The Epstein Files

 Democrats and the media are way too enthusiastic about the possibility that the Epstein files will have some important negative effect on Trump's popularity with the bulk of his MAGA followers.

What is being overlooked is the 2016 video resulting from the Access Hollywood interview in which Trump candidly revealed the depth of his depravity.  

Recall that what followed the publishing of that interview was the election of Trump to the Presidency.

People like Bondi, Patel and Vance will be momentarily embarrassed by their previous advocacy for release of the Epstein grand jury hearing details, but Trump's teflon coating will remain intact.

Trump's Tariffs Policy Explained

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Planet of the Apes

 It seems every generation of Americans have to relearn the lessons of the past about the irrational fear of the other. 

The task is always made more difficult by systematic efforts to obscure and rewrite well documented accounts of previous intolerance such as we see now being conducted by the Trump administration.

Fortunately, there are still many easily accessed resources for learning and teaching about irrational and destructive prejudice.  One very good one is the non-profit densho.org which got its start twenty-five years ago in Bellevue, Washington.  The area's Japanese-American community drew on its own experience with WWII internment as inspiration to put together a thorough multi-media effort to create a fact-based tool-set for combating intolerance.

While the primary focus of Densho is based on the personal history accounts of the Japanese-American community, the website also provides a good overview of the many versions of intolerance which have plagued the country.  The highlights of the story are told very nicely in the short film, "Other": A brief history of American xenophobia.

Worth A Look

The rise of end times fascism
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
 

 The two authors have gone to the trouble of delineating the unifying philosophy of the far right elite. It's fundamental properties are a fear of regulation that puts limits on massive wealth acquisition, and the construction of refuges from the apocalyptic future which they are responsible for facilitating.

Clueless

 From the way that the tariffs were rolled out it is clear that Trump really has no clue about the economic effects of his actions or how to manage the process. However, that is not a barrier to the objectives of the 2025 Project.  The chaos created by Trump's flailing executive orders creates a climate which facilitates the destruction of the institutions of government as specified in the Heritage Foundation publications which lay out the Project 2025 agenda.

A good example of how the 2025 authors are now manipulating the process is the recent modification of the tariffs to exempt smart phones and computers from the tariffs.  That is likely to be enough to quell the alarm among the Trump base that depends on social media for its news. Trump clearly lacks the analytic capacity to make that kind of course adjustment, but he is the perfect conduit for those close to him who pull his strings.

 

What Now?

Michael Tomasky in The New Republic asks:

Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?

He goes on to assert that:

"The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win."

and, "...I’ve written this before, but I’m going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who are the only people in the world who have the power to do something about this state of affairs—take some action."

That observation about the tidal wave of right-wing media is not inaccurate.  I would suggest however, that it leaves something to be desired as the basis for an action plan in the moment. It seems to me that focus on media is something of a distraction right now, and that it is a prescription mostly for tinkering with the status quo. It also overlooks the fact that fascist regimes of the past achieved power without the benefit of social media.

What is most needed right now is a strategy for survival, including identification of the most obvious threats and feasible plans for harm mitigation.  Rather than trying to build a bigger and better social media response, financial support would be better devoted right now to supporting immigrant defense organizations.

There is no question that Trump and his allies will be working to put the right-leaning billionaires like Musk in charge of the country.  However, that is a long, slow process.  In the near term, the executive powers available to the Presidency will enable an immediate massive assault against millions of immigrant families.

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See also: Rebecca Solnit on Hope in the Dark ( A podcast at The Nation)

Politics Endangers Health

 I doubt the title will provoke an argument, particularly this year.  

A couple of things have brought the issue into sharper focus for me.  Trump is scheduled to visit Albuquerque on Thursday and will hold a rally at the Albuquerque Sunport.  As it happens, there is a high probability that the airport was where I contracted Covid during our recent five-day trip to Boston.

