Donald Trump treated the country as badly as he treated E. Jean Carroll

From a conservative vantage point, the record shows Trump was a bad president. Take Trump’s signature issue of illegal immigration. The ultra-progressive Barack Obama presided over a significant reduction in Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal immigrants in the final three years of his term, from 486,651 to 415,816. Trump, in contrast, made almost no progress in this regard from year two (404,142) to year four of his presidency (405,651), and also presided over an explosion in crossings during his third year (to 854,501). (I excluded the first year of each term because administrations overlap in January, and policy changes take a while to implement.) Trump shut down the government for a record 35 days, wreaking havoc on taxpayers looking for IRS help, over the single issue of wall funding. His battle amounted to one of the worst negotiations in history — in the end, he secured less wall funding, at $1.3 billion, than the $1.6 billion Democrats had themselves offered in the beginning. Meanwhile, taxpayers shelled out $9 billion in back pay for federal employees, half of that for work that wasn’t being done. On Trump’s other favorite issue, the trade deficit was higher each year under Trump than it was in every single year under Obama. Manufacturing jobs actually rose by 386,000 in Obama’s second term, but the U.S. had lost manufacturing jobs under Trump even before the pandemic hit. Likewise, Trump’s diplomacy, apart from Israeli affairs, was a disaster. He negotiated with the Taliban directly and released 5,000 vicious prisoners while committing the U.S. to a precipitous pullout from Afghanistan. He gave the Russians a major foothold in Syria while abandoning a U.S. base and huge stores of American supplies. He embarrassed the free world by kowtowing to North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un and saying he “fell in love” with the murderous nut-job. And he committed U.S. prestige to regime change in Venezuela, only to fail spectacularly. And that’s just a partial listing of Trump’s abject policy and political failures. In sum, Trump is liable for battery — not just against E. Jean Carroll, but against the whole U.S. body politic. New Orleans native Quin Hillyer is a senior commentary writer and editor for the Washington Examiner, working from the Gulf Coast. This column originally appeared in the Examiner. He can be reached at Qhillyer@WashingtonExaminer.com. His other columns appear at www.washingtonexaminer.com/author/quin-hillyer. https://www.nola.com/opinions/quin_hillyer/quin-hillyer-donald-trump-treated-the-country-as-badly-as-he-treated-e-jean-carroll/article_0df647de-f0f0-11ed-af87-6f24043376a0.html

History offers a bleak legal prognosis for Donald Trump

Tom Nichols: We've had a 'national shrug' to Pence's warnings about Trump

No, Hatred is Not Winning

Yes, there are some really miserable human beings doing some incredibly cruel things to a whole lot of people—many from Senate seats and mega church pulpits and capitol buildings and television studios. This gives their vitriol a megaphone, it magnifies their enmity, it earns their sickness greater bandwidth than it deserves. The venom those relatively few people produce commandeers the headlines and writes the loud narrative of impending disaster. It’s a story you read and re-read all day long. It becomes gospel truth. But that is not the whole story. It is not your story, or mine, or the story of tens of millions of people like us who are profoundly disturbed right now; those of us sick to our stomachs and moved to tears. We are furious, and that fury is an alarm ringing out in the center of our chests. In that place, hatred is not winning. In that place, love and goodness are trending. In that place, life is defiantly breaking out. In that place, hope is a rising flood. Take a look in the mirror, friend. You are living proof that hatred is not winning. In the story you are writing here—good, compassionate, open-hearted people still walk the planet. Don’t underestimate this. In the hearts of hateful people, yes hatred is winning. In those continually consumed with contempt for others, yes violence is trending. In the lives of those who get up every day seeking to do damage, yes, the bad people are winning. But this is not who you are. And as exhausted and disheartened and terrified as you are—there are millions upon millions who are similarly burdened. Take a look in the mirror and remember that there, hatred is not winning. Notice the people in your news feed who give you reason to keep going. Realize that in them, hatred is not winning. Think about the people you see being brave and selfless and compassionate, and remember that because of them, hatred is not winning. Look across the room or through the contacts on your phone or next to you at dinner, and remember that hatred is not winning there. As long as the heart of decent people is still beating—hope lives. Put your hand on your chest and be reminded. Be encouraged. OCTOBER 30, 2022 / JOHN PAVLOVITZ No, Hatred is Not Winning https://johnpavlovitz.com/2022/10/30/no-hatred-is-not-winning/

History - Elections and Voting

History - Elections and Voting In an interview this morning with CNN’s Dana Bash, Arizona Republican nominee for governor Kari Lake refused to say that she would accept the results of the upcoming election-- unless she wins. Former president Trump said the same in 2020, and now more than half of the Republican nominees in the midterm elections have refused to say that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election because, they allege, there was voter fraud. This position is an astonishing rejection of the whole premise on which this nation was founded: that voters have the right to choose their leaders. That right was established in the Declaration of Independence separating the 13 British colonies on the North American continent from allegiance to King George III. That Declaration rejected the idea of social hierarchies in which some men were better than others and should rule their inferiors. Instead, it set out a new principle of government, establishing that “all men are created equal” and that governments derive “their just power from the consent of the governed.” Republicans’ rejection of the idea that voters have the right to choose their leaders is not a new phenomenon. It is part and parcel of Republican governance since the 1980s, when it became clear to Republican leaders that their “supply-side economics,” a program designed to put more money into the hands of those at the top of the economy, was not actually popular with voters, who recognized that cutting taxes and services did not, in fact, result in more tax revenue and rising standards of living. They threatened to throw the Republicans out of office and put back in place the Democrats’ policies of using the government to build the economy from the bottom up. So, to protect President Ronald Reagan’s second round of tax cuts in 1986, Republicans began to talk of cutting down Democratic voting through a “ballot integrity” initiative, estimating that their plans could “eliminate at least 60–80,000 folks from the rolls” in Louisiana. “If it’s a close race…, this could keep the Black vote down considerably,” a regional director of the Republican National Committee wrote. When Democrats countered by expanding voting through the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, more commonly known as the Motor Voter Act, a New York Times writer said Republicans saw the law “as special efforts to enroll core Democratic constituencies in welfare and jobless-benefits offices.” While Democrats thought it was important to enfranchise “poor people…people who can’t afford cars, people who can’t afford nice houses,” Republicans, led by then–House minority whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia, predicted “a wave of fraudulent voting by illegal immigrants.” From there it was a short step to insisting that Republicans lost elections not because their ideas were unpopular, but because Democrats cheated. In 1994, losing candidates charged, without evidence, that Democrats won elections with “voter fraud.” In California, for example, Senator Dianne Feinstein’s opponent, who had spent $28 million of his own money on the race but lost by about 160,000 votes, said on “Larry King Live” that “frankly, the fraud is overwhelming” and that once he found evidence, he would share it to demand “a new election.” That evidence never materialized, but in February 1995 the losing candidate finally made a statement saying he would stop litigating despite “massive deficiencies in the California election system,” in the interest of “a thorough bipartisan investigation and solutions to those problems.” In 1996, House and Senate Republicans each launched yearlong investigations into what they insisted were problematic elections, with Gingrich, by then House speaker, telling reporters: '“We now have proof of a sufficient number of noncitizens voting that it may well have affected at least one election for Congress,” although the House Oversight Committee said the evidence did not support his allegations. In the Senate, after a 10-month investigation, the Republican-dominated Rules Committee voted 16 to 0 to dismiss accusations of voter fraud in the election of Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu that cost her $500,000 in legal fees and the committee $250,000. Her opponent, whose supporters wore small socks on their lapels with the words “Don’t Get Cold Feet. Sock It To Voter Fraud,” still refused to concede, saying that “the Senate has become so partisan it has become difficult to get to the truth.” There was nothing to the cases, but keeping them in front of the media for a year helped to convince Americans that voter fraud was a serious issue and that Democrats were winning elections thanks to illegal, usually immigrant, voters. Amplified by the new talk radio hosts and, by the mid-1990s, the Fox News Channel, Republicans increasingly argued that Democrats were owned by “special interests” who were corrupting the system, pushing what they called “socialism”—that is, legislation that provided a basic social safety net and regulated business—on “real” Americans who, they insisted, wanted rugged individualism. If Democrats really were un-American, it only made sense to keep such dangerous voters from the polls. In 1998, the Florida legislature passed a law to “maintain” the state’s voter lists, using a private company to purge the voter files of names believed to belong to convicted felons, dead people, duplicates, and so on. The law placed the burden of staying on the voter lists on individuals, who had to justify their right to be on them. The law purged up to 100,000 legitimate Florida voters, most of them Black voters presumed to vote Democratic, before the 2000 election, in which Republican candidate George W. Bush won the state by 537 votes, giving him the Electoral College although he lost the popular vote. Voting restrictions had begun, but they really took off after the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision gutted the provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act requiring preclearance from the federal government before states with a history of racial discrimination changed their election laws. Now, less than a decade later, Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been open about suppressing Democratic votes, easing voting restrictions for three reliably Republican counties devastated by Hurricane Ian but refusing to adjust the restrictions in hard-hit, Democratic-leaning Orange County. Open attacks on Democrats in the lead-up to this year’s midterms justify that voter suppression. Last week, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) suggested that Black Americans are criminals who “want to take over what you got,” and Republican candidates are running ads showing mug shots of Black men. Today, Trump chided American Jews for not sufficiently appreciating him; he warned them to “get their act together…before it’s too late.” Republican lawmakers have left those racist and antisemitic statements unchallenged. Those attacks also justify ignoring Democratic election victories, for if Democratic voters are undermining the country, it only makes sense that their choices should be ignored. This argument was exactly how reactionary white Democrats justified the 1898 coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, when they overthrew a legitimately elected government of white Populists and Black Republicans. Issuing a “White Declaration of Independence,” they claimed “the intelligent citizens of this community owning 95 percent of the property” were taking over because those elected were not fit to run a government. Like the Wilmington plotters, Trump supporters insisted they were defending the nation from a “stolen” election when they attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to cancel the results of the 2020 Democratic victory. It was not so very long ago that historians taught the Wilmington coup as a shocking anomaly in our democratic system, but now, 124 years after it happened, it is current again. Modern-day Republicans appear to reject not only the idea they could lose an election fairly, but also the fundamental principle, established in the Declaration of Independence, that all Americans have a right to consent to their government. Heather Cox Richardson October 2022

