Dear Commons Community.

Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday easily batted down an attempt by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to oust him from his post, after Democrats joined with most Republicans to fend off a second attempt by G.O.P. hard-liners to strip the gavel from their party leader.

The vote to kill the effort was an overwhelming 359 to 43, with seven voting “present.” Democrats flocked to Mr. Johnson’s rescue, with all but 39 of them voting with Republicans to block the effort to oust him.

Members of the minority party in the House have never propped up the other party’s speaker, and when the last Republican to hold the post, Kevin McCarthy, faced a removal vote last fall, Democrats voted en masse to allow the motion to move forward and then to jettison him, helping lead to his historic ouster.

This time, the Democratic support made the critical difference, allowing Mr. Johnson, who has a minuscule majority, to avoid a removal vote altogether. While for weeks Ms. Greene had appeared to be on a political island in her drive to get rid of yet another G.O.P. speaker, 11 Republicans ultimately voted to allow her motion to move forward.

That was the same number of Republicans who voted in October to allow the bid to remove Mr. McCarthy to advance — but back then, they were joined by every Democrat.  As reported by The New York Times.

“I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort,” Mr. Johnson told reporters shortly after Wednesday’s vote. “As I’ve said from the beginning and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my job. I intend to do what I believe to be the right thing, which is what I was elected to do, and I’ll let the chips fall where they may. In my view, that is leadership.”

“Hopefully,” he added, “this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress.”

Congratulations to those who voted for Johnson and for putting the country ahead of their political parties.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who says she had a sexual encounter with Donald Trump, took the witness stand in the former president’s criminal trial yesterday, providing sometimes graphic testimony about a 2006 tryst she says they had in a hotel suite and the efforts to buy her silence in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.  As reported by NBC News.

The vivid testimony added a jolt of tabloid sensationalism to proceedings that just a day earlier focused on comparatively mundane topics, such as corporate record-keeping and financial reimbursement practices. Trump set the stage in dramatic fashion before anyone even took their seats in the courtroom Tuesday: “I have just recently been told who the witness is today,” he said in a since-deleted social media post. “This is unprecedented, no time for lawyers to prepare.”

Daniels, wearing an all-black outfit and black eyeglasses, spoke in a conversational and hurried tone, occasionally looking directly at the jury box as she testified about her humble upbringing, her pornography career and her relationship with Trump. State Judge Juan Merchan repeatedly reminded her to keep her answers short and speak more slowly so the court recorder could keep up.

Trump, brows furrowed, stared straight ahead during most of Daniels’ deeply unflattering testimony and sometimes whispered with his lawyers at the defense table. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to Daniels, and he denies her claims of an affair. His lawyers sought to persuade jurors that Daniels wasn’t credible and that she was driven by greed.

Daniels described a tumultuous childhood and a “neglectful” mother before she chronicled how she entered the adult film business, first as a performer and later as a writer and director. But the dramatic highlight of her testimony concerned her first meeting with Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006, when he was a reality television star as host of NBC’s “The Apprentice.”

In wide-ranging testimony about the 2006 encounter, Daniels told jurors that she was initially hesitant to accept a dinner invitation from Trump. She was 27 at the time, she said, and he was around 60 — her father’s age. But she ultimately took the advice of her publicist at the time, who she recalled saying: “It’ll make a great story. He’s a business guy. What could possibly go wrong?”

Daniels later described the moments she said Trump came on to her in a penthouse hotel suite, where he answered the door in “silk or satin” pajamas that reminded her of Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner. They spoke for two hours before she went to the restroom and returned to find him on the bed in his boxer shorts, she said. She testified that seeing him there felt “like a jump scare,” adding: “That’s when I had that moment where I felt like the room spun in slow motion.”

He didn’t force himself on her or “rush at me,” she said, but he implied he could help her. “I thought you were serious about what you wanted,” Daniels recalled Trump saying. She said she believes she “blacked out” at some point during sex, which was brief. Afterward, Trump told her “it was great,” called her “honey bunch” and suggested they get together again, Daniels testified. She said he hadn’t worn a condom. She said she tried to leave the hotel as quickly as possible.

Daniels told jurors that she felt ashamed that she didn’t stop the sexual encounter. In the months that followed, Trump and Daniels kept in touch. He suggested he could book Daniels a role as a competitor on a season of “The Apprentice,” she said, but that plan never came to fruition.

