Month: April 2022

Hear it. Believe it.

Good lord:

Vance described two possibilities that many on the New Right imagine—that our system will either fall apart naturally, or that a great leader will assume semi-dictatorial powers.

“So there’s this guy Curtis Yarvin, who has written about some of these things,” Vance said. Murphy chortled knowingly. “So one [option] is to basically accept that this entire thing is going to fall in on itself,” Vance went on. “And so the task of conservatives right now is to preserve as much as can be preserved,” waiting for the “inevitable collapse” of the current order.

He said he thought this was pessimistic. “I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left,” he said. “And turn them against the left. We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program.”

“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” he said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”

“And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—” he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

This is a description, essentially, of a coup.

“We are in a late republican period,” Vance said later, evoking the common New Right view of America as Rome awaiting its Caesar. “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

That’s the kind of thing Steve Bannon and his minions have been saying for years. JD Vance is running for the Senate with Trump’s endorsement and the backing of one of the richest men in the world.

This is not an anomaly. Just look at what Desantis is doing.

The ones singing are lining up to be a hot lunch

People celebrating not having to wear masks on airplanes are done with Covid. But Covid’s not done with them, at least not here in the Tar Heel State: NC sees 50% increase in COVID cases compared to last week.

If that headline doesn’t grab ya, how about this one? Even mild COVID-19 can cause your brain to shrink:

Patients hospitalised with COVID-19 are almost three times more likely than those not hospitalised to have impaired cognition. But brain scans now show that even a mild case of COVID-19 can shrink part of the brain, causing physical changes equivalent to a decade of ageing.

But freedom, huh? Or how about this?

Covid is not just a cold. I’ve never had to take my kids to a cardiologist after they had a cold.

🧵about covid and🫀issues

— Rebecca Saltzman (@beccasaltz) April 19, 2022

Saltzman tweets:

After my son developed long covid, I signed him and my daughter (who also had covid) up for an NIH study on pediatric covid outcomes. Through this study we discovered that they both have a potentially serious abnormality in their heartbeats

Specifically, they have a prolonged QT interval, which means the heart isn’t recharging properly from one heartbeat to the next. This can cause serious arrhythmias and even sudden cardiac arrest. People can literally just drop dead from this.

She links to JAMA and Lancet reports. Her kids could be damaged for life. Doctors don’t know.

I can’t explain how distressing it is to see people jubilantly ripping their masks off on planes after everything Covid has put my family through. The complete lack of regard for vulnerable members of our community is downright sociopathic.

Sociopathy got elected president in 2016.

Rex Huppke cites an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll that shows “56% of those surveyed favor requiring people on planes, trains and public transportation to wear masks, compared with 24% opposed and 20% who say they are neither in favor nor opposed.”

Not only is Huppke not pitching his masks, he’s offering helpful tips for avoiding maskless sociopaths:

1) If an unmasked traveler is about to take the seat next to you, greet your new seatmate like this: “Hi, my name is Rex Huppke. I see we’ll be seated next to each other on today’s flight and you’ve decided not to wear a face mask. I’m looking forward to spending the next two hours talking to you loudly about my testicle-tanning regimen! I heard about it from Tucker Carlson, and I have to say, my testosterone levels have never been higher. Buckle up!”

2) If the first item doesn’t work for you because you have scruples or don’t have testicles, tanned or otherwise, try a different but equally effective greeting: “Hey, great to see you. Sit down and strap in, because I’ve got some things to tell you about cryptocurrency! Are you familiar with ethereum? A lot of folks are still stuck on bitcoin, but I believe in The Flippening and think it’s just a matter of time before bitcoin maximalists get rekt, you know what I mean? I always tell people, ‘Do your own research,’ but for the next few hours, I AM ALL YOURS!”

3) Right before an unmasked passenger sits down, pull out a large binder clearly marked: “ANTIFA SUPER-SOLDIER’S GUIDE TO IN-FLIGHT SOCIALIST INDOCTRINATION.”

There’s more, but for that do your own research.

(h/t CS)

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

How do conservatives advance broadly unpopular programs?

There’s one born every minute. In the current century, no one knows that better than Donald John Trump (except his handler Vladimir Putin). Press the right buttons and people will believe anything, buy anything. Even things they neither want nor need. Ad agencies and shopping networks are built on that premise.

If people do not want what you’re selling, catch them at their most vulnerable moments when they are frightened and anxious. Tell them there is no alternative (TINA). That’s Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” about disaster capitalism. No good crisis should go to waste. It works on a national and global scale. Players who are prepositioned know that the time to ram through unpopular policies is when public opposition is in disarray.

And if there is no crisis lying around, make one. Moral panics work like mini-shocks. They both galvanize right-wing voters and create profit opportunities for capitalists.

Dan Pfeiffer’s newsletter points to the effort to use the moral panic over discussing race and gender differences in schools to advance the effort to privatize public schools. “ALEC has theirs. Now they want yours,” I wrote back in 2011:

The impulse among conservatives to privatize everything involving public expenditures – schools included – is no longer just about shrinking government, lowering their taxes and eliminating funding sources for their political competitors. Now it’s about their opportunity costs, potential profits lost to not-for-profit public-sector competitors. It’s bad enough that government “picks their pockets” to educate other people’s children. But it’s unforgivable that they’re not getting a piece of the action. Now they want to turn public education into private profits too.

The answer lies in this question: What is the largest portion of the annual budget in all 50 states? Public education funding is required by state constitutions. The animus toward public education isn’t really about big government or what’s taught there. It’s about corporate America’s insatiable appetite. Wherever there is a nice, recession-proof stream of public money, investors want their cut, if not all of it.

