October 9, 2024

Wednesday, October 9, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

Kamala is always busy.

Yesterday morning, on The View, Kamala introduced a plan that will be a game changer for American families.

As President, she will propose that Medicare fund home health care, using savings generated by the Biden-Harris negotiated reductions in drug prices.

The average number of viewers for The View is 2.35 million. Watch what Vice President told them. 👇

She also called for Medicare to cover vision and hearing care.

Next, Kamala was on Howard Stern’s show. He has an estimated 10 million daily listeners with 74% between the ages of 25-54 (the key voting demographic).

Late night. Kamala joined Stephen Kolbert.

I will likely post on that tomorrow.

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Bob Woodward delivers his own October surprise.

Some weren’t surprised.

New York Times - Kamala Harris just spoke at length about a report in a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward, which detailed Donald Trump’s friendly relations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Woodward reported that Trump sent Putin Covid tests in 2020. “People were dying by the hundreds,” Harris said. “Everybody was scrambling to get these kits,” adding that “this guy who is president of the United States is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator, for his personal use.”

One more thing.

There is that other breaking news too. Also not a surprise. Trump stopped the FBI from vetting Kavanaugh.

FBI probe of Kavanaugh constrained by Trump White House, report finds.

In September 2018, as allegations of sexual misconduct against Brett M. Kavanaugh threatened his confirmation to the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump vowed that the FBI would have “free rein” to vet the claims. Trump said the FBI was “talking to everybody” and added on social media: “I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion.”


The president’s comments came as a surprise to the FBI, according to a new report from a Democratic senator based on previously undisclosed correspondence between the agency and the White House. FBI officials — directed to conduct a very limited inquiry in a week’s time — requested “additional guidance” from the White House, citing the public remarks by Trump and other officials describing a freewheeling investigation. But the White House never authorized the agency to independently probe the sexual misconduct allegations, which Kavanaugh staunchly denied.


The report, which was produced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a Judiciary Committee member and leading critic of the Kavanaugh confirmation, and provided to The Washington Post ahead of a public release on Tuesday, provides additional evidence of the tight control exercised by the White House over the FBI investigation — despite Trump’s claims to the contrary.

The report found that messages to the FBI tip line regarding Kavanaugh were forwarded directly to the White House and never probed, and that the FBI had no written protocols for the supplemental background investigation ordered by the White House. It notes that the FBI was instructed by the White House to talk to 10 potential witnesses and was not given the leeway to pursue corroborating evidence — the absence of which was cited by senators as they narrowly voted to confirm Kavanaugh, marking a major triumph for the conservative movement and locking in a right-leaning majority that would later overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

Trump ordered the additional inquiry following nationally televised testimony by Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh had groped her and tried to take off her clothes more than three decades earlier, when they were in high school at a party in suburban Maryland. Another accuser, Deborah Ramirez, had come forward in a New Yorker story, saying Kavanaugh had shoved his penis into her face during a dorm party when they were at Yale University in the early 1980s.

“The Congressional report published today confirms what we long suspected: the FBI supplemental investigation of then-nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh was, in fact, a sham effort directed by the Trump White House to silence brave victims and other witnesses who came forward and to hide the truth,” said Blasey Ford’s lawyers, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks.


An attorney for Ramirez, John Clune, said of the report: “It’s really disappointing since our client was so candid about something that was a pretty awful experience.”
Kavanaugh did not respond to a request for comment sent to the Supreme Court on Monday. Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Kavanaugh “was unfairly slandered and smeared with lies.”


Gillie Maddox, a spokeswoman for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chaired the Judiciary Committee during Kavanaugh’s confirmation, said the report “doesn’t offer any legitimate, substantive new ground.” She also said its release before the November election raises “questions about its validity and motive.”


Some of the limits placed by the Trump White House on the inquiry were widely reported at the time. The FBI did not question Kavanaugh or Blasey Ford about the allegations. Nor did the FBI interview dozens of people whose names were provided by lawyers for Blasey Ford and Ramirez who said they could have offered corroborating evidence. It was also clear at the time that the FBI was not conducting a criminal investigation in which it would have broad authority.

The FBI declined to comment on the report but explained in a statement how it responds to requests from the White House to conduct background investigations.


