(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Finally a speaker [1] [] Date: 2023-10-26 We begin today with Russell Berman of The Atlantic writing about the rise of Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson to speaker of the House and the road that lies ahead. Johnson’s ascent is a product of both the GOP’s ideological conformity and its ongoing loyalty to Trump. His record in the House is no more moderate than Jordan’s, whose preference for antagonism over compromise turned off an ultimately decisive faction of the party. Both Johnson and Jordan served as chairs of the Republican Study Committee—the largest conservative bloc in the House—and played key roles in Trump’s effort to overturn his defeat in 2020. Johnson enlisted Republican lawmakers to sign a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to allow state legislatures to effectively nullify the votes of their citizens. Despite Johnson’s involvement, he won the support of at least one Republican, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, who had refused to vote for Jordan, because the Ohioan didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of Biden’s win. For electorally vulnerable House Republicans, Johnson’s relative anonymity was an asset. They rejected Jordan in large part because they feared that his notoriety and uncompromising style would play poorly in their districts. By contrast, Johnson, who heeded Scalise’s advice to avoid being “marginalized or labeled,” comes across as mild-mannered and polite. He could be harder for Democrats to demonize. Johnson is so little known that operatives at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which sent out a flurry of statements criticizing each successive speaker nominee, were still combing through his record and listening to old recordings of his radio show this morning. “Mike Johnson is Jim Jordan in a sports coat,” a spokesperson, Viet Shelton, told me. “Electing him as speaker would represent how the Republican conference has completely given in to the most extreme fringes of their party.” The next few weeks will test whether the inexperienced Johnson is in over his head, and just how far to the right Johnson is willing to push his party. “You’re going to see this group work like a well-oiled machine,” Johnson, flanked by dozens of his GOP colleagues, assured reporters after securing the nomination last night. He’ll have plenty of doubters. The new speaker will be leading the same five-vote majority that routinely rebuffed McCarthy, forcing him to rely on Democrats to pass high-stakes legislation. An election denier will have control over the House when the counting of Electoral College votes for the presidential election begins if Republicans maintain control of the House during the 2024 elections. Devlin Barrett of The Washington Post reports that Special Counsel Jack Smith is arguing in new court filings that Judge Tanya Chutkan should reinstate her gag order. In a lengthy filing, Smith’s office argued she should reinstate the gag order, particularly in light of a social media post this week in which Trump talked about his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who is a likely witness in the pending trial. Without the court’s order, prosecutors wrote, there is an “immediate risk” that witnesses’ testimony “could be influenced or deterred by the defendant’s documented pattern of targeting.” Notably, the filing urged Chutkan to “modify the defendant’s conditions of release by making compliance with the Order a condition or by clarifying that the existing condition barring communication with witnesses about the facts of the case includes indirect messages to witnesses made publicly on social media or in speeches.” Such a modification, the prosecutors argue, would give Chutkan “compliance measures available under 18 U.S.C. § 3148 in addition to those available as a contempt penalty for violating the Order.” The compliance measures listed in that part of the law are “a revocation of release, an order of detention, and a prosecution for contempt of court.” David Smith of the Guardian look at new polling showing that a growing but significant subset of Americans support political violence. The 14th annual American Values Survey, carried out by the non-profit Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in partnership with the Brookings Institution thinktank, offers a snapshot of America’s deepening polarisation and willingness to contemplate taking up arms. Even as Joe Biden has sought to lower the temperature, support for political violence has increased over the past two years, the survey shows. Today about 23% of Americans agree that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country” – up from 15% in 2021. The PRRI has asked this question in eight separate surveys since March 2021 but this is the first time that support for political violence has risen above 20% in the general population. Phoebe Wall Howard, Eric D. Lawrence, Jamie L. LaReau of the Detroit Free Press report on the specifics of a tentative agreement that the United Auto Workers union has reached with the Ford Motor Company to end the strike. The tentative agreement includes an 11% wage increase the first year and totals 25% over a 4.5-year contract, plus a $5,000 ratification bonus and cost-of-living adjustments, according to two sources familiar with the deal but not authorized to speak publicly. The gains in the deal are valued at more than four times the gains from the last UAW contract in 2019, and provide more in base wage increases than Ford workers have received in the past 22 years, the UAW said in a news release. The union said the tentative agreement also includes: Cumulatively raising the top wage by more than 30% to more than $40 an hour Raising the starting wage by 68%, to more than $28 an hour Providing a raise of more than 150% to the lowest-paid workers at Ford over the life of the agreement, with some workers receiving an immediate 85% increase immediately upon ratification Reinstating major benefits lost during the Great Recession, including cost-of-living allowances and a three-year wage progression Killing different pay rates, or tiers, for workers Improving retirement benefits for current retirees, those workers with pensions, and those who have 401K plans Including the right to strike over plant closures The news follows an especially good meeting on Wednesday afternoon between negotiators for the United Auto Workers union and Ford, sources told the Free Press. Ben Rhodes writes for the New York Review of Books (behind a paywall) and asks us to consider the cost of an escalation in Gaza by thinking back to Sept. 12, 2001. Human beings react unconsciously in the face of threats, rarely stopping to consider the potential consequences before we respond to violence with greater violence. This is particularly true when you are the stronger party—as the US was relative to al-Qaeda and the Taliban after September 11, and as Israelis are now relative to Hamas. What was the result of America’s response to a traumatizing terrorist attack? Yes, the “Global War on Terrorism” launched under President George W. Bush and refined under President Obama disrupted terrorist networks and destroyed the version of al-Qaeda that attacked us; in the past two decades, the US has not faced an attack at home anywhere near the scale of September 11. But imagine if you were told on September 12, 