Why Is Dianne Feinstein Still in the Senate?

Dianne Feinstein seems to think she was never on a leave of absence from her job.

On Tuesday, Senator Dianne Feinstein, flanked by a team of staffers, fielded some questions from the press after voting on the Senate floor, reports Slate.

She reported that she was “feeling fine,” though suffering from a nondescript “problem with the leg.”

She was then asked by a reporter what the response from her colleagues has been like since her return back to the Hill.

“No, I haven’t been gone,” Feinstein responded. “You should follow the—I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working,” she continued.

She was then asked if she meant she had been working from home.

“No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting,” she insisted. “Please. You either know or don’t know.”

The comment is curious given the gravity of how consequential Feinstein’s absence—and indeed, lack of voting—has been over the past few months. Feinstein has been absent from the Senate since February 27, having been hospitalized in early March for a case of shingles.

During that time, Democrats were unable to advance court nominees. Her absence has been used by senators like Dick Durbin as justification for why Supreme Court ethics legislation cannot be advanced. Republicans, aided by weak politicians like Joe Manchin, have been able to vote to pass inane resolutions like overturning an Environmental Protection Agency rule to reduce truck pollution.

When Feinstein was asked Tuesday about members who have called for her resignation, she deflected and was apparently wheeled away.

Slate asked Senator Sheldon Whitehouse about whether there was any optimism for Feinstein to return to being a fully functioning, contributing member of the Judiciary Committee.

“I’m gonna leave that to the medics,” he responded.

On Tuesday, eight Democrats and independents joined Senate Republicans in voting to overturn Washington, D.C.’s police reforms.

Senators Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, Jeanne Shaheen, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Jacky Rosen, Angus King, and Kyrsten Sinema all joined in the effort to overrule time and work that residents and officials have invested to make their city safer.

The new resolution to overturn D.C.’s local rule was introduced by Republicans in March, just hours after Biden and Congress killed a different bill reforming D.C.’s criminal code (that, more than anything else, updated codes that hadn’t been dusted off in over 100 years).

The resolution aims to overturn an array of reforms made in the aftermath of a string of brutal police killings nationwide. Among the reforms are provisions outlawing the use of neck restraints, like that used by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin to kill George Floyd in May 2020.

D.C.’s reforms also call to make body-camera footage of officer-caused deaths, or serious uses of officer force, more accessible to the public. They moreover expand membership and inclusion on governing bodies like the Police Complaints Board and Use of Force Review Board—small asks given how often police departments get away with sweeping misconduct and outright violence under the rug.

The reforms also ban employment of new officers if they were previously determined by other agencies to have been responsible for serious misconduct, or if they were forced out of previous jobs for “disciplinary reasons.” Nothing radical about having baseline standards for what type of person is allowed to be empowered to enforce the law; whatever happened to “with great power comes great responsibility?”

Biden can—and is expected to—veto the Senate vote. Consequently, some shrewd pundits have characterized it all as a “messaging vote,” a low-stakes vote that allows conservative senators to say, “Look, we didn’t support this radical bill,” come election time. After all, Biden will veto it, so what does it matter anyway?

But what is the “message” to be had here, really? What does it tell voters that eight Democratic caucus members joined this farce to overturn D.C.’s democratic will? What does it tell voters that these so-called Democrats found it prudent to bend the knee to bad-faith right-wing attempts to obstruct even moderate checks on unaccountable police forces? If politics is meant to be about making an argument, about convincing people and rallying them to your side, the only message communicated by this cowardly vote is that D.C.’s autonomy is indeed up for debate, that having baseline standards for what the police can and can’t do to the citizenry is somehow an out-of-field demand, and that you as an elected official lack the conviction to stand for anything at all.

So, sure, clever punditry class: Call it a “messaging vote.” Meanwhile, as Democrats continue to allow these right-wing attacks to appear just part of reasonable debate, actual reforms will remain as moderate as this D.C. police reform actually was. In the eyes of the media and political class, the goalposts will remain the same, and the bounds of what change we can actually strive for will continue to narrow. And all of it because a handful of feckless Democrats are allowed, even encouraged, to cower and join out-of-touch attacks on even modest changes to our violent, unaccountable system of justice and power.

Democratic Representative Robert Garcia introduced a measure Tuesday to force a floor vote on whether to expel serial fabulist George Santos from the House of Representatives.

Santos was charged in federal court last week with 13 counts of various forms of financial fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to all of them. The embattled New York congressman is still facing investigations by local and state authorities. He also confessed last week to stealing checks in Brazil 15 years ago, in return for prosecutors dropping the criminal case against him.

