May 15, 2021

All House Republicans back effort to force floor vote on 'born alive' bill

BY JARED GANS AND CRAWFORD HUMPHREYS - 05/14/21 08:31 PM EDT

The entire House GOP conference is now in support of an effort to force a floor vote on an anti-abortion bill.

All 212 Republicans in the House are backing a discharge petition for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would require health care practitioners to provide care to infants who survive an attempted abortion.

Discharge petitions need 218 signatures to force a vote, meaning Republicans will fall short unless they can persuade any Democrats to cross the aisle. Three House Democrats signed on to a similar petition for the bill in the previous Congress, but none of those Democratic lawmakers are still in office.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for petition sponsor Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) said they are “still encouraged that Democrats will sign the petition.”

more
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/553675-all-house-republicans-back-effort-to-force-floor-vote-on-born-alive-bill

May 15, 2021

Ex-Defense Secretary Delivers Damning Takedown Of GOP Spin On U.S. Capitol Riot

05/15/2021 03:30 am ET

“They’re trying to perform a frontal lobotomy on the American people,” warned William Cohen, the Republican former senator for Maine.

By Lee Moran

Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Cohen on Friday tore into elected Republicans who are desperately trying to spin the narrative on the deadly U.S. Capitol riot.

“Those members who are trying to say, ‘No big deal on Jan. 6,’ they’re trying to perform a frontal lobotomy on the American people, a side effect which is mental dullness,” Cohen, a Republican former senator for Maine, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

GOP lawmakers on Wednesday tried to depict the riot, in which five people died, as “a normal tour visit” involving “peaceful patriots.” That’s despite the existence of thousands of hours of video footage proving the violence incited by ex-President Donald Trump and his enablers was anything but.

“Everyone who watched what took place that day cannot begin to even think this was just a normal day with a bunch of citizens parading through the halls of Congress,” said Cohen, calling it “an assault upon democracy.”

more
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/william-cohen-jan-6-gop-spin_n_609f72bfe4b0daf2b5a19e57

May 15, 2021

McCarthy leadership PAC made payments to Luntz firm

Glenn Kessler 5 hrs ago

“Frank [Luntz] has been a friend of mine for more than 30 years. … I’ve rented a room from Frank for a couple of months, but don’t worry, I’m back to — going back to where I normally am, on my couch in my office. But, yeah, we pay fair market rate.”

— House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” May 4

When House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was first asked about living in a luxury apartment owned by pollster Frank Luntz — after being criticized for it by Fox News host Tucker Carlson — he emphasized that the two men have a long-term friendship.

McCarthy described Luntz as a friend he first met in 1994, when he was a staff member for then-Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.). “Frank’s a friend I knew for 15 years before I ever got in,” McCarthy said, apparently referring roughly to when he became a member of Congress in 2007.

At the time of his remarks earlier this month, McCarthy’s emphasis on a friendship seemed logical. There appeared to be no business relationship between the two men, except for a poll conducted by Luntz in 2000 for yrock.com, which McCarthy started when he was national chairman of the Young Republicans.

But Federal Election Commission filings show that the leadership PAC controlled by McCarthy — Majority Committee PAC, or McPAC — paid one of Luntz’s companies, FIL Inc., nearly $40,000 in late 2020, just before McCarthy began renting what he described as a “room” in the recently renovated apartment.

more
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mccarthy-leadership-pac-made-payments-to-luntz-firm/ar-BB1gKYNZ

May 15, 2021

Joe Biden has proven an elusive target for Republicans. With the Cheney fight over, their focus...

Joe Biden has proven an elusive target for Republicans. With the Cheney fight over, their focus is back on the president

David Jackson, USA TODAY
Published 5:00 AM EDT May. 15, 2021 Updated 5:00 AM EDT May. 15, 2021

WASHINGTON – Shortly after meeting at the White House on Wednesday, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy signaled a renewed effort with an aggressive fundraising text targeting his host, the president.

"I just met with Corrupt Joe Biden and he’s STILL planning to push his radical Socialist agenda onto the American people," the text said.