There were many opportunities for contagion at the stops along the way, but the long and densely packed security lines at our trip's beginning should have been a red flag.  Covid booster shots shortly before traveling seemed worthwhile, but did not stop the disease this time. A guide from New Mexico's Department of Health illustrates the possible precautions in addition to vaccination:

 

The first safety practice is likely the most important: Avoid large gatherings.  The next, Social Distance, is not available in airport security lines.

In relation to two of  the specifics applicable to the upcoming Trump rally, mask wearing and vaccinations, there can be little hope of compliance in the Trump crowd.

Public health tracking of Covid is very sporadic at present.  If you google "political rallies covid" all the links refer to a study from around the time of the last election four years ago:

(from a CNBC article)

  Researchers looked at 18 Trump rallies held between June 20 and Sept. 22 (2020) and analyzed Covid-19 data the weeks following each event.

   The researchers found that the rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

   They also concluded that the rallies likely led to more than 700 deaths, though not necessarily among attendees.

 That study was conducted near the height of the pandemic, so the results are likely not accurately predictive of what will be produced by the Sunport rally.  It is also unlikely that the poor level of monitoring now in force will give a true picture of the public health outcome.

Update:

It turns out that Trump could have staged his rally in Albuquerque's Convention Center if he had paid the $440,000 he still owes the City for the last time he was here.  Just as well for public health as it  now looks like Thursday's event will take place on the tarmac near CSI Aviation, so a better ventilated venue.

Deja Vu

 Nearly five years ago I posted some thoughts about Arundhati Roy's fiction and political writing that have often brought her threats for her courageous stance against despotism in her country.  Now, as reported in The Guardian, she is again under siege:

Indian authorities have granted permission for the prosecution of the Booker prize-winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy over comments she made about Kashmir at an event in 2010.

After watching that online presentation by Roy and Naomi Klein on  the web site of "The Nation" I wrote that:

Americans don't pay a lot of attention to what is going on in India,  but we make that choice at our own peril.  It is a country of over a billion people ruled by an authoritarian regime which operates comfortably in the neo-liberal global economy.  One result of that is that India is far along the path to the environmental disaster brought to us by a combination of global warming and continuing bad economic and political choices.

The comparison of political trends in India and the U.S. seems to me even more apt now given Trump's plan to harness the Justice Department to go after his critics should he win the election in 2024.

What Now?

 The judge is faced with a sentencing decision that is likely to please no one.  The pundits are pointing out that a first time conviction for a non-violent crime of the type Trump has committed would not normally send the miscreant to a prison.  Still, some kind of penalty seems called for.

Depending on the election outcome,  how about barred and locked doors and windows for the White House?  Calls should be monitored and limited (no long distance).  Twenty minutes daily exercise in the Rose Garden.

House arrest is perhaps not a perfect solution, but it would offer something for everyone.

Extinction

 A recent PBS Newshour interview featured a member of the vestigial group of Republicans who do not support Trump, GOP Rep. Mike Lawler of New York.  He started off with the call for reduced spending and a lower deficit which has been the centerpiece of their platform since before the invention of the wheel. That relic has seldom been supported by any respectable economist since the Great Depression and, of course, the Republicans have never hesitated to throw money at any of their favorite projects.  Everybody, including most Republicans, know that party line is BS -- the current crop of office seekers may pay it lip service, but the Trumpists have moved on to a xenophobic obsession with building a border wall -- out of gold bricks if that is what it takes.  The bottom line for all this is that the "moderate" Republicans really don't have anything to say of interest to anyone at this point.

Contingency Plans

 In spite of the overwhelming evidence of Trump's guilt I would be surprised to find anyone who thinks a conviction would rate any better than even odds.  So, it seems like some thought ought to be given to what might be done to restore some balance to the universe in the event of exoneration.

I have so far only come up with a couple possibilities:

• In the event that Trump walks free it seems appropriate that anyone currently serving time for any Espionage Act transgression should also be set free.