“George Santos is a fraud and a liar, and he needs to be expelled by the House,” Garcia said in a statement Tuesday. “News that federal prosecutors are filing 13 criminal charges against George Santos should have been the final straw for Kevin McCarthy, but he refuses to act. Republicans now have a chance to demonstrate to Americans that an admitted criminal should not serve in the House of Representatives.”

Garcia’s motion is privileged, so House Republicans must schedule a vote on the resolution by Thursday. They have not given any indication yet of when the vote will take place. The resolution will need a two-thirds majority to pass.

Santos is barely six months into his first congressional term, and he is known only for scandal. He appears to have fabricated the bulk of his professional and educational resume. He claimed his mother survived 9/11 (she was not even in the country) and similarly lied that his grandparents fled the Holocaust and four of his employees were killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting. Last week, he was charged for money laundering, wire fraud, and theft of public funds, including claiming Covid-19 unemployment fraud when he wasn’t unemployed.

The resolution to expel him is unlikely to pass, even though the vast majority of his constituents want him gone. Despite a federal indictment for Santos, most Republicans still aren’t calling for his removal from Congress. In fact, Santos has continued to vote on bills and maintains that he will run for reelection.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has so far resisted condemning Santos. The strongest rebuke McCarthy has offered yet was saying last week that he wouldn’t support the freshman congressman’s reelection campaign. But McCarthy and other Republican leaders have avoided saying whether they will force Santos out of Congress, for a very simple reason: They need him.

Republicans hold the House majority by the thinnest of margins, and McCarthy appears to be struggling to get his party to present a united front. He can’t afford to lose a single vote, so if Santos is out, then McCarthy will be in trouble.

During a Tuesday hearing on the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman took the banks to task.

“Republicans want to give a work requirement for SNAP, you know, for a hungry family to have these kinds of penalties, or some kinds of working requirements. Shouldn’t you have a working requirement after we bail out your bank?” Fetterman challenged Silicon Valley Bank President Greg Becker. “Because [Republicans] seem to be more preoccupied [with] SNAP requirements for hungry people, but not about protecting the taxpayers that will bail [out the banks].”

Fetterman’s pointed question came in a larger line of questioning that pointed out the contradictions endemic within the American economy.

“Is it an inside joke that no matter how incompetent or how greedy, the government will always bail you out when your bank crashes?” Fetterman inquired. “Everyone has to realize that no matter how bad I behave, no matter how big my raise is, my bonuses and everything, we will come in and bail it,” he continued, asking Becker if he believes it’s all a “running joke in the circles of banking that ‘no matter how bad we have, we are going to be saved.’”

“I don’t believe that’s the case,” Becker responded.

“Really?” Fetterman said, incredulously. “Do you believe that that is not outrageous: that no matter how deplorable your performance is, you are made whole—all by taxpayers.… What if we didn’t come out and bail out your bank, what would’ve happened?”

Becker answered by saying that their shareholders did lose their value, that he believes it was important to protect their clients, and that businesses would have been significantly impacted if they were not bailed out.

“Is it a staggering responsibility that the head of a bank could literally crash our economy?” Fetterman countered. “It’s astonishing.… They also realize that now they have a guaranteed way to be saved,” he continued. “Isn’t it appropriate that this kind of control should be more stricter?”

Fetterman posed more and more questions challenging such a status quo—in which banks can make off just fine no matter their negligence, while taxpayers pay for the life-ring buoys while being subject to stricter requirements for benefits—to no answers.

“Thank you, Senator Fetterman; didn’t see an eagerness on the panel to answer your questions, thank you,” Senator Sherrod Brown concluded.

Millions throughout America are trying alternative diets: plant-based, paleo, low carb. And now there’s a new group of people whose meals mainly consist of boots: practically the entire Florida legislature.

Florida lawmakers, on both sides of the aisle, have sent a bill to Governor Ron DeSantis that would expand legal immunities to protect private space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX or Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin when workers suffer injuries or even die. The Spaceflight Entity Liability Bill broadens when space companies are exempted “from liability for injury to or death of a crew resulting from spaceflight activities.”

Florida’s move to expand liability protections comes as billionaires’ rockets keep exploding and more and more private companies are taking wealthy passengers on interstellar adventures. An analysis by the Florida state Senate admits outright what the entire point of the legislation is: “This bill has the potential to limit the cost of litigation to businesses engaging in spaceflight activities.”

The bill  mandates “crew” and participants alike fill out a waiver that grants legal immunities to space companies in cases of injury or death.

