The Iowa Caucuses are on January 15th. The New Hampshire primaries are scheduled for January 23rd. Get ready for the cray-cray. Abortion Rights and Trump’s campaign are in the headlines today. As the Boys from South Park say, “I call shenanigans!”
The election in Kentucky has brought a young woman to the front of the abortion debate. This is a Washington Postarticle about her and how she will join the national conversation on a civil right that is very personal and essential for her. “‘Everybody’s daughter’: The rape victim behind Kentucky’s viral abortion ad. Hadley Duvall helped Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear win reelection — and she’s ready to campaign again in 2024.” The feature article was written by Caroline Kitchener.
One month before the governor thanked her for his victory, Hadley Duvall had already won.
Standing in the middle of a football field in mid-October, she looked out at the students of her small Christian university, stunned to be the one wearing the rhinestone tiara. Her classmates could have chosen to honor the student body president ora leading member of the local Bible study. Instead, they’d picked Hadley, the face of a viral ad about abortion and sexual abuse that had begun airing a month earlier, and would soon help Democrats hold the governor’s mansion in one of the most conservative states in the country.
“They don’t hate me,” Duvall,21, recalled thinking as she accepted a bouquet of red roses from her college president. “They made me homecoming queen.”
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection campaign learned aboutDuvall because of a Facebook post about her experience she had written on June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling triggered a near-total abortion ban in Kentucky, one of 12 states with a recently enactedban that makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Days after she heard from Beshear’s team, Duvall was sitting in the dining room of a wealthy Beshear supporter she didn’t know, staring into a video camera. She aimed her words directly atthe Republican candidate for governor, who for months had thrown his full support behind the current version of Kentucky’s law before conceding late in the campaign that he was open toadditional exceptions.
“This is to you, Daniel Cameron,” Duvall said in the ad, her blue eyes narrowed in anger.
“To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”
She tells the story of the abuse in detail. So, I have to issue another Content Warning today. It’s about the details of a 12-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her stepfather.
Republican Campaign Strategist Liz Mair wrote this Op-Ed in today’s New York Times. Mair has a list of clients that are basically in the deplorable basket. “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-Life’ Means a Lot of Things to a Lot of People.”
Well, D’oh. Again, we see the Republican obsession with late-term “abortions,” which are usually the result of something gone horribly wrong, incredibly rare, and the OB/GYN profession considered to be deliveries with bad outcomes. Again, they’re not even considered abortions after the point of fetal viability, where babies will be saved if possible. The overwhelming majority are wanted pregnancies and devasting to the women and families involved.
Many conservatives may call themselves pro-life, but in practice, that may be a more aspirational statement than an accurate reflection of hard policy views. Perhaps by figuring out what it now means to be pro-life — and recognizing that pro-life policy is easiest to sell only when it amounts to a ban on abortions later in pregnancy — Republicans can come up with a new approach to the politics of the issue.
Before Roe was overturned, the term “pro-life” covered a lot of ground — which was useful over decades in galvanizing a broad coalition willing to use abortion as a political cudgel. As Republicans are finding out today, “pro-life” means many things to many people.
Reading how these people think about something so complex and personal is not anything I like to do, but it’s necessary. There are a lot of states trying to get abortion rights on their ballots, and Republicans are pulling shenanigans to try to keep the initiatives away from voters. We have to hear what the deplorable are doing so we can fight them at the ballot box. I put a Rolling Stone article up about South Dakota yesterday. Today, I feature this PBS News Hourreport from last August. Given what I read about South Dakota, I can’t help but believe that deplorables in states like Ohio haven’t shared their tactics.
Across the country, Republican officials and activists who oppose abortion access have worked to make it harder to pass citizen-led ballot measures and added roadblocks to the process of getting abortion directly on the ballot These attempts to stop voters from weighing in directly on abortion aren’t new, but advocates say the current anti-ballot-measure efforts are taking on a renewed pace and ferocity. As voters even in conservative states have chosen to back abortion rights, GOP legislators and officials have been willing to fundamentally change the rules of democracy.
“We’ve been seeing an acceleration of these attacks on ballot measure processes more every year for the past several years,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which works to pass progressive ballot measures. “And the success that abortion rights advocates have had at the ballot box in 2022 is putting fuel on that already burning fire of red state legislatures wanting to exclude their voters from direct democracy.”