• To avoid any future circus performances like the current one going on in Miami we might as well just cc anything with a Secret label to Moscow and Beijing.

Winding up.

 Not much new in the last of the Jan.6 Committee Hearings today.  However, I thought they did a nice job of summarizing the year of work by the committee.  It was interesting to see the clips of the Congressional  leadership during the siege.  Pelosi and Schumer were cool and effective in a very tense and uncertain situation.

I am skeptical that the House will support the effort to force Trump to testify, even if the Dems narrowly retain control.  Even if everything went as desired -- even if Trump dropped dead today -- we would still be facing the massive damage Trump has done by putting his supporters in office at all levels of government, including the retrograde Supreme Court.

It seems unlikely Trump will be able to run again; none of his aspiring lookalikes wants to see him on the ticket, let alone the rest of us.  But all the issues are still going to be in place including the undermining of elections and abortion rights for the 2024 contest.  There is certainly a good chance that someone with Trump's authoritarian bent but smarter could take the top spot.

Giving the Military Establishment Some Credit

A recent article in The New Yorker provides chilling details about Trump's ignorant brutality, the  threat he posed to national integrity, and how the country's military leaders saw the threat building on the eve of January 6th.  Trump ignored the advise of his top military advisors at nearly every opportunity, and he kept replacing them in an effort to get unquestioning support for a wide range of strategic and political issues including the constitutionally prohibited use of the military within the borders of the U.S. 

Trump's relationship with the military may have been the most egregiously fraught in our history, but it was not the first time that a President of the United States ignored the strategic expertise and ethical concerns of the top brass.

In 1945 Harry Truman went ahead with dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in spite of the contrary opinions of many of the historically recognized military leaders of those times.  Here is a sampling of those opinions as reported in Wikipedia:

...Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:

In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.^[109]

Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,^[110][111] Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet), Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr.(Commander of the US Third Fleet), and even the man in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands, then-Major General Curtis LeMay:

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.

— Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, ^[102]

The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

— Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, 1950, ^[112]

The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

— Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command, September 1945, ^[113]

The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment ... It was a mistake to ever drop it ... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. 

— Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr., 1946,...

The Other Side of the Coin

Immigration to the U.S. is a topic that fills the news every day and it may be the most potent source of division in the country's political landscape.  On the other hand, emigration and expatriation from the U.S. get very little attention.

While most U.S. expats appear to be motivated primarily by economics, I would guess that quite a lot of people in the Trump era have given at least a passing thought to looking for residence in a place that seems to more highly value rationality, equality and stability.  Canada, Costa Rica and New Zealand come to mind.

It doesn't take a lot more imagination to realize that moving to another country brings with it a heavy load of complications.  To cite just one, the U.S. taxes according to citizenship rather than residence, so moving abroad can result in some real tax nightmares involving the bureaucracies of two nations.

Of course, there is another moving option available in the form of internal migration.  For instance, a lot of African Americans moved from the rural south to northern or western urban areas.  The reasons in that case were based on economic and political issues.  The logic behind such a move is irrefutable, but the consequences were seldom so clearly positive as might be hoped.

Despite some obvious drawbacks to picking up and moving to a new place for anyone, the idea still retains a lot of appeal, in most cases for possible economic improvements.  In some instances it also seems likely some people may feel surrounded by a community which they feel is unsafe or hostile to their beliefs, and be looking for that reason to change their residence.

I'm staying put.  Twelve years ago, I chose to move from rural southern New Mexico to Albuquerque, New Mexico's biggest city.  While I have lived in quite a few places inside and outside the country, moving at this late stage of my life no longer seems like a useful or even viable option.  Not that there are not local conditions which create serious concerns.  Albuquerque has some of the highest crime and murder rates in the country.  New Mexico is among the poorest of states and it is not likely that will change significantly in my lifetime.

