WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — Embattled newly elected U.S. Rep. George Santos on Thursday told reporters he would resign from office if 142 people asked him to, as fallout continues from numerous falsehoods he told about his life story during the campaign.

“If 142 people ask for me to resign, I will resign,” Santos replied to reporters as he hurriedly exited a Capitol Hill office and entered an elevator.

It’s uncertain how he settled on 142 or what significance that figure holds. It’s possible Santos meant to say “142,000,” which would be about the number of New Yorkers who voted for him in the 3rd Congressional District.

Numerous state and local Republican leaders in New York on Wednesday called for Santos’ immediate resignation.

Initially, the victory by Santos, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, was seen as a bright spot for the party in an otherwise underwhelming midterm election. But as reports began to emerge that Santos had lied about having Jewish ancestry, a career at top Wall Street firms and a college degree, he turned into a distraction and an embarrassment to the party as it took control of the House.

During his campaign, he referred to himself as “a proud American Jew.” But he later backtracked on that claim, saying his mother’s family had “a Jewish background,” and he told the New York Post in an interview, “I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”

The state and local parties of New York have no mechanism to remove Santos from office, according to The Associated Press. He was sworn in to the U.S. House last week after Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s marathon session to claim the House speaker gavel, during which Santos voted for him 15 consecutive times.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

At least six people were killed in Autauga County, Alabama, on Thursday as a storm swept through the U.S. South, the New York Times reported.

The storm also damaged homes and left tens of thousands of customers without power in parts of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama.

The GOP House members want to investigate everything and everyone. One of the things they plan to do is look into “the abuses committed by the unelected, unaccountable federal bureaucrats.” A select subcommittee has been created. Heading it up is Rep. Gym Jordan of mass screaming fame.

This committee will look into what they deem the “weaponization of the federal government.” The fact that Gym Jordan is heading up this committee is hysterical given that he himself defied a subpoena to testify, but this is the way the Republicans govern — by hypocrisy.

The GOP plans to investigate everything from: Hunter Biden. To: The FBI. And: President Biden. And: Anything else they can.

In other words, we’re in for a bunch of fake investigations by fake people. That isn’t surprising. What does have me curious is how in the world republicans ever expect to win in 2024.

My guess is they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it. The GOP, in recent years, seems to have given up any pretense of being a political party. Political parties want to win. The GOP does not appear to prioritize winning anymore. They’re making it up as they go along.

They get their marching orders from Trump now. So basically, this is a party that has ceased to be anything more than the Trump wing of politics. When 2024 comes rolling along, here is what I predict:

The GOP will not have one accomplishment to their name.

The GOP will not have passed any bills or done anything to help the American people.

The GOP will have as their candidates even more unhinged, alt-right people because that’s what Trump will want, and they must always obey Trump.

The GOP may have gone through two or three house speakers by then, the courtesy of the crazy wing making motions to vacate every ten minutes.

The GOP will not have a logical plan to win.

The GOP will still support Trump even if he’s locked up in prison.

The GOP will lose again badly.

The post The irrelevant party appeared first on Palmer Report.

Welcome to the California Briefing, the weekly dispatch of California Jewish news from the Forward’s Louis Keene. In this edition: The looming Feinstein fracas, Seth Rogen’s bizarre new project, and kosher pizza comes to O.C.!

To get this in your inbox every Thursday, subscribe here: forward.com/california.

A looming Feinstein fracas

When she defeated Gray Davis on Nov. 3, 1992, Dianne Feinstein became the first Jewish female senator in United States history, and she’s held onto her seat for the three decades since, compiling a liberal track record longer than a CVS receipt on topics like gun control, civil rights and abortion access.

But questions have mounted in recent years about the 89-year-old senator’s declining fitness, and a serious challenger for her seat, Rep. Katie Porter, did not wait for Feinstein to announce her retirement to declare her own candidacy. And Porter is expected to be joined soon by Rep. Adam Schiff, creating a tantalizing race between Democratic stars who have earned the respect of their peers and the ire of their colleagues across the aisle.

On Twitter, Democratic political consultant Tim Tagaris likened the matchup to “the #2 and #3 ranked teams in the country” going at it.

Rep. Barbara Lee will also run, Politico reported Wednesday. But … as the Forward’s Adam Kovac notes, Feinstein’s filed paperwork for 2024, too. Awkward!