It also expands the definition of “spaceflight entity” to include any entity authorized to conduct spaceflight activities, beyond ones that are solely associated with the United States Federal Aviation Administration. It cuts out language ascribing liability to spaceflight entities for damage caused from “inherent risks” of spaceflight activity; instead, the bill broadens the scope of liability immunity to include all spaceflight activities.

Moreover, the bill amends language that orders entities to be liable for injury if they had actual knowledge, or reasonably should have known, of risks. The new language only orders legal liability for “actual knowledge” of risks, meaning there is no longer any expectation for companies to be responsible for damages from risks they “reasonably should have known” about.

The bill passed the state Senate 39–0 and the state House 107–5. The overwhelmingly bipartisan move to grant special legal protections to bloated companies run by some of the richest people in the world is mirrored by how much these entities donate to politicians of both parties.

Musk’s SpaceX has spent some $8 million in lobbying efforts since 2020 and donated another $1 million to members of both parties during the 2022 election cycle alone. Bezos’s Blue Origin has spent some $6.3 million in lobbying efforts since 2020, while sending just over half a million dollars to members of both parties during 2022.

Republican-majority legislatures in Nebraska, North Carolina, and South Carolina are all trying Tuesday to ram through extreme abortion bans at the last minute, despite recent failures.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion has been legal in Nebraska until 20 weeks and in South Carolina until 22 weeks, although both states have multiple restrictions, such as a mandatory 24-hour waiting period and biased counseling aimed at running out the clock. Abortion is also currently legal in North Carolina until 20 weeks. If the bills pass, particularly the Carolinas’ measures, they will have wide-ranging negative consequences for abortion access.

The Nebraska legislature failed last month to overcome a filibuster against a six-week abortion ban after two anti-abortion senators voted “present.” Republicans are now pushing a 12-week abortion ban instead, as part of an anti-trans bill restricting gender-affirming care. One of the senators who helped kill the previous ban, Republican Merv Riepe, could once again prove to be the crucial swing vote.

A six-week ban also died in the South Carolina legislature in late April, after all of the female senators, who span the political spectrum, banded together to filibuster the measure. The bill had looked unlikely to make it back to the floor because there weren’t enough days left in the legislative session. But Republican Governor Henry McMaster called lawmakers back for a special session to consider multiple measures, including an abortion ban.

A new six-week ban has now made it through the state Senate and goes Tuesday before the House, where Democrats have filed 1,000 amendments to try and block the measure from reaching a final vote. If an amended bill passes the House, it will need reapproval by the Senate before it goes to McMaster for his signature.

The North Carolina state legislature will also convene Tuesday to vote to override a veto on a 12-week abortion ban. Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill over the weekend, cheered on by hundreds of abortion rights supporters.

But state Republicans have just enough votes to override the veto, after Representative Tricia Cotham switched parties. If they succeed, the bill will go into immediate effect. The measure technically bans abortion after 12 weeks, but in reality, the window could be much shorter. People would also only be allowed to get a medication abortion until 10 weeks of pregnancy, and to get one, they would have to go to three separate, in-person appointments that are 72 hours apart.

While any of the bills passing would be a huge blow to reproductive rights, the measures in the Carolinas would absolutely decimate abortion access in the South. North Carolina in particular has become a haven for people seeking out-of-state abortions. Taken in conjunction with Florida’s six-week abortion ban, abortion access could be practically wiped out for a huge swathe of the United States.

According to Rudy Giuliani, “Black guys hit women more than anybody else does … and so do Hispanic guys—it is in their culture,” and “Jews want to go through their freaking Passover all the time, man oh man. Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago.”

The comments are just the cherry on top of a vile ice cream sundae of allegations about the former New York City mayor and Trump lawyer. A new $10 million lawsuit accuses Giuliani of making these comments, as well as promising to pay a woman a $1 million annual salary to work as his associate, and instead raping and abusing her over the course of two years. The suit adds that Giuliani was constantly drunk, was open about efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and that he plotted to go in with Donald Trump on selling off pardons at $2 million a pop.

The 70-page lawsuit goes to great detail in explaining Giuliani’s alleged behaviors, down to specific dates and locations; the defendant and victim, Noelle Dunphy, reportedly has a trove of recorded conversations to back up her allegations.

From allegedly abusing Dunphy and being constantly drunk to making vile comments about public figures and pretty much every single culture, the lawsuit levels a slate of disturbing accusations against the longtime Trump lackey.