In the final days of the 2016 presidential race, Daniels accepted $130,000 from Trump’s team to sign a nondisclosure agreement about her alleged tryst with Trump. (Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and “fixer” at the time, cut the check and later got reimbursed, a process that is at the center of the criminal charges against Trump.) The prosecution has tried to present the hush money payment as a part of a scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

Daniels testified that she understood that signing an agreement that barred her from talking about her sexual encounter with Trump required them to act like they’d never met. “We had to pretend like we didn’t know each other at all, basically,” she said.

In an exchange with prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, Daniels insisted that she didn’t care about the exact dollar figure at the heart of the nondisclosure agreement. “I didn’t care about the amount,” she said. “It was just, get it done.”

Daniels testified that her personal life descended into “chaos” after her contractual arrangement with Trump and Cohen became public in a 2018 article in The Wall Street Journal, recounting that she and her young daughter were ostracized from their social circles.

Trump harassed her, too. Hoffinger displayed a social media post from Trump and asked Daniels: “Who do you understand Mr. Trump to be referring to as ‘horseface’ and ‘sleazebag’ in this post?”

“Me,” Daniels replied.

In a frequently tense cross-examination by one of Trump’s lawyers, Daniels acknowledged that she despises Trump, said she hopes he is jailed if he’s found guilty — and insisted that she started calling him names publicly only because he mocked her first.

Her names for Trump were quite graphic and not appropriate for a family blog. They are available in the Trump trial public record!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Paul Ryan has no interest in giving Donald Trump another chance come November.

The former House speaker told Yahoo Finance yesterday that he doesn’t plan to vote for the former president, adding he would be writing in a Republican candidate instead.

“Character is too important for me,” Ryan told us at the Milken Institute Global Conference. “[The presidency] is a job that requires the kind of character [Trump] doesn’t have.”

Ryan, who left the speakership in 2019, has been vocal in his opposition of Trump since. During a Monday panel, Ryan warned about the stakes in the upcoming election, saying Trump would be “bad on NATO, bad on alliances, bad on Europe, and bad on trade.”

“Democracy is being tested in two very specific ways. One within, with our polarization eating each other alive,” said Ryan, who is now vice chairman and partner at private equity firm Solamere Capital.

“The second one is from [the outside], from authoritarian regimes who are basically saying they got the mojo, they can make the decisions faster, they can beat democracy.”

Six months before Election Day, President Joe Biden and Trump remain locked in a tight race, with the candidates tied 37%-37% in the most recent USA Today/Suffolk University Poll.

Trump has so far struggled to fully unite the GOP behind his candidacy. Just a small fraction of former Cabinet members have endorsed him, prompting him to respond during a recent interview with Time magazine.

“I had some bad people. When they think they are not in favor and they’re not coming back, they’re not inclined to endorse,” he said.

Ryan said he supports Trump’s tax policies and is in favor of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a bill he championed during his speakership. But he warned about the spending plans proposed by both candidates, saying Biden and Trump are “demagoguing” lawmakers who are “offering solutions.”

The IMF projects the US government debt to increase from 122.1% to 133.9% of annual GDP by the end of this decade.

Ryan also came out against reported plans for Trump to impose 10% tariffs on all global exports and a 60% tariff on Chinese goods.

“I think 10% tariff across the board is a really, really bad economic policy,” Ryan said. “It’s just 10% tax on American consumers making our businesses less competitive.”

Ryan reiterated his opposition to Biden’s plan to sunset Trump’s $1.7 trillion tax cut, saying that would lead to a “massive tax increase on medium and small-sized businesses as well.”

“I think they’re both bad for the economy,” he said, adding that he would still cast a ballot in the presidential election. “I wrote in a Republican the last time. I’m gonna write in a Republican this time.”

Ryan needs to get more of his GOP colleagues commenting on Trump’s character or lack thereof!!

Tony

Stuart Varney and Kristi Noem.  Photo Courtesy of Yahoo News.

Dear Commons Community,

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) and Fox Business host Stuart Varney were speaking over one another in an interview yesterday, during which the governor attempted to defend her decision to shoot her dog despite mounting criticism, which resulted in her telling him “enough.”

