Month: January 2022

Voters are a fickle bunch. They want what they want, and they want it yesterday. Especially liberal ones. With the thinnest of margins in the House and none whatsoever in the Senate, Democrats are expected to pass transformational legislation over lockstep Republican opposition on the Senate side of the Capitol. The hardening story line is that President Joe Biden is old and ineffective. Democratic leaders on the Hill are too. And what’s Attorney General Merrick Garland’s problem? Why isn’t TFG in handcuffs by now?

The frustration is understandable. But a seven-million popular-vote margin and 74-vote margin in the Electoral College did carry with them legislative muscle sufficient to manifest Biden’s governing vision. The Senate’s Jim Crow-era filibuster rule remains a barrier two Democrats will not relinquish for reasons that are unintelligible. And Biden, for all his years in the Senate and eight (now nine) in the White House, is not LBJ.

“The bottom is falling out” for Democrats because they “refuse to govern and refuse to solve problems,” one social-media pundit wrote. How then? By fiat? With magical thinking? Democrats are apparently struggling like hell to govern and solve problems with majorities far too small, stymied by Republicans for whom no one demands accountability, as Greg Sargent observed again Monday:

So galling: In much of the media coverage of the Dem failure to pass democracy protections, lockstep GOP opposition has been simply erased as a factor in what's happening, even as Republicans continue to actively restrict voting in many states.

Reupping this: https://t.co/MMm2VpqGoI

— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) January 17, 2022

Progressives instinctively know condemning Republicans is as useless as trying to fly by flapping their arms. Democrats might at least wince. We want Democrats to stand by small-D democratic principles and American ideals while complaining they are not as strategic, ruthless, and duplicitous as norm-crushing Republicans. Even with more seats, it’s a no-win.

Granted, there are a few Democratic leaders on the Hill who should have passed the torch long ago to a new generation not yet as institutionalized to the Beltway.

But doomed or not, today Democrats in the Senate will at least get caught trying to deliver for their base (NYT):

The Senate on Tuesday will begin to debate legislation that combines two separate bills already passed by the House — the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — and folds them into an unrelated measure. The move would allow the Senate to bring the bill directly to the floor, avoiding an initial filibuster.

But that strategy would still allow Republicans to block it from coming to a final vote, and Democrats lack the unanimous support needed in their party to change Senate rules to muscle through the legislation themselves. Still, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said late last week that Democrats would forge ahead anyway, forcing Republicans to publicly declare their opposition to the bill.

The vote, if it goes as expected, will put Democratic defectors in the history books as two who were willing to give lip service to defending voting rights, but who abandoned voters when the time came to do any actual defending. Fifty Republicans, too, will write themselves into history as opponents of guaranteeing “a Republican Form of Government” to which they are pledged.

The Freedom to Vote Act contains a slate of proposals to establish nationwide standards for ballot access, in an effort to counteract the wave of new restrictions in states. It would require states to allow a minimum of 15 consecutive days of early voting and that all voters are able to request to vote by mail; establish new automatic voter registration programs; and make Election Day a national holiday.

A second measure, named for Representative John Lewis, the civil rights icon who died in 2020, would restore parts of the landmark Voting Rights Act weakened by Supreme Court rulings. Among the provisions was one mandating that jurisdictions with a history of discrimination win prior approval — or “preclearance” — from the Justice Department or federal courts in Washington before changing their voting rules.

Republicans have uniformly opposed the legislation, casting it as inappropriate federal intervention in state voting operations and a partisan exercise intended to give Democrats an unfair advantage.

Because inappropriate intervention in state voting operations Republicans reserve to themselves.

Why isn’t the headline like: “Republicans, feeling no remorse or backlash after their failed insurrection, have successfully blocked Biden’s attempts to battle climate change and protect voting rights”

Give ‘em credit for that
https://t.co/xavGnHtNws

— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) January 18, 2022

That’s what the Michigan Attorney General called the actions of these fake electors who sent phony documents to the National Archives in December of 2021.

Recall Trump’s hack lawyer John Eastman sent out his “January 6th Scenario” in which he stated “7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors to the President of the Senate.” And they did!

