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Lee Hamilton

Now that its settled down to just a low simmer, the revolt by members of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives has mostly left the front pages.

But it would be fair to say that it hasnt been resolved merely cooled for the moment. Since it could flare up again at any time, its worth taking a step back and looking at why, in the long run, the House might be better off because of it.

First, though, lets recap. As you may recall, the whole thing began when some of the House GOP caucus most conservative members decided to use more than words to express their displeasure with the debt ceiling agreement struck between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

In essence, they took their own partys agenda hostage with 11 of them siding with Democrats on a procedural vote that halted progress on several Republican-sponsored bills. In the closely divided House, this was enough to produce a week of gridlock early in June, while McCarthy and the rebels huddled to try to come to terms.

They emerged with an agreement to allow the blocked bills and other measures to move forward and a warning from the rebels that they could grind things to a halt again if they dont see progress on a power-sharing deal with McCarthy.

We want to work on an accountability regime and a power sharing agreement, said one of the hardliners, Rep. Matt Gaetz. We want to see House conservatives in a position to be able to enforce the agreements that we all make.

Democrats, of course, watched all of this gleefully, and while some conservative commentators praised the rebels for insisting on steeper cuts to federal spending, others lamented the talking points the move handed to people who criticize the House GOP caucus for being unable to govern.

It gives the usual media suspects grist for more rounds of Republican infighting/incompetence stories, fumed the New York Post editorial board.

To me, however, what was most noticeable about the whole affair was not the politics of the moment but that it was a major detour from the long march in the House toward what detractors call the imperial speakership a handy shorthand for the decades-long trend, under both Democratic and Republican leaders, to consolidate power in the hands of just a few leaders.

There is no question this has made for more efficiency in the House by keeping debate and amendments to a minimum and wrapping multiple pieces of legislation that ought to get their own votes into a single omnibus package that most members barely get a chance to read. The tradeoff, at least in the past, has been the leadership protects members of their own party from politically touchy votes.

But the cost to American democracy has been high. The House unlike any other institution in Washington was designed by the architects of our republic to be the peoples body, the most representative of our nations diverse and ever-changing population. Over the countrys history, it developed a robust committee system, rules for floor debate and other procedures designed to give ordinary representatives a chance to do just that: Represent the American people.

The consolidation of so much power in leaders hands has circumvented all that and, arguably, made the House more prone to partisanship and more inclined toward the extremes because the majority leadership cares mostly about pleasing its own base, not forging common ground across the aisle.

There are any number of issues on which I part company with the members of the Freedom Caucus. But on this front, I have considerable sympathy as do other observers who care about a House of Representatives that can function as its creators intended and as it did for much of its history.

As former Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski argues in a recent op-ed, If the House does not change, its members will continue to fail in representing their constituents in the legislative process on most major issues. Thats an issue we all should care about, regardless of party.

Lee Hamilton is a senior adviser for the Indiana University Center on Representative Government, a distinguished scholar at the IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and a professor of practice at the IU ONeill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years. Send comments to [emailprotected].

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Lee Hamilton: The Republican House revolt isnt all bad - Seymour Tribune

In a recent CNN interview (and on many previous occasions), Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville insisted that the phrase a white nationalist simply meant someone whos a good American.

When reporter Kaitlan Collins explained slowly that a white nationalist is someone who believes that the white race is superior to other races, Tuberville huffed, Well, thats some peoples opinion.

Some people like, say, Tommy Tuberville? Or Ron DeSantis? Moms for Liberty? The congressional Freedom Caucus? The right-wing Supreme Court majority? All those angry (yet terrified) Caucasians watching what they always assumed was their country become more brown and less Christian?

Tuberville later retreated a bit from what sounded like something Foghorn Leghorn would say at the monthly klavern barbecue, but no matter what language he and his fellow knuckle-draggers use, hes another example of how the Republican brand is no longer bigger business and smaller government.

Its white supremacy. Their platform? White supremacy. Their political and social goals? White supremacy.

The U.S. Supreme Court seems to share the Republicans obsession with making America white again. Gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and striking down affirmative action in university admissions dismisses the institutional racism of centuries of oppression, favoring instead the pale and the privileged.

And speaking of pale and privileged, declaring opposition to multiculturalism and pledging to support Christian Nationalism across the country, the College Republicans the future of the party! have invited Nick Fuentes, the out and proud anti-Semite and racist who boasts hes just like Hitler, to this years national convention on July 30.

