How Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson Surrendered to MAGA.

Plus, Can the CHIPS Act Be Implemented Without Becoming a Byzantine Mess?

Jim Swift

Mar 8

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AMANDA CARPENTER: How Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson Surrendered to MAGA.

Republican members of Congress upset with Tucker Carlson’s rewrite of January 6th as a peaceful protest should redirect their ire. It’s their colleague, GOP Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who is giving that lie new life.
The only reason Carlson is airing these specials is because McCarthy provided him the content to produce them.
McCarthy made an affirmative decision to collaborate with Fox News, even as the company is embroiled in a billion-dollar lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, which has exposed in granular detail how Fox’s two-faced hosts, executives, and producers brazenly air content they know is untruthful. That makes this not just a Fox problem, but a Republican party problem, too.

READ THE REST.

CATHY YOUNG: A Moment of Horror, and a New Hero for Ukrainians.

On Monday, the grim chronicles of Russia’s war in Ukraine hit a macabre new low when a video appeared on social media depicting the apparent execution in cold blood of a captive Ukrainian soldier by Russian troops. The 12-second clip shows a weary-looking man in camouflage fatigues standing in a shallow trench in a wooded area calmly smoking a cigarette while someone off-camera, speaking Russian, says either “Film him” or “Don’t film him.” Then, just as calmly, the man says “Slava Ukraini!”—“Glory to Ukraine!”—the slogan made famous by the past year’s war. “You bitch!” a man sputters off-camera, and at that very moment there is a burst of automatic gunfire, blowing off the prisoner’s cap and bringing him down a split second later. Then, almost without pause, more bullets rip into the fallen soldier’s body. And a final off-camera comment, just before the video ends: “Sdokhni, suka” (“Croak, bitch”).
The full context of this hideous act is not entirely clear—not that there’s any context that could mitigate it. Was the man being filmed for some other purpose, perhaps to document his surrender, and then killed on the spot for his defiant words? Or was this a deliberately filmed firing-squad execution, with the prisoner smoking a last cigarette according to old military tradition and knowingly speaking his last words? Was he standing in a trench or, as some have speculated, in a grave he’d been ordered to dig?

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Tucker has been dining out on how much the media supposedly despises Donald Trump — when by his own admission, he hates Trump with a passion. And his take on Jan 6 is inherently contradictory: It was Nancy’s fault, but also not much happened that day. Matt Gertz joins Charlie Sykes today.

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ADAM J. WHITE: Can the CHIPS Act Be Implemented Without Becoming a Byzantine Mess?

Last summer, Congress enacted the CHIPS Act to boost America’s ailing semiconductor industry, for the sake of reducing our reliance—and the world’s reliance—on China’s own industry. As the Biden administration now begins to execute that law, its next steps will reveal much about the administration itself. And if it follows through on its newly announced plan to water down Congress’s semiconductor policy with other domestic policies, it will illustrate one of the major problems in modern American administration.
In the constitutional debates swirling around federal administration today, one of the biggest issues is “delegation.” For a century, Congress has delegated immense and innumerable powers to federal agencies, in legislation that gives regulators practically open-ended discretion.

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ANN MARLOWE: The Sites of War.

Representational art has been having a moment, and landscapes with it. Some would say this is because it’s easier on the eyes and mind—landscapes, according to this argument, are usually easy to parse, like windows into other, attractive spaces. We don’t expect what a massive new installation by Adam Cvijanovic does, erasing the comforting distance of the window and dropping us into the world of the painting.
Nor do we expect the disorientation we feel. In one group of panels, we are confronted by boulders, just gray, waterworn boulders, so emphatic that they must mean something . . . but what?
This extraordinary new series was just installed in the Major General Emmett J. Bean Federal Center just outside Indianapolis, a vast, austere clerical and administrative building for the military.

READ THE REST.

🚨OVERTIME 🚨

Happy International Women’s Day… I’ve always thought the “international” part is unnecessary, but I’m celebrating the women in my life with a pizza party and a nice dinner for us adults.

All Star TNB! Tomorrow night, save the date at 8 (Eastern)! JVL, Bill and Cathy will be joined by special guest Eric Edelman for the March 9 edition of Thursday Night Bulwark. The panel will discuss the latest in the war in Ukraine starting at 8:00 p.m. ET.

“The most interesting think tank in American politics…” A great profile of our friends at the Niskanen Center.

Jack Shafer nails Tucker… There’s so much Tucker coverage out there it makes one want to get sick, but them’s the breaks: sadly, he’s the news. At Politico, the great Jack Shafer really nails Tucker and what he’s become: what he hated. Bill O’Reilly 2.0. A phony.

Life imitates Silicon Valley… As ChatGPT comes to work intra-office communications systems.

Child labor? Really? For the party that overhypes child trafficking and scaremongers about supposed “groomers”, a handout like this to those who actually exploit children, should come as no surprise. Children should be able to work, given sensible parameters and if they want to, but this is a bit much. Especially with the growing abuse of migrant minors.

Matt Schlapp’s accuser comes forward… After a sleepy CPAC, the worst kept secret in Washington reveals his identity.

McCarthy tells Zelenskyy: Nyet. No, Kevin McCarthy won’t visit Ukraine to see the horrors for himself. Hey, at least his see no evil, hear no evil spinelessness is consistent!

Kyle Rittenhouse… The right wing social media darling that failed to launch.

Ruben Gallego blazes his own trail… Will his YOLO campaign style work in his quest to unseat Kyrsten Sinema, or will it backfire?

Rennervations… A heartwarming new show coming to Disney+ to remind yourself that not all is wrong with the world.

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.

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