Month: November 2021

It’s important for people to understand how this works. This is not spontaneous. It’s a strategy. Judd Legum’s newsletter is essential for understanding that and I highly recommend that you subscribe:

The nation’s school boards are under attack. Frequently things are getting out of hand:

In Illinois, a “man was arrested…for aggravated battery and disorderly conduct following a disruption at a Mendon Board of Education.”

In Virginia, “[o]ne man was arrested, another man was ticketed for trespassing and a third person was hurt at a chaotic” Loudoun County School Board meeting. Prior to the meeting, several “board members received death threats.” When the public comments portion of the meeting ended early to ensure the safety of the attendees, protesters “chanted ‘[s]hame on you’ and raised their middle fingers.”

In Washington State, a meeting of the Marysville School Board was forced to recess after protesters wouldn’t stop banging on the windows. Following the cancelation of the meeting, the protesters began yelling obscenities. One man grabbed a flag pole and confronted two of the board members. An object was thrown at them as they fled the scene. One school district official was blocked from leaving the parking lot when protesters surrounded his car.

In California, unmasked protesters forced their way into the school board meeting room in violation of COVID protocols. The meeting was canceled after the protesters “refused to leave the meeting room and verbally abused the staff.” 

In Tennessee, a doctor who testified in favor of students wearing masks at a school board meeting was threatened as he left the premises: “[W]e will find you and we know who you are.”

The people showing up at these meetings are enraged about COVID policies and Critical Race Theory. There were other incidents at school board meetings in Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Delaware, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and other states.

The National School Board Association (NSBA) is sounding the alarm. In a letter to President Biden on September 29, the NSBA said that “malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased” and “these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” The organization requested federal assistance to ensure the safety of its members and larger public school community. 

Alongside the chaos and violence, there is a parallel effort to replace incumbent school board members with right-wing ideologues who oppose public safety measures and teaching students about racism. In 2021, there were at least 80 efforts to recall 207 school board members, more than double the previous record.

The sudden interest in school boards is not an organic grassroots movement of angry parents. Rather, it is an effort orchestrated by seasoned right-wing political operatives who have formed a constellation of well-funded groups dedicated to disrupting school boards. With the help of conservative media, they’ve already succeeded in pushing school boards into the center of political debates.

Their interest is less about changing public schools than in creating a potent cultural issue that can be exploited by Republican political candidates. 

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“Grassroots” group targeting school boards run by Koch-linked operative

Since its formation earlier this year, the Virginia-based Parents Defending Education (PDE) has emerged as a leading group targeting school boards. Following the NSBA’s September 29 letter, PDE criticized the group for seeking the assistance of the Department of Justice.

“It is shameful that activists are weaponizing the U.S. Department of Justice against parents,”  PDE President Nicole Neily said. “This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America’s underperforming K-12 education – and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced.” 

PDE’s activities include encouraging parents to create social media pages to “document examples of woke indoctrination” and waging lawsuits against “woke” curricula. 

PDE also maintains an “IndoctriNation Map” where it targets schools for reasons including committing to anti-racism, offering teachers support through affinity groups, and acknowledging inequity. 

“Through network and coalition building, investigative reporting, litigation, and engagement on local, state, and national policies, we are fighting indoctrination in the classroom — and promoting the restoration of a healthy, non-political education for our kids,” reads the organization’s website. 

PDE purports to be a “national grassroots organization working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas.” 

But Neily, the group’s president, has a long history in right-wing political organizations. Neily is also the founder of Speech First, a right-wing nonprofit group that advocates for “free speech” on campuses. In 2018, the Nation reported that Speech First’s board of directors included “a former head of a Koch-backed trust and two conservative attorneys from Koch-funded programs.” 

Parents Defending Education’s sophisticated operations have raised eyebrows. In June, Maurice Cunningham, a recently retired professor who has been monitoring PDE, pointed out to the Daily Beast that for a group that was only incorporated in January 2021, PDE was suspiciously well-organized:

The next thing you know, this group of moms is hiring a law firm that has represented Donald Trump, has a sophisticated PR approach, has extensive…instructions on how to go about the things they’re encouraging people to do. And you have to say to yourself, okay, that takes a lot of money.”

Prior to her work with Speech First, Neily worked for other Koch-funded organizations including Franklin News Foundation and the conservative nonprofit, Independent Women’s Forum. Neily was also “a “Koch summer fellow for both the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights and the Competitive Enterprise Institute,” according to the watchdog group SourceWatch.

PDE senior fellow Elizabeth Schultz is a former Trump official. She appeared on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom morning show last week criticizing the Fairfax County School Board. “They feel like they are in charge of us, and I think it is responsible for citizens to stand up and speak up about how their taxpayer dollars are spent,” Schultz said.

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How Tucker Carlson turned No Left Turn into a national force

No Left Turn in Education is a prominent conservative group that, according to its website, seeks to “mobilize community participation in school board meetings.” The group, which was founded in 2020, says it is combating “radical teachings” in schools “motivated by a political agenda.” 

No Left Turn was founded by Elana Yaron Fishbein, who rose to prominence after appearing on prime-time Fox News shows. The group was relatively small until Fishbein appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight, after which the group’s Facebook page “shot up from fewer than 200 followers to over 30,000” overnight. 

No Left Turn aims to “combat racial indoctrination in our K thru 12 education system,” despite the fact that Critical Race Theory is not taught in K-12 schools in the United States. Her group says the 1619 Project, a project developed by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones examining the consequences of slavery, aims to “overturn our society by sowing divisiveness and hate.”

Fishbein and her organization, however, frequently engage in divisive rhetoric. In a social media post, Fishbein wrote, “White students who attend predominantly black inner-city high schools fear for their lives daily, but no one marches in the streets declaring ‘White Lives Matter.’” 

No Left Turn, according to Media Matters, has “compared the efforts of public school educators to that of Pol Pot, Vladimir Lenin, and Adolf Hitler.” The group has also posted anti-LBGTQ rhetoric, including “telling activists to go ‘back to Trans-sylvania’” and stating that accepting LGBTQ children “represents the ‘dismantling of the family unit!’”

