 Dear Weekend Jolter, Nine made-for-television hearings and one 845-page report later, the January 6 committee has wrapped up its work. This may be the last we hear from the body in this form, as Republicans take control of the House next month. But Andy McCarthy and National Review's editorial board raise a pertinent question: Will the committee's final acts — particularly its criminal referrals earlier this week — backfire on the members who would like to see Donald Trump prosecuted? From our editorial: By making the referrals, the committee has enabled Trump, if he is ultimately charged, to argue that the decision was driven by politics, not evidence. . . . The January 6 committee could have performed a valuable service by simply issuing its much-anticipated report along with the full, unedited transcripts of witness testimony and exhibits, so the public could judge how faithful its television presentations were to the evidence. There would have been no need to make referrals; the report would suffice. Now, if the special counsel does decide to charge a January 6 crime, Trump will be able to counter that the prosecution is a political vendetta; i.e., that the Biden Justice Department took no action against Trump until after he announced his 2024 candidacy, at which point a high-profile, blatantly partisan, Democrat-controlled committee called for Trump's indictment. If the January 6 committee wanted Trump to be prosecuted, it shouldn't have made the prosecutor's job harder.
The committee's actual report, released late Thursday, is damning, as expected. The testimony and other evidence aired over the course of the panel's proceedings were valuable and significant, toward the purpose of establishing a public record, especially concerning Trump's part in fomenting the chaos that day. The report's findings are unmistakable on that point, running through the former president's role disseminating falsehoods about election fraud, refusing to accept the results, pressuring Mike Pence to shirk his vote-counting duties, pressing DOJ officials to back up his nonsense, pressuring state officials, pressuring members of Congress, and, ultimately, whipping up thousands of supporters before and during the Capitol riot while doing little to stop the violence that ensued. "The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him," the report concluded. (Five House Republicans also released their own report, which you can read about here.) None of this means Trump will face federal prosecution. But if he does — well, I’ll turn it over to Andy for the prosecutor’s view of how the committee could complicate things, as the 2024 race gets under way and the DOJ contemplates breaking the glass: Let's say the DOJ were to forge ahead and indict Trump for conspiring to obstruct Congress and defraud the United States — the crimes Judge Carter highlighted. Even if Special Counsel Jack Smith had meticulously built such a case on reliable evidence, the committee's referrals would bolster Trump's defense that the charges against him were nakedly political. He would now be able to claim, plausibly, that the Justice Department only moved against him, after two years of conceding that he did not conspire with the rioters, when a hyper-political committee handpicked by Democrats called for his prosecution — and only after he declared his candidacy for the presidency. At that point, he would allege, the Biden Justice Department acceded to the Democrat-dominated committee's recommendation that it bring charges that would eviscerate Trump's campaign, thus removing Biden's main rival from the field. . . . The blunt fact is that the committee's referrals will have no bearing on whether the Justice Department decides to charge Trump. If the referrals have any relevance, it will be as Exhibit A in Trump's defense that any indictment is sheer partisan politics.
Food for thought. Such claims would be yet another distraction from Trump's patent misconduct — but obfuscation is his superpower, one he wields to great effect. (Before these tasty links, one last note: Mike Rowe was just on The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast, which is a podcast hosted by Charles C. W. Cooke, something I wouldn’t have to keep explaining if Charles had been clearer with his nomenclature. Anyway, I recommend you tune in.) NAME. RANK. LINK. EDITORIALS More on the January 6 committee's finale: The January 6 Committee's Empty Political Gesture Stop the madness: Put an End to End-of-the-Year Omnibus Bills A big step in the right direction: Japan's Welcome Defense-Spending Boost ARTICLES Philip Klein: The $1.7 Trillion Omnibus Is a Scandal Dan McLaughlin: How Trump Cost the Republicans the Senate Rich Lowry: Biden's Disgraceful Border Evasions Jim Geraghty: Glenn Youngkin's Big Plans Brittany Bernstein: David Brock Founds New Smear Machine Focused on Combatting Hunter Biden ‘Misinformation’ Stanley Kurtz: DeSantis's Triumph, Kemp's Test Madeleine Kearns: No, Opposing LGBT Ideology Does Not Cause Violence Madeleine Kearns: Dr. Levine Pulls Up the Ladder behind Him Jay Nordlinger: 'The People,' They Say Ari Blaff: Matt Taibbi’s Poker Face Ryan Mills: University of Minnesota Med School Gives Leg Up in Promotions to Pro-DEI Faculty John McCormack: Why Electoral Count Act Reform Deserved a Standalone Senate Vote Caroline Downey: Six-Figure Blue-State Safety Nets Are Driving Americans Out of the Work Force, Study Finds Christian Schneider: Colleges Are Gambling with Their Students' Futures Jack Crowe: 'Your Money Is Not Charity': Zelensky Takes Aim at Isolationism in Address to Congress CAPITAL MATTERS Joseph Sullivan says economists should not be so quick to dismiss the possibility of a recession: Jobs Numbers Are Consistent with an Inflationary Recession Marc Joffe hopes a newly passed provision will make Washington a less-sloppy spender: How to Stop Wasting Money on Government Bailouts LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW. Armond White takes on Avatar: Avatar or Art: A Contest for Your Mind You don't often see the phrase “tasteful nudity” in this note, but Brian Allen's latest museum review merits the mention: Modigliani at the Barnes on Its 100th Birthday: Substance, Sparkle, and Sensuality THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY TURTLEDOVES, SO I GOT YOU SOME EXCERPTS Phil takes a blowtorch to the whole corrupt process of how lawmakers jam through what they want without adequate debate, year after year, by riding the "omnibus": Just two days before an expected Senate vote, congressional leaders cooked up an outrageous $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, demanding that lawmakers open wide and swallow its 4,155 pages so everybody can leave town for the year. This is a scandal. It is not a scandal to be added to the salacious and shocking catalogue of notorious Washington scandals, but a scandal precisely because what is happening has become a completely ordinary way for business to be conducted in Washington. The scandal is that it is so unremarkable. The scandal is that it will be repeated again and again, no matter which party is in power. Critics say that the omnibus shows that Washington is broken and that senators and members of Congress are incompetent. They lament the fact that lawmakers procrastinate to the last minute what they could have accomplished all year. In reality, the system is functioning just the way people in power want it to function. Sure, lawmakers could have followed a process in which a budget is unveiled and passed in the spring, and all priorities are discussed within relevant committees in full public view for months. Legislative text could be released well in advance of any vote, allowing for plenty of time to view it and debate amendments. And lawmakers could divide different policies into different bills so that each can be evaluated on its own merits. But running things this way would risk subjecting policies to actual debate. Instead, Congress has passed a series of short-term funding measures since the fiscal year began on October 1 so they could manufacture a crisis in the waning days of 2022. This has allowed congressional leaders and their staffs to hide behind closed doors, load a freight train with their preferred government-funded goodies, get the media to describe it as a "must-pass bill," and dare anybody to vote against the final product and risk shutting down the government ahead of Christmas. Any senator who wants Electoral Count Act reform will have to vote to increase funding for Medicaid; anybody who wants to finance the military will need to vote to increase spending on food stamps and for more infrastructure money. Anybody who does not blindly agree to pass this mammoth piece of legislation will be accused of leaving a lump of coal in the stockings of America's veterans. This may look like a chaotic mess, but describing it in such a way lets congressional leaders off of the hook. This is not a system that is buckling. From the perspective of those in power who want to ram through their priorities with as little scrutiny as possible, this is a system operating at peak efficiency.
Dan McLaughlin has kicked off a series examining Trump's impact on the 2022 Republican candidate field. Spoiler — his influence was not a positive one. We start with the big Senate races: A major reason why many Republicans and conservatives have increasingly soured on Donald Trump following the underwhelming 2022 election cycle is that Trump played a crucial, often decisive role in picking so many of the bad candidates who lost winnable races. What follows is an examination of exactly how badly Trump harmed Republicans, beginning in this first installment with the big three Senate races in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona. All three were eminently winnable with good candidates, and any two would have given the party control of the Senate. Trump and his defenders argue that he endorsed more than 200 candidates who won, and that this outweighs his losing endorsements. Clearly, as unpopular as Trump is, being endorsed by Trump was not a kiss of death all by itself. Nor did voters reject candidates merely for what the GOP's more florid critics call "complicity." In Florida, Marco Rubio won by 16 points running with Trump's general-election endorsement, double his 2016 margin. In Utah, Trump endorsed the reelection of Mike Lee. Evan McMullin built his whole Senate campaign around Lee's post-election text messages with Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Lee faced a surprisingly competitive race — he got the lowest vote share of any Utah Republican for the Senate since 1974 — but he won by double digits anyway. But Mike Lee and Marco Rubio were not chosen or recruited by Donald Trump. And therein lies the difference. In examining how Republicans ended up with so many losing candidates in winnable races, tallying endorsements is the wrong question. Trump padded his list by backing a ton of safe House incumbents with no real primary challengers. The more important question in assessing whether Trump should continue in a leadership role in the party is what role he played in the party's selection of candidates in 2022. That role goes beyond simply a numerical scoreboard of endorsements. Trump deterred some potential candidates, even incumbents, from running. He endorsed unsuccessful primary challengers to candidates who won in November. He helped some candidates win their primaries with decisively timed interventions. He endorsed others only when they had locked up their nominations, or only in the general election. Once the campaigns began, some Trump-endorsed candidates ran standard Republican campaigns; others, even those not formally endorsed by Trump, went all-in on 2020 stolen-election theories. The latter fared much worse.
