Tuesday Reads
Posted: October 26, 2021 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: abortion, Build Back Better plan, Climate change, Federal Spending, Joe Manchin, nor'easter, Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court, weather 18 Comments
The Northeaster, by Winslow Homer
Good Afternoon!!
A huge nor’easter is moving up the coast and will likely hit us this afternoon. New Jersey and New York have already declared states of emergency. It has already been pouring rain here for the past two days and it will continue into tomorrow. We are expecting 70 mph wind gusts, maybe a bomb cyclone, and, of course, power outages. I just hope I don’t lose power. I need to get a better flashlight.
The Washington Post: Intensifying nor’easter lashing Northeast with flooding rain and high winds.
A storm offshore the Mid-Atlantic explosively intensified Monday night, and it is buffeting the Northeast with strong winds and flooding rains.
Flash flood watches are up from extreme northern Delaware and New Jersey through eastern Pennsylvania and most of southern New England. Up to five inches of rain are possible, falling on soils that are largely saturated following an exceptionally wet summer. Parts of New Jersey have already seen more than 4 inches, with rainfall rates topping an inch per hour….
Wind advisories also stretch from the nation’s capital to the coastline of Maine, with a high-wind warning up for the shorelines of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where gusts could top 70 mph. The nor’easter is the first of two sprawling storm systems that will bring inclement weather to the East Coast this week. Its rate of intensification is expected to qualify it as a “bomb cyclone,” or a storm that strengthens with unusual haste.
The storm is the final act of a destructive ensemble that brought tornadoes to the Ozarks and Midwest on Sunday and a line of strong thunderstorms to parts of the Mid-Atlantic overnight Monday, which unloaded 1 to 3 inches of rain from Washington to Philadelphia. By Tuesday, rain and downpours were exiting offshore of the Delmarva Peninsula, spiraling into a new developing low pressure center taking shape off the East Coast.
But nearly half of Americans are deluded about what causes climate change, according to a new poll.
Vice News: 45% of Americans Don’t Believe Humans Cause Climate Change, VICE News/Guardian Poll Shows.
This year was marked by several unprecedented natural disasters, including a “heat dome” marked by sweltering temperatures of up to 113 F that plagued the Pacific Northwest, killing hundreds, and record-breaking wildfire seasons that razed entire towns and displaced thousands. Experts linked the string of natural disasters to the climate crisis, and yet, many Americans are still struggling to understand whether and why the generation-defining crisis is happening.
Emil Carlsen, Nantasket Beach Nor’easter, 1882
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 Americans on behalf of VICE News, the Guardian, and Covering Climate Now, by YouGov, comes less than a week before leaders and delegates from around the world meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26, the United Nations’ climate change conference. The data shows that climate change is a top voter issue in the U.S., behind health care and social programs. For college grads and Democrats, climate change jumped to top spot (for Democrats it was tied with health care).
But while 69.5 percent of respondents believe global warming is happening, they were divided on what’s causing it. Forty-five percent don’t think humans are mostly to blame for global warming, opting instead to blame “natural changes in the environment” or “other,” and 8.3 percent denied global warming is happening altogether.
That’s mostly due to Republicans (55.4 percent) and independents (33 percent) though, who were far more likely than Democrats (17.2 percent) to believe “natural causes” have led to global warming. Young people and educated folks too were significantly more likely to believe humans are to blame for climate change.
Republicans aren’t satisfied with destroying U.S. democracy and killing as many people as possible with Covid-19; apparently they are also determined to hasten the end of the human race. Of course Republican are getting help with their goal of ending democracy and doing nothing about climate change–from a so-called Democrat.
John Nichols at The Nation: Joe Manchin’s Surefire Strategy to Ensure That Democrats Lose in 2022.
If Joe Manchin gets what he wants in negotiations with the Biden White House and his fellow Democratic senators regarding climate policy, which now seems likely, it could have a devastating impact on the planet—and on Democrats’ prospects in 2022.
How so? Let’s answer that question by asking and answering two other questions.
First: Name an issue that young people—an increasingly important and frequently decisive voting bloc—are passionate about? When the US Conference of Mayors surveyed potential voters between the ages of 18 and 29 in 2020, 80 percent said the climate crisis was “a major threat to human life on earth as we know it.” By a 3-1 margin, young people said “bold measures” needed to be taken to address that threat.
Greg Cartmell, October Nor’easter
Second: Name the issue that Democrats are now talking about downplaying in the ”Build Back Better” agenda in order to secure the West Virginia senator’s support? The Biden administration is by all accounts preparing to cut from the budget plan the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP), a key climate initiative that would use a combination of incentives and mandates to get utilities to embrace renewable energy.
Much of the serious reporting on the issue has focused on the devastating impact that losing those clean-energy provisions could have on upcoming climate negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Without them, it will be tougher for Biden to convincingly pledge a 50 percent reduction in US carbon emissions by 2030. That could undermine negotiations on the issue, according to Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State. So serious is the threat that Mann greeted the news of Manchin’s push to abandon the CEPP by declaring, “Joe Manchin just launched a hand grenade at Glasgow.”
Read the rest at The Nation.
More depressing articles on Biden’s shrinking “Build Back Better” legislation:
The Washington Post: Additional Medicare, Medicaid benefits may be whittled or cut as Democrats woo moderates.
Democrats’ sweeping plans to bolster Medicare and Medicaid benefits have been scaled back amid an assault from industry groups and opposition from centrists like Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), with popular coverage expansions likely to be narrowed in hopes of reaching a deal this week.
Meanwhile, drug-pricing reforms have come under sustained attack from pharmaceutical lobbyists, with some Democrats now balking at empowering Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. Scaling back that proposal, which was expected to cut government spending by more than $700 billion over a decade, would complicate Democrats’ ambition to subsidize their coverage expansions.
Manchin told reporters on Monday that he had concerns about some of Democrats’ signature proposals, underscoring the fragile state of negotiations. “You’ve got to stabilize” Medicare’s long-term finances before adding new benefits, the senator said, adding that he thought the Medicaid proposal was “unfair” to states like his, which have already expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act.
