For those suggesting Democrats should try to save House Republicans from this speaker morass, my column says not "no,"
but "hell, no" -- and I'm something of an institutionalist, partial to compromise.

#1: The uncompromising Rs refuse Dems' help. 🧵
latimes.com/opinion/story/… Why should Dems have voted to keep Kevin McCarthy, the devil they knew, as speaker?
Not only did he not offer them anything, he gave them more than ample reason to oppose him. Toadying to Trump. Reneging on debt deal. Blaming Dems for near-shutdown. Moving to impeach Bideny. 2/

Amid reports Jordan is close to becoming House speaker, re-upping my column on why that would be a travesty. While McCarthy played along as Trump spun up his MAGA militia to attack on Jan. 6, Jordan plotted along with the insurrectionist in chief./1
latimes.com/opinion/story/… Jordan’s name appears 44x in the Jan. 6 committee's report: re WH meetings & repeated calls w/Trump, incl'g amid the attack, & his contacts before & after with Trump lackeys. The panel said DOJ should investigate him & House Ethics should sanction him for ignoring subpoenas./2

Column: "No sooner had Donald Trump finally been fingerprinted and booked than we Americans were reminded of that other V.I.P. scofflaw who, by his repeat offenses, has long mocked our national conceit that no person is above the law."
Clarence Thomas.
latimes.com/opinion/story/… 2/Perversely, because Thomas sits on the highest court, he’s all but unaccountable. Trump, once the most powerful person on the planet, has lost the protection of a DOJ policy against indicting a sitting president. But the 9 justices have jobs for life--judging, but not judged.

French newspaper Le Monde: "If there is any American exceptionalism, it is to tolerate the fact that schools in the United States are regularly transformed into bloody shooting ranges...Indeed, America is killing itself & the Republican Party is looking the other way..." lemonde.fr/en/opinion/art…

Former GOP House Maj Ldr Eric Cantor on @CNN blames "both sides" for extremism & singles out Obama for pursuing a 1-party '09 stimulus pkg.
FACT: On Obama's inauguration night, Cantor was at the dinner of Congress' GOP leaders where they decided to oppose everything he did. @CNN FACT 2: Partly to attract GOP support, Obama held down the cost of the stimulus bill--now widely seen as too small for the Great Recession--and included about 40% tax cuts, not spending.
But GOP leaders had decided at that dinner to oppose everything.

Trump's White House fetes for new SCOTUS justices, with partisan invitees, are NOT normal.
Past presidents typically avoided them, in a nod to judiciary branch's independence. Justices' were sworn in at the Court.
The late Justice John Paul Stevens wrote about this: Stevens:
"The ceremony should take place at the Supreme Ct whenever possible. The 3 branches of our govt are separate & equal. The president & the Senate play critical roles in the nomination & confirmation process. After that... the ‘separate but equal’ regime takes over.”

"So I guess they said she was threatened," Trump says to his MI rally about Gov. Gretchen Whitmer--as if he doesn't believe the FBI case against 13 men for plotting to abduct her.
Crowd chants "Lock her up!"
Yup--their gov was targeted & they want HER locked up.
Law & order. Trump brags to MI rally about how many doctors treat a president -- "and each one wanted to touch another part of my body...I said, 'Get the hell out of here, doctors.'"

Even as Trump was campaigned in '16 to 'drain the swamp,' he chose as campaign mgr Paul Manafort, who'd made millions as a global swamp creature for pro-Russia oligarchs, doing the work of Putin.
Details are in the Senate Intel Committee's newest report:
intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/… "ProRussian Ukrainian oligarchs with deep economic ties to Russia also paid Manafort tens of
millions of dollars and formed strong ties with Manafort...
Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin
Kilimnik...a Russian intelligence officer."

Finally Robert S. Mueller III responds to the months of WH lying to undermine the investigation he headed & Trump's commutation of Roger Stone's sentence:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/… "Stone was prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly so."

Manifesto: "Hispanic invasion of TX"
Trump tweets:
6/1/19--Mexico allowing "millions of people...to INVADE the US"
6/2--Mexico must "stop the invasion of our Country by Drug Dealers, Cartels, Human Traffickers..."
6/2--"what are [Dems] thinking as our Country is invaded..."
MORE more Trump tweets
3/9/19--"I am stopping an invasion"
1/31--Sending troops to southern border "to stop the attempted invasion"
1/11--"an invasion!"
11/18--"the U.S. is ill-prepared for this invasion"
10/29--"This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!'

The shutdown cost the economy $11 billion, $3 billion of which is a permanent loss, acc'g to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
CBO projected economic growth will slow this year to 2.3%, down from 3.1% as the sugar high from tax cuts abates. The president who promised economic growth of 4% or more will run for reelection in a year when, CBO projects, growth will decline to 1.7%.