Comer engaging with his constituents. John Buss, @repeat1968
These types of initiatives are definitely part of a democratic republic that Republicans would prefer to disappear in a Trump autocracy. So, how is the Republican plan to overthrow a constitutional democracy going? Well, look at the Trump Campaign. This is from Politico. “Trump’s revenge? GOP braces for daily blasts from ‘orange Jesus.’ His reascension, as nominee or the eventual winner, threatens to spark the same clashes with the Hill GOP that took a heavy toll on the party.”
Congressional Republicans are steeling themselves for a return to daily life with Donald Trump — which means constant, uncomfortable questions about his erratic policy whims and political attacks.
With Trump far ahead of the GOP primary pack and leading President Joe Biden in some polls, Republicans are getting a preview of future shellshock akin to their experiences in 2016 and his presidency. It’s likely to continue for the next 11 months. And perhaps four more years after that.
Trump’s recent call to replace the Affordable Care Act is triggering a particularly unwelcome sense of deja vu within the GOP. Even as many Senate Republicans steered away from Trump over the past couple years, now they’re increasingly resigned to another general election that could inundate them with the former president’s often fact-averse and hyperbolic statements.
But Hill Republicans are girding to treat Trump the third-time nominee the same way they did Trump the neophyte candidate and then president. They’re distancing themselves and downplaying his remarks, which touch on policy stresses like his urge to end Obamacare and political grievances like his vow to come down “hard” on MSNBC for its unfavorable coverage.
“He is almost a stream of consciousness,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), one of only three Senate Republicans who will remain in office after voting to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial — the other four have either already left or plan to next year. It’s “analogous to when every day he would tweet,” Cassidy added, “and 99 percent of the time it never came to anything.”
The article continues to highlight how many Trump critics are leaving their office voluntarily this year rather than face Trump and his army of congressional deplorables. This New York Times article outlines his radical ideas for this election cycle. The byline includes Maggie Haberman, FYI. “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First. Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker.”
As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.
What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.
As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.
This article written by Philip Bump in the Washington Post also addresses Trump’s campaign style. “How Donald Trump uses dishonesty.” He might as well say the quiet part out loud.
Trump spent years trying to get people to buy gold-plated condominiums, apartments gilded with veneers of luxury and class. He spent years trying to get lots of people to buy lots of things, really, with allegations of fraudlingering around him and his company for much of that time. But he was never more successful in parlaying dishonesty into investment than since he embraced a career in national politics in 2015.
His approach that year was groundbreaking for a deceptively simple reason. Republican voters, frustrated by Barack Obama’s election and reelection, had increasingly embraced misinformation about national political issues. The Republican establishment, including elected officials, didn’t know how to deal with this. At first, they tried to co-opt the energy, reframing their desired policy preferences in the vernacular common with the tea party or fringe-right media outlets. But there was still a gap between what those outlets and right-wing commentators were endorsing and what established politicians would say.
Trump closed the gap. He said the things about immigrants that were common on the fringe-right, despite being exaggerated or false. He said the things about the left that those commentators, uncoupled from the party, were claiming on Fox News and in blogs. There was a backlash, including from the GOP establishment, that helped increase the audience for his claims. Republicans — especially the hard-right Republicans who were more likely to vote in primaries — heard him and viewed him not as a dishonest, opportunistic demagogue but as a solitary truth-telling pariah. That everyone in a position to know pointed out that Trump was wrong or lying reinforced his political branding: He was the guy challenging the elite hegemony. “Birds aren’t real,” but for an older generation.
This has been Trump’s sales approach ever since. You can see it in the rhetoric he deployed over the weekend at campaign events in Iowa, reiterating false, debunked claims about election fraud and attempting to reframe President Biden as a threat to democracy. But those are the endpoints of his approach, not the mechanism itself.
Consider this bit of rhetoric Trump offered in support of the idea that it is Biden, not him, who undermines America’s systems and history.
“You know that they’ve labeled parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists. I mean, can you believe it?” he said in Cedar Rapids. “But they have. You know, when I first heard that — they have actually gone after parents viciously and violently, and when I first heard it, I thought people were just making it up. They haven’t made it up. You’ve seen that.”
They did make it up. This idea that the Biden administration had called parents “domestic terrorists” has been debunked repeatedly. But — because it’s so compelling a reason to despise Biden and because the debunkings don’t permeate right-wing media — the idea has become embedded in anti-Biden lore. He’s right about one thing, though: His supporters have seen that claim, on Fox News and in right-wing commentary for years. It’s false, but they’ve seen it, and here’s Trump glomming onto the idea so that he can put it to higher use: disparaging Biden and his administration as the threat to democracy.