The infighting over health care also prompted Democratic leadership this month to consider a plan to delay some of the party’s health agenda to next year, including a plan to repeal a Trump-era ban on prescription drug rebates, hoping that election-year deadlines would force lawmakers to seal deals that are currently proving elusive, said three people with knowledge of the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
That won’t excite Democrats about voting in 2022. And Bernie Sanders is fighting back. The Hill: Sanders draws red lines on Medicare expansion, drug pricing plan in spending bill.
Karol Wyckoff, Nor’easter
Robert Reich at The Guardian: Is Biden’s entire agenda about to shrink into nothingness?
This week, Democrats either reach an agreement on Biden’s social and climate agenda or the agenda may shrink into meaninglessness. The climate measures in particular need to be settled before Biden heads to Scotland for the UN climate summit this weekend, so other nations will see our commitment to reduce carbon emissions.
On Sunday, Biden met with key Democrats to work out spending and tax provisions. Yet every senate Republican and at least two senate Democrats continue to assert that Biden’s agenda is too costly.
Too costly? Really? Compare the Biden’s social and climate package’s current compromise tab of $2tn (spread out over the next 10 years) with:
The $1.9 trillion Trump Republican tax cut that went mostly to the wealthy and large corporations.
Americans were promised that its benefits would “trickle down” to average workers. They didn’t. Corporations used them to finance more stock buybacks. The wealthy used them to buy more shares of stock (and shares of private-equity and hedge funds).
The Trump Republican tax cut should be repealed to pay for Biden’s social and climate package. There is no good reason to retain it. But no senate Republican will vote for its repeal, nor will Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema – making it a political non-starter in a chamber where Democrats have just half the votes.
The $2.1 trillion that America’s 750 billionaires have raked in just since the start of the pandemic.
You might think that at least a portion of this windfall should help pay for Biden’s agenda since much of it has been the result of monopoly power (for example, Amazon’s dominance over e-commerce during the pandemic).
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is proposing a “Billionaires Income Tax,” to be paid by the roughly 750 Americans with $1bn in assets or $100m in income for three consecutive years. It would be a yearly tax on the increasing value of their assets – such as stocks and bonds – regardless of when they sell. They could still write off losses every year. Interestingly, neither Sinema nor West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the other holdout, has voiced opposition to Wyden’s proposal.
The nearly $8 trillion we’ll be spending on the military over the next 10 years.
The United States already spends more on our military than the next 10 biggest military spenders in the world combined.
Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee unveiled a nearly $726bn budget for the Defense Department in 2022. That was about $20bn more than Biden requested. Some $14bn in other funds are set aside for the Pentagon in separate military construction and energy appropriations bills, bringing the total budget to about $740 billion. Over ten years, that comes close to $8tn.
More at the link. Also see this from The Washington Post Editorial Board: Build Back Better is getting worse and worse.
Karen Blackwood, A Nor’easter Coming
I’ll end with this piece by Erin Gloria Ryan at The Daily Beast: These Aren’t Justices. They’re Used Car Salesmen, and They’re Coming for Your Abortion Rights.
One of the oldest sales tricks in the book is the one where the salesperson presents the potential buyer with an extremely crappy option first, and follows that up with an only moderately crappy second option. The potential buyer, dazzled by the jump in quality between options one and two, won’t scrutinize option two as much, because it’s so much better than option one. This has been employed by slimy realtors, wedding planners, and used car salesmen.
And now, we’ve reached the point in the American experiment where the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority has resorted to a cheap sales tactic in an attempt to rehabilitate its image. Lower the customer’s expectations enough, conventional wisdom goes, and they’ll thank you for ripping them off.
The high court agreed to hear the Biden administration’s challenge to the law on Nov. 1, on an expedited schedule. Legal observers predict that the court will toss the law out. I—and many wary pro-choicers—predict that after tossing the law out, the media will fawn over the court’s newfound social moderation, and the Susan Collinses of the world will crow that they were right, the hysterical feminists were wrong, and the Supreme Court was never going to toss abortion rights on—as Mike Pence would say—“the ash-heap of history.”
The following month SCOTUS will hear oral arguments in the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health, testing the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that directly confronts Roe v. Wade by banning abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation. Roe established in 1973 that the government has no right to interfere with abortion access prior to fetal viability—around 24.5 weeks’ gestation (a full-term pregnancy takes 40 weeks). Dobbs is the direct challenge to Roe that conservative activists have had a hard-on for since Reagan.
Ryan argues that, using the “smokescreen” provided by the ridiculous Texas law, the right wing justices will use the Alabama law to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Sorry this post is so full of woe. Hope you all have a pleasant Tuesday; I’ll be taking a news break for the next few hours at least.
Monday Must Read Journalism and Must See TV
Posted: October 25, 2021 Filed under: FBI, Republican presidential politics, Sudan, Treason and Sedition Republican Style 7 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
I want to bring your attention to a TV documentary and a Rolling Stone Exclusive on evidence there was heavy planning on the part of Congressional Republicans in the insurrection on January 6th. I have to teach tonight, get my real ID this afternoon, and this morning a mitigation specialist comes to check out the water damage in my attic. This will be brief.
First, the documentary was shown last night on MSNBC and will be running on Peacock. It basically addresses the failures of Reconstruction after the Civil War and the deep roots of institutional racism in our country. There were compelling interviews with Southern Americans about their experience. There were professors discussing the various failures that led to the Lost Cause and a lot of where we are right now in terms of Black and White America. There were visits to historical–frequently covered up–events throughout our history like the Clinton, MS Race Massacre. There was also a visit to a Civil war museum that lifts up the contributions of black soldiers of the Union Army.
Here’s a basic description via the Chatanooga Free Times Press. “‘Civil War’ documentary, partially filmed in Chattanooga, premieres Sunday on MSNBC.”
A Civil War documentary that includes perspectives from several Chattanooga-area residents will premiere Sunday on MSNBC.