GOP attacks go beyond FBI and elections to delegitimize government

The threat to democracy metastasizing from former president Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat stretches beyond elections and into federal agencies and their employees. Vitriol by GOP members of Congress — including comparing the federal government to “the Gestapo” of Nazi Germany and proposing to “defund the FBI” — is just the latest example of boiling aggression that extends across the government. Trump fanned that flame when he shared on social media an article titled “The Fascist Bureau of Investigation” — an incredible act by a former president. But the right-wing anger goes past the law enforcement agency to include scorning feds generally, hitting the Education Department for curriculums it doesn’t control and efforts to improve tax collection. Elections are a foundation of democracy, but “Republicans have convinced a large number of people that election results can’t be trusted,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said in an interview, “which, of course, means that decisions by those elected officials are illegitimate.” For conservative analyst Bill Kristol, an organizer of Republicans for the Rule of Law who held high political positions in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, comments like Grassley’s mean “there’s a big market out there on the right for attacks on the federal government, which are different from just saying we should have small government or we should reform parts of the government. It’s really, ‘They’re out to get you. There’s a conspiracy to get you,’” he said in an interview. “That’s the only way those attacks on the IRS make sense.” But the attacks on the IRS, other agencies and federal employees make sense if delegitimatizing government is the point. “I do think that both the policies and rhetoric that took hold during the Trump presidency led many people to question the legitimacy of government,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “They delegitimized everything from the Constitution to elections to Congress to law enforcement to the missions of our agencies. … So, he did succeed in delegitimizing government and people’s trust in our institutions of democracy.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/24/gop-attacks-fbi-doj-government-trump/

How the Mar-a-Lago search has helped fuel GOP attacks on the IRS

Verbal attacks on federal law enforcement after the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate have become enmeshed with Republican criticism of a Democratic spending bill. The legislation does not direct the hiring of 87,000 armed agents. It does allot $80 billion over a decade throughout the agency to bolster taxpayer services and enforcement of the tax code. But as Republicans work to find their message in the days after their standard-bearer’s Florida residence was searched by the FBI, the verbal attacks on federal law enforcement have become enmeshed with another talking point tied to a totally different issue: the idea that Democrats are supercharging a tax agency to surveil regular Americans. Both issues came to a head last week as House Republicans returned to Washington to vote against the Inflation Reduction Act days after the search at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, riling up supporters by conjoining the two issues as examples of extreme federal government overreach by Democrats. While Republican members have stretched the truth about what the funding would do, the talking points are unlikely to go away. Several GOP strategists focused on House races described the funding for the IRS as a gift for their candidates to draw contrasts with Democratic opponents ahead of the midterm elections on an issue they say voters universally dislike. The Inflation Reduction Act gives the IRS more than $45 billion for tax enforcement that could be used to hire more agents and help close the “tax gap” of unpaid federal taxes. It also allots $25 billion for logistical operations within the agency, roughly $5 billion for business upgrades and another $3.2 billion to bolster taxpayer services. Democrats have argued that Republican cuts across all levels of the federal government have created a massive backlog of unprocessed taxpayer paperwork. An IRS report to Congress this year showed that the pandemic contributed to a drastic spike of unprocessed tax returns, from 7.4 million at the end of the 2019 filing period to 35.8 million by the same time in 2021. “While Democrats put people and country before politics and power, Republicans are knowingly lying to voters in defense of the wealthy tax cheats that back their campaigns,” said Tommy Garcia, a spokesman at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/18/how-mar-a-lago-raid-has-helped-fuel-gop-attacks-irs/?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_politics&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F37aeba1%2F62fe22451930ae1d20546727%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F9%2F57%2F62fe22451930ae1d20546727&wp_cu=798fbc1be6589a3768fb139e53083601%7C654c090c-4cc9-11e0-a478-1231380f446b

I used to be optimistic about America’s future. Not anymore.

Unleashed by a right-wing Supreme Court, Republican legislatures around the country are repealing or restricting abortion rights. This is producing horror stories that I never thought I would see in the United States. A woman in Texas had to carry a dead fetus for two weeks because removing it would have required a procedure that is also used in abortions. A woman in Wisconsin bled for more than 10 days after an incomplete miscarriage because medical staff would not remove fetal tissue. A 10-year-old girl was raped in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. These are the kinds of human rights violations we would be protesting if they occurred in other countries. That they are happening in the United States is an ominous sign of what lies ahead, because other countries in recent years that have taken away abortion rights — Poland and Nicaragua — have also taken away political rights. We already live in a “backsliding” democracy, where voting rights are being restricted and freedom is under siege. The most severe threat comes from an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party whose maximum leader is an unindicted and unrepentant coup plotter. Jonathan Swan of Axios has an alarming report on the preparations in Trump World for returning to power: “Sources close to the former president said that he will — as a matter of top priority – go after the national security apparatus, ‘clean house’ in the intelligence community and the State Department, target the ‘woke generals’ at the Defense Department, and remove the top layers of the Justice Department and FBI.” One of the instruments of Trumpian purges would be Schedule F, a new category of federal employment that Trump created in 2020 (and Biden rescinded), which would have removed tens of thousands of federal employees from civil service protections. By reviving Schedule F, Trump could fire career officials and replace them with ultra-MAGA loyalists. “F” might as well stand for “fascism,” because that is what we will get if Trump were to appoint his most fanatical acolytes to the most powerful positions in government. As political scientist Brian Klaas just wrote in the Atlantic, given that the GOP has become “authoritarian to its core,” there are two main ways to save America: Either reform the Republican Party or ensure that it never wields power again. But a MAGA-fied GOP is likely to gain control of at least one chamber of Congress in the fall and could win complete power in 2024. ~ Max Boot, Columnist and Longtime Conservative Stalwart https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/trump-second-term-threat-us-democracy/?utm_campaign=wp_follow_max_boot&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl-maxboot&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3778c7b%2F62dec15ecfe8a21601057d26%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F6%2F16%2F62dec15ecfe8a21601057d26&wp_cu=798fbc1be6589a3768fb139e53083601%7C654c090c-4cc9-11e0-a478-1231380f446b

Doctors and patients deserve a ‘conscience’ exception to abortion bans

A lawsuit in Florida brought by the Jewish Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor challenges the state’s 15-week abortion ban by arguing that it is vague and violates equal protection and due process protections. But it also makes an interesting argument that raises some important legal and moral questions: that the law tramples First Amendment rights and the state constitution’s free-exercise clause. The complaint alleges, “The Act establishes as the law of the State of Florida, a particular religious view about abortion and when life begins, which is contrary to the views of Plaintiff, its members, congregants, and supporters as well as many other Floridians.” The suit explains: The Act reflects the views of Christian nationalists who seek to deny religious freedom to all others, under the arrogant, self-righteous notion that only they are capable of understanding God’s law and judgments and the religious views of all others are false, evil and not entitled to respect or constitutional protections. Proponents of this way of thinking used their political power to enshrine their narrow religious views as the law of the State of Florida, which not only results in irreparable harm to Plaintiff and all others who espouse a different view, including many of their co-religionists, but it also threatens and harms the very framework or our Democracy, and the cherished ideal of the separation of church and state which has been the cornerstone of American democracy since its inception and the reason it has been so successful and the envy of freedom-loving people throughout the world. Laws that ban abortion rest on the belief that “fetal life” is conterminous with “personhood.” The complaint explains why this assumption is so arrogant: “Jewish law does not consider life to begin at conception or at 15 weeks and most Jews such as Plaintiff, its members and congregants do not believe that all the rights of personhood are conferred upon a fetus.” The complaints adds, “In fact, under traditional Jewish law life begins at birth and if a fetus poses a threat to the health or emotional well-being of its mother, at any stage of gestation up until birth, Jewish law requires the mother to abort the pregnancy and protect herself.” Avraham Steinberg, an Israeli physician, explains in a paper for the Journal of Medical Ethics that Jewish medical ethicists prioritize not only human life but also the value of personal autonomy. “Autonomy is not only the privilege of the patient. It is widely agreed that the physician’s autonomy, too, must be respected,” he writes. A doctor’s professional and ethical obligations are generally to prevent risk of harm, favor less risky and invasive procedures over more risky and complicated ones. In a similar vein, medical ethicist Dr. Jay B. Lavine explains, “Everything possible must be done for every patient in terms of preserving life, treating illness, and relieving suffering. All therapeutic decisions must be in the patient’s best interests. The safest, gentlest treatment for a given condition must always be the preferred one.” Lavine adds, “Prevention is the highest form of healing. Drugs and surgery have their place in the holy art of healing, but the need to resort to invasive treatment must also be regarded as a failure in prevention.” Florida’s abortion ban would no doubt prevent the procedure in situations that Jewish ethics would either permit or require it. Whether this is sufficient to prove a violation of federal or state religious-freedom rights is an open question that will be litigated around the country. (Put it down on the list of legal conundrums that doctors and patients must now sift through thanks to the Supreme Court.) In any event, this is an issue the forced-birth crowd should care about. For years, right-wingers have strenuously insisted on religious carve-outs to allow employers to avoid government mandates for contraception coverage or health providers to deny certain services they disagreed with. While the federal ReligiousFreedom Restoration Act mandating conscience clauses was ruled unconstitutional as it applied to the states, 21 states have conscience clause laws in place as a matter of state law. Those just happen to include many of the states that have the most severe abortion bans in place. Failure to respect faith traditions with regard to abortion bans would prove that the right is looking out for Christians — and that it is willing to blithely infringe upon the rights of other religious groups. We will see whether state or federal constitutional claims invoking free-exercise clauses can prevail against state abortion bans. In the meantime, forced-birth advocates should be honest enough to acknowledge that protections for “fetal life” are nothing more than state enactment of a particular religious dogma. Moreover, they should ask themselves: If they value the right to opt out of state laws to protect their religious views, why do they find it acceptable to deny the same protections for those who don’t agree that personhood starts at conception? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/24/abortion-bans-need-conscience-exceptions-jewish-religious-freedom/?utm_campaign=wp_follow_jennifer_rubin&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl-jenniferrubin&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3776c45%2F62dd52efcfe8a21601033d1e%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F6%2F16%2F62dd52efcfe8a21601033d1e&wp_cu=798fbc1be6589a3768fb139e53083601%7C654c090c-4cc9-11e0-a478-1231380f446b

Republicans could be taking a victory lap. Here’s why they aren’t.

