Finally Friday Reads: No Kings

“I’m for No Kings.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Tomorrow, we will likely see the biggest nationwide protest in our country’s history. This will be the second “No Kings” peaceful assembly this summer. We will undoubtedly view huge protests in America’s cities as well as smaller ones in towns and rural areas. Already, Despot Donnie’s Deplorable collaborators are trying to frame the movement in the most unflattering and untrue manner possible. I’m looking forward to joining my patriotic friends here in New Orleans from the Lafitte Greenway. We are one of 10 anchor cities. Let’s hope the media is up to its role in preserving democracy. I understand that the Portland Frogs, Unicorns, et al will be represented.

This is from Garrett M. Graff writing at his column at Doomsday Scenario. “Three Reasons I Still Have Hope for America. This weekend’s “No Kings” rallies stand as an important corrective amid a dark moment.”

To me — as someone who cares deeply about the future of American democracy — the rallies stand as an important expression of love for the United States and the idea and dream that the US has represented for 250 years.

Graff’s column continues by listing and elucidating three points.

1. People — There are more of us than there are of them.

2. History — America’s progress has always been imperfect.

3. Actuarial — Trump won’t last forever, which means “Trumpism” will fall.

You may read the logic behind his arguments at the link. Meanwhile, Andrew Egger–writing for The Bulwark–describes the desperation inherent in the MAGA response to the protests. “A Noun, A Verb, and Antifa.”

“Those who love Trump are the devout, virtuous patriots that must be protected no matter what; those who hate him are the vile demons who must be destroyed by any weapon to hand.”

It’s been plain for a while that this axiom is the central guiding tenet of MAGA philosophy. But this week, we really got to see just how all-encompassing that rule is.

Last Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson kicked off a small scandal by describing the “No Kings” protests that will take place across the country tomorrow as a “hate America rally” run by “the pro-Hamas wing and Antifa people.” This week, those claims became the centerpiece of GOP messaging about the protests. Yesterday, multiple Republicans senators—John Barrasso on the Senate floor and Steve Daines on Fox News—denounced the protests as a “hate America rally.” On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz said he had introduced legislation to allow the Justice Department to target the funders of “these rallies, which may well turn into riots” for racketeering charges. Attorney General Pam Bondi continues to make the case that protesters carrying matching, professionally printed signs is proof they’re secretly Antifa. And Karoline Leavitt said yesterday, while speaking about the New York City mayoral race, that “the Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”

As we keep saying: The “No Kings” protests that took place in June were nothing like what these Republicans are describing. They were peaceful, patriotic, and overwhelmingly normie-coded: a bunch of regular people taking to the streets to exercise their right to object to the ongoing depredations of an authoritarian administration. Organizers held deescalation trainings—as they have done again this week—and instructed protesters to distance themselves from anyone who seemed like they were there to cause trouble. As a result, the mammoth protests went off pretty much without a hitch.

This Saturday’s “No Kings” protests are likely to again be the beau idéal of what peaceful protests should be. But they’ll also be anti-Trump, so Republicans are compelled to denounce attendees as anti-American troublemakers who are probably also paid actors and Antifa terrorists.

I guess both Soros and Antifa are supposed to be writing checks to the millions of us marching. I’d like to meet a rube that actually believes that. Jill Lawrence has this critique at MSNBC’s website’s Op-Eds. “The fear driving Trump and the GOP’s attacks on the ‘No Kings’ rallies. Republicans’ fictional portrait is part of a strategy to stop the resistance before it flexes its growing power.”

You might find this hard to believe, but Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are making stuff up. This is a go-to move when they fear their power and corrupt authoritarian plans are at risk, and that’s happening a lot lately. Now, with millions of people signed up to attend thousands of “No Kings” demonstrations Saturday across America, the GOP’s desperation meter is at DEFCON 1.

The alarm is clear from the overwrought Republican leaders spouting hallucinatory talking points in which “No Kings” protests become “‘Hate America’ rallies.” They are weaving a tale of extremists, terrorists, Marxists, agitators, “the pro-Hamas crowd” (House Speaker Mike Johnson’s phrase), and professional protesters supposedly paid by billionaire George Soros. It’s straight-up fearmongering.

