The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack will hear testimony Tuesday from four police officers who were on the frontlines that day as rioters supporting then-President Trump violently stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying President Biden’s electoral win.
The hearing will mark the first time the panel will have public testimony, and will kick-start its efforts to investigate the events on Jan. 6.
The four officers testifying are:
DC Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges
DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone
Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn
Capitol Police Officer Sgt. Aquilino Gonell
National security analyst Clint Watts just reminded MSNBC viewers that the real gaps in what we know about the Jan. 6 insurrection lie at the Department of Justice and congressional levels. Nonetheless, putting these four and their harrowing stories of assault and injury at the hands of insurrectionists squarely in the public eye again will help reframe the contested narrative the G.O.P. and former president have worked so hard to muddy since January.
Adding to the morning’s drama, the Department of Justice has notified former Trump administration officials that they may testify before the committee about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol:
Witnesses can give “unrestricted testimony” to the House Oversight and Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, the department said in a letter this week. Both panels are scrutinizing the Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the election in its final days and the events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The decision runs counter to the views of former President Donald J. Trump, who has argued that his decisions and deliberations are protected by executive privilege. It also sets up a potential court battle if Mr. Trump sues in a bid to block any testimony.
That’s “potential” in quotes. Winning via litigation delays is classic Trump. He will sue.
Media critic Eric Boehlert worries that the national media will “both sides” the investigation and insist there exists a “cloud” over the investigation:
So many media players will not accept the obvious fact that most Republicans don’t want a faithful accounting of the insurrection and Trump’s role in it. Republicans aren’t using smoke and mirrors to disguise their true intentions either. As usual, they’re being upfront in pushing their un-democratic agenda.
It’s just that journalists don’t want to acknowledge the disturbing reality, that the party they so desperately want to portray as being a mainstream, center-right entity is doing everything possible to make sure the facts surrounding the ransacking of the U.S. Capitol — a riot launched in an effort to stop the certification of an American election — remain clouded for reasons of self-preservation.
This week, the heroes of January 6 will finally get the chance to tell their stories.
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 27, 2021
Sgt. Aquilino Gonell is already wiping away tears as he gives his opening statement. Nothing he’d seen as a U.S. soldier in Iraq had prepared him for what he experienced at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
It’s going to be a long day and a long investigation.
The “sense of celebration was palpable,” the New York Times begins. Just weeks ago, it seemed the country was on the back side of the Covid pandemic. Then the Delta variant began to bite overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated, among the misinformed, the vaccine-hesitant, the propagandized, and among belligerent Trump-o-manicas who consider any un-Trump-sanctioned behavior treason.
The rest are losing patience with those who reject vaccination out of political grievance and a warped sense of personal freedom. Vaccine refuseniks are making the lives of Covid-weary neighbors difficult once again while putting the lives of children under 12 at risk. Calls for vaccination mandates are on the rise for municipal and federal employees as new infections rise:
“I’ve become angrier as time has gone on,” said Doug Robertson, 39, a teacher who lives outside Portland, Ore., and has three children too young to be vaccinated, including a toddler with a serious health condition.
“Now there is a vaccine and a light at the end of the tunnel, and some people are choosing not to walk toward it,” he said. “You are making it darker for my family and others like mine by making that choice.”
The resurgence is straining families:
Josh Perldeiner, 36, a public defender in Connecticut who has a 2-year-old son, was fully vaccinated by mid-May. But a close relative, who visits frequently, has refused to get the shots, although he and other family members have urged her to do so.
She recently tested positive for the virus after traveling to Florida, where hospitals are filling with Covid-19 patients. Now Mr. Perldeiner worries that his son, too young for a vaccine, may have been exposed.
“It goes beyond just putting us at risk,” he said. “People with privilege are refusing the vaccine, and it’s affecting our economy and perpetuating the cycle.” As infections rise, he added, “I feel like we’re at that same precipice as just a year ago, where people don’t care if more people die.”
Even the vaccinated have to worry abour getting “breakthrough” infections.