Pfeiffer links to this video: What’s the end-game of Critical Race Theory fear-mongering?

NEW: What’s the end-game of Critical Race Theory fear-mongering?

The complete privatization of public schools. Right-wing groups are stoking racist fears to make a profit.

We spoke with a former Koch-network lobbyist & a current teacher to investigate the war on public schools. pic.twitter.com/v5kpJKg7b0

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) April 13, 2022

Milton Freidman’s influence, the Koch network, and other capitalist gluttons.

“Most of their policies are broadly unpopular,” says Charles Siler, a former lobbyist for the Goldwater Institute in Arizona. “One of the biggest challenges I faced was how do we take these really unpopular ideas and frame them as broadly popular.”

Couch them as about parental rights, maybe? Name your culture war du jour.

“This isn’t a conspiracy theory. They admitted it,” says Siler who now teaches. “They used the furor surrounding racial equality to sneak in school privatization.”

And to siphon off public funds into education entrepreneurs’ pockets. Into charter and voucher schools.

“Critical race theory is just the latest vehicle for the right-wing’s grievance industrial complex,” says Siler. “The whole plan is to break public schools, to break these community institutions, a place where we all work and can see the power of collective action in a very real and meaningful way in our own lives.”

Hell no. Not if the right people’s pockets are not being lined. And I mean “right” people. Their foot soldiers are dupes and pawns.

In “Is Our Children Learning Too Much?” Christopher Hooks writes:

The moral panic is also useful if your goal is to weaken public education in favor of parochial and other private schools. Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, has helped kick-start and nurture the fight over CRT and school “pornography” in the past several years. In early April, he spoke at Hillsdale College, in Michigan, and outlined a teleology of his crusade. “To get universal school choice, you really need to operate from the position of universal public school distrust,” he said. “In order for people to take significant action, you have to make them feel like they have something at stake.” Offering parents a taxpayer-funded choice among public and private schools has been a hard sell, in Texas and elsewhere. Perhaps calling school librarians pedophiles will do the trick.

It’s a scam and a violation of the social contract written into the country’s very DNA. But not capitalism’s DNA.

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You know how to sabotage an economy. A true Republican.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s short-lived policy of requiring state troopers to conduct secondary inspections of trucks crossing into Texas from Mexico cost the United States almost $9 billion in just 10 days, Axios reported Tuesday.

The policy, which Abbott enacted on April 6, snarled truck traffic at the border and led to a protest by Mexican truckers that stopped trade at some major crossings. On April 15, Abbott ended the double inspections, for which he’d received withering criticism from both sides of the border and the aisle, after striking deals with the governors of the four Mexican states that border Texas.

Per Axios, Abbott implemented the policy “in response to the Biden administration’s announcement that it would lift Title 42,” a Trump-era public health policy that denied migrants entry into the United States.

An analysis by the Perryman Group showed that the U.S. lost an estimated $8.97 billion in GDP due to delays at the border, while Texas alone lost $4.23 billion.

Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat contesting Abbott’s bid for a third term as governor, slammed Abbott for his costly gambit. “Abbott jacked up inflation, increased prices at our stores, hurt Texas businesses, killed jobs, and shut down billions of dollars in trade … Abbott says this financial pain is necessary. I say electoral consequences are necessary,” he tweeted Tuesday.

Sadly, I suspect Texas Republicans are cheering Abbot for hurting their economy. Owning the libs is more important than anything.

Boo hoo hoo

Piers Morgan is a pusillanimous jackass but every once in a while he does something interesting. This is interesting:

Trump walks out of explosive Piers Morgan interview after being pressed on 2020 election https://t.co/1DtLWzm7Uq pic.twitter.com/iODHPDjDTm

— New York Post (@nypost) April 20, 2022

Former President Donald Trump blasted Piers Morgan as “very dishonest” while walking out of an interview with the TV presenter and Post columnist after being pressed on his claims that he lost the 2020 presidential election due to voter fraud.

The 45th president became increasingly frustrated with Morgan’s questions, at one point calling him a “fool,” according to clips of the sit down.

“I think I’m a very honest man … much more honest than you, actually,” Trump said at one point. 

“Really?” Morgan asked. 

“Yeah,” Trump responded. 

Elsewhere, Morgan told Trump the 2020 vote “was a free and fair election. You lost.”

“Only a fool would think that,” Trump shot back. 

“You think I’m a fool?” Morgan retorted.

“I do now, yeah,” Trump responded. 

Lol. He just called the vast majority of Americans fools.

This is, of course, hilariously ironic since he famously stalked off the set of his show in Britain after being called out for trashing Meghan Markle. Still, it’s good to see someone just say to Trump’s face: “you lost.” It appears he didn’t like it.

“With respect, you haven’t produced the hard evidence,” Morgan said of Trump’s claims as the former president attempted to interject.

“I don’t think you’re real,” the former president said to Morgan, later turning to the production crew and calling his interviewer “very dishonest.” 

The preview clip ended with Trump getting out of his seat and ordering production to “turn the camera off.” 

“Very dishonest,” he added while walking away.

Describing the experience in a Thursday column for The Post, Morgan revealed he also told the former president that he blamed Trump’s refusal to admit defeat for the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. 

“Then you’re a fool! And you haven’t studied,” Trump responded, according to Morgan. 

Morgan recounted that Trump called him a fool six more times in the interview, described Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as “stupid” and his own vice president, Mike Pence, as “foolish and weak.” 