That’s how it works, over and over. He gets buy-in on a familiar claim and then pivots it to his advantage, either by depicting himself in opposition to shared enemies or by leveraging the credibility he earns to make other false statements. Right after this riff, for example, he started talking about how his opponents purportedly cheat in elections. Graham Kates of CBS News reports that “Trump seeks “urgent review” of gag order ruling in New York civil fraud case.” Not even a court can shut this idiot up while he destroys others’ lives.
Former President Donald Trump intends to appeal a ruling that upheld a gag order in his civil fraud trial in New York, with his attorneys saying Monday that they plan to ask the state’s highest court to review the decision.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron issued the order barring Trump from commenting publicly about his staff after the former president published a social media post disparaging Engoron’s clerk on Oct. 3, the second day of the trial. The order was later expanded to apply to attorneys in the case.
The judge found that Trump and his campaign violated the gag order twice, and Trump paid $15,000 in fines, before the appeals court temporarily stayed the order on Nov. 16. That hiatus lasted two weeks, while a panel of judges in the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court considered, and then rejected, Trump’s request to have the gag order lifted.
Trump is now seeking an “urgent review” by New York’s highest court, called the Court of Appeals, his attorneys said in a filing. Trump has accused Engoron and the clerk, Allison Greenfield, of bias in his filings.
“Without expedited review, [the defendants] will continue to suffer irreparable injury daily, as they are silenced on matters implicating the appearance of bias and impropriety on the bench during a trial of immense stakes,” Trump attorney Clifford Robert wrote. “Petitioners’ counsel have no means of preserving evidence of or arguments regarding such bias and impropriety at this time, since the Gag Orders also prohibit in-court statements.”
I’m unsure how to endure all this since we must deal with it head-on. I suppose ranting here, going to my local to drink a glass of wine and rant, plus just plain ranting to the dog and cats, will suffice for now. I’m not quite too old to also rant at my elected officials, even though there’s not much they do about anything.
We will also get this mess that Republicans have cooked up to get us to ignore Orange Caligula’s rants. Here’s more of those Crazy Train Republicans as reported by Newsweek. “Joe Biden Impeachment Looks More Likely After Walmart Confrontations: Comer. Who had Walmart Confrontations on their Election Bingo cards? Anyone?
Representative James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said on Sunday that an impeachment of President Joe Biden looks more likely after House Republicans heard from their constituents at Walmart over the Thanksgiving holiday.
The GOP has been investigating Biden over allegations that he intervened and benefited from his son Hunter Biden‘s business dealings with China and Ukraine while he was vice president under former President Barack Obama, including accusations of taking bribes. The allegations have been denied by the White House and Hunter Biden’s lawyers, with Democrats criticizing the GOP’s impeachment inquiries for failing to find any meaningful evidence against the president.
Once the impeachment inquiry is complete, the Judiciary Committee will decide on whether to draw up any draft impeachment articles against Biden to be voted on by the House. Comer has said that a vote could take place by early 2024.
Better let MGT do it, or she will come after you with a machete and whack of little Jim. You remember what she did to Boerbert.
We have a few more weeks before we can actually see voter sentiment instead of reading misleading polls. Hang in here with us!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
You’ve got covert action Prejudice to extremes You’ve got primitive cunning And high tech means You’ve got eyes everywhere But people see through you
You’ve got good manipulators Got your store of dupes You’ve got the idiot clamour Of your lobby groups You like to play on fears But people see through you
You’ve got instant communication Instant data tabulation You got the forces of occupation But you don’t get capitulation
‘Cause people see through you People see through you People see through you People see through you
By Bruce Cockburn
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Lately, I’ve been thinking about how to feel about our chances of saving American democracy. Now that Trump and many of his cronies have been indicted, can we breathe easy? I think things are looking better, but it looks like Trump will get the Republican nomination no matter what happens with all his criminal and civil cases. It’s also highly likely that Trump and many of his allies will appeal court decisions again and again in order to delay convictions.
It seems that the Georgia case is likely to proceed quickly; but Trump is going to try to get his case transferred to federal court, as Meadows has already done, and both of them are going to appeal a negative decision all the way to the Supreme Court.
The January 6 case is also moving fairly quickly; but, again, there will be appeals.
