U.S. Politics

[Rick Plant]

This is Kathryn Kimball Mizelle. She is a Federalist Society judge who worked for Clarence Thomas. The American Bar Association said she is unqualified to hold office, but Republicans confirmed her anyway after Trump lost.

She just ruled the CDC can’t require masks on planes. Because of her, we will see more virus cases increase.

[Rick Plant]

Biden to visit New Hampshire harbor to highlight investments in nation’s ports and waterways

CNN — President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit a harbor in New Hampshire on Tuesday to highlight how billions of dollars from the bipartisan infrastructure law are being spent on rebuilding the nation’s ports and waterways, a White House spokesperson tells CNN.

Biden will travel to Portsmouth Harbor and is expected to deliver remarks on how investments in the nation’s port infrastructure are are aiming to strengthen supply chains and bring down costs for American families, the spokesperson said.

The trip comes as the White House grapples with persistent global supply chain issues that have been driving up prices for American families. A recent report showed consumer prices hit a new 40-year high in March, and much of that jump was driven by rising gasoline and food prices. These problems are only getting worse amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and as parts of China implement lockdowns due to a fresh spike in Covid-19 cases.

“American ports are a cornerstone of the US economy, but outdated infrastructure and the Covid-19 pandemic have strained their capacity and jeopardized global supply chains – which has caused delays and passed costs directly to consumers,” the spokesperson said.

The White House says Portsmouth Harbor handles approximately 3.5 million tons and nearly $2 billion of cargo a year. The US Army Corps of Engineers completed a $18.2 million project earlier this month to widen the harbor’s turning basin and is investing an additional $1.7 million for maintenance dredging of the shipping channel and basin, according to the White House.

These funds were allocated from the bipartisan infrastructure law, which is one of Biden’s biggest legislative victories since taking office. The law invests $17 billion in port infrastructure. The President has made several trips around the country to tout the bipartisan achievement and highlight the infrastructure investments that were made possible by the law.

The cargo that passes through Portsmouth Harbor includes material to make drywall, road de-icing salt, home heating oil and underwater fiber optic cable, according to the White House. It is also a staging and transport location for several wind energy projects and for nuclear power plant components manufactured at the nearby Westinghouse Electric.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/18/politics/biden-new-hampshire-harbor/index.html

[Rick Plant]

Biden to require infrastructure projects be made with U.S. iron, steel
Federal agencies will have to ensure that new projects funded by the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package are made with U.S. materials.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is directing federal agencies to ensure that new construction projects funded by the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package are made with U.S.-made materials.

In 17 pages of guidance Monday, the Office of Management and Budget instructs federal agencies to make sure that by mid-May, any projects to build or repair roads, bridges, water pipes or even broadband internet are made with domestic products, including iron and steel.

"This means all manufacturing processes, from the initial melting stage through the application of coatings, occurred in the United States," the guidance says of the metals requirement.

Agencies must also ensure that the bulk of components of any manufactured products used in the construction projects are made in the U.S.

Government agencies can obtain waivers for the requirements if it's found that procuring the products domestically isn't in the public's interest, that quantities of the materials aren't "sufficient and reasonably available ... or of a satisfactory quality," or if the U.S.-sourced materials would raise the cost of a project by more than 25 percent, the guidance says.

The new guidance is part of the administration’s moves to implement the infrastructure law, which President Joe Biden signed in November. It's also part of Biden's strategy to alleviate supply chain issues in the U.S. amid the Covid pandemic and inflation.

During the previous administration, then-President Donald Trump hit European countries with steep tariffs on steel and aluminum products, which raised prices on those materials in the U.S. At the G-20 summit in October, Biden announced that the U.S. had reached a deal to reverse those tariffs.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-require-infrastructure-projects-made-us-iron-steel-rcna24816

[Rick Plant]

This Tax Day, the difference in approach between the President and Congressional Republicans couldn’t be clearer.



https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1516071246462693379

[Rick Plant]

‘It’s getting worse for him’: Maddow breaks down Mike Lee’s growing scandals



The host of "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC broke down the latest scandals involving the efforts of Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) to overturn the 2020 election.

"A few days ago, we learned from CNN that Utah Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Lee had comported himself after the November election and in the lead up to the January 6th attack in a way that didn't at all match what he has said publicly about what he did at the time," Maddow reported.

"Sen. Lee has repeatedly presented himself as a person who didn't approve of Donald Trump's efforts to try to overturn the election and stay in power even though he had lost. He's presented himself as someone who had a real patriotic conscience about that kind of thing, not just a conservative, but a constitutional conservative, who never would have gone along with any of those scams," Maddow explained. "Well, then, CNN obtained text messages that Sen. Lee sent to Trump's chief of staff, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, at a time all that was going on. The text messages tell a very different story."

Maddow noted a new editorial from The Salt Lake Tribune titled, "Saturday’s Utah State Republican Convention would be a great place for Mike Lee to come clean, Editorial Board writes."

"It is past time for Mike Lee to start fessing up to all he knows about the plot to set aside the results of an honest and fair election to keep Donald Trump in power. We know Utah’s senior senator had a much greater role in that plot than he has previously acknowledged, his constituents deserve a much more detailed accounting of what went on and the extent of Lee’s participation in it," the newspaper noted. "Yesterday would be a great time for Lee to come clean. Saturday’s Utah State Republican Convention would be a really good opportunity, too."

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Ron DeSantis plan to go after Disney could massively backfire -- and leave taxpayers footing the bill



Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has laid out as one of his goals for the Florida legislature's special session a bill to abolish the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a special taxing zone that essentially allows the Walt Disney World resort complex to act as its own local government. The move is intended to punish the Disney corporation for criticizing his infamous "Don't Say Gay" law, which limits the ability of teachers to discuss the existence of sexual orientation or gender identity in the classroom.

