Month: September 2021

The right wing is in “whatever sticks” mode as it searches for a winning wedge issue to run on nationwide in coming election cycles. Whether it is “the great replacement,” anti-mask and vaccination, Donald Trump’s “stolen” reelection, or critical race theory, underneath it is all the same issue.

With Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the urban-based media went to its standard practice of seeking out White men in rural diners. They hoped to explain why Real Americans™ of the working class accepted a gilded, pompous, xenophobic, womanizer and snake-oil salesman as their personal savior. While the initial explanation was economic anxiety, others on the left pointed to a more facile explanation: racism. Both hot takes have proved inadequate.

Blaming Trumpism on race hatred, though hatred there is, was no more satisfying than economic anxiety. Was Trump’s election White backlash to the election of the first Black president? * Surely. But as I’ve written here repeatedly, the reason is more than skin deep.

CNN reports that national security authorities see ominous signs in White supremacist and anti-government extremists celebrating the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan (emphasis mine):

Several concerning trends have emerged in recent weeks on online platforms commonly used by anti-government, White supremacist and other domestic violent extremist groups, including “framing the activities of the Taliban as a success,” and a model for those who believe in the need for a civil war in the US, the head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, John Cohen, said on a call Friday with local and state law enforcement, obtained by CNN.

Cohen said on the call that DHS has also analyzed discussions centering on “the great replacement concept” a conspiracy theory that immigrants, in this case the relocation of Afghans to the US, would lead to a loss of control and authority by White Americans.

Underneath all of the wedge issues, underneath all of the cri de guerre freak-outs from the conservative fringe is just that: fear of loss of control.

The “alpha male” dominance theory of canine behavior may have been debunked some years ago, but tell that to former Trump advisor Sebastian “the alpha males are back” Gorka. Tell it to Trump himself, a man as obsessed with projecting strength as he is fearful of appearing weak, a man who stokes conflict among underlings to keep any from threatening his status as alpha among alphas.

Cultural and political dominance has been a birthright for White people in this country since its founding. And they mean to keep it by any means necessary. That impulse is more than skin deep. It is This is lizard-brain stuff.

Authorities fear violence against immigrants will see an uptick:

At this time, Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, is not seeing any observed credible threats, or mobilization of online extremist activity, but is concerned that the current online rhetoric highlights ideological concerns and possible threats to public safety, said Joanna Mendelson, associate director of the center.

Extremists often take current events and weave them into their own narrative and worldview, said Mendelson, which is what is taking place in the aftermath of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and amid the humanitarian and military crisis.”

They’re taking the same kind of core tropes and themes, and kind of bigoted views of the world, and injecting them into this current event,” Mendelson told CNN.

There has been a lot of Islamophobia and xenophobia echoed by White supremacists and anti-Muslim activists, claiming that public safety and national security is threatened because they see refugees through a stereotypical lens as being dangerous criminals or terrorists, according to Mendelson.

A core conspiracy guiding White supremacist ideology is the “the great replacement,” the belief that ultimately, the White race is facing its ultimate extinction, she said.

Extinction is pretty primal.

* The Associated Press on July 20, 2020 explained its use of capitalization surrounding Black and white:

After changing its usage rules last month to capitalize the word “Black” when used in the context of race and culture, The Associated Press on Monday said it would not do the same for “white.”

The AP said white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.

From organization to organization, the rules vary. I try to be consistent with whatever source I’m citing, but it requires some keyboard gymnastics.

Summer fun:

Uma the hippo just turned 47 at the San Antonio Zoo, so zookeepers gave her and her 6-year-old grandson Timothy watermelons, cantaloupes, and other treats to crush with their giant jaws 🦛🍉 pic.twitter.com/Zu8Fsmc3c3

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) August 29, 2021

https://twitter.com/semibogan/status/1433399378253811723?s=20

I needed that … 🙂

This Thomas Ricks review of the new book “Alpha” about Trump’s good buddy Eddie Gallagher should scare the hell out of anyone who might be thinking that Trump wasn’t quite as bad as we remember him. And it shows that it’s long past time to take a look at what is wrong with the military that they enabled this:

In recent years we’ve had a raft load of fanboy books by and about Navy SEALs and other special operators at war. But in Alpha, David Philipps, a reporter for The New York Times, has produced a serious study of a SEAL unit in crisis as it fought ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, in 2017. By Philipps’s credible account, the unit’s leader, Eddie Gallagher, was a one-man wrecking crew for ethical behavior. He murdered a teenage captive by plunging a knife into the helpless prisoner’s neck. He entertained himself by repeatedly firing his sniper rifle at people who clearly were civilians, such as old men, schoolgirls, and people doing their laundry in the Tigris River. He frequently disobeyed orders from his superiors and hid information about his unit’s whereabouts on the battlefield. He had a drug abuse problem.

The story gets worse. Gallagher’s immediate superior, a Navy SEAL lieutenant, was intimidated by him and went along with his misdeeds. The chain of command above that officer was aware of Gallagher’s behavior but did nothing to constrain him. Indeed, when the commander of SEAL Team 7, Robert Breisch, was told of possible war crimes violations by members of Gallagher’s team, instead of pursuing their allegations, as was his clear and legally required duty, he told them to report the violations themselves. But Gallagher’s immediate subordinate worried that if he vocally asked for an inquiry into the murder of the prisoner, Gallagher would find a way to kill him—which would be easy enough in a combat zone.

But Philipps’s book isn’t just about Gallagher. It’s about a system that enables evil because it doesn’t want to look bad. After the Mosul deployment, Gallagher was assigned to teach special operations urban warfare in the United States, and the compliant lieutenant was promoted to teach the art of command in such fights. Despite his justified fears of death, Gallagher’s concerned deputy went on to report the murder three times—only to have the Navy fail to act on each occasion. The institutional Navy’s response was to figure out a way to handle the situation quietly. When that failed and Gallagher’s story became major news, the Navy was still unable to discipline him, and the SEAL was embraced by high-level political figures, including then President Donald Trump.

Gallagher’s military and political trajectory is shocking, but it isn’t necessarily surprising. American leaders have a two-decade history of mishandling our wars in the Middle East, and officials have authorized needless violence against our enemies, real and perceived. Gallagher may or may not have been inspired by the dishonesty and brutality that underscored our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But his story is certainly a parable for what we did wrong.

In the spring of 2018, several members of Gallagher’s platoon lost patience with their leader’s misdeeds and essentially demanded an investigation. Gallagher responded by seeking to intimidate witnesses. Among other things, he gave the names of his accusers to an old SEAL buddy, who responded in a text message, “some day we will just kill them.” This book brims with such striking quotations, mainly because Philipps was able to read a trove of some 6,000 texts written by Gallagher and 2,300 others sent by members of his platoon.

The investigation proceeded. It turned out that Gallagher had a past: He had never trained as a sniper and indeed wasn’t a very good shot. On an earlier deployment to Afghanistan, he had dropped in on an Army Special Forces unit and began firing at Afghans. When he shot an unarmed man walking in a field, Army soldiers who witnessed the incident reported him to their commander. But the Navy decided not to delve further into this particular crime.

When they finally decided to prosecute him for his other crimes, including killing the teenage prisoner, Gallagher found fast outside backing. The Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth conducted a campaign on the soldier’s behalf. He featured Andrea Gallagher, Eddie’s wife, in television interviews. She alleged that her husband was an innocent and noble victim of an ungrateful government. “These are atrocities being committed against our military service members, my family, my husband,” she claimed. She asserted that people who had never been in the fight were judging her husband, when in fact his accusers were members of her husband’s own team, who believed he had recklessly endangered them while undercutting the war effort by alienating Iraqis. Benefiting from Fox’s backing, Andrea Gallagher was able to raise roughly $500,000 for her husband’s legal defense fund.

More importantly, Hegseth’s efforts attracted the attention of Donald Trump and his sons. The president called Richard Spencer, the Navy secretary, to chew him out over the service’s handling of Gallagher—and then told Spencer to call Hegseth, the Fox News contributor.

