April 16, 2022 (Saturday)
And just like that, it’s spring again, and the world in this part of the globe, once again, is waking up.
There’s a lot of work ahead of us in the next several months, but for now, let’s take a deep breath and take the night off.
My very best wishes to those observing Passover, Ramadan, and Easter.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
[“Eastbound,” by Buddy Poland.]
April 17, 2022 (Sunday)
Today, political scientist and member of the Russian legislative body Vyacheslav Nikonov said, “in reality, we embody the forces of good in the modern world because this clash is metaphysical…. We are on the side of good against the forces of absolute evil…. This is truly a holy war that we’re waging, and we have to win it and of course we will because our cause is just. We have no other choice. Our cause is not only just, our cause is righteous and victory will certainly be ours.”
Nikonov was defending the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which Russian troops have leveled cities, killed thousands, kidnapped children, and raped and tortured Ukrainian citizens.
The intellectual leap from committing war crimes to claiming to be on the side of good might be explained by an interview published in the New Statesman at the beginning of April. Speaking with former Portuguese secretary of state for European affairs Bruno Maçães, Sergey Karaganov, a former advisor to Russian president Vladimir Putin, predicted the end of the western democracies that have shaped the world since World War II. Dictators, he suggested, will take over.
Democracy is failing and authoritarianism rising, Karaganov said, because of democracy’s bad moral foundations. As he put it: “Western civilisation has brought all of us great benefits, but now people like myself and others are questioning the moral foundation of Western civilisation.”
Karaganov’s statement says a lot about why white evangelicals in the U.S. are willing to toss democracy overboard in favor of a one-party state dominated by one powerful leader. They deny the premise of a system in which all people are equal before the law and have the right to have a say in their government.
Putin cemented his rise to power in 2013 with antigay laws that supporters claimed defended conservative values against an assault of “genderless and fruitless so-called tolerance,” which “equals good and evil.” Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, an ally of Putin’s, has been open about his determination to replace the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy with Christian culture, stop the immigration that he believes undermines Hungarian culture, and reject “adaptable family models” for “the Christian family model.”
The American right has embraced this attack on our system. In October 2021, former vice president Mike Pence spoke in Budapest at a forum denouncing immigration and urging traditional social values, where he told the audience he hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would soon outlaw abortion thanks to the three justices Trump put on the court. Next month, the American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will be held in Budapest, Hungary; Orbán will be the keynote speaker.
Increasingly, Republican lawmakers have called not for the U.S. government to leave business alone, as was their position under President Ronald Reagan, but to use government power to crack down on ”woke” businesses they insist are undermining the policies they value—meaning companies that protect LGBTQ rights, racial justice, reproductive choice, and access to the ballot. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis and his supporters have threatened Disney for its mild defense of LGBTQ rights, insisting the company grooms children for sexual abuse, and Texas Republicans are considering barring local governments from doing business with any national company that provides abortion coverage for its employees.
To achieve such control in a country where they are a minority, they are skewing the electoral system to install a one-party government. Just like Orbán’s government in Hungary, and Putin’s in Russia, the one-party government they envision will benefit a very small group of wealthy people: witness the Russian oligarchs whose yachts worth hundreds of millions of dollars are being impounded all over the world. And, just like those governments, it will be overseen by a strongman, who will continue to insist that his opponents are immoral.
But here’s the thing:
Democracy is a moral position. Defending the right of human beings to control their own lives is a moral position. Treating everyone equally before the law is a moral position. Insisting that everyone has a right to have a say in their government is a moral position.
This moral position is hardly some newfangled radicalism. It is profoundly conservative. It is the fundamental principle on which our country has been based for almost 250 years.
In 1776, the nation’s Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all people “are created equal…[and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….” They asserted that governments are legitimate only if those they govern consent to them.
The Founders did not live these principles, of course; they preserved the racial, gender, and wealth inequality that enabled them to imagine a world in which white men of property were all equal.
But after World War II, Americans tried to bring these principles to life. It is this attempt for America to realize its ideals that the radicals on the right want to overturn.
After World War II, the Supreme Court began to insist that all Americans really do have a right to self-determination and that they must be treated equally before the law. Using the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that no state can “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” it began to upend longstanding racial, gender, class, and religious hierarchies.
