Month: May 2021

The sweetest story:

At a Palm Springs wildlife preserve, a group of Arctic wolves began howling during Tuesday’s wee hours. A battered coyote pup who days ago could barely bark or lift his head began singing along.

Kele Younger, founder of the Magic Jungle Wildlife Preserve, said it was nothing short of a miracle — despite the cacophony intruding on her sleep.

“It really means he’s on the road to this extraordinary recovery,” Younger said of Twenty-Twenty, a name given to the pup as a nod to his injured eye in hopes it would heal.

Just over a week ago, hikers found the coyote pup in the foothills of the Indian Canyons area in Palm Springs. The pup appeared to be alone and badly injured, so one hiker took him home and tried to rehabilitate him, Younger said. Animal authorities said he may have been mauled by a mountain lion, bobcat or other animal much larger than his tiny self.

Then Younger got a call asking for help. Younger said several other facilities declined to lend a hand, and she ultimately took the pup back to her place. There she fed and watered him, and he fell asleep watching Netflix.

But the next morning, Twenty-Twenty was not in good shape. “He was just looking into my eyes and saying, ‘I’m really sick, I need a doctor,’ ” Younger said.

That day he was admitted to the Apple Valley Animal Hospital, where Younger often has her other exotic animals treated.

When Twenty-Twenty arrived, he was dehydrated and weak. Further examination revealed he was suffering from a fractured sternum, a puncture wound and severe trauma. He’s blind in his left eye, and it’s unclear if it’s due to a previous injury or if it’s a developmental defect, said Dr. Cliff Jessen, a veterinarian who treated the pup.

Staff treated him with IV fluids, antibiotics and “lots of TLC,” Jessen said. Younger is raising funds to cover the cost of his treatment.

The roughly 6-week-old coyote appears to be on the mend.

“He’s still in the process of recovery, so we don’t know how his body’s going to do as far as complete recovery, but he’s making perfect progress so far,” Jessen said.

The pup spent last weekend at the home of Jessen and his wife, Karen, manager of the animal hospital. The couple realized he was able to lap water from a small bowl, so they removed his IV. They took him for short walks a few times a day outside their desert property, where he mainly wanted to hide. Coyotes, and especially pups, are shy, Karen Jessen said.

By the time he went back to Younger’s house Monday night, Karen Jessen said, “really for hours, I could just hold him, like cuddling a little baby, and he’d put his head on my shoulder.”

Twenty-Twenty’s long-term fate is still coming into focus.

In the short term, he’ll continue to recuperate at Younger’s preserve, where she’s feeding him with a syringe. It’s unlikely that he’ll be able to return to the wild, given his physical impediments and habituation to people. Younger may eventually transfer him to a facility where he can spend time with other nonaggressive coyotes.

“We’ll make that decision in a few more weeks, but right now he’s just a little love muffin,” Younger said.

Of course he is. The man lives for vengeance. There would be no better revenge than to win back the White House — and punish every last person who defied him.

Meanwhile:

Former President Donald Trump revealed Thursday that he will hold campaign-style rallies in four battleground states in the coming weeks as speculation swirls that he’ll mount another bid for the White House in 2024.

“Relatively soon, we’ll be doing one in Florida, we’re gonna do one in Ohio, we’re gonna do one in Georgia, we’re gonna do one in North Carolina,” Trump told One America News. “We’ll be announcing them very soon over the next week or two, and I think we’ll probably start in Florida and Ohio and we’ll be announcing the rallies very shortly.”

A source close to the 45th president told The Post last week that Trump would hold at least two rallies in June, with a third event likely to take place around the July 4 holiday.

Enjoy your Trumpless time, friends. It’s about to end…

Also, keep in mind that the only reason he isn’t announcing now is because of the campaign finance requirements that might cost him a little grift money and force him to show some financial records. But unless he dead or in jail, he’s running.