Even as it acted, the Navy continued to stumble. Irked by leaks, it sought to find out who was releasing information by having the lead prosecutor send an email with a tracking device to defense attorneys. That ill-advised stunt got the lawyer kicked off the case by the judge. He was then replaced by a junior Navy officer who had never tried a murder before. The Navy’s lawyers also gave blanket immunity to a member of the SEAL team who then proceeded to testify, under that de facto pardon, that he had killed Gallagher’s prisoner himself.

The SEAL culture of placing loyalty before integrity even seeped into the jury room. Philipps reports that one of the jurors previously had visited Gallagher’s house five times for Bible study, and had told comrades that he had donated $1,000 to Gallagher’s defense fund. But when asked in the courtroom about his connections to Gallagher, the juror responded that they barely knew one another.

Gallagher’s lead lawyer in the trial was Timothy Parlatore, who had represented New York mafiosi and later represented Fox’s Hegseth, whose second wife divorced him after he impregnated a Fox News producer. Parlatore chewed up the prosecution’s witnesses. The case fell apart, and Gallagher was found guilty on only one minor count. He went free. Trump congratulated Gallagher and his wife, tweeting, “Glad I could help!” When the remorseful Navy chain of command sought to strip Gallagher of his SEAL emblem, Trump fired Spencer, the Navy secretary.

Unfortunately, Eddie Gallagher’s story may be emblematic of the post-9/11 era. Our leaders panicked after the attacks of that day, and the American people followed them. We invaded Afghanistan—I think correctly—but then mishandled the war. Then we invaded Iraq on false premises. We made torture of prisoners American policy. And we let sadists like Gallagher loose on the world.

But much of the American public doesn’t want to know or understand that we inflicted such harm. How many Americans can tell you the number of foreigners we have killed in our response to September 11? Very few know or seem to care. Those hijackings were a remarkable moment in American history, spurring widespread unity and an outpouring of patriotic support. But in the following two decades, we devolved into harsh divisions and fierce political infighting, thanks in part to the escalating lies that began in the wake of the attacks. It makes me think of something a Middle Easterner said after the 2001 hijackings: “You Americans think you are going to change my region, but I think we will wind up changing you.”

With both of those wars now almost behind us, it’s time for the military to take stock of everything that went wrong. That should include making Alpha—one of the most important books to come out of the Iraq War
(as I wrote in a blurb for it)—required reading in every service academy.

This is a terrible story for the Navy. What cowardice. What weakness they showed. But they also had an ignoramus Commander in Chief who learned everything he knew about the military from watching “Patton” and Fox and Friends. It is truly a miracle that we didn’t have a bigger catastrophe than we did.

The Trumps and the Gallaghers celebrating at Mar-a-lago:

Sickening.

Lauren Windsor, doing her great undercover work, caught Jim Jordan saying that Trump is definitely running again:

https://twitter.com/lawindsor/status/1433800993603530755

I have never doubted he would run again unless he was physically unable to do it. Vengeance defines him and he is desperate to wreak it on the people who humiliated him — the Democratic leaders and those who voted for them must be punished.

I suspect he’s getting anxious with all the vultures buzzing around waiting to nibble on his carcass. (He put Nikki Haley down hard the other day.) And you can bet that DeSantis and Pompeo are getting under his skin. He doesn’t want to wait. He wants to clear that field and start campaigning. The question is when, not if.

There is no avoiding the culture war fight the Republicans are going to wage in 2022. So the Democrats might as well bring the fight to their own turf. That means run against the putative 2024 front-runner Donald Trump and his minions, pushing hard on January 6th and — fighting for abortion rights.

So I’m glad to see this:

President Biden is eager for a fight over abortion — an issue he sees as politically advantageous after the conservative Supreme Court left in place the near-ban in Texas, senior officials tell Axios.

Why it matters: The Supreme Court appears to be barreling toward giving red states significantly more power to restrict women’s access to abortions.

State of play: The White House sees abortion as a potent issue ahead of next year’s midterms, with Biden under huge pressure on Afghanistan, inflation, crime and the border, Axios’ Sam Baker, Jonathan Swan and Alayna Treene report.

The Texas law, SB8, allows strangers to sue doctors, nurses, or even Uber drivers — anyone who performs or facilitates an abortion.

