Letters from an American - April 18, 2024

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

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April 18th, 2024. I will not spend the rest of 2024 focusing on Trump and the chaos in the Republican Party, but today it has been impossible to look away. In Trump's election interference trial in Manhattan, Judge Juan Mershon this morning dismissed one of the selected jurors after she expressed concern for her anonymity and thus for her safety. All of the reporters in the courtroom have shared so much information about the jurors that they seemed at risk of being identified. But Fox News Channel host Jesse Waters not only ran a video segment about a juror, he suggested she was

concerning. Trump shared the video on social media. The juror told the judge that so much information about her had become public that her friends and family had begun to ask her if she was one of the jurors. Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted jurors' fear for their safety was a concern normally seen only in a case involving violent organized crime. Nonetheless, by the end of the day, 12 people had been chosen to serve as jurors. Tomorrow, the process will continue in order to find six alternate jurors. It's a courtesy for the two sides at a trial to share with each other the names of their next witnesses so the other team can prepare for them. Today, the prosecution declined to provide the names of their first three witnesses to the defense lawyers out of concern

that Trump would broadcast them on social media. Mr. Trump has been tweeting about the witnesses. We're not telling them who the witnesses are, Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said. Mershon said he can't blame them. Trump's defense attorney, Todd Blanch, offered to commit to the court and the prosecution that President Trump will not post about any witness on social media. I don't think you can make that representation, Merchant said, in a recognition that Trump cannot be trusted, even by his own lawyers. An article in the New York Times today confirmed that the trial will give Trump plenty of publicity, but not the kind that he prefers. Lawyer Norman L. Eisen walked through questions about what a prison

sentence for Trump could look like. Trump's popular image is taking a hit in other ways as well. Zach Anderson and Aaron Mansfield of USA Today reported that Trump is funneling money from his campaign fundraising directly into his businesses. According to a new report filed with the Federal Election Commission, in February and March, the campaign wrote checks totaling $411,287 to Mar-a-Lago, and in March, a check for $62,337 to Trump National Doral, Miami. Experts say it is legal for candidates to pay their own businesses for services used by the campaign so long as they pay fair market value. At the same time, they note that since Trump appears to be desperate for money, it looks bad.

Astonishingly, Trump's trial was not the biggest domestic story today. Republicans in Congress were in chaos as members of the extremist Freedom Caucus worked to derail the national security supplemental bills that House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, has introduced in place of the Senate bill, although they tracked that bill closely. in place of the Senate bill, although they track that bill closely. The House Rules Committee spent the day debating the foreign aid package, which appropriates aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan separately. The Israel bill also contains $9.1 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza and other countries. A fourth bill focuses on forcing the Chinese owners of TikTok to sell the company, as well as on imposing sanctions on Russia and Iran. At stake in the House Rules Committee was Johnson's plan to allow the House to debate and vote on each measure separately, and then recombine them all into a single measure if they all pass.

This would allow extremist Republicans to vote against aid to Ukraine while still tying the pieces all together to send to the Senate. As Robert Jimison outlined in the New York Times, this complicated plan meant that the Rules Committee vote to allow such a maneuver was crucial to the bill's passage. committee vote to allow such a maneuver was crucial to the bill's passage. The extremist House Republicans were adamantly opposed to the plan because of their staunch opposition to aid for Ukraine. They wrote in a memo on Wednesday, this tactic allows Johnson to pass priorities favored by President Biden, the swamp, and the Ukraine war machine with a super majority of

House members, leaving conservatives out to dry. Extremist Smarty Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, and Thomas Massey, a Republican of Kentucky, vowed to throw Johnson out of the speakership. But Democrats Tom Swasey of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida have said they would vote to keep him in his seat, thereby defanging the attack on his leadership. So the extremists instead tried to load the measure up with amendments, prohibiting funds from being used for abortion, removing humanitarian aid for Gaza, opposing a two-state solution to the Hamas-Israel war, calling for a wall at the southern border of the U.S., defunding the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and so on.

Greene was especially active in opposition to aid to Ukraine. She tried to amend the bill to direct the president to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and demanded that any members of Congress voting for aid to Ukraine be conscripted into the Ukrainian army, as well as have their salaries taken to offset funding. She wanted to stop funding until Ukraine turns over all information related to Hunter Biden and Burisma and to require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to resign. More curiously, she suggested amending the Ukraine bill so that funding would require restrictions on ethnic minorities, including Hungarians in Transcarpathia, right to use their native languages in schools are lifted. This language echoes a very specific piece of Russian propaganda. Finally, Moskowitz proposed that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene should be appointed as Vladimir Putin's special envoy to the U.S. Congress.

Many Congress members have left Washington, D.C. since Friday was to be the first day of a planned recess. This meant the partisan majority on the floor fluctuated. Olivia Beavers of Politico reported that that instability made Freedom Caucus members nervous enough to put together a floor action response team, or FART, I am not making this up, to make sure other Republicans didn't limit the power of the extremists when they were off the floor. The name of their response team seems likely to be their way to signal their disrespect for the entire Congress. Their fellow Republicans are returning the heat. Today, Mike Turner, a Republican of Ohio, referred to the extremists as the bully caucus on MSNBC and said,

we need to get back to professionalism. We need to get back to governing. We need to get back to legislating. Derek Van Orden, a Republican of Wisconsin, told Julie Grace Brufke of Axios, The vast majority of the Republican Party and the House of Representatives are sick and tired of having people who constantly blackmail the Speaker of the House. Another Republican representative, Jake LaTurner of Kansas, announced today he will not run for re-election. He joins more than 20 other Republican representatives heading for the exits. After all the drama, the House Rules Committee voted 6-3 tonight to advance the foreign aid package to the House floor. Three Republicans voted nay. While it is customary for the opposition party

to vote against advancing bills out of the committee the Democrats broke with tradition and voted in favor Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.