You’ve got to love this:

The host added that Trump initially tried to end the interview by declaring “That’s it!” but remained in his seat to discuss a recent hole-in-one he scored while playing golf. After that discussion, the former president stood up with a “hateful” look and ordered the crew members to turn the cameras off. 

Of course, Piers couldn’t be happier. They are two sides of the same coin.

Update: Oh boy. Piers writes up the backstory. Lol!

“Piers, we have a problem.”

I was standing inside the gilded confines of President Donald Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago private members’ resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and one of my production team was brandishing a document with a concerned look on his face.

“What’s that?” I asked, bemused.

“This is a collection of quotes you’ve apparently said about President Trump in the past two years. Someone sent it to him in the last hour, and the quotes are not good. In fact, they’re really bad.”

I was due to start an interview with Trump in precisely eight minutes, and it was intended to be a blockbuster exclusive to rocket-launch my new global TV show, “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” on Monday, April 25.

My four-camera crew were all set up in a palatial bar, I was suited, booted, made up and had been exchanging cordial small talk with Secret Service agents designated to ensure we behaved ourselves.

But as I hurriedly scanned the three-page white paper document, my heart sank.

There were several dozen comments from me, taken from columns I’d written and interviews I’d given, in which I was savagely critical of Trump’s conduct in the last year of his presidency, from his woeful handling of the coronavirus pandemic to his refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election, and the appalling January 6 riot at the Capitol that followed.

Whoever sent it knew exactly what they were doing.

These were by far the worst things I’d ever said about a man with whom I’d been friends for 15 years, but I felt they were justified when I said them, and I still do now.

In the suddenly very chilly light of a sun-kissed Florida afternoon, however, they made distinctly unhelpful reading.

“Is he going to cancel the interview?” I asked, trying not to panic.

”I don’t know,” came the reply. “But he is VERY upset.”

”See if I can go and talk to him about it,” I suggested.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in Trump’s office.

Normally, he’d greet me with a cheery smile and the words, “How’s my champ?,” because I was his first “Celebrity Apprentice” on the series that made him a TV superstar.

But this time, there were no such welcoming niceties.

He was staring at me across his desk with undisguised fury, clutching the document titled “Piers Morgan Comments About President Trump.”

”What the f–k IS this?” he snarled.

Then he began slowly reading out some of the quotes.

“Trump’s a supreme narcissist …”

Pause.

“His pathetic antics in the past few weeks since losing the election in November have been utterly contemptible.”

Pause.

”Trump’s now too dangerous, he’s morphed into a monster that I no longer recognize as someone I considered to be a friend and thought I knew.”

Pause.

“He’s now acting like a Mafia mob boss.”

Pause.

“And all because Donald’s stupendous ego couldn’t accept losing and sent him nuts.”

Each time he paused, he peered over the document at me, with mounting rage in his eyes.

When I won Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice” show in 2008, his final words to me as he announced the result were: “Piers, you’re a vicious guy. I’ve seen it. You’re tough. You’re smart. You’re probably brilliant. I’m not sure. You’re certainly not diplomatic. But you did an amazing job. And you beat the hell out of everybody … you’re the Celebrity Apprentice.”

When he won the 2016 election, I returned the favor by sending him a card saying: “Well, Donald, you’re a vicious guy. I’ve seen it. You’re tough. You’re smart. You’re probably brilliant. I’m not sure. You’re certainly not diplomatic. But you did an amazing job. And you beat the hell out of everybody … you’re the President of the United States.”

So we had a reasonable understanding of each other’s personalities, good and bad.

And it wasn’t like we’d never had a spat.

He unfollowed me on Twitter (he only followed around 50 accounts at the time, so this didn’t go unnoticed!) in April 2020 after he’d proposed using household disinfectant to fight COVID, and I’d hammered him in a column for spreading “bats–t crazy coronavirus cure theories.”

But a few months later, he called me for a lengthy chat before the election and chuckled about how “mean and nasty” I’d been about him, so I mistakenly assumed he didn’t really mind me verbally whacking him from time to time.

Wrong!

I’d never seen him so livid or felt so uncomfortable in his presence as I did right now in his office.

He was almost foaming at the mouth and kept shaking his head slowly and menacingly at me, like Don Corleone when he felt he’d been disrespected.

There was no point in trying to deny the quotes.

I’d said them, and I’d meant them.

“I’ve always been critical of you when I’ve felt you deserved it,” I eventually said, “but as you know, I’ve also written and said many supportive things about you too. This is a one-sided hatchet job designed to stop you doing our interview.”

“It’s definitely a hatchet job,” he retorted, “ON ME!”

Then he read another line: “January 7, 2021 – President Trump needs to be removed from office. As soon as possible … through new emergency articles of impeachment, which would have the additional benefit of barring him from ever running for the presidency again.”

”REMOVED FROM OFFICE?!” he spat. “BARRED FROM EVER RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AGAIN?!”

Then he threw down the document and threw me a look of withering contempt.

”I thought we were friends?” he shouted. “This is so disloyal! After all I’ve done for you? Why would you say all this about me?”

“I thought what you did was wrong,” I replied, feeling myself beginning to sweat.

This wasn’t going well.

It looked for sure like Trump was about to can the interview, which would have been a massive waste of time and money for me and our team and leave me an even more massive hole for the first show.

I was desperately thinking of some way to salvage things.

”I don’t intend our interview to be confrontational,” I said. “A lot of time has passed since I said those things, and a lot has happened in the meantime.”

“Why should I do it at all?” he scoffed. “You’re not real. You’re a fake.”

“No, I’m just brutally honest.”

“DIS-honest!”