Ok, I’ve been depressing enough for one day. William Saletan makes a point I’ve been trying to make as well. The Trump party is between a rock and a hard place, even if they are unaware of it:

Two weeks ago, in an interview on Fox News, Sen. Lindsey Graham explained why House Republicans had to purge Rep. Liz Cheney from their leadership. “She’s made a determination that the Republican Party can’t grow with President Trump,” Graham told Sean Hannity. “I’ve determined we can’t grow without him.” Graham framed this as a choice, as though either he or Cheney had to be wrong. But what if they’re both right? What if the GOP, by becoming the Trump party, has trapped itself in a fatal dilemma? Polls suggest that this is precisely what has happened. The GOP can’t afford to alienate its Trumpist base, but it can’t afford to lose anti-Trump Republicans either. By ousting Cheney, the party is risking electoral disaster.

In the fight between Trump and Cheney over the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection, most Republicans are on Trump’s side. Seventy percent agree (wrongly) that rampant fraud affected the election’s outcome, that Joe Biden didn’t get enough legal votes to win, and that his victory was therefore illegitimate. Fewer than 30 percent of Republicans concede that the Jan. 6 attack was a rebellion or uprising, and only 17 percent call it an insurrection. Thirty-seven percent hold Biden or the Democratic Party primarily responsible for the attack; only 11 percent hold Trump or the GOP primarily responsible. In fact, 35 percent of Republicans insist that “the participants who took part in the events on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol” were “patriots.”

Cheney wants the Jan. 6 violence to be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted, but most Republicans don’t. In a Pew survey conducted in March, a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said too much attention had “been paid to the riot at the Capitol and its impacts.” Only half said it was very important “for federal law enforcement agencies to find and prosecute those who broke into the U.S. Capitol,” and 37 percent worried that the offenders would be punished too harshly. In April, in a UMass Amherst/WCVB poll, only 44 percent of Republicans supported “continuing the federal effort to identify, arrest, and charge individuals who participated” in “the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.” Thirty-three percent opposed that effort. In a third survey, taken last week by Civiqs, 75 percent of Republicans opposed “a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

That’s why Cheney’s colleagues fired her as chair of the House GOP conference: Truth and principle were on her side, but most Republicans weren’t. In polls taken last week, Republican respondents agreed by ratios of 4-to-1 that her colleagues were right to remove her.

But that doesn’t mean the ouster was cost-free. In three polls taken this month, 17 percent to 20 percent of Republicans opposed Cheney’s removal. Independents, by a net margin of 12 to 14 percentage points, were more likely to oppose than support her demotion. A Morning Consult poll found that on balance, registered voters who chose third-party candidates in 2020, or who didn’t vote at all that year, also thought the GOP should have kept her in leadership. In a close election, alienating all these people can be fatal.

Pollsters are just beginning to examine the Cheney sympathizers. In last week’s CBS News survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, most of the 20 percent who opposed her ouster cited among their reasons “There’s room in the party for different views” or “Not everyone should support Donald Trump.” But many gave reasons that will be harder to reconcile with the party’s ongoing campaign to whitewash the insurrection and the lies party leaders told about the election. Thirty-nine percent of respondents who sided with Cheney said “she’s right about the election,” and 37 percent said “she’s right about rule of law.” This core pro-Cheney faction, roughly 35 to 40 percent of 20 percent, adds up to 7 or 8 percent of the Republican-leaning electorate.

House Republicans figure that by the time the 2022 election rolls around, these people will have forgotten a party leadership vote that took place in May 2021. But purging Cheney didn’t solve the GOP’s underlying problem: Trump. In an Echelon Insights poll taken in April, 15 percent of Republican voters said they preferred a GOP “free of Donald Trump’s influence.” In a Navigator survey, when Republicans and Republican leaners were asked whether the party “should continue on the path laid out by Donald Trump” or “make some changes and move in a new direction,” 22 percent chose a new direction. These numbers closely resemble the percentage who have opposed Cheney’s removal in more recent surveys.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The Echelon Insights poll found that beyond the 15 percent of Republicans who wanted to cleanse the party of Trump, another 21 percent preferred a GOP that “supports Donald Trump’s America First agenda but is not led by him,” and a further 23 percent preferred a GOP that “builds on Donald Trump’s successes and moves on from his failures.” Polls continue to show that Trump is an abrasive factor within the party, particularly in his treatment of liberals and racial issues. He’s also an albatross among independents: The Echelon Insights survey found that 57 percent of them would prefer a GOP free of his influence.