McCarthy and other Republicans have said intraparty squabbles, including the drama surrounding Rep. Liz Cheney, distracted them from presenting a unified front against Biden and his big spending plans.

Now, with Cheney expelled from Republican congressional leadership, the GOP and its allies are renewing attacks on Biden on issues such as immigration, taxing the wealthy, foreign policy, and the ability of a 78-year-old man to handle the political world's toughest jobs.

more
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/2021/05/15/target-joe-biden-donald-trump-gop-find-hard-hurt-his-image/5042821001/

May 15, 2021

Arizona audit divides wobbling state GOP

State Senate Republicans' audit of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County has others worried the party is marginalizing itself ahead of the midterms.

By JAMES ARKIN

05/15/2021 07:00 AM EDT

Arizona Republicans have an opportunity in 2022 to claw back ground they’ve lost as the state shifted towards Democrats. But first, the fight over 2020 has to end.

Republicans in the state are still divided over the results of the last election, months after President Joe Biden was sworn into office. An ongoing and extraordinary audit of the 2020 vote count in the state’s largest county — rooted in conspiracy theories and the false belief that Biden’s election was not legitimate — is deepening the schism six months after the election, with no clear end in sight.

The GOP-controlled state Senate subpoenaed ballots from Maricopa County, where more than half of Arizona’s voters live, and hired a previously unknown private firm to conduct the audit. Republican supporters say the effort is necessary to ease concerns of voters about the 2020 vote count.

But other Republicans are speaking out to warn that the amateurish conduct of the audit and the conspiracy theories it has amplified could cause lasting damage to the party. Next year they must defend an open governor’s seat and try to flip back one of the two Senate seats Democrats took in the last two elections.

more
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/15/arizona-audit-divides-wobbling-state-gop-488438

May 15, 2021

Whatever happened to Jared Kushner's peace plan?

Opinion by David A. Andelman

Updated 7:31 PM ET, Fri May 14, 2021

(CNN) - Last year, former President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled their peace plan for the Middle East at the White House. Now, 16 months later, the question that begs to be asked is whether that plan has worked at all.

Initially, of course, it seemed like a colossal success. Though Palestinian representatives rejected the entire plan from the outset and refused to be involved in any aspect of its creation, two of Israel's longest-standing foes in the region, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, followed by Morocco and Sudan, reversed generations of hostility, opened diplomatic relations and eventually allowed commercial air flights.

Yet, from the get-go, there were some ominous signs. The plan, in what has become known as Jared Kushner's Vision for Peace -- a tribute to the efforts by the former President's son-in-law -- spelled out in a detailed map for Israel to halt expansion of any new settlement activity on a large swath of the West Bank without American consent, which Kushner affirmed would not be given "for some time." (However, the plan did allow Israel to annex its existing West Bank settlements -- in violation of international law.)

Indeed, a series of "talking points," which Kushner and the State Department cabled to all American embassies, and which Politico obtained and published, claimed that "Israel has agreed to comport its policies to this Vision for at least four years, including freezing all settlement activity in the West Bank in areas that this Vision designates for the future State of Palestine."

more
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/14/opinions/jared-kushner-peace-plan-israelis-palestinians-andelman/index.html

May 15, 2021

Kevin McCarthy Says Biden Doesn't 'Have the Energy of Donald Trump': Trump 'Didn't Need to Sleep...

Kevin McCarthy Says Biden Doesn’t ‘Have the Energy of Donald Trump’: Trump ‘Didn’t Need to Sleep Five Hours a Night’

By Gideon TaaffeMay 14th, 2021, 10:14 pm

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) spoke admirably of former President Donald Trump, claiming, “Donald Trump didn’t need to sleep five hours a night.”

McCarthy appeared alongside Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and the new House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) on Hannity Friday.

Sean Hannity asked McCarthy for his observations on President Joe Biden after their recent meeting. Hannity said of the president, “I kinda see Joe as a little bit out of it, well, a little bit more than out of it, a little checked out. And I’m concerned that I am not the only one that sees it. As a matter of fact, everybody I talk to says they see it.”