”You didn’t make me your Celebrity Apprentice because I’m a shrinking violet who sits on the fence or doesn’t say what he really thinks.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds, his eyes boring into mine with all the warmth of an Arctic glacier.

It was time to change the mood music.

”I’d love to talk about your recent golf hole-in-one,” I stammered. “Your playing partner Ernie Els was raving about it.”

Trump sat bolt upright.

”He was? Where?”

“In a newspaper interview I read. He said it was a brilliant shot and you played really well.”

“I did, I did.”

“Was that your first hole-in-one?”

“No! I’ve had seven!”

Seven?

Lolololol!!!

This claim seemed highly implausible. (I’m a keen golfer and only had one. Most amateurs haven’t even had that.) But this wasn’t a good moment to fact-check him about his sporting prowess. 

”Amazing,” I replied. “Congrats!”

Suddenly, Trump clapped his hands.

“OK, I guess I’ll still do the interview. I don’t know why, honestly, but I’ll see you down there.”

My extremely fractious audience was over, and I felt a huge wave of relief as I headed back to my team.

”How was he?” asked my executive producer, Winnie Dunbar-Nelson, who’d flown from London to oversee the interview.

”He’s very annoyed,” I said, “more annoyed than I’ve ever seen him. Spitting blood, in fact. But he’s going to do it.”

Ten minutes later, President Trump arrived in the interview room, and acted like nothing had happened as we posed for smiling photos together. He was even charm personified to Winnie, whom he remembered from three previous presidential interviews we’d taped for my old show, “Good Morning Britain,” in Davos, onboard Air Force One and inside the Churchill War Rooms.

But I could sense he was still very wound up, and there was none of the usual bonhomie between us that I was used to in our many previous encounters.

I’d been promised 20 minutes and feared he would cut that down to punish me.

But in the end, I got 75 minutes, by far the longest time I’d ever had with him on camera, and it was a fascinating, often riveting, sometimes hilarious series of exchanges with arguably the world’s most famous person as we talked about everything from Ukraine, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and nuclear weapons, to the royals, transgender athletes, Twitter and Joe Biden.

For the first hour or so, it was a perfectly normal interview, and we even shared a few laughs.

Trump displayed the extremely forthright style and brash humor that first propelled him into the White House, and certainly showed no sign of losing any of his fabled energy.

I also agreed with him about a number of issues, as I have done in the past.

I’ve never been tribal or partisan about Trump — of the 100 or so columns I wrote about him during his presidency, around half were positive, half negative. 

But things took a dramatic downward turn when I finally brought up his refusal to accept defeat in 2020 and the appalling scenes on January 6.

I told him I believe he lost the supposedly “rigged, stolen” election, I repeatedly pointed out his failure to produce any evidence of the widespread voter fraud he insists occurred to rob him of his presidency, and I blamed his refusal to admit defeat for the deadly riots at the Capitol.

”Then you’re a FOOL!” he sneered. “And you haven’t studied!”

He was back to the furious Trump he’d been in his office and branded me a fool six more times, in between calling Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “stupid,” and his former vice president, Mike Pence, “foolish and weak.”

Our collective crime was that none of us agree he had the election stolen.

Now abandoning any pretense at cordiality, Trump ranted that he was far more honest than I, and again sneered that I wasn’t “real” before haranguing me for exceeding our 20 minutes, which was particularly disingenuous given that during all our previous interviews, he’d invariably decided exactly how long he wanted to keep talking.

[…]

Apparently, he was later heard denouncing me as a “scumbag” and saying he wished he’d never done the interview.

Morgan goes on to speculate that he person who sent Trump that list was Nigel Farage, who works for a rival TV network now. And he hopes Trump will do more interviews, which he probably will.

Oy Vey.

They will leave no stone unturned

With the good possibility that the Democrats may lose congress in 2023, it is more urgent than ever that they do what they can to fix our electoral system before the Republicans take over. Otherwise, 2024 is likely to be the final breaking point for our democracy.

This article in Politico runs down yet another flaw in our system that could easily be exploited by a party that has shown it’s more than willing to do it:

Congress is right to address vulnerabilities in our election process. But reformers can’t simply fight the last war if they truly want to protect the presidency. When counting the results of the 2024 presidential election, Trump’s supporters won’t control the vice presidency like they did in 2020. Hence, if they want to try and seize the White House again, they will have to use new strategies that use those political institutions they do control.

At present, a House majority is perhaps the one thing Trump’s supporters seem most likely to run during the 2024 presidential election. But that alone might be enough to steal the presidency, unless and until Congress says otherwise.

Under current law, a simple majority in the House of Representatives could not only derail the process for counting electoral votes but would also appoint the person who becomes president if and when that process fails. If Congress wants to prevent this from happening, it needs to look past the Electoral Count Act to another area of law that reformers have yet to address: that governing presidential succession.

This disturbing scenario has its origins in the process that the Constitution sets out for determining who becomes president following a general election. The 12th Amendment requires that the vice president, in his or her capacity as president of the Senate, open the electoral votes received from state electors “in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives,” at which point the votes “shall then be counted.” To satisfy this requirement, Congress has traditionally convened a joint session where the House and Senate sit together to review the electoral votes and debate any issues. Once the count is finalized, the vice president reads the results to those assembled and thereby establishes who has qualified to become the official president-elect and vice president-elect.

