Month: June 2022

Ron DeSantis shall henceforth ben known as Viktor Florban. On this I am firm. https://t.co/OBZjhJEMzG

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) June 3, 2022

He’s making himself very, very clear:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blocked state funding for a new Tampa Bay Rays training facility partly because the baseball team spoke out against gun violence in the wake of back-to-back gun-related massacres in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, a source familiar with the internal conversations told CNN.

Two days after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at a Texas elementary school, the Rays announced a $50,000 donation to Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization that advocates policies to prevent gun violence. The Major League Baseball team also tweeted a statement calling for action.

“This cannot be normal,” the tweet read. “We cannot become numb. We cannot look the other way. We all know, if nothing changes, nothing changes.”

It would not be the first time DeSantis has moved against a company that took a political position opposite to him. DeSantis signed a bill in April to strip Disney of its special governing status in Florida after the company publicly criticized a new state law that bans certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.

DeSantis on Friday hinted at his displeasure with the Rays’ remarks, telling reporters at a news conference that it was “inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation.” But he added, “Either way, it’s not appropriate, but we were not in a situation where use of tax dollars for a professional stadium would have been a prudent use.”

A spokeswoman for the Rays did not respond to a request for comment.

Desantis left himself an out by saying he wouldn’t have signed it anyway. But there is no doubt that corporations are getting the message loud and clear anyway:

Oh and by the way:

SCOOP: The State or Florida threatened the Special Olympics with $27.5 MILLION in fines because the organization had a vaccine requirement at its games in Orlando this weekend.

Late yesterday, the Special Olympics pulled the requirement. 1/3

— Jay O'Brien (@jayobtv) June 3, 2022

DeSantis is embracing every single culture war issue and acting on them with authoritarian power. He is the future of the Republican Party.

If you are a worker in America, your job prospects are excellent

Dean Baker has the details:

Strong Job Growth but Easing Wage Pressure

The economy added 390,000 jobs in May, while the unemployment remained unchanged at 3.6 percent for the third consecutive month. The May report showed clear evidence that the labor market is normalizing with wage growth continuing to slow.

The annualized rate of wage growth comparing the last three months (March, April, and May) with the prior three months (December, January, and February) was 4.3 percent, done from the 5.2 percent year over year increase. This is only moderately higher than the peak 3.6 percent YOY rate hit in February 2019. This means that if we are concerned about underlying inflation, rather than supply shocks, most of the Fed’s work has been done.

Share of Unemployment Due to Voluntary Quits Edges Downward

The share of unemployment due to voluntary quits edged down to 12.8 percent. This is a sign that workers perceive they have less bargaining power. It had peaked at 15.1 percent in February. It also reached levels above 15.0 percent just before the pandemic and in 2000. This is not a labor market in which workers feel totally comfortable quitting their jobs.

Hours are Also Stable

Earlier in the recovery, employers increased the length of the average workweek to a peak of 35 hours in January of 2021 from a year-round average of 34.4 hours in 2019. This presumably was a result of their difficulty in hiring workers. The average workweek has now been at 36.6 hours for the last three months. This is consistent with a story where most employers are no longer experiencing much difficulty hiring workers.

The Slowdown in Wage Growth is Widespread

The fastest wage growth in the recovery has been at the lower end of the labor market, but the slowdown is showing up here as well. The annual rate for production and non-supervisory workers was 5.1 percent comparing the last three months with the prior three months, down from 6.5 percent year over year. In hotels and restaurants it was 9.5 percent, down from 11.8 percent year over year.

Private Sector Nearly Back to Pre-Pandemic Employment Level

The private sector added 333,000 jobs in May, leaving it down by just 207,000 from its pre-pandemic level. It will likely cross this threshold in June.

Job Gains Widely Spread Across Sectors

Construction added 36,000 jobs in May, putting its employment 40,000 above the pre-pandemic level. Manufacturing added 18,000 jobs in May, leaving its employment just 17,000 below the pre-pandemic level. Air transportation and trucking added 5,700 jobs and 13,300 jobs, respectively in May, leaving employment in the sectors 6.0 percent and 4.0 percent above the pre-pandemic level.

