December 5, 2024

Thursday, December 5, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

Final numbers in the House.

The popular vote was a 1.48% win for Trump… 1.48%. Not a landslide.

And the House is barely a Republican win. The Times called the 2025 House “The Smallest House Majority in History.” It just might turn over and stop Trump as soon as someone red defects, is fed up or retires.

Let’s talk the defections first. A 217-215 majority means Mike Johnston can’t lose even one Republican vote if all the Democrats vote in a bloc.

As to the “fed ups” and retirees (sometimes it will be hard to tell which is which), they bring about the special elections, and we have shown time and time again, we are good at those.

@yasharali.bsky.social on Bluesky

Final House Numbers: Republicans have won 220 seats, while Democrats have secured 215. With three anticipated GOP departures next year, House Republicans will begin the 119th Congress with a slim 217-215 majority.

Hang tough on this.

In the meanwhile, call your Senators and Representative to let them know your dissatisfaction with the rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon’s pick of Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy; and to inform them of your expectation that they will leave it all out there on the playing field to block these profoundly dangerous nominations whether they have a vote on them or not. (Language in this paragraph borrowed from Simon Rosenberg with gratitude).

@diffugerenives.bsky.social on Bluesky

For a time (not insignificant, much of Trump's first 100 days), it will be a one-vote margin. And a 4-vote margin in the Senate during the critical confirmation process and hearings for his nominees. Remind me how was this a mandate.

Simon Rosenberg also reminded us all, as did Congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, that there as still 60 days to go and Senate Dems can hold confirmation hearings on Trump’s nominees this December while we still have control.

Ornstein wrote on Twitter:

Dems have the Senate majority for the next 60-plus days. Use it! Not just to confirm judges. Hold your own pre-confirmation hearings. Foreign Relations on Tulsi Gabbards ties to Russia. Intel Committee on John Ratliffe's misconduct on intelligence in Trump's first term

Judiciary on Matt Gaetz's corruption and repeated sexual offenses. Homeland Security on Kristi Noem's lack of qualifications and corruption of office in SD, Tom Homan's sadistic and illegal child separation. HELP Committee on RFK's lunatic theories

Armed Services on Pete Hegseth being bounced from the military for extremism, ties to white nationalism, plans to hollow out the military. All this will be whitewashed when the GOP takes the majority. Preempt them!

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More on Democratic Leadership.

This is big!

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With Trump’s Election, there seems a new tone to our nation, and it’s not pretty.

Is it a coincidental that these two news flashes are about healthcare?

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News from around the world.

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What we can expect next.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) calls for President Biden to issue blanket pardon for those "targeted by Trump's Enemies List".

Biden White House Is Discussing Preemptive Pardons for Those in Trump’s Crosshairs

President Joe Biden’s senior aides are conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to senior Democrats familiar with the discussions.

Biden’s aides are deeply concerned about a range of current and former officials who could find themselves facing inquiries and even indictments, a sense of alarm which has only accelerated since Trump last weekend announced the appointment of Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Patel has publicly vowed to pursue Trump’s critics.

The White House officials, however, are carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons to those who’ve committed no crimes, both because it could suggest impropriety, only fueling Trump’s criticisms, and because those offered preemptive pardons may reject them.

The deliberations touch on pardoning those currently in office, elected and appointed, as well as former officials who’ve angered Trump and his loyalists.

Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The conversations were spurred by Trump’s repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. “The beneficiaries know nothing,” one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons.

Biden’s ultimate decision, though, could prove just as consequential to some of the country’s most high-profile public officials as his choice to pardon his son.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment on but did not deny the discussions.

That the conversations are taking place at all reflects the growing anxieties among high-level Democrats about just how far Trump’s reprisals could go once he reclaims power. The remarkable, 11-year breadth of Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter illustrated how worried the White House is about Trump officials seizing any potential openings for prosecution.

At issue, to repurpose a phrase, is whether to take Trump seriously and literally when it comes to his prospective revenge tour against Democrats and others in the so-called Deep State who’ve raised his ire.

End-of-administration pardons are always politically fraught. But President George H.W. Bush’s intervention to spare former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Bill Clinton’s pardon of financier and donor Marc Rich seem quaint compared with what Biden officials are grappling with as Trump returns to the presidency with lieutenants plotting tribunals against adversaries.

And that was before the president pardoned his son, infuriating many of his own party already angry at Biden for insisting on running for reelection as he neared 82. Now, Biden’s aides also must consider whether they should offer the same legal inoculation to public officials who’ve attracted the ire of Trump or his supporters that the president granted his convicted son.

The White House is facing contradictory pressures from Capitol Hill. Some longtime Democratic lawmakers, like Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), have talked favorably about the precedent of former President Gerald Ford’s preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon, issued before any charges were filed against the disgraced former president.

“If it’s clear by January 19 that [revenge] is his intention, then I would recommend to President Biden that he provide those preemptive pardons to people, because that’s really what our country is going to need next year,” Markey said on WGBH last week.

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Penn.), a close Biden ally who hosted the president in his district shortly before the election, issued a plea Wednesday for Biden to offer blanket pardons.

“This is no hypothetical threat,” Boyle said in a statement, adding: “The time for cautious restraint is over. We must act with urgency to push back against these threats and prevent Trump from abusing his power.”

Other lawmakers, I’m told, have been just as emphatic in private with Biden’s aides in calling for preemptive pardons. (Politico)

Below are some of the people we need POTUS to pardon preemptively. 👇 Some will refuse because pardons carry with them the presumption of guilt, and they did nothing wrong except live in a country where a revengeful, angry, crazy man with no respect for the law is being returned to the White House.

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

Dr. Anthony Fauci.

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