This joint session is where Trump supporters hoped to turn the 2020 election results in his favor, specifically by having legislators object to some states’ electoral votes and urging then-Vice President Mike Pence to abuse his authority to change the final count. When Pence refused, pro-Trump protesters were enraged and soon began storming the U.S. Capitol building to disrupt the proceedings. This is why reformers in Congress are now focused on overhauling the Electoral Count Act, which regulates the procedures at this joint session: so as to make it harder, if not impossible, for others to manipulate the joint session in this way in the future. But none of the proposals currently on the table address the more fundamental question of what happens if the joint session never takes place.

The Electoral Count Act states that the House and Senate “shall meet” to count the electoral votes at a specific date and time in the years following presidential elections. But there are good reasons to doubt whether Congress can compel the House and Senate to take such a step; notably, the Constitution empowers each individual chamber, not Congress as a whole, to “determine the Rules of its Proceedings.” Legislators recognized this possibility shortly after the Electoral Count Act was enacted. This is why they continued to have both chambers vote on whether to enter into each joint session, a practice that dates back to the first counting of electoral votes in 1789.

Of course, a simple majority of either chamber — or just 41 members of the Senate, if one senator were to filibuster — could defeat the concurrent resolution that establishes a joint session. Alternatively, a majority of either chamber could simply refuse to attend and thereby prevent the number of attendees from reaching the majority that the Constitution requires for each chamber to have a “Quorum to do Business.”

There are certain internal House and Senate rules that might make this more difficult to accomplish, including those that allow a minority of members to compel the attendance of absent peers. But the House, at least, adopts its rules just a few days before the electoral votes are counted, meaning a House majority planning to derail the joint session could simply amend or repeal any House rules that might stand in its way. A majority of the Senate could similarly amend its rules using the so-called “nuclear option,” as it’s done twice in the past few years in order to reduce the number of votes needed to end debate on nominations.

Some members of Congress who wish to proceed with the joint session in spite of these efforts may argue that a quorum from each chamber is not necessary to satisfy the 12th Amendment. They may also try and use the complicated procedures for making objections under the Electoral Count Act to prevent the joint session from recognizing a lack of quorum. But even if these efforts were to succeed, finalizing the electoral vote count without a quorum from both chambers present could, at a minimum, raise serious constitutional doubts about the results.

The more responsible reading of the law may well be that such circumstances simply don’t satisfy the 12th Amendment’s requirement that the electoral votes be opened and counted “in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives.” But this would in turn leave the country without a president-elect or vice president-elect to assume office when the incumbent administration’s term ends on Jan. 20.

The 20th Amendment gives Congress the authority to regulate what happens next, which it’s done through the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. That law sets out a line of succession in the event that both the presidency and vice presidency become vacant. Specifically, it makes the speaker of the House first in line for the acting presidency, followed by the president pro tempore of the Senate and then the members of the incumbent president’s cabinet. So long as they meet the requirements for becoming president and resign from their current role, the next person in this line of succession serves as the acting president until the winners of the election are determined or someone higher in the chain of succession becomes eligible.

Putting the speaker of the House at the top of this list, however, creates some perverse incentives for the House majority. The House elects its speaker on the basis of a majority vote at the beginning of each Congress, which is just days before the joint session to count electoral votes in the years following general elections. And while every speaker to date has been a member of the House, this isn’t legally required; a majority of the House may in fact choose whoever they want as speaker and thereby make that person first in line for the presidency.

Hard-line GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene recently underscored what this might mean in practice when they suggested that the House might select Trump as speaker if Republicans were to retake the majority in 2022. But the scary truth is that, if Republicans also win a House majority in 2024, they would not have to stop there. A Republican House majority could at that point not only elect Trump as speaker but refuse to participate in the joint session to count electoral votes, thereby preventing the selection of a president-elect or vice president-elect. This would leave the presidency vacant come Jan. 20 — a vacancy that Speaker Trump would then fill by operation of the Presidential Succession Act. And while this appointment would be temporary, Trump would remain there so long as the same House majority refused to finalize the electoral vote count and determine the actual winner. Trump said this week that he wasn’t interested in becoming speaker if Republicans take the House in November. But he might have a different opinion in 2024 if doing so becomes a stepping stone back to the White House.

To be certain, this scenario raises a number of unprecedented legal and procedural questions that might impact the outcome. But the possibility is credible enough to be taken seriously.

Nor should it be seen as politically beyond the pale. Disrupting the process for counting electoral votes is not so different from what 139 House Republicans did in 2021 when they voted against accepting the 2020 election results on the basis of unproven allegations of electoral fraud. Furthermore, a general election has produced a president of one party and a House of the other no fewer than nine times since the end of World War II, suggesting future House majorities may well see political advantage in such a step.

Fortunately, the laws that make this scenario possible are not written in stone. Amending the 12th Amendment is almost certainly a bridge too far, but revising the Presidential Succession Act is well within Congress’ reach and warrants the attention of reformers.

An easy fix might focus on Trump himself by disqualifying individuals who have previously held or been a candidate for the presidency — or even those who have been impeached by the House, a condition that could already disqualify members of the president’s cabinet — from the line of succession. But a House majority could still appoint another candidate of its choice that isn’t disqualified by these conditions.

Alternatively, Congress might remove the House speaker and Senate president pro tempore from the line of succession altogether. Some experts have already endorsed this option as a means of avoiding separate constitutional questions as to whether Article II of the Constitution allows legislative officers to be in the line of presidential succession for cases of death, disability or resignation. But handing the presidency to incumbent cabinet officials might pose its own perverse incentives, particularly if they are of the same political party as the House majority.

