HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

April 19, 2022 (Tuesday)

Last night, lawyers for Ed Vallejo, one of 11 members of the right-wing Oath Keepers gang accused of seditious conspiracy for their actions surrounding January 6, filed a motion for Vallejo’s release from pretrial jail.

Vallejo’s lawyer describes his client as having “a passionate yet gentle nature, as well as [a] love of animals,” and quotes one of Vallejo’s friends as saying the accused conspirator is a “true man of passion” whose “tools are an abundance of love, sunshine and gratitude to God for giving him a chance to prove it by helping people.” The lawyer tried to explain away the 200 pounds of food Vallejo brought for a 30-day siege (he thought they were going camping, the lawyer says) and his declaration that there would be “guerilla war” if Trump didn’t “bring the f*cking hammer down." The lawyer’s argument is that Vallejo should be let out of prison because the real culprits were former president Trump—who convinced Vallejo that the election was stolen and that the country must be protected—and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, who was planning an attack on the Capitol.

The motion is interesting because included in it were several hundred pages of exhibits, including dozens of pages of messages allegedly between many of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Messages indicate how closely the insurrectionists on the ground followed former president Trump’s Twitter feed—“there’s no better direct link from him than Twitter”—and offer extensive evidence that the attack on January 6 was planned in advance.

The insurrectionists talked at length from late December onward about arming themselves and going to Washington, D.C. On January 3, one reported to the group that they had gotten an email saying that the rally would start at the Ellipse, whose space “merges into the Mall around the Washington Monument, and heads down to the Capitol, the scene of the ‘action.’”

Calling himself “We the People,” one of them wrote, “WeAreTheStorm as you are about to witness!!” The person took heart from what was happening in Congress: “Sens Ted Cruz (RTX), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Braun (RIN), Steve Daines (R-MT), John Kennedy (RLA), James Lankford (R-OK) and senators elect Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) announced they will object to the Jan. 6 electoral vote certification and are calling for a 10-day electoral commission to audit the election results.”

As well, the messages refer to Trump advisor Roger Stone and to Representative Ronny Jackson (R-TX), at the time the newly elected representative who had been the White House physician. “Roger Stone just asked for security,” Jessica Watkins texted the group chat on January 1, referring to a statement Stone had made on television. Another answered: “Who reached out to you? I [spoke] to him Wednesday.” On January 6, around 3:00 in the afternoon, one person texted the group: “Dr. Ronnie Jackson—on the move. Needs protection. If anyone inside cover him. He has critical data to protect,” one person messaged. Oath Keeper leader Steward Rhodes messaged back: “Give him my cell.”

By 6:36 on January 6, the conspirators appear to have figured out they were in trouble. “We are now the enemy of the State,” one messaged the others. Another was furious at Rhodes: “As I figured. This organization is a huge f*ckin joke. You Stewart are the dum**** I heard you were. Good luck getting rich off those Dumb ***… donations you f*ck stick.”

Rhodes responded to the group by moving the goalposts. They had “one FINAL chance to get Trump to do his job and his duty,” he said. “Patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what's coming if Trump doesn't take decisive action right now. It helped to send that message to HIM. He was the most important audience today. I hope he got the message.”

This morning, a spokesperson for Jackson said: “Rep. Jackson is frequently talked about by people he does not know. He does not know nor has he ever spoken to the people in question.“

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol also has a great deal of information; it has now interviewed more than 800 people. On April 11, Salon columnist Chauncey DeVega published an interview with Hugo Lowell, who has been following the January 6 committee closely for The Guardian. Lowell’s observations support the idea of a conspiracy, although he noted evidence is still coming in. “The evidence so far points to the fact that Donald Trump knew and oversaw what happened on Jan. 6,” Lowell told DeVega. “Trump knew in advance about these different elements that came together to form both the political element of his plan, which was to have Pence throw the election, and the violence that took place on Jan. 6.”

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the January 6 committee, suggested Lowell’s observation was correct yesterday when he told reporters: “This was a coup organized by the president against the vice president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” Trump’s role in that coup will be the centerpiece of next month’s public committee hearings.

Last week, on April 12, Alan Feuer of the New York Times broke the story that on December 30, 2020, Jason Sullivan, a former aide to Roger Stone, urged Trump supporters on a zoom call to “descend on the Capitol” on January 6 to intimidate Congress. Sullivan said that Trump would declare martial law and would stay in office. “Biden will never be in that White House,” Sullivan said. “That’s my promise to each and every one of you.” “If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” he said. “We have to put that pressure there.” Sullivan’s lawyer responded to the story by saying he had just “shared some encouragement” with people who believed the election had been stolen.

Yesterday, Kimberly Guilfoyle, former Trump advisor and fiancée of Donald Trump, Jr., spoke with the January 6 committee for 9 hours. Guilfoyle was with the Trump family the morning of January 6 and was also a fundraiser for the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse, claiming to have raised $3 million to underwrite it. In its March 3, 2022, letter subpoenaing Guilfoyle, the committee reminded her that she spoke at that rally, telling “the crowd, 'We will not allow the liberals and the Democrats to steal our dream or steal our elections,' and were filmed backstage prior to your speech telling people to 'Have the courage to do the right thing. Fight!'"

In Georgia, voters are challenging the inclusion of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on the ballot this fall, arguing that she is an insurrectionist disqualified to hold office under the Fourteenth Amendment. Ratified after the Civil War, that amendment says any official who has taken an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and then engages “in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” cannot hold office. Greene took her oath of office on January 3, 2021, three days before the January 6 insurrection, and insisted the election had been stolen. “This is our 1776 moment,” she told Newsmax on January 5, 2021.

Greene promptly sued to get a judge to block the challenge. Yesterday, federal judge Amy Totenberg decided that the case can go forward. Greene will have to testify on Friday, under oath, before a state administrative law judge in Atlanta. She will be the first member of Congress to testify under oath about the events of January 6. After the judge handed down the decision, Greene complained to Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson that “I have to go to court on Friday and actually be questioned about something I’ve never been charged with and something I was completely against.”

This will be a bellwether for the other nine similar cases already filed across the country and might, of course, affect the candidacy of the former president should he run again in 2024.

JUDGE FINDS FORMER GOVERNMENT CONTRACTOR NOT GUILTY IN FIRST JAN. 6 ACQUITTAL

A Washington, DC judge ruled the first acquittal tied to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

A Washington, DC judge on Wednesday found a man not guilty for his alleged role in the US Capitol riot — the first acquittal tied to the Jan. 6 attacks.

Matthew Martin, a former government contractor from New Mexico, told US District Court Judge Trevor McFadden he thought police had waved him into the building and didn’t know he was breaking the law when he entered.

Based on video from the scene, McFadden said Martin’s claim was “plausible” and that prosecutors failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“People were streaming by and the officers made no attempt to stop the people,” the judge said.

After viewing footage, McFadden said the officer may have given Martin that impression because he briefly interrupted people streaming into the building then stepped back to apparently allow them to enter.

“I do think the defendant reasonably believed the officers allowed him into the Capitol,” McFadden said, adding that cops were “were grossly outnumbered at that point.”