Fuentes, whose pals include neo-Confederates and Klan-adjacent types, is popular with certain congressional Republicans. Reps. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene made an appearance at his America First shindig last year.

A few alleged grown folks in the Republican Party actually condemned Gosar and Greene, shocked! shocked! that they would associate with anti-Semites (they werent so bothered about the racism).

Surely not that nice Paul Gosar, the one who posted a cheery video about murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and employed an aide with ties to neo-Nazis?

Or the lovely and talented MTG, she of the Jewish space lasers? She said she didnt even know who Fuentes was, or if she did, well, what matters is those Pharisees trying to destroy Jesus America: Were not going to be deterred by journalists and Washington insiders who fear the name of our Lord, she proclaimed, and relentlessly attack those of us who proclaim his name.

Greene was famously shunned by the insiders of her own party for a while, but shes now at the heart of congressional power, a close ally of Kevin McCarthy in a legislative body reluctant to condemn white supremacy and paranoid about an immigrant invasion designed to destroy American culture, engineered by nefarious non-Christian, un-American, crypto-Marxists from George Soros to Hillary Clinton to the Pentagon.

Not joking: Republicans have turned on the United States military.

Members of Congress who keep forgetting to get their rabies shots have worked themselves into a froth over gay soldiers, trans soldiers, diverse soldiers, and soldiers reading critical race theory.

You may recall that time in 2021 when U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, Floridas Most Punchable person, tried to challenge the militarys diversity reading matter and Gen. Mark Milley took him down: Ive read Mao Zedong. Ive read Karl Marx. Ive read Lenin, Milley said. That doesnt make me a communist. So, what is wrong with understanding having some situational understanding about the country we are here to defend?

Now the Republican House wants the Pentagon to ban critical race theory as well as drag shows and women controlling their own reproduction. Oh, and do something about China, too, if theres time after trying to make the services whiter, maler, and straighter.

Tommy Tubervilles single-handedly holding up 265 promotions: Officers and their families have no idea where theyll be stationed or when, because ol Tommy objects to funding military womenfolk to get access to abortions.

Aint like theres any trouble brewing in Foreign Parts.

Not to be outdone, Floridas tantrum-prone governors hollering about wokeness, vowing that when hes in the White House, On Day 1, were ripping out all the Obama-Biden policies to woke-ify the military.

Thats just one component of DeSantis white supremacist agenda: Hes also trying to erase diversity as a goal in education and suppress learning about this countrys systemic racism. He wants to end birthright citizenship, too.

DeSantis conjures up images of alien hordes incentivized to get here by any means necessary so they can drop a baby on American soil and claim unearned American citizenship for that little freeloader.

He says he wants to defy the Fourteenth Amendment, which ensures that anyone born in the United States is entitled to equal protection under the law. It was passed right after the Civil War to give the formerly enslaved their rights or, at least, try to.

DeSantis prefers to think the Fourteenth Amendment doesnt actually say what it says.

Justice Clarence Thomas, his fellow irascible Ivy Leaguer, is also inclined to read the Fourteenth Amendment as somehow color-blind.

In Thomas concurring opinion in the courts dismantling of affirmative action, he argues that the amendment doesnt really have anything to do with race.

This might come as a surprise to descendants of slaves and veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.

Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that white supremacists arent always white.

They are, however, always hypocrites. Ron DeSantis is the great-great-grandchild of Luigia Colluci, a woman who landed at Ellis Island on Feb. 21, 1917, with no visa, 16 days after Congress passed an immigration act designed to keep the likes of her out.

The law was aimed in particular at Asians, southern Europeans, and other undesirables, including idiots, imbeciles, poor, beggars, criminals, polygamists, anarchists, people with physical and mental disabilities, the sick, prostitutes, etc. a population that would not help keep America a white mans country.

Luigia Colluci was illiterate technically a disqualifier and pregnant with an anchor baby.

America let her in.

The rest as we know to our sorrow is history.

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The Republican Party is dropping its Klan hood - Florida Phoenix

The indictments of Donald J. Trump past and pending are becoming the background music of the 2024 presidential campaign: always there, shaping the mood, yet not fully the focus.

Like so much of the Trump presidency itself, the extraordinary has become so flattened that Mr. Trumps warning on Tuesday that he was facing a possible third indictment this year, this time over his involvement in the events that led to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, drew shrugs from some quarters of his party and a muddled response from his rivals.

