September 5, 2023

Tuesday, September 5, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

In Philadelphia, yesterday, Biden contrasted his record of of job creation with ‘the former guy’s’ without ever mentioning Trump’s name. He also compared Trump to Herbert Hoover.

Video is 3 minutes 59 seconds.👇

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Kamala is always busy.

The Vice President is on her way to Jakarta, Indonesia for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN. 🇮🇩 It’s Harris’ third trip to Southeast Asia and fourth to Asia overall, and she's touched down in more countries there than any other continent. The repeat visits, in addition to meetings that she's hosted in Washington, have positioned Harris as a key interlocutor for the Democratic administration as it tries to bolster a network of partnerships to counterbalance Chinese influence.

This latest journey is another opportunity for Harris to burnish her foreign policy credentials as she prepares for a bruising campaign year. She's already come under attack from Republican presidential candidates who say she's unprepared to step up if Biden, the oldest U.S. president in history, can't finish a second term.

John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said Harris has “made our alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific a key part of her agenda as vice president,” and he described her itinerary as “perfectly in keeping with the issues that she’s been focused on." (A mashup including ABC News).

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Whether this ultimately happens or not, the possibility made my day.

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One reason Mitch McConnell won’t step down.

Senator Dianne Feinstein 89, from California, can’t step down. The GOP has said that they won’t seat anyone California Governor Gavin Newsom appoints to replace her.

Similarly,Kentucky Democratic Governor has hinted that a replacement for McConnell, should the Republican Majority Leader step down, would not be a Republican. The situation in Kentucky is even more complicated than the Feinstein situation. Read all about it here. 👇

Kentucky governor won’t commit to appointing Republican if McConnell resigns.

After Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) experienced his second freezing episode in five weeks, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) is declining to say whether he would follow a state law requiring him to appoint a Republican in the event of a Senate vacancy.


A reporter asked Beshear on Thursday whether, if McConnell were to step down, he would choose a replacement from one of three nominees selected by the state Republican Party, as the statute requires.
“There is no Senate vacancy,” Beshear responded at the news conference. “Senator McConnell has said he’s going to serve out his term, and I believe him, so I’m not going to speculate about something that hasn’t happened and isn’t going to happen.

”

Asked whether voters deserve to know his stance on the issue, Beshear said he would not “sensationalize” McConnell’s health.


Beshear, who took office in 2019, is running for reelection this fall against Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R), a protégé of McConnell who has also been touted as a possible Senate successor should McConnell retire.


McConnell, the longest-serving Senate GOP leader in history, has insisted he has no imminent plans to leave the Senate.

Beshear’s remarks raise questions about whether the governor might challenge the 2021 law and seek to appoint a Democratic senator. He vetoed the statute after the state’s Republican legislature passed it, calling the bill “unconstitutional.” The legislature overrode Beshear’s veto.

The law, backed by McConnell, requires a governor to select within 21 days one of three nominees chosen by the state-level party apparatus of the departing senator. A special election must then be held to select a more permanent replacement. The timing would depend on when the vacancy occurred.

In his veto message, Beshear said the law violates the 17th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which gives voters the right to directly cast ballots for senators, rather than state legislatures filling the seats. The amendment also says a state legislature can empower a governor to temporarily fill a vacancy until an election can be held.

“The bill therefore upends a century of precedent by delegating the power to select the representative of all Kentuckians to an unelected, unaccountable committee of an organization that represents only a fraction of Kentuckians,” Beshear wrote in the veto message.

The governor also argued that the law violates a provision of the Kentucky Constitution that says state-level vacancies “shall be filled by appointment of the Governor.”

“No conditions, qualifications, or limits are placed on that appointment power,” Beshear wrote.

In addition to his comments Thursday, Beshear declined to answer a question from Politico this month about whether he would commit to appointing a Republican replacement for McConnell.

Beshear would have two choices if he wanted to appoint a senator of his choosing, said Michael Abate, a Louisville-based attorney with expertise in constitutional law. The governor could file a lawsuit challenging the statute or immediately appoint someone not on the state Republican Party’s list of three names. Either scenario would probably prompt a court battle, Abate said. (The Washington Post).

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[2] Top Democrats: Powerful argument 14th amendment could disqualify Trump.

Representative Adam Schiff (CA) (left) and Senator Tim Kaine (VA) (right) supported the idea that the Constitution may eliminate Trump as a Presidential candidate in 2024.

Two leading Democrats said Sunday there are potential grounds to remove former President Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot under the 14th Amendment's "insurrection clause."

The big picture: The comments by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) came as Trump sent out fund-raising emails Sunday on potential litigation over the 14th Amendment that railed against "traitorous 'Republicans'" who may be looking into potential cases as he stares down four criminal indictments, per NBC News.