Republicans don’t want to talk about when women should retain the right to end a pregnancy, or what services politicians will provide to parents forced to have children they might not want or be able to afford. Democrats should force them to vote on these issues, one by one. An earlier Democratic procedural vote for a bill that would have enshrined the right to abortion into federal law failed in the Senate last month. But the bill was broad enough that even normally pro-choice Republican senators (such as Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska) were willing to vote against it as “overly broad.” Democrats should break this issue into parts and force Republicans to answer all those sensitive questions they’ve been ducking. For instance: Do they support a federal right to abortion in, say, the first trimester? Yes or no? What about a right to abortion if the mother’s health is at risk? Or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest? Should states be able to ban IUDs and any other contraceptives that prevent implantation of a fertilized egg? What about paid leave and other programs that provide resources to new moms and their babies? Should states that ban abortion be required to provide postpartum health care to women forced into unwanted (and sometimes dangerous) births? Republicans have been frustratingly opaque about their agenda (and not only as it relates to reproductive health). Democrats must get them on the record either committing to the protections and programs American women need — or fessing up to the unpopular positions they have been trying to hide. ~Catherine Rampell Columnist https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/28/republicans-could-be-taking-victory-lap-heres-why-they-arent/

As abortion rights disappear, Louisiana's poor climate for mothers and children comes into focus.

Post World Landscape By the numbers, Louisiana is among the most difficult places in the country to bear and raise a child. Pregnant Louisianans have long died during childbirth at higher rates than women in the rest of the country. Black women, who have been more likely to seek abortions, are four times more likely to experience pregnancy-related death than White women, according to one study. Louisiana has the third-highest teen birth rate in the nation, the third-highest share of preterm births and the second-highest share of low-birthweight births. It is not one of the 10 states with paid family leave requirements. Louisiana doesn’t require insurers to cover birth control or sterilization, and state law bans contraception from being distributed at schools, where sex education is optional and, when taught, must focus on “abstinence between unmarried persons.” The state ranks second in the nation for both poverty and child poverty. “If we’re going to be a pro-life state, let’s be pro-life, not just pro-birth,” said Marketa Walters, an Edwards appointee who serves as secretary of the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services. “And take care of the children that come into this state. Better mental health services, better behavioral health services. Let’s teach sex education in the schools.” Walters said the agency in recent months has already increased the amount of money people can get through welfare payments, as well as a program for family members to take care of kids. But she said she’s worried about an increase in domestic violence if pregnant women don’t have the financial stability to leave a relationship. “We desperately need more money for child welfare and staff,” she said. “You’ve heard me say that for six and a half years at the Legislature.” Some doctors are also raising alarms about the trigger law’s implications for prenatal care. One of the key reasons death of pregnant women is higher in Louisiana is because mothers are forced to travel long distances for care in many areas of the state, where health providers are sparse. New Orleans Health Director Dr. Jennifer Avegno said she’s concerned maternal mortality could get worse once the state’s strict anti-abortion laws go into effect, especially if patients in rural areas with few health providers have pregnancy complications that can only be fixed by removing a fetus. “We have to make very quick decisions with critical patients,” Avegno said. “Anything that creates confusion around that is detrimental not just to the physician but to the health and life of the patient.” “Any confusion, any limiting access...has a pretty clear effect that more women are likely to die,” she added. “As physicians, that’s incredibly hard to take.” Widespread poverty and other social ills also mean people typically have a harder time raising children in Louisiana than elsewhere. Jan Moller, head of the left-leaning Louisiana Budget Project, said the root causes of Louisiana’s grim climate for mothers and children can be traced back to poverty. “By almost any way you count it, Louisiana is one of the toughest places to have a kid and raise a kid,” Moller said. The state has already taken some key steps to expand health access to people who will be affected by the repeal of abortion rights. Since the late 1990s, lawmakers and governors have steadily expanded the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, to provide Medicaid coverage to children in poor families. More than half of Louisiana children are covered by the program or by Medicaid. And Medicaid, federal health insurance for people with low incomes, covers a wide swath of residents, driving down the state’s uninsured number and other metrics, like the number of women who don’t have a doctor. Gov. John Bel Edwards expanded Medicaid in line with the Affordable Care Act, the law known as Obamacare, in 2016. Even those changes haven’t been enough to turn the tide for women and kids, Moller said. The state has the highest gender pay gap in the country, no minimum wage, and residents have little access to paid leave. He also noted that the federal government sent a monthly check to families who qualified for the child tax credit as part of President Joe Biden’s covid relief package. But federal lawmakers let that program lapse. https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_86e68eae-f995-11ec-890d-8bbe50ae7bff.html

The right to choose abortion is vital, even when women don’t choose it

Women have been talking to me about their children. How much they love them. How important it is that they had chosen to have them. These women became pregnant in a time and place in which they could have chosen to end their pregnancies. But sometimes it’s the appearance of an exit ramp that makes you realize you want to stay on the highway after all. Sometimes a person needs to know they don’t have to in order to realize how much they want to. This is what was lost on the giddy steps of the Supreme Court on Friday morning. This is what is lost in the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It’s not the abortions we would have had. It’s the abortions we wouldn’t have had. We are losing the idea that we were the best stewards of our own bodies and our own futures — our right to self-determination. We are losing the reassuring voices of our pragmatic mothers saying, You don’t have to do this. And we are losing the freedom to decide to do it anyway, if that’s what we want. The abortions we didn’t have are as formative as the ones we did. They are the roads we took. They are the roads we took without ever dreaming that all other roads would be taken from us. ~Monica Hesse Columnist - The abortions we didn’t have. The right to choose abortion is vital, even when women don’t choose it https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/25/abortions-we-did-not-have/

A Dangerous New Era - The Washington Post Editorials

Moreover, as Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor noted in a dissent, the court’s ruling enables Congress to ban abortion across the country, even in cases of rape or incest. This will become a vicious internecine legislative war that, given the right political circumstances, could result in the wholesale abridgment of rights that should be considered basic. This prospect contradicts the majority’s insistence that it is merely returning the abortion question to the states. The court’s audacious attack on abortion rights raises questions about the future of other legal guarantees, including same-sex marriage, access to contraception and even interracial marriage. These guarantees are based on concepts of individual rights of the sort the court majority has now disregarded. Friday’s ruling was another reminder, for a country that needs no more, that Americans cannot take for granted the freedoms they enjoy. Their decisions, particularly how and whether they vote, can have direct, dramatic and negative consequences for their lives. A decades-long conservative crusade to nullify federal abortion rights has now succeeded, because Senate Republicans underhandedly stacked the court with justices who have proved to be disastrously intemperate. This tragic moment should wake Americans to reality: They must defend their rights, or they are liable to lose them. ~A Dangerous New Era - The Washington Post Editorials https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/24/overturning-roe-dangerous-era/

Our Views: With Roe fallen, it's time for an urgent new debate

We hope to see a way forward for our state (Louisiana) to unite around practical steps, even as debate over the Roe decision plays out. Not least, that requires a new commitment to age-appropriate sex education in schools, including real access to information on avoiding unwanted pregnancy. It also means looking at strengthening private social services and the public safety net for people who face enormous financial obstacles to raising children, or more children — an area in which some of the most anti-abortion states, including ours, are also the stingiest. And above all, it calls for the Legislature to revisit its refusal to create exceptions for victims of rape and incest. We have always been concerned by some lawmakers' rather cavalier attitude toward the difficult cases that arise — and will arise with a vengeance, once abortion is completely banned. This is no longer a theoretical issue; for years, legislators could vote for sweeping abortion bans knowing that federal courts would prevent their enactment. That backstop no longer exists. Further, rape and incest exceptions, although opposed by Louisiana Right-to-Life this year in the Legislature, would be consistent with the anti-abortion views of many Republicans. That a woman — or child — should be victimized twice, once by her attacker and then again by the state ordering her to take the pregnancy to term, is not going to be popular, even here. Yes, the court has ruled. But the debate over Louisiana’s approach to the difficult problems raised by a complete abortion ban has never been more urgent. ~NOLA.com - Our Views https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_d8e65dcc-f65e-11ec-9f5a-8ba6d2d38071.html