Meanwhile, however, I live in a pretty quiet middle-class neighborhood.  And, while I am appalled by the state of politics at the national level, the city, state and federal representatives which are responsible for my part of town are bright, energetic progressives who are working hard to make things better for their fellow New Mexicans.

I have been particularly impressed by our U.S. Congressional Representative, Deb Haaland, who is one of the first Native American women to reach that position.  She has gone to great lengths to stay in close touch with her constituents through emails and town halls, and she has sponsored many progressive initiatives in her first year in Congress.

Even with some good local allies, of course, there is no guarantee that progress will continue on an unbroken course.  Politics doesn't work that way.  Still, I welcome the encouragement from activists who are younger and smarter than me.  Also, I do think that lasting significant change has got to come from the bottom up.

What got me thinking along these lines were a couple of articles in today's Guardian:

Lauren Gambino's article on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explains very clearly how the youngest woman ever elected to Congress got to where she is.

Joseph Stiglitz's article about Martín Guzmán, Argentina's new minister of economy appointed by President Alberto Fernández, is encouraging because it gives a ray of hope to a country that for decades has experienced a rollercoaster ride of boom and bust.  I had a first-hand view of the country sliding into one of the worst busts which led to a nightmarish dictatorship, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Fernández and Guzmán will at least prevent a repeat of that.

Obama's Mistake

It is not unusual for politicians to talk about healing divisiveness and working across the aisle during their campaigns.  The difference in Obama's case was that he actually tried to make that work after he took office.  It was a great waste of time and effort.  When he reached out, the Republicans were right there ready to chop off his hand and shut the door on his candidate for the Supreme Court.

I was reminded of Obama's unfortunate strategic error yesterday when I went to a Democratic ward meeting in Albuquerque.  The up side of the get-together was the presence of some bright, engaged young people.  One of the brightest and most articulate spent his allotted time talking about the negative consequences of confronting aggressive rants by Trump supporters, pointing out that their attitudes were likely due to some personal misfortune.  For all I know that could be true, but is it relevant to effectively changing the way the country is governed?

I think it indisputable that people stressed by economic, social and emotional conditions will often turn for reassurance to authoritarian leaders.  We are certainly seeing that now with the rise of Trump and other right-wing leaders world-wide.  It is also important, however, to not lose sight of that fact that people over-all are becoming more liberal generally across the ideological divides.

Just look at attitude shifts in recent decades toward inter-racial relationships, gay marriage and marijuana usage.  Some concrete statistical support for those trends was offered recently in an article at FiveThirtyEight.  The article was specifically addressing the liberalization over the past thirty years of the Democratic Party, but the statistics also support the idea that liberalization has not been confined to the left side of the political spectrum.  While the populace as a whole has moved leftward, governance has moved in the opposite direction.

So, the problem is not the natural age-old human tendency to look to support from right-wing authoritarians.  Rather it is that the machinery of governance has been captured by corporate dark money which supports the politicians willing to sell out the real interests of their constituents -- and not all are Republicans.  An obvious response is to just not support any candidate -- regardless of party or ideological pretense -- who accepts corporate campaign funding.

Take Aways

Impeachment:

The Dems have done a pretty good job of staging the public hearings.  I would imagine that a fairly small percentage of the public tuned into all the hours of testimony and questions.  Still, there was plenty of red meat for the media and a coherent story of Trump's attempt at bribery is out there.  The last two people called to testify have done a thorough job of poking holes in the falsehoods and conspiracy theories propagated by the Republicans.

The Debate To Date:

I'm hoping ever more fervently that I will not have to vote for Joe Biden.  I'm also not much happier with the idea of supporting Pete Buttigieg, and for much of the same reasons, though he does not carry the burden of being over the hill like Joe.  Bernie still has the clearest voice of the bunch.  Warren seemed a bit lost in the weeds at this last debate. (Others rated her performance to be superior -- see, for instance, the 538 report on the debate.)  The rest are also-rans, but I would be happy to see nearly all of them in high government positions after a Dem victory in the 2020 elections.

