Heather Digby Parton, Salon

The Times story, reported by Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner, essentially reveals that the investigation which was supposed to blow the lid off of the Russia investigation by proving that it was a "partisan witch hunt," was itself a witch hunt — only on behalf of Trump. Barr was enabling and covering for Trump throughout his tenure as we saw with his preemptive press conference to diminish the Mueller Report and mislead the public as to its conclusions and his willingness to back Trump's strategy to discredit Vote-By Mail during the 2020 campaign. Even when he finally deserted the sinking ship in December of 2020, his letter of resignation showered Trump with praise even as he knew he was plotting to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. But the Durham investigation was his personal project and it turns out that it was a monstrous abuse of power.

The whole point of naming a Special Counsel is to remove the taint of political interference by keeping a distance between the politically appointed Attorney General and the investigation. Barr did not do that. In fact, he directly participated in the probe by traveling overseas to the United Kingdom and Italy with Durham to interrogate their intelligence officials about whether they helped American investigators frame Trump which apparently offended them to no end since they did nothing of the sort. Durham and Barr became bosom buddies, throwing back scotch together at the end of the work day and having dinner on a regular basis. And Barr, who was convinced that the CIA had created the whole "Russia hoax," eagerly ran interference with the Intelligence agencies for him as needed. Evidently, Durham was very taken with Barr and agreed from the get-go that Trump had been set up.

We had previously heard that Barr and Durham went to Italy on some sort of Hardy Boys expedition, but now we learn that they had been told by Italian authorities about some very credible information that Trump had committed serious financial crimes. Barr and Durham realized that it wasn't something they could completely ignore (as much as they probably wanted to) so Barr assigned that case to Durham instead of another prosecutor and opened a criminal investigation. This was then leaked to the public in a way that implied they had found evidence of criminal behavior on the part of the FBI, the intelligence agencies or possibly even Hillary Clinton. They certainly didn't let on that they were investigating Trump. ...

I'm talking about Trump, of course. In what is being billed as his first official event since he announced his run for the 2024 GOP nomination, Trump said so himself:

"They said he's not doing rallies, he is not campaigning. Maybe he's lost his step. I'm more angry now and I'm more committed now than ever."

He was referring to the fact that most of the media have been commenting on his lackluster performance ever since that boring announcement speech more than two months ago. The growing consensus is that he's lost his mojo. So when he scheduled two small events this past weekend, first in New Hampshire at the annual GOP meeting and then at South Carolina's Capitol building, both before crowds of about 400 people each, it reinforced that assumption. Gone were the days when he would land in his shiny Trump jet or Air Force one to rapturous crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. Now he's just another Republican presidential hopeful hanging around diners and glad-handing the local officials.

His speeches in these two early voting states were vintage Trump rants including many greatest hits. He even did the tired riff on how windmills are killing all the birds, adding a flourish that they're also killing planes and oceans which is a bit baffling. He complained about the border, of course, even reprising the line about how they're sending murderers and rapists and bragged that he'd come up with the word "caravan" to fearmonger about people seeking asylum. He rambled on about "renegotiating" the debt with China, making no more sense today on that subject than he did back in 2016....

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made good on his promise this week to exact revenge on Democrats for denying committee assignments to far-right extremists Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Paul Gosar, R-Az. He booted two California congressmen, Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, from the Select Committee on Intelligence. As Speaker, McCarthy has the power to make this move unilaterally. But he is also proposing to kick Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Relations Committee, which will require a vote of the full House.

The cycle of revenge has officially begun.

It should be noted that the removal of Greene and Gosar, both of whom have addressed white nationalist gatherings and publicly advocated for the deaths of Democratic officials, was decided by a bipartisan vote by the full House. But that was an earlier, more innocent time. A golden era when death threats against Democratic colleagues were considered bad form by at least a handful of Republicans. It was all the way back in 2021, a lifetime ago. In the Republican Party of 2023, Kevin McCarthy's clown show, such behavior is rewarded with plum committee assignments while prominent critics of Donald Trump are politically sacrificed in ritual acts of retribution....

After spending the Trump administration cutting taxes for the wealthy and massively raising military spending, congressional Republicans are back to caterwauling about deficits. This was as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning. When Republicans are in power they give away the store and then when the Democrats are called in to clean up their mess, Republicans immediately rant and rave about government spending and the debt. This has been going on for decades and it would have been short-sighted to expect anything different from them this time.

Naturally, they're putting the safety net programs on the chopping block. The Washington Post reports:

In recent days, a group of GOP lawmakers has called for the creation of special panels that might recommend changes to Social Security and Medicare, which face genuine solvency issues that could result in benefit cuts within the next decade. Others in the party have resurfaced more detailed plans to cut costs, including by raising the Social Security retirement age to 70, targeting younger Americans who have yet to obtain federal benefits.

If that immediately brings to mind the words "Simpson-Bowles" (and makes you break out in a cold sweat) you might be like me and have PTSD from the last time this was introduced back in 2012. It didn't make it into law but only because the Freedom Caucus refused to take yes for an answer when the Obama team opened the door for some serious reductions in benefits. That wasn't the first time Democrats offered up cuts to those programs and were rebuffed. Back in 1995 when the House Republicans shut down the government to force spending cuts, Bill Clinton offered cuts to Medicare and speaker Newt Gingrich said it wasn't enough and walked away. ...

It's begun. And just as we once assumed, it's a tired re-run of 2020 with former president Donald Trump hopping from rally to rally repeating his boring recitation of the Big Lie and the perpetual "witchhunt" and "hoax" mantras. Only this time, the Republican presidential primary is starting early with what's shaping up to be a crowded field. Whether any of Trump's rivals will be able to knock him out remains to be seen — but there's no doubt they think he's weakened enough to chance it.

We've all been closely watching Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who hasn't yet made any overt moves to run but is nonetheless clearly positioning himself to do it. At the moment he is the only serious contender who still holds office which gives him the opportunity to demonstrate his right-wing bonafides. And boy is he ever doing that.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the list of his aggressive authoritarian policies is already a mile long, each one designed to curry favor with the far right by provoking everyone else. Just last week he added to the pile by overseeing his hand-picked education curriculum watchdog's denial of high school AP classes in African American history, saying that "the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value." They will still be able to offer AP classes in European, Japanese and Chinese history, it's just Black history that doesn't have educational value in Florida. Can they be any more obvious? ...