For “The Civil War (or, Who Do We Think We Are),” Emmy-nominated director Rachel Boynton visited classrooms around the nation to see how the war is taught.
Her stop in Chattanooga features Chris Carpenter’s Civil War classes at McCallie School, historian and educator LaFrederick Thirkill, the caretakers of Chattanooga Confederate Cemetery and Chattanooga Connected, a group of community leaders dedicated to intentionally breaking down racial barriers.
Franklin McCallie, a co-founder of Chattanooga Connected, said he’s proud of Boynton’s effort to shed light on “a major thorn in the side of our nation.” The film, he said, should get people talking “rationally and with the hope of healing.”
McCallie was among those who first saw the film in a screening at the Tivoli Theatre earlier this month.
“I feel this film could make a difference,” he said. “She has the liberal side, the very conservative side, and she has shown the depth of feeling of those who have not left the Confederacy behind, who have not left the Civil War behind” more than a century and a half later.
In a review, film critic Matt Zoller Seitz said the movie will be of “particular interest to students who want a lively, thoughtful presentation of basic historical subjects but aren’t going to get it in classrooms where the curriculum is approved by people who are mainly concerned with avoiding discomfort and preserving the status quo.”
This is an interview with the filmmaker.
Portrait of an unidentified African American soldier in uniform, c. 1860s
My next offering is from Rolling Stone. You will want to read this: “EXCLUSIVE: Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff. Two sources are communicating with House investigators and detailed a stunning series of allegations to Rolling Stone, including a promise of a “blanket pardon” from the Oval Office.” It was written by Hunter Walker who had access to two sources working with the ongoing investigation.
I’ll put the list of seditionists up first.
The two sources, both of whom have been granted anonymity due to the ongoing investigation, describe participating in “dozens” of planning briefings ahead of that day when Trump supporters broke into the Capitol as his election loss to President Joe Biden was being certified.
“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically,” the organizer says. “I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.”
For the sake of clarity, we will refer to one of the sources as a rally organizer and the other as a planner. Rolling Stone has confirmed that both sources were involved in organizing the main event aimed at objecting to the electoral certification, which took place at the White House Ellipse on Jan. 6. Trump spoke at that rally and encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol. Some members of the audience at the Ellipse began walking the mile and a half to the Capitol as Trump gave his speech. The barricades were stormed minutes before the former president concluded his remarks.
These two sources also helped plan a series of demonstrations that took place in multiple states around the country in the weeks between the election and the storming of the Capitol. According to these sources, multiple people associated with the March for Trump and Stop the Steal events that took place during this period communicated with members of Congress throughout this process.
Along with Greene, the conspiratorial pro-Trump Republican from Georgia who took office earlier this year, the pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).
“We would talk to Boebert’s team, Cawthorn’s team, Gosar’s team like back to back to back to back,” says the organizer.
Portrait of Christian Fleetwood.
It sounds like the chickens are coming home to roost!
In another indication members of Congress may have been involved in planning the protests against the election, Ali Alexander, who helped organize the “Wild Protest,” declared in a since-deleted livestream broadcast that Gosar, Brooks, and Biggs helped him formulate the strategy for that event.
“I was the person who came up with the Jan. 6 idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and Congressman Andy Biggs,” Alexander said at the time. “We four schemed up on putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that — who we couldn’t lobby — we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body hearing our loud roar from outside.”
Alexander led Stop the Steal, which was one of the main groups promoting efforts to dispute Trump’s loss. In December, he organized a Stop the Steal event in Phoenix, where Gosar was one the main speakers. At that demonstration, Alexander referred to Gosar as “my captain” and declared “one of the other heroes has been Congressman Andy Biggs.”
The indication is the list of acts leading up to riots and sedition is long and extensive. I think we can safely assume that these planners were likely at the hotel session prior to January 6,
I have one breaking news story from Sudan to add down here. “Sudan coup: Military dissolves civilian government and arrests leaders.” The reporting is via the BBC.
A coup is under way in Sudan, where the military has dissolved civilian rule, arrested political leaders and declared a state of emergency.
Coup leader, Gen Abdel Fattah Burhan, has blamed political infighting.
Protesters have taken to the streets of the capital, Khartoum, and there are reports of gunfire.
Military and civilian leaders have been at odds since long-time ruler Omar al-Bashir was overthrown two years ago and a transitional government set up.
Witnesses say the internet is down and that army and paramilitary troops have been deployed across the city. Khartoum airport is closed, and international flights are suspended.
Some protesters chanted “no to military rule”.
Demonstrator Sawsan Bashir told AFP news agency: “We will not leave the streets until the civilian government is back and the transition is back.”
“We are ready to give our lives for the democratic transition in Sudan,” another protester, Haitham Mohamed said.
So, that’s enough for me today. The news will likely be crazy-go-nuts today as the press secretary of the tv series The West Wing used to say.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads: Investigating The January 6 Insurrection and Trump’s Attempted Coup
Posted: October 23, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Coup attempt, Donald Trump, January 6 Committee, January 6 insurrection, Jeffrey Clark, Steve Bannon 16 Comments
Mädchen mit Katze, 1956, by Otto-Dix
Good Morning!!
There is a great deal of news today about the January 6 Capitol insurrection and the House committee’s investigation of what happened.
First up: if you didn’t think Trump and his gang were trying to organize a serious coup attempt, you need to read this stunning article at The Washington Post: Ahead of Jan. 6, Willard hotel in downtown D.C. was a Trump team ‘command center’ for effort to deny Biden the presidency.
They called it the “command center,” a set of rooms and suites in the posh Willard hotel a block from the White House where some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal lieutenants were working day and night with one goal in mind: overturning the results of the 2020 election.
The Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse and the ensuing attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob would draw the world’s attention to the quest to physically block Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s victory. But the activities at the Willard that week add to an emerging picture of a less visible effort, mapped out in memos by a conservative pro-Trump legal scholar and pursued by a team of presidential advisers and lawyers seeking to pull off what they claim was a legal strategy to reinstate Trump for a second term.