Placing the Blame on High Gas Prices

Americans are outraged about the high prices at the pump because the United States is now the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, followed by Saudi Arabia and Russia. It is also the third-largest exporter behind those two countries (And, by the way, we became the world’s energy titan even with decades of increased regulations on drilling, production and use of oil and gas.) Finally, the U.S. is also the world’s second-largest importer of oil because many of its refineries are built to process only types of oil mined from other countries. Naturally, Americans want the industry to increase production so prices can fall. Indeed, Biden has begged American companies to increase production and capacity to ease the burden on consumers. They have refused. Why? Yes, they are enjoying record profits and rewarding stockholders. But, according to the financial press, there is a second, equally important reason. Which brings us to the hopeful part of this story. Even before the pandemic, the industry had decided the future for fossil fuels was not great because the growing impact of climate change was increasing demand for renewable fuels. They see this pattern in the record sales of electric vehicles and the decision by American carmakers to go almost fully electric in 10 years. They see it in record growth worldwide in investments in solar and offshore wind development. Meanwhile, Putin’s murderous war, while pushing prices higher right now, is speeding the transition away from fossil fuels. European countries are advancing their timelines to renewable energy so they can stop buying Russian oil and gas. Oil and gas executives know ramping up production and drilling now will cost many billions over several years that could leave them sitting on product as demand begins slipping — just like during the pandemic. So they’re choosing to squeeze as much profit out of the world’s misery while bankrolling for their futures in renewables. It’s business. Of course, governments can ease the pain. The U.K. is using a windfall profits tax on oil companies to ease the bills on low-income households. Don’t expect that to happen in the U.S.; Republicans would block any such attempt in the Senate. A better way to look at these record prices is as a signal that better days are coming for the planet, and Louisiana. Higher prices will mean less fossil fuel use and reduced emissions, which eventually will reduce sea level rise and the size of hurricanes. In the long run, that’s good news. Bob Marshall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Louisiana environmental journalist, can be reached at bmarshallenviro@gmail.com, and followed on Twitter @BMarshallEnviro. https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_63a5b6ce-f312-11ec-b4b6-1b49ba4ec12d.html

The ‘pursuit of happiness’ means having the right to privacy

Americans face two contradictory visions of democracy. One is represented by a right-wing, activist Supreme Court and Christian nationalists. The other needs a leader. In the first vision of the United States, a sliver of the electorate (White, Christian, male) exploits anti-majoritarian aspects of our democracy (e.g. the filibuster, the electoral college, gerrymandering) to use the awesome power of the government to impose values rooted in the 19th century on a diverse country. (Unsurprisingly, the beneficiaries are largely White, Christian and male.) Oppositional forces (modernity, science, diversity) are foreign, elite and alien. This vision posits that to achieve “ordered liberty” for a diverse, noisy, rambunctious people, we must respect the right to self-determination — to choose one’s family, one’s lifestyle, one’s profession and one’s philosophy of child-rearing. That necessitates restriction on government so as to protect a sphere of private conscience. It’s what Louis Brandeis called the “right to be left alone.” The latter view is shared by a majority of Americans in diverse policy arenas, including contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, child rearing and lifestyle. And until Friday, the Supreme Court dating back nearly a century had jealously guarded that sphere of privacy. Before Griswold v. Connecticut was decided in 1965, the court in the 1920s protected the right to send your child to the school of your choice and receive instruction in a foreign language; in the 1950s, the right to choose your profession; and the right to travel in 1958 — none of which are expressly set forth in the Constitution but all of which are essential to a free people. The court in 1923 held that “liberty” includes the right “to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” All of that — all of it — is up for grabs if the views expressed most directly by Justice Clarence Thomas are accepted. It’s a world few progressives or conservatives would really want to chance. But aside from the court, the invasion of all personal decision-making of privacy is now the driving force behind the MAGA movement. It wants to control how schools teach race, what teachers say about sexual and gender identity, how parents treat transgender children, and, now, whether women can be forced to give birth against their will. Whether tyrannical busybody rules are adopted by political bodies (made less democratic by gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.) or the court, the society that results will be antithetical to the modern vision of a society in which individuals define their own lives and make intimate decisions without fear of the government or deputized vigilantes punishing them. This conflict between two views of America comes at a time when the Democratic Party is struggling to articulate the values of ordinary Americans and to both unify its own base and expand to a larger share of the electorate. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s reckless and reactionary activism, we can see clearly the common value in dire need of support: the right of privacy. As the Supreme Court for about 100 years has explained, this entails the right to self-determination, to self-realization and to personal autonomy. Privacy, like liberty, is threatened by a Christian nationalist movement that wants to freeze the United States in the 19th century and remove our individual choices. The interests (the right to abortion, to same-sex marriage, to contraception, to raising your child as you see fit, to set up a household of your choosing) are varied. Some interests are as old as the republic with newfound urgency (e.g. the right to be secure in one’s home without no-knock raids), and some are entirely new (the right to control your own online data). The theme however is singular: The right to live free from the tyranny of the government and the mob. Quite simply, privacy makes possible the “pursuit of happiness,” which each person must define for themselves . Perhaps the Democratic Party can construct a unifying theme (Privacy is on the ballot!), or perhaps it requires a new political movement akin to other advocacy organizations (Americans for privacy). It might entail a new fusion party that can endorse candidates who respect the right of privacy. One can imagine an agenda dedicated to codifying rights of privacy in federal and state law, to securing privacy rights in referendums and initiatives and even passing a simple constitutional amendment that preserves the right of privacy as it existed before Dobbs. In sum, Americans need a counterweight to a Christian nationalist movement that seeks to impose on the majority the set of social beliefs of the minority. They need a movement to defend the myriad ways 330 million Americans engage in “pursuit of happiness” — ways as diverse as the country itself. All they need is the leadership, energy and determination to harness that most innate human desire — to fulfill one’s own destiny. Opinion | We need a pro-privacy movement to combat Christian nationalism - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/27/privacy-christian-nationalism/?utm_campaign=wp_follow_jennifer_rubin&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl-jenniferrubin&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F37375fb%2F62b9ba7ccfe8a21601c54261%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F6%2F16%2F62b9ba7ccfe8a21601c54261&wp_cu=798fbc1be6589a3768fb139e53083601%7C654c090c-4cc9-11e0-a478-1231380f446b

America's bishops pushed hard for the end of Roe. Now they call for unity and healing. What reality is that?

In 1974, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, then president of the University of Notre Dame, warned Roman Catholics against ceding the abortion debate to "crude zealots who have neither good judgment, sophistication of procedure nor the modicum of civility needed for the rational discussion of disagreements in a pluralistic democracy." This week, the "crude zealots" won. America's Catholic bishops are doing a victory lap over this decision. Four of the five justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade were conservative Catholics. (Chief Justice John Roberts, also a conservative Catholic, voted to uphold the Mississippi abortion ban at issue in the Dobbs case, but did not support overturning Roe outright.) The bishops have been pushing for the overturn of Roe for decades, and many of them were glad to overlook Donald Trump's moral lapses because he declared himself anti-abortion. In his single term (at least so far), Trump, with the help of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, kept his promise and larded the court with three conservative justices eager to reverse 50 years of court precedent. Now these same church leaders are calling on Americans to unite, and for dissension to end. "It is a time for healing wounds and repairing social divisions," the bishops wrote in a statement. "[I]t is a time for reasoned reflection and civil dialogue, and for coming together to build a society and economy that supports marriages and families, and where every woman has the support and resources she needs to bring her child into this world in love." What planet do they live on, to suggest that such an outcome is remotely plausible? Strife will just devolve to the states. Indeed, a 2021 investigation by the National Catholic Reporter found that major anti-abortion groups were funding voter suppression efforts in key states, endorsing Donald Trump's Big Lie and pushing for future Republican victories. That doesn't sound like "coming together" to me. Worse, abortion bans could be the first step toward a police state for pregnant women and anyone who may help them terminate a pregnancy. As the New Yorker's Jia Tolentino predicts, pregnant people could conceivably be surveilled to ensure they do nothing to endanger a "preborn" child — and could be charged with murder if a miscarriage or stillbirth is confused with an abortion. But women who want to get pregnant may also be at risk. The Catholic church condemns in vitro fertilization (IVF) because of its doctrine that life begins at conception, wary that some fertilized eggs could be discarded or used in medical research. If a state decides to take the same position, where does that leave infertile women and couples? In their statement hailing the Roe decision, the bishops congratulated anti-abortion activists on all the alleged good they have done to support pregnant women over the years. But they might also consider all the money that was squandered on this decades-long struggle, and the moral compromises they made along the way. Trump's narrow election victory in 2016 was almost certainly fueled by older, white Catholics in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan who listen to what the church says. But the Catholic hierarchy's abortion obsession has had other pernicious side effects. During the pandemic, bishops' nitpicking over the extremely remote connection between abortion procedures and the development of life-saving COVID vaccines meant that the U.S. church did not wholeheartedly endorse Pope Francis' view of vaccination as a moral obligation. How many hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated Americans died because of those strange abortion qualms? On the bishops' planet, only the innocent "preborn" have any real right to life. The rest of us must adjust to the dictates of what increasingly looks like a doctrinaire Supreme Court dominated by ultra-conservative Catholics. Catholic bishops celebrate a big win: But as they have sowed, so shall they reap | Salon.com

A clear and present danger

For well over 200 years, American elections have relied on a basic principle: the losers peacefully accept defeat. Trump and his followers represent a catastrophic departure from that history. They are not conservatives at all, but wild-eyed radicals. In the name of making America “great again,” they are trashing the very traditions that ensure American greatness. “We are in a dangerous place at the moment,” Ben Berwick, counsel for the advocacy group Protect Democracy, told the Times. “There is a substantial faction in this country that has come to the point where they have rejected the premise that when we have elections, the losers of the elections acknowledge the right of the winner to govern.” That’s why it’s critical for Congress to pass a package of reforms, now being crafted by a bipartisan group of senators, to plug loopholes and clarify ambiguities that this “substantial faction” could exploit in the future to thwart the democratic process. One rule would reinforce Mike Pence’s insistence, in the face of Trump’s pressures, that the vice president has no authority to alter or question election outcomes. Another would make it much harder for members of Congress to challenge results reported by the states. A third would strengthen the authority of the federal judiciary to overrule renegade state officials and legislatures that try to manipulate vote totals. States could also use financial help to protect election officials from harassment. The danger to democracy is clear, and it is present. True conservatives have a profound duty to stand up to Trump and his followers and confront that danger. ~ Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. https://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/catoosa_walker_news/opinion/columns/steven-roberts-a-clear-and-present-danger/article_4275c3ce-f3ba-11ec-a4ac-5f10df4a60f1.html

We already achieved ‘energy independence.’ What good did it do us?