On average, Cheney sympathizers and Trump critics are more likely than other Republicans to be moderate, nonwhite, highly educated, and young. In the CBS News survey of Republicans and Republican leaners, one-third of respondents under age 45 who were asked about Cheney’s ouster opposed it. While only one-quarter of respondents age 65 or older acknowledged that Biden had legitimately won the election, half of those under 45 did. And while nearly half of respondents 65 or older said it was very important “for Republicans to be loyal to Donald Trump,” fewer than 30 percent of respondents younger than 45 felt that way. On race, opposition to Trump correlated directly with age: 19 percent of respondents age 65 or older, 33 percent of the 30-to-44 age group, and 43 percent of respondents younger than 30 rejected Trump as a model. The more Trump talks, and the more GOP leaders rally around him, the more they antagonize the rising cohort of younger voters.

House Republicans think they’ll win control next year because it’s a midterm election and they’re the party out of power. But an Economist/YouGov poll taken this week shows how even a small defection by anti-Trump, pro-Cheney Republicans could upend those plans. When respondents were given a choice between three congressional candidates—“the Democratic Party candidate,” “a Republican candidate who supports Donald Trump,” and “a Republican candidate who does not support Donald Trump,” 10 percent of Republicans chose the GOP candidate who didn’t support Trump. If supporters of the two Republican candidates were to unite against the Democratic candidate, the result would be a tie. But without help from voters who preferred the anti-Trump Republican, the pro-Trump Republican would lose to the Democrat by 7 points.*

The key here is that Democrats get their voters out. If they don’t, this won’t matter because the Trumpers are so excited that they can hardly contain themselves until they can go vote in 2022 (and, if necessary, contest any races they lose — because in their minds that’s impossible.)

But what Saletan says is true. At some point they are not going to be able to find any more white racists and odd numbers of racial minorities who inexplicably want to be part of that weird cult. The Trump party really can’t afford to lose votes.

Following up on my post below in which I wring my hands over the fact that it’s going to take a lot of courage for anyone to ever hold Trump accountable for anything since we live under a serious threat of violence, here’s a suitably scary column from Never trumper Michael Gerson:

American politics is being conducted under the threat of violence.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has a talent for constructive bluntness, describes a political atmosphere within the GOP heavy with fear. “If you look at the vote to impeach,” she said recently, “there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives.” The events of Jan. 6 have only intensified the alarm. When Donald Trump insists he is “still the rightful president,” Cheney wrote in an op-ed for The Post, he “repeats these words now with full knowledge that exactly this type of language provoked violence on Jan. 6.” And there’s good reason, Cheney argued, “to believe that Trump’s language can provoke violence again.”

Sometimes political events force us to step back in awe, or horror, or both. The (former) third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives has accused a former president of her party of employing the threat of violence as a tool of intimidation. And election officials around the country — Republican and Democratic — can attest to the results: Death threats. Racist harassment. Armed protesters at their homes.

From one perspective, this is not new. Trump has made a point of encouraging violence against protesters at his rallies (“knock the crap out of them”), excusing violence by his supporters (people “with tremendous passion and love for their country”) and generally acting like a two-bit mob boss. He publicly supported Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with homicide in the killing of two people in Kenosha, Wis. (Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty.) He embraced Mark and Patricia McCloskey for brandishing guns at peaceful marchers in St. Louis. He deployed federal security forces to break heads in Lafayette Square.

If Trump has a political philosophy, one of its main tenets is toxic masculinity — the use of menace and swagger to cover his mental and moral impotence. And the mini-Trumps have taken their master’s lead. When Trump operative Stephen K. Bannon proposed that Anthony S. Fauci should be beheaded, when Trump ally Joseph diGenova said a federal cybersecurity official should be “taken out at dawn and shot,” when Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani urged Trump supporters to engage in “trial by combat,” all of this was more than paunchy, pathetic, aging White men talking smack they could never back up. It exemplified a type of politics where cruelty is the evidence of commitment, brutality is the measure of loyalty and violence is equated with power.

