13 July 21
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Matt Gaetz Has a Wild New Plan to Make Trump President Again
Paul Blest, VICE
Blest writes: "A wild new plan to make Donald Trump president again just dropped, and it involves him taking over Nancy Pelosi's job."
Gaetz promised a Speaker Donald Trump would 'impeach Joe Biden' and get the GOP back into the White House.
wild new plan to make Donald Trump president again just dropped, and it involves him taking over Nancy Pelosi’s job.
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said at Trump’s rally in Sarasota over the weekend that should the GOP win control of the House of Representatives after the 2022 midterms, he’d vote for Trump as Speaker of the House—despite the fact that Trump seemingly has no plans to run for the House whatsoever.
"The crooked establishment in both political parties in Washington DC, they want to get their power back, and I've got a different plan," Gaetz told the crowd in Florida. "After the next election cycle when we take back the House of Representatives, when we send Nancy Pelosi back to the filth of San Francisco, my commitment to you is that my vote for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives will go to Donald J. Trump.”
“Can you imagine a Speaker Trump?” Gaetz asked, going on to say Trump would “throw all of the Democrats off of the committees” and “impeach Joe Biden.”
The Trump-as-speaker strategy has been floating around the right-wing internet for months, and for understandable reasons. Becoming Speaker of the House would bring Trump—who has repeatedly said he could retake the White House before 2024, the next presidential election—to third in line for the presidency behind Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. If Trump became Speaker and an impeachment effort against Biden and Harris was successful, Trump would become president.
The only flaw in this theory is that, as was the case with Trump’s two impeachments, the Senate would need two-thirds of senators to also vote to convict Biden, which isn’t likely.
There’s also the small matter of Trump showing little interest in running for House. Trump called the idea “very interesting” during an interview with right-wing radio host Wayne Allyn Root last month, but soon walked it back, later telling Fox Business that it was “highly unlikely” he’d run for office in 2022.
But although there’s no precedent for choosing a House Speaker who isn’t actually a member of the House, the Constitution is ambiguous on the question, saying only that “The House of Representatives shall chuse (sic) their Speaker and other Officers." And interestingly enough, several non-House members were nominated as Speaker in 2019 after the Democrats took the House—including Biden.
But actually making a non-House member Speaker would be a historical first, and as constitutional scholar David Forte told NBC News in 2015, the people who wrote the Constitution meant for the Speaker to be an actual member of the House. "It would have been unthinkable for the most populous house not to have its leader be part of the representatives who were elected by the people," Forte told NBC News.
Either way, Trump appears to have appreciated the gesture from his biggest Florida sycophant, praising Gaetz during his Florida rally appearance as a “friend of mine” and “a great guy.”
“He’s fighting, fighting, fighting. I guess they don’t like people that do that,” Trump said of Gaetz, who is currently under investigation into whether he paid underage girls for sex. “He’s somebody who’s very special in so many ways, and he’s a very brave guy: Matt Gaetz.”
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Texas governor Greg Abbott. (photo: Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images)
Texas Democrats Flee the State to Thwart Voting Restrictions Law
Sam Levine, Guardian UK
Levine writes: "Lawmakers took off from a private airport terminal Monday afternoon, the Texas Tribune reported, and were expected to land in Washington DC early in the evening."
exas Democrats fled the state as part of an all-out effort to block Republicans from passing new restrictions on voting in the state.
The move, first reported by NBC News, escalates one of the most high-stakes battles over efforts to make it harder to vote in America.
Lawmakers took off from a private airport terminal Monday afternoon, the Texas Tribune reported, and were expected to land in Washington DC early in the evening.
It comes days into a special legislative session in Texas in which Republicans are advancing measures that would impose new identification requirements on mail-in ballots, ban 24-hour and drive-thru voting, and empower partisan poll watchers.
Texas, a state Trump handily won in 2020, is already one of the hardest places to vote in the US. It is among a handful of states that do not have online voter registration nor does it allow everyone to vote by mail, only allowing those who are 65, have a disability, or who meet other criteria to do so. Texas was among the states with the lowest turnout in 2020.
This is the second time Texas lawmakers have walked out of the capitol to deny Republicans the required two-thirds quorum needed to conduct business.
In late May, Democrats walked out of the regular session of the legislature, thwarting an earlier version of the voting bill. Republicans have pressed on with a similar version of that bill in the special session, though they dropped two of its most egregious provisions – a measure cutting early voting hours on Saturdays and another that would have made it easier for judges to overturn elections.