Somehow no one appears to have noticed. “Energy independence” is a political slogan in search of a concrete definition, but based on context, conservatives appear to be referring to situations when the United States sells more oil and petroleum products to the rest of the world than it buys from other countries. The United States initially became a net exporter of oil and petroleum products in late 2019, while Trump was in office, for the first time since at least the 1950s.. There were a few months in late 2020 and early 2021 when that vaunted new trend reversed, and the United States again imported slightly more than we exported. But even then, total petroleum production and consumption still remained nearly even. That was the loss of “energy independence” that Republicans often decry, and (incorrectly) blame on President Biden’s supposed “war on fossil fuels” rather than the pandemic and its volatile effects on petroleum markets. But even that quickly reverted back again. Since last October, we’ve been exporting more than we import each month, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an independent government statistical agency. That is, we got back to “energy independence” under Biden, but Republicans forgot to update their talking points. And what of the reports that fossil-fuel firms ratcheted down production in the past couple of years, allegedly because Biden was waging war on them? It’s true that earlier in the pandemic (i.e. pre-Biden), energy production declined both domestically and internationally. No surprise, given that oil prices briefly turned negative. A lot of companies went bankrupt and investors lost money. In fact, Trump helped negotiate a cut to global oil production to help stabilize plummeting prices, another fact Republicans sometimes conveniently forget. If we actually want to get energy costs down, if we want to completely insulate ourselves from global price shocks, what we ultimately need is the technological investments that keep energy cheap, reliable and, coincidentally, clean. That means investing in renewables, including: installing grid-scale solar wherever possible. Encouraging consumers and businesses to transition to electric vehicles, stoves and heat. And especially, developing better battery technology. Despite the perception that renewable energy is some expensive, indulgent cause of liberal tree huggers, it’s already quite cheap. It’s cheaper, for instance, to build and operate an entirely new wind or solar plant than it is to continue operating an existing coal facility. But without better storage technology, we’re stuck with using easily storable fossil fuels, which are dirtier and subject to geopolitical turmoil. We can’t control what the Russians do. We can’t control what the Saudis do. What we can do is electrify everything and make sure the electricity we use is cheap. That’s the solution if you want to stick it to oil companies, as many on the left do; it’s also the solution if you want abundant, inexpensive and truly independent energy sources, as the right has been coveting for decades. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/07/energy-independence-oil-gas-renewables/

Is there a sickness in U.S. culture? Yes: The GOP gun cult.

But Republicans do have a point about American culture — just not the one they’re trying to make. There is a sickness in America. It’s our gun cult, which has no counterpart in any other advanced democracy. Republican politicians, the gun lobby and gunmakers — the unholy trinity — are complicit not only in weakening gun laws but also in glorifying firearms and encouraging their sale. After every mass shooting, Republicans inspire more gun sales by warning that Democrats are planning to confiscate guns. By increasing the number of firearms in circulation, that makes the next mass shooting more likely. Guns have overtaken flags as an obligatory accessory in Republican campaign commercials, and people who have used guns allegedly for self-protection, such as Kyle Rittenhouse, have become Republican folk heroes. Gun ownership has become a mark of tribal identity in red America. More than twice as many Republicans as Democrats own guns, and by far the most popular reason for buying one is personal protection. Protection from what? Well, it’s no mere coincidence that gun sales have been soaring (primarily among White men) while right-wing politicians and propagandists have been hyping two phantom menaces: First, the criminal threats supposedly posed by desperados from “Democrat cities,” Black Lives Matter protesters and undocumented immigrants. Second, the political threat from Democrats who are supposedly “grooming” children, replacing “legacy Americans” with immigrants of color, and bringing communism to this country. The message to Republicans is that only the Second Amendment can protect their lives and liberty. Republicans are so alarmed about imaginary Democratic plots that 40 percent say violence against the government can be justified. Much of the GOP fearmongering has an obvious racist taint. Blake Masters, a Senate candidate from Arizona who has Donald Trump’s endorsement, blamed gun violence on “Black people.” Yet in the second-deadliest mass shooting in the past month (the one at a Buffalo grocery store), the 10 people who were killed were Black and the alleged perpetrator was a white teenager who was motivated by the “great replacement” theory that Republicans such as Masters espouse. Republicans are contributing to the bloodbath engulfing America by blocking gun-safety laws while promoting gun ownership. The result is that in 2020, guns became the leading cause of death among children. Unless the gun cult fades on the right, children — and adults — will continue to die needlessly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/07/republican-gun-cult-america-sickness-myths-conspiracy/

There’s no reasoning with a GOP hijacked by disinformation

A new study shows how distorting disinformation has become on the political right in the Trump era. Brian Guay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others set out to learn why, as previous studies of social media patterns have found, Republicans share between 200 percent and 500 percent more fake news (fabrications published by sites masquerading as news outlets) than Democrats. Were they less able to distinguish fact from fiction? More psychologically predisposed to political bias? In part, yes. But the researchers found that “the issue primarily seems to be a supply issue,” Guay told me. “There’s just way more fake news on the right than the left.” In experiments giving Democrats and Republicans equal amounts of fake news that confirmed their world views, Republicans were more likely to share the falsehoods — but only 1.6 times more likely. This suggests that Republicans don’t have some “overreaching hunger” to traffic in untruths; they simply can’t avoid it because they’re so immersed in the stuff. Guay’s is the latest of many studies identifying the disinformation “asymmetry” afflicting the right in the Trump era. In lay terms: Garbage in, garbage out. Republican voters hear lies by the thousand from Trump and imitators such as Johnson and Cruz. They hear new conspiracy theories daily from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and other Trump-inspired elites. It’s hardly surprising that, thus exposed, they become more toxic in their language, more extreme in their ideology and more outraged. If you saw “evidence” everywhere you turned, from people you trusted, that the country is being run by socialist pedophiles bent on disarming the populace, extinguishing your race and destroying the United States, you’d probably be outraged, too. At the very least, you might not be in the best frame of mind for a constructive conversation about ending gun violence. ~Dana Milbank Columnist https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/gun-safety-compromise-impossible-gop-disinformation/

Christian nationalism on the rise in some GOP campaigns

Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, said those Jan. 6 displays were not surprising. According to a recent survey by the institute, white evangelical Christians were among the strongest supporters of the assertion that God intended America as a “promised land” for European Christians. Those who backed that idea were far more likely to agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence ... to save our country.” “To my mind, white Christian nationalism is really the threat,” Jones said. Elizabeth Neumann, chief strategy officer for Moonshot, a tech company that aims to counter online violent extremism, disinformation and other harms, said Christian nationalism began picking up steam around 2015 amid a rising narrative of purported persecution of Christians. Neumann, who served in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations and grew up in an evangelical Christian household, called the movement “heretical and idolatry” and an “apocalyptic vision (that) very often leads to violence.” Many pastors are pushing back against it, she added. “I see Christian nationalism as the gasping, dying breath of the older generation in America that is afraid that Christians are going to be replaced,” she said. https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2022/05/29/christian-nationalism-on-the-rise-in-some-gop-campaigns/

Analysis: How the right embraced the racist ‘replacement’ theory

The right spread the racist ‘great replacement theory’ even after a series of tragedies in which the shooter espoused it. Analysis by Aaron Blake Racists have long espoused the theory — as the Buffalo suspect apparently did — to suggest that Whites are being usurped. Meanwhile, in recent years, Republicans and conservative pundits have increasingly cast Democrats as favoring immigration in the hopes of diluting the GOP’s political power. We’ve written about the GOP’s descent into replacement theory before, but it’s worth laying out the timeline. The idea was mostly relegated to the fringes when Donald Trump first ran for president, but he did nod to it. And then it took off last year despite tragedies involving the theory in 2017, 2018 and twice in 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/16/gop-replacement-theory-timeline/

Louisiana already seceded once. Does this politician want to try again?

Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Kentucky who was head honcho of the Senate when it was Republican-controlled, sat on President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court for a year. But he was quick off the mark once Trump took over. After ensconcing Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, McConnell completed the trifecta that doomed Roe by rushing Barrett's nomination through days before the election that finished Trump. If these justices are not partisan hacks, they might as well be. ~James Gill, columnist https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_792fa59a-d233-11ec-8055-0fcdd74aa6f9.html

Let’s throw out the term ‘culture wars.’ This is religious tyranny.