Context: Election officials in several states are examining whether Trump's name should be removed from the 2024 ballot due to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prevents anyone who "engaged in insurrection" against the U.S. from holding elected office.

• Two liberal nonprofits have vowed to take legal action should Republican presidential primary front-runner Trump's name appear on the ballot.

What they're saying: Schiff told MSNBC Sunday that the 14th Amendment case is a "valid argument," noting it's "pretty clear" that if "you engage in acts of insurrection or rebellion against the government, or you give aid and comfort to those who do," you're disqualified from running for office.

• "It doesn't require that you be convicted of insurrection. It just requires that you have engaged in these acts," said the former member of the House Jan. 6 committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riots to MSNBC's Jen Psaki. "It's a disqualification from holding office again, and it fits Donald Trump to a T."

• Kaine told ABC News' "This Week" Sunday there's "a powerful argument to be made" for disqualifying Trump from the 2024 race, though he said he believed it's "probably going to get resolved in the courts."

• He added to ABC's George Stephanopoulos that in his view, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol "was designed for a particular purpose at a particular moment, and that was to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as is laid out in the Constitution."

Meanwhile, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) said on NBC News' "Meet the Press" Sunday that he saw no reason why Trump's name wouldn't be on his state's 2024 ballot.

• "If someone wants to try to litigate it it's not really a New Hampshire issue," he said to NBC host Chuck Todd. "They're litigating it against the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and therefore would be applicable to all 50 states. So, no, I fully expect the former president to be on our ballot."

The other side: The Trump campaign-allied MAGA Inc. super PAC in an email Sunday called the comments by "Hillary Clinton's former running mate" Kaine a "bogus legal theory."

They pointed to an Obama-appointed Florida judge's dismissal last week of a challenge to Trump's candidacy under the 14th Amendment.

Worth noting: U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg said in her ruling that the plaintiffs in the Florida case "lack standing to challenge" Trump's qualifications for seeking the presidency, "as the injuries alleged" in the U.S. Capitol insurrection "are not cognizable and not particular to them."

For the record: Trump denies any wrongdoing in the criminal cases against him and has pleaded not guilty in three of them, including a federal Jan. 6 case alleging that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election.

He's announced his attention to enter a not guilty plea on Wednesday in Georgia's election subversion case against him.

Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.

Go deeper: Why Trump can legally run for president despite indictments. (Axios).

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Another Reminder on Labor Day.

From the writer/editor Dana Rubin.

On this Labor Day, we remember the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire 112 years ago.

At five o’clock on a March afternoon in 1911 a fire broke out on the top floor of a factory in Manhattan.

The building was home to the Triangle Shirtwaist company, one of thirteen garment manufacturers in New York that had resisted attempts at unionizing. A young Polish-born organizer, Rose Schneiderman, had helped lead an unsuccessful strike for better working conditions at that same factory a little more than a year earlier.

Conditions had not improved. As the fire raced across the ninth floor, bolts of cloth and paper patterns burst into flames. Trapped behind locked doors, dozens of workers clawed their way through the smoke and fire to windows, then leapt to their death on the pavement below. Girls as young as fourteen from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Southern Italy perished that day, a total of 146 dead.

One week later, at a mass meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan, Schneiderman gave voice to the horror and outrage felt across the country.

“This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city,” she said. “... every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred ... it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.”

Schneiderman later said she was so upset she could hardly speak above a whisper, but “the words poured out.”

Her speech that day is included in my new anthology of American women's speeches, "Speaking While Female: 75 Extraordinary Speeches by American Women."

Schneiderman is just one example of the long, proud history of women speaking up for the rights of the disadvantaged and the dispossessed.

She had come to the US from Poland at age eight. Her family was so poor she left school after the sixth grade. By sixteen she was working as a lining  

In 1926 she became president of the Women’s Trade Union League, and in the 1930s she played a key role in shaping New Deal legislation.

“Little Miss Schneiderman,” as The New York Times called her — she was only four foot nine — spoke in auditoriums and church halls, in basements and at street meetings, and eventually on the radio. To critics she was “the Red Rose of Anarchy,” a play on her flaming red hair.

At a labor speech in Cleveland in 1912, she said: “The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too” — the right not just to subsistence but also beauty. (LinkedIn).

The final voice for Labor Day on the Roundup.

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Breaking News💥

First lady Jill Biden tests positive for COVID-19; President Biden tests negative for virus.

WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19 Monday but is experiencing only mild symptoms currently, her spokeswoman said.

President Joe Biden was tested for the virus following his wife’s positive test, but his results were negative. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president would continue testing regularly and would be monitored for symptoms.

Jill Biden will remain at the couple’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for the time being, communications director Elizabeth Alexander said. (Associated Press).
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