“I want to see the GOP defend the idea that your nosy neighbor can sue your aunt for driving you to the hospital,” a senior White House aide told Axios.

Biden announced “a whole-of-government effort to respond to this decision,” including his new Gender Policy Council, the White House counsel’s office, HHS and the Justice Department.

Part 2: All three branches of government engage on abortion

The White House wants to elevate the Texas abortion case even though aides know a high-profile fight over abortion rights will also energize Republicans.

That’s because Democrats say the sheer sweep of Texas’ law, and the highly unusual way it’s written, make it a juicy political target.

Democrats think the issue will especially help them with suburban voters, who hold the key to the House majority.

“This is a massive political gift to Democrats,” a senior House Democratic aide said.

Reality check: On the actual issue of abortion, Dems are losing.

They’re unlikely to stop this trajectory, no matter how well they do in midterms.

What’s next: A more straightforward abortion case — a Mississippi case that’s a likely vehicle for the conservative court to chip away at Roe — is teed up for the term that begins next month.

The other side: “I would be careful if I were them,” said an influential conservative legal figure, referring to Democrats.“The Texas law makes the Mississippi law look very reasonable,” the conservative said. “The more play the Texas law gets, the easier it is to uphold Mississippi. Because the Mississippi law is no longer the end of the world.”

🚨 Breaking: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he might support a law that bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, much like the Texas law. The details.

I very much doubt that the Texas law will make overturning Roe look good by comparison, which is what will happen with the Mississippi law would do. But who knows? A lot of people in this country are willing to believe anything. And if I had to guess, other states that are in the grip of this wild radical Trump base will follow the Texas law. How can they help themselves?

Here’s right winger Matthew Continetti on the issue, which I think is the more honest assessment of Republican concerns (as reflected in the fact that they have been noticeably silent about the Texas gambit.)

This first-term (one-term?) president hasn’t exactly inspired confidence with his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, inflation, illegal immigration, crime, and withdrawal from Afghanistan. To the contrary: President Biden is remote, inept, out-of-touch, and out-of-step. He’s on a downward political trajectory. His best chance of recovery is a break from the onslaught of bad news. He needs the media to shift topics.

And the state of Texas is ready to assist him.

Late in the evening of September 1, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 not to enjoin a Texas law that bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected at about six weeks of pregnancy. The Court found that the law, Senate Bill 8, “presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they [the abortion providers appealing to the Court] have not carried their burden.” The most basic “complex and novel antecedent procedural” question is this: When the Court issues an injunction, it doesn’t unilaterally put a law on pause. It tells officials not to enforce a law.

But Texas officials don’t enforce the abortion restrictions in Senate Bill 8. Private citizens do. The law authorizes them to sue abortion providers or individuals promoting abortions in Texas after the six-week limit. How, then, can the Court enjoin a law that no one has enforced? And how can the Court judge the constitutionality of a statute that hasn’t been challenged correctly? Until that happens, the Court wrote, the Texas law remains in place.

Which might help Biden. The president, the vice president, Democrats in Congress, progressive activists, and their allies in the media denounced the Texas law with incredible speed. Why? Not just because they are passionate defenders of abortion. Because they sense a political opportunity. Biden said that he would “launch a whole-of-government effort to respond to this [i.e., the Court’s] decision.” Nancy Pelosi said that she would bring to the floor the “Women’s Health Protection Act,” which would eliminate practically all restrictions on abortion nationwide. Former acting solicitor general and al Qaeda lawyer Neal Katyal tweeted that Senate Democrats should break the filibuster to codify abortion rights. The disaster in Afghanistan vanished from the front pages. Stories on the Texas bill appeared instead.

These are stories that Democrats want to see. For the fact of the matter is that the Texas heartbeat law cuts against public opinion on abortion. “Most Americans do not want to overturn Roe v. Wade, but they have long supported restrictions on its use, including solid opposition to second and third trimester abortions,” wrote my American Enterprise Institute colleague Karlyn Bowman in 2020. The restrictions in the Texas law are imposed during the first trimester. They don’t include exemptions in cases of rape or incest. Abortion clinics say they are turning away women for fear of litigation.