Low Paying Nursing Homes and Child Care Centers Still Struggle to Find Workers

Nursing homes add 1,300 jobs in May, while child care centers added 1,500 jobs. Employment in both sectors is still down more than 10 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

Leisure and Hospitality Sector Adds 84,000 Jobs

The leisure and hospital sector was hardest hit by the pandemic closings. It is adding jobs at a rapid pace, but employment is still far below pre-pandemic levels. The arts and entertainment sector added 16.2k jobs, now down 211k jobs from the pre-pandemic level. Hotels and restaurants added 21.4k and 46.1k jobs, respectively. Employment in the sectors is now down by 383k and 751K jobs, respectively from pre-pandemic levels. It is worth noting that, in spite of the drop in employment, real restaurant sales are well above the pre-pandemic level.

State and Local Government Education Has Largest Job Gain in a Year

State and local government education added a total of 50.7k jobs in May. This is the largest gain since May of 2021. Employment in public education is still 287,000 below its pre-pandemic level, as schools have had trouble attracting workers. The May jump is a big step towards reversing this shortfall.

Retail Sector Shows Big Job Loss in May

The retail sector lost 60.7k jobs in May, 32.7k of this in general merchandise stores. This is consistent with reports of falling demand by Target, Amazon, and other major chains. With these chains reporting a glut of merchandise and loss of pricing power, we may soon see lower prices for many items.

Labor Force Participation Up for Prime Age Workers

The overall labor force participation rate edged up 0.1 pp to 62.3 percent, but the participation rate for prime age workers (ages 25 to 54) rose 0.2 pp to 82.6 percent, 0.5 pp below pre-pandemic peak, but above 2019 average. The rise was due to a 0.4 pp increase for prime age women (the rate for men was unchanged) to 76.6 percent, 0.3 pp below pre-pandemic peak. Clearly, there has been no “great resignation.”

Employment Rate for Blacks Edges Higher

While the unemployment rate for Blacks ticked up to 6.2 percent, their employment rate rose 0.5 pp to 59.1 percent, above the 2019 average and 0.3 pp below pre-pandemic peak.

Self-Employment Rises in May

The number of both incorporated and unincorporated self-employed rose in May. It now stands more than 1.1 million above its pre-pandemic level. Earlier in the recovery, it was plausible that many workers turned to self-employment because they were unable to get regular payroll employment, with the unemployment well under 4.0 percent, this is no longer the case. This jump in self-employment is by choice.  

Another Very Positive Employment Report

The May employment report was just about as good as could have been hoped for. It continued to show strong job growth, but also a normalizing of the labor market that should allay concerned about overheating and a wage-price spiral. Wage growth is clearly slowing, not accelerating as the wage-price spiral story would have it.

At the same time, most of the data looks very similar to the strong pre-pandemic period. Most measures of employment and labor force participation rates are near pre-pandemic peaks and above 2019 averages. While payroll employment is still below the pre-pandemic level, it is important to remember that if we add in self-employment, current levels are considerably higher.

The drop in unemployment due to quits undermines the story of an out-of-control labor market.

It used to be “jobs, jobs, jobs!” was all politicians can talk about. Now? Whatever:

Biden inherited one of the worst unemployment crises in history and we’re now at historic low levels of unemployment in a year and a half. That’s never happened, and reporting on the economy without acknowledging that is kind of absurd. https://t.co/oCTk7TbZQI

— Jesse Lee (@JesseLee46) June 2, 2022

Say it ain’t so

This Politico piece is funny. It is basically about what a dumb guy Kevin McCarthy is but it’s couching itself in a “media crit” piece. It’s kind of a cheap trick:

Is Kevin McCarthy a great big dummy?

That’s not a rhetorical question. Read between the lines of some of the coverage during McCarthy’s 15 years in Congress and you start to suspect that many folks who pay close attention to our likely next House Speaker don’t think he’s the sharpest tool in the shed.

The hints slip in, often as asides: McCarthy is “a golden retriever of a man,” “not known for being a policy wonk,” “not known for his immersion in policy details,” “not known to have a mind for policy,” “a coastal extrovert of ambiguous ideological portfolio who … would far rather talk about personalities than the tax code” and “not necessarily a policy wonk or political mastermind like his predecessors in House leadership.” His elevation would mean that “even though the fractured House Republican caucus may benefit from McCarthy’s networking abilities, others may have to step up to help filter out the details of policy quagmires to come.” No wonder “many believe he lacks the political and tactical gravitas to be a force” and “there are those who privately question his policy chops and intellectual abilities.”

It’s not hard to conclude that the authors of these lines may be trying to tell us something.

