Month: June 2022

My, my, my. Politico interviewed Alex Holder the documentarian who was hired to do the puff piece on Trump. This little tidbit is interesting:

On Thursday, we noted that during a trip aboard Air Force One, a scheduled interview between Holder and Trump was abruptly canceled. Holder told us a bit more about that trip, and it turns out to be much more interesting than we knew.

Holder traveled with then-President Trump on Sunday, Oct. 25, three days after the second presidential debate and nine days before Election Day. That day, Trump flew from Washington to New Hampshire, then on to Maine, and then back to Washington. But WH COS MARK MEADOWS told Holder that something had come up and the planned interview was nixed.

“My memory is,” Holder told us, “that the chief of staff sort of came over and said that the interview couldn’t happen today because the president was on the phone. And I believe, if I remember correctly, that he said that he was on the phone to the president of Russia, VLADIMIR PUTIN, which is why the interview had to be postponed.”

Well that certainly piqued our curiosity. Why would Trump be having an apparently unscheduled Sunday chat with Putin during a packed day of campaigning in New England nine days before the election?

One explanation could be that Trump and Putin were reportedly trying to negotiate an arms control agreement, as Axios’ Dave Lawler and Alayna Treene reported on Oct. 11, 2020. And indeed, on Oct. 26, the Kremlin released a statement about its views on several security issues in Europe.

But one top Trump official involved in those talks told POLITICO that he had no recollection of a Trump-Putin call during that period.

However, there was some other news breaking that Sunday related to Putin that certainly would have caught Trump’s attention.

At the debate in Nashville days earlier, Trump had accused JOE BIDEN of receiving millions of dollars through some kind of corrupt scheme involving HUNTER BIDEN’s alleged business dealings in Ukraine and Moscow — accusations that were the cornerstone of Trump’s case against Biden in the final days of the 2020 campaign.

But that Sunday, Putin undercut Trump and said that as far as he knew, the allegations were nonsense. Sputnik, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, tweeted the news at 8:40 a.m. But it wasn’t until later in the day, when Trump was wrapping up a rally in New Hampshire, that the news broke through in the American press. Reuters reported at 2:20 p.m., “Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that he saw nothing criminal in Hunter Biden’s past business ties with Ukraine or Russia, marking out his disagreement with one of Donald Trump’s attack lines in the U.S. presidential election.” (Newsmax ran the same Reuters wire copy at 2:17 p.m.)

Huh. That seems like interesting context on a day when Holder says he was informed that Trump and Putin were on a call together. We asked Holder when his conversation with Meadows happened. “I *think* it was between NH and Maine,” he texted us.

We checked the pool reports that day, and Air Force One taxied for takeoff from Londonderry, N.H., at 2:32 p.m. The plane landed in Maine at 3:05 p.m. If Holder’s memory is accurate, Trump was on the phone with Putin just minutes after the news broke that the Russian president had dismissed Trump’s Hunter Biden allegations.

They were such good buds I’m sure it was a big disappointment that he couldn’t get Vlad to smear Hunter Biden for him in the final days of the election. Sad!

I wonder how often the two of them had these informal chitchats?

They say Pro-choice protesters are staging an insurrection

As you hear right wingers fatuously wring their hands over potential violence from pink pussy hat wearing pro-choice protesters, keep this in mind. It’s from extremism expert, Jared Holt:

Conservative US political figures pre-empted and reacted to the United States Supreme Court’s rollback of abortion access conflating an ambiguous risk posed by a fringe group with the broader, peaceful pro-choice movement in the United States. To advance that willful misrepresentation against the majority of Americans that disapproves of the ruling, they deployed a familiar narrative playbook and information ecosystem.

Mainstream and increasingly extreme voices in the conservative information ecosystem amplified threatening messages posted online by an apparent radical pro-choice group and proceeded to cite those messages to stoke fears of imminent, coordinated, and widespread radical-left violence against abortion opponents. Democratic politicians who offered messages of support for pro-choice causes and encouraged protests were branded “insurrectionists” by prominent right-wing influencers — a cynical attempt to equate the violent January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol that led to multiple deaths with the ongoing popular, peaceful protest in response to the Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling. A common refrain in these narratives pointed back to a supposedly inevitable “night of rage” from pro-choice groups following the decision.