At one Republican congressional fund-raising lunch on Tuesday in Washington, the news of a likely third Trump indictment went entirely unmentioned, an attendee said. Some opposing campaigns strategists all but ignored the development. And on Capitol Hill, Mr. Trumps allies quickly resumed their now-customary defensive positions.

Two and half years ago, the deadly riot that left the nations seat of government defiled had threatened to forever tarnish Mr. Trumps political legacy. His supporters had stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of his defeat, stoked by their leader who had urged them to fight like hell. Even long-loyal Republicans broke with him as shattered glass littered the Capitol complex.

Yet today, Mr. Trump is the undisputed front-runner for the Republican Partys 2024 presidential nomination. And the threatened charges relating to Jan. 6 against Mr. Trump were instead turned into attacks on his successor by his Republican defenders on Tuesday.

We have yet again another example of Joe Bidens weaponized Department of Justice targeting his top political opponent, Donald Trump, Representative Elise Stefanik, the No. 4 House Republican, told reporters on Capitol Hill.

When Mr. Trump and Ms. Stefanik spoke by phone on Tuesday, the former president lingered on the line as they discussed ways to use the Republican-led House committees to try to attack the investigations. Mr. Trump also spoke with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who accused the Biden administration of trying to weaponize government to go after their No. 1 opponent.

Their comments reprised a role that Republicans in Congress played for Mr. Trump twice before when he was impeached, and twice again when he was indicted earlier this year. The first indictment came in March, by the district attorney in Manhattan in connection with hush money payments to a porn star. The second was in June, when he was indicted on charges of keeping top-secret classified documents and obstructing efforts to get them back.

Republicans and Mr. Trumps extended orbit have established a rhythm of how to respond. Yet on the campaign trail, Mr. Trumps leading rivals continue to struggle to even articulate a response.

Chief among them is Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trumps top-polling rival. At a stop in South Carolina, Mr. DeSantis on Tuesday said that Mr. Trump should have come out more forcefully against the protesters who stormed the Capitol that day.

But after that line was picked up by Trump surrogates to attack Mr. DeSantis, his usually forceful DeSantis War Room Twitter account was anything but warring, accusing those surrogates of taking the governor out of context.

I hope he doesnt get charged, Mr. DeSantis said of Mr. Trump in an interview broadcast later on CNN.

The CNN interview was supposed to be an important moment for a candidate who had previously avoided any sit-downs that might legitimize the corporate media that he regularly denounces. Instead, the network interrupted its own exclusive recorded DeSantis interview with live updates from outside a courthouse in Florida on one Mr. Trumps coming trials. The sequence seemed to capture the state of the race that Mr. Trump is dominating.

Justin Clark, who served as Mr. Trumps deputy campaign manager in 2020 and whose firm, National Public Affairs, has conducted polling of the primary race, said the challenge for his rivals is the voters themselves. Data from Mr. Clarks firm shows that Republicans view an attack on Mr. Trump as an attack on them, he said.

That loyalty is not something that is easy to beat in a campaign, he added. His opponents see this, too, and that is why they tread very carefully. Its hard to see how another Republican breaks out when primary voters are rallying around their most recent president and any challengers have to hold their fire.

Mr. Trump on Tuesday revealed that he had received a target letter from the Justice Departments special counsel, Jack Smith, who is investigating his role in the lead-up to the violence of Jan. 6.

Almost always means arrest and indictment, Mr. Trump wrote of the target letter on Truth Social.

Mr. Smiths office already indicted Mr. Trump in federal court in June, saying he had possessed reams of national defense material and obstructed the investigation. In the coming weeks, he faces possible indictment in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election in that state.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, who had served as Mr. Trumps communications director before resigning in late 2020 and publicly breaking with her former boss, said, The most striking thing to me is that most of Trumps G.O.P. opponents, who are polling double digits behind him, still will not seize this opportunity to denounce his unfit actions.

One reason is that Mr. Trump, and Republican primary voters, have so thoroughly rewritten the history of Jan. 6, 2021. The mere mention of the day is no longer an overwhelmingly clear political loser for the former president, at least in a Republican primary. Mr. Trump, two months after the attack, declared the violence a love-fest, and has continued to do so.

Indeed, at a rally this year in Texas, Mr. Trump placed his hand on his heart and listened to the song Justice for All that featured his voice and those of some Jan. 6 prisoners.

Few prominent elected officials were as directly affected on Jan. 6 as former Vice President Mike Pence. But even he declined to suggest that Mr. Trump should be prosecuted and said the election should be how the matter is arbitrated.