He called Martin’s conduct “about as minimal and not serious as I can imagine”. Martin is the first Jan. 6 defendant to testify in his own defense.

JAN. 6 TRIAL NEWS

Jan. 6 protestors are finally starting to get their verdicts

The protest of January 6 deepened the divide in the country, and it also heightened our own understanding of this divide. We now understand that this is not a difference of opinions and ideologies. We seem to live in complete parallel realities.

We saw images of people walking into the Capitol. Some were angry. Others were curious. We saw grandmothers take selfies and some interesting outfits. We saw an unarmed woman being shot dead by a police officer. We saw how the media called him a victim. What we did not see, however, was an armed insurrection and terrorist attack ordered by the 45th U.S. President, Donald J. Trump. Regrettably, that is what half of the country thinks happened.

The left has used that event as ammo for over a year against the GOP, conservatives, and Trump supporters and unfortunately for many of the attendees of the January 6th Trump speech, their life got turned upside down that day.

In June 2021, Democrats established a witch hunt committee—otherwise known as the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack—to investigate what they called a domestic terrorist attack. Many attendees in DC that day, that dared come near or inside the Capitol building were arrested and charged during this prolonged initiative, and have been waiting in a cell for their days in court. They are finally starting to get their verdicts.

On April 6, a Federal Judge acquitted Matthew Martin of all four counts for which he was charged, AP reports. Martin had been arrested under misdemeanor and disorderly conduct charges, which alleged that he illegally entered the Capitol.

Martin had testified that a police officer waved him into the building after the turmoil began. The prosecutor had dismissed that testimony as “nonsense.”

However, those of us who saw multiple videos from different angles, saw police officers standing aside and seemingly ushering naive people into the building. Almost as if they were about to do a sightseeing tour of the historic building.

District Judge Trevor McFadden, however, disagreed with prosecutors and said it was reasonable that overwhelmed police officers allowed him to enter the Capitol through the Rotunda on January 6th. Judge McFadden said he had seen videos of police officers standing aside and allowing people inside as Martin approached. The judge also said that Martin’s actions were “about as minimal and non-serious” as anyone who was at the Capitol that day.

So far, Matthew Martin is the third “Capitol Riot” defendant whose case has been resolved by trial. He is, however, the first to be acquitted of all charges. The first two ended with convictions, although the same Judge acquitted one of those defendants of a disorderly conduct charge after a bench trial last month.

Our hope, of course, is that justice may be served as fairly as possible; and that the rest of the defendants that will soon get their date in Court, also get a fair trial and a fair hearing.

HEATHER “Dummy Sux” COX RICHARDSON

April 20, 2022 (Wednesday)

Yesterday, Arizona governor Doug Ducey brought the Republican governors of 26 states together in the “American Governors’ Border Strike Force” to serve as a “force multiplier” in what he says is “criminal activity directly tied to our border.” For all of Ducey’s rhetoric about how the force is supposed to “accomplish what the federal government has failed at, protecting our communities from ruthless transnational criminal organizations,” the “strike force” is supposed to “share intelligence, strengthen analytical and cybersecurity efforts, and improve humanitarian efforts to protect children and families.”

This measure is pretty clearly a political ploy before the midterms. As the Texas Tribune reports, since 2005, Texas governors have launched widely publicized border initiatives during political campaigns, insisting that they would manage what the federal government was ignoring. Billions of dollars later, it is not clear they have accomplished anything.

Most recently, with Operation Lone Star in 2021, Texas governor Greg Abbott deployed more than 10,000 members of the Texas National Guard and state troopers to the border, at a cost of about $25 million a week for the troopers and $2 billion a year for the National Guard members. That’s almost five times what the legislature had budgeted. While the administration has claimed success, an investigation by ProPublica, the Texas Tribune, and the Marshall Project suggests that it is taking credit for arrests that had nothing to do with border issues and were often handled by law enforcement officers unconnected with Operation Lone Star. Most arrests are not of human traffickers or smugglers, but of people accused of trespassing on private property.

And so, it appears, messaging for the midterms is in full swing.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis continues to threaten to dissolve Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District in his anger over Disney’s opposition to the recently passed “Don’t Say Gay” bill that restricts instruction in gender identity or sexual orientation in public schools in vague language that leaves the door open to silencing minority voices. Since 1967, the existence of the Reedy Creek Improvement District has given the company the right to govern the Disney park as if it were a town.

The Walt Disney Company delivers to the state more than $409 million in sales taxes for tickets alone, employs more than 80,000 Florida residents, and supports more than 400,000 more jobs. Today, the Miami Herald reported that repealing the company’s governing authority would raise taxes on families in the area by $2,200 each.

Florida state representative Michael Grieco (D) tweeted: “The FL Legislature cannot unilaterally dissolve Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District. It’s an exercise in futility… This whole thing is an effort to deflect attention away from the unconstitutional redistricting of Congressional districts and diluting of the black vote.” Grieco was referring to the governor’s redistricting map that heavily favors Republicans and that DeSantis drew himself after vetoing a more reasonable map—although still favoring Republicans—passed by the Florida legislature.

On Monday, federal judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate on public transportation, saying the rule exceeded the CDC’s authority. The decision raised ire in part because it was transparently ideologically driven: former president Trump appointed the former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas—she was then 33 years old—to a federal judgeship with just 8 years of experience practicing law, and the Senate confirmed her after Biden was elected. Her husband works at Jared Kushner’s new investment firm, the one bankrolled to the tune of $2 billion by the Saudi crown prince.

But in fact, according to a poll by the Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, a majority of Americans want a mask mandate on public transportation. Fifty-six percent of those polled wanted people to wear masks, while 24% were opposed and 20% didn’t care. A YouGov poll put the number of those in favor at 63% and those opposed at 29%.

The rule was set to expire on May 3 in any case, but today, the Department of Justice appealed the ruling, largely to protect the authority of the CDC to impose similar requirements in the future. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the case, is right leaning, and if it decides against the administration, it could weaken the CDC going forward.

Over all hangs the Big Lie that Biden stole the 2020 election from former president Trump. Supporters of the former president continue to hammer on that lie, trying to destabilize belief in our elections. Notably, John Eastman, author of the Eastman memo offering a scheme by which former vice president Mike Pence could overturn the election, is now pushing states to “decertify” Biden’s election. There is no mechanism for such a thing, but it hardly matters; the point is to continue to rile up Trump’s base with the lie that he was cheated.

But news from the January 6 committee is starting to get traction. Yesterday, the editorial board of the Salt Lake City Tribune noted that “[i]t is past time for Mike Lee [R-UT, whose texts trying to overturn the election have just come to light] to start fessing up to all he knows about the plot to set aside the results of an honest and fair election to keep Donald Trump in power.”

And right-wing media personality Alex Jones claims to have offered to talk with the Department of Justice about what he knows of the January 6 insurrection in exchange for immunity, suggesting that he is concerned about his actions surrounding January 6. We learned that the department quietly hired a well-known prosecutor of high-profile cases, Thomas Windom, to work on potential criminal prosecutions.