This approach to politics is disturbing at any time. But now it has fastened itself upon an object, a project. Rather than trying to win future elections by attracting new voters, Trump Republicans wish to reshape the electoral system to produce more favorable results. Instead of using the 2020 presidential loss as a guide for additional outreach, Trump Republicans want to ensure they can claim and enforce a victory in 2024 withessentially the same vote total as 2020 — probably the high-water mark of the Trump coalition.https://2e09625b18ea193cfa676a38a87ab995.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

In some ways, the Trump movement of authoritarian populism is forward-looking. It eternally relitigates the 2020 election as preparation for the next. Compared with the utter chaos of previous efforts, this timethere seems to be a strategy at work. First, undermine Republican confidence in the electoral system and stoke the party’s sense of grievance. Second, modify state election laws to try to discourage Democratic (and particularly minority) turnout. Third, replace or intimidate state election officials who show any hints of independence or integrity.

The first goal has been achieved: In a recent poll, more than two-thirds of Republicans denied the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election as president. Results on the second goal (so far) have been mixed. Republican “reforms” have made the system marginally less fair than the status quo, but not quite as bad as some feared.

The third goal is where the threat of violence has mattered most. Officials who held the line against electoral corruption in 2020 have been worn down by threats. Some have retired or been forced out of office. State legislators who didn’t act as reliable partisans have been targeted and intimidated. All who resist Trump’s will know they will be singled out by name. They will be exposed to political jeopardy and physical peril, particularly from activists who view the right to bear arms as the right to make armed threats.

I think we underrate this possibility at our peril and we certainly underestimate how the threat is affecting various players in our political system. Don’t think people do not take this into consideration in decision making. It’s unavoidable. They are looking at a very large group of cultists who are extremely angry, being egged on to violence by their leader and his henchmen and are unreachable by normal information channels. In many ways they are holding this country hostage right now.

Former FBI counterintelligence chief Frank Figluzzi has some unnerving news for the Trump family:

This week, New York Attorney General Letitia James revealed that her civil law inquiry into the corporate entity known as the Trump Organization has become a criminal investigation. In that same brief statement, New York state’s top law enforcement official also explained that James’ office has partnered with the Manhattan district attorney, who is already investigating potential criminal tax fraud violations committed personally by former President Donald Trump.

For the Trump family, it may already be too late to get their stories straight.

This week also brought news that the Trump Organization’s CFO, Allen Weisselberg, is the subject of a New York state criminal investigation into his personal taxes — which appears to be an attempt to leverage his cooperation in the Trump Organization case.

Former Trump Organization Vice President Michael Cohen, upon learning of the now-criminal probe, said of the Trump children, “I think Trump is going to flip on them.” While we have no idea what the future will hold, we do know that what this all means is that — if they haven’t already — it’s time for members of the Trump family who served as organization employees to each retain experienced criminal defense lawyers.

In fact, depending on what those Trump Organization family members have already said — and to whom — it may already be too late. Importantly, because the Trump Organization case is now criminal, individual employees and officers of that organization can face criminal charges for their specific roles in any corporate wrongdoing. Donald Jr. and Eric still serve as executive vice presidents of the organization, a title that Ivanka Trump previously also held. And, of course, before his presidency, their infamous father was at the helm of the organization.

During my FBI career, including my time leading one of the largest white-collar crime branches in the field, and later, as a corporate security executive, I saw corporate employees mistakenly think that their companies’ attorneys represented them, too, in cases of corporate malfeasance. Big mistake. A company attorney represents the company, not the individual employees or executives. It’s quite likely that Trump Organization attorneys have already asked — and Trump family members have already answered — questions about what each of them did or did not do that might be the focus of New York’s investigation.

Depending on what those Trump Organization family members have already said — and to whom — it may already be too late.

In fact, there’s a whole body of case law on what it means when an employee answers questions posed by a company’s attorneys or investigators to try to get to the bottom of who did what. There’s even a kind of “corporate Miranda warning” that ethical companies give their employees who are asked to provide statements when a company is trying to determine whether it’s in trouble.

These advisements — called “Upjohn warnings” — developed out of a Supreme Court case involving a pharmaceutical company accused of paying bribes overseas. The Upjohn case resulted in a kind of good news/bad news conclusion. The good news for corporations was that the court found that attorney-client privilege applied to communications between company attorneys and employees.

That meant companies could confidentially rely on, and preserve under privilege, what their employees told them about what went wrong. The bad news for employees was that the attorney-client privilege had nothing to do with them. The privilege belonged to the company, and the company could waive that privilege in a heartbeat if it wanted to expose employees’ statements and pin the blame on them.