Granted anonymity, some journalists do just that. “He’s a lightweight,” says one veteran political journalist who has covered McCarthy.

“I would never consider him to be smart,” says a TV figure who has interviewed him several times.

“In a strange way that is hard to explain, he’s gotten more stupid the longer he’s here,” opines a longtime Capitol Hill reporter who has watched McCarthy since his early days of palling around with the wonkier likes of Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor.

While not every Congressional reporter I spoke to shares this view — several offered faint praise by noting that there are plenty of dumber members; others make the point that anyone who masters a Congressional caucus must have something good going on — it’s safe to say it’s not an obscure opinion.

“We have a grudging respect for his political savvy, navigating himself to the position he’s gotten,” says one beatster. “He has incredible emotional IQ.”

But this isn’t actually a column about Kevin McCarthy’s intellect. I’ve never met the man, much less quizzed him about Aristotle or particle physics (or tax policy).

Rather, it’s a column about how Washington talks: If someone is in line for an important job, and people in the business of telling it like it is think that person is a dimwit, why doesn’t this conclusion get shared with the broader public?

It turns out that stupid may be one of Washington’s last taboos. Left to their own devices, insiders will bandy about all kinds of notions about prominent pols: Who’s a liar, who’s losing their marbles, who’s a dupe. But while other polite norms have crumbled — conventions against alleging dishonesty shrank during the Trump years; recent coverage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein suggests there’s a new candor about discussing senility — out-and-out accusations of dopiness are rare.

Even in opinion columns, the language tends to elide the subject. About the roughest recent assessment of McCarthy’s intellect among the writers who are actually permitted to share their point of view came from conservative Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, who called him an “ambitious plodder … someone difficult for his colleagues to attack because he never had anything remotely interesting to say.” (In the same column, Gerson had no problem using short, specific, non-euphemistic language about other aspects of McCarthy, calling him a “liar” and a “hypocrite.”)

It goes on.

Of course McCarthy is a dolt. Anyone who has observed him in public can see that. And it’s not an act like Oxford educated Louisiana Senator John Kennedy’s. He’s dumb, that’s obvious.

But this piece is supposedly calling out Reporters for not being honest about it when this reporters isn’t being honest about by making it a piece about journalism instead of just Kevin McCarthy being dumb. So he’s actually doing exactly what he accuses them of doing.

But yeah, McCarthy is stupid. Alert the media.

Republicans won’t be in the room thank God

The long-awaited January 6th committee public hearings have finally been scheduled. The first one is set for next Thursday, June 9th, in prime time. The committee previewed their plans for next week, announcing on Thursday that they will “present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power.” They seem to be very carefully choreographing the event, even drawing out the suspense by not naming the witnesses until next week.

The hearings, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said, will “tell a story that will blow the roof off the House.” We can only hope that is not unjustified hyperbole. These hearings are an important public record of an attempted coup that the whole country must see.

What we have already seen is quite a bit of information, like the voluminous text messages from various Republicans and journalists to the White House Chief of staff Mark Meadows during the insurrection itself. There have been leaked testimonies from major players inside the Department of Justice and Donald Trump’s White House, as well as information from Trump’s legal advisers and various state officials. Between all of that and the media’s own digging, people who have been following the story have a pretty clear picture of what happened.

Donald Trump and his allies tried to overturn a legal election with a series of plots that culminated in the violent insurrection on January 6th. But no one has put together the whole story for the American people so that they can understand just how unprecedented and dangerous these schemes were — and how close we came to a very serious constitutional crisis.

The committee is promising previously unseen material and one hopes it will add something to the narrative that we haven’t yet seen. And it seems that they are serious about putting together a professional, multi-media presentation, so it shouldn’t be too boring for the public. But the most important element of these hearings is going to be witness testimony. It will be the first time we’ve heard from anyone involved, or even any experts, on the subject of the coup in an official capacity. (You may recall that in Trump’s second impeachment, the Democrats were going to call witnesses but backed down at the last minute. )

Expert testimony is always important in hearings like this to educate the public about complex issues. Axios reported this week that they plan to call conservative Republican former federal judge, J. Michael Luttig, a man who was shortlisted more than once for a Supreme Court seat. Luttig advised Former Vice President Mike Pence on the illegality of overthrowing the government. (Evidently, Pence wasn’t sure …) 

Republicans are obviously worried that some of their troops might tune in and see something that will shake their faith in the Big Lie.

