Take this graf, for instance:
Our work has focused on four interconnected priorities: ending the fighting, developing credible postwar security guarantees and arrangements that reduce the risk of renewed conflict, preparing a comprehensive economic and prosperity plan for Ukraine, and advancing humanitarian measures to alleviate suffering and address the human consequences of this war.
Translated from your bullshit it means:
- Disarming Ukraine while giving Russia financial lifelines
- No restrictions on Russian forces, broad limits on NATO deployments.
- You, Witkoff and the rest of your criminal enterprise raping Ukraine on mineral rights.
- No consequences to Putin for wholesale war crimes.
God, at least don't use some Temu Claude to write you garbage. It's transparent.
See you in at the hearings.
Democrats are already telling corporations and law firms that they have questions and expect documents and answers. They’re doing this in part because they know the Administration will stonewall them.
A lot of the relevant evidence sits in the email accounts and files of law firms, corporations and former officials, who are far more likely to comply, and corporate America has gotten the message.
“We can expect subpoenas to go after internal corporate communications, as well as communications between corporate executives and administration officials,” said Daniel Suleiman, a former Justice Department official now at the Covington & Burling law firm.
Todd Blanche is not happy about it:
Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday on CNN that he might prosecute members of Congress over what he called intimidation, though he didn’t say what law he thought had been broken.
“They’re talking about going after companies, private companies who happen to have made investments in this country over the past couple years. That is not oversight,” Blanche said.
That’s precisely what it is, actually.
I’m old enough to remember Congressional hearings that delved into the conduct of corporate, not just how Administrations were doing their jobs. There were even Congressional investigations of organized crime (what, you thought Puzo made that up for “The Godfather”?). If Congress can have oversight of organized crime, it can have oversight of corporations and law firms. Especially if it’s sometimes hard to slip a piece of paper between legitimate and illegitimate enterprises.
The simple fact is, Congress has very broad investigative powers, because Congress needs them to function as a legislature. Congress needs the authority to investigate so it can determine what laws are needed, what laws need to be repealed, modified, added, or clarified. That power is necessarily very broad, and it is allowed to be broad by the courts largely on the separation of powers doctrine.
Blanche is coming perilously close to Bar disciplinary investigations. Generally that takes improper handling of client funds (an unforgivable breach of fiduciary duty), or the wild antics of Giuliani slandering Georgia election workers by name (and even then the lawsuit preceded the disciplinary proceedings). I can see a future, though, where Blanche is removed from office, and then the appropriate Bar gets appropriately interested. He really is dancing right on the edge of the abyss.
In other news, I inherited Caro’s four volume biography of LBJ from my brother, and I’ve just taken up volume 1. Caro’s thesis is that understanding LBJ’s character “is essential to understanding the history of the United States in the twentieth century.” I didn’t realize LBJ was on good terms with FDR (though it makes sense. LBJ was in Congress in 1937), which is notable because Cato further argues that LBJ’s presidency “brought to crest tides of social change that had begun flowing during the New Deal a quarter of a century before.” Of course, after LBJ’s one elected term, and due (Cato asserts) largely to the Vietnam War (which “was essentially a Vietnamese war” when LBJ’s term began, but became thoroughly Americanized in four years). Caro’s point is that LBJ’s term, brief as it was, was a watershed, and we have all, since 1968, been living in the “after.” “After” being the end of the New Deal Era.
I would venture today that a new watershed is before the nation, an electoral repudiation of the last 58 years and what they led to, that is more than an angry spasm and a knee jerk reflex over the cost of housing and the price of eggs. The corruption of the Trump Administration is of a piece with the corruption of every Republican Administration since 1968; Trump is just clumsier and more brazen. LBJ became a rich man in Congress by helping his friends win government contracts, but that’s by and large how government contracts work. Trump blatantly helps his sons and himself, and brags openly about how rich he’s become.
And it’s the corruption of the Administration, as well as the corruption of police power of government (ICE, DHS) that has produced this watershed, and turned even Texas blue. I don’t doubt the Democrats could squander this moment. I just don’t think it will be that easy to lose. Caro’s argument is that LBJ’s personality is a major factor in that change. Especially when he’s put up against Obama, or Biden, or even Bush pere et fil, Trump’s personality is certainly much more a major factor in current events. And if you want to roll the election issues up into one big ball, as Cato does with the 20th century, you can easily say it was Trump’s personality that the nation repudiated and rejected as a guiding national force in the 2026 midterms.
It’s too early to truly say, but in 1968 I knew things had changed, even if I didn’t think the change was permanent. By ‘72 I knew it was, and only this week did I begin to hope things had changed again. Our long national nightmare may actually be over.
At least for 30 years or so. It is, after all, being touted as a “generational change.” But maybe we can make it last for two generations. π§