Aimee McLean, a nurse case manager at Salt Lake City’s University of Utah Hospital, is not the first to suggest insurance companies link coverage for Covid medical bills to vaccination status. “If you choose not to be part of the solution, then you should be accountable for the consequences,” she said.
“If we’re respecting the rights and liberties of the unvaccinated, what’s happening to the rights and liberties of the vaccinated?” said Elif Akcali, 49, who teaches engineering at the University of Florida, in Gainesville. The university is not requiring students to be vaccinated, and with rates climbing in Florida, she is worried about exposure to the virus.
Sadly, it is going to take a brush with death to change many minds. If they are lucky enough to survive.
WATCH: Brother of Formerly Anti-Vaxx Talk Radio Host Hospitalized by Covid Admits 'He Got it Wrong' on Vaccines https://t.co/FhooSyEC7Q
Being on a ventilator with Covid changed conservative talk radio host Phil Valentine, his brother told CNN (Mediaite):
“Phil would like for his listeners to know that while he has never been an ‘anti-vaxer’ he regrets not being more vehemently ‘Pro-Vaccine,’ and looks forward to being able to more vigorously advocate that position as soon as he is back on the air, which we all hope will be soon,” his family said in a Friday statement. “Phil & his family would like for all of you to know that he loves ya’ll and appreciates your concern, thoughts & prayers more than you will ever know. Please continue to pray for his recovery and please go get vaccinated!”
John Berman asked his guest about Valentine’s experience, saying his brother’s hospitalization “basically scared [him] straight.
“I went directly to the Walmart and got the vaccine and said, you know, you pick the arm, I don’t care, just do it,” Valentine revealed. He added that his mission is to tell the vaccine-hesitant now to “quit worrying about the politics and the conspiracies and all that sort of stuff.”
But punitive measures or social ostracism could backfire, “experts warn.” Perhaps gentle persuasion?
BREAKING: The Department of Justice releases another video from January 6th.
Critical Race Theory (CRT), once a little-known academic concept, is now at the center of the national political discussion. CRT is discussed incessantly on Fox News. It is featured in campaign advertisements. And legislation banning it is advancing in statehouses around the country.
This didn’t happen on its own. Rather, there is a constellation of non-profit groups and media outlets that are systematically injecting CRT into our politics. In 2020, most people had never heard of CRT. In 2021, a chorus of voices on the right insists it is an existential threat to the country.
A Popular Information investigation reveals that many of the entities behind the CRT panic share a common funding source: The Thomas W. Smith Foundation.
The Thomas W. Smith Foundation has no website and its namesake founder keeps a low public profile. Thomas W. Smith is based in Boca Raton, Florida, and founded a hedge fund called Prescott Investors in 1973. In 2008, the New York Times reported that The Thomas W. Smith Foundation was “dedicated to supporting free markets.”
More information about the foundation can be gleaned from its public tax filings, which are called 990-PFs. The Thomas W. Smith Foundation has more than $24 million in assets. The person who spends the most time working for the group is not Smith but James Piereson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. According to the foundation’s 2019 990-PF, Piereson was paid $283,333 to work for The Thomas W. Smith Foundation for 25 hours per week.
Piereson was also paid $140,000 in 2019 as an independent contractor for the Manhattan Institute, where Thomas W. Smith is a trustee. While Thomas W. Smith avoids public comments, Piereson is prolific. And Piereson’s writings provide insight into what is motivating the foundation’s grants.
The people and groups behind anti-CRT hysteria claim that there is a radical new theory being taught in schools that seeks to make white people hate themselves and define everyone exclusively by their race. None of this is true. But Piereson provides an insight into the underlying ideology that explains why so much effort is being put into perpetuating these myths.
Piereson has made clear that he opposes efforts to increase racial or economic equality, even if these efforts are financed by private charities. Piereson described his views in a 2019 op-ed in the Washington Examiner:
[C]haritable foundations have felt the great sustained pressure to “pay up” for alleged sins against the ideals of racial and economic equality. It started out as pressure from a few vocal activists banging on the doors of large foundations. It’s turned into a movement in which philanthropic leaders are falling over themselves to throw money at their critics in hopes of mollifying them…
In another column published in 2019 in the Wall Street Journal, Piereson objected to the Surdna Foundation spending money on “community-led efforts that target the root causes of economic and racial inequities” because its deceased founder John Emory Andrus was a capitalist and would not have approved.