He wrote in a CNN op-ed in April that Trump lost the election fair and square and that all the rules the Republicans are screaming were unlawfully changed were actually changed “to expand the right and opportunity to vote, largely in response to the COVID pandemic.” He is right and the majority of Americans know that. But Luttig went much further in his analysis of the situation and it’s something the greater public needs to understand:

Trump’s and the Republicans’ far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest. The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.

Luttig is ultra-conservative. But he isn’t delusional and he isn’t a coward which makes him something of a unicorn in Republican circles. His testimony should be very compelling.

CNN reported that the committee has also called members of former Vice President Pence’s inner circle, including his chief counsel Greg Jacob  and his chief of staff Marc Short. In addition they are expected to call former Justice Department officials who were pressured by the president and his lackeys to lie about the election being stolen as well as what CNN calls other “first hand witnesses.”

We won’t be hearing from Trump himself or the witnesses who are refusing to cooperate, some of whom, like Steve Bannon and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, have been referred to the Department of Justice for contempt of congress. Meadows is perhaps the most important accomplice of the bunch since he seems to have been the clearing house for every half-baked conspiracy theory in the right-wing fever swamp during the post-election period. He originally cooperated with the committee and turned over a boatload of documents and text messages before he decided to clam up. The texts are scintillating reading, exposing the fact that virtually the entire GOP was begging Trump to stop the insurrection for hours, proving they believed he had the power to do so.

And apparently, as former GOP congressman and January 6th Committee investigator Denver Riggleman told Anderson Cooper, the text messages during the post election period prior to that day were downright chilling:

Riggleman calls Meadows the “MVP” for all the information he provided and one of his close aides, Cassidy Hutchinson, was subpoenaed and testified several times before the committee and appears to have shared other vitally important information. No one has announced that she will testify publicly but if she does, it’s clear she has a story to tell.

Whatever happens in these hearings we can be sure that they will be different than any hearings you may have watched in recent years and it’s not just because of the extraordinary subject matter. For the first time in recent memory, we will have a congressional hearing without even one obnoxious Republican grand stander seeking to derail the whole thing. We can expect that this committee will be serious and focused which is something we have not seen in public hearings for a very long time.

The Republicans are obviously worried that some of their troops might tune in and see something that will shake their faith in the Big Lie so they are plotting to “counter-program” the hearings. Axios reported on Thursday that they are deploying everyone from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to possibly Trump himself to fan out to Fox News, Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” “Real America’s Voice,” Facebook and Trump’s own Truth Social to ensure the base doesn’t lose their religion.

They plan to portray the Democrats as out of touch with average Americans, one aide telling Axios, “we’ve got to be rigid and responsible, but a lot of Republicans think if Dems want to just talk about Jan. 6 between now and the midterm election — good luck.” In that case, they might want to have a chat with their Dear Leader who can’t shut up about the Big Lie that’s at the heart of this entire crisis. If anyone’s keeping January 6th alive, it’s Donald Trump. 

Salon

Consent is contingent on who gets a say

This paragraph from Heather Cox Richardson’s substack is as succinct an explanation as any of the division in this country, of why a MAGA mob stormed and breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and why people in high places plotted to overthrow an election if not the government:

We have reached a place where Republican leaders no longer believe in the principle the nation’s Founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The idea that a government’s legitimacy comes from the fact its people choose it was the huge leap the Founders made to create a nation based not on monarchy but on democracy, and it is one of the two foundational principles of our government. Republicans appear to have rejected this principle and moved to the position that the election of Democrats is illegitimate and stopping such a victory—even if it is fairly won—is important enough to break long-standing laws in order to do it. 

The second foundational principle (as our 18th-century male founders understood it) is “all men are created equal.” The Civil War, Reconstruction, and 100 years of Jim Crow proved how much those flowery words were, for half the country, mere marketing.

I might take issue with Richardson’s assessment that Republican leaders no longer believe in either principle. One could argue that many conservatives never believed them, either when Democrats represented the ruling class on these shores or, since the latter half of the last century, now that Republicans do:

At the end of the Revolutionary War, there were an estimated half million Tories in this country. Royalists by temperament, loyal to the King and England, predisposed to government by hereditary royalty and landed nobility, men dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal.

After the Treaty of Paris, you know where they went? Nowhere. A few moved back to England, or to Florida or to Canada. But most stayed right here.