The term “night of rage” was lifted from the title of blog post published by Jane’s Revenge: an autonomous collective that emerged after the Dobbs decision was leaked in May. On its anonymous blog, one can find over-the-top manifestos calling for retaliation against those seeking to deny access to abortion. Jane’s Revenge has no evident organization, no apparent command and control structure, nor has it demonstrated an ability to coordinate — as opposed to an aspiration to inspire — widespread action to date; rather it claims to exist as loosely connected but ideologically aligned small groups.

Due to the amorphous nature of the group, it is difficult to gauge the size of the Jane’s Revenge network or what amount of action it realistically steers. Regardless of how the group may be comprised, actions taken in its name have been real. The group has claimed credit for vandalism and property destruction at locations associated with opposition to abortion: anti-abortion pregnancy centers, anti-abortion groups’ offices, and so on. Few, if any, national pro-choice movement groups have acknowledged Jane’s Revenge — let alone endorsed its actions. In contrast, anti-abortion groups have vandalized, harassed, and directed violence at abortion clinics for decades.

Jane’s Revenge entered mainstream consciousness following its mention in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published June 20. Two days later, a reporter from news outlet Al Jazeera asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the “night of rage” promised by Jane’s Revenge; the White House said that US President Joe Biden condemned the group. But the most potent fuel for right-wing panic around Jane’s Revenge can be sourced back to an article published by Newsweek reporter Jake Thomas, who wrote an article published on June 23 that reported a secondhand account that a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent had told the Catholic Diocese of Stockton, California, that DHS was aware of a manifesto calling for “attacks on churches” the evening the Court sent down its decision.

It was notable that Newsweek published this story. Newsweek has been declared a “zombie publication” by some media observers; its editorial page also hosts virulently anti-abortion commentators with a history of spreading misinformation, including “birtherism” claims targeting Vice President Kamala Harris.

New York Times reporter Stuart Thompson tweeted on June 24 that he spoke with the Diocese of Stockton, who said a widely circulated screenshot of an alleged memo from its office, which appears to be the entire basis of the Newsweek article, was inaccurate.

Although Newsweek reported that the Catholic Church document it viewed did not explicitly name Jane’s Revenge, to whatever extent the story may have been accurate, enough parallels existed between the details it claimed and the manifestos of the Jane’s Revenge blog to seed fear among anti-abortion advocates. While the actions previously committed in the name of Jane’s Revenge have presented genuine security risks to anti-abortion organizations and advocates, there is little evidence to suggest the group represents a wider threat. A June 24 DHS bulletin reportedly obtained by Voice of America and separate from the Newsweek article contained acknowledgement of Jane’s Revenge and its post about a “night of rage.” The bulletin also reportedly noted that threats are present from domestic violent extremists on both sides of the abortion debate.

Right-wing influencers, media, and politicians have exaggerated and generalized the risk that Jane’s Revenge threatens against its perceived opponents, choosing to paint with the same broad brush it used in its goal of discrediting racial justice demonstrations in the summer of 2020. According to data accessed by the DFRLab using Meltwater Explore, the use of the phrase “night of rage” spiked online immediately surrounding the Court’s ruling on abortion access and correlating with the publication of Newsweek’s article. The phrase was used on the Jane’s Revenge blog on May 30, and the most recent post there is from June 15, but the fear campaign invoking the phrase did not achieve much traction until the day before the Court’s decision.

After the Court’s decision, prominent right-wing figures presented pro-choice calls to protest and police responses to such protests as if they were proof that a massive, violent plot was underway.