But according to Mary Ellen Klas of the Miami Herald, there's a bit of a snag in the proposal: abolishing the district involves paying Disney's $2 billion worth of bond debt from building the resorts — and to do that, families in Orange and Osceola Counties would have to pay thousands of dollars.

In other words, this bill intended to punish Disney would actually be a huge transfer of money to the company, at taxpayer expense.

Mary Ellen Klas @MaryEllenKlas
Details emerge on @GovRonDeSantis idea to repeal Disney's special district governing authority. To pay the Disney's $2 B in bond debt, Orange and Osceola county families would have to be assessed $2,200 tax bill says @FarmerForFLSen. "This is shoot first and ask questions later."

Sen. @JeffreyBrandes asks: "My concern is this bill essentially wipes away Disneys' $2 billion of debt...if the legislative intent here is ultimately to attack them, then why would we want to cancel $2 billion of debt?"

The special district bill, alongside a Republican gerrymandering proposal that would wipe out half the Black congressional districts in the state, come as Republicans escalate a culture war panic nationwide, introducing bills limiting classroom information on race and sexuality, and even seeking to purge books from libraries.

https://twitter.com/MaryEllenKlas/status/1516573779840974858

[Rick Plant]

Trump-appointed judge lives up to her 'not qualified' bar rating with stunning ruling



Fifteen days after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, a 33-year-old conservative lawyer whose only courtroom experience was as an intern while in law school was handed a lifetime appointment as a federal judge in Florida.

Kathryn Kimball Mizelle was confirmed on November 18, 2020, by a straight party line vote of 49-to-41 by the Republican Senate, then controlled by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The American Bar Association had labeled her “unqualified” in opposing her nomination because of her inexperience.

On Monday, Mizelle provided a real-life primer into what can go wrong when an uncredentialled ideologue gets a federal judgeship. She rocked the world of air and train travel by broadly banning mask mandates, punctuated by a false claim about masks that showed she was equally unqualified in public health.

“Wearing a mask cleans nothing,” Mizelle wrote in her decision. “At most, it traps virus droplets. But it neither ‘sanitizes’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitizes’ the conveyance.”

That unsourced opinion was delivered confidently with all the authority of someone who had interned somewhere -- as opposed to having actual public-health credentials. And it was in keeping with the formula with which Mizelle had been able to don judicial robes without judicial credentials.

Mizelle’s views on the efficacy of masking are directly refuted by a recent international research study that found masks plays “a crucial role” in slowing virus spread, as reported last month at Science News. The Mayo Clinic also continues to state that “face masks combined with other preventive measures, such as getting vaccinated, frequent hand-washing and physical distancing, can help slow the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19.”

Mizelle’s “disappointing decision” -- in the words of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki -- was magnified by the reality that it was the product of Republicans’ cynical politicization of the judiciary. By a judge who wasn’t about to be deterred by science.

Mizelle had checked off the right MAGA-world boxes before her confirmation. She had joined the Federalist Society. She had clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Her husband Chad Mizelle had served as chief of staff and acting general counsel in Trump’s Homeland Security department.

Mizelle herself had held a job in the Trump Justice Department that involved supervising litigation handled by its Civil Rights division. Her experience there prompted the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to condemn her as “an ultraconservative ideologue" and a Trump loyalist" who “worked to dismantle many critical civil-rights protections.”

But what set Mizelle apart was the historic nature of her ascendancy to the federal bench. It was truly an outlier. Both her confirmation at the age of 32 and its political timing had been nearly unprecedented, as the Daily Beast reported at the time:

“Russell Wheeler, an expert on the judiciary and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Mizelle’s young age sets her apart. He had to go back to 1937, when FDR appointed Alfred Murrah to the district court at age 32, and then Joseph Story, whom President James Madison appointed to the Supreme Court in 1811 at age 32. ‘There may be other appointments in their early 30s, but it's rare,’ he said.”

And McConnell’s cynical timing was also nearly unheard of. Wheeler told the Daily Beast that only once since 1896 had a lame duck Senate continued to conform nominees of a president after he had been defeated (Stephen Breyer’s 1980 appointment to the Court of Appeals.)

The Daily Beast also had reported that “Mizelle is the 227th Trump nominee confirmed to the federal bench—in what has been this administration’s real “operation warp speed”—and the 10th to be found “not qualified” by the ABA, a stigma that prior administrations sought to avoid and that Trump supporters treat as a badge of honor, evidence of Trump’s disruptive power.”

For its part, the ABA had written a letter on September 8, 2020 to the Senate Judiciary Committee stating that “a substantial majority” of its Standing Committee on the Judiciary had placed that “not qualified” label upon her as a candidate for the U.S. District Court. It noted that Mizelle’s mere eight-year career as a lawyer at the time was a “rather marked departure” from its 12-year minimum standard for judges. And there was this:

“Since her admission to the bar Ms. Mizelle has not tried a case, civil or criminal, as lead or co-counsel. Of her four distinguished federal clerkships, one clerkship was in the trial court. That year, plus her 10 months at a reputable law firm and approximately three years in government practice translates into 5 years of experience in the trial courts. We have taken into account the nominee’s experience in federal grand jury proceedings, which are non-adversarial and do not take place before a judge.

“Ms. Mizelle has a very keen intellect, a strong work ethic and an impressive resume. She presents as a delightful person and she has many friends who support her nomination. Her integrity and demeanor are not in question. These attributes however simply do not compensate for the short time she has actually practiced law and her lack of meaningful trial experience.”

Seventeen months later, it appears Mizelle has had her “meaningful trial experience” on the job. The ABA looks prescient. And the world of travel is a little less safe to show for it.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mcconnells-newest-judge-is-seriously-not-qualified-and-dangerous