The Republicans in two of those states hedged their bets. The New Mexico certificate was submitted “on the understanding that it might later be determined that we are the duly elected and qualified” electors (emphasis added). The Pennsylvania certificate was similarly qualified “on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors” (emphasis added).

The submissions from those two states deserve the benefit of the doubt. They can and should be read as contingent, belt-and-suspenders backup plans to make sure that Trump electors were identified in the event, however unlikely, that the courts reversed the election results in their states.

Not so the other five states. The phony Trump electors from each of the other five states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin—certified that they were in fact the “duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America” from their respective states.

This was a criminal act under  18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) as part of abroad conspiracy by Donald Trump and others to corruptly obstruct, influence or impede the electoral vote count. But it’s also just straight up fraud. Every state has laws against electoral fraud. Arizona for instance has one which says that a person who knowingly forges or counterfeits returns of an election is guilty of a “class 3 felony,” the minimum penalty for which is two and a half years in prison. So there’s that.

According to this piece, from which I’ve gleaned much of this information, also notes anther federal statue this may fall under:

However, there is one federal criminal statute that appears to cover this situation specifically and squarely. Under 52 U.S.C. § 20511, it is a crime punishable by a fine or up to five years in prison—or both—if any person:

knowingly and willfully deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process, by . . . the procurement, casting, or tabulation of ballots that are known by the person to be materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held. [Emphasis added.]

There is some debate in the academic community about whether the votes of presidential electors are “ballots” as that term is used in this statute. The reference to “ballots” may be intended to refer only to the popular vote, not the votes cast by the electors, the argument goes.

But the statute doesn’t say that. It just says “ballots.” The common understanding is that a ballot is simply the mechanism by which votes are cast. Moreover, the Constitution explicitly and repeatedly refers to the votes of presidential electors as “ballots.” Here’s the applicable language from the Twelfth Amendment:

The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President. [Emphasis added.]

Once the issue of whether presidential electors cast their votes by “ballots” is resolved—if there really is such an issue—the rest seems easy:

The phony electors’ ballots were clearly “materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent under the laws of the State in which the election is held.” As discussed above, Biden, not Trump, was the duly elected and qualified winner in each of the five states.

The fraudulent ballots were “cast.” They were fully executed and transmitted to the National Archives, Congress, and the federal judiciary, in imitation of the process set forth in 3 U.S.C. §§ 10 and 11 for the casting of legitimate ballots.

The phony electors clearly knew the ballots were false. The whole damn world knew that Biden, not Trump, had been certified as the winner in each of their respective states. That’s why this whole plot was hatched in the first place.

By casting electoral ballots that they knew were not for the duly elected and qualified winners in their states, the phony electors not only deprived the residents of their states of “a fair and impartially conducted election process,” they effectively sought to nullify the entire state election process.

These certificates weren’t just provisional, backup measures in case something changed. The Pennsylvania and New Mexico certificates showed how to make that clear in plain English. The phony certificates from the other five states purported to list the “duly elected and qualified” electors and were transmitted to the federal government as the state’s official electoral votes, some even on letterheads bearing the state seal.

Other federal criminal statutes also may be applicable.

The broadest federal statute that may apply is 18 U.S.C. § 371—“Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States.” That statute says that if two or more persons conspire to defraud the United States or any agency thereof “in any manner or for any purpose,” and perform “any act” to effect the object of that conspiracy, each person shall be fined or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both. As Harvard professor Laurence Tribe noted in a Boston Globe op-ed last week, under the Supreme Court ruling in Tanner v. United States, Section 371 applies to “any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of Government.” Conspiring to file fraudulent election returns in order to overturn a presidential election, and the actual transmittal of those fraudulent documents to the federal government, easily meets that standard.

It is also a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, punishable by up to five years of imprisonment, to file any “false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” in any matter within the jurisdiction of the federal government, or to use a “false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent” information.