The Gateway Pundit, a firehose of right-wing misinformation, reposted a Twitter video of US Representative Maxine Waters of California reacting to the Court’s decision and branded her an “Insurrectionist.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was filmed outside the Supreme Court by a Turning Point USA employee as she joined crowd chants of “illegitimate” and “into the streets,” footage that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia used to claim that Ocasio-Cortez “just launched an insurrection.”

Andy Ngo, a far-right media figure who routinely engages in lies and misrepresentations, shared video footage of police in Washington, DC, mobilizing in response to growing protests at the Supreme Court and claimed it was “in response to and anticipation of mass violence by the left over Roe v Wade.” The same speculative sentiment was echoed, nearly verbatim, by US Senator Marco Rubio. The Gateway Pundit shared the same video and warned readers with the headline: “Leftist Terrorists (Biggest Threat to America) Gear Up For ANOTHER Summer of Violence.” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who leads the Republican Party in the US House of Representatives, echoed the same ominous warnings, calling on President Biden to act to “deter and prevent violence … Now. Before it’s too late.” McCarthy’s tweet bearing the message was subsequently retweeted by Donald Trump Jr., son of former US President Donald Trump.

The narratives deployed by right-wing personalities and politicians have spawned virulent reactions across the far-right media ecosystem, including calls to take up arms against protesters.

White nationalist Nicholas Fuentes wrote to his followers on Telegram the night before the Court’s decision, “stand back and stand by” — echoing the words former President Trump gave to the Proud Boys extremist group during a 2020 presidential debate. On the morning of the decision, Fuentes activated that call, writing: “DEFEND YOUR CHURCHES TONIGHT!”

The same calls to action were echoed among groups of Proud Boys, from at least one open militia member, and within clusters of other far-right extremist communities the DFRLab monitors regularly. Erin Gallagher, a disinformation researcher, compiled some of the calls for anti-abortion advocates to show up armed against pro-choice protesters that appeared on Twitter.

With the same playbook used to taint public perceptions of racial justice demonstrations in 2020, right-wing influencers seek to cast popular opposition to the Court’s ruling not just as wrong, but as potentially criminal. During the summer of 2020, disinformation campaigns aimed at racial justice protests used mischaracterized, decontextualized, and false claims to attempt to smear the breadth of protesters supporting racial justice as militant “antifa” radicals. As DFRLab’s Emerson Brooking explained at the time, disinformation had real consequences, “spark[ing] acts of targeted harassment, armed assaults, and general panic in American towns.” The attempt to associate all racial justice protesters with “terrorism” received buy-in from the highest levels of government power, including then-President Donald Trump and then-Attorney General William Barr.

The same pattern is evident in attempts to discredit pro-choice demonstrations in the wake of the Court’s ruling on Dobbs. One Republican official directly connected the two events’ talking points on a television appearance the night before the Court’s ruling. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas told Fox News host Sean Hannity the night before the ruling: “We’re going to see a reprise, I fear, of the Black Lives Matter and the Antifa riots where they’re going to try to use political violence to advance their ends, and the Department of Justice needs to step in and stop them.”

Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado paid homage to viral conspiracy theories spread during racial justice protests in 2020, asking on Twitter why bricks were found near the US Capitol building. In 2020, influencers spread baseless rumors that pallets of bricks were left in the city streets near construction sites — as allegedly supplied by billionaire George Soros or other supposedly “nefarious” liberals — to be used by protesters to inflict damage.

National flashpoint issues like abortion access can provoke strong emotions across the political spectrum — something that DHS acknowledged in a June 7 advisory. In its assessment, it rightly observed that “individuals who advocate both for and against abortion have, on public forums, encouraged violence, including against government, religious, and reproductive healthcare personnel and facilities, as well as those with opposing ideologies.”

The pink pussy hat Resistance are not terrorists like the right wingers who assassinated doctors and blew up abortion clinics for the last 40 years. But they have very recent experience at political organizing so these people are right to be concerned.

i'm sorry WHAT pic.twitter.com/iBP7mUBbD7

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) June 25, 2022

Republican lawmakers and Utah politicos celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade on Friday, with one legislator saying she trusted Utah women “to control [their] intake of semen.”