What better material for a Democratic president and progressive movement eager to change the subject from their own incompetence to the fanaticism of their opponents? The subtleties of Senate Bill 8—the fact that its text says Roe may be a valid defense against it so long as Roe is controlling precedent—won’t be mentioned in the media firestorm. The media doesn’t do subtlety. It’s not their bag.

The politics of abortion are crosscutting and complex. I make no claim that the 2022 midterm or 2024 presidential elections will turn on the Texas heartbeat law or on the Court’s forthcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Health—in which the Court could overrule Roe or weaken it beyond recognition. But I do not doubt that Republican candidates will have to take on this difficult and uncomfortable subject. Every Republican running for office will be asked whether he or she supports the Texas law and others like it. They better have an answer ready. And that answer better not sound like it came from Todd “legitimate rape” Akin, whose abortion-related gaffe in 2012 cost the GOP a Senate seat.

That was another election Republicans thought they had in the bag. They were disappointed. Will history repeat? Few people in 1973 understood the ways in which Roe would warp our constitutional system. Few people today can predict the fallout from either the Texas law or a potential reversal of Roe next summer—much less all of the events, scandals, and crises that will unfold in the coming year.

Let’s hope the Democrats handle this right. Lives depend upon it.

Ezra Klein makes the case for Newsom, not just against the GOP. I hadn’t known some of this and I live here (a sad comment on California’s political press and culture, I’m afraid.)

The prospect of Gov. Larry Elder has jolted California’s Democrats out of their apathy. Polling on the recall has swung from a dead heat in early August to an 8.4 margin for Gavin Newsom in FiveThirtyEight’s tracker. But I want to make an affirmative argument for continuing the Newsom experiment: Something exciting is taking shape in California. The torrent of policy that Newsom and the Democratic Legislature are passing amounts to nothing less than a Green New Deal for the Golden State.

To understand Newsom, both his successes and his failures, you need to see the paradox that defines his career. The knock on him is that he’s all style, no substance — a guy who got where he is by looking like a politician rather than acting like a leader. The truth is just the opposite. Newsom’s style is his problem; his substance is his redemption.

When Newsom was the mayor of San Francisco, his nickname was “Mayor McHottie,” and he came complete with a tabloid-ready personal life and funding from the unimaginably wealthy Getty family. His worst mistakes as governor — like attending a birthday dinner for a lobbyist friend at the luxe French Laundry, unmasked, during the depths of the pandemic — deepen those suspicions. The “Beauty,” one of his recall opponents, who fancies himself “the Beast,” called him in a $5 million ad blitz.

The attacks wound Newsom because what appear to be his strengths are actually his weaknesses. Newsom is handsome in a way that comes off as just a little too coifed, like the actor you’d cast to play a politician in a movie. His personal life and social misjudgments have dogged him for decades. He doesn’t have a knack for memorable sound bites or quick connection. (A sample line from our interview: “It was not without consideration that last year we passed a number of bills to site homeless shelters and supportive housing and Homekey and Roomkey projects with CEQA waivers and as-of-right zoning.”) He’s an eager nerd who presents as a slick jock, and he’s never found a way out of that dissonance.

He’s also been governing amid the worst pandemic in modern history. California has outperformed most states in health outcomes and, particularly, in economic outcomes. “We dominate all Western democracies in the last five years in G.D.P.,” Newsom said. “The G.O.P. loves G.D.P.! Twenty-one percent G.D.P. growth in the last five years. Texas was 12 percent. And our taxes are lower for the middle class in California than they are in Texas.” Basically every economic indicator you can look at in California is booming, from household income growth to the $80 billion-plus budget surplus. But it’s still been a grueling 18 months of masks, lockdowns, deaths and discord. There’s been little attention to policymaking in Sacramento.

As a result, people don’t realize how much Newsom and the Democratic State Legislature have done. But in the two and a half years since Newsom became governor, they’ve more than doubled the size of California’s earned-income tax credit and Young Child Tax Credit, and added a stimulus just for Californians (though some of the neediest were left out). They expanded paid family leave from six to eight weeks and unpaid leave to 12 weeks. They added 200,000 child care slots and $250 million to retrofit child care centers. They passed legislation giving all public school students two free meals each day, funding summer school and after-school programs for two million children and creating a full year of transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds by 2025.