It said, for example, that the promise of equality before the law meant that people of color had a right to a jury that was not made up exclusively of white people, that Black and Brown kids had a right to attend the same public schools as their white neighbors, and that white Americans could not kill or assault Black Americans without consequences.
It decided that states could not privilege one race or one religion over another and that people have the right to marry whom they wish, across racial and gender lines. It decided that people themselves, not the state, had a right to plan their families.
Then, to ensure that states were truly democratic, in 1965, Congress protected the right of all Americans to vote, giving them an equal say in their government and bringing to life the concept in the Declaration of Independence that governments are legitimate only when they derive their power from the consent of the governed.
Americans who had seen the horrors of the Holocaust—which was, after all, the logical and ultimate outcome of a society based on hierarchies—saw their defense of equality as a moral position. It recognizes the inherent worth of individuals without privileging one race, one gender, one religion, or the wealthy. It works to bring the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to life, stopping the violence that certain white Christian men in the past visited on those they could dominate with impunity.
Those radicals who are now taking away the right of self-determination, the right to equality before the law, and the right to vote because they are “questioning the moral foundation of Western civilisation” are launching a fundamental attack on our nation.
In his day, responding to a similar attack, Abraham Lincoln noted that accepting the idea of inequality was an act of destruction that would “transform this Government into a government of some other form.”
Arguments based in the idea that some people are not capable of making their own decisions “are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world,” Lincoln said in 1858. “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it[,] where will it stop…. If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out[.]”
FTFY.
Also, I am not sure HCR is right in describing democracy as a moral and conservative position. Democracy isn’t static, it develops itself. If I accept ever-changing and adaptive as conservative, then “conservative” would be liberally understood indeed.
Lastly, I have a bit of a grievance with the term “moral” in itself, since my understanding of the term defines moral codes as something given to humans by external forces, while ethical codes are developed from some fundamental, intrinsic principles. Ethics: self-evident, but also logical. Moral: by authority, hence not necessarily self-evident, nor logical.
ETA: needed to fix that quote.
I’ll leave the ethics-and-morals conumdrum up to others who are more philosophically inclined, but I will point out that she’s discussing the ideal of democracy within the US historical context.
And in that context, to fight in a way that seeks to shut down democracy, a founding US principle (however far from actually achieved), certainly does seem the opposite of “conservative.” Given, you know, conservative declarations in the US context of their belief in founding principles, and in other ways of “conserving” that which has been handed down from the past. To fight for what amounts to an end of democracy is instead a fight for radical uprooting of a founding US principle.
I would not be surprised if this also explains a lot of the Biden-bashing coming from that group:
Thanks for that reminder. Interestingly, she’s discussing a global phenomenon: that some countries shift back to a more authoritarian state, or are even on the way to full dictatorship.
The US-American perspective applied to this global view is not my favourite, I have to admit, and needs some intellectual leap on my behalf… Mental gymnastics, maybe.
April 18, 2022 (Monday)
Today is tax day, since public workers in Washington, D.C., got April 15, our usual tax day, off to celebrate Emancipation Day. That holiday honors April 16, the day that President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 signed the law emancipating enslaved Black Americans in the nation’s capital.
The Biden administration used the occasion of tax day to highlight the difference between its tax policies and those of the current Republican Party. Biden is calling for making “billionaires and large corporations pay their fair share” and “ensur[ing] no one making under $400,000 a year pays a penny more in taxes.”
The Republicans have offered only Florida senator Rick Scott’s “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” which calls for imposing taxes on the 57% of Americans who made too little during the pandemic to pay income taxes, as well as getting rid of all legislation after five years, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. The nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that Scott’s tax policy would increase taxes on the nation’s poorest 40% by more than $1000 on average. The states hit hardest are in the South: Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Georgia, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Florida.
Since the American Civil War, deciding who pays taxes—and for what—has been shorthand for who belongs in our nation and what we care about. Curiously, Biden’s policies echo those of the early Republican Party.
