“The judge in the Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan on Monday held the former president in contempt and fined him $1,000 for once again violating a gag order prohibiting him from attacking witnesses or jurors. The judge, Juan Merchan, spoke directly to Mr. Trump and warned him that the fines had not stopped him from continuing to violate the order,” the New York Times reports.
Said Merchan: “I find you in criminal contempt for the 10th time.”
He added: “Going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sentence. The last thing I want to do is put you in jail.”
Washington Post: “The state of New York’s criminal case against Trump continues on Monday — the 12th day of trial. Prosecutors are not revealing who they will call next to the stand, and so far the witnesses have alternated between obscure figures — like the young paralegal whose job at the Manhattan district attorney’s office includes cataloguing Trump’s social media posts — and high-profile players talking about their conversations with Trump in the White House.”
Associated Press: Prosecutors move deeper into Trump’s orbit as testimony in hush money trial enters a third week.
“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) promises she’ll force a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson this week. This morning, we have fresh insight about what might happen when the vote is called,” Politico reports.
“We’ve been saying for a while now that if House Democrats save Johnson by providing the votes needed to kill the conservative coup attempt, his position will be untenable — that eventually more Republicans would join the fray, making it impossible for him to continue leading.”
“But we’re starting to question that prediction given the scale of the pushback we’re seeing to Greene. While conservative hard-liners remain unhappy with Johnson — and might indeed vote against a motion to table (aka kill) the ouster — they’re equally unhappy with Greene’s antics and thus might give him a pass.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) became the latest Republican to hit Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over her plan to oust Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), The Hill reports. Said Crenshaw: “She needs her time in the spotlight, you know, and it’s been a while, and I think it’s one last ditch effort to get attention, is what she’s looking for.”
“Speaker Mike Johnson signaled to an audience at his high-dollar donor retreat that he’d support kicking members off their committees if they oppose party-line procedural votes,” Punchbowl News reports.
“Republicans voting against the rule has been a huge problem for Johnson and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy this Congress. With the GOP’s razor-thin margin of control, Republicans can only afford a handful of defections on rule votes, which are typically passed on a partisan basis. It was once unthinkable to have a member of the majority vote against a rule. But hardline Republicans — even those serving on the Rules Committee — have made it practice. Control of the Rules Committee is how the speaker controls the floor.”
“The Biden administration last week put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-made ammunition to Israel,” Axios reports.
“It is the first time since the Oct. 7 attack that the U.S. has stopped a weapons shipment intended for the Israeli military. The incident raised serious concerns inside the Israeli government and sent officials scrambling to understand why the shipment was held.”
Israel has ordered the closure of Al Jazeera in the country, a move the Qatar-based news network called a “criminal act,” CNN reports.
“The Israeli military on Monday said it was asking tens of thousands of Gazans sheltering in eastern Rafah to temporarily evacuate to what it described as a humanitarian zone, a sign that Israel was inching closer to invading the city in defiance of international pressure,” the New York Times reports.
“By 9 a.m. local time, the military had begun dropping leaflets in eastern Rafah ordering people to evacuate. The Israeli military said it would also use text messages, phone calls and broadcasts in Arabic to warn residents of Rafah to leave.”
Wall Street Journal: “Israel says it needs to break up four remaining Hamas battalions located in Rafah, the one Gazan city that hasn’t been subject to a full-on Israeli ground invasion, to achieve its goal of destroying the group’s ability to attack Israel.”
Washington Post: Israel tells U.S. it has no “alternative” to military action in Rafah.
“The latest round of negotiations between Israel and Hamas hit an impasse on Sunday as mediators struggled to bridge remaining gaps and a Hamas delegation departed the talks in Cairo,” the New York Times reports.
Bloomberg: “Israel closed the Kerem Shalom humanitarian crossing into Gaza on Sunday after a rocket barrage was fired by Hamas, as weekend talks on a potential truce broke up inconclusively.”
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) refused to take responsibility in a CBS News interview for falsely claiming in her new book that she met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Said Noem: “As soon as it was brought to my attention, we went forward and have made some edits. So I’m glad that this book is being released in a couple days and that those edits will be in place.”
She added: “I’m saying that this book is very, very good. And I’ve met with many world leaders and there are world leaders that I’ve met with that are in this book and there are many that I’ve met with that are not in this book. This is an anecdote that I asked to have removed because I believe it’s appropriate at this point in time.”
“Donald Trump is privately trashing South Dakota’s MAGA Gov. Kristi Noem for executing her puppy and writing about it in her forthcoming memoir — a matter that appears to have closed the book on the idea of selecting her as a vice presidential nominee,” Rolling Stone reports.
“During conversations with close political allies and other confidants, sources say, the former president has repeatedly brought up the incident, including as recently as in the past couple days, to criticize Noem and question her political acumen.”
“Abortion-rights groups with a deep war chest are facing off against organizers determined to protect a near ban on the procedure in Florida that went into effect this month,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The pitched battle is over a November ballot initiative that would override the state’s new ban on abortion after six weeks and enshrine abortion rights in the Florida constitution. Democrats view the ballot measure as a catalyst that will galvanize party voters, possibly putting the red state in play for President Biden.”