What we’re watching and not watching

🎤  Red carpet interviews are unbearable for all but celebrity stans and high-fashion obsessives, but the Golden Globes made them fun by hiring British media personality Amelia Dimoldenberg to do red carpet interviews. She and Andrew Garfield make a nice pairing!

😭 There was an incredible moment during the awards ceremony, too, after Ke Huy Quan won Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Tearing up on stage, Quan turned and thanked Steven Spielberg, who gave him his first part in 1984 — as a child actor in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It’s one of the most moving acceptance speeches you’ll ever see.

🌈  Stranger Things teenybopper-turned-teenager Noah Schnapp came out as gay in a short TikTok. Earlier this year Schnapp confirmed fan speculation that the character he plays on the show, Will Byers, was gay. Can we make Byers — whose mom is played by Winona Ryder — Jewish, too?

🤪  A new TV series on a man who married a scammer he met on JDate, starring the victim as himself? Sounds like a Nathan Fielder project, but Paul T. Goldman (now streaming on Peacock) is actually brought to you by Seth Rogen, and by Paul Finkelman (Goldman’s real name), an eccentric Floridian who also wrote the script — to the extent there is one. Jimmy Kimmel looked genuinely flummoxed when the pair appeared on his show.

🧢  San Francisco Giants outfielder Joc Pederson FaceTimed with MLB Network from Cabo to discuss his recent re-signing and explain why he didn’t play for Team Israel in the last recent World Baseball Classic (and why he will this time).

What we’re reading

Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob has expressed interest in acquiring the MLB’s Angels. Photo by Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize

🌺  America’s oldest living Pearl Harbor survivor, Joseph Eskenazi, will turn 105 later this month, but the Redondo Beach resident isn’t too old for a cross-country trip. The LA Daily News’ Clara Harter relates Eskenazi’s harrowing war story from Union Station, where the veteran received a hero’s sendoff on his way to the World War II museum in New Orleans.

🚇  “The boring journey of Matt Yglesias.” A withering profile of the popular ex-Vox pundit turned Substack millionaire.

💁‍♀️  A woman should replace Trevor Noah as the host of The Daily Show. (There, I said it.) Two possibilities: Chelsea Handler has thrown her hat in the ring, and Sarah Silverman has signed up to guest host.

💰  The LA Times published a deep dive into a lawsuit involving the $70 million sale of a Malibu estate by Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Mauricio Umansky. (The man suing him, Sam Hakim, says Umansky defrauded him.)

⚾️  I’m tired of the Angels being so bad, and thrilled they’re up for sale. A prospective owner: Joe Lacob, under whose stewardship the Golden State Warriors rose from cellar-dweller to NBA dynasty. Just don’t let Lacob near the Commissioner’s Trophy.

Your humble correspondents

🤣  March Madness in January: I interviewed the organizers of a tournament-style bracket to decide 2022’s Jewish-themed Tweet of the Year. Oddly, nothing I tweeted last year made their top 50. I promise I’m taking it in stride. Not mad at all!

Finally, in the we-are-so-lucky-to-live-in-California-department…

The pizza at Pizza Tanya. Courtesy of Eliad Suissa

A new kosher pizza joint in Huntington Beach is named after one bedrock Chabad-Lubavitch text — and inspired by another. 

Proprietor and chief dough-tosser Eliad Suissa says he opened Pizza Tanya at the behest of the Lubavitcher Rebbe — meaning he inserted a letter at random into a volume of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s correspondence and followed the advice the Rebbe gave on that page. The book told Suissa, who also runs Las Vegas kosher establishment Cafe Express, he needed to be near a Chabad. 

So Suissa opened the new spot next door to Hebrew Academy of Orange County (a Chabad K-12 school) and named the spot after the Tanya, a book of Hasidic philosophy favored by Chabadniks.

He hyped up his crust and the quality of his ingredients as reasons to make the drive.

“The good food, the flavor, and my hands that are doing it,” Suissa said.

The post California Briefing: The race to replace Dianne Feinstein appeared first on The Forward.

(NewsNation) — As politicians debate the best way to handle record numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, those who make it to the U.S. face uncertainty as border towns lack the resources to handle the influx of people.

NewsNation’s Ali Bradley spent 24 hours with migrants in El Paso, Texas, to see what life was like for those who have recently crossed the border.