The Republicans invented our national income taxes during the Civil War. As costs for uniforms, guns, food, mules, wagons, bounties, and burials rose to as much as $2 million a day, Congress recognized the need to raise money to cover the debts the United States was incurring. Ordinary Americans, who were terrified of the inflation that had come with the “rag paper” money of the American Revolution, told the government that there was “not the slightest objection raised in any loyal quarter to as much taxation as may be necessary.”
So Congress turned to manufacturing taxes, which essentially turned into sales taxes, of 3% on all manufactured goods. Those taxes would not be enough to stabilize the economy, and members of Congress knew the taxes could not be raised higher without unduly burdening farmers and workers. So, to make sure that tax burdens would “be more equalized on all classes of the community, more especially on those who are able to bear them,” they invented the U.S. income tax to be collected by a national agency—the precursor to the Internal Revenue Service.
By the end of the war, Congress had imposed 5% taxes on manufactured goods, and income taxes of 5% for incomes between $600 and $5,000, 7.5% for incomes from $5,000 to $10,000, and 10% for incomes of more than $10,000.
These taxes were enormously popular, in part because they demonstrated the health of the national treasury and the ability of ordinary Americans to support their government, but also in part because Congress recognized that if it was going to levy tax money from ordinary people, it needed to make sure ordinary people had the money to pay those taxes.
Shortly after imposing taxes, Congress stopped selling the “public lands”—Indigenous lands in the West—to land speculators to raise money and instead gave them away to poor men to farm. “Every smoke rising from a new opening in the wilderness marks the foundation of a new feeder to Commerce and the Revenue,” wrote newspaper editor Horace Greeley.
In 1862, Congress also created the Department of Agriculture to spread knowledge about modern farming practices and provide seeds to poor men. In exchange for “seed money,” Senate Finance Committee chairman William Pitt Fessenden (R-ME) said, the country would be “richly paid over and over again in absolute increase of wealth. There is no doubt of that.” It then turned to public colleges, which were “demanded by the wisest economy” because they would help men to work more efficiently, which would enable them to accumulate wealth, which would, in turn, enable them to buy from others, creating prosperity for the whole economy.
On the same day that Lincoln signed the Land-Grant College Act, he signed a bill creating the Union Pacific Railroad, claiming for the government the power to develop the country’s economy.
The early Republicans believed that a democratic government should guarantee education and equality of opportunity to all men, rather than turning the country over to an oligarchy that made its fortunes in a hierarchical economic system based on human enslavement.
Today, the White House echoed this worldview when it released a fact sheet titled “This Tax Day, the President Is Fighting to Reward Work, Not Wealth, While Republicans Want to Increase Taxes on the Middle Class.” It pointed out that the 2017 Trump tax cuts gave a $1.5 trillion tax cut to the very wealthy, and now Republicans are turning to working Americans to make up the budget shortfalls. “Republicans complain that middle-class Americans don’t have ‘skin in the game’ and don’t pay enough in taxes,” the White House said. “But the truth is that middle-class Americans are the back bone of our economy, pay plenty in federal, state, and local taxes, and in many cases pay a higher rate than the super-wealthy.”
Biden’s emphasis on public investment in individuals illustrates his view of the U.S. economy. He has been pushing for federal procurement to nurture American business, requiring that “made in America” for federal procurement will mean 60% of component parts are made in the U.S.; that number will rise to 65% in 2024 and 75% in 2029. When he took office, products qualified as “made in America” if 55% of their components were made in the U.S.
Today, the White House issued guidance requiring that after May 14, all of the iron, steel, manufactured products, and construction materials used for any project funded by the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill must be made in the U.S. That rule can be waived if it hurts the public interest, if the supplies are not available in the U.S., or if it will increase costs more than 25%. The administration hopes to create jobs, ease shortages, and limit our reliance on countries whose national interests are not in line with ours, like China. Since manufacturing is above the historical average at 78.7% capacity, the rule will probably require more factories.
The Biden administration has also used money as leverage over Russia, of course, and the sanctions there are biting. On April 13, Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, left the country. Losing Maersk, along with a number of other shippers, will strangle the movement of goods. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin insists that the sanctions have failed, but today the head of Russia’s central bank said that consumer prices are up 16.7% from last year and that since “practically every product” in Russia depends on imported parts, when factories run through their inventories, prices will skyrocket. Meanwhile, Russian workers are losing jobs as foreign businesses leave the country.