Newsom is “three years ahead of Joe Biden in terms of pro-family policy,” Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, told me. “Any parents or grandparents who back the recall are voting against their own financial interest, I’d say.”

Housing has been harder, in part because you need to do more than just spend money. Ben Metcalf, who led California’s Department of Housing and Community Development for three years under Gov. Jerry Brown and one year under Newsom, recalls that “when Newsom first arrived, I was excited by his vision, but then dismayed by his inability to effectively deliver and get the Legislature to do what he wanted. Brown knew how to wield power. He knew the points of inflection. He had a team of people he could rely on.”

You hear unflattering comparisons with Brown often when you ask around about Newsom. Brown was a more disciplined and experienced leader. He chose his priorities carefully, and he did what he promised. The surplus Newsom is spending is a gift bequeathed by Brown, who persuaded California’s voters to sharply raise taxes on the wealthiest residents. But Brown did little to address the state’s housing affordability crisis and neither did the Legislature.

Nancy Skinner, a state senator who’s been a leader on housing, told me that “our shortage has been decades in the making.” The mantra, she said, was to just leave it to the cities. “For years, the Legislature just urged city governments to be more responsive. We tried to create some incentives. And only in the last five years did we realize this is a statewide crisis and we can’t just leave it to local governments to get it fixed. It took the Legislature a long time to get to the place of realizing the urging and carrots didn’t do it. We have to do the mandates.”

Newsom, to his credit, prioritized housing from the beginning. Early in his term, in 2019, he sued the city of Huntington Beach for allegedly falling short on its housing commitments and threatened to sue dozens more. He made housing the primary focus of his 2020 State of the State speech. But the initial consensus was that he overpromised and underdelivered. There were widespread frustrations that he wasn’t tough enough with the Legislature and his interventions were often ineffective. He remains far behind his goal of building 3.5 million new housing units by 2025.

“I said the 3.5 million houses was a stretch goal,” he protested to me. “I said in trying to achieve it, we’d find what we were capable of!”

To be fair, Newsom couldn’t have predicted that the pandemic, which descended on California just weeks after his big housing speech, was coming. Still, in February, I was furious watching California’s political class, including Newsom, fail and fail again to pass major housing legislation. But when the facts change, so must your mind. The Legislature just passed, and Newsom will sign, a series of housing bills that achieve something I never expected to see in California: the end of single-family zoning. S.B.9 allows homeowners to divide their properties into two lots and to build two homes on each of those lots. It won’t solve the housing crisis, but it’s a start.

Newsom and other Democrats are also finally appreciating the depth of the anger even liberals feel about homelessness. “People can’t take the tents and open-air drug use,” Newsom said to me. “They can’t. Nor can I. They want the streets cleaned up. They want more housing. They don’t care about task forces or bills. I think that sense of urgency coming out of Covid sharpens our edges. The five- to 10-year plans, no one is interested in that anymore. What’s the five- to 10-month plan?”

In Newsom’s case, it’s using the state’s budget surpluses to drive a $12 billion investment over two years in permanent residences and mental health care for the homeless. How well it works remains to be seen, but no other state is investing in housing at anything like this scale or speed.

After COVID, homelessness is the biggest issue in Los Angeles for sure. It is a serious crisis. Let’s hope Newsom survives and is able to get something real passed and implemented before the election next year. You don’t want to think about what Republican ideas are to “solve” the homeless problem. Let’s just say it involves camps in the desert.

In the wee hours of November 9th, 2016, I sat slumped in front of my computer trying to gather my thoughts to write my piece for Salon that was scheduled for later in the morning. The feeling I had, as did millions of others, was one of utter shock and despair that my country had somehow elected an ignorant brand name in a suit named Donald Trump to lead it. Having observed him closely during the campaign, writing about him nearly every day, I knew his presidency was going to be a trainwreck of epic proportions. This was depressing on every level but the prospect of a GOP-led Supreme Court majority, with special thanks to the Machiavellian machinations of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was downright terrifying.