Here’s a taste of the scale and degree of what Giuliani is being accused of in the massive $10 million lawsuit, through word count:

• Abuse, abused, abusive, abusing: 33
• Alcohol, alcoholic, alcoholism: 11
• Drink, drinking, drinks, drinker, drunk: 16
• Force, forcing, forced, forcible: 21
• Harass, harassing, harassment, harassed: 47
• Intoxicated: 9
• Jew, Jewish: 3
• Pressure, pressuring: 11
• Rape: 4
• Scotch: 4
• Sex: 35
• Sexual, sexually, sexualize, sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual harassment: 87
• Wage: 19

Elon Musk has gone all in on the classic conservative antisemitic trope of blaming George Soros for everything, seemingly all because the older billionaire sold his Tesla stock.

Soros’s family office, Soros Fund Management, bought up stock in the electric car maker over the course of 2022, holding a total of 132,000 shares by the end of the year. Then the fund capitalized on Tesla’s impressive 68 percent jump in value this year, selling off its entire Tesla stake in the first quarter of 2023, according to reports on Monday.

Soros Fund Management also sold some of its stake in electric vehicle start-up Rivian Automotive, but apparently Musk still took the sales personally. “Soros reminds me of Magneto,” he tweeted late Monday, referring to the X-Men villain.

When journalist Brian Krassenstein pushed back, arguing Soros has “good intentions” but gets attacked for his political affiliation, Musk came back with some full-throated antisemitism.

“You assume they are good intentions. They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity,” said the outgoing Twitter CEO.

Soros declined to comment on the matter when contacted by The New Republic.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that either a conservative has blamed Soros for something completely unrelated to him or that Musk has pushed antisemitism. Republicans love blaming Soros for anything and everything. One recent example is when they blamed him for former President Donald Trump being indicted.

As for Musk, he has let Nazis back onto Twitter, as well as Kanye West. Musk ultimately had to re-ban West, who now goes by Ye, after the musician proudly proclaimed that he loves Hitler. Musk himself also shared a Nazi photo while urging people to vote Republican in the 2022 midterm elections.

A Trump-era special counsel’s four-year-long investigation into the FBI over its probe of possible ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign ended Monday with a whimper instead of the previously promised bang.

Special prosecutor John Durham was appointed in 2019 by then–Attorney General William Barr to look into possible misconduct by the FBI during its investigation of Trump-Russia ties. Trump promised at the time that Durham would uncover the “crime of the century.”

Instead, in a more than 300-page report released Monday, Durham sharply criticized the FBI but failed to bring about the raft of criminal convictions the previous administration had expected. Durham accused the FBI of launching its investigation based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.” He also said investigators relied on “confirmation bias” instead of considering evidence that would have cleared Trump.

Over the course of Durham’s entire investigation, his team only charged three people. A former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to altering an email the bureau cited when applying to eavesdrop on an ex-Trump campaign aide. The other two defendants, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and an analyst for a Russian American think tank, were both acquitted of charges of lying to the FBI.

Barr appointed Durham shortly after special counsel Robert Mueller completed his investigation into allegations that Trump and Russia had colluded to rig the 2016 election. Mueller, by comparison, issued about 36 criminal charges, including for half a dozen Trump associates. He determined that Russia had intervened in the election for Trump, which the campaign welcomed, but that it had not actively colluded with Team Trump.

The FBI first began investigating the allegations of collusion in July 2016, but there were multiple revelations of flaws in the probe. Durham’s own investigation dug into these mistakes, but by the time he released his report on Monday, the Justice Department had already examined those issues and the FBI had made dozens of corrective actions.

This is not the first time the Republicans have touted an investigation that turned up a whole lot of nothing. House Republicans have been investigating President Joe Biden and his family for months but have been unable to provide any actual evidence linking Biden to any wrongdoing. And Monday morning, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer revealed that one of their top informants has gone missing.

Former New York City Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani allegedly promised to pay a woman a $1 million annual salary to be his close associate, and instead raped and abused her over the course of two years. He was allegedly constantly drunk, plotted to sell pardons to criminals, and made racist and antisemitic comments. And he also apparently never paid the woman he abused for months on end.

The litany of disturbing accusations come in a $10 million lawsuit buttressed by phone records, thousands of emails, and recorded conversations, all brought by the victim, Noelle Dunphy. The bombshell lawsuit reveals in great detail how Giuliani sexually assaulted his employee and, at the same time, how he has long been planning to undermine our democracy.

Dunphy’s lawsuit states that Giuliani allegedly first met her in 2016, in the lobby of the Trump Tower. The Trump lawyer asked her details about her life and suggested his interest in hiring her. Three years later, Giuliani sent Dunphy a Facebook message and friend request.