The group has held rallies to “[s]top Critical Race Theory and Social Justice Indoctrination” in both Georgia and Virginia.

Political consultant targets school boards

The 1776 Project was created earlier this year in an effort to “raise funds to support school board candidates who oppose public schools teaching critical race theory and the 1619 Project.” 

The group’s website states that Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project tell “explicit falsehoods about history to push their political agenda” and that these programs are being “taught in classrooms in nearly every state across the country.” (It is not.)

The group was founded by Ryan Girdusky, a “political consultant and conservative writer” who supported Trump. In June, Girdusky wrote that Critical Race Theory “is an ideology that seeks to socially engineer our society based on race.” Girdusky told Axios his goal “is to help raise awareness and campaign on behalf of school board candidates nationwide who reject the divise philosophy of critical race theory and want to push it out of our public schools.” 

According to the PAC’s FEC filings, the group has already raised $437,881 in donations since April 2021.

CORRECTION: This article incorrectly reported that the 1776 Project PAC hosted a rally in Loudon County, Virginia with former Trump administration cabinet member Ben Carson. That event was hosted by 1776 Action, a separate organization with a similar mission.

These people have been operating ike this for decades. They know what’ they’re doing. Democrats need to take this seriously — and the mainstream media should be reporting it.

TPM’s Josh Kovensky analyses the case the Supremes are going to hear today determining whether presidents can claim executive privilege to cover up coup planning:

Former President Trump’s lawsuit to block the Jan. 6 Committee’s probe gets a hearing Thursday, and the stakes are high.

The case could close off one of the last avenues of accountability for the former president and his actions in subverting the 2020 election.

But the lawsuit could go further than shielding Trump. It could further neuter Congress in its oversight role, while potentially strengthening the ability of former presidents to declare that swaths of records generated during their time in office remain off-limits from investigators.

“The overriding interest is that the public has a need to know certain information, particularly in cases like criminal matters and information surrounding the January 6 Congressional investigations,” UCLA Law professor Jon Michaels told TPM.

Trump wants to bring that to an end.

In the suit, Trump has raised broad claims of executive privilege, the doctrine which protects presidential records in order to protect executive decision-making, the thinking being that the president and his advisers can be more candid knowing that the subject of their discussions will largely be shielded from public view.

Trump broke with precedent by asserting executive privilege as a former holder of the office in an effort to the National Archives from responding to a document request from Congress. It’s a claim that makes constitutional law professors laugh, but also one that, if upheld to any extent, would shut off a big avenues of accountability for former presidents.

Trump’s Case

In his lawsuit, Trump is asked a D.C. federal judge to take a few actions that would block the probe: declare the subpoena invalid, stop the National Archives from responding to the subpoena, and then, finally, to force the National Archives to obey Trump when he says that certain documents are covered by executive privilege.

“Executive privilege must be defended!” Trump said in an August statement.

Trump argued that as a former president who generated the records while in office, he could assert that the subpoenaed documents were subject to his privilege. Courts have traditionally said that the privilege resides more with the office, and its current occupant – in this case, Joe Biden, who has been declining to say that records subject to the committee’s request are privileged.

The demand goes to the question of whether former presidents – and not sitting presidents – can assert executive privilege. There is very limited law in the area, and most of it is governed by the 1977 Nixon v. Administrator of General Services case, which held that the privilege largely belongs to the executive branch, with former presidents having limited rights to assert the privilege so long as it comes in the context of a specific demand for information, former Office of Legal Counsel Attorney-Adviser and University of Kentucky law professor Jonathan Shaub said.

“The privilege is on behalf of the country – you have to say that turning over the information would damage the public interest,” Shaub told TPM. “The president in asserting the interest is speaking on behalf of the republic. Saying a former president is speaking on behalf of the republic makes no sense.”

Trump, in the lawsuit, says that Biden made a mistake in not asserting executive privilege.

But he mixes that argument with two other claims: that Congress’ subpoena itself is too broad to pass muster under the Constitution, and that it lacks a legislative purpose – a claim he used to stonewall congressional investigations while in office.

“Because the Committee’s requests seek to expose confidential and privileged information while lacking ‘a legitimate legislative purpose,’ this Court has the power to declare the requests invalid and to enjoin their enforcement,” Trump’s lawsuit reads.

The stakes

That sets up Trump’s claim: that Congress should not be allowed to investigate him, and that anything he asserts as privileged should be off-limits.

If Trump succeeds, it could short-circuit Congress’s attempt at holding him accountable for the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, while also giving former presidents broader powers to assert that documents created during their time in office are off-limits to investigators.

Jessica Bulman-Pozen, director of the Center for Constitutional Governance at Columbia Law School, said that the two dissents in the Nixon case, which still governs the question here, presented other ways to think about the options. Under the dissent written by Justice William Rehnquist, the former president would have been fully able to assert executive privilege over documents created during his time in office. The privilege resided with the person, not the office.

“The dissent said it’s the person – so the former president can claim it,” she told TPM.

A decision along those lines could block not only the current investigation, but any other future attempt at investigating former presidents for conduct taken while in office.

Greg Lipper, a D.C. criminal and constitutional lawyer, said the Supreme Court could side with Trump on his complaints about the subpoena without ever even touching executive privilege.

“You could see five or six justices say, the Democrats are not legislating, they’re trying to conduct a quasi-criminal investigation,” Lipper said.

That would have a limited effect on the longer-term doctrine of executive privilege, but it would almost certainly short-circuit Congress’ Jan. 6 probe.

Bulman-Pozen told TPM that “even if the court were to accept a stronger version of former presidential executive privilege, I don’t imagine that it would cut out that sense of the political back and forth,” adding that she thought it unlikely that the case would make it that far.

Judges prefer to have these kinds of disputes decided outside of the courtroom – a difficulty in this case, where litigation appears to have been one of the first options.

Shaub, the former OLC official, pointed out that because there are so few court decisions in the area of executive privilege, that could both give the courts time to drag it out, but would also make anything the Supreme Court says about it have a more outsized effect.

“Because there is so little law, and its such a novel situation, you can see them dragging it out, the courts having to wrestle with it in order to resolve it,” he said, adding that “there is very little chance that this case will create a more robust precedent” for former presidents.