Rep. Karianne Lisonbee described a text message she said she received urging her to hold men accountable for unwanted pregnancies.

“I got a text message today saying I should seek to control men’s ejaculations and not women’s pregnancies … I do trust women enough to control when they allow a man to ejaculate inside of them and to control that intake of semen,” the Clearfield Republican told reporters at a news conference at the Utah Capitol on Friday.

This is what we’re dealing with, people.

One thing John Edwards got right

Adam Serwer (The Atlantic):

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson contains a classic Alito disclaimer—an explicit denial of the logical implications of his stated position. In this case, Alito declares that “nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” even as he argues that when it comes to rights “not mentioned in the Constitution,” only those “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” are protected. If you’re asking yourself who decides which rights can be so described, you’re on the right track.

Feel that chill up your spine?

Justice Clarence Thomas in a concurring opinion invited challenges to Supreme Court precedents on contraception, legalizing same-sex marriage, and striking down anti-sodomy laws. He left out the ruling permittting interracial marriage for some reason.

Judicial restraint is gone now that conservatives have a supermajority on the court. The right’s aversion for judicial activism was as phony as the rest of their well-marketed principles.

Justice Samuel Alito’s concurring opinion on the New York concealed carry case this week was but “a paraphrase of culture-war blather one hears in right-wing media,” his reasoning on par with what “might come from a fifth grader,” writes Serwer. “[O]verturning Roe was less a result of the partisan composition of the appointees than the ideological evolution of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.” Logical consistency, like principles, is disposable in the pursuit of translating “right-wing cultural identity into law.”

Two Americas

The majority’s supposed originalism is a means to affirm novel legal interpretations grounded in present-day right-wing grudges as what the Constitution demanded all along. Every time those grievances shift, the interpretations will shift with them, even as the justices scour history anew for confirmation of ideological conclusions they would never question even if they failed to find it. That is ultimately why no rights that Americans currently possess are safe from this Court. Decisions about which rights survive and which do not are highly dependent on what it means to be a conservative at that time. There will always be new right-wing grievances to ameliorate by judicial fiat, justified by new abuses of constitutional history.

The core conservative belief about the culture war is that there is a Real America that is conservative, and a usurper America that is liberal. This, not historical research, not legal analysis, is the prime means of constitutional interpretation for its current majority. And while the justices will both pretend and insist otherwise, the public need not flatter their imperious delusions. They should take the right-wing justices’ vow that other constitutional rights are safe for precisely what it is worth—which is to say, absolutely nothing.

Majority rule in the Supreme Court is based on minority rule in the Senate, and increasingly often (by conservative design) by minority rule in the House and by constitutional design in the White House. The right will restore feudalism one way or another. The Christian right will put those of usurper faiths in their places.

They don’t want to govern. They want to rule.

If the ADD-prone left does not want to be ruled, they’ve got to quit squabbling over whose pet issues take priority, dump expectations for instant gratification, and get as serious as the movement conservatives who spent decades (and billions) plotting to take away personal freedoms in the name of liberty.

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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.
If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com

Now what do we do?

After the Supreme Court released its ruling Friday overturning Roe v. Wade and 50 years of precedent, protests broke out across the country. President Joe Biden condemned the ruling and urged protesters to remain peaceful. There were scattered arrests.

Rep. Eric Swalwell of California won the internet.

Don’t forget to turn your clocks back 50 years tonight. 🕰 ⏰#WomensRights #RoeVWade

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) June 25, 2022

After the anger and outrage aside, then what?

Blogger Susie Madrak tweeted, “Advice from my 30+ years of politics: Taking part in actions without a strategy or a specific goal is a waste of time. Actions without progress result in burnout.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York confronted protesters outside the Supreme Court Friday morning with an angry, yet sober assessment of what lies ahead.

“This is not something that is going to be solved in a day, in an election, or in a year. Because we gotta strap in. This is a generational fight,” AOC said. “This is not instant gratification.”