For his part, Putin insists that the global alliance against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will collapse. But tonight CNN reports that the U.S. State Department is considering naming Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, a designation that would place Russia with North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Cuba and further choke Russian trade.
MSNBC commentator and national security expert Malcolm Nance has thrown his lot in with those fighting against Russia. Tonight, speaking in uniform from Ukraine, he told MSNBC’s Joy Reid: “The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought I’m done talking… It’s time to take action here. So about a month ago I joined the international legion here in Ukraine….”
Damn, that’s something. Malcolm, you have my respect.
April 19, 2022 (Tuesday)
Last night, lawyers for Ed Vallejo, one of 11 members of the right-wing Oath Keepers gang accused of seditious conspiracy for their actions surrounding January 6, filed a motion for Vallejo’s release from pretrial jail.
Vallejo’s lawyer describes his client as having “a passionate yet gentle nature, as well as [a] love of animals,” and quotes one of Vallejo’s friends as saying the accused conspirator is a “true man of passion” whose “tools are an abundance of love, sunshine and gratitude to God for giving him a chance to prove it by helping people.” The lawyer tried to explain away the 200 pounds of food Vallejo brought for a 30-day siege (he thought they were going camping, the lawyer says) and his declaration that there would be “guerilla war” if Trump didn’t “bring the f*cking hammer down." The lawyer’s argument is that Vallejo should be let out of prison because the real culprits were former president Trump—who convinced Vallejo that the election was stolen and that the country must be protected—and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, who was planning an attack on the Capitol.
The motion is interesting because included in it were several hundred pages of exhibits, including dozens of pages of messages allegedly between many of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Messages indicate how closely the insurrectionists on the ground followed former president Trump’s Twitter feed—“there’s no better direct link from him than Twitter”—and offer extensive evidence that the attack on January 6 was planned in advance.
The insurrectionists talked at length from late December onward about arming themselves and going to Washington, D.C. On January 3, one reported to the group that they had gotten an email saying that the rally would start at the Ellipse, whose space “merges into the Mall around the Washington Monument, and heads down to the Capitol, the scene of the ‘action.’”
Calling himself “We the People,” one of them wrote, “WeAreTheStorm as you are about to witness!!” The person took heart from what was happening in Congress: “Sens Ted Cruz (RTX), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Braun (RIN), Steve Daines (R-MT), John Kennedy (RLA), James Lankford (R-OK) and senators elect Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) announced they will object to the Jan. 6 electoral vote certification and are calling for a 10-day electoral commission to audit the election results.”
As well, the messages refer to Trump advisor Roger Stone and to Representative Ronny Jackson (R-TX), at the time the newly elected representative who had been the White House physician. “Roger Stone just asked for security,” Jessica Watkins texted the group chat on January 1, referring to a statement Stone had made on television. Another answered: “Who reached out to you? I [spoke] to him Wednesday.” On January 6, around 3:00 in the afternoon, one person texted the group: “Dr. Ronnie Jackson—on the move. Needs protection. If anyone inside cover him. He has critical data to protect,” one person messaged. Oath Keeper leader Steward Rhodes messaged back: “Give him my cell.”
By 6:36 on January 6, the conspirators appear to have figured out they were in trouble. “We are now the enemy of the State,” one messaged the others. Another was furious at Rhodes: “As I figured. This organization is a huge fckin joke. You Stewart are the dumass I heard you were. Good luck getting rich off those Dumb ass… donations you f*ck stick.”
Rhodes responded to the group by moving the goalposts. They had “one FINAL chance to get Trump to do his job and his duty,” he said. “Patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what’s coming if Trump doesn’t take decisive action right now. It helped to send that message to HIM. He was the most important audience today. I hope he got the message.”
This morning, a spokesperson for Jackson said: “Rep. Jackson is frequently talked about by people he does not know. He does not know nor has he ever spoken to the people in question.“
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol also has a great deal of information; it has now interviewed more than 800 people. On April 11, Salon columnist Chauncey DeVega published an interview with Hugo Lowell, who has been following the January 6 committee closely for The Guardian. Lowell’s observations support the idea of a conspiracy, although he noted evidence is still coming in. “The evidence so far points to the fact that Donald Trump knew and oversaw what happened on Jan. 6,” Lowell told DeVega. “Trump knew in advance about these different elements that came together to form both the political element of his plan, which was to have Pence throw the election, and the violence that took place on Jan. 6.”