2020

New Mexico has been treated to a preview of the Republican strategy for the upcoming elections.  Trump's Attorney General/Personal Lawyer put on a big show in the State implying that State and local governments are not doing anything to effectively combat crime.  This is now being followed up by an on line media barrage disparaging the governor, the mayor of Albuquerque and Representative Xochitl Torres Small of Las Cruces.  TV PAC ads about Torres Small are running nightly.

A sample of the Republican talking points can be found on Joe Monahan's New Mexico Politics blog.   The Nov. 20 blog post carried a law and order screed by retired APD Sergeant Dan Klein suggesting that Federal oversight of the Albuquerque Police Department was hampering law enforcement.  Overlooked was the fact that the current city administration has put a good effort into hiring more officers.  Additionally, the governor recently detailed a large number of State Police to help out with combatting crime in central New Mexico.  In the post for the following day, Monahan published my brief reply to Klein:

Klein, with his opportunistic law and order pitch, would have us conveniently forget that we just recently got rid of a "law and order" governor who did nothing to effectively combat crime in New Mexico. In fact Martinez starved and disrupted the public services institutions which are crucial to real progress. Lessening police oversight now is one sure way to undermine social justice while doing nothing to affect the root causes of crime in our State.

 So, expect LAW AND ORDER every day from now to the election.  What you won't hear from the Republicans, of course, is any kind of support for educational reform, jobs, health care, mental health or drug abuse treatment for rural and small town New Mexico.  Also, don't hold your breath while waiting for them to tackle methane pollution, degradation of the State's water supply through fracking and any number of other environmental threats faced by New Mexicans.

You saw it here first.

I see Thomas Geoghegan at Bloomberg has picked up on my idea to offer Trump immunity in exchange for immediate resignation from the office of the President.  I would like at least a citation.

To be fair, Geoghegan does thoroughly lay out the details of how Congress might craft the process of forced resignation by passing a law which would only require the votes of a few Republicans as opposed to a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

Realistically, there is close to a zero probability of success for either a conviction in the Senate or passage of a law forcing resignation.  Given the available time before the 2020 election the best that can be hoped is that either process would sufficiently damage Trump to prevent reelection.  The Democrats' strategy for the impeachment route is based primarily on two charges -- extortion of the President of Ukraine and obstruction of justice in regard to cover-up attempts by Trump and his lackeys. The process of crafting a law forcing resignation could be more wide ranging, including all of Trump's sordid past.

Well, it is probably too late now for the Democrats to change horses, and I expect they will stick to the impeachment process.  Too bad they apparently didn't see my suggestion in July.

Momentum

"For the first time since the beginning of the Democratic presidential primary, Elizabeth Warren took the lead in PredictIt’s online betting markets over the weekend. Shares of the Massachusetts senator were going for as high 29 cents on Sunday, one cent more than Joe Biden’s. Senators Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders were a fairly distant third and fourth..."

Bernie has a good excuse for a sudden relative drop in popularity.  Biden does not; he is just coming up against raw reality.

The idea that the former Vice-Pres was the one most likely to beat Trump was based on equal parts of his association with Obama and a dose of nostalgia for largely imagined better times.  Now, it is becoming increasingly clear that Joe is short on genuinely original ideas and he has demonstrated little skill in articulating the ideas he does have.  It seems unlikely that Biden would hold up well in a debate with an unscrupulous performer like Trump.

Warren has thought deeply about the major issues and developed thorough policy positions on all of them.  Equally important, she has shown that she knows how to deal with Trump-style trolling.
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Related:
How to get rid of that skunk smell?
(help from Science)

The Trump Spiral

It seems there is no way to know at this moment what is going to happen about impeachment or the 2020 election.  What is obvious, however, is that Trump is spiraling out of control in his responses to the daily challenges he confronts.  He spouts a poisonous torrent of daily Twitter posts interspersed with confrontations with the Press full of truculence and name calling.  His demeanor is that of a frustrated, inarticulate child.