The Democratic decision to flee the state offered a jolt of energy to national Democrats, who have watched Republicans across the country use their majorities in state capitols to enact several new measures to impose voting restrictions.
The Democrats fleeing Texas plan to advocate for federal voting legislation while in Washington, NBC News reported.
“We are now taking the fight to our nation’s capitol. We are living on borrowed time in Texas,” Democratic leaders in the state house of representatives said in a statement. They urged Congress to pass the For the People Act, which includes several provisions that would expand voter access, as well as an updated version of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Gilberto Hinojosa, the chairman of the Texas Democratic party, supported lawmakers as they left the state.
“We will not stand by and watch Republicans slash our right to vote, silence the voices of Texans of color, and destroy our democracy – all to preserve their own power. Our lawmakers have refused to be complicit in Republicans’ destructive attacks – and they’re doing what Texans need them to do: hold the line so that not one more anti-voter law can be passed in Texas,” he said in a statement.
With no quorum, Republicans in the state legislature will be unable to proceed with any business in the special session, which can last a maximum of 30 days. Democrats who flee the state face potential arrest, according to NBC News as state Republicans can authorize law enforcement to haul the Democratic legislators back to the state. Republicans did just that in 2003, when Democratic lawmakers fled the state in an effort to block new electoral maps that would favor Republicans.
Dade Phelan, a Republican and the speaker of the Texas house of representatives, said Republicans would use “every available resource” under the state constitution and rules of the House to secure a quorum. The rules of the Texas house allow legislators to authorize the sergeant-at-arms to arrest lawmakers, if needed, to secure a quorum.
“These actions put at risk state funding that will deny thousands of hard-working staff members and their families a paycheck, health benefits, and retirement investment so that legislators who broke quorum can flee to Washington DC in private jets,” he said in a statement. “The special session clock is ticking – I expect all members to be present in our capitol in order to immediately get to work on these issues.”
As recently as last week, there was not widespread consensus among Democrats on whether to flee the state, the New York Times reported.
Some Democrats, realizing they could not block Republicans from passing new restrictions for ever, favored staying and fighting the legislation on procedural grounds, and proposing amendments to win key concessions, the Times said. Some worried that fleeing the state would make it look like Democrats were abandoning their legislative responsibilities. Those in favor of fleeing argued it would bring new spotlight to the fight over voting rights in Texas. Fifty-eight of the 67-member Democratic caucus are expected to flee the state, NBC reported.
Republicans began advancing the new voting bill on Saturday in a committee hearing that lasted into the early hours of the morning. Hundreds of people signed up to testify against the measure and waited hours to do so.
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Allen Weisselberg, center, at the Lower Manhattan building that houses the criminal courts and the district attorney's office. (photo: Jefferson Siegel/NYT)
Trump Organization Strips Weisselberg of Roles After Indictment
Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich, The New York Times
Excerpt: "A week after state prosecutors in Manhattan indicted Donald J. Trump's family business and its chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, the company began removing Mr. Weisselberg from every leadership position he held atop dozens of its subsidiaries, according to a person with knowledge of the matter."
The removal of Allen Weisselberg from dozens of subsidiaries could signal a looming shake-up in former President Donald Trump’s family business.
The move could be a potential precursor to a wider shake-up at the former president’s company, the Trump Organization, as the reality of the indictment takes hold for Mr. Trump and his senior executives. While Mr. Weisselberg continues to work at the Trump Organization, and there is no indication that Mr. Trump wants to cut ties with him, the company might seek to move him into a lower-profile role.
The Trump Organization set the change in motion last week as it began to erase Mr. Weisselberg’s name from subsidiaries or corporate entities affiliated with him, the person with knowledge of the matter said, and public records on Monday reflected that he was no longer linked to at least 20 Trump companies incorporated in Florida. As the records are processed in other states in the coming days and weeks, the full scope of his removal will come into focus.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (photo: Brittany Greeson/Getty Images)
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: Progressives May Sink Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Without Reconciliation Deal
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "We speak with Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about efforts to pass major infrastructure funding that could address child care, climate change, education and poverty."