“But it is also a steeper hurdle for abortion-rights supporters than in past battles because Florida requires a supermajority to pass ballot initiatives. That has transformed the organizing effort into an expensive and multimillion-dollar referendum that could deliver organizers their first loss and potentially shape the outcome of other races on the ballot, including contests for the White House and Congress.”
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) told NBC News he would support ditching the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade.
“As Vladimir Putin persists in his bloody campaign to conquer Ukraine, the Russian leader is directing an equally momentous transformation at home — re-engineering his country into a regressive, militarized society that views the West as its mortal enemy,” the Washington Post reports.
“Putin’s inauguration on Tuesday for a fifth term will not only mark his 25-year-long grip on power but also showcase Russia’s shift into what pro-Kremlin commentators call a ‘revolutionary power,’ set on upending the global order, making its own rules, and demanding that totalitarian autocracy be respected as a legitimate alternative to democracy in a world redivided by big powers into spheres of influence.”
“A U.S. crackdown on banks financing trade in goods for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made it much more difficult to move money in and out of Russia,” the Financial Times reports.
Anne Applebaum: “Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told 60 Minutes that Democrats “effectively have been governing as if we were in the majority.”
“The Federal Election Commission quietly issued an advisory opinion last week allowing candidates to raise unlimited money for issue-advocacy groups working on ballot measures in elections in which those candidates are on the ballot,” the New York Times reports.
“The opinion, issued in response to a request from a Nevada-based abortion rights group, could significantly alter the landscape in the fall in terms of the capacity that candidates aligned with these groups have to help them raise money.”
“The decision applies to all federal candidates, but with a presidential election taking place in six months, the biggest attention will fall to that race. If Mr. Biden can solicit money for abortion-rights ballot measures, he can add to an already-existing fund-raising advantage that his team currently has over Mr. Trump.”
“Less than four weeks after taking office, President Trump, his senior White House aides and a group of Republican lawmakers gathered in the Oval Office to sign a resolution that killed an obscure Obama-era energy regulation,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“In the following months, Trump would sign more than a dozen similar resolutions, undoing a raft of Obama administration regulations on everything from unemployment to education. The effort was made possible by Trump’s unprecedented use of a 1996 law called the Congressional Review Act, which allows a new president, with the help of allies on Capitol Hill, to quickly eliminate regulations put in place in the final months of the previous administration.”
“If he wins a second term, Trump plans to use the same tactic to unravel as much of President Biden’s agenda as possible… And senior Biden aides are doing everything in their power to stop him, setting off a behind-the-scenes scramble to Trump-proof as many regulations as they can before they become vulnerable to being overturned under the 1996 law.”
“Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s first visit to Europe in nearly five years is shaping up as a test of the continent’s willingness to confront Beijing over its support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as Chinese trade policies that have eviscerated critical European industries,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“European leaders tend to tread lightly with Beijing, not wanting to jeopardize ties with a major trade partner. But French President Emmanuel Macron, who is set to meet with Xi on Monday on the first leg of the six-day trip, has cast the Ukraine war and China’s trade practices as an existential threat to Europe.”
Bloomberg: China’s billions help Xi make useful friends in Eastern Europe.
“The indictment of Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) on Friday not only sidelined an outspoken moderate lawmaker and put a potentially flippable seat on the 2024 map, it picked at a scab that’s festered inside the House GOP for months,” Politico reports.
“Faced with the endless drumbeat of embarrassments from Rep. George Santos (R-NY), 105 Republicans joined with Democrats in December to expel him from Congress. Kicking him out before he’d been convicted of any crime broke with House precedent and was seen by many in the GOP as a self-inflicted wound, cutting their already thin majority even thinner.”
“Now, Republicans are planning to argue, turnabout is fair play.”
Interestingly, Donald Trump came to Cuellar’s defense last night.
And here you will see the difference between Democrats and Republicans. I am willing to bet that if the GOP tries to expel Cuellar, a majority of Democrats will vote with them to expel him.
“Democrats are preparing an aggressive new immigration strategy months after Republicans blocked a bipartisan border security bill aimed at easing record-high illegal crossings along the southern border,” NBC News reports.
“At a meeting in the Senate last week, key administration officials and top Democratic lawmakers discussed a path forward that would include forcing votes that Republicans would be likely to oppose… The discussions included potential executive actions within the coming weeks.”
Peter Baker: “It has become the topic of the season at Washington dinner parties and receptions. Where would you go if it really happens?”
“Portugal, says a former member of Congress. Australia, says a former agency director. Canada, says a Biden administration official. France, says a liberal columnist. Poland, says a former investigator.”
“They’re joking. Sort of. At least in most cases. It’s a gallows humor with a dark edge. Much of official Washington is bracing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump really could return — this time with ‘retribution’ as his avowed mission, the discussion is where people might go into a sort of self-imposed exile.”
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