The congressman compared Biden to his predecessor. “At no time, having known Joe Biden for some time, does he have the energy of Donald Trump. Donald Trump didn’t need to sleep 5 hours and he would be engaged. If you called Donald Trump, he’d get on the phone before staff would.”

more + video
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/kevin-mccarthy-says-biden-doesnt-have-the-energy-of-donald-trump-trump-didnt-need-to-sleep-five-hours-a-night/

May 15, 2021

Alan Dershowitz Calls Bernie Sanders a 'Self-Hating Jew' in Newsmax Segment on Israel

By Gideon Taaffe May 14th, 2021, 7:38 pm

Alan Dershowitz spoke on the right-wing channel Newsmax Friday, and called Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders a “self-hating Jew.”

In a segment first flagged by Media Matters’ Jason Campbell, Dershowitz told a Newsmax host during a segment on Gal Gadot’s comments on Israel and Palestine, “You can be a Jew and an anti-Semite.”

He continued, “Bernie Sanders, who’s Jewish, is a self-hating Jew, a self-hating Jew who is willing to see Israel be defeated militarily by a terrorist group because he’s on the hard left and he has to follow the hard left.”

Bernie Sanders wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the US to stop being “apologists” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to reexamine US military aid to Israel.

Sanders called out Hamas for its role in escalating violence as well, saying, “Hamas firing rockets into Israeli communities is absolutely unacceptable” and that it’s attempting to “to exploit the unrest in Jerusalem.”

more
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/alan-dershowitz-calls-bernie-sanders-a-self-hating-jew-in-newsmax-segment-on-israel/

https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1393317713485905920

May 14, 2021

Former Gaetz Confidant Pleads Guilty and Agrees to Cooperate

Source: New York Times


Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Florida, admitted to sex trafficking a minor and agreed to help in prosecutions of others.

By Michael S. Schmidt
May 14, 2021, 1:39 p.m. ET

A former confidant of Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, admitted in court papers on Friday to an array of federal crimes — including sex trafficking of a minor — and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigations, handing prosecutors a potential key witness as they decide whether to charge Mr. Gaetz.

Joel Greenberg, who was a tax collector in the Orlando area until he was indicted last year, did not implicate Mr. Gaetz by name in papers filed by prosecutors in Federal District Court in Orlando.

But Mr. Greenberg admitted that he and unidentified others had paid a 17-year-old girl for sex and that he had provided her with drugs. He admitted that he “introduced the minor to other adult men, who engaged in commercial sex acts” with her, according to the documents, and that he was sometimes present. The others were not named.

Prosecutors revealed in the documents that they have evidence they say corroborates Mr. Greenberg’s admissions — including a series of communications and transactions Mr. Greenberg had with the girl, and a list of dates of their sexual encounters. The inclusion of that material appeared designed to bolster the credibility of Mr. Greenberg as a witness whose truthfulness would likely be challenged by anyone who is charged based on anything he tells prosecutors.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/politics/joel-greenberg-matt-gaetz.html

May 14, 2021

You left us': Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean slams Trump in expletive-laden message

Kristine Phillips
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean lashed out at President Donald Trump, accusing him of misleading his supporters and then deserting them despite their unwavering loyalty.

"We are now and always have been on our own. So glad he was able to pardon a bunch of degenerates as his last move and s--- on us on the way out," Nordean said in an expletive-laden message about the former president. "F--- you trump you left us on [t]he battle field bloody and alone."

Nordean is one of several members of the extremist group with ties to white supremacy whose members describe themselves as "Western Chauvinists." He's among the more than 400 people who have been charged for their alleged roles in the deadly assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Prosecutors say Nordean, along with other Proud Boys members, planned to push through police barricades and force themselves inside the building that day. Nordean, the self-described "sergeant-at-arms" of the Proud Boys' Seattle chapter is facing several charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and aiding and abetting.

more
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/14/capitol-riot-proud-boys-leader-ethan-nordean-lashes-out-trump/5089270001