Take a look around. Their progeny are still with us among the one percent and their vassals. Spouting adolescent tripe from Ayn Rand, kissing up, kicking down, chasing their masters’ carriages or haughtily looking down their noses at people they consider inferiors.

Pretending to hold the two principles dear was the price colonial plutocrats paid to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves so they might plunder the New World unhindered by the British. They kept their own royalist leanings barely in check in polite company for over two centuries. Until Trump. The masks (and the hoods) have come off.

The royalists’ program today, as it was a century ago, is to reject the results of any election they don’t win and to prevent as many of their inferiors from casting ballots as possible. The goal is to render government of the people, by the people, for the people mere Model Congress role-play.

Paul Krugman wrote in 2014:

And now you understand why there’s so much furor on the right over the alleged but actually almost nonexistent problem of voter fraud, and so much support for voter ID laws that make it hard for the poor and even the working class to cast ballots. American politicians don’t dare say outright that only the wealthy should have political rights — at least not yet. But if you follow the currents of thought now prevalent on the political right to their logical conclusion, that’s where you end up.

The truth is that a lot of what’s going on in American politics is, at root, a fight between democracy and plutocracy. And it’s by no means clear which side will win.

Stay tuned.

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He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

House investigators will debut their first public hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection in prime time on Thursday, June 9 at 8 p.m. Eastern. Stand by for what the Party of Trump and their liege lord will do to distract public attention (NBC News):

“The committee will present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power,” the panel said.

There will be visuals, surely. And a guest star, TBA. This is TV.

Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and his committee will be competing for eyeballs with infotainment.

CNN reported Thursday on a few among the flood of text messages received by then-chief of staff Mark Meadows as Donald Trump’s MAGA mob battled police defending the Capitol:

“He’s got to condem (sic) this shit. Asap,” Donald Trump Jr. texted at 2:53 p.m.

“POTUS needs to calm this shit down,” GOP Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina wrote at 3:04 p.m.

“TELL THEM TO GO HOME !!!” former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus messaged at 3:09 p.m.

These urgent texts and more poured in while Donald J. Trump watched the battle on TV at the White House and did nothing. Rioters attacked the Capitol just after 1 p.m. Trump delayed issuing a statement calling off his supporters until 4:17 p.m. By then, several people were dead or dying.

One of the key questions the January 6 House committee is expected to raise in its June hearings is why Trump failed to publicly condemn the attack for hours, and whether that failure is proof of “dereliction of duty” and evidence that Trump tried to obstruct Congress’ certification of the election.

The Meadows texts show that even those closest to the former President believed he had the power to stop the violence in real time.

[…]

Seventeen months later, CNN spoke to more than a dozen people who had texted Meadows that day, including former White House officials, Republican members of Congress and political veterans. Without exception, each said they stood by their texts and that they believed Trump had the power and responsibility to try to stop the attack immediately.

Most who spoke with CNN would do so only anonymously.

Some said it was because of their jobs. Some said they were afraid Trump would be reelected. One said they just didn’t want to go through “the misery of being targeted by Trump supporters.”

The committee hopes to tell the Jan. 6 story, Axios reports, “in such a way that the American people understand the gravity of what happened — and the role former President Trump and his associates played in ginning up the mob that tried to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power.”

They will try. They’d best have hired media advisers.

Former congressman Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) told CNN’s Anderson Cooper this week he used his intelligence background and an analysis team he assembled to help the committee match anonymous phone numbers in collected texts to names and locations. The language from sitting and former members of Congress and connected Trump donors was so “horrific” and disconnected from reality that it scared him. It was “spiritual warfare coupled with QAnon-type of religiosity and types of conspircay theories” coming from people in high positions of power.

The committee’s goal will be to lay out a coherent narrative from incoherent ravings.

I’m not confident they can reach a lot of Americans living on Earth II.

Brynn Tannehill, a technical analyst with RAND tweeted this week:

I have a friend, whose husband is a retired Marine special forces guy. He spent better part of a year at the siege of Khe Sanh. After he retired, he was a police officer (SWAT) and medical first responder. He’s vaguely conservative on some things, but not nuts. 1/n

In his retirement, he still teaches police, SWAT teams, and first responders about dealing with ugly mass casualty events, including Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High Yield Explosives. He’s still part of the state volunteer emergency services. 2/n

This past week, he got asked to do a day of training for emergency medical services providers in a different county. Think even redder and more Trumpy than his already fairly conservative home town in a red state. 3/n

Part of his training (the briefing with PowerPoint) was discussing where mass casualty attacks come from, who does them, their tactics technics and procedures, and what sorts of injuries their mass casualty events produce. Basically, here’s what to expect. 4/n

For anyone who’s military, this should sound pretty boring and normal: it’s the intel briefing that everyone gets when discussing CONOPS.