They were led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon was an occasional presence as the effort’s senior political adviser. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was there as an investigator. Also present was John Eastman, the scholar, who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
They sought to make the case to Pence and ramp up pressure on him to take actions on Jan. 6 that Eastman suggested were within his powers, three people familiar with the operation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Their activities included finding and publicizing alleged evidence of fraud, urging members of state legislatures to challenge Biden’s victory and calling on the Trump-supporting public to press Republican officials in key states.
The effort underscores the extent to which Trump and a handful of true believers were working until the last possible moment to subvert the will of the voters, seeking to pressure Pence to delay or even block certification of the election, leveraging any possible constitutional loophole to test the boundaries of American democracy.
Here’s what these coup-organizers were doing:
Kaate Diehn-Bitt, Peter Paul Diehn with cat
The three people familiar with the operation described intense work in the days and hours leading up to and even extending beyond 1 p.m. on Jan 6, when Congress convened for the counting of electoral votes.
In those first days in January, from the command center, Trump allies were calling members of Republican-dominated legislatures in swing states that Eastman had spotlighted in his memos, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, encouraging them to convene special sessions to investigate fraud and to reassign electoral college votes from Biden to Trump, two of the people familiar with the operation said.
On Jan. 2, Trump, Giuliani and Eastman spoke to 300 state legislators via a conference call meant to arm them with purported evidence of fraud and galvanize them to take action to “decertify” their election results. “You are the real power,” Trump told the state lawmakers, according to a Washington Examiner report. “You’re the ones that are going to make the decision.”
The goal was to convince these state lawmakers to work to decertify the election results in their states and to try to convince Mike Pence to delay certification of the electoral college results to give these insurrectionist legislators time to convince their colleagues to overthrow the election results. And Bannon was involved in these efforts.
Also on Jan. 2, Eastman, Giuliani and Epshteyn appeared on Bannon’s podcast to make the case directly to Bannon’s pro-Trump listeners. They discussed what Bannon called that day’s “all-hands meeting with state . . . legislators that the Trump campaign and also others are putting on.” The comments were first highlighted by Proof.
They argued that state lawmakers were legally bound to reexamine their election results. “It’s the duty of these legislatures to fix this, this egregious conduct, and make sure that we’re not putting in the White House some guy that didn’t get elected,” Eastman said. He contended that Congress could itself decide on Jan. 6 to select Trump electors in contested states, but that “it would certainly be helped immensely if the legislatures in the states looked at what happened in their own states and weigh in.”
I hope you’ll go read the rest. Every sentence in the article is important.
Will Bannon pay a price for his involvement in the coup attempt? That will be up to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman writes: Don’t be too sure about the Justice Department’s ‘duty’ to indict Bannon.
Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland has a far more complicated decision coming his way than people realize.
The Department of Justice, in the person of the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, has received a referral from the House of Representatives to bring criminal contempt charges against Stephen K. Bannon, who has refused to comply with a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6.
Two Cats, by Franz Marc
The righteousness of the referral is not in doubt. There is every reason to think Bannon has important first-hand information about the planning of the Capitol attack. After all, he crowed the night before on his podcast: “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow…. Strap in.”
In addition, as the committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), emphasized Tuesday, there is strong reason to think Bannon knows if and how Trump was “personally involved” in the Jan. 6 attack. No matter is more important for Congress to probe or for the American public to understand.
As for Bannon’s thumbing his nose at a subpoena, it could not be a more flagrant or a more contemptuous violation of the law.
Enforcing the subpoena “should be a slam dunk,” Littman writes, “But it isn’t.” According to Littman, there are several Office of Legal Counsel memos that will impact Garland’s actions. One decision is that the DOJ is not required to enforce subpoenas on members of the executive branch–the AG makes the decision. Other OLC memos address the issue of White House officials and executive privilege. I’m not sure I understand this, because Bannon was not a White House official when all this was happening–even when he was in the White House, he was only a political adviser. Furthermore, Trump is no longer president and how can he invoke executive privilege over planning for a coup? Littman writes:
There is a way for Garland to square the circle. The Office of Legal Counsel’s memo that has precluded pursuit of criminal contempt charges was based on cases in which the department issued legal opinions that the assertions of privilege were proper.
Bannon’s suggestion that the subpoenaed documents and communications are properly covered by executive privilege is spurious at best. First, there’s the fact that Trump hasn’t actually asserted the privilege. On top of that, the select committee’s subpoena involves events that happened years after Bannon left the executive branch; it’s ridiculous to say the relevant testimony and documents must be kept secret to ensure that presidents can freely do the country’s business.
Finally, even if Bannon had a sound claim to executive privilege, Congress’ and the public’s need to know the information covered by the subpoena is paramount, and that factor should prevail. (Likewise, public interest trumped Nixon’s claim to privacy in the 1977 Supreme Court case, which was about the disposition of the disgraced president’s papers.)
More January 6 committee news:
The House select committee investigating the US Capitol insurrection is planning for former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to testify next Friday — teeing him up to be the first Trump administration official to comply with a subpoena for an interview with the panel, two sources familiar with the committee’s inquiry told CNN.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Girl with Cat
Clark’s testimony could be a major step forward for Democrats as they attempt to determine what former President Donald Trump, Republican members of Congress and his advisers did and said behind closed doors about overturning the results of the 2020 election before January 6.
CNN has also learned that Alyssa Farah, former director of strategic communications in the Trump White House and assistant to the president, has voluntarily met with Republicans on the House select committee and provided information in several meetings, according sources familiar with the matter. There are two Republicans on the committee — Vice Chair Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
The panel has been talking to an ever-widening circle of witnesses as part of its sprawling investigation — and testimony from Farah in addition to Clark would give the panel a crucial new level of insight into Trump’s thinking after the election….
After the deadly January 6 insurrection, Farah told CNN that Trump lied to the American people about the 2020 presidential election results and said that he should “seriously consider” resigning from office.
Clark emerged in the last week of 2020 as a central player in Trump’s two-month-long effort to overturn the vote in key states — and as one of the officials who was in direct contact with Trump.