Michaels, the UCLA professor, argued that the tussle over executive privilege could lead to a slippery slope situation where administrations routinely release records from their predecessors as a way of humiliating them.

He added that part of the issue was the courts – it’s very difficult to predict what a stacked judiciary will do.

“That what makes this such a perilous moment – that the courts are highly politicized and highly partisan,” he said. “Are they making good decisions and prudent decisions or decisions in partisan interest?”

I will be shocked if they don’t protect Trump but I guess you never know. I’ve wondered if these conservative partisan with lifetime appointments might just think damaging Trump is in the best interest of the party. But I doubt it.

Update — Looks like there might be teeny problem:

It was a month after the 2020 presidential election, and Bernard Kerik was starting to panic. The former New York City police chief and his friend Rudolph W. Giuliani were shelling out thousands of dollars for hotel rooms and travel in their effort to find evidence of voting fraud and persuade state legislators to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.

Yet President Donald Trump’s campaign had turned down Kerik’s request for a campaign credit card. The bills were piling up. “How do I know I’m gonna get my money back?” Kerik remembers thinking to himself at the time, according to a recent interview he did with The Washington Post.

The bills went unpaid until after Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro went to bat on their behalf, according to a Republican official, who like some others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Soon after, the campaign cut Kerik a check — with Trump’s approval, according to a former senior campaign official.

That move, in mid-December, smoothed the way for what would eventually be more than $225,000 in campaign payments to firms owned by Kerik and Giuliani — including more than $50,000 for rooms and suites at the posh Willard hotel in Washington that served as a “command center” for efforts to deny Biden the presidency in the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The fact that campaign funds were used to finance efforts to subvert Biden’s victory could complicate the former president’s ongoing attempt to use claims of executive privilege to shield documents and testimony from the congressional committee investigating Jan. 6, according to some legal scholars.

Ahead of Jan. 6, Willard hotel in downtown D.C. was a Trump team ‘command center’ for effort to deny Biden the presidency

The congressional panel has made sweeping requests to the archivist of the United States for papers from the Trump White House, including for all documents stretching back to April 2020 that relate to efforts to challenge the results of the election or delay the counting of electoral college votes.

The requests specifically name dozens of people, including Kerik, Giuliani and others who were present in the Willard command center, such as former White House strategic adviser Stephen K. Bannon and legal scholar John Eastman. Eastman wrote two memos laying out legal arguments for Vice President Mike Pence to either reject Biden’s electoral votes on Jan. 6 or delay certifying the results so that states could conduct further investigations.

Trump has asked a federal court to block the release of the documents, claiming that they are protected by executive privilege. And Bannon, facing a subpoena from the committee, has cited Trump’s executive privilege claims as a reason for his refusal to comply.

The use of campaign funds “further undermines a wildly broad assertion of executive privilege” by Trump, said Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor. “Executive privilege is typically limited to the protection of communications involving a president’s official duties — not to those relating to personal or political campaign matters,” Ben-Veniste said.

Roy Edroso says he was too young to recall McCarthy’s Red Scare. (Me too.) Eventually, conservatives stopped accusing liberals of palling around with the Soviets, mostly because red-baiting stopped working for them.

But they found other ways to smack down any uppity lefties with a platform who forgot their places and stepped out of line. Ward Churchill, for those who remember the post-9/11 hysteria. Others today.

Nothing has changed, only the moral panic du jour. Republican culture warriors will continue to accuse liberals of teaching “critical race theory” as long as “they think it works,” as Bill Clinton observed of Republican tactics in 2004. Or until something that leaves a bigger bruise comes along:

“The ones with intellectual credentials they would prefer not to tarnish tend to admit the CRT charge is bullshit but feel it’s okay to use because their supporters, the salt of the earth, feel it’s true because something something elitism, e.g.:

Edroso wraps up:

In one sense this is nothing very new; as mentioned, conservatives have whipped up hysterias before, particularly when they had nothing else going for them, and as usual they’re targeting people to whom others might listen. The disturbing extra ingredient of this one is the linkage with race, and the claim that white people are getting a bum rap.

The force behind their formula has always been the accusation that the pointy-heads are aiding and abetting an external enemy who poses an existential threat to the nation — the Soviets, Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden. The enemy in this case has so far been left unnamed. In the anti-CRT laws they’re passing, conservatives are careful to stipulate that they’re trying to protect members of any race who feel bad about what their teacher taught them — even though it’s only been white people complaining. But as their movement grows in power and confidence I don’t expect that will hold. Soon enough they’re going to start saying out loud who their enemy is — and then, friends, you better hold on tight.

Edroso’s behind the news and needs to watch this. Conservatives are already saying out loud who their enemies are. They have met the enemy, and he is YOU.

“I can’t seem to get out of my own way,” an old friend would say when relationships went awry. The left might say the same thing if it had that level of awareness.

A significant fraction of the American electorate has regressed to the Middle Ages. Democrats keep trying to oppose them by the rules of the Age of Reason and wonder why nothing they do works.

When you get far enough down in size, Newton’s Laws, the mechanics governing everyday reality, no longer apply. Go far enough down the right-wing rabbit hole and reason no longer applies either. Yet the left refuses to acknowledge that, believing it can reason people out of that place.

Take for example, the Critical Race Theory ruckus. By some polls, CRT was a factor in Republican Glenn Youngkin’s Tuesday victory in the Virginia governor’s race.  Pointing out that the theory is not taught in primary and secondary schools has little effect. Facts do not prevent angry, sometimes violent, parents from disrupting school board meetings.

IRONY: Poorly educated voters — who believe in myths, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories — say education is important. 😖

— Spike (@jmsexton_) November 3, 2021

“Poorly educated voters — who believe in myths, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories — say education is important,” tweeted Michael Sexton, describing people who also reject science and an unvarnished account of history.

Republicans are not running on policies. They are running on feelings. Democrats keep trying to talk people out of feeling what they feel whether or not those feelings are based on real or imagined (or ginned-up) grievances.

In a place where reason no longer applies, the left is not simply bringing a knife to a gun fight, it is showing up empty-handed.