s lawmakers return to Washington, D.C., following a two-week recess, we speak with Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about efforts to pass major infrastructure funding that could address child care, climate change, education and poverty. President Joe Biden has already struck a $1 trillion infrastructure agreement with a centrist group of lawmakers concentrated on roads, bridges and highways, but a fight is brewing over a larger package that Democrats want to pass in the Senate using the budget reconciliation process, which can pass with just 50 votes and avoid a filibuster. “The Progressive Caucus is rather united in the fact that we will not support bipartisan legislation without a reconciliation bill, and one that takes bold and large action on climate, drawing down carbon emissions, but also job creation and increasing equity and resilience for impacted communities, particularly frontline communities,” says Ocasio-Cortez, who represents New York’s 14th Congressional District. “That’s where we’ve drawn a strong line.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Representative, I wanted to ask you about — in the infrastructure and the developing agreement between Democrats and Republicans on infrastructure, the concerns of you and other members of the Progressive Caucus about what is going to happen to efforts to combat climate change in these battles over infrastructure?
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, I believe that the Progressive Caucus is rather united in the fact that we will not support bipartisan legislation without a reconciliation bill, and one that takes bold and large action on climate, drawing down carbon emissions, but also job creation and increasing equity and resilience for impacted communities, particularly frontline communities. And so, we’ve made that very clear and that a bipartisan agreement will not pass unless we have a reconciliation bill that also passes. And so, that is where we’ve drawn a strong line. And I believe that Speaker Pelosi, the White House and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have taken that threat quite seriously. They know that we fully intend on acting out on that if a reconciliation bill does not come to the floor of the House.
And, you know, we have many — there’s many, many different actions that we need in a climate bill for reconciliation, whether it’s a Civilian Climate Corps, whether it is increased infrastructure and investment in rail, in mass transit, and whether it’s also centering frontline, Indigenous, Black and Brown and low-income communities that are polluted on and often experience the greatest brunt, and will be experiencing the greatest brunt, of climate change-related infrastructure failures.
AMY GOODMAN: So, this issue of trying to get a massive Green New Deal proposed — I mean, Bernie Sanders, of course, head of the Budget Committee, said $3 trillion is simply not enough to deal with what must be dealt with in this country — also involves this filibuster. And there are many right now, in the voting rights community, for example — and this all overlaps — who are saying just President Biden is simply not expending his political capital to get this dealt with, because he has a very limited amount of time, possibly, when the Democrats are in power in the Senate and he’s the president and Democrats control the House, to get some of this groundbreaking legislation through. Tomorrow he’ll be giving a voting rights speech in Philadelphia. What does he have to do? What are you saying behind the scenes? What is Schumer saying? What is your relationship like with Schumer? What are you demanding they do that they’re failing to do right now?
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, I do believe that there is a sense, particularly among members of Congress, that believe that the White House is leaving some of its leverage on the table in terms of really pushing on voting rights and the passage of H.R. 1, and particularly in its conversations with those in the Senate, whether it is Senator Manchin, Sinema — or, frankly, there are others. It’s not just Manchin and Sinema that have been hesitant on the filibuster, but I believe that there are other members of the Senate that are essentially hiding behind them in their hesitations, as well. And, you know, the White House has been stepping up slightly in that campaign, and I think that’s evidenced by their decision to make a speech tomorrow.
But I do believe that all of these conversations are quite interlinked, and I believe that it should be coming up in every conversation and every negotiation, whether it is infrastructure, whether it is voting rights and so on, that, you know, the White House needs to be making explicit, frankly, to members of Congress the way that it is — what they are doing, particularly within our own party, to make sure that this gets done, because the last thing that we want to see is a lot of wonderful speeches and public-facing statements but no actual passage of critical voting rights legislation.
And I think that this is — it cannot be stated enough that the United States is in a very fragile and delicate precipice of democracy in our own right. And if we do not get H.R. 1 passed, if we do not pass it in this term, I think I and many other individuals, frankly, are quite fearful for the state and future of our democracy. It is that simple. We have state Republican parties that are setting up the infrastructure and, frankly, the practice to overturn the results of an election. And that includes the presidential election.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And speaking of presidential elections, former President Trump delivered the keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, in Dallas, Texas, over the weekend. He captured over 70% of the 2024 GOP presidential nomination poll at CPAC. Should Democrats be concerned about his continued popularity?