Democrats, too, are finding their voices for the midterms.

The administration continues to try to call attention to the booming economy, noting that the real GDP in the U.S. exceeds that of the other G-7 countries. Today, news broke that household cash exceeds debt for the first time in 30 years and that new housing starts, a key economic indicator, are rising fast: they are up 9.7% from a year ago.

The Education Department announced it is taking advantage of existing but underused programs to cancel student loan debt for 40,000 people and to offer credits to more than 3.6 million federal student loan borrowers to help them repay their loans. And the administration noted today that the Republican tax plan will increase taxes on 75 million middle-class families by an average of almost $1,500 a year while Biden’s plan will not raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year.

Money is shaping up to be a key issue. In Texas, Beto O’Rourke, who is running to unseat Abbott, is hammering hard on the cost of the governor’s shenanigans, including his recent stunt shutting down trade across the U.S.-Mexico border on the pretext of checking for drugs or undocumented immigrants. The shutdown cost the U.S. nearly $9 billion overall and Texas alone about $477 million a day. "What Abbott has done is literally create chaos on the US-MX border," O'Rourke said, "whether it's the National Guard deployment, where 4 guard members have taken their lives, this latest stoppage at international ports of entry... or just the rhetoric that has inflamed tensions."

O’Rourke is also running an ad suggesting that Texas property taxes have gone up $20,000,000,000 under Abbott.

But the most inspiring approach to the midterms came this week from Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow. In response to a colleague who had called her a “groomer” in a fundraising email after McMorrow stood up against marginalizing the state’s LGBTQ population, McMorrow made a stand against the hatred and bigotry coming from Republican colleagues. Defining herself as “a straight, white, Christian, married suburban mom,” she called out the “performative nonsense” of her so-called Christian colleagues. “People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape… or that healthcare costs are too high, or that teachers are leaving the profession,” she said. “We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they are not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives.”

Recalling historical heroes who tried “to right wrongs and fix the injustice in the world,” she reminded her colleagues that “each and every single one of us bears responsibility for writing the next chapter of history. [We decide] what happens next, and how WE respond to history and the world around us.”

“We will not let hate win.”

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

April 21, 2022 (Thursday)

Today started with a New York Times story by journalists Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, based on their forthcoming book, detailing how the two top Republicans in Congress during the January 6 insurrection, then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), blamed Trump for the attack on the Capitol and wanted him removed from office.

On the night of January 6, McConnell told colleagues that the party would finally break with Trump and his followers, and days later, as Democrats contemplated impeachment, he said, “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a ***** for us.” McConnell said he expected the Senate to convict Trump, and then Congress could bar him from ever again holding office. After what had happened, McConnell said: “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.”

McCarthy’s reaction was similar. Burns and Martin wrote that in a phone call on January 10, McCarthy said he planned to call Trump and recommend that he resign. “What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it,” he told a conference call of the Republican leadership. He also said he wished that social media companies would ban certain Republican lawmakers because they were stoking paranoia about the 2020 election. Other leaders, including Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), talked of moving Trump out of the party.

Within weeks, though, faced with Trump’s continuing popularity with his base, McConnell and McCarthy had lost their courage. McConnell voted against Trump’s conviction for incitement of insurrection, and McCarthy was at Mar-a-Lago, posing for a photograph with Trump. Since then, McConnell has said he would “absolutely” vote for Trump in 2024 if he is the Republican Party’s nominee, and McCarthy has blamed the January 6 insurrection on Democratic leaders and security guards for doing a poor job of defending the Capitol.

Their tone has changed so significantly that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol wanted to interview McCarthy to see if Trump had pressured him to change his story. McCarthy refused to cooperate, saying that “[t]he committee’s only objective is to attempt to damage its political opponents” and that he would not talk about “private conversations not remotely related to the violence that unfolded at the Capitol.”

Today, McCarthy responded to Burns and Martin’s story with a statement saying that the reporting was “totally false and wrong” before going on a partisan rant that the “corporate media is obsessed with doing everything it can to further a liberal agenda” and insisting that the country was better off with former president Trump in office. McCarthy’s spokesperson, Mark Bednar, denied the specifics of the story: “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” Bednar said.

Oops. There was a tape.

On January 10, 2021, McCarthy and Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) on a call with the House Republican leadership spoke about invoking the 25th Amendment, and McCarthy said he expected impeachment to pass the House and likely the Senate, and that he planned to tell Trump he should resign.

After Rachel Maddow played the tape on her show tonight, conservative lawyer and Washington Post columnist George Conway tweeted: “Here’s an idea for you, Kevin. Tell the truth. Save whatever you might be able to salvage of your dignity and reputation. Come clean.”

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

April 22, 2022 (Friday)

“I don’t recall.” “I don’t remember.”

Georgia Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene today took the stand before an administrative law judge in Atlanta to defend her right to be on the ballot in Georgia after five voters challenged her inclusion on the grounds she had violated the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits anyone from holding office who has taken an oath to support the Constitution and then participates in an insurrection or rebellion or gives aid and comfort to someone who does.

After being caught out when her examiner provided a video in which she called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a traitor just after Greene denied ever saying such a thing, Greene did not try to defend her inflammatory past statements. She simply said she didn’t remember anything about the events surrounding the January 6 insurrection. Even when asked “Did you advocate to President Trump to impose martial law as a way to remain in power?” she did not answer no, but rather said: “I do not recall.” “So you’re not denying you did it?” asked her questioner. “I don’t remember,” she answered.

Under her own lawyer’s questioning, Greene claimed to have been a “victim” of the January 6 attack, although there are photos and a video of her smiling and apparently at ease with colleagues during the attack. Ultimately, her lawyer defended her speech as protected under the First Amendment, said the evidence wasn’t clear, and said that removing her would create a bad precedent.

The judge will report on the evidence and make a recommendation to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger about whether to include Greene on the ballot. Ultimately, the decision will come down to him. Since he is eager to fend off challenges from the Trump right wing, he may have already made his decision. But Greene’s refusal to repeat any of her inflammatory statements under oath in court, and therefore at risk of perjury, demonstrated the degree to which right-wing leaders have gained power by lying to their supporters without accountability.

There has been some accountability this week, though, for the gulf between Republican rhetoric and reality. Yesterday Brian Kolfage, co-founder of the “We Build the Wall” project that claimed to be raising money to build former president Donald Trump’s border wall, pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the project. He, and other organizers, promised donors that all proceeds would go toward building the wall. His partner on the project was Trump confidant Steve Bannon, who was charged in the case but was pardoned by the former president. Financier Andrew Badolato also pleaded guilty. The Fox News Channel and pro-Trump personalities, including Donald Trump, Jr., and his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, pushed the wall scheme.

Kolfage initially claimed that criminal cases against him were politically motivated but now says, “I knew what I was doing was wrong and a crime.” Badaloto said, “I’m terribly, terribly sorry for what I did and I humbly beg the court for mercy.”

But if accountability has shown up for businessmen, it has not for lawmakers.