The right-wing justices and their supporters appear ready to reject one of the Founders’ core principles: that religion shall not be imposed by government edict. Other Republicans have given away the scheme. In his 11-point plan, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, declares: “The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated. To say otherwise is to deny science.” Put aside the utter incoherence (is it God or science?): The senator is explicitly calling for state power to be used in the service of his religious beliefs. And it’s no slip of the tongue. As would a number of Supreme Court justices, Scott would impose religious views while refusing to admit his views stem from a particular religious perspective. “Abortion kills human children,” Scott pronounces. “To deny that is to deny science.” Actually, he wants to mandate conduct based on the religious view that humanity/personhood starts at conception. This is not about “culture.” It is about appropriating state power to enforce theocratically driven positions. Issues dismissed as “culture” or “wokeness” inevitably boil down to whether government will diminish individual rights (e.g., a rape victim’s access to abortion) and supplant decision-making on matters, such as health care, that individuals and families jealously guard. Vice President Harris said on Tuesday at an Emily’s List gathering, reversing Roe would be “a direct assault on freedom, on the fundamental right of self-determination.” She continued: “When the right to privacy is attacked, anyone in our country may face a future where the government can interfere with their personal decisions. Not just women. Anyone.” In sum, the media’s “culture wars” shorthand is an evasion, a refusal to recognize that what is at stake are the rights and lives of those without the resources or power to defend themselves (e.g., travel out of state for an abortion). The Supreme Court is poised to roil the very essence of our constitutional tradition and strike at the heart of a pluralistic democracy. Let’s call it what it really is: state-enforced theocracy, or, if you prefer, religious authoritarianism. By Jennifer Rubin Columnist https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/04/culture-wars-diminishes-danger/?utm_campaign=wp_follow_jennifer_rubin&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl-jenniferrubin&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F36bfe96%2F6272895e956121755a63afec%2F5976f806ade4e26514bcc8c9%2F6%2F16%2F6272895e956121755a63afec

To recall: Appeals court: Trump wrongly diverted $2.5 billion in military construction funds for border wall.

To recall: June 26, 2020 Appeals court: Trump wrongly diverted $2.5 billion in military construction funds for border wall. A federal appeals court on Friday ruled against the Trump administration in its transfer of $2.5 billion from military construction projects to build sections of the U.S. border wall with Mexico, ruling it illegally sidestepped Congress, which gets to decide how to use the funds. In two opinions, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a coalition of border states and environmental groups that contended the money transfer was unlawful and that building the wall would pose environmental threats. Critics of Trump's wall praised the rulings on Friday for upholding the Constitution, which grants Congress the power of the purse. ~Military Times https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/06/26/appeals-court-trump-wrongly-diverted-25-billion-in-milcon-funds-for-border-wall/

To recall: Stopping U.S. Assistance to Central America is Counterproductive and Misinformed

To recall: June 17, 2019, the State Department said no additional foreign aid will be provided for Honduras, Guatemala & El Salvador until they take "concrete actions to reduce the number of illegal migrants coming to the U.S. border." Trump administration chooses a strategy that makes things worse. Instead of working with leaders in Central America to stabilize the situation there, the administration is eliminating aid intended to create better conditions that would help keep families home. The Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group, stated “all aid to Central America is not the way to build a safer, more prosperous region where people aren't forced to flee.” Lawmakers who were against the plan said it was cruel to cut off aid to countries dealing with hunger and crime. The move would be counterproductive, because it is more likely increase the number of migrants than decrease it. https://www.wola.org/analysis/stopping-us-assistance-central-america-counterproductive-misinformed/

Ukraine is our war, Biden is our wartime president

In 1987, Trump took out full-page newspaper ads urging Americans to stop paying to defend others, the big subtext being to leave NATO. (George W. Bush and Barack Obama also called for other countries to raise defense spending but didn't dream of using that as an excuse to compromise U.S. security.) These were Russian talking points parroted by a real estate investor whom the Russians were bailing out of bankruptcies. Trump in return laundered Russian oligarch/mob money through sales of U.S. property in all-cash, anonymous transactions. One example is the deluxe Trump Towers in Miami's Sunny Isles Beach, now known as "Little Russia." U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russians interfered with the 2016 presidential election to help elect comrade Trump. He came through for the Russians three years later when he blocked nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine. Trump claims that Putin would never have invaded Ukraine had he still been president. This is the opposite of true. Trump's advisers reportedly warned him that blowing up NATO would be unpopular and could cost him reelection. ~ Froma Harrop https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/columnists/froma-harrop-ukraine-is-our-war-biden-our-wartime-president-opinion/article_e1b62df7-f629-5f1d-9cb8-ecedd1639d56.html

This Republican about-face is so much worse than ‘cancel culture’

In other states, such as Georgia, GOP politicians have punished private companies for taking supposedly “woke” stands on issues such as gun violence. Republicans in Congress have likewise tried to use antitrust enforcement and other government levers to punish companies whose public stances on voting rights or internal policies on content moderation they dislike. This approach to governance was expertly modeled by Donald Trump, who as president frequently used the power of the state to reward friends and punish perceived political enemies. He did this through tax law, tariff policy and other proposed subsidies that chose winners and losers according to their political allegiances. He selectively enforced energy policies, such as allowing offshore drilling, to dole out favors to friends. He allegedly attempted to block a government contract to Amazon because its founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Post; he also tried to raise the prices the retail giant pays for U.S. Postal Service shipping. He launched a bogus antitrust investigation into car companies that had opposed his lax emissions standards. He threatened to revoke the “licenses” of broadcast media firms whose coverage he disliked. And that’s not getting into all the times he tried to weaponize his presidency to prosecute or otherwise punish politicians and private citizens (rather than companies). At the time, these behaviors might have seemed like an aberration from standard GOP rhetoric and policy, the ravings and abuses of a would-be authoritarian leader. Occasionally his fellow Republicans even called Trump out on these command-and-control, Soviet-style efforts to intervene in markets and curb free enterprise. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/04/republicans-embrace-trumps-approach-using-power-bully-opponents/?tid=ss_tw

The GOP is increasingly viewing politics with the zeal of religious absolutism

From article: Republicans have replaced the give-and-take of politics with religious zeal — the politics of absolutism. If God is on your side and the other side represents an existential threat, surely you wouldn’t let truth, comity, fairness or decency slow you down. In the grand scheme of things, what’s a little character assassination of a trailblazing Black female judge? That view of illegitimacy often stems from Christian nationalism. As Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, explains, “A worldview that claims God as a political partisan and dehumanizes one’s political opponents as evil is fundamentally antidemocratic.” He tells me, “A mind-set that believes that our nation was divinely ordained to be a promised land for Christians of European descent is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion and equality of all.” Christian nationalism cannot be separated from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection or the absolutist politics of today’s GOP. As David French, the evangelical Christian writer and former Republican, candidly acknowledges in the Atlantic: One of the most dangerous aspects of the effort to overturn the election was the extent to which it was an explicitly religious cause. January 6 insurrectionists stampeded into the Senate chamber with prayers on their lips. Prominent religious leaders and leading Christian lawyers threw themselves into the effort to delay election certification or throw out the election results entirely. In the House and Senate, the congressional leaders of the effort to overturn the election included many of Congress’s most public evangelicals. They didn’t just approach the election fight with religious zeal; they approached it with an absolute conviction that they enjoyed divine sanction. The merger of faith and partisanship was damaging enough, but the merger of faith with lawlessness and even outright delusion represented a profound perversion of the role of the Christian in the public square. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/28/republicans-ketanji-brown-jackson-hearings-reveal-politics-of-absolutism/?fbclid=IwAR0aC-

A month into war, Putin’s mind-set is complex — and dangerous

From article: Putin is something different — a Russian Orthodox Christian believer rather than an atheist, with an ideology closer to Benito Mussolini’s fascism than Vladimir Lenin’s communism. Putin described the bloody assault as salvation for Ukraine — and spoke of a religious duty “to relieve these people of suffering.” Astonishingly, he quoted the Bible to justify his blitzkrieg: “I recall the words from the Holy Scripture: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Putin’s religiosity is a little noted but powerful part of his personality. Putin’s mother, Maria, was a “deeply religious” woman, according to biographer Steven Lee Myers, who survived the siege of Leningrad in World War II after moaning for help amid a pile of corpses. When her son Vladimir was born in 1952, she "secretly baptized the boy,” Myers writes. “The Bolsheviks treated the Russian people as inexhaustible material for their social experiments,” Putin wrote. “One fact is crystal clear: Russia was robbed.” At the heart of Putin’s worldview is a sense that Russia has been humiliated by a Western conspiracy. Russia’s enemies are immoral, Putin argued. He believes deeply in the evil that he is doing. He sees the destruction of an independent Ukraine almost as a religious duty. Two obvious warnings emerge from this narrative: Handle the volatile mix that is Putin with care, lest it explode in a far wider war. And do not let him succeed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/22/putin-religious-russia-history-ukraine/

Distinguished persons of the week: They speak to and for Russians

From article: No one should think such messages can be kept from Russians. Russia is not North Korea. As The Post reports, “In the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine and imposed new laws penalizing speech that knocked major news sites offline, Russians have flocked to the app stores, tech workers there said.” They are downloading “virtual private networks for connecting across borders and such messaging apps as Telegram, WhatsApp and Threema, all of which are major ways of sharing unapproved news.” This new media, combined with old technology such as shortwave radio, can provide uncensored news to a significant number of Russians. Meanwhile, hackers continue to wreak havoc with Russian state media. The Post reports: “Wednesday evening, the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry website was defaced by hackers, who altered its content. Notably, the hack replaced the department hotline with a number for Russian soldiers to call if they want to defect from the army — under the title ‘Come back from Ukraine alive.’” Truth and personal agency are despots’ kryptonite. Messages such as those from Ovsyannikova, Schwarzenegger and the army of pro-democracy hackers are spreading across Russia, overwhelming a desperate and humiliated regime. To them we can say, well done. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/18/why-arnold-schwarzenegger-told-russia-stop-war-ukraine/