“The FBI follows a long-standing, established, process through which the scope of the investigation is limited to what is requested,” the statement said. “The FBI does not have the independent authority to expand the scope of a supplemental background investigation outside the requesting agency’s parameters.

”
In an interview, Whitehouse said the review of the FBI probe took six years because of resistance from both the Trump and Biden administrations to providing correspondence with the FBI, access to FBI officials and answers to questions about the investigation. Until 2021, the only information Democratic senators said they were able to obtain about the procedures for a supplemental background investigation was a publicly accessible YouTube video explaining how the FBI tip line works.


“Assurances that everything was being done by the book and according to standard FBI procedures omitted the fact that for supplement background investigations, there is no book and there are no procedures,” Whitehouse said. “You simply do what the White House tells you.”


The report notes there was no dedicated tip line set up for the Kavanaugh inquiry; members of the public used a preexisting portal called the National Threat Operations Center. The FBI received more than 4,500 calls and electronic messages related to Kavanaugh and was directed to forward the tips to the White House without pursuing any possible leads, according to the report. Even when senators contacted the FBI directly with the names of people who claimed to have relevant information about Kavanaugh, the FBI did not contact them.


The report described how two days before voting on Kavanaugh, senators were given about an hour to review more than 1,600 pages of material collected by the FBI, mostly raw information from the tip line. Neither the FBI nor the White House explained whether the tips had been reviewed, Whitehouse said.
“It all went up to the White House for a decent burial,” Whitehouse said, “with no investigation whatsoever.” (Washington Post)

Trump refused to give California wildfire aid until told how many people there voted for him, ex-aide says

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, former President Donald Trump has blasted the Biden administration for its handling of the disaster — going so far as to accuse Democratic leaders of ignoring the needs of Republican storm victims.

But a review of Trump’s record by POLITICO’s E&E News and interviews with two former Trump White House officials show that the former president was flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.

Mark Harvey, who was Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told E&E News on Wednesday that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after deadly wildfires in 2018 because of the state’s Democratic leanings.

But Harvey said Trump changed his mind after Harvey pulled voting results to show him that heavily damaged Orange County, California, had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.

“We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” said Harvey, who recently endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris alongside more than 100 other Republican former national security officials.

The exchange — not previously reported — drew a dumbfounded response on social media Thursday from President Joe Biden, who summed up Trump’s attitude as: “You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you.”

“It’s the most basic part of being president, and this guy knows nothing about it,” Biden posted on X, reacting to a tweet about an earlier version of this article.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom piled on, calling the episode “a glimpse into the future if we elect” Trump.

The Trump campaign did not respond to an E&E News request seeking comment.

Both Harvey and Olivia Troye, a former Trump White House homeland security adviser who backed up Harvey’s claim, say Trump is approaching Hurricane Helene with a similar mindset. They say he is politicizing a disaster that has killed more than 170 people in six states. And Troye, who has endorsed Harris for president, accused Trump of trying to divert attention from his own political liabilities on disaster responses.

She said if Trump wins the White House again, he will view disasters through a political lens that values personal loyalty over damage considerations.

“It’s not going to be about that American voter out there who isn’t even really paying attention to politics, and their house is gone, and the president of the United States is judging them for how they voted, and they didn’t even vote,” Troye said in an interview Wednesday.

Troye, who played a lead role in federal disaster response, said local political leaders regularly called her office begging for help because Trump refused to sign documents approving aid. Troye said she had to repeatedly enlist former Vice President Mike Pence to apply pressure.

Added Harvey: “There’s no empathy for the survivors. It is all about getting your photo-op, right? Disaster theater to make him look good.”

On Monday, Trump turned a visit to flood-damaged Valdosta, Georgia, into a partisan attack. He falsely claimed the Biden administration — and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) — were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” and that GOP governors couldn’t get the president on the phone.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, both Republicans, confirmed that wasn’t true and praised the federal response. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) also applauded the Biden administration’s response to Helene, which damaged the southeastern part of the state.

While Trump is alone among political leaders in accusing President Joe Biden of ignoring the Republican victims of Hurricane Helene, his four years in the White House show that at times he played favorites with disaster response. (Politico).

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The polls - they are shifting.

From Simon Rosenberg.