Within just a few weeks that terror was made manifest as millions of women and their allies took to the streets for the first Women’s March on January 21, 2017. The massive gatherings were a protest against everything Donald Trump and the Republicans stood for but the main issue that brought all those people together was the knowledge that the Supreme Court was now very likely going to end abortion rights in America. Donald Trump had made an explicit promise to appoint only anti-abortion judges who were committed to overturning Roe vs. Wade and there was little doubt the GOP base would hold him to it.

When Justice Anthony Kennedy cynically retired the next year so that the Republicans could solidify their hard core majority by installing a political hack by the name of Brett Kavanaugh, it was all over but the shouting. The 5-4 majority to overturn Roe vs Wade was on the court.

This week we saw the beginning of the end. Texas passed a draconian anti-abortion law that banned the procedure after 6 weeks. Since most people don’t know they are pregnant that early in pregnancy, it effectively bans the procedure for all but a very few. This wasn’t the first of what they call “fetal heartbeat” laws that states have tried to pass, but it is the first to go into effect despite Roe v. Wade still standing. This is because the Texas legislature came up with a devious way to circumvent federal jurisdiction, by taking enforcement out of the hands of the state altogether and putting it into the hands of private citizens, also known as vigilantes.

Abortion rights advocates had petitioned the Supreme Court to block the implementation of the law but they allowed it to go forward, the Trump majority writing that the laws novel scheme was just too complicated for them to contemplate so they just had to let it stand. It’s absurd, of course. The court exists to untangle complicated legal questions.

But everyone knows that this was not the real reason the five ultra-conservatives let this law stand. The justices are fully aware that the scheme was devised to circumvent their authority and they are happy to let it. This gives them a chance to let the air out of the balloon a little bit in anticipation of the full overturn of Roe vs Wade in the next session when they hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi case that has been chosen as the vehicle to deliver the coup de grâce. As my Salon colleague Amanda Marcotte expressed with visceral emotion, no matter that we knew it was coming, it’s still devastating to finally see it happening.

It’s worth taking a closer look at the law Texas passed and how it came about just to see where else we may be headed in the era of the Trump Court.

This law’s novel approach to enforcement, essentially removing the state and using what amounts to vigilantes and bounty hunters (under the promise of $10,000 for every abortion aider and abettor they bag) is essentially a form of legal secession from the U.S. Constitution. By removing the state and putting this into the realm of civil law, they can circumvent Americans’ constitutional rights by making them impossible to exercise. Chief Justice John Roberts, who dissented from the majority opinion, concedes that the vigilante scheme is a problem writing:

“I would grant preliminary relief to preserve the status quo ante — before the law went into effect — so that the courts may consider whether a state can avoid responsibility for its laws in such a manner.”

The mind boggles at the possibilities for this idea to be used in other realms. Imagine if California were to ban guns but only allow private citizens to sue people who knowingly or unknowingly helped them obtain them? Or how about outlawing MAGA hats with the same scheme? But let’s be serious. The Trump Court will only allow these means to be used for ends with which they agree. And they can do that. There is no appeal after all.

This court majority is signaling loud and clear that they have abandoned all pretense of impartial justice. They have joined the rest of the far-right in their quest to retain power and achieve their ends by any means necessary. All they need for “legitimacy” is the power they have — and it is immense.

The fact that hardcore, anti-democratic, right-wingers like the Trump Court have apparently decided that state-sanctioned vigilantism is a valid law enforcement mechanism should not surprise us. As the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg pointed out, this is now mainstream thinking on the right:

Today’s G.O.P. made a hero out of Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man charged with killing two people during protests against police violence in Kenosha, Wis. Leading Republicans speak of the Jan. 6 insurgents, who tried to stop the certification of an election, as martyrs and political prisoners.

Last year, Senator Marco Rubio praised Texas Trump supporters who swarmed a Biden campaign bus, allegedly trying to run it off the road: “We love what they did,” he said. This weekend in Pennsylvania, Steve Lynch, the Republican nominee in a county executive race, said of school boards that impose mask mandates, “I’m going in with 20 strong men” to tell them “they can leave or they can be removed.”