In a 2017 column, Piereson criticized liberal philanthropists for focusing on “climate change, income inequality, [and] immigrant rights,” describing these as “radical causes.” He stressed the need for “a counterbalance provided by right-leaning philanthropies.”
Piereson also opposes classes dedicated to the study of women, Black people, or the LGBTQ community in universities, saying these topics lack “academic rigor.”
In the 1960s, universities caved to the demands of radicals on campus by expanding academic departments to include women’s studies, black studies, and, more recently, “queer studies.” These programs are college mainstays, making up in ideological vigor what they lack in academic rigor.
He opposes efforts to diversify professors or students on college campuses saying “diversity-promotion efforts on campus actually increase resentment on the part of both white and minority students.” Piereson argued that “racial bigotry and violence against women” is not a big problem on college campuses. He says that concerns about these issues are “irrational.”
How did CRT, a complex theory that explains how structural racism is embedded in the law, get redefined to represent corporate diversity trainings and high school classes on the history of slavery? The foundation funding much of the anti-CRT effort is run by a person who opposes all efforts to increase diversity at powerful institutions and laments the introduction of curriculum about the historical treatment of Black people.
It’s hard to generate excitement around tired arguments opposing diversity and racial equality. It’s easier to advocate against CRT, a term that sounds scary but no one really understands.
Legum has a lot more detail in his newsletter.
Of course some angry, rich, white, racist is behind all this. There always is. As for the Manhattan Institute which is doing his dirty work, here’s the guy in charge of the project:
The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think "critical race theory." We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 15, 2021
Florida doctors and Democratic lawmakers are calling out Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for his anti-scientific approach to Covid-19. DeSantis has been an opponent of measures designed to curb the virus’s spread—such as mask mandates—despite the rising number of cases in his state.
“The consequence of his leadership has been a steep rise in Covid-19 cases and increased numbers of Floridians dying,” Dr. Frederick Southwick, a University of Florida physician and member of the Committee to Protect Health Care, told WPBF News in Palm Beach.
“As a physician and a Floridian, I am frankly angry and ashamed,” said cardiologist Dr. Bernard Ashby, who leads the committee’s Florida chapter, according to WLRN.
Florida’s Democratic congressional lawmakers are also concerned, writing in a letter to DeSantis this week about their “grave and urgent concern over the worsening COVID-19 surge in Florida.”
“Since the start of the pandemic, Florida has remained a national focal point due to your administration’s lax, delayed, and incomplete responses to this serious threat,” the lawmakers wrote. “Your administration’s reluctance to use all the science- and evidence-based tools available to defeat the virus has created unwarranted roadblocks at the local level.”
For the last two weeks, one out of every five new cases of Covid-19 is in Florida, according to the White House. And hospitalization rates have skyrocketed by 95 percent over last month. Despite that news, DeSantis has staunchly refused to implement mask requirements—even in public schools, where children under 12 are not yet old enough to be vaccinated against the virus—and continues to use his gubernatorial powers to undermine local Covid mandates. Just last month, DeSantis issued a “blanket pardon” for any person or business that non-violently refuses to comply with local Covid-19 measures in the state. DeSantis has also sued the Biden administration and CDC to re-open the cruise industry.
Meanwhile, vaccination rates in the state’s rural areas remain low, despite DeSantis’s recent promotion of the vaccine. Although across the state 60 percent of residents above the age of 12 are vaccinated, counties in northern parts of the state are around 30 percent vaccinated. And vaccination rates have decreased by 80 percent since April. Yet DeSantis’s administration has acted as if the pandemic is over, discontinuing daily reporting of Covid-19 cases and banning businesses from requiring proof of vaccination.