Yesterday, New York Times journalists broke the news that House minority leader Kevin McCarthy did, in fact, say to Republican leadership that he thought Trump should resign after the January 6 insurrection. When news of that conversation broke yesterday morning, McCarthy called it “totally false and wrong,” only to have a recording of the conversation surface on Rachel Maddow’s show last night, revealing McCarthy to have straight-up lied.

Such a scandal would have sunk a leader in the past, but McCarthy has quietly assured Republican colleagues that he immediately called Trump and that the former president isn’t mad at him. That assurance was enough for some House Republicans to let the matter slide. One of them told CNN reporters Melanie Zanona, Manu Raju, and Lauren Fox: "The only one who matters is Trump, [a]nd if Trump is fine, it's not an issue."

Three people told Washington Post reporters Jacqueline Alemany, Marianna Sotomayor, Felicia Sonmez, and Julian Mark that Trump sees McCarthy’s quick capitulation to him after calling for his resignation as a demonstration of Trump’s control of the Republican Party.

But the Republican disarray might not be fixed so easily. Trump Republicans, including Steve Bannon, expressed their fury with McCarthy today for his perceived disloyalty. “McCarthy and McConnell are the enemies of the Republican Party,” one wrote.

And then, this evening, Politico dropped photos appearing to be Trump loyalist Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) in lingerie and jewelry, drinking with young women hugging him, at what appears to be a somewhat raucous party. Cawthorn outraged Republican leadership recently when he said his colleagues had invited him to “orgies” where there was cocaine; they suggested his statements were false. Cawthorn admits that the photos are real, but says the “goofy vacation photos” are from “waaay” before he got elected and suggests “the left” is trying to hurt him. The photos will nonetheless create a mess for the Republican caucus, already reeling.

And the tension in the party will continue. Today, CNN dropped another recording, this time of a conference call between McCarthy and Republican leaders on January 11 in which McCarthy did, in fact, say: "[L]et me be very clear to you and I have been very clear to the President. He bears responsibility for his words and actions. No if, ands or buts…. [H]e told me he does have some responsibility for what happened. And he needs to acknowledge that." McCarthy has since avoided confirming the conversation.

Despite its increasing exposure, Republican disinformation continues to poison our democracy. Florida governor Ron DeSantis today signed the law he demanded from the Florida legislature in retaliation for the Walt Disney Company’s opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” law widely perceived as attacking LGBTQ Floridians. The new law strips from the Walt Disney Company the ability to govern itself essentially as if it were a town, as the Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID) set up in 1967.

DeSantis sold the bill as a way to protect children from what he lies are “groomers” of children for sexual assault.

But the law significantly strengthens his political power. Sarah Rumpf of Mediaite notes that the law will hurt the people of the state: Disney has preserved large green spaces as natural habitats that are hugely valuable real estate and are now at risk. In addition, repealing Disney’s status means that Orange and Osceola Counties are now responsible for Disney’s $2 billion bond debt—a 20% to 25% tax hike costing $2,200 to $2,800 per family of four—and will have to pick up the tab for the operating services that Disney currently provides. Since Disney’s RCID pays more and has better employee benefits than the Florida government, county workers staying on will likely have to take pay and benefit cuts.

Rumpf also notes that the law won’t go into effect until June 1, 2023, after this year’s midterms and after next year’s legislative session. The idea is to “put Disney on a leash,” one attorney told Rumpf, “So they better do what Ron DeSantis says, they better give to the P[olitical] A[ction] C[ommittee]s Ron DeSantis says, or else.” The implication, the lawyer said, was that if Disney did as it was told, the new law would quietly go away. Even more, though, state law says that Disney’s status can’t be repealed without the consent of the voting landowners, a reality Republicans in the state legislature appear to have ignored.

That pain is about political power. DeSantis’s attack on Disney demonstrates his use of the state to impose the will of his voters on a popular company; it also retaliates against Democratic voters. Osceola and Orange County were two of the Florida counties that backed Biden in 2020, Osceola by 56.4% to 42.6% and Orange by 61% to 37.9%. Imposing taxes and lower wages on the people there seems likely to be what makes the plan attractive to DeSantis.

Indeed, along with the attack on Disney, the Florida legislature accepted extreme new congressional districts carved out by DeSantis that significantly benefit Republicans while carving up one traditionally Black district and obliterating another: the one currently represented by Val Demings, who is challenging Marco Rubio for his Senate seat.

Opponents of the law are suing.

Heather Cox Richardson

April 23, 2022 (Saturday)

Late last night, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol filed a motion asking a judge to put an end to the attempts of Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows to stonewall the committee. Meadows has tried to avoid talking to the committee or providing it with documents, using a number of different arguments that essentially try to establish that the U.S. president cannot be held accountable by Congress. The committee’s motion carefully explains why those arguments are wrong.
To support their belief that the Congress has the right and responsibility to investigate the circumstances of the January 6 insurrection—a correct understanding of our governmental system, in my view—the committee gave the judge almost 250 pages of evidence.
Included was some of the material I’ve been waiting for: a list of members of Congress who participated in planning to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
We have heard a lot about independent lawyers and members of the executive branch who were willing to try to keep Trump in office. We have also heard about people at the state level. But while there has been plenty of speculation about what members of Congress were involved, we had little to go on.
We knew that both former energy secretary Rick Perry of Texas and Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) had texted with Meadows about possible avenues for overturning the election. We knew that Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) had recorded videos before the insurrection that suggested they supported it. We had an odd statement from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on January 5 saying that he, not then–vice president Mike Pence, would count the certified electoral ballots the next day. We had Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) allegedly saying to Jordan on January 6, “Get away from me. You f**ing did this.”
But the January 6th committee has just given us a bigger—although not the whole, yet—picture.
In last night’s filed motion was part of the testimony to the committee from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to the president and the chief of staff. When asked which members of Congress were involved in calls about overturning the election—including calls saying such efforts were illegal—Hutchinson named Representatives Greene, Jordan, Boebert, Scott Perry (R-PA), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Jody Hice (R-GA), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Debbie Lesko (R-AZ).
The heart of this group was the “Freedom Caucus,” which was organized in 2015 to move the Republican Party farther to the right. Its first chair was Jim Jordan; its second was Mark Meadows. Its third was Andy Biggs. Mick Mulvaney, who would go on to Trump’s White House, and Ron DeSantis, who is now governor of Florida, were key organizers.
Let’s be clear: the people working to keep Trump in office by overturning the will of the people were trying to destroy our democracy. Not one of them, or any of those who plotted with them, called out the illegal attempt to destroy our government.
To what end did they seek to overthrow our democracy?
The current Republican Party has two wings: one eager to get rid of any regulation of business, and one that wants to get rid of the civil rights protections that the Supreme Court and Congress began to put into place in the 1950s. Business regulation is actually quite popular in the U.S., so to build a political following, in the 1980s, leaders of the anti-regulation wing of the Republican Party promised racists and the religious right that they would stomp out the civil rights legislation that since the 1950s has tried to make all Americans equal before the law.
But even this marriage has not been enough to win elections, since most Americans like business regulation and the protection of things like the right to use birth control. So, to put its vision into place, the Republican Party has now abandoned democracy. Its leaders have concluded that any Democratic victory is illegitimate, even if voters have clearly chosen a Democrat, as they did with Biden in 2020, by more than 7 million votes.
Former speechwriter for George W. Bush David Frum wrote in 2018: "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” And here we are.
As if to illustrate this point, news broke today that a North Carolina official threatened to fire an elections official unless she gave him access to the county’s vote tabulators. The news agency Reuters noted that this threat was only one of more than 900 instances of intimidation of election officials in what has become commonplace after the 2020 election.
It appears that elected officials of the Republican Party are willing to overturn a legitimate Democratic victory in order to guarantee that only a Republican can hold office. That means a one-party state, which will be overseen by a single, powerful individual. And the last 59 days in Ukraine have illustrated exactly what that kind of a system means.
Standing against that authoritarianism, Democratic president Joe Biden is trying to reassure Americans that democracy works. He insisted on using the government to support ordinary Americans rather than the wealthy, and in his first year in office, poverty in the United States declined, with lower-income Americans gaining more than at any time since the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s. Lower-income workers have more job opportunities than they have had for 30 years, and they are making more money. They have on average 50% more money in the bank than they did when the pandemic hit.
Biden’s insistence on investing in Americans meant that by the end of his first year, the U.S. had created 6.6 million jobs, the strongest record of any president since record keeping began in 1939. By the beginning of April, the economy had added 7.9 million jobs, and unemployment was close to a 50-year low at 3.6%. Meanwhile, the deficit is dropping: we should carve $1.3 trillion off it this year.
Biden’s deliberate reshaping of the American government to work for ordinary Americans again, regulating business and using the federal government to enforce equal rights, so threatens modern Republicans that they are willing to destroy our country rather than allow voters to keep people like Biden in power.
I do not believe that a majority of Americans want a dictatorship in which a favored few become billionaires while the rest of us live without the civil rights that have been our norm since the 1950s, and no voting rights to enable us to change our lot.
Tonight, news broke that Democrats in Utah have voted to back Independent candidate Evan McMullin for senator rather than run their own candidate. McMullin is trying to unseat Republican Senator Mike Lee, whose texts to Meadows as they conspired to overturn the election have lately drawn headlines. Democrats are gambling that there are enough Democrats, Independents, and anti-Trump Republicans in Utah to send Lee packing.