The stolen documents case looked promising, but Judge Cannon is determined to protect Trump. It’s likely that Jack Smith will eventually have to appeal her rulings to the 11th Circuit. Whether she can be removed from the case is an open question.
It is very likely to come down in the end to Joe Biden beating Trump again in the 2024 election. I believe he can do it, but those of us who care are going to have to go through some anxious times. I’d be interested to know how others feel about all this.
Now, here’s what’s happening in political news and opinion.
Yesterday, Mitch McConnell had another public episode of “freezing up” while speaking to reporters. I’m guessing this has probably happened more then once–just not during a public appearance.
BREAKING NEWS: Sen. Mitch McConnell appearing to have another scary episode in the media gaggle in Covington today. Aides had to step in to help him out and repeat questions. He was eventually lead away. We'll have the full video on @WLWTpic.twitter.com/q9ex5MHxLV
These could be mini-strokes or symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, according to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Gupta also suggested that these episodes have likely been more frequent than we know, base on the way McConnell’s aides seemed to immediately know what to do.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the longtime Republican leader who has appeared increasingly diminished and frail after a series of falls and a serious head injury this year, froze up suddenly during a news conference on Wednesday in Covington, Ky., the second such episode he has experienced on camera in recent weeks.
Mr. McConnell, 81, was taking questions from reporters after an event hosted by the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce when he was asked for his thoughts on running for re-election in 2026. Mr. McConnell, who appeared thinner and paler than he has in recent months, began to answer the question with a slight chuckle and abruptly stopped speaking for about 30 seconds, standing motionless as he gripped his lectern with his mouth pursed and his eyes fixed.
When an aide approached to ask if he had heard the question, he mumbled “yes,” but he seemed unable to continue speaking or to move.
It was the second such incident in two months, and the scene intensified questions about Mr. McConnell’s health condition, his ability to serve and his future in the Senate.
Mr. McConnell had a concussion in March when he fell at a Washington hotel during a fund-raising event, and was absent from the Senate for weeks while giving almost no updates on his health status. Since then, he has had at least two more falls, which his office did not disclose.
The Senate GOP leader paused for roughly 30 seconds during a press availability in Kentucky, a little more than a month after a similar episode in the Capitol in late July. His office attributed both episodes to lightheadedness, adding that McConnell would consult on Wednesday with a physician as a precautionary measure.
That explanation may not stem questions when the Senate reconvenes next week. While worries about McConnell’s first freeze had faded somewhat during August recess, with even some critics publicly defending his abilities, the second incident is sure to trigger increased scrutiny of McConnell’s hold on the conference, as well as who might succeed him.
Senators quickly sought more information about McConnell’s health after the incident, according to one person familiar with the dynamics. Shortly after the Wednesday incident, McConnell held calls with his closest allies including Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), Conference Chair John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), according to people familiar with the calls. All of them are potential successors to McConnell.
What’s going on in the Senate GOP behind the scenes?
Internally, McConnell is facing dual dynamics: His potential successors — Cornyn, Thune and Barrasso — are backing his leadership, staying supportive and say he’s sharp. There’s no mechanism to force another leadership race until the end of next year, though a group of five senators can call a special conference meeting to discuss the matter.
There’s no sign of that yet, though some Republican senators privately say his grip on the caucus and his engagement in meetings has waned since March. The dynamics are complicated by McConnell’s 2022 leadership race, in which he both won handily and faced his first opposition ever. He beat Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a former chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, 37-10. That means he has a built-in group of detractors amid the latest health queries.
The GOP leader still has unfinished business. He’s trying to facilitate more aid to Ukraine and offer an alternate vision to former President Donald Trump. Trump and McConnell haven’t spoken since December 2020, and Trump continues to advocate for Republicans to replace McConnell. The Kentucky Republican refuses to speak about Trump even as the presidential candidate cruises toward the GOP nomination.
McConnell is also highly focused on flipping the Senate in 2024, particularly after 2022’s disappointing election losses. And he’s hoping to help Daniel Cameron, a former aide, win the Kentucky governorship this fall, even dispatching his chief of staff to the state to help beat Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. If there is a Senate vacancy, the governor would select the replacement from a small group of Republicans recommended by the state GOP.
What’s happening with McConnell also puts the spotlight on 90-year-old Diane Feinstein.