While serving as the acting head of civil cases at the Justice Department at the end of the Trump presidency, Clark floated plans to give Georgia’s legislature and other states backing to undermine the popular vote results. He gave credence to unfounded conspiracy theories of voter fraud, according to documents from the Justice Department, and communicated with Trump about becoming the attorney general, a Senate investigation found this month.
The extent of Clark’s talks with Trump in the days before January 6 aren’t yet publicly known. The committee subpoenaed Clark for testimony and documents last week.
Did Clark decide to testify because he feared being referred for criminal contempt along with Bannon?
Also from CNN: House investigators target the money trail behind January 6 rally.
The House select committee is setting its sights on the financing behind events and people associated with January 6, CNN has learned, including money that funded pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rallies that preceded the attack on the Capitol that day, in an effort to determine whether any election law violations or financial crimes took place.
Franz Marc, Girl with Cat, 1910
The Democratic-led panel is focused in part on understanding how event organizers and vendors were paid, and how the two rallies were funded, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation, including some who have been interviewed by the committee. Investigators also want to know if any funding came from domestic extremists or foreign sources, sources say.
As the committee moves forward with its sweeping probe of January 6, among the many new details CNN has learned is that the committee has divided its work into at least five investigative teams, each with their own color designation.
The ‘green’ team, for example, is tasked with tracking money, including the funding behind the rallies, as well as untangling the complex web of financial ties between rally organizers and entities affiliated with former President Donald Trump or his campaign, according to multiple sources.
Some of the other teams such as the “red” “blue” and “gold” teams are examining everything from the motivation of participants, whether there was coordination between groups, and whether Trump used his executive authority to pressure lawmakers, former Vice President Mike Pence and the Justice Department, according to the sources familiar with the committee’s work.
“As Rep. Liz Cheney said the other night, it’s very likely that Trump was personally involved in the planning and execution of January 6 and these money trails can help adduce additional proof of that,” CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen said. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, is vice chair of the select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.
I’ll post more interesting links in the comment thread. Have a nice weekend, Sky Dancers!!
Friday Reads: Mitch McConnell keeps trotting out his Prize Livestock
Posted: October 22, 2021 Filed under: abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, Voting Rights, Voting Rights and Voter Suppression, War on Women 10 Comments
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Still Life, Cactus, 1919
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Louisiana is a little later than most states that I’ve lived in with their State Fair Livestock Shows. It probably has something to do with the heat and peak hurricane season which occurs during the Labor Day Weekend which is when I was used to doing the Iowa State Fair, the Nebraska State Fair, and the Minnesota State Fair.
My favorite part as a kid was the kids from 4H showing off their pet livestock projects. It was always a real range of farm animals and the kids and animals seemed really close when you watched them in their pens together.
The one thing that killed all that for me was knowing that what looked like a loving pet to me was most likely going to wind up at an auction. I like the Crazy Cajun Pygmy Goat Shows though because I know they’re likely going to live a long life attending yuppy yoga goat classes, or clearing out the bramble in some backyard for a fee, or being the focus of some kid’s birthday party, or providing the basis for some cheese.
Perhaps I read Charlotte’s Web to my kids way too many times.
The point is that both the ranchers-to-be and the meals-to-be love those shows. The animals have no idea that their purpose is to ensure everyone knows their place in the food chain. It’s mostly to remind everyone that no matter how much attention they get at one point, they’re simply there to show off enough so everyone will go off and find more of their kind to slaughter.
This is about how I feel about Mitch McConnell trotting out Amy Coney Barrett and now, Clarence Thomas to represent just how much animals will preen for the camera when they’re about to sell the rights that got them there out. I wonder if he’ll trot out the white guys too? Nah, it’s all about preserving only their rights.
https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1451585520153370645
Saguaro Cactus at Sun Set, Gayle McGinty
The deal with livestock shows is they are always big deals to a few that lead up to mass slaughter for the innocent.
This is from The Washington Post. “McConnell lauds Thomas, says Supreme Court should not heed the ‘rule of polls’” Someone needs to tell Mitch the settled laws are not about the rule of polls. They are about the Rule Of Law.
The conservative think tank was the site of a day-long celebration of Thomas’s three decades on the court, with panels of judges, lawyers and legal analysts celebrating the 73-year-old justice’s record.
McConnell was the keynote speaker, and he urged boldness and independence from the federal judiciary he had a large hand in reconstructing. He pushed through a record number of confirmations of federal judges when Republicans controlled the Senate and President Donald Trump was making nominations.
Included in the list are three Supreme Court justices: Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Polls have shown public approval of the Supreme Court is falling — those who say it is too conservative are growing — but McConnell said popularity is not the standard by which judges should be evaluated.
“They’re not tasked with reasoning backwards from abstract impressions about what outcome the nation supposedly needs or the court’s public standing supposedly requires,” McConnell said. “We need the rule of law, not the rule of polls.”
Thomas has provided the example, McConnell said. “For 30 years and counting, you have had the brightest possible North Star illumining the path before you, the courage and fidelity of Justice Clarence Thomas,” the senator from Kentucky said.
…
Thomas is the second justice to appear with McConnell in the last two months. Barrett accompanied him to the University of Louisville for a speech at the center that bears the senator’s name in September.
“My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” she said. Critics said it was not a choice setting for such a nonpartisan message.
McConnell is the politician most responsible for the change on the Supreme Court and in the federal judiciary, said Donald McGahn, Trump’s White House counsel. “He’s always had an eye on the long game,” McGahn said in introducing McConnell.
Democrats remain bitter about McConnell’s role. As Senate majority leader, he refused to allow a hearing on President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court choice Merrick Garland in 2016, saying it was inappropriate in an election year. Garland was nominated to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February of that year.