How Putin’s mistakes rallied his enemies

This is no cause for complacency. Putin can still inflict enormous damage, particularly on the people of Ukraine. Holding firm against him will be costly, and unity against him in the West could fray. He will certainly try to sow divisions among and within the democracies. Party strife is one of freedom’s inevitable byproducts. Western voters will be tempted to see the showdown in Ukraine as, in Neville Chamberlain’s infamous phrase, “a quarrel in a faraway country.” Nonetheless, it’s not outlandish to hope that Russian citizens, including some among its elites, will eventually tire of the isolation bred by their leader’s misadventures and misjudgments — especially if he drags his country into a large and costly land war. If the West remains patient and determined, Putin could yet reap the whirlwind at home. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/23/putin-ukraine-russian-overreach-his-own-undoing/

We need a ‘Mazars warning’ on everything Trump says

Those who consume any Trump message should like-wise receive a Mazars warning: “The statements of Donald J. Trump should not be relied upon” ~ Dana Milbank https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/16/trump-accountants-warning-do-not-trust/

The GOP celebration of covid ignorance is an invitation to death

The first, practiced most vigorously by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, uses an ongoing pandemic as a stage for the display of ideological zeal. In this view, the covid-19 crisis — rather than being a story of remarkable but flawed scientists and public health experts deploying the best of science against a vicious microbe — has been an opportunity for the left to impose “authoritarian, arbitrary and seemingly never-ending mandates and restrictions.” Never mind that U.S. public health officials are not part of the left, and are authentically confused about the equation of their advice with ideology. A second type of the Republican romance with death comes in the vilification of those most dedicated to preserving the lives of Americans. Public officials such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) invent a conspiratorial backstory to the covid crisis and depict the most visible representatives of the United States’ covid response as scheming, deceptive deep-state operatives. Any change in emphasis or strategy by scientists — an essential commitment of the scientific method — is viewed as rich opposition research. A third category of Republican death wish is the practice of strategic ignorance. In a case such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — America’s most reliable source of unreliable information about covid-19 — such ignorance might not be feigned. He might well believe that gargling with mouthwash call kill the coronavirus, and that thousands of people are regularly dying from vaccine side effects, and that a pandemic that has taken more than 800,000 lives in the United States is “overhyped.” During a pandemic, however, the celebration of ignorance is an invitation to death. Public health depends on social cooperation. If a significant group of Americans regard the musing of a politician such as Johnson as equal in value to Fauci’s lifelong accumulation of expertise, the basis for rational action is lost. And the result is needless death. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/13/gop-covid-ignorance-endangers-american-lives/

Jan. 6 wasn’t the end of a failed plot. It was a new salvo in an unfolding uprising

The events of Jan. 6 were not the evidence of a failed plot; they were one rallying point in an unfolding uprising. We still need to understand exactly what happened that day. But more important than such events is the attitudes that enabled them. At issue is the question of democratic legitimacy: Do citizens seek solutions to their problems outside the structures of democracy? This is what motivates people who believe they have found loopholes in the constitutional order that allow them to rule like a majority without winning a majority of support. This is what causes a sitting president to contemplate martial law when a democratic outcome defies his will. On Jan. 6, 2021, we saw what can happen when the protection of procedure is thrown aside by those who govern us. Since then, we have seen the appeal of undemocratic ideals only expand on the right. This has highlighted the most difficult, recurrent debates of U.S. history. Can a nation with so much regional diversity unite in common public purposes? And will the people remain loyal to democratic procedures against the appeal of political demagogues? Moving forward, Jan. 6 does not deserve special distinction — except to celebrate the courage and sacrifice of those who defended the Capitol against attack. It is one more day of a concerted, ongoing assault on democratic institutions. Defeating that assault will require Americans who rise to the defense of self-government with the same intensity as those who pursue victory in the culture wars. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/06/jan-6-assault-on-democracy-unfolding/

Doughnuts are not the key to the fountain of youth

“Doughnuts are not the key to the fountain of youth,” says Gohara, who reminds her patients that a nutritious eating pattern is a lifestyle, not a transient plan that will fix wrinkles in six weeks. “Skin is an organ,” Gohara says. “As such, we should eat for our skin, as we do for our heart and brain.” If you want to protect all three, the Mediterranean, MIND and DASH diets offer a promising place to start. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2021/12/17/food-plans-anti-aging-diet/

Opinion: Every time I think the inflation discourse can’t get dumber, I’m proven wrong

Republicans and right-wing media have argued, for instance, that President Biden has driven up energy prices as part of his supposed war on fossil fuels. Specifically, they blame him for shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline. They don’t mention, however, that this pipeline was only 8 percent built when Biden revoked a U.S.-side permit for its construction. So Biden did not actually shut down any existing supply. (It’s also not clear that the canceled XL pipeline would have much effect on U.S. gas prices, even if it were eventually built someday, given that most oil passing through it likely would be exported.) Or, Republicans say the real way Biden raised gas prices was by ending drilling for oil and gas on public lands. This didn’t actually happen, even if Biden’s campaign pledges and executive actions suggested it would. The Associated Press reported in July that the Biden administration was on track to approve more oil and gas drilling permits this year than were approved any year of the Trump administration — actually, more than any year since 2008. And last month, just a few days after the global climate conference known as COP26, the Biden administration conducted the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history. The main reason price growth is up has to do with constrained supply not keeping up with booming demand. That is, the pandemic has resulted in worker shortages, supply-chain disruptions and other bottlenecks in the United States and abroad. These problems are happening at the exact same time that cooped-up consumers are eager to buy even more stuff than they did pre-pandemic. Arguably, recent U.S. fiscal policy may have exacerbated this dynamic: Biden and the Democrats enacted stimulus payments and other government transfers earlier this year, which gave consumers more cash to spend. Now consumers are spending that cash. That could be one reason inflation is higher here than it is in, say, the euro zone — though inflation has reached record highs there, too. Aside from some vague rhetoric about Democrats’ “big spending” habits, though, those checks are not really what Republican politicians are criticizing Biden for. Perhaps with good reason: The spring stimulus checks were extremely popular, including among Republican voters. Plus, this line of attack might also implicate former president Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers, since they too passed multiple rounds of stimulus payments last year. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/02/every-time-i-think-inflation-discourse-cant-get-dumber-im-proven-wrong/

The exhausting, soul-sapping meanness of Lauren Boebert

From article But trolling is exhausting. It can take the wind out of you even if you aren’t the instigator or the target. Mean-spiritedness changes the atmosphere and the mood of the room. It’s not an invigorating intellectual argument that informs even as it enrages. It’s not an energizing and graceful debate that forces you to see someone’s beliefs in a new way. Trolling is hollow and cheap. It steals your appetite for engagement. It leaves you empty. It deadens us all. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/11/30/exhausting-soul-sapping-meanness-lauren-boebert/

Why Everyone Is So Rude Right Now-In the minds of some of the individuals, snapping at the flight attendant is not rude, it’s civil disobedience.

Some people may have thought that, having been prevented from mingling with other humans for a period, folks would greet the return of social activity with hugs, revelry and fellowship. But in many ways, say psychologists, the long separation has made social interactions more fraught. The combination of a contagious, life-threatening disease and a series of unprecedented, life-altering changes in the rules of human engagement have left people anxious, confused and, especially if they do not believe the restrictions were necessary, deeply resentful. “We’re going through a time where physiologically, people’s threat system is at a heightened level,” says Bernard Golden, a psychologist and the author of Overcoming Destructive Anger. This period of threat has been so long that it may have had a damaging effect on people’s mental health, which for many has then been further debilitated by isolation, loss of resources, the death of loved ones and reduced social support. “During COVID there has been an increase in anxiety, a reported increase in depression, and an increased demand for mental health services,” he adds. Lots of people, in other words, are on their very last nerve. This is true, he adds, whether they believe the virus is an existential threat or not. “Half the people fear COVID,” says Golden. “Half the people fear being controlled.” Heightening the anxiety, the current situation is completely unfamiliar to most people. “Nobody expected what happened. We didn’t have time to prepare psychologically,” says Cristina Bicchieri, director of the Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania. Then, just as it seemed like the danger had passed, other limitations arrived; staff shortages, product shortages, longer delivery times. “People think, ‘O.K, now we can go shopping and go out,’ and they find that life is not back to normal,” Bicchieri says. “There is an enormous amount of frustration.” It’s not a coincidence, psychologists say, that much of the incivility occurs towards people who are in customer service industries. “People feel almost entitled to be rude to people who are not in a position of power,” says Hans Steiner, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. “Especially when they come at them, and remind them of the fact that they have to do their piece to get rid of this pandemic.” The workers who are now in charge of enforcing rules are traditionally regarded as caregivers and servers. The power dynamic has been completely upended. And of course, it’s always easier to punch down. “It’s displaced anger,” says Bernard. “They’re angry about other things but they take it out in those encounters.” It wasn’t like Americans were exactly overlooking their differences before the pandemic. Some researchers point to the increase in crude public discourse, both from political leaders and in online discussion—which encourages outsized emotions—as the gateway rudeness that has led to the current wave. “We don’t filter ourselves as much as we used to,” says Bernard. “On the internet, people feel like they can say anything. They no longer guard themselves. And I think they transfer that lack of filter into public life. I think from leadership that we’ve had in the last number of years, that’s only been more encouraged.” But it goes deeper: Impolite interactions are not the only thing that’s on the rise; crimes are too. “We’re seeing measurable increases in all kinds of crimes, so that suggests to me that there is something changing,” says Jay Van Bavel, associate professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, and co-author of a book on social harmony, The Power of Us, that came out in September. He suggests the reasons for the rise in both are structural and profound; America has lost sense of social cohesion, as a result of the widening gaps between the wealthy and working class. “The more inequality you get—which has gotten really bad in the last few decades—the less of a sense of cohesion there are across socioeconomic classes,” he says. “That’s something that if that’s not addressed is going to continue to cause turmoil.” There’s some international agreement that the situation may not just be one where people have forgotten their manners, or are out of practice because everyone had to stop shaking hands for a while. Matteo Bonotti and Steven T. Zech, both of the politics department at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, who wrote Recovering Civility During Covid 19, conclude that even if the people were initially bamboozled because they had to communicate using a new set of rules, that soon wore off. “At the very beginning [of the pandemic] people just didn’t know how to be polite,” says Zech. It was hard to communicate a smile, and it became necessary to avoid rather than embrace people. But after a certain point, the unintentional rudeness became intentional and deliberate. “It’s meant to call attention to what they see as this kind of unjust policy, some discrimination, or some infringement on some other right,” says Zech. In the minds of some of the individuals, snapping at the flight attendant is not rude, it’s civil disobedience. If the rash of bad behavior is not just short-term impatience with the unique situation and actually a symbol of something much deeper, then unwinding it will be more difficult than merely giving flight attendants more training on what to do with with mid-air contretemps, although that can’t hurt. Meanwhile psychologists suggest that people slow down, breathe out more slowly and lower their voices when encountering difficult social situations or irate people so as not to make any situation worse. “All of anger management,” says Golden, “involves pausing.” https://time.com/6099906/rude-customers-pandemic/