In truth, anti-Trump protests, like the first “No Kings” demonstrations earlier this year, have drawn people of all backgrounds, united not by payment but by their deep concern — even despair — about what’s happening to their country. Some may show up this weekend wearing inflatable costumes as frogs, chickens, bears, dinosaurs or unicorns, as they have in Portland, Oregon, and outside Chicago. In D.C., we might once again see and hear a trombonist with the stage name Michael McTrouserpants.

Whoever attends, there will undoubtedly be countless signs and flags. Some of them admittedly, will bear impolite messages, but none of this protest is in any way evil or illegal or, as Johnson argues, “an outrageous gathering for outrageous purposes.” Peaceful protest is a constitutional right enshrined in the First Amendment — and peaceful protest is almost entirely what we’ve seen. Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium project reported that less than 0.5% of the first No Kings demonstrations on June 14 — one of the largest single-day protests in U.S. history — had injuries or property damage.

While the president and his allies have been known to revel in violence against Trump’s political opponents, the No Kings website features links to primers on safety, de-escalation, and “sacred” religious protest traditions, and this stern warning: “A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.”

 The New Yorker‘s Susan B. Glasser argues that the press are complicit. “Donald Trump’s Dream Palace of Puffery. The Pentagon’s ban on real journalism looks to be a preview of where the White House is headed.” They’re enabling the liar-in-chief to ensure access.

But tough questions for Trump are now few and fewer, even as he spends more and more time in front of the cameras in what has become America’s first live-streamed Presidency. Consider what happened on Tuesday, when a reporter from ABC News tried to ask Trump a question. Before the journalist could get her query out, the President cut her off. “You’re ABC fake news,” he said. “I don’t want.” He did not bother to disguise the reason, either: simple retaliation. “I don’t take questions from ABC fake news after what you did with Stephanopoulos to the Vice-President of the United States,” he said, referring to a contentious interview last Sunday between ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and Vice-President J. D. Vance.

Instead, Trump called on Brian Glenn, the chief White House correspondent of an all-Trump, all-the-time news outlet called Real America’s Voice. Glenn is rarely listed on the official White House press-pool roster, yet he manages to make it into restricted events with the President nearly every day. This spring, he bragged to the Times of London, “My job as a conservative journalist is to ask questions that highlight the good things that he’s doing for this country—that a lot of the media outlets in there simply won’t ask.” On Tuesday, he eagerly stepped in when Trump rejected the ABC reporter. But, rather than ask a question, he started with a compliment. “First of all, congratulations on achieving peace,” he told Trump. “You are indeed the peacemaker.”

The President then interrupted him. “Did you ever think I was going to be called the peacemaker?”

Glenn replied, “Actually, I did.”

His question, when he got around to it, was about Alyssa Farah, a former aide in Trump’s first-term White House who is now a co-host of the popular ABC daytime talk show “The View” and a vocal critic of Trump’s. According to Glenn, Farah had promised to wear a Make America Great Again hat on TV if he actually managed to secure the release of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, but she had not yet done so. After explaining all this to the President, his query to Trump was just two words: “Your response?”

A day later, Glenn was back in front of Trump, at a press conference featuring the President and the director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel. The event’s news, among other things, was Trump complaining that law-enforcement agencies should investigate and prosecute more of his political enemies and confirming that he had secretly ordered the C.I.A. to carry out operations inside Venezuela. Glenn, however, wanted to make a point about one of Trump’s longtime preoccupations—what the President calls the “rigged election” of 2020. “By the way, you won Georgia three times,” Glenn shouted over other reporters trying to ask questions. Ed O’Keefe, of CBS News, standing in front of Glenn, could be seen shaking his head with what appeared to be exasperation. It was the last part of the exchange that really stood out, though. In response to Glenn, Trump said, “Yeah, I agree. Do you agree with me?” After Glenn replied, “I do,” the President quickly jumped back in: “And he’s the media! He’s the media!”

Excuse me while I vomit.  Don Holmeyer writing at LiberalCurrents introduces the nail to the hammer. “The Pro-Massacre, Pro-Segregation, Pro-Eugenics Administration. The Trump administration is seeking to rewind the clock on an entire century of legal—and moral—progress.”

Take civil rights, particularly the decades-long, organized push to end Jim Crow discrimination in voting, housing, schooling and other legal arenas half a century ago. Trump et al. are dismantling its legacy piece by piece:

• In his first week back in office, Trump froze the Department of Justice’s pursuit of civil rights cases, including police reform agreements that followed officers’ killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
• Also in the first week, Trump rescinded a 60-year-old executive order that banned racial and other discrimination in federal employment—one that was published by Lyndon B. Johnson just weeks after he signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• In February, Trump fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Hegseth pretends was hired only because of his race. Hegseth also proclaimed that “the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’” It fits a broad pattern of removing Black leaders throughout the government and replacing them with white ones.
• In July, Attorney General Pam Bondi advised schools that essentially any deliberate effort to diversify their student bodies—not just considering race but also any factor, like income, that might correlate to race—would be considered illegal.
• In August, Trump declared the Smithsonian and other museums focused too much on “how bad Slavery was.”
• And in September, The New York Times reported that fair housing protections, which say you can’t block people from your apartments and houses because they’re a certain color (as Trump knows from personal experience), are being rolled back and ignored.

These are not the actions of a government that believes the right side triumphed in the Civil Rights Movement, that people of all skin colors belong in all spheres of public life, or that race doesn’t define one’s ability or worth. As Adam Serwer observed in February, we are in the midst of a “Great Resegregation.”

Our societal regression extends to public health as well. As the concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest entered popular culture a century ago, they sprouted the eugenics movement. Eugenics was the high-society term for the idea that we should breed better humans and that worse humans—which usually meant poor, ill or darker-skinned—shouldn’t breed at all.

We may have our first insight into those s0-called drug ships that Trump’s ordered the Navy to sink.  This is from Reuters’ Phil Stewart. “Exclusive: In a first, US strike in Caribbean leaves survivors, US official says.”

The U.S. military carried out a new strike on Thursday against a suspected drug vessel in the Caribbean, and in what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, a U.S. official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not offer additional details about the incident, which has not been previously reported, except to say that it was not clear that the strike had been designed to leave survivors.

The development raises new questions, including whether the U.S. military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in U.S. military custody, possibly as prisoners of war.
The Pentagon, which has labeled those it has targeted in the strikes as narcoterrorists, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prior to Thursday’s operation, U.S. military strikes against suspected drug boats off Venezuela killed at least 27 people, raising alarms among some legal experts and Democratic lawmakers, who question whether they adhere to the laws of war.

Videos presented by the Trump administration of previous attacks showed vessels being completely destroyed, and there have been no prior accounts of survivors afterwards.

So, Congress has declared no war but yet, we have prisoners of war now?  War talk is a good time to bring up the Bolton indictment.  This is from CNN’s Aaron Blake.  “Why the Bolton indictment is different from the Comey and James cases.”

In Bolton’s case, there is less of a throughline between Trump’s conduct and the charges.

Yes, Bolton is also someone Trump spotlighted for prosecution, like Comey and James. As far back as 2020, Trump accused Bolton of breaking the law and warned there would be “a really big price to pay.”

“Now he will have bombs dropped on him!” Trump said.

But Trump doesn’t appear to have played a similar role in orchestrating the charges against Bolton, at least from what we know. He didn’t publicly push for the charges as much in recent weeks. And he certainly didn’t force out a prosecutor who resisted the charges before installing a loyalist who brought them, like he did in the Eastern District of Virginia (the site of the Comey and James cases).

The Bolton charges also were ultimately brought by experienced prosecutors, including US Attorney Kelly O. Hayes, who has served in the District of Maryland since 2013, and nonpartisan career prosecutor Tom Sullivan.

In Comey’s and James’s cases, Trump’s handpicked US Attorney Lindsey Halligan was essentially forced to bring the charges herself, after other prosecutors balked or were removed.

That Bolton is facing charges isn’t nearly as surprising. In fact, a federal judge back in 2020 basically warned of exactly that.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled in Bolton’s favor in a civil case stemming from a dispute with the Trump administration over the publication of Bolton’s book. But Lamberth otherwise excoriated Bolton for his handling of classified information.

Lamberth said in his ruling that Bolton “likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his nondisclosure agreement obligations.”

That’s about all I can take today. Have a good weekend and just sit back and watch the protests and join on in wherever you are!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

RIP Ace Frehley