Every time the Weekend Jolt features something from the Morning Jolt, a rift in the universe opens somewhere over the Midwest. With apologies to Council Bluffs, do take the time to check out Jim Geraghty's interview with Governor Glenn Youngkin: I had a chance to speak to Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin on Monday; he's wrapping up a busy 2022 and preparing for what could be a make-or-break 2023, aiming to get a wide-ranging agenda through the Virginia state legislature. "We're working on tax cuts for Virginians, we're working on investing in education, and making sure we have the high standards that kids deserve," Youngkin said. "We're rolling out Operation Bold Blue Line, which will put 2,000 new cops on the streets. How do we make government run better? I've had people say to me, 'governor, your administration accomplished more in one year than a lot of people thought you could get done in four years. All that does is double down my excitement to see what we can do next year when we hit the accelerator." Youngkin has enjoyed solid job-approval numbers since taking office — 53 percent in May, 55 percent in August and 52 percent in December — and note that 31 percent of Democrats approve of the job he's doing. That same survey found this month that 52 percent of Virginia Republicans want him to run for president, but only 34 percent of all Virginians do. I asked Youngkin about the persistent presidential buzz surrounding him; for much of the past year, Youngkin punted on the questions about a 2024 bid, insisting he was focused on his duties as governor and the midterms. While it's still early, Youngkin's comments are starting to sound more Sherman-esque in his refusal to acknowledge any interest in running. "I have to say I'm really honored and humbled by it all," Youngkin said. "Here we are, two years ago, I had just left my job at Carlyle, my dream job. And I was contemplating running for governor, and my name is tossed around in that context, and it was humbling. Forty years ago, I was taking out the trash and washing dishes down at the beach because I needed a job. My primary response will continue to be, I'm focused on Virginia. . . . I just have to make sure that we deliver for Virginians. I've got a mission on my hands, and we're going to accomplish it, and I am laser focused on it."
Caroline Downey reports on a new study illustrating the connection between government aid and labor shortages: The value of welfare and government-provided health insurance for some U.S. households in certain blue states exceeds six figures, exacerbating the labor shortage that has plagued the U.S. economy in the wake of the Covid pandemic, according to a newly released study entitled "Paying Americans Not to Work." In 24 states, unemployment benefits and Obamacare subsidies for a family of four with two unemployed parents is equivalent to — and in some cases, exceeds — the national median household income, according to a recent study conducted by the economists Casey Mulligan, Erwin Antoni, and Stephen Moore on behalf of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a non-profit that promotes free-market economic policy. The national median household income was $78,813 in 2022. In 14 states, a family of four in which both adults are unemployed can receive unemployment insurance and Affordable Care Act subsidies equivalent to a job that pays $80,000 in combined salary and health benefits. Washington, New Jersey, and Massachusetts provide safety-net programs that provide the equivalent of over $100,000 in annualized cash and benefits for a family of four, the economists found. Workers in some states can receive more benefits from remaining unemployed than their blue-collar counterparts who are working, the study showed.
Christian Schneider is following a truly shameful development on American college campuses: Schools are selling access to their students to gambling organizations for millions of dollars. As detailed in a recent New York Times report, colleges and universities now routinely sign sponsorship deals with gambling websites, complete with financial incentives to get their students hooked on money lines and parlays. In September 2021, for instance, Michigan State University entered into an $8.4 million agreement with Caesar's Sportsbook that allowed the company to promote gambling on the campus. Louisiana State University — also a state school — signed a similar deal with the sportsbook in 2021, which prompted the university to email its students, many of them under the age of 21 and thus unable to legally gamble, urging them to start placing bets. One student who showed up on campus said the school immediately sent him a "promo code" to start betting.
Shout-Outs Asra Nomani, at City Journal: The War on Merit Takes a Bizarre Turn Brad Raffensperger, at the Wall Street Journal: Raphael Warnock, Election Denier Associated Press: Iran authorities arrest actress of Oscar-winning movie CODA Merry Christmas. | 
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