Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The Select Committee will meet and function despite GOP obstruction

[Brexiter]

Politico:

Pelosi taps Cheney for Jan. 6 select committee

Cheney, who lost her leadership post over her criticism of former President Donald Trump, was one of two Republicans who voted to establish the panel this week.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming will serve on the Democrat-led investigation of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

"We are very honored and proud she has agreed to serve on the committee," Pelosi said at a press conference alongside several other Democratic lawmakers she is naming to the select panel.

Here's your select committee on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot: pic.twitter.com/3as5e2OlRC

— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) July 1, 2021

I asked Pelosi when the committee will get started and what they would do if McCarthy doesn’t appoint immediately. “Well, we have a quorum,” she said with a smile.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 1, 2021

Some notable Donald Rumsfeld obits, starting with Erik Loomis/Editorial Board:

Finally, the beast is dead

He then worked at a banking firm for a couple of years in the early 1960s, but then ran for Congress in 1962. He won that race and served four terms. He was a generally moderate Republican at this time and supported civil-rights legislation. He also co-sponsored the Freedom of Information Act, an ironic move given his later career.

But during these years, he was exposed to a vile force that has done tremendous damage to the world—the Economics Department at the University of Chicago. This transformed his views, as these ideas placed the seeds of evil in so many people over the decades and all the way to the present. How much did Milton Friedman come to love Don Rumsfeld? He later bemoaned Reagan selecting George Bush as his vice president as the greatest mistake of his presidency (how dare he use the term “voodoo economics!”) and claimed that if Reagan had listened and selected Rumsfeld instead, “I believe he would have succeeded Reagan as president and the sorry Bush-Clinton period would never have occurred.” Hoo boy. What a world that would have been.

Then there’s George Packer/Atlantic:

How Rumsfeld Deserves to Be Remembered

America’s worst secretary of defense never expressed a quiver of regret.

Rumsfeld was the worst secretary of defense in American history. Being newly dead shouldn’t spare him this distinction. He was worse than the closest contender, Robert McNamara, and that is not a competition to judge lightly. McNamara’s folly was that of a whole generation of Cold Warriors who believed that Indochina was a vital front in the struggle against communism. His growing realization that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable waste made him more insightful than some of his peers; his decision to keep this realization from the American public made him an unforgivable coward. But Rumsfeld was the chief advocate of every disaster in the years after September 11. Wherever the United States government contemplated a wrong turn, Rumsfeld was there first with his hard smile—squinting, mocking the cautious, shoving his country deeper into a hole. His fatal judgment was equaled only by his absolute self-assurance. He lacked the courage to doubt himself. He lacked the wisdom to change his mind.

And don’t miss these headlines:

Daily Beast: Donald Rumsfeld, Killer of 400,000 People, Dies Peacefully

Teen Vogue: Donald Rumsfeld, Former Defense Secretary and Accused War Criminal, Dead at 88

Donald Rumsfeld became a symbol of failure but that doesn't mean he was ever held accountable for the war crimes, the torture, the death and displacement. @DanielLarison: https://t.co/JUFt4B4hsv

— Responsible Statecraft (@RStatecraft) July 1, 2021

This is not a guy who left a warm fuzzy legacy.

Prediction: the charges brought today in Manhattan are the tip of the iceberg. Note DA request for a protective order to keep discovery close to the vest while investigation continues.

— Andrew Weissmann (@AWeissmann_) July 1, 2021

WaPo:

Most Americans prioritize making lawful voting easier, Washington Post-ABC poll finds

By a roughly 2-to-1 margin, Americans prioritize making lawful voting easier rather than making voter fraud more difficult, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Friday.


The poll finds 62 percent of adults saying it is more important to pass new laws “making it easier for people to vote lawfully,” while 30 percent say it’s more important to pass new laws “making it harder for people to vote fraudulently.”


The poll was conducted just before the Supreme Court upheld two Arizona voting restrictions that a lower court had said discriminated against minority voters, with experts saying the decision could make it harder to challenge some new voting restrictions being passed following former president Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.

Vote choice in the final round of the NYC Mayor race among the 283611 in-person voters who preferred someone other than Adams/Garcia but ranked one of them for RCV: Garcia 185545 (65.42%) Adams 98066 (34.58%) Garcia is benefitting greatly from being voters' 2nd/3rd/4th choice.