Landscape with Cacti, Diego Rivera, 1931
It’s always disheartening to see minorities and women welcome their overlords. It’s something I’ve never understood. At least the animals at a livestock show don’t see what’s come but, damn, what person isn’t aware of the results of selling out? We’re seeing Republicans block every attempt to provide access to voting rights. They’re gerrymandering Texas right now in a manner that over-represents white people and underrepresented Hispanic Americans. This is from The Dallas News. “Texas’ latest congressional gerrymander wouldn’t pass muster under doomed Freedom to Vote Act. Senate Democrats seem to lack votes needed to push through scaled-down voting rights bill.” Let’s face it. They want governance by white christianist men period.
Congress is preparing for a showdown Wednesday on a doomed bill to protect minority voting rights that Democrats view as critical – and that, if it were in place, would derail the gerrymandered redistricting plan just finalized in Austin.
Republicans set aside a scant 14 of 38 U.S. House seats in Texas for Democrats, leaving the rest for themselves.
That’s 37% for Democrats, 63% for Republicans – a gap of 26 points that doesn’t even come close to passing muster under the Freedom to Vote Act, which uses recent federal elections as the benchmark to determine whether a congressional map is even modestly fair.
“There are serious voting rights issues on the map,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.
He noted how blatantly the Texas congressional map that Gov. Greg Abbott will soon sign violates the proposed ban on partisan gerrymandering.
Republicans carried Texas in the last two races for president and U.S. Senate – but not by anything close to 26 points.
Sahuaro, Tucson, Arizona (1940) by Maynard Dixon
This analysis is from The Texas Observer and Justin Miller. “REPUBLICANS’ GERRYMANDERED MAPS TURN BACK TIME IN TEXAS. Once again, Republicans draw the lines of power to protect their incumbents and amplify their white, conservative, rural base—and deny millions of Texans of color their due political representation.”
With a quick glance at the new redistricting maps that Texas Republicans just rammed into law, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Lone Star State’s population became a whole lot whiter, more Republican, and more rural over the past decade.
But that is a political illusion achieved through surgical lines that create donut-hole districts, gnarled fists, and land bridges, drawn by a party desperate to avoid confronting the realities of a transformed state. People of color constituted 95 percent of Texas’ population growth over the past decade, including roughly half from Latinos alone, earning the state two new congressional districts. But Republicans used redistricting to effectively turn back time, locking in the white majoritarian rule that has controlled Texas since Reconstruction.
Democrats, voting rights advocates, and everyday constituents alike protested that the maps carved apart neighborhoods and voters of color in blatantly discriminatory fashion. But Republicans rushed through the legislative process with their fingers in their ears, providing the public with only a perfunctory chance to provide input as the maps advanced at a rapid clip. GOP leaders insisted that the maps were drawn “race-blind” and that their lawyers had assured them they were not running afoul of the federal Voting Rights Act.
By spreading out the electoral power of their white base in the vast expanses of deep-red rural Texas, Republicans shored up their current hold on power. They drew majority-white districts and fewer Hispanic majority districts, making red seats redder and blue seats bluer. This was done by defusing the ascendant political power of Latino, Black, and Asian voters in the cities and suburbs of Texas.
If this all sounds familiar, it should. During the last redistricting cycle in 2010, Republicans similarly maximized their political control with districts that courts repeatedly found were drawn with intent to racially discriminate. Those legal battles lasted through almost the entire decade. Now, more examples of brazen racial gerrymandering have cropped up in the new maps, just as they did 10 years prior. Take State Senate District 10 in Tarrant County. In 2018, a coalition of Black, Hispanic, and white voters flipped the seat by electing Democrat Beverly Powell. She may not have the seat for long; the new map transforms the 10th district into a conservative stronghold that dilutes Black and Hispanic votes by way of Republican voters in several nearby rural counties.
In the Texas House map, the GOP-held 54th district in Bell County had become increasingly competitive as the Black and Hispanic population grew in Killeen, which overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020. To protect that seat, Republicans made the 54th into a Bell County donut that completely encircled another Republican district. Each district got a piece of the county’s two Democratic-voting cities, Killeen and Temple.
Districts like the 22nd in Fort Bend County and the 24th in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs had finally become political battlegrounds in the last election cycle as multi-racial coalitions banded together. “That was like a glimpse of the future of American politics. Very coalitional, very multi-racial,” says Michael Li, a redistricting lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice. But Republicans chose to dismantle those seats, packing diversifying areas into new deep-blue Democratic districts or cracking them off into Republican-held seats made whiter and redder by extending out into far-flung rural counties.
“Republicans are really scared of the suburbs because they’re becoming more diverse and because white voters in the suburbs aren’t as reliable for Republicans anymore and they’re not sure they’re getting it back anytime soon,” Li says.
Yellow Cactus, Georgia O’Keefe, 1929
So, hello from the Post Roe v. Wade reality. This is from NPR. “The Supreme Court keeps Texas abortion law in place, but agrees to review it.” Mitchell has obviously been the fluffer for this. Notice he didn’t need to fluff Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review a controversial Texas abortion law on Nov. 1 but refused to block the law while it examines Texas’ unusual enforcement scheme and whether the Department of Justice has the right to sue to block the law.
The court will not directly consider the constitutionality of the law. Instead, in its order, the court said it would consider the following questions:
- whether “the state can insulate from federal-court review a law that prohibits the exercise of a constitutional right by delegating to the general public the authority to enforce that prohibition through civil action”;
- and can “the United States bring suit in federal court and obtain injunctive or declaratory relief against the State, state court judges, state court clerks, other state officials, or all private parties to prohibit S.B. 8 from being enforced.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented with keeping the law in place.
“The promise of future adjudication offers cold comfort, however, for Texas women seeking abortion care, who are entitled to relief now,” she wrote. “These women will suffer personal harm from delaying their medical care, and as their pregnancies progress, they may even be unable to obtain abortion care altogether.”
She added:
“There are women in Texas who became pregnant on or around the day that S. B. 8 took effect. As I write these words, some of those women do not know they are pregnant. When they find out, should they wish to exercise their constitutional right to seek abortion care, they will be unable to do so anywhere in their home State. Those with sufficient resources may spend thousands of dollars and multiple days anxiously seeking care from out-of-state providers so overwhelmed with Texas patients that they cannot adequately serve their own communities. Those without the ability to make this journey, whether due to lack of money or childcare or employment flexibility or the myriad other constraints that shape people’s day-to-day lives, may be forced to carry to term against their wishes or resort to dangerous methods of self-help.”