To truly reduce the incentive for manipulation, Congress needs to insulate the line of presidential succession in cases of failed elections from partisan preferences. One way to do this would be to limit the line of succession to non-partisans, such as senior career civil servants. Alternatively, Congress could assign the acting presidency at random from a pool of qualified individuals or rotate it between several such individuals over time. Any of these mechanisms would make it all but impossible for a House majority to know that interfering with the electoral vote count would hand the presidency over to its co-partisans, thereby removing their incentive to do so.

If the experience of the 2020 election has shown us anything, it’s that the rules and traditions that have long governed our country are more fragile than they may seem. Congress needs to take the threat to our democratic system seriously. Doing so requires that they not just fix yesterday’s problems but look ahead and address other vulnerabilities before they can be capitalized upon.

Yikes. If you think they would never go this far, I don’t think you’re paying attention. They are getting more radical by the day. By 2024, Trump will have spent four years relentlessly hammering the lie that he was robbed of the presidency in 2020 and his supporters will be primed to demand that the party ensures that it will not happen again. The GOP representatives are highly unlikely to defy them.

Be like Irv. Knock on the door.

This thread from Tom Junod is well worth reading and the documentary he discusses sounds like something we all need to see. It’s important to be reminded that there is good in people. It’s so easy to forget:

A woman is raped by a football player. She testifies against him and lives in isolation in the freshman dorm. One night, there is knock on her door. She opens it, and another football player fills it. “Hello,” he says. “My name is Irv Pankey, and I believe everything you say.”

When @pinepaula and I were working on #Untold, our story about Todd Hodne and his crimes at Penn State 4 decades ago, many people asked us a question about the coaches, cops and players who learned about Hodne in real-time: “What would you have had them do?”

Irv Pankey is our answer.

One of 12 African-American players on @PennStateFball team in 1978, Irv saw in Betsy Sailor something of his own isolation. He thought, “She does not deserve to be a pariah” and went to her door. He said “You will never have to walk on this campus alone again.”

He is the only player to have done so, though he eventually found others to follow his example. He changed the life of a brave woman shattered by a two-hour sexual assault at knifepoint, a woman who forevermore called Irv Pankey “my guardian angel.”

Betsy Sailor and Irv Pankey graduated and went their separate ways, Betsy to a long career in HR and Irv to the Los Angeles Rams. They did not see each other again for more than 40 years. Last September, our story #Untold brought them back together.

Today, “Betsy & Irv,” the film @nicole_noren made for @ESPNFilms from their reunion in State College premieres on @ESPNPlus. It features Betsy Sailor and Irv Pankey, now in their 60s, telling their story. It is a film as beautiful and luminous as its heroes.

I was in that room and did those interviews. I was there when Betsy spoke of calling her mother to tell her she had been raped. I was there when Irv once again knocked on Betsy’s door and time went away. I will never forget and if you watch “Betsy & Irv” neither will you.

“What would you have had them do?” is more than a rhetorical question, because it has an answer. Be a helper. Be a hero. Be like Irv Pankey. Knock on the door. Believe.

What would you have had them do? Here is Irv Pankey’s answer: “I had to go get her.” 1

Here is the trailier for nicole_noren’s beautiful film. The trailer is just a minute long, and yet you can’t miss the light it shines, the light *they* shine: “Betsy & Irv.” End.

Originally tweeted by Tom Junod (@TomJunod) on April 20, 2022.‘

Sometimes, basic human decency takes priority. Not to mention logic and common sense.

If you aren’t on Twitter or Facebook you probably missed the brouhaha yesterday about a Washington Post story on a right wing troll who spends her days harassing LGBT teachers online and trying to get them fired from their jobs. It’s important because the assault on educators and LGBT people in general is growing acute and it’s important to pay attention.

Alex Pareene does the best job of breaking down the issue and pointing to some of the fallacies that were overwhelming the issue yesterday on social media:

On Tuesday, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz published a story about a repulsive creep who uses her large online following to, essentially, subject random LGBTQ people (and especially trans people) to harassment, and worse. The piece is meant to help explain who is behind the right’s furious anti-trans moral panic, how the right’s propaganda machine finds the “main characters” that help stoke that moral panic, and how this creep used that propaganda machine to grow the following that now helps provide her with new people to feed into the meat grinder. 

So, naturally, much of the Twitter debate about the story was about Media Ethics, because Lorenz knocked on the creep’s door.

It remains a sadly common belief among many journalists that “regular people” have misconceptions about journalism and the news gathering process that can be cleared up with greater transparency and better media literacy education. I think most people have essentially no opinion on the news gathering process. I imagine they think of journalists, when they think of journalists at all, as the people yelling questions at mayors, shouting over the din of exploding flash bulbs, while the mayors sort of wave their hands and say they have “total faith” in their police departments to, say, apprehend The Penguin, or investigate themselves for shooting an unarmed teenager.

Or people in big coats standing on the sides of rain-slicked highways gesturing broadly at ten-car pile ups. You know, news.

A related belief people in the news business sometimes express is that, because the profession has done such a poor job explaining its methods, its ethical codes, and its bright lines, sometimes people become alarmed or upset when they witness what are actually common reporting practices, especially around tracking down and identifying sources, subjects, victims, and wrongdoers. This one is closer to the mark. Journalism can be exploitative and invasive and grubby. There’s this whole book about it. 

In this case, though, the thing that happened was that information was gathered in basically the simplest way possible, deemed newsworthy, and put in a newspaper. This is what many, many people, so many people, tried to explain, over and over again, to everyone who was mad about it.

Ben Collins, a smart reporter and by all appearances a conscientious one, did one of the better versions of this sort of careful explanation of the reporting process that led to this story. If you want an explanation that you can send to a decent person, send them his thread.

Say there are two women with the same, very specific name.

They live in the same exact neighborhood.