now that would be a slick and pragmatic maneuver

go nevertrumpers!

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

April 25, 2022 (Monday)

Yesterday, voters in both France and Slovenia rejected far-right candidates for leadership. French voters preferred leaving Emmanuel Macron in place as president by 58.5% over Marine Le Pen (41.5%). Le Pen is supported by fascists and antisemites, and she promised to take France out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), to turn against the U.S. influence, and to end multiculturalism, which she maintains is a failure.

In Slovenia, a small country in central Europe where Melania Trump was born, prime minister Janez Janša is a close ally of Viktor Orbán, who is prime minister in Slovenia’s neighbor Hungary and who has been quite clear that he intends to dismantle democracy. An admirer of Donald Trump, Janša insisted that Trump won the 2020 election, and pushed the nation toward the right, away from the European Union and toward a governing style like Orbán’s. Freedom House, which keeps tabs on the health of democracies, recently said that Janša’s government has been trying to undermine the rule of law, the media, and the judiciary. He lost out yesterday to a new political party that is socially liberal, pro-European, and eager to deal with the climate crisis. That party, the Freedom Movement, was organized only in May 2021.

The rejection by European voters of far-right authoritarianism is a backdrop to news in the U.S. today, where CNN dropped information about 2,319 text messages from the files Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol before he changed his mind and stopped cooperating.

Shockingly, these are the messages Meadows thought were okay to share. He held back more than 1,000, including all of them from December 9 to December 20, on the grounds that they should be protected for one reason or another. You have to wonder what was in them, considering what was in the ones he surrendered.

The first thing that jumps out from today’s messages is how thoroughly Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity was working for Trump, rather than acting the part of an impartial news reporter. On Election Day, November 3, 2020, Meadows told Hannity to stress to voters they needed to get out and support Trump. “Yes sir,” Hannity answered. “On it. Any place in particular we need a push?” Meadows answered: “Pennsylvania. NC AZ… Nevada.” “Got it,” Hannity answered. “Everywhere.” There is now some muttering that the Trump campaign should have listed the free advertising from the Fox News Channel as a campaign contribution, since it was clear that Hannity’s shows were advertisements, and that “in-kind” donations are subject to federal regulation.

The second thing that jumps out is how determined Trump Republicans were to believe that Trump could not possibly have lost the election. The day after the election, the Trump team was already working state officials to skew the vote counts, but as early as November 6, Trump advisor Jason Miller texted evidence that debunked the idea that the election was stolen, and he would continue to do so. Meadows agreed that there was no evidence to match the extreme claims of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell; Jared Kushner sent an article debunking the story of suitcases full of ballots in Georgia. We know from other exchanges that Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) came to recognize that the election had not been stolen.

And yet, Trump supporters, especially MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, continued to send Meadows stories about a stolen election; Lindell believed that God was directing Trump’s reelection. By November 7, former energy secretary Rick Perry was on board with the idea that the election had been fraudulent. By November 19, 2020, Meadows was trying to set up a call with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger—this would end up being the hour-long phone call between Raffensperger and Trump on January 2, 2021, that Raffensperger recorded. In it, Trump urged Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” in Georgia—one more than Trump needed to win the state.

As early as November 6, a scheme to keep Trump in power despite the will of the voters was underway. To be clear, this means that elected representatives and appointed members of our government were actively working to end our democracy. More than 40 current and past members of Congress are in the records, including Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL), Donald Trump, Jr., and Rick Perry. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) was also a key player.

Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ) suggested getting Republican state legislatures to appoint electors* for Trump rather than Biden. Meadows answered: “I love it.” Representative Scott Perry (R-PA) texted on December 26: “Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!” On January 5, Jim Jordan said that Vice President Mike Pence should refuse to accept all electoral votes he thought were unconstitutional. Meadows responded: “I have pushed for this. Not sure it’s going to happen.”

When the MAGA crowd turned violent on January 6, supporters begged Trump to call them off, suggesting they knew full well who was rioting and who was behind those riots. And yet, hours later, Jason Miller proposed lying to the American people by changing the story altogether, blaming “Antifa” for the violence of the Trump supporters at the Capitol. He added that Trump should tweet, “The fake news media who encouraged this summer's violent and radical riots are now trying to blame peaceful and innocent MAGA supporters for violent actions. This isn't who we are!” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) also tried to argue that the attackers were “Antifa. Dressed like Trump supporters.” So did Louie Gohmert (R-TX).

Those deep in the insurrection have flat out lied about their participation in it, suggesting they know it was illegal. When called out for texts back last December, Rick Perry denied he sent them, but today’s texts not only came from his phone but also were signed. Similarly, when Greene was asked under oath just last Friday—three days ago—“Did you advocate to President Trump to impose martial law as a way to remain in power?” Greene answered: “I do not recall.” Greene’s questioner followed up: “So you’re not denying you did it?” Greene answered: “I don’t remember.”