We may all have to become flowers that bloom in a democracy desert quite soon. I’m glad BB covered the Republican cover-up of the insurrection yesterday so I can just forget it a bit here. We’re going to have to organize and show up again. Get ready. This will be a wild News Day.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Two Selfish Senators vs. Democracy
Posted: October 21, 2021 Filed under: just because 11 Comments
Soft Winds, by Daniel Pollera
Good Morning!!
Hopes for the future of U.S. democracy and opportunities to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and improve the lives of working and middle class Americas are all being held hostage by two people who call themselves Democrats, but refuse to compromise to advance those Democratic goals. Now one of those people is threatening to leave the party, according to Mother Jones editor David Corn: SCOOP: Manchin Tells Associates He’s Considering Leaving the Democratic Party and Has an Exit Plan.
In recent days, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has told associates that he is considering leaving the Democratic Party if President Joe Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill do not agree to his demand to cut the size of the social infrastructure bill from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion, according to people who have heard Manchin discuss this. Manchin has said that if this were to happen, he would declare himself an “American Independent.” And he has devised a detailed exit strategy for his departure.
Manchin has been in the center of a wild rush of negotiations with his fellow Democrats and the White House over a possible compromise regarding Biden’s ambitious Build Back Better package, and Manchin’s opposition to key provisions—including Medicare and Medicaid expansion, an expanded child tax credit, and measures to address climate change—has been an obstacle that the Democrats have yet to overcome. As these talks have proceeded, Manchin has discussed bolting from the Democratic Party—perhaps to place pressure on Biden and Democrats in these negotiations.
He told associates that he has a two-step plan for exiting the party. First, he would send a letter to Sen. Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, removing himself from the Democratic leadership of the Senate. (He is vice chair of the Senate Democrats’ policy and communications committee.) Manchin hopes that would send a signal. He would then wait and see if that move had any impact on the negotiations. After about a week, he said, he would change his voter registration from Democrat to independent.
It is unclear whether in this scenario Manchin would end up caucusing with the Democrats, which would allow them to continue to control the Senate, or side with the Republicans and place the Senate in GOP hands. In either event, he would hold great sway over this half of Congress.
Without Manchin’s vote, the Democrats cannot pass the package in the 50–50 Senate. And a vote on this measure is key to House passage of the $1 trillion bipartisan road-bridges-and-broadband infrastructure bill the Senate approved in August. (Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, has also been a problem for the party.) Manchin has met with Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and a variety of his fellow Senate Democrats this week in an effort to strike a deal. Through it all, he has insisted that $1.75 trillion is his top and final offer, and he has constantly said no to proposed programs that almost every other congressional Democrat supports. He has told his fellow Democrats that if they don’t accept his position, they risk getting nothing.
At Politico, Playbook reporters have the “backstory” on Corn’s scoop.
A rather angry Manchin told our Burgess Everett that Corn’s story was “bullshit.”
We talked to Corn on Wednesday night and came away with the impression of a reporter who is 1,000% sure his story was correct.
“The sourcing was impeccable,” Corn said. “Even if he had told me it was bullshit the story still would have run.”
Corn contacted Manchin’s office early Wednesday telling his press secretary that he had a time-sensitive story and wanted to make sure he had a good Manchin contact who could respond. Manchin’s press secretary asked the reporter to send it to her.
At around 10:30 a.m., Corn sent her an email outlining what he would be reporting. No response.
At noon he followed up. “I said we are going to post soon, will you be getting back to me,” Corn told Playbook. “And silence — crickets.”
We’ve known Corn for a long time and we trust him. We’ve known his scrupulous editor Clara Jeffery for even longer. (Full disclosure: One of us was her intern in 1997!) Corn and Mother Jones did not invent this. Manchin clearly told someone the account that Corn relayed in his piece.
Why now? We’ve heard several theories that this was a strategic leak. Some say it was designed to reduce Manchin’s leverage in the reconciliation talks by making him seem desperate.
“I’m just wondering if Joe is blowing off some steam to someone or whether someone planted the story to put pressure on Joe,” a friend of the senator told Playbook. “He hasn’t talked about leaving the party in a very long time. And he’s just not in a desperate situation. He’s feeling like he’s holding all the cards.”
Conversely, others say the story was meant to increase Manchin’s leverage by scaring Democrats. A Manchin exit from the Democratic Party would be hugely embarrassing for Biden. (Though, as several of Manchin’s Senate colleagues told us, even if Manchin became an independent it doesn’t necessarily mean that he wouldn’t caucus with the Democrats.)
But our best (informed) guess is that it was neither — that this story, like many good scoops, fell into Corn’s lap without any Machiavellian strategy behind it.
FWIW, we couldn’t help notice that both Corn and Manchin were spotted circulating at the same party Monday night at the French ambassador’s residence, where Steve Clemons was being honored with France’s Legion of Honor.
Manchin Democratic Party exit rumors seem to spike once a season, and they’ve been circulating recently. Even the most plugged-in operatives don’t completely discount the idea that Manchin may have discussed the idea. For instance, when we asked a senior White House official about the Corn report, the person replied, “It’s all been kicking around. Who knows?
More Manchin reads:
The Washington Post: All eyes on Manchin after Republicans again block voting rights legislation.
And then there’s Kyrsten Sinema. At New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait writes: Report: Sinema Bent on Destroying Biden Presidency to Keep Taxes on the Wealthy Low.
The Wall Street Journal today reports that Sinema “has told lobbyists that she is opposed to any increase” in taxes on high-income individuals, businesses, or capital gains. Her opposition is reportedly “pushing Democrats to more seriously plan for a bill that doesn’t include those major revenue increases.”
If this report is true, it would likely be a death blow to Biden’s social agenda. Senate rules require that creating or expanding any social program — health care, child care, education, or anything else — can only be made permanent if it has some funding source. If Sinema refuses to support any tax increases on the wealthy, there’s no financing available to come anywhere close.