“Elections are not enough…. We need sand in every damn gear,” she added. “But elections alone are not going to save us. We need to show up at the ballot box, but that’s the bare minimum.”

Democratic Party officials insisted, as they will, that turnout, electing more Democratic senators this fall, is the way to turn the situation around for women’s rights. But elections are their answer to everything. Every election is the most important in history. And here we are.

When AOC said this is a generational fight, part of the problem she’s identified is a generational one. Conservative billionaire-funded think tanks and supported activists have worked relentlessly toward this moment for decades. The current leadership of the Democratic Party, whatever their accomplishments and skills, idled along and assumed progress was irreversible.

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, in the White House, and in state houses across the country learned politics in another century and another America. Politics changed. The world changed. They did not.

Within the Democratic Party. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, for example, drew exasperated responses with his passionless response to the overturn of Roe:

Just asked Whip Clyburn about the Dobbs decision: “It’s a little anticlimactic, I think we all expected this. And I'm hopeful, you know I have to read the decision to see exactly the extent to which we can move legislatively to respond to it.”

— Dylan Wells (@dylanewells) June 24, 2022

“I support Rep. Clyburn but he isn’t grasping the situation,” tweeted a Navy veteran. “We di [sic] need to galvanize and correct this but this statement is inadequate for the moment”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s response drew mockery on Twitter:

Pelosi: "The Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. They cannot be allowed to have majority in the Congress to do that. That’s their goal." pic.twitter.com/EkCYzLOPE1

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 24, 2022

“Our gerontocracy is simply not fit for this moment,” tweeted Amanda Litman of Run For Something in response to both.

https://twitter.com/helaineolen/status/1540485698792214529?s=20&t=KZcERkAWhd1iemzNGUwnlg

Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) of This Modern World had an even more cold-eyed assessment of what the demise of Roe means:

https://twitter.com/tomtomorrow/status/1540507763490668546?s=20&t=Uh0x6kEY1vuqdl1_dA8CUg

He went on:

It’s real hard to let go of your old life — trust me, I have some experience here. But it’s gone. All this bullshit about the sacred filibuster, the tradition of a nine member court, Republicans might say mean things about us if we challenge any of it — gotta let it go.

If you want people, young people especially, to “vote harder,” you have to inspire them, show that you’re living up to your end of the bargain, fighting like a motherfucker. I don’t know if the institutionalists in leadership can ever comprehend this.

It’s disingenuous as fuck to say “Democrats control all three branches, this is on them,” because the stupid 60-vote problem, the Manchin/Sinema problem, these are real. But it’s learned helplessness to say, “nothing can be done so why bother trying.”

I’m just thinking out loud of course. I don’t know what the answer is. but we just got kicked down to the bottom of a well, and either we give up and die, or we try to figure out a way out. Those are the options.

I mean, I do know what the answer is — eliminate the filibuster, expand the court, stop bringing a water pistol to a nuclear confrontation. But I don’t know how we possibly get from here to there.

(correction to one thing, without breaking thread: Dems obviously do not control all three branches, but the not-pedantic among you understand what I was trying to say.)

Democrats need new leaders prepared to do battle under current realities, not the old ones. AOC and others lower down the pecking order get that. Politics as usual is gone. But “as usual” is the only kind the current leadership knows. They still want to party like it’s 1999.

The standard benediction is, “We thank them for their service.”

Update: Added one last thought, second to last paragraph.

Second Update: AOC making my point.

Dem leaders must tell voters the plan:

What’s the *actual* need? Which specific seats are we focused on? WHAT votes do we need & WHERE (what states + races?)

And, what’s the return? What is Biden/Congress ACTUALLY willing+able to do at 52/60 seats?

Be honest. Details motivate

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 25, 2022

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com

Because you need it today:

From James Fallows:

Familiar early-summer scene in our back yard in DC:

Mother deer leaves very newest fawns—which have no smell to attract predators—to spend the day hiding under bushes just behind the house. Later on mother will return and disappear with the fawn. May be back tomorrow.