And yet, on January 17, Greene texted: “In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall [sic] law. I don't know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!”

The attack on our democracy was entirely fabricated, and yet it has persisted and metastasized in the shape of the Big Lie that Biden stole the election. Last night in Georgia, where Republicans Brian Kemp and Trump-endorsed David Perdue are struggling over the Republican nomination, the Big Lie was center stage. According to Patricia Murphy of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Purdue began the debate by endorsing the Big Lie—“First off, let me be very clear, the election in 2020 was rigged and stolen—”and he managed to keep the debate locked on the 2020 election for the first 24 minutes.

The ability of the Republicans to create a world out of lies comes from our current media landscape in which it is possible for Trump supporters to live in a media bubble of falsehoods.. Researchers recently conducted an experiment in which they paid pro-Trump Republicans to switch from the Fox News Channel to CNN for a month, and they discovered that those viewers changed their minds on a number of key issues. But, as soon as the payments stopped, they went right back to watching the FNC.

This week, the European Union set out to bring some kind of order to social media, reaching a deal that would require Facebook, YouTube, and other internet services to combat misinformation, disclose their algorithms, and stop targeting users with divisive advertising. And yet, the U.S. today appeared to move in the opposite direction. Twitter announced it had reached an agreement with billionaire Elon Musk to sell Twitter to him. If he gets over all the next hurdles to the deal, that widespread information hub will become a company owned by a single man. Reporter Matthew Gertz from Media Matters wrote that last Friday, 18 House Republicans led by Jim Jordan wrote to the Twitter board that had previously opposed the sale to Musk, browbeating them to consider the sale, which they interpret as a win for right-wing voices that have been banned from current Twitter for spreading lies.

Jokes broke out today that Arizona would be challenging the results of the French election, but it’s not really a joke. Today, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill providing for an election police force charged with rooting out election fraud, and Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded that the Fox News Channel today mentioned Hunter Biden 32 times and Mark Meadows once.

When Slovenian prime minister Janez Janša lost his election yesterday, a leader of the opposition noted how many people in the country were in shock at how quickly Slovenia slipped into “a more autocratic system. We never thought a democratic system could change so fast,” she said.

*The text’s actual words– “a look doors”-- seem to be a voice to text mistranslation.

an election police force is vital to a modern democracy

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

April 26, 2022 (Tuesday)

I intended to write tonight about Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statement today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—and I will—but the research for that topic led me elsewhere: into the world of the early years of the Trump administration, when many journalists were trying oh, so hard to pretend that maybe Trump’s gutting of the State Department, for example, was just some part of a new policy approach.

It’s startling when you compare it with today’s coverage of Biden.

What got me on this track was Blinken’s offhand comment today that his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was “the 100th time that I’ve had an opportunity to brief Congress, which is one of the ways I’ve worked to meet the commitment that I made in my confirmation before this committee to restore Congress’s role as a partner both in our foreign policymaking and in revitalizing the State Department.”

That reminded me that shortly after Trump took office journalists wrote about how he was sidelining the State Department. “Is the State Department Being Intentionally Gutted?” wondered Michael Fuchs on February 28, 2017, in Just Security. He noted that Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, former chief executive officer of ExxonMobil, had not held a single press briefing since he took office and hadn’t been at summit meetings with Trump and foreign leaders. The tradition of daily press briefings from State Department spokespeople had also stopped dead the day Trump took office. The White House had said it was going to cut the State Department budget to offset an increase of $54 billion in defense spending.

The Trump administration had asked the senior career officers running the department’s administration to resign, and several senior diplomats had been recalled before replacements were even nominated. The floor where the secretary of state and the senior team have offices was essentially empty, and the administration was not filling those positions.

Maybe, Tillerson was “just getting up to speed,” but while he sounded tentative, Fuchs wasn’t willing to believe an innocent explanation. He said there were “strong signs” that “the White House [was] trying to sideline the State Department[.]” Fuchs noted that Trump seemed “enamored of the military” and seemed eager to get rid of the nonpartisan bureaucracy that stabilizes democracies.

CNN’s Nicole Gaouette had similar observations but wondered if the silence of Tillerson’s State Department was just a reflection of his caution in front of the media. She recorded that the deafening silence from the State Department created confusion as Trump’s tweets rocked long-stable ships. “[T]he President and his Cabinet have given mixed messages on issues like the US commitment to NATO,” she noted.

And then, for his first trip abroad, Trump went not to Canada or to Mexico, our two largest trading partners, democracies, close allies, and neighbors, but to Saudi Arabia, an oligarchic kleptocracy. There, he and Tillerson appeared to embrace the culture, something previous presidents had been careful to avoid because of its extreme misogyny and occasional extremism. Tillerson did in fact hold a press conference there, but U.S. media was banned: only foreign media was admitted. Foreign affairs expert Anne Applebaum called the trip “bizarre, unseemly, unethical and un-American.”

Of course, we now know that Trump was centering foreign affairs in the White House—Ivanka Trump went along on that trip to Saudi Arabia to promote “female entrepreneurs”—and among his own cronies like the “Three Amigos” who tried to pressure Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky into launching a fake investigation into Hunter Biden. The plan was, at least in part, to stop looking at foreign affairs as national security—just days ago, Trump told an audience that during his term he had threatened European leaders that the U.S. would not honor the mutual aid pact and defend Europe against incursions by Russia—and instead to pocket huge sums of money. We know now it was Trump friend Tom Barrack who was behind the meeting with the Saudis as he angled for a huge deal to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

People who seemed nonplussed by the extraordinary actions of the Trump administration were not deliberately giving him a pass, I don’t think. They just couldn’t believe they were seeing the dismantling of centuries of diplomacy to enrich one family and its inner circle.

So when Blinken now talks about values and national security again, it seems sometimes we are cynically harsh.

Today, he spoke to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reminding it that he, the secretary of state, had spoken to the committee 100 times. He thanked it for its support and talked of the recent visit he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had made to Kyiv, where they had gone to demonstrate the U.S. commitment to the government and the people of Ukraine. He described the countryside and cities coming back to life after the carnage Russia visited on them, and he hailed the extraordinary determination of the Ukrainians.

There is a lesson in that determination for the U.S., he suggested. “Moscow’s war of aggression against Ukraine has underscored the power and purpose of American diplomacy. Our diplomacy is rallying allies and partners around the world to join us in supporting Ukraine with security, economic, humanitarian assistance; imposing massive costs on the Kremlin; strengthening our collective security and defense; addressing the war’s mounting global consequences, including the refugee and food crises….”

Blinken was understating things. The administration’s bolstering of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other allies and partners, along with its strong effort to keep various nations on board with economic sanctions, has been key to supporting Ukraine. Today, news broke of just how extensive U.S. sharing of intelligence has been with Ukraine, enabling Ukraine not only to protect its own weapons from attack, but also to shoot down a Russian plane transporting troops. Indeed, U.S. intelligence has helped prevent Russia from getting control of the airspace over Ukraine.

