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‘Reckless Brinksmanship’: McCarthy Blamed for ‘Bizarre and Inept’ US Credit Downgrade

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On the evening of Monday, August 1st, 2023, FitchRatings lowered the United States‘ credit “default rating” from ‘AAA’ to ‘AA+’, which the agency stated, “reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance relative to ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’ rated peers over the last two decades that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions.”

Citing news reports about the state of the American economy, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen blasted the update as “arbitrary and based on outdated data.”

Yellen, MSNBC opinion columnist Steve Benen noted on Tuesday, “had plenty of company.”

READ MORE: ‘Arbitrary’: Janet Yellen slams Fitch US credit downgrade

Harvard University Economics Professor Jason Furman, for instance, called Fitch’s move “completely absurd. And is more likely to show that Fitch is irrelevant to the views of investors in U.S. sovereign debt than it is to show investors anything about the United States.”

Similarly, ex-Treasury Secretary and Harvard Professor Emeritus Larry Summers posted on X that although “the United States faces serious long-run fiscal challenges… the decision of a credit rating agency today, as the economy looks stronger than expected, to downgrade the United States is bizarre and inept.”

Economist Robert Reich weighed in as well, asserting that “US credit-rating agency Fitch doesn’t know what it’s doing. Less risk of default on US Treasury securities now than before debt ceiling was raised.”

Lawmakers such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Representative Brendan Boyle (D-Pennsylvania) also rebuked Fitch’s decision and placed the blame “squarely on the shoulders” of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California).

READ MORE: McCarthy caves and caves, then caves some more

“The downgrade by Fitch shows that House Republicans’ reckless brinksmanship and flirtation with default has negative consequences for the country,” Schumer said in a statement. “Republicans need to learn from their mistakes and never push our country to the brink of default again.”

Boyle, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, directly implicated “Speaker McCarthy and the extreme MAGA Republicans who openly rooted for default” during the latest debt ceiling standoff this past spring.

“For years, Republicans were warned that their repeated brinksmanship and deficit-funded tax giveaways for the wealthy and big corporations would have consequences” Boyle added. “And now, for the second time in American history, Republican extremism and recklessness has undercut the American economy.”

Benen believes that those criticisms are accurate, writing that McCarthy “ignored the warnings and proceeded with the scheme anyway.”

Benen also listed three reasons why:

    1. Republicans were told they’d likely force a downgrade if they proceeded with their debt ceiling crisis.
    2. Republicans proceeded with their debt ceiling crisis.
    3. It led to a downgrade.

Benen concluded, “I can appreciate why GOP leaders want to avoid responsibility for this, but Democrats aren’t the ones who keep creating debt ceilings, and it wasn’t President Joe Biden who launched the Jan. 6 crisis. The mystery surrounding who’s to blame for the downgrade isn’t a mystery at all.”

READ MORE: ‘Pretty remarkable’: Yale economist praises Bidenomics for financial growth ‘across the board’

Benen’s editorial continues at this link.

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‘On Day One’: Trump Vows to End Protections for LGBTQ Students

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Donald Trump says the day he enters the Oval Office for a second term he will end anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students implemented by the Biden administration.

Serving up a scattershot series of complaints with the hosts from the Philadelphia-based right-wing talk radio show “Kayal and Company” on Friday, Trump compared LGBTQ+ protections to a “cuckoo’s nest.”

“A lot of things don’t make sense, having to do with what they’re doing, from the border to all of the men playing in women’s sports. I mean, the world is like a cuckoo’s nest right now with what they do,” Trump declared.

One of the hosts alleged President Joe Biden has engaged in “manipulation” of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. She claimed parents now have to “pinch some pennies” to be able to afford private Christian schools for their children, to remove them from the enhancements that go into effect this summer.

“Many schools are grappling with what they’re going to do,” she said, “because as of August 1, as you know, because of Biden’s manipulation of Title IX, these kids, the school boards, have no choice, they’re meeting right now they, many of them perplexed, and they don’t know what to do, Mr. President, because they’re so upset over this that at August 1 a biological boy can change in a locker room.”

READ MORE: ‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

Trump replied, “It’s crazy. Crazy.”

“We’re going to end it on day one,” Trump vowed. “We’re going to change it on day one. It’s going to be changed. We’re going to end it. That’s right.”

“The whole thing is crazy. Look, it’s like men playing in women’s sports. It’s like open borders for the world to come in. Send all their prisoners. We’ll take as many as you can give us. Send all their people from mental institutions.”