And specifically regarding elections, it is crime under 52 U.S.C. §10307 for any person “acting under color of law” to “willfully fail or refuse to tabulate, count, and report” the vote of any person qualified to vote. This would seem to apply to any state officials who, acting under color of law—that is, acting in some official capacity—were involved in transmitting the phony electoral certificates to the federal government. By purporting to certify the election of a person who was not duly elected, such officials would be willfully seeking to disenfranchise millions of individuals who were qualified to and did vote.

There are people in jail for making a simple mistake and voting when they weren’t technically eligible. These people went way, way beyond that.

Will they pay a price? I would hope so. But so far, there hasn’t been a peep about this from any law enforcement, state or federal.

The NY Times has a juicy story about Trump’s growing animosity toward his mini-me, Ron DeSantis. I guess he’s feeling the heat:

For months, former President Donald J. Trump has been grumbling quietly to friends and visitors to his Palm Beach mansion about a rival Republican power center in another Florida mansion, some 400 miles to the north.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a man Mr. Trump believes he put on the map, has been acting far less like an acolyte and more like a future competitor, Mr. Trump complains. With his stock rising fast in the party, the governor has conspicuously refrained from saying he would stand aside if Mr. Trump runs for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.

“The magic words,” Trump has said to several associates and advisers.

That long-stewing resentment burst into public view recently in a dispute over a seemingly unrelated topic: Covid policies. After Mr. DeSantis refused to reveal his full Covid vaccination history, the former president publicly acknowledged he had received a booster. Last week, he seemed to swipe at Mr. DeSantis by blasting as “gutless” politicians who dodge the question out of fear of blowback from vaccine skeptics.

Mr. DeSantis shot back on Friday, criticizing Mr. Trump’s early handling of the pandemic and saying he regretted not being more vocal in his complaints.

The back and forth exposed how far Republicans have shifted to the right on coronavirus politics. The doubts Mr. Trump amplified about public health expertise have only spiraled since he left office. Now his defense of the vaccines — even if often subdued and almost always with the caveat in the same breath that he opposes mandates — has put him uncharacteristically out of step with the hard-line elements of his party’s base and provided an opening for a rival.

But that it was Mr. DeSantis — a once-loyal member of the Trump court — wielding the knife made the tension about much more.

At its core, the dispute amounts to a stand-in for the broader challenge confronting Republicans at the outset of midterm elections. They are led by a defeated former president who demands total fealty, brooks no criticism and is determined to sniff out, and then snuff out, any threat to his control of the party.

That includes the 43-year-old DeSantis, who has told friends he believes Mr. Trump’s expectation that he bend the knee is asking too much. That refusal has set up a generational clash and a test of loyalty in the de facto capital of today’s G.O.P., one watched by Republicans elsewhere who’ve ridden to power on Mr. Trump’s coattails.

Already, party figures are attempting to calm matters.

“They’re the two most important leaders in the Republican Party,” said Brian Ballard, a longtime Florida lobbyist with connections to both men, predicting Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis “will be personal and political friends for the rest of their careers.”

Good lord. They’re both monsters. I think J.V. Last has this right, however:

I wrote about the brewing Trump-DeSantis feud back in July, when it was clear that DeSantis was Single White Female-ing Trump to a degree that was going to get super uncomfortable.

Now the fight is almost out in the open and I am here to tell you that if DeSantis doesn’t back off, he’s going to get blowed up.

Reasons:

(1) DeSantis is a phony. Trump is authentic.

You’re not supposed to remember this, but DeSantis is a smarty-pants, Ivy League elite lawyer who is playacting as a populist crusader. Trump is the real thing.

Just look at the booster stuff: DeSantis almost certainly got the booster. But he’s now caught in No Man’s Land where he has positioned himself as quasi anti-vax, even though he’s received the vaccines.

Or look at the anti-lockdown rhetoric: DeSantis is pushing revisionist history about how he refused to impose any sort of precautions in Florida.

If this turns into a hot war, Trump is going to crush him. Maybe it’s possible to outflank Trump on vaccines, but not if you’re a phony who took the vaccines.

Republican primary voters will smell that a mile away.

(2) You can’t beat Trump on “conservative” policy.