“At the same time as DeSantis says the vaccines are effective—which they are—he’s also banning businesses from requiring proof of vaccination,” Dr. Mona Mangat, an immunologist who is also a member of the physicians’ committee, told WLRN. “He has taken away private companies’ ability to protect their employees and customers by requiring the safe and readily available vaccine.”
Instead, DeSantis is trolling the administration and selling merchandise mocking Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert and chief medical advisor to the White House. His campaign store is selling t-shirts that say “Don’t Fauci my Florida” and a koozie with a DeSantis quote: “How the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on?”
Negative reactions to DeSantis’ vaccine push among vaccine-resistant individuals and new polling data suggests that it could be too late to change the minds of those who refuse to get the shot.
Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn accused DeSantis of “trying to be politically correct” in his promotion of the vaccine. “That’s a dangerous place to be for people in this country who do have influence,” Flynn said.
Conservative podcaster Stew Peters—”confused” by DeSantis’ vaccine push after supporting his anti-lockdown stance—falsely accused the governor of taking bribes.
“It was all about bribery,” he said, calling the governor a “sellout.”
“Everybody has a number. When you get someone to fold, you just put a lot of money on the line,” he added. “We don’t know if DeSantis’ family was threatened.”
This Politico story about two emergency managers in Louisiana is just sad. It’s also hair raising. Here’s an excerpt:
One day last week in Sheffield, Melton and Grabryan were sitting in a large van in front of a local church. Its parking lot displayed a small white sign advertising Covid-19 vaccine to anyone who wanted it.
Only 18 people showed up. It’s been like that for weeks. At one point, Grabryan laid his head back on the van’s cushy seat, shaking it side to side. “I’ve been out to the funeral home for more visitations this year than I have before,” he said. “There’s no one in this area that doesn’t know someone who was affected by it.”
Grabryan can’t understand what’s holding people back. But then again, maybe he can.
“Until it starts hitting here really bad again, these people aren’t going to get the shot,” Melton added.
Covid-19 is ever present in northern Alabama these days, as the Delta variant wraps its arms around the population, weaving in and out of homes, schools and churches. But locals rarely discuss the vaccine in public. And health officials believe in a hands-off approach — if they push too hard, they risk alienating their friends. Officials in both Alabama and Louisiana say their governments have in the past shied away from door knocking, trusting that if they put up enough flyers and promote the safety of the vaccine through the media, people would sign up. But that strategy is not working. Vaccination rates have declined in recent weeks.
“I did have a lady come down here and ask why we were pushing something that wasn’t an approved drug. I tried to tell her that this is a volunteer thing and we aren’t pushing it on anybody,” Melton said. “We’re just making it available for the ones that want it. If they want to take it here is the opportunity to take it. If they don’t want to get it, nobody is gonna chase them down and force it on them.”
That approach — believing that people will eventually get the shot to protect themselves and their community — has largely failed in parts of Louisiana, too, despite massive resources being spent to set up vaccine clinics across the state, including in stadiums, grocery stores, school gyms and churches. The vaccine is a non-starter in communities where people say they do not trust the federal government.
An hour east of Baton Rouge in Hammond, La., regional medical director Gina Lagarde sat among piles and piles of personal protective equipment, boxes of vaccine doses, and cardboard signs saying “VACCINES HERE.” Lagarde has brought on volunteers from the Louisiana National Guard to help roll out the vaccine in rural communities nearby. In recent days, vaccine administration numbers have begun to tick up slightly. Still, she said, “We worry we are in the surge now and schools are about to open.”
In a series of interviews, Louisiana regional medical directors and physicians described a horrific last two weeks marked by overcrowded ICUs, people showing up to emergency rooms after suddenly developing shortness of breath, and Covid-19 patients clinging to their last hours before abruptly letting go and dying. Almost all of these people died because they chose not to get the vaccine. And that’s what’s triggered doctors and nurses who are experiencing more anxiety and exhaustion now than they did during the first, second and third surges.
“At least then we didn’t have a vaccine and there was nothing we could do,” said Tonya Jagneaux, a critical care physician at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge. “Sometimes you just feel like screaming.”