SAN FRANCISCO — A beach house in an exclusive neighborhood. A trust fund worth more than most Americans will see in a lifetime. A family so prominent that the increasingly acrimonious legal dispute must be turned over to an out-of-town judge.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), flanked by aides, arrives for a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Capitol Hill May 11, 2023. (Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)
The feud over the estate left by Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s late husband, Richard Blum, has many of the ingredients of a Netflix thriller — complete with a billion-dollar fortune and the potential for a season-ending cliffhanger over whether she will unleash political chaos by retiring from the Senate. It’s the story that everyone is whispering about given the messy final chapter in the life of a grand dame of California politics.
The family struggle that has emerged in recent weeks raises fresh questions about the 90-year-old senator’s ability to serve. A review of the San Francisco Superior Court file, along with a half-dozen interviews with family friends and associates, suggests Feinstein appears to be almost completely removed from the legal brawl, despite her stature and vast knowledge of government and the law.
“The estate battle is a spectacle that diminishes people’s image and memory of her,” said Jerry Roberts, a journalist who wrote a biography of Feinstein and has closely followed her career for 50 years. “It’s a great sadness.”
The family legal battle mirrors the uncomfortable debate over her future in Washington — with Feinstein herself largely silent about the drama surrounding her.
Feinstein continues to serve in Congress despite questions about her ability to hold office, including memory issues amplified by muddled public comments and concerns about her overall health following a bout of shingles that sidelined her for nearly three months.
The stakes for her party are huge. If she were to step down before her term ends in early 2025, Senate Republicans have said they would prevent another Democrat from taking her place on the Judiciary Committee to block President Joe Biden’s federal court appointments. The Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to change committee assignments.
Former President Donald Trump went absolutely buck wild online Wednesday, posting more than 30 angry videos railing against his 2020 opponent Joe Biden, the Department of Justice, Democrats in general, Fox News, special prosecutor Jack Smith, Rupert Murdoch, and his own attorney general Bill Barr, among others. He bragged that his recent interview with Tucker Carlson has beaten Oprah’s interview with Michael Jackson as the most watched in history, and claimed the first Republican primary debate on Fox News was “one of the lowest rated EVER, if not THE LOWEST.” After hours of posting the rambling video messages, he paused to wish everyone in Florida dealing with Hurricane Idalia well—but immediately returned to his furious ranting. It’s unclear if anything in particular prompted the display, though he did promise on Tuesday to post more videos covering “many subjects in many timeframes.”
You can find some of the crazy videos on Twitter. Here’s one if you’re curious.
I will just point out that so far today Trump has made 102 social media posts including 31 different video clips of himself. And the night is young. But Biden is a stark raving lunatic. Got it, Chief. https://t.co/JQRDPdDMK4
Martin Pengally at The Guardian: Donald Trump vows to lock up political enemies if he returns to White House.
Donald Trump says he will lock up his political enemies if he is president again.
In an interview on Tuesday, the rightwing broadcaster Glenn Beck raised Trump’s famous campaign-trail vow to “lock up” Hillary Clinton, his opponent in 2016, a promise Trump did not fulfill in office.
Beck said: “Do you regret not locking [Clinton] up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?”
Trump said: “The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us.”
Trump has encouraged the “lock her up” chant against other opponents but he remains in considerable danger of being locked up himself.
Under four indictments, he faces 91 criminal charges related to election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments to an adult film star. He denies wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of political persecution. Trials are scheduled next year….
Trump told Beck that Biden was behind the indictments against him. In fact, all were brought by prosecutors independent of the White House: 44 by the justice department special counsel Jack Smith, 34 by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and 13 by Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton county, Georgia.
Trump also claimed “the woman that I never met, that they accused me of rape, that’s being run by a Democrat, a Democrat operative, and paid for by the Democrat [sic] party”.
That was a reference to civil claims brought by E Jean Carroll, a writer who says Trump sexually assaulted her in New York in the 1990s. Earlier this year, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and fined about $5m. A second trial is due next year. The judge in the case has said Trump has been adjudicated a rapist.
Also facing investigations of his business affairs, Trump said Democrats and other opponents were “sick people … evil people”.
It’s still so hard for me to understand how anyone can support this maniac, but here we are.
Before Donald J. Trump was indicted four times over, he was sued by New York’s attorney general, who said that for years the former president, his business and members of his family had fraudulently overvalued their assets by billions of dollars.
Before any of those criminal trials will take place, Mr. Trump is scheduled for a civil trial in New York in October. During the trial, the attorney general, Letitia James, will seek to bar him and three of his children from leading their family business, the Trump Organization, and to require him to pay a fine of around $250 million.