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the January 6 committee, suggested Lowell’s observation was correct yesterday when he told reporters: “This was a coup organized by the president against the vice president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” Trump’s role in that coup will be the centerpiece of next month’s public committee hearings.
Last week, on April 12, Alan Feuer of the New York Times broke the story that on December 30, 2020, Jason Sullivan, a former aide to Roger Stone, urged Trump supporters on a zoom call to “descend on the Capitol” on January 6 to intimidate Congress. Sullivan said that Trump would declare martial law and would stay in office. “Biden will never be in that White House,” Sullivan said. “That’s my promise to each and every one of you.” “If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” he said. “We have to put that pressure there.” Sullivan’s lawyer responded to the story by saying he had just “shared some encouragement” with people who believed the election had been stolen.
Yesterday, Kimberly Guilfoyle, former Trump advisor and fiancée of Donald Trump, Jr., spoke with the January 6 committee for 9 hours. Guilfoyle was with the Trump family the morning of January 6 and was also a fundraiser for the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse, claiming to have raised $3 million to underwrite it. In its March 3, 2022, letter subpoenaing Guilfoyle, the committee reminded her that she spoke at that rally, telling “the crowd, ‘We will not allow the liberals and the Democrats to steal our dream or steal our elections,’ and were filmed backstage prior to your speech telling people to ‘Have the courage to do the right thing. Fight!’"
In Georgia, voters are challenging the inclusion of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on the ballot this fall, arguing that she is an insurrectionist disqualified to hold office under the Fourteenth Amendment. Ratified after the Civil War, that amendment says any official who has taken an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and then engages “in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” cannot hold office. Greene took her oath of office on January 3, 2021, three days before the January 6 insurrection, and insisted the election had been stolen. “This is our 1776 moment,” she told Newsmax on January 5, 2021.
Greene promptly sued to get a judge to block the challenge. Yesterday, federal judge Amy Totenberg decided that the case can go forward. Greene will have to testify on Friday, under oath, before a state administrative law judge in Atlanta. She will be the first member of Congress to testify under oath about the events of January 6. After the judge handed down the decision, Greene complained to Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson that “I have to go to court on Friday and actually be questioned about something I’ve never been charged with and something I was completely against.”
This will be a bellwether for the other nine similar cases already filed across the country and might, of course, affect the candidacy of the former president should he run again in 2024.
April 20, 2022 (Wednesday)
Yesterday, Arizona governor Doug Ducey brought the Republican governors of 26 states together in the “American Governors’ Border Strike Force” to serve as a “force multiplier” in what he says is “criminal activity directly tied to our border.” For all of Ducey’s rhetoric about how the force is supposed to “accomplish what the federal government has failed at, protecting our communities from ruthless transnational criminal organizations,” the “strike force” is supposed to “share intelligence, strengthen analytical and cybersecurity efforts, and improve humanitarian efforts to protect children and families.”
This measure is pretty clearly a political ploy before the midterms. As the Texas Tribune reports, since 2005, Texas governors have launched widely publicized border initiatives during political campaigns, insisting that they would manage what the federal government was ignoring. Billions of dollars later, it is not clear they have accomplished anything.
Most recently, with Operation Lone Star in 2021, Texas governor Greg Abbott deployed more than 10,000 members of the Texas National Guard and state troopers to the border, at a cost of about $25 million a week for the troopers and $2 billion a year for the National Guard members. That’s almost five times what the legislature had budgeted. While the administration has claimed success, an investigation by ProPublica, the Texas Tribune, and the Marshall Project suggests that it is taking credit for arrests that had nothing to do with border issues and were often handled by law enforcement officers unconnected with Operation Lone Star. Most arrests are not of human traffickers or smugglers, but of people accused of trespassing on private property.
And so, it appears, messaging for the midterms is in full swing.
