In a deposition taken in July, Bartov disclosed that he was being paid $1,350 an hour to work on the case. In court, he said he had now worked about 650 hours on the case, which would total $877,500.

Questioned by lawyers for New York’s attorney general, Bartov said the money had come from the Trump Organization and the former president’s political action committee, Save America.

The law ( the Leahy Law) requires that the US vet any foreign military receiving US arms. However, that doesn’t happen with Israel

If Robert Kagan hoped to generate some conversation with a lengthy Washington Post opinion piece last week, he succeeded. Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an editor at large for the Post, presented a provocative warning to the public, arguing that the United States faces the possibility of a “dictatorship” if Donald Trump is returned to the White House.

Sen. J.D. Vance — a former Trump critic turned sycophant — evidently wasn’t persuaded by Kagan’s case. On the contrary, the Ohio Republican this week sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken seeking some kind of investigation into the published piece. From the senator’s letter:

“I wish to address to your attention a recent opinion piece published in the pages of a widely-circulated American newspaper. Based on my review of public charging documents that the Department of Justice has filed in courts of law, I suspect that one or both of you might characterize this article as an invitation to ‘insurrection,’ a manifestation of criminal ‘conspiracy,’ or an attempt to bring about civil war.”

In other words, Vance, a Yale-educated lawyer, believes the Post op-ed might have crossed a legal line.

Isn't the duty of a newspaper to "comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable?" This senator is way too comfortable - with a dictatorship.

The Republican National Committee on Friday afternoon said it would pause participation in further Republican presidential primary debates, effectively leaving decisions around future debates up to media organizations and the 2024 Republican presidential candidates themselves.

"We have held four successful debates across the country with the most conservative partners in the history of a Republican primary," the Republican National Committee (RNC)'s Committee on Presidential Debates said in a statement. "We have no RNC debates scheduled in January and any debates currently scheduled are not affiliated with the RNC."

"It is now time for Republican primary voters to decide who will be our next President and candidates are free to use any forum or format to communicate to voters as they see fit," the committee said.

The Republican Party’s “repeal and replace Obamacare” zombie is back, and it’s even more brain-dead than before.

The possibility that we might, as The New Republic’s editor Michael Tomasky put it, “sleepwalk” into a second Trump presidency is very real, which is all the more shocking given the mounting evidence that Trump Redux could well end America as we know it. The New Republic’s Matt Ford capably laid out how few guardrails remain in place, including, as Brian Beutler noted in his Off Message newsletter, “the likelihood that Trump will have carte blanche if not active participation from Congress.” The Atlantic, our doughty journal of ruling-class opinion, has even dedicated an entire upcoming issue to the topic.

For the brief period that he stood at the pinnacle of national politics, Kevin McCarthy cast an odd sort of light on Bakersfield, his unfashionable, hardscrabble home town in southern California that might never have penetrated the national consciousness without him.

The city has none of the trappings of what we think of when we think of the Golden state – no beaches, no cable cars, no redwood forests, and only an intermittent view of the Tehachapi mountains, depending on the intensity of the smog that rises from the inland oilfields and large tract farms that provide its lifeblood. The Beach Boys never immortalized Bakersfield in song – and neither, for the most part, has anyone else.

Yet for the past year, as McCarthy struggled to lead the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the city has enjoyed a quirky notoriety as the place that formed the man that wielded the speaker’s gavel, albeit for an agonizingly – and historically – short time.

A deal to provide further U.S. assistance to Ukraine by year-end appears to be increasingly out of reach for President Joe Biden. The impasse is deepening in Congress despite dire warnings from the White House about the consequences of inaction as Republicans insist on pairing the aid with changes to America’s immigration and border policies.

After the Democratic president said this past week he was willing to “make significant compromises on the border,” Republicans quickly revived demands that they had earlier set aside, hardening their positions and attempting to shift the negotiations to the right, according to a person familiar with the talks who was not authorized to publicly discuss them and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The latest proposal, from the lead GOP negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., came during a meeting with a core group of senators before they left Washington on Thursday afternoon. It could force the White House to consider ideas that many Democrats will seriously oppose, throwing new obstacles in the difficult negotiations.

Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.