Except, this crowd of “students” was having none of it.

Why? 5/n

Because this decorated combat vet who’s pro-police in in most cases had the temerity to show them the FBI statistics on the sources of domestic terrorism and mass casualty events: which is roughly 75% right wing, 18% religious, 4% left wing, and the rest other or N/A. 6/n

Under right wing he included things like neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the like.

The audience refused to believe.

“No! It’s Antifa!”

He pulled up the spreadsheets and stats on the FBI website.

They still wouldn’t believe him, even with FBI data collected un Trump. 7/n

Best of luck, Bennie. You’re going to need it.

(h/t JH)

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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
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Pro-choice sentiment is now the highest Gallup has measured since 1995 when it was 56% — the only other time it has been at the current level or higher — while the 39% identifying as “pro-life” is the lowest since 1996.

Similarly, for the first time in Gallup’s trend on the moral acceptability of abortion, originating in 2001, a majority of Americans (52%) consider abortion morally acceptable, while a record-low 38% call it morally wrong.

Separately, Gallup asks Americans if abortion should be legal under any circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances or illegal in all circumstances. Those who say it should be legal only under certain circumstances are then asked whether they would prefer it to be legal in most or only a few circumstances.

The latest data show Americans are less likely than a year ago to say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, falling six points to 13%, the lowest Gallup has recorded for this position since 1995. At the same time, the 35% wanting it legal under any circumstances is the highest in Gallup’s trend by one point, after increasing slightly each of the past three years.

The combined percentage opting for one of these more supportive positions is now 53%, up from 45% a year ago. Meanwhile, the combined percentage favoring more restrictive policies has fallen from 52% to 45%.

This issue should be right at the top of the Democrats’ agenda this fall. Guns, abortion and democracy should be the message. But I don’t know if they’re willing to meet the GOP on the culture war battlefield. It would be a first if they did.

They are pushing voting rights out the Overton Window

The GOP candidate for Governor in Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano isn’t trying to hide their plans:

Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s Republican candidate for governor, is perhaps the state’s most prominent peddler of former President Donald Trump’s lie that widespread fraud cost him the 2020 election.

A state senator and retired U.S. Army colonel, Mastriano says he wants to make everyone re-register if they want to vote again. The concept flatly violates federal law, legal scholars say, and may conflict with state law, not to mention constitutional protections. It is also a throwback to laws designed by white people in past eras to keep Black people or newer European immigrants from voting.

But Mastriano, who was present at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection and was endorsed by Trump, is undeterred, discussing his plan for re-registration both before and after winning the Republican nomination for governor on May 17.

Pennsylvania is one of the few states where governors appoint a secretary of state who oversees elections. That means a Mastriano victory in November could make Pennsylvania — a premier presidential battleground state — a test case of whether laws meant to protect voter access to the polls can be undermined.

It’s unclear where Mastriano got the idea, and he has not responded to repeated interview requests on this or any other topic. But he has pitched re-registration as a necessary step to scrub the voter rolls of dead voters and ghost voters — voters registered to nonexistent addresses — in time for the 2024 presidential election.

In a gubernatorial primary debate in April, Mastriano said that, if elected, he would require voters to “re-register. We’re going to start all over again.”

In an interview on the conservative broadcaster Newsmax three days after the primary election, Mastriano suggested that it is a step that his appointed secretary of state can take without approval by the Legislature.

“We might have to reset, as far as registration, start that whole process over here,” Mastriano said. “There’s still a lot of dead on the rolls, and what have you, and there’s ghost phantom voters that we found, as well, at various address.”

If he is elected, he said, taking that and other steps is of the utmost urgency: “So we’re going to take that very seriously and move really hard. Basically we have about a year to get that right before the 2024 presidential election.”

It appears that this is illegal under the national Voter Registration Act and Pennsylvania law. However, we know how much weight precedent has with our high court, so who knows? I’m sure there’s some ancient states’ rights argument they can dredge up if they want to legalize this.

This is not a new idea:

Southern states, following Reconstruction, imposed annual re-registration requirements, with some of those laws lasting until at least 1971. The laws were regarded as one of the mechanisms used by those states to try to keep Black people from voting.