I still trying to reconcile the fact that the people who believe Trump is still president are blaming Biden for everything that goes wrong.

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 4, 2021

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted Wednesday night that the failed Republican candidate in last year’s Delaware U.S. Senate race, Lauren Witzke, now claims that her loss by 100,000 votes was stolen by dead voters. She expects to produce “irrefutable evidence” that the seat belongs to her. This is the “background music” the “weird humming noise,” Maddow said, behind Republican politics these days.

The Republican Party just tells lies, former Sen. Al Franken told MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour.”

And the lies are winning for them. At this point, it is hard to tell how many are simply cynical politicians and how many are true believer. But it is likely that the plotters and schemers are feeding the true believers lies to believe.

Paul Rosenberg wrote up for Salon the webinar by Rachel Tabachnick that I mentioned attending weeks ago. That instructive recording is now online.

Tabachnick’s research finds that there are indeed thinkers behind the reconstructionist wing of dominionism held by the right’s foot soldiers. Not that many true believers are aware of it. They’ve simply absorbed it:

“The goal of reconstructionism is to tear down the existing order and reconstruct a new society based on biblical law,” Tabachnick said. “Even if we assume that this vision of a theocratic America will never come to fruition, it’s important to recognize the movement’s impact on the ideas, strategies and tactics of the larger religious right and its role in sacralizing the actions of other anti-statist fellow travelers.”

When clips of a speech by North Carolina Republican lieutenant governor went viral this week, many will not have recognized the dominionism behind his promise that “Christian patriots will own and rule this nation.” But when he declared non-Republicans “our enemies” and the most populous state in the U.S. “Commie-fornia” [timestamp 8:10], what he put on public display was Christofascism.

I don’t have an answer just now for how Democrats combat that. But they had best start getting out of their own way and start thinking outside the Enlightenment box. Fascism is back.

"To remind Americans that fascism is back. At least all that has the virtue of being true." https://t.co/BlfwHc8e4G

— @TomSullivan@mstdn.social (@BloggersRUs) November 4, 2021

Earlier this year the FEC was presented with evidence that the NRA illegally coordinated with GOP campaigns to use the same personnel and vendors to run ads for GOP candidates, claiming the vendors were “functionally indistinguishable.” That’s illegal. But the FEC didn’t act. So a federal judge granted the Giffords’ nonprofit the right to sue the NRA.

It calls for the court to prevent the NRA from “violating the law in future elections” and for the gun rights group to pay a fine to the Treasury Department equal to the alleged total in the donation scheme.

The lawsuit alleges as much as $35 million in “unlawful” and “unreported in-kind campaign contributions” went toward a scheme that goes back as early as 2014, with $25 million allegedly going toward Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. 

NRA ran shell companies to illegally fund Trump and other Republicans, Giffords group alleges in suit Washington Post 11/3/2021

This is an important development, because it shows what can be done when one of the institutions that is supposed to keep the blatant corruption in check, fails to act. I’m a big fan of civil lawsuits because in America money is power.

And when you get in the way to a group’s revenue, you reduce their power. My fedora is off to my old friends at Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and my new friends at Campaign Legal Center Action for this lawsuit and this strategy.

The story about how the NRA used shell companies and vendors to coordinate is in the lawsuit.

The races at the heart of the lawsuit include the following (with the candidate receiving the NRA’s support in bold):

2014: Thom Tillis in the race for Senate in North Carolina (vs. Kay Hagan); Tom Cotton in the race for Senate in Arkansas (vs. Mark Pryor); Cory Gardner in the race for Senate in Colorado (vs. Mark Udall)
2016: Ron Johnson in the race for Senate in Wisconsin (vs. Russ Feingold); Donald Trump in the presidential race (vs. Hillary Clinton)
2018: Josh Hawley in the race for Senate in Missouri (vs. Claire McCaskill); Matt Rosendale in the race for Senate in Montana (vs. Jon Tester)

Giffords Sues the National Rifle Association for Violating Campaign Finance Laws

When a group is busted for illegally obtaining or using money, there should be penalties. But if the agency that is supposed to impose those penalties is rendered weak or ineffectual, we need to figure how to fix the agency.

If the FEC failed to act on this very clear violation of the law, what else are they failing to act on? For example, WHERE did the money that the NRA used for these campaigns come from?

If the FEC doesn’t act on the issue of money coming from Russia and being funneled via the NRA to campaigns, there needs to be another lawsuit. Maybe the people who lost the elections could get the Campaign Legal Center Action to file on their behalf.

I’m mentioned the Russian money because it gives me a chance to show the cool animation I made in 2018.

What did Chris Cox, Josh Hawley & Tom Cotton know about the source of NRA’s funding?

What will show up in the discovery of this lawsuit? What happens if the source of the funding is traced to foreign entities? New York’s attorney general said in August that the NRA had failed to root out rampant internal corruption. What else will show up?

Who at the NRA knew? Surely Chris Cox, the head of the NRA-ILA and NRA-PVF, knew. Who else knew and when did they know it?

Which of the vendors working for the candidates knew?
Which of the candidates knew? Hawley? Cotton? Who on their staff knew?

Because there are so many different ways to LEGALLY get money from outside groups, I’m always astonished when someone violates the bright lines of FEC laws on foreign contributions. Frankly it just feels lazy on their part.

Breaking FEC laws has become “Just the cost of running for office” for the GOP

For Trump and the modern GOP, violating FEC laws is like cheating on your taxes, it’s “just smart business.”

For GOP candidates to NOT accept money from foreign entities would be “leaving money on the table.” To them getting caught and paying a tiny fine is “just the cost of running for office” in an election.

Part of the problem is that violations of FEC laws currently results in small fines and “Don’t do that again!” administrative warnings. The candidates are likely doing a cost/benefit analysis of getting busted compared to the huge financial/power benefit of winning an election.

The business mentality of “Do the crime, pay the fine” works for them. But prison terms don’t.
When the chance for prison isn’t one of the penalties, the fine should be bigger. In this case, the NRA would have to “pay a fine to the Treasury Department equal to the alleged total in the donation scheme.” Making the NRA pay $35,000,000 would be cool.