Remember back when Cruz, Rubio, Walker, and the rest were going to box Trump in because he didn’t hold the line on conservative policy orthodoxies? How’d that work out?

Anti-vax is a new conservative orthodoxy and I am skeptical that a fight about policy on these grounds is going to matter to Republican voters, either.

Trump ran right over the GOP field in 2016 on matters of policy by beating them with attitude and affect. And he’ll do the same to DeSantis.

The only way to (theoretically) outflank Trump is on comportment. And even if that were possible, Ron DeSantis isn’t capable of doing it because at bottom, he’s just another establishment elite climber trying to pull off a triple bank shot.

(3) Sunk cost.

So you’re a Republican primary voter. You’ve mortgaged your entire political identity to Donald Trump. You left Reaganism. Took the Trump ride. Bought the t-shirt. Wore the hat.

You’ve forced yourself to believe some crazy shit. About QAnon. About the 2020 election being stolen. About COVID being overhyped. About Joe Biden having dementia. All because this was the price of admission to be on Trump’s side.

And now you’re going to chuck all of that and admit you were wrong about Trump in order to throw in with Ron DeSantis?

That’s not how things typically work for people exiting belief systems.

(4) If DeSantis challenges Trump, he’ll be marked forever.

Ron DeSantis isn’t stupid. He’s seen the same things we’ve all seen. If you’re a Republican and you get crosswise with Trump, one of two things happens: You get pushed out of the party, or you eventually bend the knee in order to stay in the party.

We have so many examples it’s stupid.

What DeSantis should understand is that this choice is a trap. Because even the people who surrender after challenging Trump are politically maimed. They become damaged goods in the minds of Republican voters.

Marco Rubio. Ted Cruz. Lindsey Graham. Nikki Haley. Chris Christie. Kevin McCarthy. Mitch McConnell. Once you’ve bent the knee to Trump, you have to fight like hell just to keep your station. Moving up in the world? Forget about it.

Why is this? Because no one who has submitted to Trump after getting clobbered by him is capable of selling the dominance politics that Republican voters want.

The next leader of the Republican party won’t be a politician who challenges Trump and unseats him. The Republican party is a totalitarian state and in autocracies, you ascend to the throne by being loyal to the boss and positioning yourself to take over when he passes on.1

I suspect that DeSantis is smart enough to understand this. If so, then he’ll wait until the last possible minute and then swerve to avoid a full collision with Trump. Perhaps he understands that Trump has little respect for the people who truckle to him and he thinks that the best way to get to the VP slot in 2024 is by showing just enough alpha that Trump respects him—but not so much as to become a threat.

Nobody has yet been able to thread that needle. And truth be told, I don’t think it’s possible. But there’s a first time for everything.

This seems right. If all these people want a dominating, whiny bully, DeSantis would certainly fit the bill. In fact, there are a whole bunch of right wingers who fit that bill. But they’re not Trump. They don’t have the X-factor that makes him so beloved by tens of millions of Republicans. I don’t pretend to understand the appeal of either Trump or Desantis, but I do think Trump has more of it.

If they go head to head, I’d bet on Trump any time.

There’s good news and bad news:

Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, warned on Sunday that the Omicron surge of coronavirus cases had not yet peaked nationally, saying that the next few weeks would be very difficult in many parts of the country as hospitalizations and deaths rise.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Dr. Murthy noted the “good news” of the plateaus and drops in known cases in the Northeast, especially in New York City and New Jersey.

But “the challenge is that the entire country is not moving at the same pace,” he said, adding “we shouldn’t expect a national peak in the coming days.”

“The next few weeks will be tough,” he said.

The highly contagious Omicron variant has fueled an explosive surge of known cases, with an average of more than 800,000 new cases a day reported on Saturday, according to a New York Times database.

Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, also expressed concerns that the next several weeks would overwhelm hospitals and staff. “Right now we’re at about 150,000 people in the hospital with Covid,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “That’s more than we’ve ever had. I expect those numbers to get substantially higher.”