In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis continues to threaten to dissolve Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District in his anger over Disney’s opposition to the recently passed “Don’t Say Gay” bill that restricts instruction in gender identity or sexual orientation in public schools in vague language that leaves the door open to silencing minority voices. Since 1967, the existence of the Reedy Creek Improvement District has given the company the right to govern the Disney park as if it were a town.
The Walt Disney Company delivers to the state more than $409 million in sales taxes for tickets alone, employs more than 80,000 Florida residents, and supports more than 400,000 more jobs. Today, the Miami Herald reported that repealing the company’s governing authority would raise taxes on families in the area by $2,200 each.
Florida state representative Michael Grieco (D) tweeted: “The FL Legislature cannot unilaterally dissolve Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District. It’s an exercise in futility… This whole thing is an effort to deflect attention away from the unconstitutional redistricting of Congressional districts and diluting of the black vote.” Grieco was referring to the governor’s redistricting map that heavily favors Republicans and that DeSantis drew himself after vetoing a more reasonable map—although still favoring Republicans—passed by the Florida legislature.
On Monday, federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate on public transportation, saying the rule exceeded the CDC’s authority. The decision raised ire in part because it was transparently ideologically driven: former president Trump appointed the former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas—she was then 33 years old—to a federal judgeship with just 8 years of experience practicing law, and the Senate confirmed her after Biden was elected. Her husband works at Jared Kushner’s new investment firm, the one bankrolled to the tune of $2 billion by the Saudi crown prince.
But in fact, according to a poll by the Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, a majority of Americans want a mask mandate on public transportation. Fifty-six percent of those polled wanted people to wear masks, while 24% were opposed and 20% didn’t care. A YouGov poll put the number of those in favor at 63% and those opposed at 29%.
The rule was set to expire on May 3 in any case, but today, the Department of Justice appealed the ruling, largely to protect the authority of the CDC to impose similar requirements in the future. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the case, is right leaning, and if it decides against the administration, it could weaken the CDC going forward.
Over all hangs the Big Lie that Biden stole the 2020 election from former president Trump. Supporters of the former president continue to hammer on that lie, trying to destabilize belief in our elections. Notably, John Eastman, author of the Eastman memo offering a scheme by which former vice president Mike Pence could overturn the election, is now pushing states to “decertify” Biden’s election. There is no mechanism for such a thing, but it hardly matters; the point is to continue to rile up Trump’s base with the lie that he was cheated.
But news from the January 6 committee is starting to get traction. Yesterday, the editorial board of the Salt Lake City Tribune noted that “[i]t is past time for Mike Lee [R-UT, whose texts trying to overturn the election have just come to light] to start fessing up to all he knows about the plot to set aside the results of an honest and fair election to keep Donald Trump in power.”
And right-wing media personality Alex Jones claims to have offered to talk with the Department of Justice about what he knows of the January 6 insurrection in exchange for immunity, suggesting that he is concerned about his actions surrounding January 6. We learned that the department quietly hired a well-known prosecutor of high-profile cases, Thomas Windom, to work on potential criminal prosecutions.
Democrats, too, are finding their voices for the midterms.
The administration continues to try to call attention to the booming economy, noting that the real GDP in the U.S. exceeds that of the other G-7 countries. Today, news broke that household cash exceeds debt for the first time in 30 years and that new housing starts, a key economic indicator, are rising fast: they are up 9.7% from a year ago.
The Education Department announced it is taking advantage of existing but underused programs to cancel student loan debt for 40,000 people and to offer credits to more than 3.6 million federal student loan borrowers to help them repay their loans. And the administration noted today that the Republican tax plan will increase taxes on 75 million middle-class families by an average of almost $1,500 a year while Biden’s plan will not raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year.
Money is shaping up to be a key issue. In Texas, Beto O’Rourke, who is running to unseat Abbott, is hammering hard on the cost of the governor’s shenanigans, including his recent stunt shutting down trade across the U.S.-Mexico border on the pretext of checking for drugs or undocumented immigrants. The shutdown cost the U.S. nearly $9 billion overall and Texas alone about $477 million a day. “What Abbott has done is literally create chaos on the US-MX border,” O’Rourke said, “whether it’s the National Guard deployment, where 4 guard members have taken their lives, this latest stoppage at international ports of entry… or just the rhetoric that has inflamed tensions.”