If any of the Trump family members have already even casually answered questions posed by their organization’s counsel or hired investigators, they may have mistakenly thought that what they were providing was privileged. And those statements would be privileged — but not if the organization decided, in its own interest or at the direction of the former president, that maybe Eric or Don Jr. or Ivanka needed to take the fall to save the organization or keep its notorious CEO out of prison.

The good news for corporations was that the court found that attorney-client privilege applied to communications between company attorneys and employees.

Each of the organization’s employees and officers will have their own stories to tell law enforcement agents and prosecutors about their own roles at the company and their own knowledge and intent when it came to possible criminal wrongdoing.

Often, those stories of corporate employees vary widely as to what they believe their colleagues did or didn’t do — even when those colleagues are your children, your brothers, your sister or your father. For the Trump family, it may already be too late to get their stories straight. And doing so may not even be in their individual best interests. That’s why it’s time for each of them to separately lawyer up, avoid public statements — and be really nice to one another.

I remain very, very skeptical that Donald Trump will ever see he inside of a court room. I just don’t think anyone has the nerve to activate his army of lunatics. It would truly be an act of courage and patriotism if they did.

But you never know. And in the meantime I guess I will enjoy the fantasy of thinking this monster might be finally held accountable for something in this world.

You may recall that in the wake of Former FBI Director James Comey’s firing in May of 2017, we got the first real reporting that clearly illustrated Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses as president. It was revealed that Trump went way beyond simply asking the then FBI director to go easy on his buddy Michael Flynn, which was bad enough. In Comey’s meticulously detailed memorialization of that famous meeting alone with the new president, he claimed Trump told him he wanted him to jail reporters for publishing classified information. Considering the context for that meeting, it’s pretty clear that Trump was referring to journalists who had published the information about Flynn conversing with the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. during the transition and lying about it to the FBI. Turns out that was hardly the last time Trump instructed his henchmen to go after journalists and their source.

Trump, along with the right’s media apparatus, kept up the drumbeat against leaks, tweeting furiously on the subject for months after that, finally turning his sites on then Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was already in the doghouse for following rules that required him to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Trump told the Wall Street Journal:

I’m very disappointed in the fact that the Justice Department has not gone after the leakers. And they’re the ones that have the great power to go after the leakers, you understand … and I’m very disappointed in Jeff Sessions.

The Trump administration was the leakiest administration in history. From beginning to end, the people in Trump’s orbit provided journalists with more copy than they could find time to publish. And according to many accounts, Trump was one of the top leakers himself, often ringing up his own favorite conduits on background. Yet he never stopped railing against leaks he felt were damaging and, as we know, his growing hostility towards the press became one of his most powerful organizing tools.

Sessions dutifully declared war on leakers and had the DOJ follow up on every referral — and there were many. He managed to put some leakers in jail including some who were tangentially involved in the Russia probe. But he never followed through on Trump’s order to go after the press, at least not to his satisfaction, no doubt adding to Trump’s loathing of him.

His successor Bill Barr, however, seems to have taken the task much more seriously.

Just in the last month, we’ve learned of some very serious encroachments on the First Amendment during Barr’s tenure. I just wrote about the new reports of the nefarious abuse of the Justice Department to track down an anonymous Twitter user who mocked one of Trump’s closest toadies in Congress, California Rep. Devin Nunes. And earlier this month we found out that in 2020, the Trump administration sought the 2017 communications records of three Washington Post journalists who had been covering the Trump Russia story and were responsible for the reporting on the Flynn-Kislyak calls. Most recently, CNN reported late Thursday that the DOJ informed the cable news network that last year federal prosecutors had also sought the records of CNN’s longtime Pentagon reporter Barbara Starr.

One would assume that if Sessions had thought these records were necessary to track down leakers, he would have subpoenaed them at the time. The rules for a zealous attorney general signing off on such requests are not particularly onerous and Sessions’ avowed mission to destroy the “culture of leaking” would have given him ample excuse to do it.

Basically, in order to at least attempt to abide by the First Amendment, the rules required that prosecutors use all other investigative methods before they take this step, that in most cases they alert the news organizations before they issue the subpoena, or in cases with national security concerns, they inform the individual journalists within 90 days of the subpoena being issued. And, of course, they have to deal with the various communications entities, phone companies, email platforms etc. many of which would have privacy concerns of their own.