Varney highlighted a major question for the governor by asking if she squashed her political chances of becoming former President Trump’s running mate by including the anecdote in her new memoir.  As reported by The Hill.

“Well, I don’t think you have the facts straight,” Noem responded. “This was a vicious, dangerous dog, that was a working dog, and I had to make a choice between the safety of my children and an animal that was killing livestock and attacking people.”

Noem doubled down on the decision to include the story in her book as Varney continued to hammer her about the dog story, saying it was a “very hard decision” and she shared it because “a lot of politicians run from the truth.”

Noem dodged his question about still being Trump’s vice president despite the criticism she’s received. She said she needs him to return to the White House so she can continue to do her job.

“I know that a lot of people are using attacks to try to take me down because they’re scared of me,” Noem said. “Listen, I’ve run 12 campaigns, and all I’ve done is won.”

Varney told the governor that Fox Business is “consumed with emails” of voters who say they don’t want to vote for someone who killed their dog. He later asked if she thinks she’s still in the running to be Trump’s VP pick.

Noem said she speaks to Trump “all the time,” and Varney continued to ask if the former president asked about her dog.

“Enough, Stuart. This interview is ridiculous, what you are doing right now,” Noem said in response after trying to change the topic. “So, you need to stop. It is. It is. Let’s talk about some real topics that Americans care about.”

Varney also questioned Noem on the dog’s age. She’s been catching criticism for shooting the nearly 14-month-old Cricket, a wirehaired pointer, after he misbehaved on a hunting trip.

She told Varney that it was not a puppy, but rather an “adult working dog.” He interrupted her, saying “the dog was 14 months old,” to which she said Cricket was “a year and a half old.”

Varney also pressed her on whether it was good politics for her to include the story in her book, which has also been found to contain inaccuracies about conversations and meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Woof! Woof!

Tony

Police arrest a pro-Palestinian protester during the Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Credit – Andres Kudacki—AP

Dear Commons Community,

I received an email from the Hunter College administration yesterday saying that all classes would be remote after it received a warning that there would be a protest outside the school starting at 3:00 pm.  Hunter was the staging area for a march to disrupt the Met Gala.  I am on sabbatical so I did not have a reason to go to Hunter yesterday. Here is reporting by Time Magazine.

Picket signs, smoke bombs and flares almost mingled with cameras and excited fans as scores of pro-Palestinian protesters tried to make their way to the Met Gala Monday evening to disrupt the lavish affair in New York City.

While celebrities made their fashionable entrances on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), hundreds of protesters convened outside of Hunter College as part of the “Citywide Day of Rage,” where schools across NYC took part in demonstrations protesting Israel’s continued onslaught on Gaza, according to footage shared by reporter Katie Smith on X (see video below). The protesters are demanding Israel pull out of its invasion of Rafah and are calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

NOW: After rallying outside of Hunter College, protesters in NYC have now taken to the streets and are marching up Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side pic.twitter.com/sD6gPE2Ex6

— katie smith (@probablyreadit) May 6, 2024

The Pro-Palestinian protesters took to “flooding the streets of New York City in defense of Rafah,” marching up Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, before removing barricades that were blocking access to 5th Avenue and to the museum. Chants of “It’s called, Divest! We will not stop. We will not rest!” could be heard as the group made its way closer to the party.

At around 7:11 p.m., protesters neared the MET and descended down Park Avenue. Some set off smoke bombs and flares. They removed additional barricades on their way.

Footage posted to X appears to show NYPD officers detaining protesters outside of the gala, with others chanting “Let them go” as they stand across the street.

And as various stars made their way up the MET’s steps, the protesters continued taking detours and making sudden turns in a bid to evade NYPD officers, according to Smith. Officers with the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG) followed but protesters reportedly took to sidewalks before heading back to the street. Smith would later report that the demonstrations were turned around and returned to Park Avenue.

Multiple people have been arrested, the NYPD confirmed with The Independent. They would not provide additional details about the arrests.

Demonstrations and encampments across college campuses in the U.S. and the world have grown steadily in recent weeks, as student and faculty protesters demanded that their institutions divest from companies that support or do business in Israel.