But if it can be shown the candidates knew money was coming from Russian, and didn’t report it, that needs to be more than a fine. It needs to be identified as a TREASONOUS act. There should be criminal penalties.

“Here is the evidence showing you KNEW this money was from Russian via the NRA. Why didn’t you report it? What kind of “patriot” does that?”

The Framers of the Constitution had something to say about those who commit treason. Check it out in your pocket Constitution. It’s on page 13.

Cross posted to Spocko’s Brain

Here’s a tiny bit of upbeat news that hopefully portends a bit of common sense prevailing in the future. Wisconsin is a swing state just like Virginia:

A recall effort against four Mequon-Thiensville School Board members failed to unseat any incumbents Tuesday, a major loss for recall organizers who had raised nearly $50,000 and gained national attention in their months long pursuit. 

Each of the incumbents won over 58% of the votes in their races, according to unofficial results posted by the district Tuesday.

The election marks the 16th failed recall effort against school board members in Wisconsin since the pandemic began, with many of the recall organizers citing frustration with pandemic safety measures.  

The number of school board recall attempts this year is more than double any previous year tallied by Ballotpedia, a Middleton-based nonprofit. 

Recall organizers had pushed the message that academic achievement was declining in the district, arguing that the district’s pandemic safety measures and commitments to equity were contributing to that decline. 

They cited the district’s “seven milestones for success,” which have shown declines in recent years. Standardized test scores have declined statewide over the past two years as the pandemic disrupted classroom learning. 

After results came in election night, incumbents thanked supporters. 

“My community of Mequon-Thiensville — the school district, the teachers, the staff, and most importantly, the students of the district — won tonight. It was never about us four. It was always about the students. And we are thrilled about the results,” Khan said in a phone interview.Y

“We are very happy with how the community responded to our message of rejecting lies and distortions. I am very grateful to the community that they rose up and they did not accept the distortions and lies,” Khan also said.

Recall organizer Amber Schroeder, in a joint statement election night from herself and the recall candidates, said the group was still proud.

“While this is a small loss for us, we’ve had a huge victory for many people in our community,” she said in a statement. “We are proud of what we were able to accomplish in such a short time, and we are ready to keep fighting for children.” 

Recall candidate Charles Lorenz said in a phone interview that the recall group brought attention to issues such as the academic decline in the district and transparency.

“I think from all of that, I find a really positive night personally and the fact that so many people came together and we got a message out there,” said Lorenz.

Recall candidate Scarlett Johnson said in an email Nov. 3 the group was proud of what it had accomplished over the past weeks and even the months before, when it gathered signatures.

“We look forward to working with the incumbents, hopefully with a new perspective to solve the very significant problems within the district.  Although we did not win by vote count, we recognize many other victories tonight,” she said.

Gosh, that sounds almost … decent. Maybe they really can work together to effect change that everyone can live with.

On the other hand:

Schroeder, a parent of three children in the Mequon-Thiensville School District, said she encouraged residents to vote for the recall because of academic decline in the district. She said the pursuit of equity in the district was bringing “the kids at the top down to the middle just so we can close the gap.” 

“I’m not a believer in equity in our school districts; I think it’s a horrible idea, and it’s a theory based on critical race,” she said, accusing the district of hiring “critical race theory consultants disguised as equity consultants.” 

Down the block, a parent supporting the incumbents, Neda Esmali, said recall organizers “stoked outrage in people over misinformation regarding things like critical race theory that do not exist in the school district.”

“I think our children are being used as pawns in a political agenda,” Esmali said. 

Voters cite range of views on critical race theory, academic progress

When asked why he voted, Michael Schuster, who has three grandchildren in the district, unzipped his jacket to show the writing on his shirt: “Two things every American should know how to use, neither of which are taught in schools.” Pictured on the shirt was a gun and a bible. 

“Better to vote than to start shooting all you progressive guys,” he said. “It’s better to vote. I’m not a violent person.” 

Schuster said his No. 1 issue was his opposition to critical race theory and discussion. 

“It’s not to keep someone else down; I just don’t want someone else to get privileges of any kind simply because 160 years ago, his distant ancestors worked in the cotton fields,” he said. 

Another voter who supported the recall, Carole Olkowski, said she differed with recall organizers on the subject of race. She said her daughter, who is biracial, thought there should be more curriculum in school from diverse viewpoints. But Olkowski also thought the district needed to improve academic performance and current board members weren’t doing enough. 

“I don’t think they’re ready for college,” Olkowski said. 

Another recall supporter, Tom Bardenwerper, said critical race theory wasn’t a factor for him. He said he was concerned about the quality of education. 

“Normally I wouldn’t go to these types of things but I feel a good education is very important,” he said.

Those supporting incumbents said they thought the recall effort lacked merit. 

“The reasons that were given for the recall don’t make sense to me,” said Anne Michalski. “If those individuals would like to run in a regular election, I think they are completely entitled to do so.”

Lynn Beavers, whose children attend district schools, said “the facts were lacking” in the recall effort. 

“I thought it’s a waste of money,” Beavers said. “There’s an election coming up in April; it’s just drama.”  

Megan Kuehn said the recall group’s messaging wasn’t clear “on what they stood for.” 

“It leans back to the whole CRT, anti-mask, all of the other stuff that they’re against. If it was about academic performance, we could have handled this in a more constructive way instead of wasting taxpayer’s money on a recall election in the middle of everything,” Kuehn said.

Kyle Malloy and his wife, Danielle, said the district was going in the right direction and also voted against the recall.

“Mequon’s a great school district, and I don’t think you need to have politics get in the way of teaching kids,” Kyle Malloy said.

Here’s what it was really all about:

The recall effort began in June, with Schroeder and other leaders citing concerns about academic decline, taking issue with the district’s pandemic safety measures as well as “critical race theory.” Schroeder accused board members of being unavailable and “abdicating” duties to the superintendent. 

While Wisconsinites have attempted recalls against 36 school board members in 16 district since the pandemic began, often citing pandemic safety measures and critical race theory, none of the other efforts were successful. In most cases, recall organizers failed to get enough signatures to trigger a vote. 