Their leader Donald Trump himself has encouraged vigilante violence, praising insurrectionist Ashli Babbit as a martyr, issuing statements like “when the looting starts the shooting starts”, “Liberate Michigan” and famously telling his ecstatic fans that he will pay their legal fees if they beat up protesters, among a hundred other provocative comments.

Goldberg points out that in Texas, the “pro-life” crowd is ready to start hunting down their enemies quoting one of their leaders, John Seago, saying “One of the great benefits, and one of the things that’s most exciting for the pro-life movement, is that they have a role in enforcing this law.” That’s certainly very exciting for all of the MAGA fans out there. 12 other states have passed laws similar to Texas’. A little tweaking to take state enforcement out of it and put anti-abortion bounty hunters in and they’re good to go. No doubt there will be a lot of pain and suffering but that’s pretty much all there is to the GOP agenda these days. 

Salon

The U.S. survived the Civil War, the Nazis, the Cold War, and the Trump Insurrection. But it might not survive White backlash to becoming a demographic minority.

Earlier this week a local CBS news crew visited a North Georgia hospital’s Covid unit for the first time in 2021:

The Northeast Georgia Medical Center is at capacity, the staff is tired, and people are dying.

CBS46 was in the ICU while two COVID-19 patients died within the first 15 minutes of our crews being there.

CBS46 interviewed nurse Amber Rampy who after 20 months has had all she can take.

“I just left on Friday because I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t,” Rampy said.

Like many medical professionals, she thought the worst of the pandemic was behind her.

“Although I’m used to people dying, I’m just not used to this many,” Rampy said.

73 have died at the hospital where she works just this month. That doesn’t include the two who died while CBS46 was there Monday.

248 patients were battling for their lives Monday night in the the ICU we visited and more than 6,000 people were facing the same uphill battle across the state.

“Individuals make poor decisions, you have to take care of them, but it’s overwhelming,” Rampy said.

The Hill has more:

Vice President for Northeast Georgia Health System and incident commander John Delzell told The Hill that the recent spike in Georgia has mostly been among those who are unvaccinated. Delzell also mentioned that they’re seeing a lot more younger patients with COVID-19 this time around.

Delzell believes that this current wave will peak in the next few weeks.

That’s nice.

A week from today just south of here, the Mountain State Fair will open and run for 10 days. There is nothing on its website to indicate any requirement for vaccinations, social distancing or masks. Granted, fair organizers probably assumed in their planning months ago that the pandemic would be long over by now.

But some of the fair exhibits are indoors or inside large tents. In 2019, close to 150 people contracted Legionnaires’ disease (136 confirmed) traced to a hot tub display in one exhibition building. Four people died.

I was one of the unconfirmed cases. Days after shooting the picture below, I was sick for a week with a “fever of unknown origin.” I was on antibiotics for four days before the Legionnaires’ story broke. The hot tub booth was about 20 feet to the left across the aisle from the Democratic Party booth from where I shot the picture.

That was just Legionnella. COVID-19 is not finished with us yet. But it will finish many more people before it’s done.

Guess who won’t be staffing a fair booth this year.

"You've had plenty of time today." https://t.co/JTJ5OBxEsB

— Connie Schultz (@ConnieSchultz) September 2, 2021

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki shut down a reporter who pressed her on President Biden’s support for abortion rights at the Thursday briefing, telling him, “I know you’ve never faced those choices.” The male reporter had asked Psaki how Biden could be pro-choice when it contradicts his Catholic beliefs. “He believes that it’s a woman’s right, it’s a woman’s body, and it’s her choice,” the press secretary replied.

The reporter then followed up by questioning who will “look out for the unborn child?” Psaki reiterated that the president believes it’s up to women, with their doctors, to make their own decisions. “I know you’ve never faced those choices, nor have you ever been pregnant,” Psaki asserted. “For women out there who have faced those choices, this is an incredibly difficult thing. The president believes that right should be respected.”

I don’t know who the guy asking who will speak for the unborn child but he needs to STFU. The person who speaks for the unborn child is the person in whose body the fetus is attached and unable to live without, you cretin.