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: I mean, I think the whole country should be concerned. You know, I think that there are two minds of this. One is that I do believe that whether he intends to run or not, former President Trump will be indicating and will continue to essentially tease the possibility. So, what that is to say is to not discount the ability and the popularity that he may have and the possibility of him running again. But it is also to say that he may not, but wants to continue his — essentially, his vise grip over the Republican Party. And so there are two distinct possibilities here. But I do believe that the Democratic Party should be worried.
And that cuts straight to the voting rights provisions. And I do want to state that even Senator Manchin and some others have indicated that H.R. 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights, is what they would support instead. And I think while H.R. 4 is critical for passage, it does not solve this problem. And it is not a substitute for passing the For the People Act. One main and enormous provision is that H.R. 1, it is essentially retroactive, in that it will overturn and it will supersede many of these anti-democracy laws that are being passed in states across the country. And the Voting Rights Act doesn’t — I mean, the John Lewis — the John Lewis Voting Rights Act does not do that. It restores key provisions of the Civil Rights Act, but H.R. 1 is what will actually institute and reverse some of these very corrosive and very frightening, frankly, anti-democracy laws that are being passed in state governments across the country.
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Immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. (photo: Eric Gay/AP)
High Court Ruling Gives Immigrants Facing Deportation Hope
Philip Marcelo, Associated Press
Marcelo writes: "Just a few short months ago, Lucio Perez moved out of the western Massachusetts church he'd lived in for more than three years to avoid deportation."
Immigration authorities in March granted the 40-year-old Guatemalan national a temporary stay in his deportation while he argued to have his immigration case reconsidered.
Now, Perez is looking to a recent Supreme Court ruling to help him clear that final hurdle and officially be allowed to remain in the country he’s called home for more than two decades.
“At this point, I’m feeling very positive that everything is on the right track,” he said recently from his home in Springfield, Massachusetts. “I don’t have that fear of deportation anymore. I feel safer now.”
Perez is among scores of immigrants hoping to get their deportation cancelled because they didn’t receive proper notice of the court proceedings.
In April, the Supreme Court ruled in Niz-Chavez vs. Garland that the federal government must provide all required information to immigrants facing deportation in a single notice.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for years has been notifying immigrations about their deportation cases in roughly two parts: an initial notice to appear in court and follow up notices providing the date, time and location of the proceedings.
But Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his majority opinion, criticized the piecemeal approach as exceeding federal law.
The issue, he argued, hinged on the shortest of words: a 1996 immigration law calls for the government to issue “a” notice to appear, implying Congress intended those facing deportation to receive a single document.
“At one level, today’s dispute may seem semantic, focused on a single word, a small one at that,” said Gorsuch, a conservative judge appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump. “But words are how the law constrains power.”
Immigration lawyers and advocates, who have long complained about the deportation notification process, say the ruling has implications for scores of immigration cases.
“It’s a bombshell,” said Jeremy McKinney, a North Carolina attorney who is president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association. “It’s the second time in less than three years that the court has had to remind the government that a notice to appear actually has to notify a person when and where to appear.”
The high court, he noted, made a similar ruling on deportation notices in Pereira vs. Sessions, but that 2018 decision was somewhat narrower in scope.
Immigration activists argue ICE’s current notice process causes too many immigrants to miss their court hearings , as months can pass between the initial and follow-up notices. Some, they say, don’t even find out until years later that they had a deportation hearing and were ordered removed from the country by a judge.
It could be months before the true impact of the Niz-Chavez decision is felt, but McKinney and other immigration experts say it’s sure to add more cases to an already overburdened immigration court system.
At minimum, the decision gives new life to cases in which immigrants weren’t properly notified, never showed up for their deportation cases and were ultimately ordered to leave the country, he said.
It also likely benefits anyone issued a deportation notice without the necessary specifics going forward. Indeed in places like Cleveland, Ohio, and Arlington, Virginia, immigration court judges are already granting requests to terminate deportation proceedings if an immigrant was issued a notice that lacks a place or date and time for the initial hearing, according to immigration lawyers.
Matt Benson, a Cincinnati-based attorney, estimated his firm alone has filed more than two dozen such motions, with the vast majority being granted by judges.
“The court is being flooded with these motions,” he said. “This is now a major tool to avoid a removal order against a client.”
ICE, which had argued in the Supreme Court case that its notification process was sufficient, said Friday it’s been providing the required information on a single notice since January 2019.
It also referred to a June memo in which it said ICE lawyers will “exercise their prosecutorial discretion” in deciding whether to challenge immigrants who seek to reopen their immigration cases in light of the Niz-Chavez ruling.