— Ryan Matsumoto (@ryanmatsumoto1) June 30, 2021

Margaret Sullivan/WaPo:

Why it’s so important that UNC trustees give Nikole Hannah-Jones the tenure she deserves


If every dispute about the history of race in America, every right-wing culture war and every debate over journalistic objectivity could be settled on a single battlefield, the location might be Chapel Hill, N.C. And the time might be Wednesday afternoon.


That’s when the University of North Carolina’s board of trustees is likely to vote on whether to offer tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times magazine writer who won a Pulitzer Prize last year for the 1619 Project, an ambitious package of stories that seeks to reframe American history by putting front and center the impact of slavery.


This vote will be a high-stakes moment because, until now, UNC has effectively denied tenure to Hannah-Jones, who is Black, breaking with its own tradition for similar appointments. And it has done so, apparently, because of politics.

And they awarded tenure.

1/ We’ve written a new analysis of validated 2020 voters from @pewresearch’s American Trends Panel. It examines change and continuity in the national electorate, both of which contributed to Biden’s victory. Here are some noteworthy findings... https://t.co/du8haww3OK

— pollcat (@pollcat) June 30, 2021

Charlie Warzel/substack:

What Newsrooms Still Don’t Understand About the Internet

You can’t report on a culture war and also be an invisible bystander

On Tuesday, Ed Zitron wrote an important piece on coordinated online attacks against reporters. His primary argument is that newsrooms still don’t understand the nature of the culture war they’re sending their reporters out into each day. When their employees are the subject of bad faith networked harassment campaigns, they frequently fail to protect their reporters or, more troublingly, they sometimes punish their staffers for attracting perceived ‘controversy.’

News organizations often address bad faith attacks on reporters by repeating the language of the attackers, in part, because they’re worried about looking ‘impartial.’ What they ought to do, he says, is dismiss the attacks outright for what they are: propaganda intended to delegitimize their institutions.

NEWS: Ahead of the July 4th holiday, Walensky issued her gravest warning yet about the highly contagious Delta variant. Nearly 25 percent of new infections have been linked to Delta, she said, up from 6 percent in early June.https://t.co/4zmle2Oum9

— Erin Banco (@ErinBanco) July 1, 2021

NY Times:

Trump Was Not Indicted. But the Charges Still Threaten Him.


The criminal case against the former president’s business could deliver a blow to his finances, and he remains the focus of a broader investigation in New York.

The fallout could be significant. An indictment against a company — let alone a conviction — can jeopardize relationships with banks and business partners. The former president is facing down hundreds of millions of dollars in loans that need to be repaid, and the legal threat to his business could deal a blow to his finances.

And the charges could play into Mr. Trump’s decisions about his political future. In the past, his grievances have served as both personal motivation and political tool, and as he fought Mr. Vance’s subpoenas for his tax returns all the way to the United States Supreme Court, he added the investigation to the laundry list of legal troubles he recited for supporters. Indeed, some Republicans close to the former president believe he will now be better insulated from those he calls “New York radical-left prosecutors” if he campaigns for president in 2024, and aides said that anger over the indictment could well motivate him to run.

But several allies and advisers believe he would not risk losing another general election. On Wednesday, shortly after the indictments were filed, Mr. Trump said at a Fox News town hall that he had made a final decision on whether to run. He did not say what the decision was.

I think this is right. The real effect of the Trump Org indictment is that the company is likely not to survive because creditors will call in loans and then repossess and sell his assets. Proof of falsifying financial records - not just speculation of fraud - will hit hard. https://t.co/cUWk47laHK

— Aaron Astor (@AstorAaron) July 2, 2021

There is an unindicted co-conspirator #1, and it doesn’t need to be a Trump. From Business insider:

A source told CNN the unindicted co-conspirator is Jeffrey McConney, longtime controller of the Trump Organization, who recently testified before the grand jury.

Other possibilities, according to Business Insider, are Trump himself, a tax preparer, or a third-party accountant.

CDC Director: “Preliminary data from a collection of states over the last six months suggest 99.5% of deaths from Covid-19 in these states have occurred in unvaccinated people,” (She did not specify which states.)

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) July 2, 2021

Get your vaxx on.