Incredibly odd timing, but Dunphy was coincidentally looking for a job. Soon enough, Giuliani offered her a proposal that seemed too good to be true: Be his director of business development for the Giuliani Companies and also his personal executive assistant—all for a $1 million salary.

But it all came with one strange provision: Her pay would have to be deferred, and her employment kept a “secret” until Giuliani’s divorce proceedings finished up. Giuliani apparently claimed his ex-wife and her legal team were monitoring his finances and so he was somehow limited in his financial decisions; moreover, his ex-wife would “attack” and “retaliate” against any female employee he would hire.

A final attachment to the offer? After Giuliani found out Dunphy was a domestic abuse survivor, he offered to represent her pro bono in any legal matters related to her case.

According to the lawsuit, the grossness immediately ensued. Literally after the interview, Giuliani made Dunphy come to a meeting with his team and Ukrainian associates to discuss her work with the company. During that meeting, Giuliani drank excessively and pressured Dunphy to join along. Afterward, Giuliani told his bodyguard to buzz off, so he could have some private time with Dunphy in the backseat of a limo serviced car.

Once alone, Giuliani kissed Dunphy and asked if he could come into her home; she declined and thanked him for the job. But before the goodbye could happen, Giuliani leaned even further in, saying that since the pair would be working from different locations, he would like it if Dunphy sent him flirtatious photos. After Dunphy finally escaped, Giuliani still called her five times that same evening.

And that repellent first day characterized much of what was to come. The lawsuit’s allegations are too numerous to detail, but here are just a few disturbing accusations.

On many occasions, as soon as four days into the job, Giuliani forced Dunphy to give him oral sex; he often made this demand while he was on the phone with high-profile individuals, including then–President Donald Trump. He forced Dunphy to begin working at his apartment, rather than the Giuliani Companies office. He demanded that “she work naked, in a bikini, or in short shorts with an American flag on them that he bought for her.” Even when apart, he directed Dunphy to remove her clothes and would meanwhile visibly touch himself.

Giuliani rapidly grew more possessive, texting Dunphy things like “You’re mine,” and “Nobody will ever have you now,” and even giving her a battery pack for her phone so she had no excuse not to be at his beck and call. Soon, he forced Dunphy to have sexual intercourse with him; he allegedly would not take “no” for an answer. He also wholly disregarded Dunphy’s boundaries as a domestic violence survivor, imposing his interest in BDSM (bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism) onto her on numerous instances. And during sex, he called her a “cunt,” a “bitch,” and “Rudy’s slut.”

“I think of you as my daughter. Is that weird?” he once asked Dunphy while sexually abusing her.

Outside of the constant sexual abuse and surveillance, Giuliani told Dunphy that if she knew anyone in need of a pardon, he and Trump were going in on selling them for $2 million a pop. He confided in her various plans to try to overturn the 2020 election results if Trump lost the election, including spreading the theory that “voter fraud” occurred.

And Giuliani’s abuse wasn’t limited to Dunphy, according to the lawsuit. Giuliani also made numerous inappropriate comments about other women. He told Dunphy of his being in love with three or four women, including his attraction to a 20-year-old employee more than 50 years younger than him. He apparently fantasized about her, and kissed her on the lips but did not “consummate” the relationship. He “just could not control” himself around her, he said, in a recorded conversation.

Beyond being a sex pest and cartoonish criminal, Giuliani also apparently was a Luddite; he had to have Dunphy explain to him what a podcast was.

When all was said and done, by the time Giuliani fired Dunphy two years later, she alleges she was paid only $12,000 of what should’ve been $2 million—for the job she was told she was getting.

The vile extent of Giuliani’s alleged behavior is, again, too long to list here. A final taste of what else he reportedly said: He used the word “fag” to refer to actor Matt Damon. He mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren, saying: “Pocahontas was a really hot babe, and Warren does not look like a babe. She looks like a person in search of a gender.” He also later said he was “very hot” for Warren. He stated that he would “get in trouble with underage girls” if they were 16 but looked 20. He implied that Jewish men’s penises were inferior, due to “natural selection.” He told Ms. Dunphy that “black guys hit women more than anybody else does … and so do Hispanic guys—it is in their culture.” He said, “Jews want to go through their freaking Passover all the time, man oh man. Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago. The Red Sea parted: big deal. It’s not the first time that happened.” And he made comments about “freakin Arabs” and Jews.

To Giuliani, it seems, the most praiseworthy people are 16-year-old girls he could get away with sexually harassing.

Again, the lawsuit alleges that recordings for a lot of these comments exist, so expect this story to only get worse from here on out.