In the meantime, Agusto Niz-Chavez, the 30-year-old Guatemalan national at the center of the Supreme Court case, says he’s waiting for his case to be remanded to the immigration court in Detroit.
Niz-Chavez says he’s anxious for it to be resolved. His wife was deported to Guatemala last year and he’s been raising their three children in Detroit while trying to balance work at a local pallet factory.
“My priority right now is to stay by my kids,” he said by Zoom recently. “If I’m able to obtain lawful permanent residency in the future, I would be interested in trying to find a lawful path for my wife to return to the United States.”
In Massachusetts, Perez is hoping for a similar outcome in court.
The father of four, who entered the country illegally in 1999 at the age of 17, was served with a notice to appear in immigration court back in 2011, but it didn’t have the date and time of his hearing, according to Glenn Formica, Perez’s lawyer.
“This is everything Lucio needs to get a second chance in his case,” he said.
For now, Perez is easing back into the life he put on hold for the last three years while he lived in the First Congregational Church in Amherst with support from the Pioneer Valley Workers Center and the hundreds of volunteer supporters the group helped coordinate.
The longtime landscaper hopes to open a store selling Guatemalan clothes and food if he’s granted permanent status.
“I felt like a bird in a cage before,” Perez said. “Now, I’m out of the cage and back in my life. I can leave the house, go to the store, go to work. I’m really grateful for that.”
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Police said six people have been killed and more than 200 arrested in protests since last week. (photo: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)
South Africa Deploys Army in Two Provinces to Quell Protests
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "The South African military said it was deploying soldiers in two provinces, including its economic hub of Johannesburg, to help police cope with looting and arson attacks on businesses in the wake of former President Jacob Zuma's jailing."
President Ramaphosa says the violence that has left six dead is unprecedented in post-apartheid South Africa.
he South African military said it was deploying soldiers in two provinces, including its economic hub of Johannesburg, to help police cope with looting and arson attacks on businesses in the wake of former President Jacob Zuma’s jailing.
The move comes as the country’s top court began hearing a challenge on Monday by the former president against a 15-month prison term.
Police said six people have been killed and more than 200 arrested in related protests and looting since last week.
“The South African National Defence Force has commenced with pre-deployment processes and procedures in line with a request for assistance received … to assist law enforcement agencies deployed in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces respectively to quell the unrest that has gripped both Provinces in the last few days,” South African military said in a statement on Monday.
In a nationally televised address on Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the deadly violence gripping the country’s two most densely populated provinces was unprecedented in post-apartheid South Africa.
“Parts of the country are reeling from several days and nights of public violence, destruction of property and looting of the sort rarely seen before in the history of our democracy,” Ramaphosa said.
Zuma, 79, was sentenced for defying a constitutional court order to give evidence at an inquiry investigating high-level corruption during his nine years in office until 2018.
The decision to jail him resulted from legal proceedings seen as a test of South Africa’s ability to enforce the rule of law, including against powerful politicians.
In the virtual hearing, Zuma’s counsel asked the court to rescind his jail term, citing a rule that judgements can be reconsidered if made in the absence of the affected person or containing a patent error.
Al Jazeera’s Fahmida Miller, reporting from Johannesburg, said legal experts believe chances of the court rescinding its previous ruling are slim.
“The president’s lawyers are saying he did not choose to not appear before the constitutional court. They are saying it was his ill health which dictated that. They are hoping the court rescinds its previous judgement,” Miller said.
Violence and looting
Sporadic violence and looting continued on Monday after a weekend of unrest by pro-Zuma protesters, mainly concentrated in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).
Some disturbances spilled into the country’s largest city, Johannesburg.
Shortly before the military’s announcement, troops were seen on the streets of KZN’s capital, Pietermaritzburg, and smoke billowed from the roof of a large shopping mall.
A retail shop in Durban was looted on Monday morning while in Eshowe, a town near Zuma’s Nkandla home, police fired rubber bullets to disperse crowds after a supermarket was ransacked.
In Johannesburg, in Gauteng province, an AFP news agency photographer saw a corpse at one site. The cause of the death was not immediately known. Sections of a major highway were closed.
Some of the protests appear to have been triggered by Zuma’s detention, but they are also associated with grinding unemployment and hardship inflicted by a toughening of anti-COVID measures.
or years, scientists have been warning that higher temperatures will reduce the bounty of farms 