“So it definitely does not have a favorable history,” said Michael Morley, a Florida State University law professor who specializes in constitutional and election law.

Northern states did, too, imposing it in the early 20th century on big cities such as Philadelphia and New York City, where there were higher populations of newer immigrants from Europe, researchers say.

Perhaps its most modern comparison is to a law in Texas, enacted in 1966 soon after the 24th Amendment outlawed poll taxes. The Texas law limited voting to people who re-registered annually, setting aside a four-month time frame within which to register.

A three-judge federal court panel struck that down in 1971, calling it a “direct descendant of the poll tax.”

That is where they are headed and is very possibly part of the long term strategy underlying the Supremes’ decision to gut the Voting Rights Act back in 2013.

Mastriano is a nut. But then, so is Trump. Writing these people off isn’t wise. They can win.

A Trump appointee is definitely in the running

Here’s an example of a person who perfectly represents the Trump ethos. She is expending all her energy trying to nail old and disabled people with million dollar fraud charges.

An independent watchdog this week opened a broad investigation into Social Security Inspector General Gail Ennis and her office following a Washington Post report that revealed how an anti-fraud program has imposed massive penalties on disabled and elderly people.

The inquiry by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), a group that investigates misconduct allegations against inspectors general, comes as Ennis has been directed by the acting Social Security commissioner to suspend the program amid mounting political pressure.

In a letter, a senior White House official urged a quick response fromthe chairwoman of the inspectors general council, Allison Lerner, who took the unusual step of notifying Congress and the White House that she had opened the probe. On Thursday, congressional staffers will question Ennis’s deputies about the program.

“Given the gravity of the allegations, I strongly encourage the Integrity Committee to work expeditiously,” Jason Miller, deputy director for management for the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter sent late Monday that also noted concerns about reports of retaliation against whistleblowers who questioned the penalties. “It is critical that the American public have full confidence in the important work of the Inspector General community, and that is why it is imperative these allegations be resolved in an appropriate and expeditious manner.”

Rebecca Rose, a spokeswoman for Ennis, wrote in an email, “We will continue to be responsive and cooperate fully” with the investigation and a parallel probe of the penalties by acting Social Security Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi, who has announced a “full investigation” of Ennis’s oversight of the anti-fraud program. Ennis, as a member of the inspectors general council’s Integrity Committee, must recuse herself from all committee matters while the investigation is ongoing.

At the heart of the investigation is theCivil Monetary Penalty Program, a little-known anti-fraud program run by the inspector general’s office. During the Trump administration, under Ennis’s watch, the program began levying unprecedented fines, which reached hundreds of thousands of dollars, on more than 100 people accused of improperly receiving disability benefits. The fines were imposed without considering the age, financial condition or other mitigating factors of the recipients — a departure from how the program had previously operated.

Many of those fined had no hope of ever being able to pay. Over a seven-month period that ended in mid-2019, 83 people were charged a total of $11.5 million, documents obtained by The Post showed — a jump from less than $700,000 for all of 2017.

Civil fines are supposed to provide an alternative when fraud is considered too insignificant to warrant criminal prosecution by the Justice Department. In years past, cases had often settled, with agreements for drastically lower fines as claimants gradually paid back what they owed taxpayers.

The investigation is likely to be far-reaching. The troubled anti–fraud program is one of several controversies roiling Social Security’s 500-person internal watchdog division, charged with oversight of the agency that distributes retirement benefits to 69 million Americans and monthly disability checks to about 15 million others.

Dozens of senior auditors, law enforcement agents and other staff have quit or retired, many in frustration with what they describe as Ennis’s mercurial leadership and lack of focus on the office’s mission, according to current and former staff members. Ennis has defended her leadership and said some employees bristle at changes when a new leader comes in.

In case you were wondering, Ennis was a big GOP donor before she got this job. And the Trumpers liked her so much they concurrently made her the temporary acting IG at the Interior Department before a new IG was confirmed.

I honestly have to wonder why every Trump political appointee hasn’t been shown the door by now. There is no way any of them can be trusted.

They’re going to be tracking your every move

I have absolutely no doubt that the anti-abortion zealots are going to be going after individual women once Roe is overturned.

A recent report from MIT Technology Review sheds light on the ways in which anti-abortion activists have collected data on-site at abortion clinics over the past several decades to go after doctors and others carrying out the procedure.

