Trump's Monied Hearings
And a drawing from the past
On The New Yorker Radio Hour this week, there is a great conversation with Representative Ro Khanna (California-D) and the magazine’s editor David Remnick. Khanna’s district encompasses Silicon Valley, and he knows many of the players there, including Elon Musk. It is very enlightening, I recommend listening to it, if you have the time.
Confirmation hearings begin this week for Trump’s nominees to serve in his cabinet. His supporters are “going all in for Pete Hegseth” to lead the Pentagon, despite allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking and incompetence. A coalition of outside groups are pressuring Republicans to fall into line. Steve Bannon, aid to Trump from his first time in office (and who served jail time for contempt of court), says that this time around, the efforts for successful confirmation are much more organized and very well funded. Democrats are not happy with Hegseth as the nominee, and have not had access to his FBI background check. There will be drama, but the NY Times reports that rarely do confimations fail on the floor. I wish that weren’t the case—maybe this time will be different.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has said he will order the flags in his state to return to full staff for Trump’s inauguration. It’s tradition for all flags to be half staff for 30 days in honor of President Carter. Very disrespectful of Carter.
Judge Aileen Cannon of Florida ruled that Justice Department could soon release a portion of a report written by the special counsel, Jack Smith, about the decisions he made in charging President-elect Donald J. Trump with plotting to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. But she is not releasing the part of the case she oversaw about Trump refusing to return classified government documents. Cannon said defense lawyers have to come and argue whether the Justice Department can release those documents to Congress.
I spent all day working on my documentary, Women Laughing—actually it is taking up most of my days lately! Happily so. It’s coming along. I want to share a lovely drawing I ran into today, by one of The New Yorker’s first women cartoonists, Helen Hokinson. It was drawn and published in 1925, the year the magazine was founded.
Thanks for being here, see you tomorrow!
Hegseth is a Christian Nationalist and they believe in using force to make the US a Christian nation. This alone should disqualify him as head of the Defense Department. And yet, the media never mentions this. Please email or call your Representative and inform him/her about the importance of this. I think that the Bulwark is contacting politicians about Tuesday's nomination hearings.
The cartoon from the ‘20s is beautiful. How are you feeling? Better I hope.
The horror of the right-wing republicans (I'm purposely not capitalizing the political party to show my disrespect) controlling both houses of Congress and soon, the presidency, is becoming more glaring. The idiotic republicans want to make aid to CA for the wildfires conditional on some shitty notion of their evil minds.
Glad you had something fun to work on. Talk about hypocritical. A guy accused of sexual misconduct and heavy drinking wanting the US to be a Christian nation? Say what?