One is a TikTok influencer. Nice family, cute kids, loves a good handbag.

One runs an anti-LGBT TikTok aggregator. She’s a regular on Tucker Carlson—but never shows her face.

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 19, 2022

But throughout the day, for some reason, people kept trying to make their own versions of this argument, only geared at convincing non-decent people. Everyone was basically standing in the mouth of a pipe, on top of a dam, facing Tommy Lee Jones, growling “my colleague didn’t violate journalistic ethics,” only Tommy Lee Jones was Sartre’s Anti-Semite. 

If you are attempting to persuade this creep’s defenders, specifically, and not a general audience, that what Lorenz did was ethical, and that the creep’s identity is newsworthy, you have made a category error. These people on this ascendant right don’t just have different ideas about the role and function of journalism; they don’t just believe journalists are biased liberals; they don’t just believe the media is too hostile to conservatives; they are hostile to the concept of journalism itself. As in, uncovering things dutifully and carefully and attempting to convey your findings to the public honestly. They don’t want that and don’t like it and are endeavoring to end it as a common practice. You are debating logic and facts with frothing bigots with a bone-deep opposition to your entire project.1

This new right fundamentally doesn’t want “newsgathering” to happen. They want a chaotic information stream of unverifiable bullshit and context collapse and propaganda. Their backers, the people behind the whole project, are philosophically and materially opposed to the idea that true things should be uncovered and verified and disseminated publicly about, well, them, and their projects. This may have started as a politically opportunistic war against particular outlets and stories, but it has quickly blossomed into a worldview. It’s an ideologically coherent opposition to the liberal precepts of verifiability and transparency, and the holders of those precepts are too invested in them to understand what their enemy is doing. The creep’s account, everyone in the press should understand, is the model for what they will be replaced with.

It’s not even that the right needs people to lose “trust” in traditional news organizations to win elections or start wars. That already happened and they won. It’s more like they need people to just randomly trust whatever bullshit feels right, to get them to fall for scams and believe propaganda. In the grandest dreams of the pathetic people doing most of the unpaid work, the end game is the eradication of “deviance” from public life. And that is a real threat that the people opposing this should take more seriously. Upstairs from them are the people whose job it is to make sure old people set up recurring payments. Upstairs from them, the goal is that no one finds the boss’s shell companies or offshore accounts. The mission is mainly to prevent, stigmatize, and delegitimize the discovery and confirmation and dissemination of information about how a few people got their money, where they keep it, and what they do with it—like spending it on subsidizing bigotry about trans people and getting gay teachers fired.

But that is all very “political” and thus our most distinguished journalists will be very allergic to hearing it. All I would like my unbiased, objective, nonpartisan reporter friends to understand is that they are debating with people that consider them the enemy not just in a partisan sense but in an existential one. The only correct posture to take in response is to make yourself an existential threat to their movement.

He’s right. Trying to defend basic journalism against attacks by people who think the media is “the enemy of the people” is a waste of breath.

But it’s also true that one of the ways some people try to obfuscate their true motives and ideology is by couching their commentary as “media criticism” rather than directly addressing the issue. I’m fairly sure I’ve done it myself over the years although I do try to resist the impulse. Lately it has become much more common, particularly among a certain faction that has made the transition from left to right but are afraid to admit it. This story is an excellent illustration of that phenomenon.

The woman who was intimidating LGBT teachers has a huge following and the attention of important right wing figures who acted upon what she was doing. Once you reach that level of influence and notoriety, particularly when it comes because you are doxxing, harassing and attempting to deny people their livelihoods, you have no leg to stand on when you complain about having your identity revealed because it endangers your employment. It’s fatuous on its face. Media ethics are beside the point.

… but even more what they will do if they lose

Mike Allen of Axios, one of D.C.’s most venerated purveyors of conventional wisdom, dropped a big bomb last week when he wrote that Democrats who study polling are panicking over the possibility that Donald Trump could win the trifecta in 2024 and end up with a “compliant filibuster-proof Senate majority in January 2025” courtesy of what data analyst David Shor, best known for his “popularism” theory, predicted would be “a minority of the vote. 

How’s that for a cherry on top of a shit-sundae? 

Allen pointed to a piece by Yale’s Simon Bazelon who accuses Democrats of “sleepwalking into disaster,” noting that a close presidential election in 2024 might take out Democratic Sens. Jon Tester in Montana, Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, Debbie Stabenow in Michigan and Jackie Rosen in Nevada. Allen writes, “in all those states, hardcore liberalism is a tough sell,” as if the Democrats are unaware of that and these candidates know nothing about the states they will be running in.

Yes, of course, it will be a tough map for Democrats in 2024 because all those incumbents are up for re-election in what are, with the exception of West Virginia, battleground states which by definition are well … battles. Of course, that also means these same states are tough for Republicans. After all, they all lost in 2018.

The assumption in Allen’s piece, and others like this one from Ross Douthat, is that not only is the midterm election this November going to be a rout for Democrats because of an inevitable backlash against media-hyped “hardcore liberalism,” 2024 is already in the bag for the GOP as well.

This November is a lot closer and the usual midterm dynamics are apparent, so it’s not ridiculous to be worried about the Democrats losing control of Congress. But to assume Donald Trump has already won the 2024 election because of the party’s alleged “hardcore liberalism” is the predictable stale beltway dogma about politics in “Real America” which has never been an accurate analysis of why people actually vote. We should, however, be concerned that the Democrats will lose the 2024 election for an entirely different reason, and, in fact, every Democrats’ hair should be on fire. There is an excellent possibility that they will be shut out in 2024, but it won’t be because they lost the vote.