In Kansas City, Mo., Omicron has overwhelmed hospitals since the holiday season, the city’s mayor, Quentin Lucas, said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“We have seen incredible challenges in our health care network, even getting employees that are working in our EMS services, fire department and in public safety,” Mr. Lucas said. “It is a substantial concern.”

How cases, hospitalizations and deaths are trending in the U.S.

This chart shows how three key metrics compare to the corresponding peak per capita level reached nationwide last winter.

In addition, Omicron has brought into sharp relief the longstanding lack of adequate testing supplies, with consumers now depleting pharmacies of costly rapid tests — a boxed set of two tests ranges from $14 to $24 — and creating long lines at testing sites.

The federal government has promised to distribute one billion rapid at-home coronavirus tests to Americans, limiting each household to request four free tests. And new federal rules require private insurers to cover up to eight at-home tests per member a month.

We’re not out of the woods yet. If the refusniks would just get vaccinated, we’d be out of it a whole lot sooner. But this is us — exceptional America.

Yet another disturbing story about the state of our culture right now:

School districts from Pennsylvania to Wyoming are bowing to pressure from conservative groups to purge library books about LGBTQ issues and people of color, Axios’ Russell Contreras reports.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told Axios: “I’ve worked for this office for 20 years, and we’ve never had this volume of challenges come in such a short time.”

Librarians are using the hashtag #FReadom to fight book bans.

Why it matters: As the nation’s public schools become more diverse, conflicts over what books students can access — or must read — are posing new questions about free speech and the purpose of education.

Zoom out: A pivotal midterm election year, COVID frustrations and a backlash against efforts to call out systemic racism are turning public schools into ground zero in the culture wars.

Zoom in: In Virginia, just over an hour south of D.C., the Spotsylvania County School Board in November ordered staff to remove “sexually explicit” books from libraries after a parent raised concerns about their LGBTQ themes.

Texas school districts are scrambling to review and ban some library books after state Rep. Matt Krause, a [former — Updated] candidate for state attorney general, asked school superintendents to confirm whether any books on his list of 850 titles were on their shelves.

From the left: Some progressive activists have sought to pull literary staples from school syllabi under the argument that in today’s context, they perpetuate racist or sexist constructs.

Liberal-leaning parents also have called for books to be banned over the use of dated racial epithets and themes of “white saviorism.”

The ALA’s Caldwell-Stone says such challenges are sporadic and nothing compared to the current conservative-backed efforts.

From the right: Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty, told Axios parents want educators to listen to parents’ concerns and not force certain subjects on children.

She said parents have the right to challenge books from Black scholars like Ibram X. Kendi if they see it as indoctrination.

Justice says Moms for Liberty has 70,000 members in 33 states and plans to expand.

The bottom line: John L. Jackson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said the fight over books is a microcosm of our political divisions.

Yes, there are moves on the left to remove some books from the curriculum and I can’t say I’m in favor of that either. I do think classic literature that contains racist language should be taught in context and be used as a way to open dialog about the issues, but just as a general rule I’m opposed to this concept. (It is, of course, fine to choose different books to teach in schools — times change and there’s nothing sacred about any specific work of literature. but banning from libraries? No. )

But regardless of what’s happening on the left, it’s NOTHING compared to what these right wing zealots are doing all over the country. I would register my shock that they would deny their kids a decent education but they won’t even get themselves vaccinated against a deadly disease so this is child’s play.

The idea that these people are opposed to “indoctrination” is hilarious.

Uhm:

lol pic.twitter.com/5E7eHVrCKH

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 17, 2022

I already know people who are already doing this because they are in the front lines and have some vulnerabilities. It should be made available to everyone in those categories at the very least:

A fourth shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine generated a fivefold boost in antibodies a week after the jab, according to preliminary results of a study made public by the Israeli government Tuesday.

The findings offer one of the first looks at how effective a second booster shot might be at reducing the health impact of the omicron variant spreading rapidly around the globe.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, in a statement, said the preliminary results indicated “a very high likelihood that the fourth dose will protect vaccinated people to a great degree against infection to some degree and against severe symptoms.”