The policy creates a roadmap for the government's so-called march-in rights, which have never been used before. They would allow the government to grant additional licenses to third parties for products developed using federal funds if the original patent holder does not make them available to the public on reasonable terms.

Under the draft roadmap, seen by Reuters, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.

"We'll make it clear that when drug companies won't sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less," White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance. He said companies were using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to hike prices in search of profits.

“The end of Greedflation must surely come. Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism,” Edwards wrote. “This is a big issue for policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer.”

In a tense game of chicken, remarkable for its mix of petulance and audacity, congressional Republicans are threatening to halt U.S. aid to Ukraine—guaranteeing a Russian breakthrough and possible victory in that war—unless Democrats help pass a bill that all but locks down America’s Southern border.

If the impasse isn’t resolved by the end of next week, when Congress goes on recess until the new year, the Ukrainian army could run out of ammunition. President Joe Biden could resupply the arsenal from U.S. stockpiles without legislative approval, but the move would be temporary, and the signal sent—that Ukraine, and by implication other allies, can no longer count on U.S. support in a pinch—could be a holiday cork-popper for Russian President Vladimir Putin and all of our other adversaries.

“The temporary restraining order granted by the Travis County district judge purporting to allow an abortion to proceed will not insulate hospitals, doctors or anyone else from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws,” Paxton said in a statement shortly after the judge’s decision. “This includes first degree felony prosecutions…and civil penalties of not less than $100,000 for each violation.

Paxton added, ominously: “The [judge’s temporary restraining order] will expire long before the statute of limitations for violating Texas’ abortion laws expires.”

...All available evidence indicates that the Democrats are becoming a more culture war–focused, economically moderate party — except, that is, for what Democratic politicians actually say and do.

That the Democrats have remained stubbornly focused on progressive economic reform has been apparent for a while now. But in a new paper, “Bridging the Blue Divide: The Democrats’ New Metro Coalition and the Unexpected Prominence of Redistribution,” the Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker and his colleagues quantify that resilient commitment.

“Wisconsin voters have been awaiting accountability for three years, and it is beyond time to hold those who perpetrated this scheme responsible for their actions,” explained Jeff Mandell, an attorney for the Law Forward firm that brought the suit. “This settlement agreement provides one piece of that accountability and helps ensure that a similar effort to subvert our democracy will never happen again.”

But just one piece. The threat these people pose to fair elections has not gone away.

For instance, one of the fake electors, Milwaukee County Republican activist Robert Spindell, still serves on the Wisconsin Election Commission, thanks to an appointment by Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg. This means he helps administer elections in a state whose last presidential election he deliberately tried to sabotage.

Social Security benefits are a perennial target for cuts because the program faces a long-run shortfall. Some lawmakers and opinion leaders mistakenly portray the program’s benefits as lavish. The fact is, benefits are modest and workers have earned them by paying into Social Security — protecting themselves and their families if they retire, become disabled, or die. Here are five key facts that policymakers need to keep in mind....

Here’s a Hollywood ending that President Joe Biden wants to bring to life: an incumbent facing tough polling numbers and questions about his advanced age overcomes a brash opponent to win a second term at the White House.

With strikes by writers and actors now over, Biden is beginning to make that pitch to the Southern California set in person. He and first lady Jill Biden plan to attend six fundraising events and meetings between them this weekend in the Los Angeles area, asking some of the glitziest names in town to open their checkbooks for his reelection campaign.

Some of the events will be public and others private over roughly 36 hours in California. But organizers say Biden should raise more this weekend than in any similar time frame since announcing his campaign in April. He may also potentially take in more than any presidential candidate has in greater Los Angeles this far out from Election Day.

“The pent-up excitement, enthusiasm is really unprecedented,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-founder of DreamWorks Pictures and longtime Democratic presidential fundraiser in Los Angeles, who is one of the Biden campaign’s national co-chairs. “People are excited. They’re mobilized. And they’ve been waiting months to show their support for him.”

“It’s worth noting in this latest 56-page indictment, the only Biden accused of wrongdoing is Hunter. The House Oversight Committee has been at this for years and they have so far not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business. But they are going to try again with this impeachment inquiry that’s set to start next week.” – Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, this morning on Fox Business.