Some commentators have speculated that Trump is losing his mind.  While that cannot be ruled out, it seems more likely that he has just panicked due to  losing control of the narrative, even within Foxworld.

Consider the contrast in Trump's behavior when he is in a campaign appearance with his loyal supporters.  In those venues he looks confident.  He is able there to stick to a very limited set of issues designed to appeal to the fears, frustrations and prejudices of his base.  He is able to present an image of being in charge of the nation's course.

Outside of those carefully staged appearances, however, Trump seems unable to sustain any coherent line of thought in response to daily challenges from Congress and the Press.  He lies compulsively and often contradicts himself in adjacent sentences.  He just cannot seem to shut up when that would clearly be in his own best interest.

Trump's behavior under pressure is in sharp contrast to his Republican predecessors in the Presidency.  Think for a moment about how they handled revelations about their lies and illegal behavior.  Ike lied about the U2 overflights of the Soviet Union. Reagan lied about arms sales to finance the Contras.  Bush fabricated the weapons of mass destruction myth to take us to war with Iraq.

In each of those cases, however, the perpetrator-in-chief knew to keep his mouth closed.  They let their Congressional allies carry the defense, and they let the agents of their plots take the rap and go to jail when necessary, knowing that a pardon was always available at term's end.

Nixon, of course, did talk himself out of office, but that was only because the Supreme Court forced the contents of the secret tapes into the open.  Trump, in contrast to his predecessors, also seems uniquely incapable of holding onto key advisors and of keeping his Cabinet supporters from being fatally tainted by his misbehavior.

It is interesting to speculate about the calculations that are being made now by Republicans in the House and in the Senate in response to Trump's daily melt-down.  As long as Trump could stay in campaign mode, they could fall back on the idea that Trump-will-be-Trump and then forge ahead with their standard operating procedures of cutting taxes for the ultra-rich and slashing benefits for the rest of us.

The Republican leadership is still holding the line against impeachment with the usual techniques of deflection and obfuscation.  However, there have been a few tepid criticisms coming out of the red ranks, and there appear to be around thirty Republican Senators who would be very happy to see Trump be brought down if that could be accomplished without their own political demise.

Quite a few Republican congressmen have elected to forego an attempt to hold onto their seats due in large part to the Trump trajectory.  It seems very likely that those who plan on remaining in office, in the face of Trump's volatile behavior will focus increasingly on the idea that if Trump were forced out now before the election, they would still have Pence to carry their flag.
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ps:  I see now at 10:40 PM that Colbert is covering much of the same territory in his opening monologue.  He's funnier.  Maybe I should just post links to his show on a daily basis.

Ukraine

The whistleblower report is public and the congressional hearings are under way.  The whistleblower clearly has high level access to White House activities and has conducted a thorough initial investigation, interviewing many individuals with direct knowledge of events around interactions of the President and his administration with Ukrainian officials.

The hearings will bring out many additional details as the people indicated in the report are identified and brought in to testify.  However, the concise report really lays out the major accusations quite well.  The real battles will now be to control the media narrative while also pressuring members of congress to support or oppose impeachment.

The Democrats still need a few more votes to move forward to impeachment.  There are a number of Dem members of congress who have voiced opposition to impeachment, most of whom are in districts with a large contingent of Trump supporters.  A good example is Xochitl Torres Small who narrowly took a seat in southern New Mexico that has long been held by Republicans.  Another notable holdout on impeachment is Tulsi Gabbard* of Hawaii who recently qualified for the third debate.

Helpful commentary on the unfolding Ukraine story is in progress at fivethirtyeight.com.

* "Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii endorsed the impeachment inquiry against President Trump on Friday..." (nytimes)