Day of The Dead Pandemic 2021

How Trump Steered Supporters Into Unwitting Donations

By Shane Goldmacher Published April 3, 2021Updated April 5, 2021 Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaugh’s dire warnings about how badly Donald J. Trump’s campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500. It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution — federal records show it was his first ever — quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Mr. Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell, for help. What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they thought they were victims of fraud. “It felt,” Russell said, “like it was a scam.” Mr. Trump’s hyperaggressive fund-raising practices did not stop once he lost the election. His campaign continued the weekly withdrawals through prechecked boxes all the way through Dec. 14 as he raised tens of millions of dollars for his new political action committee, Save America. In March, Mr. Trump urged his followers to send their money to him — and not to the traditional party apparatus — making plain that he intends to remain the gravitational center of Republican fund-raising online. A small yellow box and a flood of fraud complaints The small and bright yellow box popped up on Mr. Trump’s digital donation portal around March 2020. The text was boldface, simple and straightforward: “Make this a monthly recurring donation.” The box came prefilled with a check mark. How Trump Steered Supporters Into Unwitting Donations - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

The U.S. must punish sedition — or risk more of it

Stopping this rot in the political order will require accountability. That begins with the president, who deserves every legal and constitutional consequence our system offers. He should be impeached for sedition. He should be prevented from holding any further elective office. He should be stripped of all the perks of the post-presidency. He should be prosecuted for insurrection against the U.S. government. But the responsibility does not end with a single man. Many elected Republicans enabled the president’s political rise. Trump could only attempt the occupation of the Capitol because he had already occupied the Republican Party — in that case, with little resistance. Elected Republicans who cheered that takeover deserve to lose, and lose, and lose, until their party is either destroyed or transformed. There are also harder cases. Some elected Republicans did more than spread the lies that empowered the insurrection. They voted to confirm those lies after the Capitol had been assaulted. Not even physical danger — not even the humiliation of their country and the attempted murder of their colleagues — could overcome their moral cowardice and political ambition. That justifies ethics investigations of people such as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and McCarthy, leading to their possible expulsion. These legislators urged surrender to the pernicious lies and seditious demands of violent insurrectionists who had just left the building. That is the betrayal of the oath they took to defend the Constitution. This is the sad reality of our beleaguered democracy: If the United States does not punish sedition, we will see more of it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-must-punish-sedition--or-risk-more-of-it/2021/01/11/97907746-5438-11eb-a931-5b162d0d033d_story.html

Let the anti-constitutional Republicans reveal themselves

This attack on the constitutional order has led Republican populism into direct conflict with conservatism. Those who once claimed to endorse law and order have come to endorse lawless attacks on the public order. Those who once called themselves constitutionalists now treat the constitutional system with contempt. Those who once warned against tyranny now submissively serve a president with authoritarian pretensions. Those who once stood for federalism now demand that the federal government invalidate state-run elections. Those who once demanded judicial restraint now want courts to overrule democracy on a breathtaking scale. This is a movement fueled by high-octane hypocrisy. ~Michael Gerson, Conservative writer for President George W. Bush https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/let-the-anti-constitutional-republicans-reveal-themselves/2021/01/04/d3fafee0-4eb6-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html

American history is about outcomes. Will we pass the covid-19 test?

It comes as a surprise because history’s verdict is determined by the outcome. Likewise, the history of the covid-19 pandemic will be more interested in how the battle ends than in how it got started. In that respect, the fight begins now. History will elide many of the missteps of last winter provided that we make a better showing from now on. Take, for example, the fiasco of the face coverings. When the novel coronavirus emerged, hospital managers immediately worried they would run short of personal protective equipment, including face masks. To protect existing supplies, authorities assured the public that we’d be fine without masks. That was a mistake. Masks have proved to be the first line of defense, along with social distancing and clean hands. Even on the cusp of a vaccine, these simple measures are not only our best options against the pandemic; they continue to be the only ones available to engage the nation to meet this challenge. The vaccine is coming, but the crisis is already here. History’s account of Americans in this pandemic will focus on what we do starting now. Our lack of leadership has been depressing. But we’ve learned enough through these past nine months to make up for absent leadership by exercising citizenship. It’s not Normandy. It’s not Gettysburg. But this is what history demands today. There is just enough time — just barely — left for us to pass the test. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/american-history-is-about-outcomes-will-we-pass-the-covid-19-test/2020/12/08/d39b6fb6-397b-11eb-bc68-96af0daae728_story.html

The moral hypocrisy of conservative leaders is stunning

The intellectual bankruptcy and moral hypocrisy of many conservative leaders is stunning. People who claimed to favor limited government now applaud Trump’s use of the executive branch to undermine an election. A similar attempt by Barack Obama would have brought comparisons to Fidel Castro. People who talked endlessly about respecting the Constitution affirm absurd slanders against the constitutional order. People who claimed to be patriots now spread false claims about their country’s fundamental corruption. People who talked of honoring the rule of law now jerk and gyrate according to the whims of a lawless leader. These conservative leaders no longer deserve the assumption of sincerity. They are spreading conspiratorial lies so unlikely and irrational, they must know them to be lies. But their motive remains a matter of debate. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-moral-hypocrisy-of-conservative-leaders-is-stunning/2020/12/14/35e62f16-3e2d-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html

A gamble pays off in ‘spectacular success’: How the leading coronavirus vaccines made it to the finish line

The Vaccine Research Center, where Graham is deputy director, was the brainchild of Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It was created in 1997 to bring together scientists and physicians from different disciplines to defeat diseases, with a heavy focus on HIV. Since 1961, scientists had known about messenger RNA, the transient genetic material that makes life possible, taking the instructions inscribed in DNA and delivering those to the protein-making parts of the cell. In 2005, the pair discovered a way to modify RNA, chemically tweaking one of the letters of its code, so it didn’t trigger an inflammatory response. Deborah Fuller, a scientist who works on RNA and DNA vaccines at the University of Washington, said that work deserves a Nobel Prize. Ugur Sahin, chief executive of BioNTech, said it was thrilling when he and colleagues in 2016 developed a nanoparticle to deliver messenger RNA to a special cell type that could take the code and turn it into a protein on its surface to provoke the immune system. The latest genetic techniques, like messenger RNA, don’t take as long to develop because those virus bits don’t have to be generated in a lab. Instead, the vaccine delivers a genetic code that instructs cells to build those characteristic proteins themselves. Scientists have to choose which telltale part of the virus to show the immune system. Long before the pandemic, Graham’s research had revealed that some virus proteins change shape after they break into a person’s cells. A vaccine based on the wrong shape could effectively train the immune system to be an ineffective sheriff, never stopping vandals or burglars before they wreak their havoc. Graham had used this insight to design a better vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus; it made Science magazine’s shortlist of 2013’s most important scientific breakthroughs. Coronaviruses seemed like an important next target. Severe acute respiratory syndrome had emerged in 2003. Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) broke out in 2012. It seemed clear to Graham and Jason McLellan, a structural biologist now at the University of Texas at Austin, that new coronaviruses were jumping into people on a 10-year clock and that it might be time to brace for the next one. Last winter, when Graham heard rumblings of a new coronavirus in China, he brought the team back together. Once its genome was shared online by Chinese scientists, the laboratories in Texas and Maryland designed a vaccine, utilizing the stabilizing mutations and the knowledge they had gained from years of basic research — a weekend project thanks to the dividends of all that past work. On Jan. 13, Moderna, The company could start making the vaccine almost right away because of its experience manufacturing experimental cancer vaccines, which involves taking tumor samples and developing personalized vaccines in 45 days. But the world will also owe their existence to many scientists outside those companies, in government and academia, who pursued ideas they thought were important even when the world doubted them. McLellan’s laboratory at the University of Texas is proud to have licensed an even more potent version of their spike protein, royalty-free, to be incorporated into a vaccine for low- and middle-income countries. Graham is matter-of-fact, rather than exuberant, and quickly changes the subject to the immense amount of work that remains to be done. Historic scientific news must now be transformed into a tool that is mass produced, distributed and used widely around the world to blunt the sickness and suffering of this winter — and to lift the pall this pandemic has cast over virtually every aspect of daily life. He recalled that his 5-year-old granddaughter recently heard the family talking about “getting back to normal” if a vaccine is successful. “She looked up and said, ‘What is normal life, what do you mean by that?’ ” Graham said. “Half of her memorable life has been like this.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/12/06/covid-vaccine-messenger-rna/