Happy Tuesday all. We’ve had some pretty shitty NYT polls this year so let us celebrate their new national poll which has Vice President Harris up 3, 49%-46%. This is 3 points higher than their last poll and her largest lead in the NYT poll since she became our candidate. Good morning everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here are the latest national polls we’ve received from non-red wave pollsters, Harris-Walz:

51%-45% (+6) Morning Consult (gained a pt since last week)
49%-44% (+5) Susquehanna
50%-46% (+4) Big Village
49%-45% (+4) Research Co.
49%-46% (+3) TIPP/Issues and Insights (TIPP polls for rw groups)
49%-46% (+3) Data For Progress
49%-46% (+3) Economist/YouGov
49%-46% (+3) NYT/Siena
50%-48% (+2) NPR/Marist
48%-47% (+1) Yahoo/YouGov
We also got a new Detroit News poll showing Harris up 3 in Michigan, 47%-44%, a new St. Anselm’s poll showing her up 7 in NH, 51%-44%, and a new poll in VA showing her up 11, 52%-41%. Remember it was just a few months ago that the Trump campaign told us Virginia was in play.

As I’ve been writing to you polling data continues to be remarkably consistent and stable. The 538 national national polling average is now 48.5%-45.9% (+2.6), very similar to many of these polls above (to account for red wave polls in 538’s averages I toss an extra point into the averages for Dems). The Vice President has a 2-3-4 point lead in national polling, and is closer to 270 in the battleground states. Senate polling is holding, Tester remains a toss-up and House Ds are optimistic about flipping the chamber. It remains a close and competitive election, too close, my friends. As I like to say we are winning the election, but have not won it yet. Winning the election is up to us and dependent on the work we do in the final four weeks of the election. (Hopium Chronicles).

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Why is the Republican Party birthing Authoritarians?

The GOP owes the American people an explanation and an apology.

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Trump is always crazy.

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Your Daily Reminder

Trump is a convicted felon.

On May 30th, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts by the unanimous vote of 12 ordinary citizens.

The Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced on July 11th and September 18th. He will now be sentenced on November 26.

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Where to put your money to win the House.

From the Cook Report.

Of the 16 districts held by Republicans that Joe Biden won, New Jersey’s 7th District is proving to be one of the tougher ones for Democrats to flip. GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr., buoyed by warm feelings about his father, former Gov. Tom Kean, maintains a lead over Democrat Sue Altman, who has thus far struggled to break through in the expensive New York City media market.

The Cook Report says -
We’re shifting both races in Republicans’ favor: New Jersey’s 7th moves from Toss Up to Lean Republican, and Virginia’s 7th moves from Lean Democrat to Toss Up.

Don’t accept the Cook verdict. With support, we can win both seats.

SUE ALTMAN.

Sue Altman is a proud daughter of New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District. As a career teacher, Sue has fought for New Jersey’s students by protecting teachers from Governor Chris Christie’s public school cuts. For the last several years, Sue has served as Executive Director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, a non-profit combating political corruption. In Congress, Sue pledges to protect reproductive choice and women’s health, to spur competition in our economy, and to address environmental crises in local communities.

Sue Altman (NJ-07) -
DONATE TO SUE ALTMAN HERE​​

Meanwhile, the race between Republican Derrick Anderson and Democrat Eugene Vindman in Virginia’s open 7th District remains close, despite Vindman swamping Anderson on the airwaves. Vindman’s saving grace is that Harris remains favored to carry this seat, which Biden won in 2020 by seven points — but polls show the presidential margin might be closer this time around.

EUGENE VINDMAN.

Eugene Semyon Vindman (born Yevgeny Semyonovich Vindman[a], June 6, 1975) is an American politician and former U.S. Army Lieutenant colonel. He was a deputy legal advisor for the United States National Security Council (NSC) until he was reassigned on February 7, 2020.

Vindman came to national attention in October 2019 when his twin brother, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, testified before the United States Congress regarding the Trump–Ukraine scandal. Eugene received the report of President Trump's phone call from Alex and reported the call to senior White House lawyers. Alex's testimony provided evidence that resulted in a charge of abuse of power in the impeachment of Donald Trump.

Eugene Vindman (VA-07)
DONATE TO EUGENE VINDMAN HERE

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Tomorrow Milton will hit Florida.

Let us hope the evacuation was successful and the loss of life will be less than predicted.

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