… and is replaced by an evangelical Christian who opposes funding for Ukraine and was deeply involved in the attempted coup.
" A social conservative, Mr. Johnson is a lawyer and the former chairman of the Republican Study Committee. He served on former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment defense team, played a leading role in recruiting House Republicans to sign a legal brief supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election results and was an architect of Mr. Trump’s bid to object to certifying them in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021."
Meadows will likely end up serving as a witness in the other matters as well. Now that Trump is going after him with both barrels, he has nothing left to lose.
Hopefully the speed of the legal process increases, sufficiently to deliver a knockout blow to Trump in time to stop him going forth as the Republican nomination.
That has to be the desired outcome.
If he gets into office again all bets are off. He will do what he likes, the trials will be ended, and whatever he learned in his first term about enriching himself and protecting himself will be vastly magnified in his second term, now that he has learned how to manipulate the system to his own requirements.
Yep , you’d think there’d be enough ‘squishes’ who wouldn’t want to be seen supporting an insurrectionist. But who knows ? They must be getting pretty desperate now to elect someone , anyone , before having to go cap in hand to Democrats to bail them out.
I think the issue is there is no collective within the caucus to be able to develop such a rationale. The factions are only looking to satisfy themselves and not the caucus as a whole. I think that means there is only two ways out
They find a candidate who can satisfy all factions equally in a way that they dont feel requires compromise
One faction peels off and works with Jeffries to implement some form of power sharing agreement.
As unthinkable as the second options seems, with the animosity that has built up within the caucus it somehow feels like the more likely scenario.
One interesting angle of this fight was the beginnings of a small set of Republicans in the caucus finiding something like a set of governing principals the rejects Trump based MAGAism in the way they handled themselves in these votes.
A core thinker in the soft coup part of the plot and someone who openly fantasizes about a nationwide blanket abortion ban. This is who they’ve chosen to stand behind. It turns out those were not principals you were seeing signs of, but petty personal grievances.
Since I’m about to be in the back of a cargo plane for a day or two then just wanted to make clear that my family and I have not been affected by the shootings in Maine this evening.
We do have several friends who live in the area but everyone has been accounted for and is ok.
Lots of confused reports but seems to be that a US Army Reserve veteran walked into a bowling alley in Lewiston, about 30 minutes drive from my house, and started firing. Then he went to a restaurant and opened fire there. 22 dead with many more wounded is the current count.
Lots of thoughts and emotions, especially as this happens to have taken place the day before I leave my family for several months. Suddenly the atmosphere has flipped from my wife being scared for me on deployment to me being scared about leaving my wife and sons in America.
Anyway, I just didn’t want the fact that I’ll be offline for the next couple of days to make anyone think anything happened. I’m tired, angry, upset and frustrated at the deaths of yet more innocent people but physically my family and I are fine.
I’m about 40 minutes from Lewiston, and grew up around 20 minutes away. Lived in Maine 22 of my 31 years. It has always been a super safe state, but statistically it was a question of when, not if, a mass casualty event came to Maine. Still, I don’t think anyone in Maine would have anticipated that it would have the country’s deadliest mass shooting of the year so far (in October).
Today I thought a lot about the sheer tragedy of 97 people going to a football match — something that at its core is supposed to be fun — and not coming home. Here, there were 18 people who went out to have fun and did not come home.
We keep asking ourselves why these things happen, yet we do very little to change anything — I will not devote too much ink to my views on stricter gun laws, other than to say that I don’t see mass shootings on anywhere near frequent a basis as we have in any other country. That said, if the tropes about this being a “mental health problem” are in good faith, then we should (at least attempt to) do something about it rather than just use it as a phrase to mutter while the NRA puts its head in the sand. Angry and sad doesn’t begin to express it.
I have reached a point of indifferent cynicism hearing of US gun tragedies - if people really cared, there are obvious courses of action that have worked elsewhere. Those courses of action have not been followed, ergo the ‘thoughts and prayers’ are every bit as hollow as they sound.
That only ever really changes when I have a personal connection to the location. In this case, a good friend who worked for years for one of the Maine Senators in DC, and hailed from somewhere around Brunswick. Spent a fantastic weekend on Sebascodegan Island, idyllic place. Mass shootings seemed a long way away.
What are the obvious courses of action, in your opinion?
Starting with the lowest hanging fruit…
I’m very much in favor of stricter gun measures, and as a Brit living here the whole thing is tragic. I am regularly reminded that I live in a foreign land, and the viewpoint that many here have on guns is a big reminder.
Still, I am genuinely interested in your view, what could/should be done to improve the situation?
Completely agree. Thoughts and prayers have not worked any of the previous times, and the definition of insanity is repeating the same actions expecting a different result.
I grew up in Freeport, so Brunswick/Harpswell (Sebascodegan, also called ‘Great Island’ by some) are not far away. Harpswell may be one of my favorite towns in Maine.
Assuming it was King that the person worked for, I was at a law school graduation ~10 years ago where I answered the door for the host and found him standing there (he went to UVA law as did the graduate). We conversed for about 30 seconds, seemed like a straightforward guy. He had just been elected to Senate, but he was well-known and generally respected as Governor prior to that. One of the few brushes of fame I’ve ever had.
I know you asked Arminius, but as an American I really like the idea that Brits keep their guns (long-barreled guns, not handguns/assault rifles, it should be noted) locked in metal cabinets, as well as taking away weapons from people who drink-drive. If you cannot operate a motor vehicle responsibly, then I don’t think you should be trusted to operate a firearm responsibly.
A big problem in the U.S. is the number of hoops one must jump through to take away guns from someone who shouldn’t have them in the first place — and the process for doing so is incredibly ambiguous state-to-state. Making it easier to do this in the cases of those who are demonstrably mentally unfit would be a place to start. This guy had a clear mental health issue as demonstrated by his two-week hospitalization last summer, and had recently experienced a breakup IIRC.
Speaking of mental health, the idea put forth by gun advocates that “these people would use a bomb or a knife to commit mass murder if they couldn’t get a gun” is both a straw man and false equivalency; not only is it not provable that they would (I suspect some might not), but an AR-15 is far more efficiently lethal than a machete.
You can’t legislate to prevent every act of violence, but it is possible to change general trends. Unfortunately, we seem to have little appetite for that.