The protests have led to arrests and suspensions of thousands of students, while also having costly impacts on colleges. Columbia University announced on Monday that it would be canceling the university’s main commencement ceremony in favor of smaller ones after discussions with student leaders and following weeks of unrest.

Tony

Maggie Haberman at Trump Hush Money Trial.  AP Photo.

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman gave gripping updates on the “extraordinary moment” Judge Juan Merchan threatened former President Donald Trump with jail time — and pointedly noted that Trump was much less defiant. As reported by various news media.

Court began Monday in the Stormy Daniels hush money-election interference trial with fireworks, as Merchan issued his ruling, telling Trump “I find you in criminal contempt for the 10th time,” and adding “Going forward this court will have to consider a jail sanction.”

Haberman and her Times colleagues reported from inside the courtroom with live updates, as they have since the trial began in earnest, and were all over that dramatic moment.

But Haberman, who has consistently called it BS on the idea that Trump wants to be jailed in order to benefit from sympathy, observed that Trump wasn’t as defiant as he has been in the past over such threats.  Below is her transcript.

Tony

————————————————————-

Maggie Haberman
May 6, 2024, 9:30 a.m. ET

Justice Merchan is speaking directly to Trump, in an extraordinary moment. He tells him he’s finding him in contempt of the gag order a 10th time, but that the $1,000 per instance fines aren’t working and that he has to consider jail. “The last thing” he wants to do is put Trump in jail, the judge says, adding, “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well.”

Maggie Haberman
May 6, 2024, 9:32 a.m. ET

Justice Merchan tells Trump his ongoing violation of his gag order is a “direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.” He says he wants him to understand he will put him in jail if he has to.

May 6, 2024, 9:32 a.m. ET

Justice Merchan says that his job is to “protect the dignity of the justice system,” and calls Trump’s violations of his gag order “a direct attack on the rule of law.” And now he hands down his decision. We’ve already heard that he held Trump in violation a 10th time, in addition to the previous nine violations.

May 6, 2024, 9:33 a.m. ET

Trump had no noticable reaction to Merchan warning him that jail could be in the offing if he continues to flaunt his gag order.

Kate Christobek
May 6, 2024, 9:33 a.m. ET

Trump was hunched over at the defense table staring at Merchan as he issued his warning. When the judge concluded, Trump shook his head.

Jonathan Swan
May 6, 2024, 9:38 a.m. ET

It’s worth underscoring what a stunning moment this was. I have never seen anybody warn Trump, to his face, about the prospect of incarceration. He’s now sitting quietly, frowning, still seemingly absorbing that message from the judge.

Maggie Haberman
May 6, 2024, 9:43 a.m. ET

It’s an extremely subdued reaction compared to when Lewis Kaplan, a federal judge, threatened to jail him in one of his civil trials and Trump shot back, “I would love it.”

Photo courtesy of Between the Lines.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times first reported that Trump, addressing a retreat for Republican donors in Florida on Saturday night, railed against the dozens of felony charges he is facing and claimed that the cases were orchestrated by the Biden White House.

“These people are running a Gestapo administration,” Trump said, according to audio obtained by The New York Times. “And it’s the only thing they have. And it’s the only way they’re going to win, in their opinion, and it’s actually killing them. But it doesn’t bother me.”

The White House yesterday slammed Trump for comparting the Biden administration to the Gestapo police force in Nazi Germany.

“Instead of echoing the appalling rhetoric of fascists, lunching with Neo Nazis, and fanning debunked conspiracy theories that have cost brave police officer their lives, President Biden is bringing the American people together around our shared democratic values and the rule of law — an approach that has delivered the biggest violent crime reduction in 50 years,” deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.

Saturday’s event featured a number of prominent Republican lawmakers, including several in the mix to serve as Trump’s running mate in November. Trump’s campaign touted that they had raised $76 million in April and made the case at the event for Trump to expand the electoral map ahead of November.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R), who attended the event on Saturday, essentially confirmed Trump’s comments during an appearance Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“This was a short comment deep into the thing that wasn’t really central to what he was talking about,” said Burgum, who is in the running to join Trump on the GOP ticket in November.

“A majority of Americans feel like the trial that he’s in right now is politically motivated,” Burgum added.

Trump’s comments referred to the secret police force used by Nazi leaders who cracked down on political opposition and targeted Jewish people during the Holocaust.