O’Rourke is also running an ad suggesting that Texas property taxes have gone up $20,000,000,000 under Abbott.
But the most inspiring approach to the midterms came this week from Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow. In response to a colleague who had called her a “groomer” in a fundraising email after McMorrow stood up against marginalizing the state’s LGBTQ population, McMorrow made a stand against the hatred and bigotry coming from Republican colleagues. Defining herself as “a straight, white, Christian, married suburban mom,” she called out the “performative nonsense” of her so-called Christian colleagues. “People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape… or that healthcare costs are too high, or that teachers are leaving the profession,” she said. “We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives.”
Recalling historical heroes who tried “to right wrongs and fix the injustice in the world,” she reminded her colleagues that “each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history. [We decide] what happens next, and how WE respond to history and the world around us.”
“We will not let hate win.”
April 21, 2022 (Thursday)
Today started with a New York Times story by journalists Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, based on their forthcoming book, detailing how the two top Republicans in Congress during the January 6 insurrection, then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), blamed Trump for the attack on the Capitol and wanted him removed from office.
On the night of January 6, McConnell told colleagues that the party would finally break with Trump and his followers, and days later, as Democrats contemplated impeachment, he said, “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a b itch for us.” McConnell said he expected the Senate to convict Trump, and then Congress could bar him from ever again holding office. After what had happened, McConnell said: “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.”
McCarthy’s reaction was similar. Burns and Martin wrote that in a phone call on January 10, McCarthy said he planned to call Trump and recommend that he resign. “What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it,” he told a conference call of the Republican leadership. He also said he wished that social media companies would ban certain Republican lawmakers because they were stoking paranoia about the 2020 election. Other leaders, including Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), talked of moving Trump out of the party.
Within weeks, though, faced with Trump’s continuing popularity with his base, McConnell and McCarthy had lost their courage. McConnell voted against Trump’s conviction for incitement of insurrection, and McCarthy was at Mar-a-Lago, posing for a photograph with Trump. Since then, McConnell has said he would “absolutely” vote for Trump in 2024 if he is the Republican Party’s nominee, and McCarthy has blamed the January 6 insurrection on Democratic leaders and security guards for doing a poor job of defending the Capitol.
Their tone has changed so significantly that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol wanted to interview McCarthy to see if Trump had pressured him to change his story. McCarthy refused to cooperate, saying that “[t]he committee’s only objective is to attempt to damage its political opponents” and that he would not talk about “private conversations not remotely related to the violence that unfolded at the Capitol.”
Today, McCarthy responded to Burns and Martin’s story with a statement saying that the reporting was “totally false and wrong” before going on a partisan rant that the “corporate media is obsessed with doing everything it can to further a liberal agenda” and insisting that the country was better off with former president Trump in office. McCarthy’s spokesperson, Mark Bednar, denied the specifics of the story: “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” Bednar said.
Oops. There was a tape.
On January 10, 2021, McCarthy and Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) on a call with the House Republican leadership spoke about invoking the 25th Amendment, and McCarthy said he expected impeachment to pass the House and likely the Senate, and that he planned to tell Trump he should resign.
After Rachel Maddow played the tape on her show tonight, conservative lawyer and Washington Post columnist George Conway tweeted: “Here’s an idea for you, Kevin. Tell the truth. Save whatever you might be able to salvage of your dignity and reputation. Come clean.”
Then. Why. Did. He. Vote. Against. Convicting.
Because the leopards were threatening to eat his face.
You know why. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too.
Trump gets kicked, but “the Democrats did it”. Win-win for Mitch.
It’s never ‘do the right thing’. It’s always ‘how can I profit from this’, ideally combined with ‘how to do it without getting my hands dirty’.
I mean, yes… I KNOW why, but he’s saying this stuff in private. He was there that day. He saw an insurrection against this country, and the spineless coward did NOTHING.
This is Mitch McConnell, in a nutshell.
Well actually a turtle shell.
(Point taken though.)
I know… doesn’t mean I can’t be angry at people who are watching the country fall to fascism and not doing shit when they are in a position to do so.