Stretching the legs, trying out the taste of the greenery.

Now back to lying down.

This is happening as close to the house as it looks.

And just to wrap this up, fawn nodding off until mother deer arrives, some hours from now.

Fawn has gotten used to sound of typing.

I know from experience that the mother deer is too wary to be photo’ed. Without our seeing, she’ll arrive, and vanish w/ the fawn.

and the end for real:

I was wrong!

– Mother deer strolled up just now;
– Fawn *bounded* down to where she was, and began nursing;
– They ambled off together, to the right. (DC people: toward Battery Kemble park.)

End for the day.

Sequel, Friday morning.

Originally tweeted by James Fallows (@JamesFallows) on June 22, 2022.

In the dog days of summer, Willow the cat rules the roost.

On Friday, Willow’s crate was spotted being carried by a staff member from the White House residence to Marine One, the presidential helicopter that will ferry the feline — along with President Joe Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden — to Rehoboth, Delaware, and the family’s beach house.

Whether a cat can appreciate a sojourn by the sea remains questionable, but for Willow, the Rehoboth house is one of several changes of scenery she gets to appreciate as a presidential pet.

“Willow often spends the weekends with the First Family, including in Rehoboth, Wilmington, and Camp David,” the first lady’s press secretary Michael LaRosa told CNN.

When she is not being whisked away for the weekend, Willow has privileges to roam the White House. She is predominantly restricted to the White House executive residence’s private second and third floors, where CNN is told Willow particularly enjoys the solarium, a bright space above the South Portico, where she “receives lots of attention from the Executive Residence staff.” In Wilmington and at Camp David, “she often sits on the porch in the sun,” says LaRosa.

Back home, Willow also likes to visit working staff in the East Wing, taking leisurely naps on the desk of the press secretary, chasing her toys in and out of offices and generally being open to scratches. Once or twice, Willow has explored beyond her domain, making it as far as the chief usher’s office on the main floor, just next to the North entrance.

The East Wing staff has made a sign to alert when Willow is out and about, which features of photo of her face and reads: “Willow is on the prowl! Please keep these doors closed.”

The thousands and thousands of square feet Willow now calls home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are a far cry from her humble beginnings as a barn cat in Pennsylvania, where during a campaign speech by Jill Biden, she cozied up to the soon-to-be first lady. For Biden, it was love at first sight.

“Willow made quite an impression on Dr. Biden in 2020 when she jumped up on the stage and interrupted her remarks,” LaRosa said several months ago. “Seeing their immediate bond, the owner of the farm knew that Willow belonged with Dr. Biden.”

She named her Willow after her hometown of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Though it wouldn’t be until January that Willow actually moved into her digs at the White House, she enjoyed staying with Biden acquaintances in Washington, DC, until the timing was right to officially add her to the Biden home.

In December of last year, the Bidens announced the arrival of Commander, a German Shephard puppy. Willow had to wait a bit for the dog situation to shake out. Champ, the Biden’s beloved 13-year-old dog died last June, and Major, their younger adopted German Shepherd, had some well-documented issues adapting to the White House. Major was rehomed with family friends.

But like most cats, Willow doesn’t concern herself with caring all that much about dogs, though she and Commander now have a “warm and playful relationship,” according to LaRosa.

“We don’t anthropomorphize their relationship with human terms like ‘boss,'” he says, before adding, “However, my money would be on Willow every time.”

Cats make the rules.

Vote out the right wing miscreants

We can’t do much about the Supreme radicals but we can stop the right wing from doing even more damage. This is on Mitch McConnell more than any other single person. When he refused to even hold a hearing for Merrick Garland, thus holding that seat open so the wingnuts anti-abortion zealots would even vote for the orange libertine, he sealed our fate. There would be no Gorsuch and Anthony Kennedy would not have retired if Hillary Clinton were president. (If he did, he would have been replaced by someone more liberal.) We would have a at least a 5-4 court to uphold Roe today if Mitch had not blown up all norms in service of his own power.