Saturday’s remarks were the latest instance of Trump drawing criticism for using language reminiscent of dictatorships during World War II.

The former president has on multiple occasions claimed immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally were “poisoning the blood” of the country, language that Democrats argued was parroting Adolf Hitler.

Trump last year also referred to his political opponents as “vermin” who posed a threat to the country from within, drawing further condemnation from critics who said it echoed the autocratic language of Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Trump once again shows he lacks any semblance of decency and should be nowhere near our seat of government.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Burn Book:  A Tech Love Story by writer, podcaster and  columnist, Kara Swisher, who established herself as a major chronicler of the tech industry in the 1990s and 2000s.  It is a memoir of her life especially of her time living and reporting on the goings-on in Silicon Valley.  She provides insights into the dispositions of many of the major tech players such as Steve Jobs,  Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. She credits her success as a reporter to her “obnoxiousness,  persnicketiness, a distaste for lies and a proclivity to call out nonsense, no matter the power of the person uttering it.”  Her last chapter on AI technology and the future is must reading.  One of her best lines is “I am not as afraid of AI as I am fearful of bad people who will use it better than good people.”  Anyone interested in how high-tech has gotten to its commanding world position would appreciate what Swisher has to offer in this book.

Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times.

Tony

—————————————————————————————-

The New York Times

In “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” the pioneering journalist recounts a life in, and of, Silicon Valley.

A self-driving tractor-trailer maneuvers around a test track in Pittsburgh. The truck is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. Courtesy of Las Vegas Review Journal.

Dear Commons Community,

In less than nine months, Aurora Innovation Inc., an autonomous transportation company, will launch up to 20 driverless trucks carrying loads on Texas highways for partners such as FedEx, Uber Freight and Werner. As reported by The Associated Press.

On a three-lane test track along the Monongahela River, an 18-wheel tractor-trailer rounded a curve. No one was on board.

A quarter-mile ahead, the truck’s sensors spotted a trash can blocking one lane and a tire in another. In less than a second, it signaled, moved into the unobstructed lane and rumbled past the obstacles.

The self-driving semi, outfitted with 25 laser, radar and camera sensors, is owned by Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation. Late this year, Aurora plans to start hauling freight on Interstate 45 between the Dallas and Houston areas with 20 driverless trucks.

Within three or four years, Aurora and its competitors expect to put thousands such self-driving trucks on America’s public freeways. The goal is for the trucks, which can run nearly around the clock without any breaks, to speed the flow of goods, accelerating delivery times and perhaps lowering costs. They’ll travel short distances on secondary roads, too.

the autonomous trucks will save on fuel, too, because they don’t have to stop and will drive at more consistent speeds. Also, Aurora says its testing has shown that if a maintenance issue arises while one of its trucks is traveling on a freeway, the vehicle will automatically pull to the side of the road and remotely call for assistance.

The image of a fully loaded, 80,000-pound driverless truck weaving around cars on a super-highway at 65 mph or more may strike a note of terror. A poll conducted in January by AAA found that a decisive majority of American drivers — 66% — said they would fear riding in an autonomous vehicle.

But in less than nine months, a seven-year science experiment by Aurora will end, and driverless trucks will start carrying loads between terminals for FedEx, Uber Freight, Werner and other partners. Aurora and most of its rivals plan to start running freight routes in Texas, where snow and ice are generally rare.

The vehicles have drawn skepticism from safety advocates, who warn that with almost no federal regulation, it will be mainly up to the companies themselves to determine when the semis are safe enough to operate without humans on board. The critics complain that federal agencies, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, take a generally passive approach to safety, typically acting only after crashes occur. And most states provide scant regulation.

But Aurora and other companies that are developing the systems argue that years of testing show that their trucks will actually be safer than human-driven ones. They note that the vehicles’ laser and radar sensors can “see” farther than human eyes can. The trucks never tire, as human drivers do. They never become distracted or impaired by alcohol or drugs.

“We want to be out there with thousands or tens of thousands of trucks on the road,” said Chris Urmson, Aurora’s CEO and formerly head of Google’s autonomous vehicle operations. “And to do that, we have to be safe. It’s the only way that the public will accept it. Frankly, it’s the only way our customers will accept it.”

We hope Urmson is right!

Tony