These rules had been in place since the Clinton administration but after Sessions left, right wing journalist John Solomon reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein set about reworking them in order to make it easier for prosecutors to obtain journalists’ records and discard the requirement that the DOJ alert a media organization that they are planning to issue a subpoena. He evidently didn’t follow through on that. (It’s unclear why but for some informed speculation suggesting there was pushback from Microsoft and the judiciary, read this from national security reporter Marcy Wheeler.)

The big question in all this is why were they seeking these records in 2020?

The DOJ didn’t inform the media organizations or the reporters of their reasons but it seems logical to assume that it was part of Special Prosecutor John Durham’s ongoing snipe hunt for the “origins of the Russia investigation.” However, the fact that CNN’s Starr, who did not cover the Russia investigation, was also subpoenaed suggests that this went way beyond Durham’s mandate. If he is looking at leaks about North Korea policy he’s way off track. CNN was not informed of when these subpoenas were issued so there is a chance that this happened during Sessions’ tenure, but if that’s the case, the DOJ completely abandoned the rules that required them to inform the subject within 90 days.

These revelations just keep dribbling out and they suggest that for all their bellowing about “the Deep State,” the Trumpers sure took advantage of every lever of institutional, bureaucratic power to achieve their ends.

The current DOJ has apparently told these media organizations that they are willing to sit down and discuss what happened, but they are going to have to do better than that. The credibility of the Justice Department is so threadbare that they need to do a thorough investigation of everything that went on during the Trump era and they must then come clean to the American people. As Salon’s Chauncey DeVega wrote a couple of weeks ago, we need a full audit of the whole government for the entire Trump term.

The fact is that the Obama administration was no prize in this department either and we all know what happened during the Bush years. The tension between the free press, the intelligence community and law enforcement will always be there. But in this age of disinformation and rampant propaganda, it has literally never been more important to have a free press than it is now. DOJ should be protecting it not treating it as the enemy. 

Salon

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted the other night that Ford’s F-150 Lightning electric pickup could be game-changing for green energy. Ford’s F-Series has been the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. for 39 years. The F-150 going electric steepens the curve for the decline of internal-combustion-powered vehicles. “Mass consumer adoption of a better product,” an already popular one, “instantly renders everything else obsolete.”

Catherine Rampell concurs that sales of the (potentially) least expensive full-sized pickup may just put to rest culture-war rhetoric from conservatives:

This is no pokey, jelly-bean-shaped car designed for tree-huggers. Nor is it a spaceship-like ride for Bay Area tech bros. This is not a vehicle designed for virtue-signaling concerns about climate change, though it absolutely does broadcast the virtues of a bright, decarbonized, lower-pollution future.

The Lightning will be a better, faster, more functional and more affordable truck that can appeal to red-staters and blue-collar workers. If produced and purchased at scale, trucks such as this one could revolutionize car culture and eventually shrink the country’s carbon footprint. Tesla has already worked wonders in making electric vehicles (EVs) cool and more widely available. It produced about 500,000 vehicles in total last year; but as a share of the auto market, Ford’s F-series is in a league of its own, with about 800,000 trucks sold last year.

Republican lawmakers could still try to stomp the brakes, Rampell writes:

Republican officials have cast EVs as a lefty pet project that Democrats want to “push” upon an unwilling public, “whether they are ready for them or not,” as one GOP lawmaker recently put it. Republicans have pooh-poohed President Biden’s request for funding for EV subsidies and charging stations in an infrastructure package, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggesting the initiative is wasteful and part of a “liberal wish-list.”

Worse than withholding funds to accelerate electric-vehicle adoption, Republican officials push policies that could slow it down. They’ve argued, for instance, that any infrastructure package should be funded through new fees or taxes on electric vehicles — policies that would diminish the financial benefits of going electric.

But political market zealots are less wedded to what “The Market” wants than they are to financial support. And the fossil fuel industry, one of their steady benefactors, is weakening. Count on it: like country fans growing mullets after a decade of beating hippies, these late-adopters will be joined at the hip to green-energy producers once their biggest campaign donations transition away from fossil fuels to renewables. Death and taxes are not life’s only certainties.