The doctors here and across the street at Baton Rouge General Hospital are treating unprecedented numbers of Covid-19 patients. It’s not just the sheer number of cases that they are seeing, doctors say. It is that they are seeing them come in all at once. Jagneaux is sitting in a room at the hospital with her colleagues, discussing the last few days of caring for Covid-19 patients.
“What is different in my opinion this time is that it escalated so quickly. I would expect us to be here in about two weeks, based on the numbers in the community and when we first started seeing the hospitalizations go up,” said Catherine O’Neal, chief medical officer of Our Lady of the Lake. “Now it’s like the doubling time is so much faster. And that’s just the Delta variant.”
The state has recorded an average of 2,400 coronavirus cases in the last 14 days, an uptick of more than 230 percent from the two weeks prior. The patients seeking medical help are younger than ever before, between 30 and 60 years old. And they are dying. Two of the doctors at Our Lady of the Lake hospital say they both lost unvaccinated family members to Covid. In the past several weeks, two nurses in the hospital nearby died, too.
Their bad choices are affecting the whole country. And there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it. This variant is going to race through the country killing and sickening a whole bunch of people. And those unvaccinated who escape will probably be hit by the next wave. It’s insane.
We all just have to hope that these vaccines can hold up.
Delta is clearly very contagious but I wish we had better explanations for the rather abrupt turnaround in cases in India and now (fingers crossed) in the UK. https://t.co/1u8Flo3Ox1
As you know, Delta first emerged in India and accounts for most of the cases there. This is what Silver is talking about:
The cases haven’t dropped off that abruptly because of vaccinations. Only 6% of the population is has had two shots. So maybe there’s something about Delta that is short lived? Let’s hope so…
In January, when Ed Condon and JD Flynn broke off from their jobs at a long-standing Catholic news agency, they promised readers of their new newsletter that they would deliver reporting without an agenda, or a foregone conclusion. “We aim to do serious, responsible, sober journalism about the Church, from the Church and for the Church. . . . We want The Pillar to be a different kind of journalism.”
Six months later the Pillar broke the kind of story mainstream news organizations would be unlikely to touch: They said they had obtained commercially available data that included location history from the hookup app Grindr, and used it to track a high-ranking priest from his offices and family lake house to gay nightclubs.
Now Condon and Flynn, two 38-year-old canon lawyers-turned-muckrakers, are at the center of both a global surveillance-ethics story as well as a mud fight among their fellow Catholics over whether last week they served or disgraced the church. One Catholic writer described it as “a witch hunt aimed at gay Catholic priests.”
In some ways the Pillar story and reaction to it feels almost like a throwback: Conservative Catholics who point to the 1960s and liberalizing sexual mores for society’s troubles and focus on gay priests. But in 2021 the availability of personal digital data and the use of smartphones for surveillance are far bigger fears for the vast majority of Americans than is news about a member of the clergy possibly using a hookup app.
Flynn and Condon’s story also punctuates how America’s religious and journalistic landscapes have changed. Institutions and hierarchies now have to contend with scrappy start-ups taking matters into their own hands.
And in the growing conservative Catholic media scene, their newsletter and its takedown of Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill represents a new power and boldness of those demanding their church be purged of leaders who they see as too permissiveon issues like abortion,gender norms and sex outside of heterosexual marriage.
On Friday, the pair answered the question of whether there would be more sex-data stories following the Tuesday announcement of Burrill’s resignation as chief administrator of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Pillar reported it had brought some of its findings from the data to the Archdiocese of Newark to say there were “patterns of location-based hookup apps” at various clerical residences there. In a statement to The Post, the archdiocese said the Pillar provided no actual data or evidence of misconduct and that the matter is being reviewed.
With all the pedophilia and abuse in the church that’s been revealed over the past few years, you’d think they would have a little humility. But I guess they’ve reached their limit with a gay priest hooking up with adults. They have to draw the line somewhere.
Cancel culture has been around for a very long time.
Fox News hosts on Sunday promoted the idea that “childless” Americans should not be allowed to participate in society by voting.Report Advertisement
The idea was recently floated by Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance.
“Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children,” Vance told a conference on the Future of American Political Economy.
The hosts of Fox & Friends discussed the merits of the idea that the “childless left” should not be able to vote.
“I think it’s an interesting idea,” host Will Cain said. “I’m into interesting ideas. Let’s think about it. Let’s talk about it. He’s saying childless leaders are making decisions that are short-term in mind, not focused on the long-term future health of this country because they don’t have a stake in the game. Parents have a stake in the game, they have children so give parents a bigger say.”‘
Co-host Pete Hegseth pointed out that fellow co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy would get nine votes because she has nine children.
“I don’t know about that solution, that seems not feasible,” Campos-Duffy said. “But I will say that I agree with the premise of it, that it is absolutely true that people like [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], Pete Buttigieg — you can name the left-wing politicians, people who think that we should legalize marijuana because they don’t have kids and they don’t really have a stake in what that looks like.”
Right. All the parents who refuse to accept that climate change is real are real long term thinkers. Or the parents who run the fossil fuel industry. And this thing where they are refusing to get vaccines and want to take kids from their parents if they wear masks, is certainly shows great care for their future.
JD Vance is turning out to be a real blight on our politics in a whole new way. I won’t be surprised if he ends up winning. That’s just how screwed up we are these days.
Over the weekend, former president Trump held a huge indoor rally in Arizona called “Rally to Protect Our Elections” which in all likelihood will end up being a super-spreader event since so many of his followers are anti-vaccine and anti-mask. They showed up in great numbers, dressed in their flamboyant MAGA gear, excited and thrilled to be in the presence of their leader.
Outside the Phoenix, AZ rally that Donald Trump will headline, attendees are yelling at us, “No masks.” We are indeed wearing masks. This will be an hours-long indoor rally as the Delta virus has led to an increase in #COVID19 cases. pic.twitter.com/1DQA5yT5vg
Trump made passing reference to the vaccines in his endless speech, taking credit for them and telling people he thinks they should get them but going out of his way to say he respects those who choose not to do it. (The crowd cheered the latter.) But the rally was billed as a rally about “election integrity” which, in Trumpworld, translates to the Big Lie about 2020. He delivered. He went on and on about the so-called “fraud” spreading bogus details along the way, reinforcing his determination to organize the party around his lost cause.
But in the context of January 6th and the ongoing Big Lie, there was a darker message as well.
” Our nation is up against the most sinister forces…This nation does not belong to them, this nation belongs to you…” He wasn’t talking about a foreign enemy.
Let’s just say that Donald Trump is not distancing himself from the Insurrection. In fact, he is using code words and conspiracy theory signals to suggest that he’s still as happy about it as he reportedly was when it happened.
Meanwhile, In Washington we have seen the Republican Party do everything in its power to bury any investigation into that day. They’ve waged an ongoing tantrum over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s various attempts to put together a commission or select committee to gather a full account of what happened on that day. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insists that no investigation that doesn’t include Republicans who are pushing the Big Lie and are therefore, complicit in the insurrection, can possibly be fair. (Presumably, he would have wanted members of Al Qaeda on the 9/11 Commission as well.)
While there’s little doubt that a few GOP members of Congress are true believers, this is really all about one thing: the 2022 elections. And the last thing Republicans want to be talking about in that campaign is the trainwreck of January 6th. But even if they had been able to derail a congressional investigation, they can’t shut up Donald Trump, and he can talk of nothing else.
CNN’s Manu Raju asked South Dakota Republican Senator John Thune… about the former president’s claim that the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was a “lovefest.”“That’s not what any of us here experienced,” he responded. “Trying to rehash and revisit and re-litigate the past election is not a winning strategy for trying to get the majorities back in 2022.”
Raju asked the South Dakota senator if Trump’s claims of widespread fraud will hurt the party’s chances in the 2022 midterms. “I mean, he’s gonna keep saying it. There’s not anything we can do about it,” Thune said. “But like I said, anytime you’re talking about the past, you’re not talking about the future. And I think the future is where we’re gonna live.”