Israel now offering fourth covid shot to anyone 60 and older

Israel this week became the first country to launch a major second-booster campaign, making the fourth vaccination available to anyone 60 and older whose last shot was at least four months ago. Bennett’s office said more than 100,000 Israelis have registered or been vaccinated for their fourth shot in the two days of the campaign.

Critics had said the move was premature in the absence of data on a second booster’s safety and effectiveness. Some researchers didn’t rule out that repeat doses of the same vaccine could dampen the body’s immune response.

But the study, conducted by Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, could steer more policymakers toward an aggressive booster policy if it holds up to further analysis. Previous research from South Africa and Britain have suggested that omicron, while more infectious than other coronavirus variants, is less likely to cause serious illness in fully vaccinated individuals.

Researchers recruited subjects from the first round of Israelis given the second booster shot last month, 150 healthy adult medical workers of all ages. All had received previous doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The study first screened for adverse reactions to the fourth shot but found nothing concerning.

I’m already hearing on my TV that we shouldn’t do it because a lot of people aren’t even getting their third shot, as if it’s a zero sum game. I will never understand that logic, but it’s the same logic they used to slam the Biden administration when it recommended third shots last summer and are now blaming them for “mixed messaging.” (It’s the knee-jerk naysayers who are mixing the messaging but whatever…)

Let’s hope people have learned something from that mistake and at least allow for older people and those with underlying conditions to qualify for a fourth shot soon. At this point it really feels as if it is every man for himself and they shouldn’t make it harder to save your own life in a country full of people who have signed on to a death cult.

Please share this quote from my father through #MLKDay2022:

“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting.” @LeaderMcConnell @SenatorSinema pic.twitter.com/uLmHyEqTTU

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) January 14, 2022

Republicans are all over the place using Martin Luther King’s “content of their character” line and insisting that he wouldn’t have wanted schools to teach about America’s racist past. Get a load of this one from the new Great Whitebread Hope, Glenn Youngkin:

He delivers that sentence at 7:25 on the video counter.

Half a minute later, he defines the objectionable curriculum/message as "accusing one group of being oppressors and another of being oppressed, of actually burdening children today for sins of the past."

— Will Saletan (wsaletan on Threads) (@saletan) January 16, 2022

And that message is selling like hotcakes in the MAGA Death Cult.

Martin Luther King knew the score:

“So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote, I do not possess myself,” King Jr. said in his “Give Us the Ballot” speech in May 1957. “I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact — I can only submit to the edict of others.”

Organizers had gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, for the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom — which drew nearly 25,000 supporters — to push lawmakers to uphold the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.King Jr. was the last to speak. But his words to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Congress were powerful.

“The denial of this sacred right is a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition. And so our most urgent request to the President of the United States and every member of Congress is to give us the right to vote,” King Jr. said.

The crowd responded, “Yes.”

King Jr. went on to say, “Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights. Give us the ballot, and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law. We will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South and bring an end to the dastardly acts of the hooded perpetrators of violence.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first federal civil rights legislation passed since Reconstruction, authorized the government to take legal measures to prevent citizens from being denied voting rights. But it wouldn’t be until 1965 that Congress would pass the Voting Rights Act.

In March of that year, during a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama, that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” White state troopers brutally assaulted 600-some protesters. President Lyndon B. Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act that same month, when the outrage over what happened to protesters in Selma was “still fresh“; Congress passed the bill in August.

In 2013, the Supreme Court decided there was no further need for most of the Voting Rights Act.

And now here we are with a bare majority of the US Senate, including two showboating Democrats, once more blocking access to the polls as Republican state governments work overtime to ensure that they will never lose elections in the future.

It’s always, always, two steps forward and one step back in this country. And sometimes it’s two steps back. Or three.

Craig Mauger of Detroit News tweets this morning:

Stan Grot, one of the 16 “alternate” Trump electors in Michigan, told me last week that he believed an attorney from Washington, D.C., who was tied to Donald Trump, asked him to participate in the certificate signing.

That would be the phony document certifying Donald J. Trump electors as those duly chosen by Michigan voters in November 2020. Someone in federal law enforcement will be following up with Grot to obtain more detail on the who and the when of that contact with a Trump attorney. Grot’s phone records might shed light.