Vincente Salcedo’s home is now the intersection of Oregon Street and 4th Avenue. He’d been living on the street since Dec. 30 when he came to the U.S. from Venezuela. After he arrived, he got stuck in the same red-tape limbo faced by many others.

“I’ve only seen situations like this in the movies, people outside a homeless shelter waiting to be taken in,” Salcedo said.

For Border Patrol agents, it also feels like a movie, with millions of migrants making their way across the border with little they can do to stop it.

“They’re coming across in record numbers because they know they’re not being detained,” Art Del Cueto, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, told NewsNation. “They know that they just have to step foot in America, claim asylum, have no criminal record in the United States and they get released.”

In the alley by Sacred Heart church, breakfast was served: a cup of coffee and a warm meal for migrants with no other resources in the U.S.

But even donated resources are scarce. Just after 10 a.m., the shelter ran out of clean towels, which meant no more showers for the day.

Food is also precious. Migrants can’t just eat whenever they feel hungry. Instead, they consume small meals or snacks when available — typically when people drop off food at the shelter to help feed the crowds.

In the early afternoon, Venezuelan Yuleidis Silva and her three small children were asked to move from the alley where they had been sleeping so maintenance work could be done. They had to find a new place before nightfall, which can be dangerous.

Silva and her children were trying to find a way to be reunited with her husband in Chicago. But she didn’t know whom to trust.

“We could all be from the same country, but we don’t know who’s a good person and who is not,” Silva said.

Later, a good Samaritan dropped off cartons of milk and Silva’s daughter had a cup, before the mother decided to brave the walk of a few blocks to another shelter.

The sun set in the early evening, but the day wasn’t done. Someone dropped off bags of clothes to help stay warm during the cold nights.

Carlos Duran phoned family members back home in Venezuela.

“We talk to our family members back home, who are worried about us,” he said.

By 7 p.m., families lined up at a shelter to find out if they would be able to sleep indoors that night. Only women and families were eligible; no single men were allowed.

For the newly migrated, life is all about standing in line. Waiting for food, hoping for a warm place to sleep.

Just before 8 p.m., it was time for another line.

A cup of hot soup, much needed for the men who will later have to spend the night outside, is the prize at the end of the queue. Temperatures were already in the low 40s and were still dropping.

As the evening continued, migrants prepared to sleep. Salcedo piled on layer upon layer of clothing to keep warm, while Duran scouted out a spot to protect himself from the wind. Because of his height, Duran had to sleep curled up. Cramped legs are one reason he can’t get a good night’s sleep.

“One is worried if Border Patrol will come to take us or not, and that’s why the nights seem much longer,” he said.

Still, the streets of El Paso were quiet compared to just a few weeks earlier. Local officials said there was an increased presence of border agents.

“We’ve seen Border Patrol agents come to this area and pick people up. I think so many people are afraid they are going to be next,” said El Paso County Commissioner David Stout.

Salcedo prayed before bed, reading passages from the Bible. By midnight, most of the migrants were asleep, trying to stay warm. Blankets and tarps rustled, waking people up throughout the night, though both Salcedo and Duran managed to sleep through it.

The next morning, both men made sure their areas were clean and their beds removed from the sidewalks. Then it was time to begin again; the hunt for food and a bathroom started all over.

When asked what he missed most about his previous life, Salcedo’s answer was simple.

“A good shower, and a room where I can get a good night’s sleep,” he said.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said its preliminary analysis of a computer system outage on Wednesday that led to a 90-minute nationwide ground stop and disrupted more than 11,000 flights was prompted by a procedural failure.

“The agency determined that a data file was damaged by personnel who failed to follow procedures. The system is functioning properly and cancellations today were below one percent,” the FAA said in an emailed statement late on Thursday.

A computer outage that grounded flights nationally on Wednesday and disrupted more than 11,000 flights was caused by a procedural error related to a data file, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday as U.S. airline operations returned to normal.

The FAA said its preliminary analysis “determined that a data file was damaged by personnel who failed to follow procedures. The system is functioning properly.” The FAA did not answer more questions about the specifics of the problem.

More than 11,300 flights were delayed or canceled on Wednesday in the first national grounding of domestic traffic in about two decades. As of 7 p.m. EST Thursday, 5,109 U.S. flights were delayed and 163 were canceled, according to FlightAware. The FAA said cancellations were below 1% of flights Thursday.

Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), United Airlines (UAL.O), American Airlines Group Inc (AAL.O) and Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N) all reported normal operations on Thursday.

The FAA computer failure prevented airports from filing updated safety notices that warn pilots of potential hazards such as runway closures, equipment outages and construction, bringing flights to a temporary halt.

FAA officials earlier had traced the problem to a damaged database file in the system that provides pilot safety notices known as Notices to Air Missions (NOTAMs), but said there was no evidence of a cyberattack.

The same file corrupted both the main system and its backup, said people familiar with the review, who asked not to be identified.

The FAA last year sought $29.4 million from Congress for computer upgrades and to allow the acceleration of a sole NOTAM repository “and eliminate the failing vintage hardware that currently supports that function in the national airspace system.”

“The modernization of the FAA will be expensive, and will be paid for through a combination of taxes on air travel that affect all carriers and efficiencies by larger airlines,” brokerage Bernstein said in a note.

Arjun Garg, a former FAA chief counsel and acting deputy administrator, said it was premature to draw any conclusions about the event, but said the agency was right to ground flights.

Garg, now a partner at law firm Hogan Lovells, said the incident was a reminder that the FAA was subject to an annual appropriation cycle, making it difficult to plan and execute major multi-year projects such as air traffic control upgrades.

A separate outage in Canada on Wednesday that temporarily prevented new safety notices from being received and disseminated digitally was caused by an isolated IT system failure, an industry source told Reuters.

NAV Canada, the country’s privately held air navigation service provider, has said it is investigating the cause, which is not believed linked to the United States.

Canadian flights were not affected by the NAV Canada outage since the new notices could be received and shared manually, such as by fax, phone, or normal frequencies.

The FAA has been without a permanent administrator since March. The Senate has not held a hearing on President Joe Biden’s pick to head the agency, Denver International Airport Chief Executive Phil Washington, who was renominated last week.

Senators Jerry Moran and Amy Klobuchar spoke with acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen about the outage, and Nolen said “that his agency is working to determine what caused the breakdown to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” Moran said in a statement.

Shares of American Airlines closed up 9.7% after it forecast a higher fourth-quarter profit. Shares of United, Southwest, and Delta rose between 2.8% and 7.5%.

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President Joe Biden’s own administration named a special counsel to probe the improper storage of classified documents at his home and a former office on Thursday, an echo of a wider-ranging inquiry directed at his main political rival, Donald Trump.

The inquiry is a distraction for a Democratic president who has criticized his Republican predecessor’s handling of classified material, and could cast a shadow over Biden as the two gear up for a possible 2024 election rematch.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Robert Hur, who served as the top federal prosecutor in Maryland under Trump, will act as a quasi-independent prosecutor to determine whether classified records from Biden’s time as vice president had been improperly stored at his residence in Delaware and a think tank in Washington. Garland said Hur will examine “whether any person or entity violated the law.”

The White House said some material was found in a locked garage at Biden’s home and an adjacent room, and pledged to cooperate.

“We are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced,” White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement.

Asked by a reporter on Thursday about the wisdom of storing important material next to his Corvette, the self-declared ‘car guy’ president said both were in a locked garage. “People know I take classified documents and classified material seriously,” he added.

Biden and Trump now each face inquiries from special prosecutors, who are typically appointed to politically sensitive cases to ensure a degree of independence from Justice Department leadership.

But their cases are not the same, legal experts say.

Biden’s attorneys said they have found fewer than a dozen classified documents and turned over the relevant papers after finding them. Trump resisted doing so until an August FBI search turned up about 100 classified documents, raising questions about whether Trump or his staff obstructed the investigation.

“The facts cannot be more different. The only similarity is there were classified documents that were taken out of the White House to somewhere else,” said Kel McClanahan, head of National Security Counselors, a law firm.

The special counsel investigating Trump’s handling of documents is also leading inquiries into the Republican’s attempts to overturn his November 2020 election defeat to Biden.

As a sitting president, Biden faces less legal risk than Trump. He has broad latitude to declassify documents and will likely be shielded from prosecution, as the Justice Department has a long-standing policy of not bringing criminal charges against the occupant of the Oval Office.

Trump, by contrast, lost those protections when his term ended in January 2021.

Garland said he decided a special counsel was necessary in the Biden case after an initial investigation conducted by John Lausch, a Trump appointee who serves as the top federal prosecutor in the Chicago region.