Ford is not hedging its bets promoting this electric vehicle. With the engine gone, the front compartment is now a “frunk” for carrying cargo or groceries. With enough battery to power a house for several days and 110V outlets standard, no inverter is needed. Motor Trend adds, “It’s enough for the ultimate tailgate party complete with lights, music, maybe a TV, crockpot, and more.” Good luck messaging around that, Frank Luntz. You’ll need it.

Game changer! Jimmy explains the Mega Power Frunk in @Ford’s new #F150Lightning to Higgins.

In Partnership with @Ford. #Ad pic.twitter.com/OCQ1SFFnUn

— The Tonight Show (@FallonTonight) May 20, 2021

Once them old boys start mounting gun racks in Lightnings, watch how fast Republicans run to get in front of the renewables parade.

One clever Twitter user assembled a list of the right’s various reasons for why it remains blameless for the Jan. 6 Trump Insurrection:

https://twitter.com/ChefJoshWelton/status/1395400741410394120?s=20

https://twitter.com/ChefJoshWelton/status/1395400744077914112?s=20

https://twitter.com/ChefJoshWelton/status/1395400747005595657?s=20

https://twitter.com/ChefJoshWelton/status/1395400749694083077?s=20

In the Trump cult, naturally, sins against Dear Leader cannot be forgiven. More generally, the Six Excuses recall what I wrote 15 years ago about the “self-rejuvenating conservative.” That is, “conservative America has shown it will defend almost any behavior perpetrated in the cause, however it’s defined.”

Readers of Florence King (“Southern Ladies and Gentlemen“) will hear echoes of the Self-Rejuvenating Virgin, the modus vivendi by which a proper Southern woman might still present herself as unsoiled on her wedding night. For a region that spent centuries justifying slavery as God’s will, King wrote, a Southern woman explaining how she had not really lost her virginity was child’s play:

To recycle her pearl beyond price, certain ground rules had to be established. First, premeditation was forbidden. The self-rejuvenating virgin never planned ahead, she was always “swept off her feet.” If she could not make herself believe this, she engineered bizarre sexual encounters that were never quite the real thing, so the next morning she could tell herself, “It didn’t really happen because . . . “

1.   I was drunk.
2.   We didn’t take all our clothes off.
3.   We didn’t do it in a bed.
4.   He didn’t put it all the way inside me.
5.   He didn’t come inside me.
6.   I didn’t come.
7.   . . . Well, not really.

Thus do Capitol Police beaten, blodied and killed, and ruined doors and windows, ransacked offices, and terrorized lawmakers threatened with hanging become for the self-rejuvenating conservative a “normal tourist visit.” Mob members — and Republican lawmakers who egged them on — were just swept off their feet. As was D.C. Metropolitan police officer Mike Fanone. By the mob.

It is not lost on me that Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R) represents Georgia.

Ted Cruz has recently decided that he is going to emulate Dear Leader in all ways, especially his childish social media trolling. But he’s also decided to follow Trump’s example of being a conduit for Russian propaganda. It’s as disorienting as it ever was:

Holy crap.

Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea…. https://t.co/8aVFMW98NM

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 20, 2021

Just like Trump he worships the strongman. I always knew Republicans did. For all the bellowing about freedom and liberty, they’ve never been anything but authoritarian bullies.

Every Republican and a handful of progressive Dems voted against funding the Capitol police and reimbursing expenses incurred on January 6th and the aftermath.

The legislation was approved 213-212, mostly along party lines. No Republican voted in favor, and six progressive Democrats declined to support the measure.

The Democratic defectors said they were upset that the bill gave money to Capitol Police without adequately addressing the department’s failures and lack of preparedness on Jan. 6“I have not been convinced of the importance of the money,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) told reporters. She voted “no,” joined by Reps. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) and Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.). Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) voted present.

I’m not sure why the progressives did this.Apparently, they believe the Capitol police failed in their duty so they should be denied funding which I don’t think actually tracks with what the bill does. I guess they are making a point about defunding the police which is not surprising but seems to me to be a strange issue on which to make that stand. (I realize that federal officials have little influence on this issue so maybe this is the only way they can put their money where their mouths are.)

It’s not a big deal. Progressives were smart enough not to actually help them vote this down, which would have been a truly self-defeating move. No harm no foul.

But let’s talk about the Republicans voting en masse to defund the police. What?