Great news! Judge Hidalgo just learned that President Biden has officially and in an expedited manner declared the high winds and recent devastating floods in our region a major disaster. This has allowed FEMA to quickly approve Individual Assistance (direct financial support), in addition to SBA low interest loans for folks impacted by the winds or floods. “Thank you to the Biden-Harris administration for this quick response. Both President Biden himself and the Vice President’s office reached out to me to ask how they could help. Thank you to our congressional delegation and Gov. Abbott who have been advocating alongside me for the people of Harris County and Texas. We’ll have more information on timeline and application process tomorrow. It’s a big win for our community to be able to secure all the various federal resources available.”~Judge Hidalgo

Great news! Judge Hidalgo just learned that President Biden has officially and in an expedited manner declared the high winds and recent devastating floods in our region a major disaster. This has allowed FEMA to quickly approve Individual Assistance (direct financial support), in addition to SBA low interest loans for folks impacted by the winds or floods. “Thank you to the Biden-Harris administration for this quick response. Both President Biden himself and the Vice President’s office reached out to me to ask how they could help. Thank you to our congressional delegation and Gov. Abbott who have been advocating alongside me for the people of Harris County and Texas. We’ll have more information on timeline and application process tomorrow. It’s a big win for our community to be able to secure all the various federal resources available.”~Judge Hidalgo

There was just one problem: The Oversight Committee apparently couldn’t pass the resolution because too many of the panel’s Republican members had something else to do. The Hill reported overnight:

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee shuffled its schedule, bumping a hearing to hold Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress so some of its members could instead attend former President Trump’s hush money trial. ... A source confirmed to The Hill that the last-minute shift was to allow the lawmakers to make the trip to New York, with various Oversight members wishing to join the parade of GOP lawmakers who have attended the trial, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

The official line from the committee was that the votes were delayed due to “member schedule conflicts.”.....

In fact, so many Republicans were in New York City this morning that it’s likely that Democrats were in the majority in the House chamber. As of this writing, Democratic leaders haven’t tried to engage in any mischief, exploiting this apparent advantage, but the day isn’t over yet.

https://x.com/HouseJudiciary/status/1791130396379193820

Marveling at the circumstances during a Judiciary Committee meeting, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California declared this morning, “I don’t think that anything could animate the phrase ‘do-nothing Congress’ more than missing votes and canceling hearings to go up and be a spectator at your cult leader’s trial.”

Soon after, the Judiciary Committee chairman demanded information from the Justice Department about Matthew Colangelo, a former Justice Department official who’s now involved in prosecuting Donald Trump’s hush-money case. Two weeks later, as NBC News reported, Jordan has taken another related step.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is demanding documents from the New York attorney general related to the hiring of a lead prosecutor in Donald Trump’s hush money trial. Jordan, R-Ohio, accused Matthew Colangelo, who is a former high-ranking official in Attorney General Letitia James’ office, of assisting in what he called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “politicized prosecution” as Trump stands trial in New York.

The report added that Jordan is also seeking communications among Colangelo and the New York and Fulton County, Georgia, district attorneys’ offices, the Justice Department, the Democratic National Committee, and President Joe Biden's re-election campaign.

Chances are, most of the public has never heard of Colangelo, though your weird uncle who consumes conservative media all day is very likely aware of him.

As regular readers know, Colangelo served as a former senior Justice Department official with a long history of taking on Donald Trump, including having led the investigation that led to the shutdown of Trump’s fraudulent charitable foundation. When he joined district attorney Alvin Bragg’s team in 2022, it was evidence of an intensifying investigation into the former president’s alleged crimes.

Conservative conspiracy theorists, however, came to believe Colangelo’s work in the Manhattan district attorney’s office was actually evidence of the Biden administration secretly pulling the strings in the hush money case, as part of an elaborate election plot against Trump.

It’s this conspiracy theory that Jordan is now taking seriously — or at least pretending to take seriously — as evidenced by the Ohioan’s latest outreach to the New York attorney general’s office......

When Jordan took over as chair of the Judiciary Committee, it stood to reason that far-right voices would help call the shots. I didn’t realize, however, just how easily he’d be bullied into submission.

The Biden administration has declined GOP lawmakers’ requests for the tape, and there’s no great mystery as to why: Officials realize that Republicans are simply looking for a political toy they can play with ahead of Election Day 2024. Former Republican Rep. Ken Buck admitted as much this week, explaining that Congress already has the transcript and relevant information, adding that his former GOP colleagues are “just looking for something for political purposes.”

Given that there’s no legitimate or legislative reason to release the audio, Team Biden has asserted executive privilege. White House Counsel Ed Siskel told congressional Republicans in a letter yesterday, “The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal — to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”.....

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s latest fundraising appeal reads in part, “Biden and his advisors are terrified that I will release the recordings, forcing the media and Democrats to answer for the dismal decline of Biden’s mental state.” The Kentucky Republican added that audio recording “could be the final blow to Biden with swing voters across the country.”

In other words, the White House’s counsel’s office accused Comer and his colleagues of wanting to use Biden’s interview “for partisan political purposes,” after which Comer put in writing that he’s focused on using the audio recording to target “swing voters.”

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin wasted little time seizing on the Comer’s fundraising appeal.

https://x.com/Acyn/status/1791269348755316984

......At the same hearing, Rep. Jared Moskowitz decided to do a dramatic reading of Comer’s fundraising appeal, emphasizing that the GOP congressman sent out his letter under a banner that said it was from “the desk of” the Oversight Committee chairman.

https://x.com/Acyn/status/1791323954168414469

The point the Florida Democrat emphasized was simple: The public doesn’t have to take Comer’s critics’ word for it. Comer’s own letter was effectively a confession that this entire charade was — and is — a partisan stunt.

That’s how yesterday started. As the day ended, The New York Times published this report.

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag. One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors. The upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021, the images showed.

In case this isn’t obvious, Jan. 17, 2021, was just 11 days after the Trump-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol — featuring insurrectionist rioters carrying the same flag that flew at Alito's home — and just three days before Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, when there was ongoing uncertainty about the threat of far-right political violence.When I first saw images from the Times report circulating on social media, I was initially skeptical. Maybe the photos had been manipulated. Perhaps they were AI generated. Maybe there was a prank and some activists had hoisted the flag at Alito’s home in order to make him look bad.

But that’s not what happened. Rather, the photographs were real and legitimate.

The Times’ report added, “While the flag was up, the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case, with Justice Alito on the losing end of that decision.”......

But the other angle of note is the challenge facing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. From a distance, it’s relatively easy to believe that the conservative justice genuinely cares about the high court as an institution. Roberts no doubt wants the public to trust and respect the Supreme Court. He expects the public to look to the court as a neutral arbiter that Americans can count on to be fair.

With this in mind, it’s important to realize that the chief justice has some important work to do.

Ethics scandals. Leaked rulings. A deteriorating public image. Radical and unpopular decisions. Growing assumptions that the justices are partisans who pick a preferred conclusion and then work backwards to justify it. Alito’s latest controversy — the latest in a series — makes an ugly situation worse.

If Roberts doesn’t realize that he needs to get his house in order, he’s making a terrible mistake.