On Wednesday, Ms. James fired an opening salvo, arguing that a trial is not necessary to find that Mr. Trump and the other defendants inflated the value of their assets in annual financial statements, fraudulently obtaining favorable loans and insurance arrangements.
The fraud was so pervasive, she said in a court filing, that Mr. Trump had falsely boosted his net worth by between $812 million and $2.2 billion each year over the course of a decade.
“Based on the undisputed evidence, no trial is required for the court to determine that defendants presented grossly and materially inflated asset values,” the filing said.
But Mr. Trump’s lawyers, in their own motion, argued that the entire case should be thrown out, relying in large part on a recent appellate court decision that appeared as if it could significantly narrow the scope of the case because of a legal time limit. Mr. Trump had received most of the loans in question too long ago for the matter to be considered by a court, his lawyers argue.
On Monday, Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff, testified in an effort to move the Georgia racketeering case against his former boss Donald Trump and co-defendants to federal court. On the stand, he said that he believed his actions regarding the 2020 election fell within the scope of his job as a federal official.
The courts will sort out his legal fate in this and other matters. If convicted and sentenced to prison, Mr. Meadows would be the second White House chief of staff, after Richard Nixon’s infamous H.R. Haldeman, to serve jail time.
But as a cautionary tale for American democracy and the conduct of its executive branch, Mr. Meadows is in a league of his own. By the standards of previous chiefs of staff, he was a uniquely dangerous failure — and he embodies a warning about the perils of a potential second Trump term.
Historically, a White House chief of staff is many things: the president’s gatekeeper, confidant, honest broker of information, “javelin catcher” and the person who oversees the execution of his agenda.
But the chief’s most important duty is to tell the president hard truths.
President Dwight Eisenhower’s Sherman Adams, a gruff, no-nonsense gatekeeper, was so famous for giving unvarnished advice that he was known as the “Abominable No Man.” In sharp contrast, when it came to Mr. Trump’s myriad schemes, Mr. Meadows was the Abominable Yes Man.
It was Mr. Meadows’s critical failure to tell the president what he didn’t want to hear that helped lead to the country’s greatest political scandal, and his own precipitous fall….
There used to be stiff competition for the title of history’s worst White House chief of staff. Mr. Eisenhower’s chief Adams was driven from the job by a scandal involving a vicuna coat; Mr. Nixon’s Haldeman served 18 months in prison for perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal; and George H.W. Bush’s John Sununu resigned under fire after using government transportation on personal trips.
But the crimes Mr. Meadows is accused of are orders of magnitude greater than those of his predecessors. Even Mr. Haldeman’s transgressions pale in comparison. Mr. Nixon’s chief covered up a botched attempt to bug the headquarters of the political opposition. Mr. Meadows is charged with racketeering — for his participation in a shakedown of a state official for nonexistent votes — and soliciting a violation of an oath by a public officer.
Mr. Meadows didn’t just act as a doormat to President Trump; he seemed to let everyone have his or her way. Even as he tried to help Mr. Trump remain in office, Mr. Meadows agreed to give a deputy chief of staff, Chris Liddell, the go-ahead to carry out a stealth transition of power to Joe Biden. This made no sense, but it was just the way Mr. Meadows rolled. Mr. Trump’s chief is a world-class glad-hander and charmer.
Read the rest at the NYT.
That’s it for me today. What stories are you following?
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She tells the story of the abuse in detail. So, I have to issue another Content Warning today. It’s about the details of a 12-year-old girl being repeatedly raped by her stepfather.
Reading how these people think about something so complex and personal is not anything I like to do, but it’s necessary. There are a lot of states trying to get abortion rights on their ballots, and Republicans are pulling shenanigans to try to keep the initiatives away from voters. We have to hear what the deplorable are doing so we can fight them at the ballot box. I put a Rolling Stone article up about South Dakota yesterday. Today, I feature this
The article continues to highlight how many Trump critics are leaving their office voluntarily this year rather than face Trump and his army of congressional deplorables. This 
This article written by Philip Bump in the 
Former President Donald Trump intends to appeal a 
Under four indictments, he faces 91 criminal charges related to election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments to an adult film star. He denies wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of political persecution. Trials are scheduled next year….
President Dwight Eisenhower’s Sherman Adams, a gruff, no-nonsense gatekeeper, was so famous for giving unvarnished advice that he was known as the “
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