We have all heard about Trump’s followers in various states making moves to strike Democrats from elections boards and run for secretaries of state to oversee future elections. We know that Trump himself is still obsessively pushing the Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 election — and that nearly 70% of Republicans believe him. We have learned recently that members of Congress were actively involved in helping him do that, even in one case, asking the White House chief of staff for talking points to help make the case. The result of all this is to make the majority of Republican voters accept election results, as Trump openly declared back in 2016, only if the GOP wins.

Additionally, I think everyone is rightfully concerned that there will be another insurrection and that it will be much worse if that happens. It’s the sword of Damocles hanging over our entire democracy at this point and it’s hard to see how that problem can easily be fixed.

Unfortunately, that’s not all. The New York Times reported this week that Trump’s failed coup of 2020 is ongoing with action in various states to decertify the 2020 election and re-install Trump into the White House. Yes, it is preposterous, but it’s happening in a number of states with tremendous pressure being brought to bear on candidates and legislators to back up the idea that this is a legitimate process. The reporting indicates that many of these state office holders understand that it is ridiculous but they are signing on to the idea as another way to curry favor with Trump and his henchmen.

This effort is being led by John Eastman, the lawyer who proposed that the vice president can simply refuse to accept the electoral college votes and send it to the House of Representatives where a quirk in the Constitution would allow Trump to be certified for a second term. The judge who is overseeing the production of emails subpoenaed by the January 6th Committee referred to Eastman’s plan as “a coup in search of a legal theory” and proclaimed that the documents show Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct Congress. Apparently, Eastman remains undeterred and is still at it. According to the Times:

The fringe legal theory that Mr. Eastman and Mr. Epshteyn are promoting — which has been widely dismissed — holds that state lawmakers have the power to choose how electors are selected, and they can change them long after the Electoral College has certified votes if they find fraud and illegality sufficiently altered the outcome. The theory has surfaced in multiple states, including several that are political battlegrounds.

The Times characterized this project as being a way for some of the Trump grift crew, like Steve Bannon, Boris Epshtyn and Michael Flynn to remain relevant, but also as a way to keep the fervid True Believers agitated and engaged. All this handwringing over the 2020 election serves to reinforce the notion that the election system is entirely corrupt and untrustworthy, which is a real problem.

But that isn’t the most concerning aspect of this project.

The article quotes formerly highly respected conservative judge Michael Luttig making the most salient observation about what this is all about: “Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.” He calls it “the clearest and most present danger to our democracy.” Lutting is anything but a “hardcore liberal” so you would think that the Republican establishment would be a bit nervous to hear something like that from a bonafide arch conservative like him. But they aren’t. They are letting this happen because it benefits them.

There are many things they may not like about Donald Trump, but this isn’t one of them. After all, if for some reason, Donald Trump doesn’t legitimately win in 2024 and therefore has no coattails, the congressional elections in all those battleground states could be very close. If people believe that presidential elections can be overturned by state legislatures, there’s no reason that other races shouldn’t have the same privilege.

So sure, Democrats should be worried about 2024 but they need to worry about what the Republicans will do if they lose just as much as what they’ll do if they win.

Salon

We will soon find out who gave Ukrainians fighter aircraft

This bit of news from the Washington Post leaves me asking questions (emphasis mine):

President Biden approved a new $800 million aid package last week that dramatically expanded the scope of weapons Washington has supplied to Kyiv. The package included 155 mm howitzers — a serious upgrade in long-range artillery to match Russian systems — 40,000 artillery rounds and 11 Soviet-designed Mi-17 helicopters.

The latter fit well with Ukraine’s existing arsenal because those use a similar operating system as the Mi-8 helicopters that Kyiv has used for decades, said Alexey Muraviev, a national security expert at Australia’s Curtin University.

“We do the best we can with each package to tailor it to the need at the time, and now the need has changed,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday. “The war has changed, because now the Russians have prioritized the Donbas area, and that’s a whole different level of fighting, a whole different type of fighting.”

Ukraine has also received fighter aircraft and related parts from other nations, Kirby said. He declined to specify what kind of aircraft has been supplied or which countries have provided them.

We are sure to find out in due course which country(s) supplied which specific aircraft. In the meantime, David Ignatius outlines Russia’s apparent strategy for conquering the Donbas region. Ancient stuff. Classic. The problem is they are fighting Ukrainians on their own turf:

The Russians have every advantage in this fight but one: It’s not their land. Ukrainians have shown that they can mount a courageous and disciplined defense against a numerically stronger Russian force, as they did in repelling Russian attacks against the capital of Kyiv last month.

Hoping to reverse Russia’s poor showing in Round 1, President Vladimir Putin and his generals are reverting to the traditional Russian tactic of concentrating immense firepower in a limited theater of battle, and then pounding the enemy. This approach will be easier in the East, where the flat ground will enable the advancing army, and Ukrainian hit-and-run tactics are more difficult to execute.

U.S. commanders believe Russia has gathered 70 to 80 combat battalions around this eastern front to attempt what military strategists describe as a “double encirclement” of Ukrainian forces. This tactic has been used by victorious armies for centuries, ever since Hannibal famously encircled the Roman army at Cannae in 216 B.C.

So long as western allies can keep the arms flowing, Ukraine seems committed to grind the Russians as much as the Russians grind them. The problem for Russia is running out of missiles and advanced munitions that require parts supplies now embargoed.

Plus they are fighting Ukrainians.

Perhaps Joe Biden could arrange to import a few Ukrainians. Democrats don’t have the same stomach for fighting.

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.