“We’ll get that changed. Tell your people not to worry about it. It’ll be signed on day one. It will be terminated,” Trump promised, vowing to end the LGBTQ+ protections which include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.

On his first day in office, President Biden implemented “the most far-reaching of any federal protections yet” for LGBTQ+ people, according to NPR.

In an explainer on the new expanded rules, Ms. Magazine reports “The 2024 regulations prohibit discrimination not only on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

According to GLAAD, which is tracking “the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights,” President Biden has made 337 “moves” in 1206 days.

Listen to a short clip below or at this link.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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Ari Fleischer Offers Donald Trump Advice Attorney Says ‘Effectively’ Violates Gag Order

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A Fox News panel discussing the Trump New York criminal trial debated whether or not the indicted ex-president could attack the judge’s daughter, with former Bush 43 press secretary Ari Fleischer insisting he should, and claiming doing so would not violate the terms of the gag order.

“President Trump needs to stop calling the judge ‘conflicted.’ He needs to explain why he’s conflicted,” Fleischer said Friday to a panel that included former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Every day of the trial he goes in there, he says, ‘the judge is conflicted, conflicted bigger than I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life.’ He doesn’t explain how or why. He needs to say that the judge’s daughter works for a Democratic political consulting firm that does anti-Trump business. He needs to explain it. Otherwise, it’s just an assertion with no proof. And the President if he’s going to say it, back it up. Explain.”

“I think that’s a violation of the gag order, is it not?” a Fox panelist replied.

“No, he can criticize the judge,” McEnany responded.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

“Not the judge but the family,” the panelist added.

“But when he says the judge is conflicted, you can still explain how and why, and I think comply with a gag,” Fleischer insisted.

The panelists then agreed Donald Trump has been “measured” in his remarks.

National security attorney Brad Moss weighed in on social media, posting the relevant portion of the gag order and writing that Fleischer “effectively recommends Trump violate the terms of the gag order.”

The gag order in part reads: “Defendant is directed to refrain from” … “Making or directing others to make public statements about (1) counsel in the case other than the District Attorney, (2) members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or (3) the family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staffs work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result.”

Despite Trump’s repeated attacks, an ethics panel last year cleared Judge Juan Merchan of any issues surrounding his daughter’s work.

On Monday, Judge Merchan warned Trump he may throw him in jail if he violates the gag order again.

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

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Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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A federal appeals court panel of three judges has upheld the criminal contempt of Congress conviction of Steve Bannon, the far-right provocateur and former Trump chief strategist and senior White House advisor. Legal experts say he can appeal but ultimately he will he headed to prison.

Bannon had refused to comply with a subpoena lawfully-issued by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

“Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail in 2022 by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols after a jury convicted him of two counts of contempt of Congress,” Politico reports Friday. “But Nichols, a Trump appointee, agreed to postpone the jail term while Bannon appealed the decision, agreeing that the complex mix of laws that govern executive privilege and testimonial immunity for White House aides could be overturned by higher courts.”

The appeals court panel includes judges appointed by President Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, according to CNN’s Zachary Cohen.

In their ruling the judges wrote: “Public accounts indicated that Bannon had predicted on a January 5, 2021 podcast that ‘all hell [wa]s going to break loose’ the next day,” and noted, “In addition to the podcast prediction, Bannon had reportedly participated in discussions in late 2020 and early 2021 about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”

READ MORE: House Ethics Committee Extends Investigation Into ‘Ultra MAGA’ Congressman

Politico noted the “three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bannon’s argument, saying the former aide and prominent podcaster had no legal rationale for his blanket refusal to appeal before the Jan. 6 committee — and that long-standing case law.”

Bannon is a peddler of conspiracy theories whose podcast “was crowned the top peddler of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among political podcasts,” according to The New York Times, citing a Brookings study.

“Bannon is unlikely to have to report to prison immediately,” NBC News reports.

Legal experts weighed in on the question of prison for Bannon.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

“And now it’s time for Bannon to be given a date to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his sentence,” remarked MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor.

“Bannon is effectively out of appeals,” observed professor of law and MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney. “He can delay a little bit longer, asking for the full court to review the decision en banc & asking SCOTUS to hear his case on cert, but neither one of those things will happen. Bannon is going to prison.”

Professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter remarked, “it’s slammer time.”

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