And now the administration has expanded that cooperation to include intelligence sharing to enable Ukraine to take back territory Russia has captured, including in Crimea or the Donbas. This reflects Austin’s statement today that Ukraine can not only survive against Russia, but can “win.” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby elaborated: “winning is very clearly defined by a Ukraine whose sovereignty is fully respected, whose territorial integrity is not violated by Russia or any other country for that matter.” Kirby also explained Austin’s comment that the U.S. wants “to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” Kirby said: “We don’t want a Russia that’s capable of exerting…malign influence in Europe or anywhere around the world.”

In addition to responding to the urgency of the attack on Ukraine, the State Department “continues to carry out the missions traditionally associated with diplomacy, like responsibly managing great power competition with China, facilitating a halt to fighting in Yemen and Ethiopia, pushing back against the rising tide of authoritarianism and the threat that it poses to human rights,” he said. The State Department will continue to modernize, as well, to address emergence of infectious diseases, the climate crisis, and the digital revolution.

Blinken noted that the State Department is filling out its ranks as quickly as it can with diplomats that “reflect America’s remarkable diversity, which is one of our greatest strengths, including in our diplomacy,” providing the paid internships that will enable poorer young people to accept them, and finally having State’s “first ever chief diversity and inclusion officer.” The effort is paying off: State is on track for its largest hiring intake in ten years.

“My first 15 months in this job have only strengthened my own conviction that these and other reforms are not just worthwhile;” Blinken said, “they’re essential to our national security and to delivering for the people we represent.”

Heather Cox Richardson

April 27, 2022 (Wednesday)

Last night, New York Times reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin released more of the audio recording of Republican leadership that they obtained in the process of writing their forthcoming book. This recording features a conversation among the House leadership on January 10, 2021. In it, the two top Republicans in the House of Representatives—House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House minority whip Steve Scalise (R-LA)—agreed that the Trump loyalists calling out other Republicans as “anti-Trump” were endangering lives, including that of the third-top House Republican at the time, Liz Cheney (R-WY), who was also on the call.
McCarthy noted that Representative Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH) had just sent him a recent tweet from Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) about Cheney and that McCarthy was going to talk to Gaetz to get him to stop. “We saw what people would do in the Capitol,” he said. “These people came prepared with rope, with everything else.” Scalise agreed, saying “it’s potentially illegal what he’s doing.”
McCarthy singled out Representatives Gaetz and Mo Brooks (R-AL) as key culprits, but he and the others on the call also discussed Representatives Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), and Barry Moore (R-AL). McCarthy said he was going to be talking to those people because “this is serious sh*t,” and they needed “to cut this out.” “The country is too crazy,” he said. “I do not want to look back and think we caused something or we missed something and someone got hurt. I don’t want to play politics with any of that.”
And yet, of course, they did not cut it out. Instead, McCarthy did play politics with it. He caved, Cheney lost her position in House leadership, and Gonzalez, once seen as a rising star in the party, announced in September 2021 he would not run for reelection. Gonzalez’s vote to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection and his support for an investigation into the events of January 6 led Trump supporters to threaten him and his family. In his announcement that he was leaving Congress, Gonzalez called Trump “a cancer for the country.”
Last night, after news broke of the recording, Gaetz issued a statement saying that McCarthy and Scalise “held views about President Trump and me that they shared on sniveling calls with Liz Cheney, not us. This is the behavior of weak men, not leaders…. While I was protecting President Trump, they were protecting Liz Cheney from criticism…. On the bright side, you no longer have to be a lobbyist with a $5,000 check to know what McCarthy and Scalise really think. You just have to listen to their own words as they disparage Trump and the Republicans in Congress who fight for him.”
Gaetz is clearly throwing himself entirely behind Trump. Even his language here is like that of the former president. While Gaetz’s political loyalty is part of a larger story, it is also worth remembering that Gaetz is still under investigation for sex trafficking, and two of his associates have pleaded guilty in that case. One admitted to sex trafficking, and the other admitted to drug and fraud charges. Both are cooperating with authorities. Seeing Trump back in power could smooth Gaetz’s potential legal troubles.
Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson also went after McCarthy, calling him “a puppet of the Democrats…a man who, in private, turns out sounds like an MSNBC contributor. The chyron under his monologue read: “KEVIN MCCARTHY HATES PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND THIS SHOW.” News broke today that Carlson, who has openly supported Hungary’s rising authoritarian Viktor Orbán, will speak this summer at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit, a gathering traditionally used to launch presidential campaigns.
Meanwhile, excerpts from that same new book say that early in the morning of January 7, after the January 6 insurrection, then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told Martin: “I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow [Trump] finally, totally discredited himself.” McConnell said of Trump, “He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger,” adding, “Couldn’t have happened at a better time.” McConnell vowed to crush the extremist “sons of b*tches…in the primary in ’22.”
And yet now, a year later, the Trump loyalists are running strong, having abandoned the democratic ideology of the U.S. and replaced it with white Christian nationalism. They are embracing the same idea that Russian president Vladimir Putin advances: that the democratic principle of equality is immoral because it does not privilege white, straight, Christian men. They are trying to stop public discussion of race or gender, end the constitutional right to abortion, and center schools around the Christian religion.
While pro-business Republicans could live with these ideas in the past if it meant getting the economic legislation they wanted, Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Texas governor Greg Abbott have illustrated that the Trump wing of the party has abandoned Republicans’ traditional support for business. DeSantis infuriated Republicans as well as Democrats when he demanded a new—and evidently illegal—law to break up the independent governing zone under which the Walt Disney Company operates in Florida unless Disney stops supporting LGBTQ rights. And Abbott’s recent shutdown of trade to and from Mexico in order to “search” for drugs and undocumented immigrants cost the U.S. an estimated $9 billion in gross domestic product while turning up no drugs or immigrants.
Meanwhile, 18 House Republicans, led by Jim Jordan (R-OH), warned Twitter that it could be investigated if it didn’t accept an offer from billionaire Elon Musk for its purchase. This is an uncanny echo of the techniques of the Ukrainian leaders who worked for oligarchs: those leaders used “investigations” to punish opponents, just as Trump hoped to do to Hunter Biden in 2019.
The business Republicans appear finally to be fighting back, at least a little, likely recognizing that the extremes of the Trump loyalists will hurt them with the “suburban” voters they badly need. (By “suburban voters” they usually mean white middle-class voters, although the last census showed that in 2020, about 54% of Black residents within the 100 biggest American metro areas lived not in the cities themselves but in suburban areas.)
This week, they went after Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), in what sure looks like a strategic move to distance the party from the Trump loyalists without actually losing the religious base. Cawthorn’s remarks about being invited to orgies with drugs made headlines a few weeks ago, and he has been embarrassed since by photos of him in lingerie, drinking with women, at a party. Perhaps to distract from that story, Cawthorn tried to take a loaded gun on a plane and was caught—this was the second time he was caught doing this—and then complained that the “political establishment” was out to get him.
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) called for a “thorough and bipartisan” investigation of Cawthorn’s potential involvement in an insider trading scheme involving the “Let’s Go Brandon” cryptocurrency, which appears to have been a pump-and-dump scheme. (But former president Trump and his son Don, Jr., also promoted the coin, and no one has complained about their participation.) Cawthorn called Tillis a “RINO,” a Republican in Name Only.
Today, 17 Republicans were the only lawmakers to vote against a House resolution expressing support for Moldova’s democracy. As CNN reporters Melanie Zanona, Manu Raju, and Gabby Orr noted, when Trump loyalists do such a thing, they might be reminding McCarthy of their power to force more concessions on him if he becomes speaker with a small majority, enabling them to move the country in their direction no matter how unpopular they are.
The chaos in the Republican Party inspired Democratic political consultant Tim Hogan to tweet: “At this point I’m willing to believe Kevin McCarthy accidentally turned on a voice memo for the month of January and when he tried to delete it he accidentally forwarded it to the New York Times.”