In late August, Schroeder and Johnson dropped off boxes of signed petitions at Homestead High School, surpassing the threshold with over 4,000 signatures. Their efforts have been aided by politicians and donors far outside the district. 

Republican megadonor and billionaire Richard Uihlein was the top financial contributor to the recall effort, giving $6,000 to recall committees. And for nearly $6,000, recall organizers hired the firm of Lane Ruhland, an attorney who worked for the Trump campaign and helped file nomination papers in Wisconsin for Kanye West’s campaign.

Recall organizers out-fundraised those supporting the incumbents, $47,000 to $27,000. 

Days before the election, organizers on both sides were accused of legal violations.

Schroeder confirmed Tuesday that she had filed an ethics complaint Friday with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission against the committee supporting the four incumbents, accusing the group of breaking campaign finance rules — allegations denied by the committee’s treasurer, Nancy Urbani. 

Urbani said she received a copy of the complaint Tuesday from the commission and had 15 days to reply. She said the claims were false. 

“It’s a series of allegations that range from blatantly false to those that do not even apply,” she said. “We’re investigating next steps, if we have to hire our own attorney.” 

Also on Friday, an attorney for the local organization Bridge the Divide said the group was suing Johnson for defamation, claiming Johnson damaged the group’s reputation by falsely calling the organization Marxist, funded by the Democratic Party, and a proponent of defunding the police and teaching Critical Race Theory in local schools. 

In response, Johnson said she would not comment on the merits of the lawsuit but called it a “political hit job.”

Note the support from a billionaire wingnut. And all of this was ginned up on national right wing media over the past few months. As Rachel Maddow put it, Fox News has created a fully formed campaign platform for the GOP in the midterms with CRT.

But somehow, in this town more people were reasonable and sane than the racists who don’t want people getting the “privilege” of learning about the truth of our history. And the people who lost didn’t act like barbarians. Maybe there’s hope yet.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) slams John Kerry for flying to the climate conference in a private jet.

He gleefully points out that no Republican on the stage has a private jet — before being informed that Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) indeed has one. pic.twitter.com/JbTe6Krd0u

— The Recount (@therecount) November 3, 2021

Maybe he should have hit Portman up for a ride to Cancun last winter. It could have saved him quite a bit of trouble.

It turns out that Portman doesn’t have his own private jet. They were yanking Cruz’s chain. Even they know what a gloriously idiotic clown he is.

But maybe they should:

In the telling of key analysts, an activist slogan, briefly embraced by other activists (but no party leaders) lastingly, nationally defined Dems, but Republicans can go all in on the deeply unpopular insurrection and claw back suburban losses.

Youngkin's win confirms that the GOP will pay no lasting price for Trump or January 6, and need not choose between mobilizing Trumpists and persuading swing voters. Given their structural disadvantages, Democrats really needed for that not to be the case. https://t.co/KRkjX2A8ar pic.twitter.com/2oLf0UTj5i

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) November 3, 2021

Maybe politics has much less to do with issue polling than with ambient conditions, fueling emotionally potent sentiments, not cowering in response to aggression, etc?

Originally tweeted by Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) on November 3, 2021.

Yeah. But from the looks it so far, the opposite lesson will be learned from this. 2022 is going to be a very, very hard lift. It’s not impossible. But if the mood of the country is that uppity women, racial minorities and hippies need to be put in their places — a very old story — the Democrats are going to have to figure out a way to remind people that the Republicans all worshipped at the feet of the disgusting freak Donald Trump and that’s even worse.

It’s not pretty, but that’s what negative partisanship is all about. Forget restoring the soul of the nation. We misplaced that long ago. Now it’s about trying to save us from authoritarianism, something which those suburban moms forgot about when they reverted to form in the face of lies about Critical Race Theory and defunding the police.

Where are the Democrats’ t-shirts?

This piece by Kate Riga at TPM takes a look at the “how will this affect Reconciliation” handwringing:

Pundits telegraphed their think pieces for weeks: the governor’s race in Virginia, pitting former Gov. Terry McAuliffe against the quietly-Trumpy-in-nonthreatening-dad-packaging Glenn Youngkin, will be a Democratic bellwether. 

If McAuliffe loses, they predict, Democrats are doomed — in the midterms, in their current legislative push, forever and ever, Amen. And now he has, by — as of Wednesday morning — about 70,000 votes.

Could McAuliffe’s loss portend Democratic midterm losses? Of course it could. And it’s a pretty safe take to have given the historical precedent.

Is it equally possible that Democrats could finally pass these two pieces of legislation, start shouting what’s in them from the rooftops, and watch President Joe Biden’s approval numbers climb as people realize they like it? 

Yes — unless. Unless Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) take their cue from all the post-election caterwauling and decide to distance themselves further from the party, throwing up fresh new obstacles to the reconciliation package as they go. 

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), speaking to reporters before the polls closed Tuesday, was already prepared to blame progressives, pointing his finger at them for not passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill in September.  

“I don’t know why we wouldn’t have given the President, the country, and for that matter, the boost to Terry McAuliffe, the win on infrastructure a month ago,” he said. 

House progressives have refused to let that happen because they fear that moderates — namely Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) — will let the reconciliation package die as soon as the bipartisan infrastructure bill is out the door. 

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) was more circumspect Tuesday, saying that passing both of the bills before the election could have helped. 

“Mark Warner and I certainly were saying to colleagues beginning in late September early October, this would be a good thing in Virginia, to have both of these bills going to President Biden, it would be a good thing,” he said. “Both of these bills are gonna pass and I think the difference between passing them in November and passing them in October, you know, could have an effect — how much we’ll see.” 

He added to TPM that there’s been a trend of Democrats winning the White House then losing the Virginia governor’s mansion, and that McAuliffe’s loss could simply be a result of this “early midterms blues phenomenon.” McAuliffe was actually the only one to buck the trend in recent years, back in 2013.

Polling in the state had been very close, much closer than Biden’s 10-point win in the commonwealth in 2020.

This one race cannot foretell the future of the Democratic party. But it can directly affect Democrats’ best, maybe only, chance to buck the historical trend and position themselves to win the midterms: passing legislation. 

