Members of Congress Crossing Ethical and Legal Lines in Trading Stocks
Members of Congress Crossing Ethical and Legal Lines in Trading Stocks
Plus, The Last Authoritarian World Cup.
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JOE PERTICONE: Members of Congress Crossing Ethical and Legal Lines in Trading Stocks.
With Republicans retaking the House—even if by an extremely slim margin—Rep. Virginia Foxx, North Carolina’s longest-serving Republican, stands to regain her position as chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor and to potentially acquire other positions of leadership in the 118th Congress. This is all standard procedure for the chamber, but Foxx’s case is unique because of her history of ethically dubious stock trading.
Foxx, who also sits on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has earned a measure of notoriety as one of Congress’s more prolific traders. The New York Times noted Foxx’s potential conflicts of interest on three transactions in September, which included buying or selling BP and ExxonMobil stocks after hearing from those companies’ executives in a House Oversight Committee hearing.
BILL LUEDERS: Kari Lake’s Election Denial Isn’t About 2022. It’s About 2024.
Cynics of the world, unite. Kari Lake will lead you.
Or at least she’ll be #2 on the ticket. That’s where her sights are set in the presidential sweepstakes: “Trump-Lake 2024” is the bumper sticker she’s printing in her mind.
The signs of Lake’s sub rosa vice-presidential campaign are clear. First, she took a few days to huddle with political advisers after her loss was clear and before she announced that she would go full election-denial. It seems likely that they were debating whether the midterms would be a death-knell for Trump’s future prospects.
A trio of conservative judges sounded very skeptical about Trump’s need for a special master in the Mar-a-Lago case, and the Supreme Court basically told him, “No, we are not your justices.” Plus, the post-shame culture of Tucker Carlson. David Priess joins Charlie Sykes.
Eric and Eliot welcome Georgetown Professor Emeritus Robert Lieber to discuss his new book, Indispensable Nation.
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KIMBERLY WEHLE: Trump’s Day in Court (and Court and Court and Court).
Given all the headlines about the new special counsel taking over the federal investigations of Donald Trump’s criminal involvement in January 6th and his storage of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, it’s easy to lose track of his many other legal battles. But this week brought a veritable pu-pu platter of court convolutions for the ex-president. Let’s catch up.
GARRETT QUINN: The Last Authoritarian World Cup.
In 1986, the International Olympic Committee voted to split the Winter and Summer Olympics so they would alternate every two years instead of occurring together every four years. The new tradition began in 1994 with the Lillehammer Winter Olympics, site of the infamous showdown between figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. The IOC initiated the split schedule in part to bring greater attention to the winter events, and while this move did bring them out from the shadow of the more popular summer games, it also locked the Winter Olympics into permanent competition with an even bigger quadrennial athletic spectacle: the World Cup.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
REMINDER: We’re “dark” through the rest of the week. No newsletters until next week. Enjoy your holiday. We’re trying to do the same.
Happy Thanksgiving eve! The first time I missed Thanksgiving, it was because I was a college bar bouncer, and the night before Thanksgiving is… crazy. We were a 3 AM bar and we did a lot of business. D.C., stupidly, has allowed some bars to stay open to 4 AM. Nothing good happens after midnight, my mom always says. Our generous owner (and my beloved Humphrey’s just re-opened) gave us all small turkeys. I followed all the directions, but didn’t defrost my turkey sufficiently, so I ended up at White Castle.
Tomorrow, we’ll be isolating because of the COVID diagnoses, but I will be smoking a turkey on the PK Grill with Tony Chachere’s injectable butter marinade. If you’ve never tried it, it is the best. (Remember, our readers have some great recipes if you’re looking to spice things up.)
The more you know… Here’s why jellied cranberry sauce is canned upside down.
The future of our democracy… Anthony Gonzalez, an outgoing Rep. from Ohio (that I went to HS with) has this to say. It’s worth watching in its entirety.
Dril on the Musk takeover of Twitter… It’s glorious.
Enjoy every sandwich… Matt Labash remembers a reader who became a digital friend.
223.2… The best forecast of the cycle.
Toward faster ballot counting… From our friend Walter Olson at CATO.
Meanwhile, at the factory of sadness… Somebody did donuts on the field.
Resign to run? Florida’s considering moving the goalposts to help Ron DeSantis.
That’s it for me. Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.