I believe that history will hold him to account for his actions that day, Mr. Pence said Tuesday on NewsNation. But of an indictment, he said, I hope it doesnt come to that. Im not convinced that the president acting on bad advice of a group of crank lawyers that came into the White House in the days before Jan. 6 is actually criminal.

There were some exceptions.

The low-polling former governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, said in a statement that Donald Trumps actions on Jan. 6 should disqualify him from ever being president again.

And former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey wrote on Twitter that he wants to see the indictment itself before offering his opinion, but added that Mr. Trumps conduct on January 6th proves he doesnt care about our country & our Constitution.

However, the details laid out in the first federal indictment against Mr. Trump allegations that he waved material he described as secret government documents in front of people without security clearances at two of his private clubs barely dented his support. Several Republican elected officials instinctively leaped to support him, and his poll numbers remained high or even rose.

Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist in California who worked on Mitt Romneys 2008 presidential race, says he believes it will eventually all become too much freight for Mr. Trump to carry to win the nomination.

Theres been the question of electability and as these indictments pile up and details emerge, I dont think we know yet if voters will stick with him if there appears to be viable competitive alternatives, Mr. Stutzman said.

Mr. Trumps team has capitalized on his past indictments to raise huge sums of campaign cash. But in Iowa on Tuesday, at a town hall-style interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, Mr. Trump dismissed the friendly hosts suggestion that he was able to slough off his latest legal entanglement.

No, Mr. Trump said, it bothers me.

Maya King contributed reporting.

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Republicans Shrug at New Possible Trump Indictment - The New York Times

Donald Trump Ronda Churchill for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed federal judge in Miami overseeing the former president's Mar-a-Lago documents case, on Friday set a trial date for next May after Trump sought to delay it until after the 2024 election.

The timeline of the case became a point of contention for federal prosecutors, who wanted to start the trial as soon as December, and defense attorneys, who argued that Cannon should not set a trial date at all due to Trump's presidential campaign.

Cannon heard arguments from both parties on Tuesday and said she would decide promptly. On Friday, she scheduled the date for the jury trial inthe Fort Pierce Division of the U.S. District Court in Southern Floridato start in the two-week period that begins May 20, 2024.

According to Politico, Cannon has also labeled the case "complex," despite the Justice Department arguing that, as a legal matter, the case isn't especially complicated and, thus, does not need to be drawn out.

The former president is the current frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, which "means any trial that takes place before the election will likely resonate across the campaign trail," according to The Washington Post. His defense argued that the trial should be postponed until after the election because the vote will make it more challenging for an impartial jury to be seated and suggested the trial could impact the course of the election.

Cannon's ruling, however, sets the trial late in the Republican primary schedule, just weeks before the 2024 Republican National Convention.

"This is the worst possible outcome for the Republican Party. Great for Trump though," Georgia State Law professor and political scientist Anthony Kreis wrote of the trial date on Twitter.

"This basically allows Trump to snag the nomination before the most easily damning case comes to trial," he added.

Trump's attorneys also noted, in addition to his campaign schedule, Trump will be embroiled in other legal battles in the near future. He is facing criminal charges in Manhattan in connection to hush money payments made to an adult film star with a trial slated for that case in March 2024, and civil lawsuits scheduled to go to trial in New York this fall and next year. He's also the subject of two other criminal investigations one in Georgia and the other a federal probe in connection to his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

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Prosecutors, however, pushed for beginning the trial as early as December, acknowledging that the date would present an "aggressive" timeline but dismissing calls for delay. They argued that their proposed schedule would give Trump's attorneys plenty of time to review evidence from the discovery period. Prosecutors also recognized that jury selection in this case could be lengthy but cited that as a reason why proceedings should begin sooner rather than later.

Some legal experts conceded that Cannon's Friday decision on a timeline for the trial was a good one, arguing that it falls in a sweet spot between being rushed and drawn out.

"The 5/20/24 trial date that Cannon just set is about as extended as it could be without seeming ridiculous," former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman said in a tweet.

"May was the perfect choice, actually. Not so soon that it's unachievable. Yet early enough that even some additional postponements would still allow the case to be tried before next fall," lawyer George Conway added. "Good for Judge Cannon."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Other experts, however, expressed concern that, despite being a reasonable timeline now, the trial date could be pushed further due to potential delays from the defense.