Manchin, devoid of any obvious ideological consistency, seems to hold a finger up to the wind every morning and see how the Beltway gusts are blowing. If the post-McAuliffe loss freakout rattles him, makes him think he needs to take some hasty steps away from the party, that could spell the bill’s doom.

I think there’s a good chance he will do that. He’s desperate to be proven right that the big BBB bill is a bridge too far. I can easily see him talking himself into believing that after yesterday he’s blowing up the Democratic agenda for the party’s own good. He isn’t all that bright and he’s got a ego the size of Antarctica. Let’s just say I’ll be happily surprised if it doesn’t go down that way.

Yeah:

Manchin on VA / NJ results: “I just think that the message was really sent if we're going to do something, let's take time and do it right. Let's make sure that people know what's in it….”

— Alan He (@alanhe) November 3, 2021

As Tom noted below in this post, one of the main differences between the Democrats and the Republicans these days is that Democrats are sane and the GOP is not. Can there be any doubt that if the vote went the other way that all we would be hearing today would be shrill shrieks that the vote was rigged? Of course not.

Instead, the Democrats are rending their garments and retreating back to all their favored tropes (kitchen table issues! The hippies ruin everything!) Personally, I think it’s weird that all we’ve been hearing for months is how the out party is always more enthusiastic in mid-terms and that Democrats aren’t going be as excited without Trump on the ballot so I have to wonder why everyone is so surprised.

Dan Pfeiffer’s newsletter today seems pretty level-headed so I thought I’d share some pieces of it:

​A Shock to the Suburban Coalition

Typically, the party in power loses off-year elections because their base is complacent or worn down by slow progress, and the other side is fired up. That’s not what happened last night; turnout was high on both sides. Youngkin won because he convinced enough Joe Biden and Ralph Northam voters to switch sides. Virginia is a state dominated by suburbs with a large college-educated population. These are the voters who moved strongly in the Democratic direction when Trump came on the scene. Youngkin won enough of those voters and he did it without sacrificing votes from Trump’s base. In Virginia at least, without Trump on the ballot, Republicans are winning back Romney-Clinton voters faster than Democrats are winning back Obama-Trump voters or finding new voters. If that trend holds, there is no math that gives Democrats the House, Senate, or White House. Figuring out how to win these voters back without depressing our base is job number one for the party. This goal doesn’t rely on turnout or persuasion. It relies on both.

A Daunting Democratic Communications Deficit

The way the race played out in Virginia is yet more evidence Republicans have a massive communications advantage. This advantage helped Youngkin in two ways. First, Youngkin made the teaching of Critical Race Theory a major talking point, which is impressive because it is a complete nonissue. A fake, Trumped-up controversy promoted by the Right-Wing media. There is not a single student being taught CRT anywhere in the world, let alone Virginia. Yet, Youngkin was able to make a fake issue very real to Virginia voters. In a Washington Post/Schar poll from before the election, education was Virginia voters’ number one concern. Youngkin led by nine among the voters who named education as their top priority. McAuliffe led them by more than 30 earlier in the race. CRT went straight from Fox News to the top of voters’ minds in Virginia. As Greg Sargent recently wrote:

Youngkin and his allies have transmitted some of their most visceral and hallucinogenic versions of the anti-CRT demagoguery straight to the base via right-wing media … Matt Gertz of Media Matters estimates that Fox News ran up to 100 segments on CRT in Virginia last spring, even though it isn’t taught in Virginia schools.

The Right-Wing is able to create an alternative reality and then offer solutions to fake problems that people believe are Democrats’ fault. CRT probably played less of a role than a lot of pundits suggest, but the fact that Youngkin was able to make it an issue should be a giant warning sign about what is to come in 2022.

Second, because the GOP has created a powerful, self-serving media infrastructure, Youngkin used the Right-Wing media to communicate his MAGA credentials to the base without offending the Independents and Trump-skeptical Republicans who gave Biden a ten-point victory last year.

Eric Kleefeld @EricKleefeld
@waltshaub @jbouie Youngkin went looking for votes with Seb Gorka — a man who openly cheered on the January 6 attack as it was happening. Seb Gorka, neo-Nazi-adjacent Trump lackey, gets Virginia gubernatorial candidate to come on his showVirginia Republican gubernatorial candidate criticized for appearing on far-right Sebastian Gorka’s radio show.dailydot.com

Youngkin can be a fleece-wearing suburban dad/political outsider on local TV and a fully indoctrinated soldier in Trump’s army when he appears on Right Wing media. Democrats are still primarily relying on the traditional press to get our message out and we lack the firepower to make Youngkin pay a price for this duplicity. I have written before (and will write again) about how Democrats can solve this problem; but until we do, there will be more nights like last night.

Pass BBB/BIF Right Now

Twitter was ablaze with hot takes last night from people attributing the loss in Virginia to the mess in Congress. Some blamed Manchin and Sinema for slowing the process down. Others saw the loss as evidence Biden leaned too far Left. Some centrists wanted to hit pause on the process. I have yet to see a piece of evidence supporting any of these takes. I am skeptical the legislative impasse played a significant role in the race. It certainly didn’t depress Democratic turnout.

However, I think this unexpected loss should be a swift kick in everyone’s rear to get both bills passed ASAP. If the too-long debate hurt our chances in this election, it was likely because the missed deadlines, disagreements, and disappointments were fodder for a never-ending cycle of bad news for Democrats. Brokering compromises on Capitol Hill is a necessary part of the job for a president but it is a diminishing one. The public elects a president, but they tend to punish a prime minister.

The longer we delay, the longer the spotlight will linger on Democratic disarray and prevent us from making an argument for why Republicans cannot be allowed to sniff power again. Further debate and delay serve no purpose.

Youngkin’s “Trump Light” Act Will Be Difficult to Replicate

Before most of the networks even called the race, mainstream Republicans already deified Youngkin as their new savior. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat called on Youngkin to consider running for president. Prior to the vote counting, Axios called Youngkin the “prototype” for Republican candidates.