Mauger reports this morning:

The certificate is gaining new attention after Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Thursday night she had referred an investigation into the Trump electors’ actions to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Western District of Michigan. The Democratic attorney general specifically suggested charges of election law forgery and forgery of a public record could be considered.

“We have seen … various different false slates of electors from seven different states, which seems to be a coordinated effort between the Republican Parties in various different states,” Nessel said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

But there is more to the state’s investigation than forgery. Detroit News cites “an ongoing probe by Nessel’s office” into the events of Dec. 14, 2020 at the state capitol. “The Michigan electors have also drawn the attention of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” Mauger writes. After a “thorough review” by Nessel’s office, the state referred the matter to federal authorities. State charges remain a possibility.

Nessel appeared today on “Morning Joe” to discuss the investigation and potential charges. Her office has decided to hold off bringing charges pending review of federal authorities:

“It’s become clear to us from the work of the Jan. 6 commission,” Nessel said, “that this is really just one piece of a much larger puzzle involving not just Michigan, but multiple other states where Republican Party activists came together in their respective states and compiled this false slate of electors.”

It was not just political theater, Nessel said. They actually filed them with official authorities. There are multiple federal felonies at issue.

“Obviously, this is part of a much larger conspiracy,” Nessel said.

'Part of a much larger conspiracy': Investigation into 16 Michigan Republicans activists who may have violated both state and federal election laws. https://t.co/1UpwOZFAwD

— Dana Nessel (@dananessel) January 17, 2022

On the official Martin Luther King holiday, one should celebrate the man’s civil rights legacy. Even those who continue to oppose equality for all persons in this country will dutifully, perhaps grudgingly, recite today from King’s “Dream” speech. Count the times today people quote the line about people in this country, one day, being judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character.

If only. There are quite a few among us who have much to fear from being judged by the content of theirs. Gore Vidal wrote in Esquire in July 1961, Neal Gabler observed, that a new movement was brewing in America. Not for promoting equality, but for promoting sociopathy and calling it character.

Ayn Rand, Vidal saw, was becoming the guiding spirit of conservatism even as Black people sought for the first time since their ancestors arrived on these shores in chains to claim the full blessings of liberty that our founding documents promised and that King’s movement demanded.

Rand, Vidal wrote, “has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who hate the ‘welfare state,’ who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts.” Vidal could not possibly have seen at the time just how far the Rand cult would spread, Gabler lamented in 2016 ahead of the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as president.

Gabler wrote:

To identify what’s wrong with conservatism and Republicanism — and now with so much of America as we are about to enter the Trump era — you don’t need high-blown theories or deep sociological analysis or surveys. The answer is as simple as it is sad: There is no kindness in them.

https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/1483049093740085252?s=20

“The transformation and corruption of America’s moral values didn’t happen in the shadows. It happened in plain sight,” Gabler wrote. A few short years later, the country shambles towards autocracy in plain sight. Democracy’s enemies wrap themselves in the flag, drape themselves in red, white, and blue, and engage in medieval combat with police while professing their love of country and the rule of law. It is Black people, Black people, they cry, who are the real racists.

Today, with hands over their hard hearts, they will pledge allegiance to the ideal of liberty and justice for all. As they perform patriotism, let us recall what else King said before being assassinated for upsetting white supremacists.

Several sets of quotes are floating about, but Leonard Pitts provides a pithy few less likely to be heard at today’s ceremonies:

“Something is wrong with capitalism. Maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. We must develop programs that will drive the nation to the realization of the need for a guaranteed annual income.”

“A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.”

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a … mass effort to re-educate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”

“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting.”

“This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”

“For the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country even today is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.”

Pitts finishes his offering with one of the last lines King spoke the night before his death in Memphis, “All we say to America is: be true to what you said on paper.”

WARNING: There it is. The White Supremicist we have been pointing to. A public open call to White Supremacy grievance. He will be using the N-word soon. Watch for attacks on Covid treatment centers. #TrumpIsARacist https://t.co/35LJ06v5gL

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) January 16, 2022