Biden’s plan does have some other funding. One stream of income is beefed-up enforcement of taxes owed by the Internal Revenue Service. That plan is under pressure from centrist Democrats and likely to exist in shrunken form, if at all. The other is a proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs, which would save half a trillion dollars over a decade that could be used to cover new spending. But Sinema reportedly opposes that, too.
Summer Porch, by Sally Storch
Politico has a more restrained version of the same report on Sinema’s position, leaving open the possibility of theoretically finding some way of taxing rich people other than the ones Democrats have been planning on. But even if she identifies such a method, it would start the arduous process of building consensus and then overcoming the inevitable lobbying response from scratch, probably dooming the entire process. CNBC’s Kayla Tausche likewise reports that Sinema has endorsed small, but not nonexistent, increases in rates on the wealthy. Either she has changed her mind or is telling different things to different people, but the upshot is that she has a wildly divergent position on taxing the wealthy than any other member of her caucus.
What makes her opposition to taxing the wealthy so peculiar is that it is not a public opinion winner. Democratic promises to raise taxes on the wealthy are one of the most popular elements of their plan. What’s more, Sinema voted against the Trump tax cuts — and those tax cuts completely failed to produce the promised increase in business investment that was their rationale.
The Democratic party’s main political asset is its willingness to make a very tiny number of people pay more money that can finance programs that benefit a very large number of people. That only works up to a point — at some level, you can raise taxes on the rich so high it fails to yield any new revenue — but there is no evidence the current tax code is anywhere near that level. Indeed, after the Trump tax cuts, the tax code for the wealthy has become scandalously lax.
From The Daily Beast: Kyrsten Sinema’s Own Advisers Just Dumped Her.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s own advisors are the latest former allies to have had enough of the Arizona Democrat’s political maneuvering: on Thursday, the New York Times reported that five military veterans resigned from a board advising the senator on policy issues.
In a letter to Sinema, they confronted her with a litany of offenses—accusing her of using them as “window dressing” for her political brand, ignoring their recommendations, and going back on her campaign promises to protect voting access and reduce the price of prescription drugs.
Andrew Wyeth, The Porch
“Are you choosing to answer to big donors rather than Arizonans?” they asked. “These are not the actions of a maverick.”
Their joint resignation letter was highlighted in a new ad from the progressive veterans’ group Common Dreams, which has already bankrolled ad campaigns targeting Sinema for her resistance to a multi-trillion dollar social spending package championed by President Joe Biden and nearly all Democratic lawmakers.
Sinema’s objections could well reduce the size of that legislation by at least $1 trillion and scuttle elements that are broadly popular in the party—like raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for investments in health care and energy. Unlike fellow objector Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sinema has largely been silent on her positions through negotiations, exasperating Democrats who need her support in order to pass the bill.
Onetime allies and friends of Sinema’s in Arizona have been flummoxed by her moves, too, and The Daily Beast has reported that she is increasingly isolated after having alienated much of her former political network. Amid her public silence, she has largely stiffed national and constituent groups hoping to engage with her on the legislation.
Manchin and Sinema are determined to destroy the country for their own selfish reasons. A pox on both their houses!
I’ll end with this sobering piece from Dame Magazine: Sleepwalking Toward A Post Democracy America, by Brynne Tannahill. This is what Manchin and Sinema are enabling.
There has been a dawning realization among some of thecenter-left that the GOP fully intends to end democracy in the U.S. and assume permanent control of the government. Even neoconservatives like Robert Kagan have come to this same conclusion. The GOP is telegraphing their punches clearly: They’re forcing out any Republicans who would oppose a soft coup; Trump will run in 2024; he will win the nomination, and, if he doesn’t win the Electoral College outright, he will declare the election fraudulent the morning after. Whereupon states with GOP governors and legislatures will overturn the state election results and send alternate slates of electors, forcing a constitutional crisis, the GOP is likely to win.
The fact that it has taken this long for people to recognize the real danger here is something of testament to how omnipresent and blinding the myth of American exceptionalism is, resulting in “it can’t happen here” becoming cultural dogma. In reality, John Eastman wrote amemorandum proposing this exact method to overturn the election in 2020, which Trump latched onto, and was the raison d’être for the January 6th assault on the capitol, where the insurrectionists were trying to force Vice-President Pence to carry out part of the plan.
John Eastman isn’t just some random Republican lawyer. He was a professor of law. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He founded the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage. And he served as chairman of the Federalist Society’s Federalism & Separation of Powers practice group, and as a board member of the Claremont Institute—a powerful conservative think tank providing support to the GOPs efforts to enact acompetitive authoritarian coup.
Cape Cod Morning, Edward Hopper
Claremont president Ryan Williamsdeclared in an interview with The Atlantic that “the mission of the Claremont Institute is to save Western civilization.” Their plan to save “Western civilization” requires that conservatives “effect a realignment of our politics and take control of all three branches of government for a generation or two.”
Ultimately, Claremont believes that Western civilization is at stake because the U.S. is controlled by people who aren’t really American. “Most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.” This is in great part because they (wrongly) think: “The Founders were pretty unanimous, with Washington leading the way, that the Constitution is really only fit for a Christian people”
The narrative is clear: Conservatives believe that they need to seize permanent control and re-center their brand of Christianity as the basis for government, culture, and law. They do not believe that more than 50% of America matters, because they are not “real Americans.” Their vision for government is one in which more than half the country is systematically disenfranchised and forced to live in a society in which they have little say.
The greatest irony of Williams’s Atlantic article is that he says he fears a civil war, but fails to acknowledge his plan for overthrowing democracy and instituting a theocratic authoritarian government as the likely cause. In the same way that some Republicans shrug off slavery as a “necessary evil,” modern conservatives see the destruction of democracy and disenfranchisement of most Americans as vaguely regrettable, but necessary to save “Western civilization.”
This is a very long article, so I hope you’ll go read the Rest at Dame Magazine.
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