"[B]ig win for Jack Smith on trial date. But the key is making this schedule stick," NYU Law professor Andrew Weissmann,who served as a senior prosecutor on special counsel Robert Mueller's team,wrote on Twitter.

"Here's the thingin a case like this, plenty of opportunity for Trump to manufacture delay & if this date slips, it makes it far less likely trial happens before the election," former U.S. Attorney and federal prosecutor Joyce Vance tweeted, adding that "setting it in Fort Pierce with its tiny courtroom & no cameras allowed is a disservice to democracy."

Trump and his longtime aide, Walt Nauta, were indicted last month on a total of 38 counts. Trump is accused of illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office and obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them, while Nauta is alleged to have assisted Trump in his efforts to hoard sensitive materials and making false statements to the government.Both pleaded not guilty to all charges.

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about Judge Aileen Cannon

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Experts: Judge Cannon just set the worst possible Trump trial date for the Republican Party - Yahoo News

How much is a dollar worth?

To Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, quite a lot.

Mr. Burgumis one of several Republican presidential candidates going to great lengths to reach a crucial threshold to qualify for the partys first primary debate on Aug. 23 the requirement that only candidates with at least 40,000 individual donorsto their campaignswill be allowed on the stage.

A long-shot contender at the bottom of recent polls, Mr. Burgum is offering $20 gift cards to the first 50,000 people who donate at least $1 to his campaign. And one lucky donor, as his campaign advertised on Facebook, will have the chance to win a Yeti Tundra 45 cooler that typically costs more than $300 just for donating at least $1. The unusual offer was earlier reported by FWIW, a newsletter that tracks digital politics.

Mr. Burgums push to prioritize donors over actual dollars is a sign of some candidates desperation to make the debate stage and to seize some of the national spotlight from the Republican front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, and his top rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.

Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, another Republican candidate, recently ended a campaign ad with a direct plea that flashed on the screen to Donate today, get Chris Christie on the debate stage.

Mr. Burgums campaign acknowledged that its requests were directly tied to the debate and spun the gift-card giveaways into attacks on President Biden.

Doug knows people are hurting because of Bidenflation, and giving Biden Economic Relief Gift Cards is a way to help 50,000 people until Doug is elected President to fix this crazy economy for everyone, said Lance Trover, a spokesman for the Burgum campaign.

Mr. Trover added that the efforts allowed the campaign to secure a spot on the debate stage while avoiding paying more advertising fees to social media platforms who have owners that are hostile to conservatives.

Kyle Tharp, the author of the FWIW newsletter that reported on the solicitations, said that as part of his reporting process, he had donated $1 to the Burgum campaign. He did not receive any follow-up information about how he would receive the gift card, he said. The campaign laterclarified on Twitterthat 50,000 donors would receive a Visa or Mastercard gift card to their mailing address.

The campaign did not respond to a request for comment about how many donors had contributed so far.

The campaigns donations-for-cash strategy could raise potential legal concerns, said Paul Ryan, a campaign finance lawyer. Voters who make donations in exchange for gift cards, he said, might be considered straw donors because part or all of their donations are being reimbursed by the campaign.

Federal law says no person shall make a contribution in the name of another person, Mr. Ryan said. Here, the candidate is making a contribution to himself in the name of all these individual donors.

Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in election law, said that typically, campaigns ask the Federal Election Commission when engaging in new forms of donations.

The Burgum campaigns maneuver, he said, certainly seems novel and raises concerns about whether it violates the prohibition on straw donations.

But some of the legal uncertainty, Mr. Hasen added, stems from the fact that functionally, campaigns spend a lot of money to get small donations, especially in cases like this where theyre trying to reach a debate threshold.

Mr. Burgum isnt alone in using his immense wealth hes a former software executive who sold a company to Microsoft in a $1.1 billion stock deal to bolster his campaign.

Perry Johnson, a businessman who also announced a hopeful bid for the Republican presidential nomination and who ran for Michigan governor last year, has spent $80,000 to $90,000 on ads promoting $1 hats that read, I identify as Non-Bidenary, Facebook records show. His campaign said in a recent ad that it had reached 10,000 donors.

To qualify for the first presidential debate, candidates must have a minimum of 200 unique donors per state or territory in 20 states and territories, according to the Republican National Committee, which set the rules. They must also garner at least 1 percent in multiple national or early-voting state polls recognized by the committee.

Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting.

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Desperate to Debate: Why a G.O.P. Candidate Is Offering $20 for $1 Donations - The New York Times