Heather Cox Richardson

April 28, 2022 (Thursday)

It has been hard for me to see the historical outlines of the present-day attack on American democracy clearly. But this morning, as I was reading a piece in Vox by foreign affairs specialist Zack Beauchamp, describing Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s path in Florida as an attempt to follow in the footsteps of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the penny dropped.
Here’s what I see:
Before Trump won the presidency in 2016, the modern-day Republican Party was well on its way to endorsing oligarchy. It had followed the usual U.S. historical pattern to that point. In the 1850s, 1890s, 1920s, and then again in the modern era, wealthy people had come around to the idea that society worked best if a few wealthy men ran everything.
Although those people had been represented by the Democrats in the 1850s and the Republicans in the 1890s, 1920s, and 2000s, they had gotten there in the same way: first a popular movement had demanded that the government protect equality of opportunity and equal justice before the law for those who had previously not had either, and that popular pressure had significantly expanded rights.
Then, in reaction, wealthier Americans began to argue that the expansion of rights threatened to take away their liberty to run their enterprises as they wished. To tamp down the expansion of rights, they played on the racism of the poorer white male voters who controlled the government, telling them that legislation to protect equal rights was a plan to turn the government over to Black or Brown Americans, or immigrants from southern Europe or Asia, who would use their voting power to redistribute wealth.
The idea that poor men of color voting meant socialism resonated with white voters, who turned against the government’s protecting equal rights and instead supported a government that favored men of property. As wealth moved upward, popular culture championed economic leaders as true heroes, and lawmakers suppressed voting in order to “redeem” American society from “socialists” who wanted to redistribute wealth. Capital moved upward until a very few people controlled most of it, and then, usually after an economic crash made ordinary Americans turn against the system that favored the wealthy, the cycle began again.
When Trump was elected, the U.S. was at the place where wealth had concentrated among the top 1%, Republican politicians denigrated their opponents as un-American “takers” and celebrated economic leaders as “makers,” and the process of skewing the vote through gerrymandering and voter suppression was well underway. But the Republican Party still valued the rule of law. It’s impossible to run a successful business without a level playing field, as businessmen realized after the 1929 Great Crash, when it became clear that insider trading had meant that winners and losers were determined not by the market but by cronyism.
Trump’s election brought a new right-wing ideology onto the political stage to challenge the rule of law. He was an autocrat, interested not in making money for a specific class of people, but rather in obtaining wealth and power for himself, his family, and a few insiders. The established Republican Party was willing to back him so long as he could deliver the voters that would enable them to stay in power and continue with tax cuts and deregulation.
But their initial distancing didn’t last. Trump proved able to forge such a strong base that it is virtually a cult following, and politicians quickly discovered that crossing his followers brought down their wrath. Lawmakers’ determination to hold Trump’s base meant they acquitted him in both impeachment trials. Meanwhile, Trump packed state Republican machinery with his own loyalists, and they have helped make the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election an article of faith.
It is not clear whether Trump can translate his following back into the White House, both because of mounting legal troubles and because his routine is old and unlikely to bring the new voters he would need to win. It may be that another family authoritarian can, but right now that is not obvious.
Still, his deliberate destabilization of faith in our democratic norms is deadly dangerous, creating space for two right-wing, antidemocratic ideologies to take root.
One is pushed by Texas governor Greg Abbott, who is embracing a traditional American states’ rights approach to attack the active federal government that has expanded equality since World War II. The Trump years put the states’ rights ideology of the Confederacy on steroids, first to justify destroying business regulation, social welfare legislation, and international diplomacy, and then to absolve the federal government from responsibility for combating the coronavirus pandemic. Then, of course, the January 6 insurrection saw state legislatures refusing to accept the results of a federal election and rioters carrying the Confederate flag into the United States Capitol.
That Confederate impulse has been a growing part of the South’s mindset since at least 1948, when President Harry S. Truman announced the federal government would desegregate the armed forces, and white southerners who recognized that desegregation was coming briefly formed their own political party to stop it.
Abbott and the Texas legislature have tapped into this traditional white southern ideology in their quest to commandeer the right wing. Texas S.B. 8, which uses a sly workaround to permit a state to undermine the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision declaring abortion a constitutional right, has become a model for other Republican states. In June 2021, along with Arizona governor Doug Ducey, Abbott asked other state governors to send state national guard troops or law enforcement officers to the Mexican border because, he said, “the Biden administration has proven unwilling or unable to do the job.”
Abbott’s recent stunt at the border, shutting down trade between Mexico and the U.S., was expensive and backfired, but it was also a significant escalation of his claim of state power: he essentially took the federal government’s power to conduct foreign affairs directly into his own hands.
The other new ideology at work is in the hands of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who, as Beauchamp pointed out, is trying to recreate Orbánism in the U.S. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has eroded Hungary’s democracy since he took power for the second time, about a decade ago. Orbán has been open about his determination to overthrow the concept of western democracy, replacing it with what he has, on different occasions, called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy.” He wants to replace the equality at the heart of democracy with religious nationalism.
To accomplish his vision, Orbán has taken control of Hungary’s media, ensuring that his party wins all elections; has manipulated election districts in his own favor; and has consolidated the economy into the hands of his cronies by threatening opponents with harassing investigations, regulations, and taxes unless they sell out. Beauchamp calls this system “soft fascism.”
DeSantis is following this model right down to the fact that observers believe that Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill was modeled on a similar Hungarian law. DeSantis’s attack on Disney mirrors Orbán’s use of regulatory laws to punish political opponents (although the new law was so hasty and flawed it threatens to do DeSantis more harm than good). DeSantis is not alone in his support for Orban’s tactics: Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson openly admires Orbán, and next month the Conservative Political Action Committee will hold its conference in Hungary, with Orbán as a keynote speaker.
Trump’s type of family autocracy is hard to replicate right now, and our history has given us the knowledge and tools to defend democracy in the face of the ideology of states’ rights. But the rise of “illiberal democracy” or “soft fascism” is new to us, and the first step toward rolling it back is recognizing that it is different from Trump’s autocracy or states’ rights, and that its poison is spreading in the United States.

shut that igger lovin door george

stand tall for the people

I’m sure Dummy and the Canuck think Georgie was a swell guy. They seem to like their authoritarian shitstains nice and Christian and nice and White.