While this has been a years-long practice, the fact that surveillance tactics are still being deployed at some clinics adds another layer of concern for abortion supporters as the nation heads into what will likely be a post-Roe America in coming weeks or months. As we well know, the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe sometime this summer — the certainty with which that is happening was made pretty clear after the draft majority opinion confirming the high court has the votes to overturn Roe was leaked several weeks ago.

States across the union are continuing the work — that’s been ongoing since SCOTUS oral arguments last year signaled this was the direction the court was headed — to prep for a post-Roe America. Red states are passing increasingly extreme abortion laws and outright bans to get ready for this eventuality. Blue states are passing legislation to help better serve patients who may have to travel across state lines for reproductive services once Roe is overturned. There are also several states with old school “trigger laws” on the books that will immediately make abortion illegal in many cases once Roe is dismantled.

This new MIT report is a helpful reminder: anti-abortion activists have been using surveillance and other data collection tactics, like recording license plate numbers at abortion clinics, for some time to gather personal information about those seeking abortions. While anti-abortion activists maintained in this new report that the data collection is only used to track the activities of doctors and clinics carrying out abortions, there are some trends in Republican state legislatures’ bill writings that make this practice even more concerning — in that it could help private citizens go after people getting the procedure in the first place.

In states like Texas and Oklahoma, the onus for enforcing new abortion ban laws lies on private citizens. In Texas, for example, private citizens, like Uber drivers, could be targeted with citizen lawsuits for engaging in any act that could be construed as “aiding or abetting” the process for seeking an abortion post-six weeks. We’ve seen similar laws considered and passed in red states like Oklahoma in recent weeks.

And the data-tracking practices used by anti-abortion activists for decades has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years. Per the MIT report:

Anti-abortion activists have long denied that this data is being used to harass or contact people seeking abortions; they say it is used to track doctors and assess whether the activism is stopping people from returning to the clinic to have an abortion. …

But it certainly could be used that way, and Wessler, from the ACLU, says the potential for this footage to target and harm people who have abortions is exacerbated by the use of facial recognition technology. There are two possible scenarios on that front, he says: law enforcement agencies in abortion-banning states could use facial recognition databases to scan clinic footage for residents, or private groups and organizations could use the technology themselves. 

Texas and Oklahoma now have laws that allow private citizens to sue anyone who performs or helps with an abortion. [Deputy project director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the ACLU Nathan] Wessler says that in a world where federal statutes offer no protection from such lawsuits, it’s easy to see how, with a post-Roe tweak to the laws, people seeking abortions could be sued as well. That possibility, paired with clinic surveillance, could produce an enormous chilling effect “where you have this nightmare of huge damages lawsuits being filed against people who are barely able to afford the gas to travel to a state where they can legally get an abortion,” he says. 

We’re probably going to see a flurry of laws attempting to restrict travel of pregnant women. And what they will require is some sort of tracking of these women and …. their menstrual cycles. If you think that’s just dystopian sci-fi keep in mind that it already happened in at least one case:

Rachel Maddow reports exclusively on details of a newly obtained spreadsheet kept by the Trump administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, led by anti-abortion activist Scott Lloyd, tracking the pregnancies of unaccompanied minor girls. Brigitte Amiri, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project senior staff attorney, joins to discuss details of the case.

And consider this:

In the wake of the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, privacy experts are increasingly concerned about how data collected from period-tracking apps, among other applications, could potentially be used to penalize anyone seeking or considering an abortion.

Millions of people use apps to help track their menstrual cycles. Flo, which bills itself as the most popular period and cycle tracking app, has amassed 43 million active users. Another app, Clue, claims 12 million monthly active users.

The personal health data stored in these apps is among the most intimate types of information a person can share. And it can also be telling. The apps can show when their period stops and starts and when a pregnancy stops and starts.

That has privacy experts on edge, because if abortion is ever criminalized, this data — whether subpoenaed or sold to a third party — could be used to suggest that someone has had or is considering an abortion.

“We’re very concerned in a lot of advocacy spaces about what happens when private corporations or the government can gain access to deeply sensitive data about people’s lives and activities,” says Lydia X. Z. Brown, a policy counsel with the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Especially when that data could put people in vulnerable and marginalized communities at risk for actual harm.”

I think targeting individual women is what they really wanted all along. If they could get away with witch burning they would do that too. And who knows? The way things are going, that may soon be on the agenda as well.