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A report from my home-state senator, Tommy Tuberville, provides the final, necessary piece of evidence for the Senate to find Donald Trump guilty of an impeachable offense. Now, any senator who does not do so is effectively endorsing Trump’s deliberate, knowing attempt to put his own vice president’s life in danger.
Failure to convict now moves from what, as late as Wednesday night, I considered a still debatable “judgment call” to the realm of an unforgivable moral monstrosity.
The key new evidence comes from Tuberville, the freshman Republican senator from Alabama, who told reporters Wednesday some details and timing of his call with Trump during the Capitol proceedings. To understand the importance of that call, some background is in order.
McCarthy Misleads on State and Local Revenue
February 9, 2021
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy misleadingly argues that federal aid to state and local governments is unnecessary because state and local tax receipts were “the highest… in American history” in the third quarter.
State budget experts say the third quarter revenues were inflated, because almost all states moved the deadline for filing state taxes from April 15 to July 15 due to the pandemic, pushing more tax receipts to the third quarter. Many states also extended the deadline to submit sales tax receipts to the state, shifting revenue between quarters.
“It is critical to look at the entire pandemic period, rather than individual quarters, as there has been too much shifting of revenues from one quarter to another, from one fiscal year to another,” said Lucy Dadayan, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. Looking at the pandemic months, she said, state and local revenues are down overall.
In Florida, an unhappy Trump watches it all play out
Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post
Feb. 9, 2021
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As he faces his second impeachment trial, Donald Trump has been unusually quiet.
Ensconced in his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., the former president has spent his days golfing. He has rolled through his phone, calling old friends and allies simply to check in. He has dined on the patio of his lush retreat, often accompanied by a coterie of political aides still on his payroll.
And, as Congress on Tuesday took up a second Senate trial for Trump almost exactly a year after his first, Trump has remained sanguine that an evenly divided Senate will acquit him of charges of inciting an insurrection - despite his egging on of an angry crowd that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The campaign arm for House Republicans is spotlighting 47 seats currently held by what they consider to be “vulnerable Democrats” that they see as “prime pick-up opportunities” for the GOP in the 2022 midterm elections.