Sam Baker @sam_baker
Win or lose, Youngkin is the new prototype for GOP candidates Trump Light: Glenn Youngkin’s 5-step template for the GOP in swing statesThe Virginia race will have big echoes in the ’22 midterms and the ’24 presidential race.axios.com

There are many lessons to learn from Youngkin’s campaign, but I would pump the brakes on some of the immediate hagiography. His “Trump Light” act is going to be very hard for most Republicans to replicate. Youngkin is a legitimate political outsider who ran against a former governor and the ultimate political insider in a state where Democrats have controlled the governorship for 16 of the last 20 years. The vast majority of Republican candidates are politicians and MAGA media types who spent the last five years offering fealty to Trump. Pulling off Yongkin’s balancing act will be near impossible for the leading candidates in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.

Biden v. Trump

One billion pounds of digital ink (is that thing?) will be spent analyzing the role President Biden and former President Trump played in this race. None of those takes will wait for actual data and most of them will only confirm the pre-existing biases of the person offering the take. It is a fact: Joe Biden’s approval ratings are lower at this point than any other president in history’s approval ratings. Other than Trump’s numbers of course. There is a tendency in these situations to claim the unpopular president is dragging down their party, but that is a very simplistic view of how politics works. There are many factors that affect a president’s approval rating. Most of them are completely outside the president’s control. I am not arguing that better messaging, more success in Congress, or a less chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan would not have helped Biden’s current political standing. But it is just as likely the main forces (the pandemic and inflation) dragging down Biden are also dragging down Democrats across the country. There is a tendency for political punditry to make everything about the president. That is a mistake. We are not one speech or a cool event away from fixing this problem.

McAullife’s campaign tried to tie Yougkin to Trump in the most obvious ways possible. Maybe it was the wrong strategy or maybe it was just poorly executed. But Trump is going to be a factor in 2022 and likely to be on the ballot in 2024. Trump is absent from the conversation for all but the most engaged voters. He didn’t campaign in Virginia. He’s not on mainstream TV or on social media. Most voters are not thinking about Trump at all, let alone obsessing about his return to the political scene. That is going to change in 2022 when Trump hits the campaign trail in places like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Democrats will need a message that warns about the looming danger of Trumpism without looking like we are obsessed with re-litigating the past.

Youngkin was able to keep Trump out of his race but I am very skeptical that he’s going to be controlled in that way for the mid-terms. And he most certainly will not be in 2024 if he’s on the ballot. The primary races for Republicans are going to be incredibly fraught and it’s highly doubtful they are going to nominate a whole bunch of Younkins with Trump pushing his freakshow. So there’s that.

I’ll just add that McAuliffe’s campaign against Trump was poorly executed and also that Democrats have never made it explicit enough that it isn’t just Trump, it’s the whole damned party and being a member of it and voting for anyone who takes that label after Trump is something any decent human should be ashamed of. Trump IS the GOP and the GOP is Trump.

I don’t know if the window is closed for that but I’d imagine we can expect that there will be a full-fledged retreat from the Democrats of running on anything but kitchen table issues for the mid-terms. It’s what they wanted to do anyway and it will probably be unsuccessful unless there is a huge turnaround in COVID and the economy over the next few months that makes the whole country so ecstatic that suburban moms stop obsessing over CRT.

Luckily for them Trump will be happy to make an ass of himself without their help and he’ll be much more present in the next year. A lot will depend upon whether or not the media makes some changes in the way they cover the Democrats. I’m not sanguine.

Some anecdotes from Virginia yesterday:

Along with a huge team of @postlocal reporters, I spent the day at the polls in Virginia.

I was in western Prince William. Most people I met voted for Youngkin.

I just got home & I’m going through my notebook, so here’s a thread of voters’ quotes about why they picked Youngkin.

As you probably know by now, Youngkin’s message that “parents should have a say” in schools resonated with a ton of voters.

“I kind of like the old style of school,” one stepdad of school students said. “I still believe in the American flag, the Pledge of Allegiance & God.”

A Latina mom who plans on sending her 4-year-old to private school to avoid public school education about race, which she believes motivates bullying: “Parents don’t really have a choice…. They are adding new things to history that children her age don’t really need to know.”

A Black dad who’s homeschooling two of his kids said his older son recently brought home an assignment on Abraham Lincoln that troubled him, though he couldn’t say why. “I’d like to not vote for the guy who said it’s not the parents’ responsibility to take care of their kids.”

One man supported Youngkin’s anti-abortion stance, saying he once conceived a child with a woman who chose an abortion. “I don’t know what my first child would have looked like because of a woman’s right to choose…. I want to be able to go to court & say ‘I want that baby.'”

Another voter said he opposes mask and vaccine requirements. “I’m forced to vote Republican, grudgingly. I don’t even like this guy,” he said, saying he supports abortion rights and finds Youngkin “self-righteous.” But: “I’m tired of the mandates.”

Originally tweeted by Julie Zauzmer Weil (@juliezweil) on November 3, 2021.

Yikes… The one about the man saying he wants to go to court to force a woman to give birth is just chilling. But it’s all chilling. The ones who are not simple authoritarian freaks are earnest in their concerns I’m sure, but they are being manipulated and lied to.

So last night shouldn’t be a big surprise although it’s always disappointing to lose close races. (And it’s always depressing watching the MSM dance on the Democrats’ graves with such glee.) But here we are.

Youngkin managed to keep Trump away from his campaign and the GOP and its propaganda machine leveraged parental concerns around school closings during COVID (and uninformed concerns around “woke” cultural influences) into a full-blown panic over Critical Race Theory among some Biden voters. And yes, the insufferable legislative back and forth probably turned Virginia voters off because they hear so much about Washington politics in their local media.

But that doesn’t explain the close New Jersey race so I think this is really just a reversion to pre-Trump polarization. The wingnuts are more wingnutty than ever and the the GOP moderates and Independent leaners went back to their usual positions, happy to pretend that Trump never happened.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Trump is still around and he’s going to be a much bigger presence in 2022 and will likely be the candidate in 2024. So I’m not convinced this is the harbinger of doom for the Dems that everyone thinks it is.

Here he is last night. A very happy boy, rushing to take credit: