Month: July 2022

They all came out of the woodwork for Trump

How many of these weirdos ARE there?

Around 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald J. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on the phone with a little-known conservative lawyer who was encouraging his attempts to overturn the election, according to a memo the lawyer later wrote documenting the call.

The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president. Mr. Olson later conceded some of them could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and could even invite comparisons with Watergate. The plan included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, according to the Dec. 28 memo by Mr. Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order,” describing their discussions.

“Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Mr. Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’”

The document highlights the previously unreported role of Mr. Olson in advising Mr. Trump as the president was increasingly turning to extreme, far-right figures outside the White House to pursue options that many of his official advisers had told him were impossible or unlawful, in an effort to cling to power.

The involvement of a person like Mr. Olson, who now represents the conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, underscores how the system that would normally insulate a president from rogue actors operating outside of official channels had broken down within weeks after the 2020 election.

Read William J. Olson’s Memo to Trump

That left Mr. Trump in direct contact with people who promoted conspiracy theories or questionable legal ideas, telling him not only what he wanted to hear, but also that they — not the public servants advising him — were the only ones he could trust.

“In our long conversation earlier this week, I could hear the shameful and dismissive attitude of the lawyer from White House Counsel’s Office toward you personally — but more importantly toward the Office of the President of the United States itself,” Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Trump. “This is unacceptable.”

It was not immediately clear how Mr. Olson, who practices law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, arrived in Mr. Trump’s orbit. Mr. Olson previously worked with Republican super PACs and promoted a conspiracy theory that Vice President Kamala Harris is not eligible to be vice president, falsely claiming she is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. He and his firm have long represented Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group.

According to his website, which displays a photograph of him shaking hands with President Richard M. Nixon, Mr. Olson was a White House intern in 1971.

His 2020 memo was written 10 days after one of the most dramatic meetings ever held in the Trump White House, during which three of the president’s White House advisers vied — at one point almost physically — with outside actors to influence Mr. Trump. In that meeting, the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pushed for Mr. Trump to seize voting machines and appoint Ms. Powell special counsel to investigate wild and groundless claims of voter fraud, even as White House lawyers fought back.

But the document suggests that, even after his aides had won that skirmish in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the counsel’s office.

And, the memo indicates that Mr. Trump was acting on the outside advice. At one point, it refers to the president urging Mr. Olson to contact the acting attorney general directly about having the Justice Department lend its credibility to Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to invalidate the election results.

It’s important to remember that all these people were planning a coup. And they thought nothing of it. They would do it again in a heartbeat.

A warning for anyone to the left of the far right

Andy Craig was a Libertarian for nearly 10 years. No more, says he in a newsletter. The Liberty-tarians (active membership in the low five figures) have gone illiberal:

Under the direction of the so-called Mises Caucus, the LP has become home to those who don’t have qualms about declaring Holocaust-denying racists “fellow travelers” and who don’t think that bigots are necessarily disqualified from the party. They even went out of their way to delete from the party’s platform its nearly 50-year-old language stating: “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.” The caucus is also reversing the party’s longstanding commitment to open immigration policies in favor of border enforcement. The new chair, Angela McArdle, proclaims that the party will now be dedicated to fighting “wokeism.” People with pronouns in their Twitter bios aren’t welcome anymore, but, evidently, white nationalists and Holocaust deniers are.

But that’s not all. Various members of the new leadership have averred that: Black folks owe America for affirmative action; Pride Month is a plot by degenerates and child molesters aiming for socialism; and a country with zero taxes but more trans murders would be more morally acceptable than the reverse. Though some Mises Caucus figures insist they want to offer solutions to the culture wars, in practice, that means obsessively weighing in on the side of the far right.

As with Democrats and Republicans, it is those who show up — the highly motivated willing to devote the cash and time to attend state and national conventions — who get to vote on the party’s direction.* This makes parties susceptible to takeover by their most extreme elements. In this case, the Mises.

The scenario is familiar, Jonathan Last comments at The Bulwark:

A party, any party, is just a vessel. A brand name with pre-wired infrastructure. There is no reason that the Republican party has to be for lower taxes any more than the Libertarian party has to be for legal weed. There are no ideological commitments. Not really.

What there is, is power. And a party “believes” what the faction currently in control of its power structure believes.

So the Republican party believed in free trade and small government and robust American foreign policy—right up until the moment it didn’t. Because a new owner came in, took control of the apparatus, and had his own set of beliefs.

And rather than the party rank and file rebelling and waving their pocket Constitutions at him and quoting Reagan—well, the party rank and file kept waving their pocket Constitutions and quoting Reagan. But they didn’t rebel. They went along with it.

All of it.

And the Libertarians? “More than a fifth of the national party’s dues-paying members have left in the past year,” Craig explains, and offers this word of caution to anyone “to the left of the far right”:

The same pathology that afflicts the GOP now also afflicts the LP, namely, orienting itself not by reference to its principles but by single-mindedly focusing on its enemy: progressives and anybody else to the left of the far right. This alignment bodes ill for the future of American politics, now that the nation’s largest third party is an adjunct of Trumpism rather than an opponent of it.

“Taking the Libertarian Party out as a competitive force will help consolidate the right-wing vote around the Republican Party,” Jeet Heer warned last month in The Nation.

“What are you prepared to do?” Malone asked Eliot Ness. Lefties had best quite sniping at each other as though each and every policy disagreement is a grounds for divorce, figure out who their proximate adversaries are, and survive to squabble another day.

* Here, it seems mostly people who like to hear themselves talk in what they fancy is a Model Legislature.

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What Dobbs has wrought, and will

The trolley problem is a classic thought experiment in ethics:

There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track.

What would you do? What should you do?

Three years ago, The New Yorker ran a piece about what a driverless car might do in a similar situation. What if the one person was very old? Or fat or thin? Or from a racial minority? What would people from different cultures do? Now, how do we want a driverless car to choose?

We cannot even decide as a culture, I wrote at the time, whether or not it is moral to torture prisoners or cage migrant babies snatched from the arms of their mothers or let people die because they cannot afford health insurance. So, defining the ethics of self-driving cars should be no problem at all, right? And who is to be responsible for the design?

Today, the overturning of Roe has, Jeet Heer observes, opened a Pandora’s Box of ethical and legal issues, “unleashing monsters which will make life hell for countless women.” (It’s all a woman’s fault, naturally.) So in states’ rush to re-prohibit abortion, who is responsible for cleaning up the fallout from the Dobbs decision?

A woman in an unstable relationship terminated her pregnancy at seven weeks. Her ex-husband opened an estate for the embryo and has sued the Phoenix abortion clinic for wrongful death. My latest for @propublica: https://t.co/p6OGSX9imb

— Nicole Santa Cruz (@nicolesantacruz) July 15, 2022

An ex-husband accuses his then-wife and her doctor of violating Arizona’s informed consent law over an abortion four years ago. “A judge allowed the woman’s ex-husband to establish an estate for the embryo, which had been aborted in its seventh week of development, writes Nicole Santa Cruz for ProPublica:

Across the U.S., people have sued for negligence in the death of a fetus or embryo in cases where a pregnant person has been killed in a car crash or a pregnancy was lost because of alleged wrongdoing by a physician. But a court action claiming the wrongful death of an aborted embryo or fetus is a more novel strategy, legal experts said.

The experts said this rare tactic could become more common, as anti-abortion groups have signaled their desire to further limit reproductive rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. The Arizona lawsuit and others that may follow could also be an attempt to discourage and intimidate providers and harass plaintiffs’ former romantic partners, experts said.

Lucinda Finley, a law professor at the University at Buffalo who specializes in tort law and reproductive rights, said the Arizona case is a “harbinger of things to come” and called it “troubling for the future.”

Finley said she expects state lawmakers and anti-abortion groups to use “unprecedented strategies” to try to prevent people from traveling to obtain abortions or block them from obtaining information on where to seek one.

By people, Finley means women.

The Texas vigilante statute that allows third-parties to sue women who seek abortions (and anyone who assists them) is “much bigger than these wrongful death suits,” says Finley.

The Arizona case is a trial balloon to see how far the enemies of reproductive rights “can push the limits of the law, the limits of reason, the limits of science and medicine,” says Civia Tamarkin, president of the National Council of Jewish Women Arizona.

“Personhood” statutes and laws recognizing legal rights for the unborn opened the door to the Arizona lawsuit.

It’s unclear how many states allow an estate to be opened on behalf of an embryo or fetus. Some states, like Arizona, don’t explicitly define what counts as a deceased person in their probate code, leaving it to a judge to decide. In a handful of states, laws define embryos and fetuses as a person at conception, which could allow for an estate, but it’s rare.

For now. Expect that door to be wedged open wider.

As states determine what is legal in the wake of Dobbs and legislators propose new abortion laws, anti-abortion groups such as the National Right to Life Committee see civil suits as a way to enforce abortion bans and have released model legislation they hope sympathetic legislators will duplicate in statehouses nationwide.

“In addition to criminal penalties and medical license revocation, civil remedies will be critical to ensure that unborn lives are protected from illegal abortions,” the group wrote in a June 15 letter to its state affiliates that included the model legislation.

The laws surrounding in vitro fertilization (IVF) and assisted reproductive technology (ART) are next up for threats of lawsuits targeting even women who do not seek abortions Slate reports:

Fertilizing eggs in a Petri dish often results in extra embryos, which are usually frozen. And preimplantation genetic testing, or PGT, is performed on more than 40 percent of embryos before they are transferred into the uterus. Leftover embryos are frequently discarded or donated to research after patients have completed procreation or PGT detects genetic abnormalities. In some abortion-restrictive states, this may not be possible. Louisiana defines “a viable in vitro fertilized human ovum” as a “juridical person which shall not be intentionally destroyed,” and at least five states have introduced bills establishing fetal personhood. If such laws apply to embryos outside the womb, they might prohibit embryo destruction, donation of embryos to research, and maybe even embryo freezing. Even if states do not ban IVF outright, they may limit, as some countries have done, the number of embryos that can be created to prevent embryo destruction. All of this would make IVF and PGT much more difficult and expensive than they already are.

About 30 years ago, I heard in a Paul Harvey noontime program about a millionaire couple in California that perished when their private plane crashed. The childless couple had been trying to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization. The “heirs” to their fortune were frozen at the clinic. As Harvey told it, selfless women began coming forward to volunteer to carry the little dears to term for a piece of the action.

Technology chronically outruns our laws and ethics. Some people’s need to control and punish women does as well.

We are not getting any better at this.

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Otter pups!

May 30, 2022 — “We’re spellbound by this adorable cuddle puddle of otter pups at the Aquarium! Born Sat., May 21, they are tiny. What they lack in size, they make up in determination. The pups and their first-time parents, Leia and Quincy are inspiring us every day as they grow and gain weight. Follow their journey. ncaquariums.com/welcome-otter-pups“

May 30, 2022 — “We’re spellbound by this adorable cuddle puddle of otter pups at the Aquarium! Born Sat., May 21, they are tiny. What they lack in size, they make up in determination. The pups and their first-time parents, Leia and Quincy are inspiring us every day as they grow and gain weight. Follow their journey. ncaquariums.com/welcome-otter-pups“

June 1, 2022 — “OTTER PUP-DATE: Our Asian small-clawed otter pups had their first physicals today. The NC Aquariums veterinary team worked quickly to examine the pups and return them to their nest.” 

June 23, 2022 — “All three pups had their second checkup. Dr. Emily checked hearts and lungs. Their teeth are starting to come in and two of the three have signs that their eyes are opening! Follow their journey: ncaquariums.com/NCAFF-blog/posts/otter-pup-journey”

June 30, 2022 — “Eye-opening excitement and chirping on day 38. Look closely—one of the otter pups is looking back at you. She opened her eyes all the way Tuesday! Her sisters haven’t fully opened their eyes…yet.” 

July 7, 2023 — “All three pups have opened their eyes and are more mobile. When Leia and Quincy bring them out of their nest, the girls will crawl around. They are also very vocal! Guest listen closely, you might hear them chirping from behind the scenes.”

July 14, 2022 — “These pups are a handful! They started to venture out of the nest, unprompted by mom. Speaking of mom, Leia has started to hear a bit of sass coming from a pup when it’s time to go back to the nest. ncaquariums.com/NCAFF-blog/posts/sassy-and-sensational“

Again. As usual.

Oops, he did it again. After laying out all the conditions, he suddenly decided at the last minute that all the conditions he laid out are no longer operative. This is about the 5th time he’s done it. It’s ridiculous. And to be honest, we don’t know if Kyrsten, Queen of the Desert would have gone along in the end anyway. She has her prerogatives too.

Most of us long ago realized that he isn’t acting in good faith but the Democrats had to keep trying because they simply have no choice. In the old days there might have been a Republican or two they could drag into negotiations but that’s long over unless Mitch gives his dispensation and even then, they won’t do anything that might accrue to the benefit of Democrats.

Greg Sargent has the ugly details:

This will surprise only people who haven’t paid even cursory attention to the last year of Democratic politics, but Sen. Joe Manchin III may have just killed any hopes for a resuscitated version of the Democratic agenda.

The West Virginia Democrat reportedly told party leaders late Thursday that he won’t support any new incentives to combat climate change or any new tax hikes on corporations or the wealthy. The Post reports that in private talks, Manchin appeared close to a deal, only to renege at the last minute.

Yet as ludicrous as this turnaround is on its face, there are still more hidden absurdities behind the situation that show what a farce it has truly become. They turn on the specifics of what Manchin appeared to reject, and his inflation-related excuse for doing so, which amount to a display of towering bad faith.

First, a caveat: After those stories broke, Manchin claimed on Friday that he’s still open to a deal and wants to see July’s inflation numbers before deciding. So perhaps he just doesn’t want to act quite yet. But given all we’ve seen, let’s inaugurate the Manchin Rule: Until the senator actually shows he’s operating in good faith, we’ll presume otherwise.

He said that Schumer can go ahead with a small bill to extend ACA subsidies and let Medicare negotiate drug prices, but they need to wait on the tax hikes and climate stuff until August — when they’ll all be in recess. Talk about bad faith…

The deal would have raised around $1 trillion in revenue from rolling back some of the 2017 GOP tax cuts. Half of that revenue would have gone to deficit reduction, and the other half would have gone mostly to funding the transition to green energy.

Also in the mix were provisions empowering Medicare to negotiate down prescription drug prices, which would produce substantial savings. Those could be used to continue funding expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to expire after originally passing in last year’s covid-19 rescue package.

But Manchin has rejected the tax hikes and the climate provisions. For now, he is open only to some kind of deal in which savings from the prescription drugs provisions fund expanded ACA subsidies.

By the way, the subsidies highlight another problem with Manchin’s position. Even if he does just want to delay another month, extending the subsidies this month is critical, because states will soon have to assume they’ll expire and send out notices of premium increases.

Regardless, how Manchin reached this point is hard to discern. As The Post reports, he has long supported tax reforms such as those being debated, yet he seemingly backed away from them, including a measure to close a loophole enjoyed by the very wealthy to sustain Medicare.

What’s more, Manchin is still reportedly telling people he wants to secure a few hundred billion dollars in deficit reduction. How he would do this without raising high-end taxes is unclear.

It gets worse. A Democrat briefed on the conversations says Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) sought to meet Manchin’s concerns about the climate provisions head-on.

This included reducing spending on green energy tax incentives to $375 billion, the Democrat says. It also included nixing incentives for electric vehicles, which Manchin had objected to as well.

And a Democratic aide tells me much of the legislative text on green tax incentives had been written, and haggling was down to minor points. Manchin’s turnaround floored those working on that text, given what had been happening only hours earlier.

[…]

His spokesperson insists we must “adjust to the economic realities the country faces” and avoid “steps that add fuel to the inflation fire.”

But climate change is also a reality, and without something like this agenda, it may be impossible to come close to hitting climate targets scientists say are necessary to avoid disaster.

And how much would the package offered to Manchin actually increase inflation? Economist Dean Baker notes that half would go to deficit reduction, which Manchin wants, and the nixing of incentives for electrical vehicles removes another spending piece.

What’s more, Baker says, spending on ACA subsidies would be offset by less spending on prescription drugs. “It’s basically impossible to see how that would be inflationary,” Baker tells me.

Manchin is clearly either incoherently capricious or subject to sign-off from the special interests in whose pockets he resides. Either way, he’s been acting in bad faith from the beginning and he’s not going to change. He has personally and almost single-handedly destroyed what could have been a historic legislative agenda and seemingly enjoyed making the entire party dance to his tune. It’s pathetic.

I assume the Dems will say yes to the prescription drug and ACA elements. But there’s every chance he’ll pull back on that too saying that someone said something that hurt his feelings and that will be that. It wouldn’t be the first time. The Emperor is a very sensitive fellow.

Pregnancy creates second class citizenship in more ways than one

Pregnant citizens just can’t catch a break:

December 2020 was a turbulent month for Danielle Drake, 32, of Lake of the Ozarks. On December 1, her husband said he was going out with a friend, but he lied. He was actually having an affair. She filed for a divorce less than a week later, on December 7.

Then, not long before Christmas, Drake found out she was pregnant.

Drake knew immediately she had to file a second, amended petition for divorce. She also knew the impact her pregnancy would have on the divorce proceedings. Drake, who earned a law degree from University of Missouri Kansas City has been practicing family law for two years, was well aware that in Missouri, women who are pregnant can’t get a divorce.

Missouri law states that a petition for divorce must  provide eight pieces of information, things like the residence of each party, the date of separation, and, notably, “whether the wife is pregnant.” If the answer is yes, Drake says, “What that practically does is put your case on hold.”

There is a lot of disagreement online about whether pregnant Missouri women can get divorced. The RFT spoke to multiple lawyers who handle divorce proceedings and they all agreed that in Missouri a divorce can’t be finalized if either the petitioner (the person who files for divorce) or the respondent (the other party in the divorce) is pregnant.

Dan Mizell, an attorney in Lebanon, Missouri, who has been practicing law since 1997, says that certain aspects of the divorce can proceed, but everything having to do with custody of the unborn child is frozen in place until birth or a pregnancy-ending event like a miscarriage. The court can issue temporary orders related to things like dividing up property, Mizell says. “But they can’t do a final decree of divorce until she delivers the baby.”

Drake says that this is true even in the case of a divorce that is completely uncontested. “If the couple is not fighting, and they’re just saying, ‘Nope, she’s gonna take the baby and 100 percent of the things’ they still cannot go before a judge and have that finalized until after there’s a baby born,” she says.

“It is a shock to some people,” Mizell adds. “Sometimes it comes up at the very last minute, because the wife is usually asked to say under oath whether she is pregnant or not, which can be offensive at times, and also a bit ridiculous at others.”

Drake also points out what seems to be a double standard in regards to how the state treats an unborn child in a divorce proceeding compared to in abortion law.

Drake gave birth to her son in August 2020.She says that the whole basis for Missouri putting the pause on a divorce proceeding until a child is born is because Missouri divorce law “does not see fetuses as humans.”

“You can’t have a court order that dictates visitation and child support for a child that doesn’t exist,” she says. “I have no mechanism as a lawyer to get that support going. There’s nothing there because that’s not a real person.”

This aspect of Missouri divorce law has gotten more attention in the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering a ban on abortion in Missouri except in cases of medical emergency. Though what is meant by medical emergency is still ambiguous.

“This all goes back to the fact that we don’t trust women,” says Jess Piper, an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights who is running as a Democrat to be the state representative for the 1st District, in the rural northwest corner of the state. “I’ve heard actual reports of women who have been in domestic violence situations where their husbands withheld birth control from them, purposely creating a pregnancy so that she can’t leave.”

Piper adds that for some women, the new abortion law in Missouri will be just another obstacle in what can already be a fraught process of leaving a marriage.

It’s hard to escape the idea that all this is designed to control pregnant women. It’s inconsistent, incoherent and unnecessary. Why else would you do this?

A fanatic is writing the abortion legislation in the states

I posted this quote from the lawyer for national Right to Life, Jim Bopp, yesterday, about the 10 year old rape victim who traveled to Indiana to have an abortion:

“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,”

That is about as extreme as it gets, I would think. He’s one step away from saying that women should die rather than have abortions. and I’m, sure that’s next.

Well, as it happens he’s the guy writing the “model legislation” for red states across the country:

State legislatures around the country are turning to the words of a prominent Indiana lawyer as they draft legislation that would restrict abortion, but lawmakers here have signaled they will develop other language in crafting new abortion policy.

[…]

Last month Bopp wrote an extensive, detailed document for the national organization to share with state legislatures in the hopes that it could serve as a blueprint for new law.

“We tried to do as comprehensive a model law as we could think would be necessary,” Bopp said. “But you know legislators are perfectly free to pick and choose.”

Indiana Republicans often use such templates from national organizations as they craft legislation here. In fact, a USA TODAY investigation found both parties frequently use such “form bills” to pass legislation across the country. 

Bopp’s model law would ban abortions in almost all circumstances except in cases where the procedure is necessary to prevent the imminent death of the pregnant mother.

While the legislation would make it a felony with jail time to perform or aid and abet in an abortion, the woman who undergoes the procedure would not be subject to criminal penalties.

Although the main body of the text does not allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest, a footnote acknowledges that some states may want to enact such measures and contains language to that effect for these states to use.

Such a stance is not “an ideal position” but may be necessary in some states, Bopp told IndyStar.

The model legislation would also prohibit the manufacturing, sale and distribution of medical abortion pills or abortifacients to someone who could use them to have an abortion, making it a Level 3 felony.

Some states have already expressed interest in the document. Earlier this week one of Bopp’s colleagues testified in front of the South Carolina legislature, he said.

[…]

The model law also addresses local prosecutors who might choose not to enforce abortion laws in this jurisdiction. Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears announced the day that the Supreme Court issued its ruling on abortion that his office would not prosecute abortion-related cases, as have a number of his counterparts in other counties.

Bopp does not agree with such stances. 

“They’re seizing the power of the legislature to decide what the law is,” Bopp said of such prosecutors. “This is not their function but a reckless abuse of power so we have to deal with it.”

Under his proposed legislation, the state attorney general would be given authority to enforce criminal laws associated with abortion.

Note that his model says “imminent” death of the mother. As I said, he’s one step away from saying women should die.

But why should we care what this fringer says anyway, right? Well, he isn’t fringe at all. This guy isn’t some evangelical gadfly with a fetus fetish. He’s one of the most influential conservative lawyers in the country:

Bopp is known for his staunch social conservatism, and his past and present clients are “a who’s who of social conservatism,” including the Traditional Values Coalition, the Home School Legal Defense Association, Concerned Women for America, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform. He has been the general counsel for National Right to Life since 1978, the James Madison Center for Free Speech since 1997, and as the special counsel for Focus on the Family since 2004^] Bopp was the editor of Restoring the Right to Life: The Human Life Amendment, a book promoting the Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to overturn Roe v. Wade and ban abortion.

A study conducted in 2014 showed that Bopp was one of a comparatively small number of lawyers most likely to have their cases heard by the Supreme Court.He has repeatedly been named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States by the National Law Journal,

He is in the mainstream of the Republican party and he isn’t just concerned with abortion cases. He’s in all of it.

No please, not again

I’m glad David Corn brought this up because I’ve become worried about the same thing. Trump and his minions have a way of framing his bad acts that seem to exonerate him. Corn compares the current obsession with finding a specific link between Trump and the Proud Boys to the “collusion” narrative that overwhelmed all of Trump’s dirty deeds in the Russia investigation. He successfully misdirected the public away from the fact that his campaign had been infiltrated by Russian interests, including his campaign chairman, and that he had openly encouraged them to sabotage his opponent. And he persuaded much of the public that unless changed with “collusion” (not a legal concept) he was innocent of wrongdoing.

Anyway, it may be happening again:

In much the same way, Trump need not be nailed as a colluder with the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys to merit widespread condemnation and possible criminal investigation. It’s been proven that the Trump White House via then-chief of staff Mark Meadows was in communication on January 5 with longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone and disgraced former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who themselves were in contact with the allegedly seditious Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. So it remains a possibility that the White House was in cahoots with the extremists, perhaps egging them on to cause chaos on January 6 that would impede the certification of the electoral vote count—which, at that time, was what Trump desired. (The Proud Boys, at the very least, believed Trump sent them an encouraging message during the 2020 campaign when he told them, “Stand back and stand by.” And in 2016, Trump publicly asked Russian hackers to target Hillary Clinton—and they did.) Yet if these two dots—Trump and the insurrectionist paramiltarists—are not connected, that does not absolve Trump.

So much of Trump’s post-election misconduct is now out in the open. His Big Lie crusade and his incitement of the January 6 mob occurred in full public view. And his behind-the-scenes efforts to overturn the election have been revealed: leaning on state Republican legislators; pressuring election officials in Georgia (“I just want [you] to find 11,780 votes”); scheming to create fake elector slates; pressing the Justice Department to declare the election results corrupt; and muscling Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of electoral votes. Moreover, the January 6 committee has been revealing evidence showing what was already known about that awful day: While the pro-Trump marauders attacked the Capitol and assaulted law enforcement officers, Trump took no steps to end the riot. The raid proceeded for hours before Trump called on his supporters to leave the Capitol. (The committee has teased that it will provide more testimony regarding what Trump did and did not do on the afternoon of January 6 in a hearing next week.)

Some of Trump’s actions may have been illegal—and there’s much discussion these days as to whether Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is fully investigating them and whether Trump and his henchmen could be indicted. (The Fulton County district attorney is on the case.) But there is no question that Trump committed serious wrongdoing and that on January 6 he abandoned his duties as president, as he watched the riot and did nothing. 

All this ought to be enough to brand Trump a villain and a danger to American democracy. Conspiring with the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys would be merely one more offense on a tall pile. It could expand his legal liability. But it’s a subplot in a tale already fully established: Trump attempted to subvert the constitutional order to retain power. 

Trump has often escaped accountability by committing transgression upon transgression. Each dirty deed distracts from the other. Any one of his plots to steal the 2020 election would be a major scandal in itself. (Pushing the Justice Department to falsely declare the results were fraudulent!) Yet all of his dishonest conniving creates a gigantic blur that can be hard to absorb or follow. The January 6 committee has done a good job of breaking down Trump’s myriad skullduggery. This will certainly not convince the Trump cultists and denialists; they cannot be reached. But for the rest of the nation, there’s no need for a smoking gun—or to get hung up on a particular allegation or possible criminal violation. The question is no longer Trump’s guilt but how best to counter the threat he continues to pose to the republic. 

He’s right, of course. The man is a danger to our democracy, a pathological liar who has betrayed the country over and over again for his own narcissistic needs. He is a monster. It shouldn’t take a criminal indictment for him to be disqualified from ever stepping foot in the White House again.

But I’m honestly not sure that’s something we can count on. Look at all he did right out in the open and more than 70 million people voted for him. Counting on “Merrick Time” to deliver the goods as we did with Mueller is a bad idea and we certainly shouldn’t let the press allow that frame to take hold.

Apparently, that’s where we’re going

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) directly addresses Republicans during debate on bill protecting right to travel for an abortion:

“You’re trying to take away people’s right to travel. What in the world is this? Is this America? … They come for me today, they’re coming for you tomorrow.” pic.twitter.com/Qkv7at6h9m

— The Recount (@therecount) July 15, 2022

It’s outrageous. But I do appreciate that the House Democrats are putting up these bills and the Republicans are letting their freak flags fly. People need to see the specific atrocities these people are endorsing:

GOP Sen. James Lankford (Okla.) on Thursday blocked a Democratic request to unanimously pass a bill seeking to protect interstate travel for abortion.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), joined by a string of Democratic senators, had sought consent to pass a bill that would prevent states from punishing women who travel to other states where abortion is legal to get the procedure.

The measure would also protect health care providers who provide abortions to out-of-state patients. 

“Does that child in the womb have the right to travel in their future?” Lankford said in objecting. “Do they get to live?”

“There’s a child in this conversation as well,” he added.

With full-scale legislation to codify Roe v. Wade lacking the votes to pass the upper chamber, Democrats have looked for other legislative responses after the Supreme Court struck down the nearly 50-year decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

A series of Democratic senators had spoken in favor of the measure before the request Thursday.

Cortez Masto said the bill was needed to protect abortion providers even in states where abortion remains legal, saying she has heard of some who are worried about being sued if they provide abortions for out-of-state patients.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) pointed to reports that conservative groups are “right now drafting legislation to ban travel for abortion.”

While Democrats said the right to travel for abortion is constitutionally protected as well, they sought to provide additional protection in law. 

“Anyone telling you this is not a threat is not paying attention,” Murray said. 

How about these?

We just voted to combat neo nazis in our military and every single republican voted no. pic.twitter.com/lUF1NRGiXg

— Bill Pascrell, Jr. 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@BillPascrell) July 14, 2022

168 Republicans vote against Active Shooter Alert System pic.twitter.com/3OgLVuowSI

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 14, 2022

The Death Cult is working overtime in the US House of Representatives.

Will the Democrats be able to ensure that the voters are aware of this?

Maybe not …

For months the conventional wisdom has held that Democrats are in for an epic shellacking in November, perhaps on a scale that has never been seen in American history. This conventional wisdom is so hardened that if you watch cable news opinion shows or read the op-ed pages of the national papers, you’d think we might as well cancel the elections and just hand the reins over to California Republican Kevin McCarthy in the House and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell in the Senate. Just call it a day already. The assumption is that the Democratic congressional majority isn’t just a lame duck, it’s a dead duck.

There is certainly good reason to believe that the Democrats are facing a major loss. After all, the party in power almost always loses seats in the midterms. It’s often been because the president brings in a number of marginal winners on his coattails and the party loses them again when he isn’t on the ballot. (2002 was the only recent exception and that happened because of 9/11 and the fact that George W. Bush didn’t really win his election — which meant that he didn’t have any coattails to lose.)

Another big factor in determining midterm success and failure is the president’s approval rating, as you will hear every pundit and talking head repeat ad nauseam. This correlation is attributed to the idea that mid-term elections are referendums on the president and people will lodge their complaints against him at the ballot box. Since Joe Biden’s approval rating is very bad at the moment, hovering somewhere in the mid to high 30s, that spells big trouble for the party.

And then there is the idea that the generic ballot (which party will you vote for in November?) determines which specific candidates people will vote for in the end, the assumption being that they will vote the party line. For months, the generic ballot had Republicans up double digits, which helped cement the so-called beltway wisdom. With inflation running at a 40-year high, and the pandemic still hanging around, even the excellent job market can’t quiet the depressing feeling that nothing is working right anymore.

Right now, if you were to ask anyone who is somewhat informed about Democratic prospects in November they would say that it’s going to be a bloodbath. And from what we read, the Republicans in both chambers of Congress are already teeing up all the investigations and articles of impeachment so they can hit the ground running. After all, they have no agenda other than Trumpian vengeance, obstruction and bootlicking. But if you look a little bit more closely, this election may not unfold as everyone assumes it will.

All those circumstances I mentioned are true, but there are times when history just isn’t a perfect guide.

First of all, the presumed “red wave” in the House was largely predicated on the notion that Republicans were going to gain a large number of seats in redistricting. That didn’t happen. They gained a few but for the most part, the heavy gerrymandering already took place back in 2010 and there just isn’t a lot of room to create more districts for themselves. As a result, there are actually very few seats up for grabs, with Democrats mostly in solidly blue districts and Republicans in safe red ones. It’s possible that a bunch of blue districts will go for the Republicans this time, I suppose, but I wouldn’t bet on it, particularly since the most recent generic ballot polls show that the Democrats are now running even with Republicans.

CNN’s Ron Brownstein looks at some of the latest polling data and sees the suggestion of a “decoupling” of the vote from the president’s approval rating. Polls in several races show that among people who disapprove of Biden’s performance, many more than usual are still planning to vote Democratic. That is at least somewhat explained by the fact that Biden’s approval rating is so low largely because Democrats disapprove of him but they are not about to vote for some of these kooky candidates the Republicans are nominating.

That is yet another reason why this may not go the way the conventional wisdom blows. This election may be turning into a choice election rather than a referendum election, with voters being asked to choose between right-wing extremists and normal Democrats.

The GOP base is very happy about that but there are plenty of independents and centrists who are appalled by candidates such as Doug Mastriano and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia who are completely out of the mainstream. Polls in statewide races are already showing this.

Axios reported again on Thursday that Mitch McConnell is not a happy fellow:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been sounding this alarm for months: electing fringe candidates with checkered pasts could squander a golden chance to reclaim power. Now, McConnell is left hoping for a red wave so wide and powerful that candidate quality is irrelevant.

He made his MAGA bed with a bunch of My Pillows and now he has to lie in it.

Democratic strategist Joe Trippi believes that this may also be dispositive in the House because “people are going to be shocked in their districts when they realize who the Republicans have nominated.” They are literally nominating QAnon believers and January 6 insurrectionists.

Finally, there are the three big issues that have moved to center stage in this election.

There is the Republican threat to democracy that’s being exposed on TV screens all over the country this summer. As Trippi says, “though we may not want to believe it, the last truly democratic election may be at our doorstep.”

There is also the issue of guns and mass shootings. Republicans are so devoted to their firearms fetish that this week 168 of them even voted against a bill called the  Active Shooter Alert Act this week. Apparently, it’s an infringement of 2nd Amendment rights to let people know they need to take cover from a gun-toting psychopath. They are way out of the mainstream on that issue.

And there is the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the consequences of which we are starting to see play out in states and localities across the country in ghastly living color. The polls show that this is having a galvanizing effect on the Democratic electorate and they are now as committed to voting in November as the Republicans.

I would also add that there is a grotesque orange cloud hovering over the GOP in the person of Donald J. Trump who is planning to announce his candidacy any time now and remind everyone in the country that the Republican Party has been remade in his image and still dances to his tune. When asked what he thought about Trump entering the 2024 race, Joe Biden said he welcomes it. No doubt. Biden may be unpopular but in head-to-head polls, he still beats Trump.

None of this is to say that Democrats are a shoo-in or that this big red wave won’t materialize. All the historical data is in the GOP’s favor. But we are not living in normal times and the Republicans are not a normal party. 

Remember: in a country that could elect Donald J. Trump to be president, anything can happen.

Salon