“This appointment underscores for the public the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, and to making decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law,” Garland said at a news conference.

Hur, in a statement, said he would conduct the investigation impartially.

Some Republicans in Congress said they would be in a better position than the Justice Department to handle the investigation.

“When special counsels are appointed, it limits our ability to do some of the oversight investigations that we want to do,” said Representative James Comer, who will head the House Oversight Committee.

Garland named a special counsel, Jack Smith, in November to oversee investigations of Trump, shortly after Trump said he would seek the Republican nomination to run again for president in 2024.

About 100 documents marked as classified were among thousands of records seized during an August search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Biden called Trump’s behavior “totally irresponsible” in September.

Biden, 80, is expected to formally begin a re-election campaign in the coming weeks.

“People know I take classified documents, classified material seriously,” Biden told reporters on Thursday.

The White House said Biden does not know what is in the documents.

Sauber, the White House lawyer, said Biden’s personal attorneys found fewer than a dozen classified records in a locked closet in November when they were packing files at an office Biden formerly used at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a University of Pennsylvania think tank.

White House officials say those lawyers gave the material to the U.S. National Archives, the agency responsible for the preservation of government records.

The White House revealed that discovery to the public on Monday. Hours before Garland’s announcement, a White House lawyer said a second set of classified papers from that time was found at his Delaware home.

Garland revealed on Thursday that the Delaware documents were found on Dec. 20, meaning that the White House knew about them and did not mention them when it made its initial Jan. 9 disclosure.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean Pierre told reporters that the Justice Department’s review prevented the administration from telling the public.

Trump during his presidency faced a special counsel, Robert Mueller, who found insufficient evidence to conclude that contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential race amounted to criminal conduct. Mueller did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice but then-Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, subsequently cleared him.

Democratic President Bill Clinton was likewise dogged by an independent prosecutor, Ken Starr, who uncovered evidence of an extramarital affair with a White House intern, which led to Clinton’s impeachment.

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For many years now Republicans have been signalling that they have no ethics. Now the Republicans of the 118th Congress have made it official. On Tuesday House Republicans voted overwhelmingly to reintroduce term limits on members of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). The OCE’s mission is “to assist the House in upholding high standards of ethical conduct for its members, officers, and staff and, in so doing, to serve the American people.”

So what, you say? Well it turns out that the vote would in part force into early retirement three of the four Democrats on the panel. So yeah, now you get it.

Not only that, but as a further Machiavellian preemptive strike Republicans also rewrote the OCE’s rule book so as to defang much of the panel’s scope and power. That way any Republicans the OCE may be investigating for ethics violations (read: George Santos) will have a much tougher time getting anywhere.

As to the Democrats forced into retirement, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries can choose to hire replacements. But the process could take months, and in those months the OCE could open and close many cases. The GOP also voted for rules requiring that the OCE board approve the hiring of investigators within the first 30 days of a new Congress.

So in their road to “greater transparency,” as Kevin McCarthy promised, I suppose it could be argued that House Republicans are indeed making themselves very transparent. They want to put an end to oversight so the bad guys, i.e., themselves, can steal and cheat — and get away with it.

The same rationale applies to the Republican Congress’ goal to defund the IRS. The fewer agents the IRS has the harder it will be for them to pursue rich people for tax fraud. You see, rich people can afford to hire lawyers and the IRS currently lacks the resources to fight them in court. So, I guess the IRS is just going to have to settle for going after the little guys for tax fraud, who can’t afford to hire big lawyers.

Republicans crow that with fewer agents the big bad IRS has, the fewer little guys they can pick on. That’s the crap they feed the idiots who vote for them, anyway. But call me foolish, call me irresponsible, but it seems to me that if you don’t want the IRS to pick on you, just don’t cheat on your taxes.

But all this is just part of a Republican preemptive strike so they and their friends can get away with criminality and avoid being charged as criminals. It’s also why they want to “investigate” the “weaponization” of the FBI and the rest of the Department of Justice. They hope to create a chilling effect whereby the DOJ will also leave them alone so they can steal and cheat. And now you see how the big old GOP is bending over backward to protect the “little guy.”

There are eight million stories in the naked city of Republican corruption and malfeasance. This has been one of them. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

The post The Republican preemptive strike appeared first on Palmer Report.