Trump spoke to this at the Arizona rally this past weekend:
I tell this to people. I tell it to Republicans and a lot of them are very good people and they say, “Well, sir, we have to get onto the future.” Let me tell you, you’re not going to have a future. First of all, our nation is being destroyed, but you’re not going to have a future in ’22 or ’24 if you don’t find out how they cheated with hundreds of thousands and even millions of votes, because you won’t win anything. You won’t win anything.
Whether they like it or not, the GOP strategy in 2022 is going to be about relitigating 2020. Trump is out there endorsing candidates who defended him and nixing anyone who may have balked, creating even more anxiety among Republicans leaders. He is still in charge.
You might wonder why they are so nervous since Trump does get out the their base and in the midterm that could be decisive. Well, they are probably aware that Trump continuing to dominate will also help Democratic turnout. And while is very true that much depends on the Democrats’ ability to deliver the material benefit they promised, negative partisanship is a very powerful motivator and nobody brings it out like Donald Trump.
CNN political analyst Ron Brownstein has written about this, noting that Democrats were able to produce exceptional turnout in 2018 and 2020 among people who don’t always vote because of the deep antipathy to Trump. They have all the contact numbers for these folks and will be sure to let them know exactly what Trump is up to, even if they aren’t paying close attention. Michael Podhorzer, political director of the AFL-CIO has said that the 7.7 million voters who didn’t vote in 2016 but came out in the next two election, along with the 18 million first time voters in 2020 are key to success in 2022. According to the Catalyst election analysis, half of those first time voters who cast a ballot for Biden, did so to vote against Trump. If he’s out there talking his usual trash, the Democrats will likely have a much easier time persuading those voters to come out in 2022.
Beyond that, Mitch McConnell is almost certainly concerned about Trump’s ongoing disparagement of the voting system. After all, he knows there’s a good chance he lost the Senate because Trump’s accusations of rampant electoral corruption resulted in Georgia Republicans failing to vote in the runoff that elected two Democratic Senators. Trump has a very loyal base but there may be more than a few who figure it just isn’t worth it when they hear the constant refrain about corrupt election systems.
Whether Democrats are able to take advantage of this opening remains to be seen. The official line is that they are going to depend upon a good economy and the proverbial “kitchen table issues” to get out the vote. But last week the president himself seemed to indicate that he understands that Democratic voters are still highly motivated by their loathing of the man who still insists he won the election.
At a campaign rally for Virginia Governor candidate Terry McAuliffe, Biden threw down the gauntlet, calling the Republican opponent a “Trump acolyte” and saying “I whipped Donald Trump in Virginia and so will Terry.”
And he trolled him in a way designed to thrill the crowd, which it did:
He knew what he was doing. It was a subtle, but effective jab at the former president who famously had to hold his glass with two hands. Don’t be surprised to see more of this. If Trump won’t go away the Democrats wouldn’t be fools not to take advantage of it.
It’s not enough that Russian hackers are taking cities’ computers hostage. The GOP is ready to do it again with the country’s full faith and credit.
LOLGOP’s op-ed in USA Today examines the latest play by Republicans to again hold the country hostage over raising the debt ceiling, asking “How far will Republicans go to wreck the first term of a Democratic president?” That’s a rhetorical question. They did it 10 years ago:
Faced with a brutal recession, the new Republican House majority insisted it was ready to intentionally default on America’s debt for the first time in American history – unless Democrats agreed to trillions in spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit. Slashing social programs was the GOP’s No. 1 priority even as 14 million Americans were looking for work.
The result was a roller coaster off its tracks, barreling through the economy, setting off stock market shudders around the globe and triggering fears of a financial crisis even larger than the one that exploded in 2007. When the coaster eventually crashed, the United States saw the first-ever downgrade of its credit rating.
It's a massive yet completely predictable disgrace that a main reason this country can't safely reopen is because of the guys who've been demanding we reopen since last April.