2001, about the unintended consequences of our fearful and vengeful reaction. That we would launch an illogical war in Iraq that would kill hundreds of thousands of people, fuel sectarian hatred in the Middle East, empower Iran, and discredit American leadership and democracy itself. That we would find ourselves facing an ever-shifting threat from new iterations of al-Qaeda and from groups, like ISIS, that on September 11 did not yet exist. That we would squander our moment of global predominance fighting a war on terror rather than focusing on the climate’s tipping point, a revanchist Russia under Vladimir Putin, or the destabilizing effects of rampant inequality and unregulated technologies. That our commitment to global norms and international law would be cast aside in ways that would be expropriated by all manner of autocrats who claimed that they, too, were fighting terror. That a war in Afghanistan, which seemed so justified at the outset, would end in the chaotic evacuation of desperate Afghans, including women and girls who believed the story we told them about securing their future. This accounting does not begin to encompass the effects of America’s renewed militarized nationalism, jingoism, and xenophobia on our own society after September 11, which ultimately turned inward. While it is far from the only factor, the US response to September 11 bears a large share of the blame for the dismal and divisive state of our politics, and the collapse of Americans’ confidence in our own institutions and one another. If someone painted that picture for you on September 12, wouldn’t you have thought twice about what we were about to do? Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins of Foreign Affairs looks at recent polling showing that a large majority of Gazans are frustrated with the leadership of Hamas and don’t trust the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. The argument that the entire population of Gaza can be held responsible for Hamas’s actions is quickly discredited when one looks at the facts. Arab Barometer, a research network where we serve as co-principal investigators, conducted a survey in Gaza and the West Bank days before the Israel-Hamas war broke out. The findings, published here for the first time, reveal that rather than supporting Hamas, the vast majority of Gazans have been frustrated with the armed group’s ineffective governance as they endure extreme economic hardship. Most Gazans do not align themselves with Hamas’s ideology, either. Unlike Hamas, whose goal is to destroy the Israeli state, the majority of survey respondents favored a two-state solution with an independent Palestine and Israel existing side by side. [...] Our most recent interviews were carried out between September 28 and October 8, surveying 790 respondents in the West Bank and 399 in Gaza. (Interviews in Gaza were completed on October 6.) The survey’s findings reveal that Gazans had very little confidence in their Hamas-led government. Asked to identify the amount of trust they had in the Hamas authorities, a plurality of respondents (44 percent) said they had no trust at all; “not a lot of trust” was the second most common response, at 23 percent. Only 29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government. Furthermore, 72 percent said there was a large (34 percent) or medium (38 percent) amount of corruption in government institutions, and a minority thought the government was taking meaningful steps to address the problem. When asked how they would vote if presidential elections were held in Gaza and the ballot featured Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and Marwan Barghouti, an imprisoned member of the central committee of Fatah, the party led by Abbas, only 24 percent of respondents said they would vote for Haniyeh. Barghouti received the largest share of support at 32 percent and Abbas received 12 percent. Thirty percent of respondents said they would not participate. Gazans’ opinions of the PA, which governs the West Bank, are not much better. A slight majority (52 percent) believe the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people, and 67 percent would like to see Abbas resign. The people of Gaza are disillusioned not only with Hamas but with the entire Palestinian leadership. Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post looks at the role of the Palestinian Authority in the current Israeli-Hamas conflict. Though there is no excusing Hamas and no vindicating Netanyahu, another player is missing from the conversation: the corrupt, inert Palestinian Authority (PA), which has done very little to advance the interests of a two-state solution or even improved conditions for Palestinians. It has never enjoyed robust support from ordinary Palestinians (in large part because of its abusive conduct and endemic corruption). “The allegations of corruption, leveled against the Palestinian Authority almost from day one, severely undermined the credibility of former [Palestine Liberation Organization] Chairman Yasser Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, in the eyes of their people,” Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning Arab and Palestinian affairs journalist, wrote in July. “The charges, which have exponentially increased over the past three decades, are among several factors that have made it more difficult, if not impossible, for Arafat and Abbas to make substantial concessions that would lead to a peace agreement with Israel.” [...] What, if anything, can be done after the war to reform the PA and therefore provide Palestinians with a serious negotiating representative? Al-Omari recommended: “To salvage the PA as a functioning partner, Washington needs to reprioritize governance and reform issues, as well as pressure Ramallah to open political space in the West Bank and clarify the process of succession.” He added, “Although the latter issue is very sensitive and will likely generate pushback, failure to press Abbas on allowing viable succession candidates to emerge will perpetuate the paralysis.” Both the European Union and the United States must condition aid on measurable improvements in PA governance. Finally today, Ravit Hecht of Haaretz reports that some ministers of the Likud Party might be “preparing to place Netanyahu’s head on a platter to save the party.” As Israel grapples with a chaotic, painful, and overwhelming reality, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party is rapidly changing. Two weeks ago, the party was defending Netanyahu, saying he would deliver Israel a victory that restored his image of "the strong leader he is." As the days passed, the defense put forth by members of the prime minister's party faded. Now, they have begun to criticize him outright. [...] "We don't know what considerations are behind the delay in the land incursion – [U.S. President] Joe Biden, the northern front, or the prisoners and hostages," says a Likud minister. "No one in Likud is rushing to push in any particular direction on this issue because we don't know enough." However, the minister says, "There is complete unanimity regarding the fact that after the war, Netanyahu is done. As we speak, Likud is preparing to place Netanyahu's head on a platter to save the party. If he does not draw the necessary conclusions, others will draw them for him." Try to have the best possible day everyone! 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