It’s vitally important that Democrats do everything they can to prevent these Republicans from winning majorities and the presidency. This court is going to do their worst but if the Democrats can control the other two branches there are ways they can mitigate some of the worst excesses on a national level. And they have to work hard in their states to deprive these anti-democratic far right Republicans of power to dominate from the minority. It’s a grave situation but it isn’t hopeless. But it’s going to require that everyone gets out of their funk from Trump and the pandemic and re-engage immediately. It’s a matter of survival.

Josh Marshall puts it this way:

As I wrote last month here and reiterated in this Times oped earlier this month, this is the one path to reviving Roe’s protections. Get 48 Senators on the record clearly and publicly promising to pass a Roe law in January 2023 and change the filibuster rules to make that possible. That puts abortion rights and Roe protections clearly on the ballot. It’s not a certain path by any means. But it is certainly the only path available right now.

By the way:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans said they are more likely to back candidates who support the right to abortion in the November midterm elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Tuesday.

The poll of 998 voters also found that a plurality of Americans – 41% – said the country would be a worse place to live if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established the right to abortion nationwide.

It was conducted hours after the publication of a draft opinion by the top court signaling that the justices were ready to do just that. The court on Tuesday confirmed that the opinion was authentic but also said that it was not final. read more

Some 63% of respondents, including 78% of Democrats and 49% of Republicans, said they were more likely to support candidates who support abortion rights in the Nov. 8 election that will determine control of Congress for the next two years.

That certainly seems like something to work with.

Translation:

“Gay rights are next” https://t.co/H1bN5g2CuI

— Chris Meloni (@Chris_Meloni) June 24, 2022

AOC: We are talking about a court with the majority of justices appointed by a party that has not won a popular presidential election more than once in 30 years ruling against the majority of Americans. pic.twitter.com/X7wd2HV0ei

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 24, 2022

193 Republicans vote against Gun Violence Legislation pic.twitter.com/aLUOlWh818

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 24, 2022

There is no limit to their radicalism:

The House GOP caucus is insane. This is the most modest gun control imaginable paired with the mental health and school security funding they claim to want. 14 for 193 against. https://t.co/FxuAkWZAvo

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) June 24, 2022

The GOP is now a revolutionary faction in American politics that will push through radical legislation wherever they get the chance. Guns and abortion are on the ballot in November.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is the only thing standing between their far right legislative majority endorsing an ancient law that criminalizes abortion and keeping abortion legal in the state. This is where people need to be mobilized. It’s vital that Democratic Governors and slim state legislative majorities are protected because right now the right to abortion and safety in the streets in a bunch of states depends upon it.

The strands are all coming together

“What’s the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” said one senior Republican official. “He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.” — November 9, 2020, Washington Post

That senior Republican official is very lucky the journalist agreed to confer anonymity. It may be the most laughably incorrect prediction in history. The January 6 committee hearings are proving in meticulously laid out detail that Donald Trump plotted to prevent Joe Biden from taking power from the moment he lost the 2020 election. (Actually, he was laying the groundwork long before the election.)

Thursday’s revelations came even before the fourth hearing began when news broke that the FBI had raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, the former Department of Justice (DOJ) official, and fierce Trump loyalist, whom Trump had wanted to install as acting attorney general in the days before the Capitol riot. It’s unclear what crime they suspect Clark of committing but their suspicions were apparently strong enough to get a judge to issue a search warrant and presumably get the go-ahead from the highest levels of the DOJ. It may or may not be a coincidence that this warrant was served the day before the Jan. 6 committee was scheduled to publicly devote several hours to Trump’s plot to enlist the DOJ in his corrupt plot to overturn the 2020 election, a plot in which Clark was intimately involved.

Once again the witness testimony in the hearing came from Republicans who had been appointed by Trump and had previously demonstrated fealty to him.

Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former Deputy Attorney General Richard Donohue and former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel all testified on Thursday. Others from the administration appeared via video depositions, including members of the White House Counsel’s office. They all testified to the fact that Donald Trump spent weeks pressuring, harassing and threatening them in an attempt to get them to investigate conspiracy theories and issue false statements about the 2020 election. These Republicans resisted every step of the way, making Trump more and more agitated.

“Just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” Trump exasperatedly instructed on one call, according to Donohue’s handwritten notes. If that sounds familiar, it is a deafening echo of the demand Trump made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was that all he wanted was for him to hold a press conference announcing an investigation into Joe Biden. That’s Trump’s M.O.

Jeffrey Clark was an obscure DOJ official who served for most of Trump’s term served as assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. He was appointed acting head of the Civil Division in September 2020. He was hardly a TV star lawyer who Trump would say was from “central casting” but he was a hardcore Trumpist who suffers from a bad case of Fox News brain rot so he happily found himself in the middle of coup plotting after having been brought to Trump’s attention by a fellow Pennsylvanian Republican Rep. Scott Perry.

Rosen testified that he was bewildered when Trump brought him up in passing on one of his phone calls but he soon found out that Clark was being groomed by the president to replace him if he didn’t do Trump’s bidding. Clark broke protocol by scheming with the White House throughout this period rather than going through the proper channels. Another lawyer who no one had mentioned before the hearing, Ken Klukowski, was scheming with Trump attorney John Eastman and Clark from within the Justice Department, where he had evidently been placed on December 15th to work under the radar. Klukowski drafted a letter the coup plotters wanted Attorney General Bill Barr to send to Georgia and other states saying the DOJ was “investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States,” which was misleading at best. (At this point they would perfunctorily follow up on some of Trump’s wild ravings but had long since determined there was no fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election.) This letter also recommended that the Georgia General Assembly convene a special session to approve a new slate of electors. It indicated that a set of fake Trump electors had already been transmitted to the U.S. Capitol.

What this means is that the plot was not really operating on separate tracks as previously assumed. We now know that the Department of Justice plot was entwined with the John Eastman fake electors – Mike Pence plot. The coup was more organized than we knew.

Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney said:

Had this letter been released on official Department of Justice letterhead, it would have falsely informed all Americans, including those who might be inclined to come to Washington on January 6th, that President Trump’s election fraud allegations were likely very real.

At the time Klukowski and Clark drafted the letter, Rosen and Clark were listed as signatories. But they refused to sign it and they and Engel and several others were called to a meeting at the White House on January 3rd during which Trump said he planned to replace Rosen with Clark. In fact, the committee showed the White House call logs for that day which showed they were already referring to Clark as acting attorney general. The DOJ honchos all told Trump that Clark was unqualified for the job. Needless to say, Trump would not care about that — he’s the president who named Matthew Whitaker, a man much less qualified than Clark, to be acting attorney general after he fired Jeff Sessions. He has long shown that his only criteria for hiring is loyalty to him. (Since they had all been Trump loyalists themselves perhaps that was an awkward realization.)

They had all agreed prior to the meeting that if Trump carried out this “Sunday Afternoon Massacre” they would quit en masse, taking a whole bunch of top DOJ officials with them. White House Counsel Pat Cippolone was quoted telling the president it was a “murder-suicide pact.” Engel said the department would be a “graveyard.” Trump would hardly care about any of that, of course. What likely caused him to back off was this argument by Engel:

“All anyone is going to think is that you went through two attorneys general in two weeks, until you found the environmental guy to sign this thing” pic.twitter.com/qaiFomOl8Q

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 23, 2022

So much for the M.O. The optics just wouldn’t work. 

That was the end of the DOJ portion of the plot but it didn’t stop Trump from calling up Donohue shortly after the meeting to ask him to investigate a cockamamie rumor about a truck full of shredded ballots that were in the custody of an ICE agent down in Georgia.

The Clark coup plot may have been thwarted but nothing was going to stop Trump from pushing the Big Lie, no matter what. After all, January 6 was coming up — and Trump knew it was going to be wild. 

Salon