But that's how it's gone since 2009, the GOP punishes us for their failures.https://t.co/rdLuHrObe8
The GOP’s all-out political war dates back to “when Trump was still a gushing Hillary Clinton supporter,” Jason Sattler writes. “While the GOP definitely stepped up its disloyal opposition during the shutdowns of the Bill Clinton era, sabotage didn’t really become the organizing principle of the party until the election of the first Black president.”
Trump is a latecomer, even if a natural saboteur.
When first they show you who they are, believe them, etc. Post-insurrection and still arguing their Comb over King was cheated of his second term, Republicans are lining up behind their leaders, official and in exile, to sabotage the country yet again.
We must all learn the lesson we didn’t in 2011. Democrats who try to negotiate with a GOP that widely rejects the opposition party’s right to govern are only enabling Republicans’ destructiveness. You cannot even engage their threats. You can only defeat them by trying to save the country from their vicious combination of incompetence and vindictiveness.
That will take presidential stumping to pass both the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act “by whatever means necessary.” Sometime before this democratic republic winds up on a ventilator.
The first thing popping up in the Twitter feed this morning was this monologue from the Color of Change’s Rahsad Robinson. He is exasperated that President Biden’s response to pleas to engage on passage of voting rights legislation is to praise people of color for overcoming historic obstacles to voting in 2020 and to urge them to organize harder.
“We climbed up the hill with rocks on our backs and then they keep making the hill steeper,” Robinson began. “They keep making the rocks bigger. And then we keep getting told, ‘Keep climbing, y’all. Black folks, just keep climbing.'” Democrats asked to be put in power and then tell us there’s nothing they can do, Robinson said.
It's not like things were good before the latest onslaught of voter suppression laws. We were already putting rocks on our backs and going up the hill — and they keep making the hill steeper and the rocks bigger. My thoughts from my discussion with @zerlinamaxwell: pic.twitter.com/IbeVDDx9DX
Watch the nods from Zerlina Maxwell and Juanita Toliver.
“[Biden] is dropping the ball,” said Jaunita Toliver when he won’t engage on voting rights. She was just getting warmed up:
What I still can’t wrap my head around is while the same advocates, the same organizers, the same progressive groups that turned out historic numbers of voters in 2020 are literally begging for President Biden to act, these are the same people that Biden got on stage and thanked directly — black women and people of color — for turning out and getting him across the finish line.
And now, he really has to evaluate his position on the filibuster. He’s saying that it would create chaos in the Senate, and then Congress. It makes no sense, Zerlina. And so what I think right now we’re seeing from advocates and activists is that they’re not buying it. They’re not buying the White House line that it would create chaos. They’re also not buying the White House line that Biden can’t get it done. Especially after seeing him put in hours and hours of meetings to get this bipartisan infrastructure deal.
Essentially, folks are saying keep that same energy, but for my basic right to vote. Keep that same energy to preserve our democracy. Keep that same energy to make sure that we don’t have elections that are going to be essentially shams that could be decided at the state and local level based on the voter suppression bills and election laws we’re seeing passed in Republican-held state legislatures.
And so, it’s extremely frustrating to hear Biden say on stage last night that it would create chaos. What we have now is chaos, and he is dropping the ball. And what I think the other thing is that he doesn’t realize that his hesitation, his inaction, is essentially going to create yet another pillar that upholds systemic biases, systemic racism, systemic disenfranchisement that’ll have a negative impact not only on future elections, and on black and brown voters, but on our democracy writ large.
Biden spent decades as a senator. But he is not a legislator anymore. He is a chief executive. He must unlearn some of what he learned in the Senate to do the job he has now. He has convinced himself his reelection and Democrats’ fortunes in 2022 depend on enacting a massive infrastructure bill. But he has to engage on voting rights before his lack of attention loses him the support of the base that won him election in 2020 and enables lasting damage to the republic. His new job requires more than bringing home the bacon.
Democrats lost 948 state legislative seats during the last Democratic presidency after Obama abandoned both Dean’s 50-state strategy and dismantled his own juggernaut of a campaign organization, as some believe, to keep organized lefties from interfering with his personal legislative priorities. Biden seems not to have learned from that.
What you think you know is keeping you from accomplishing what you must, Mr. President.
