Pete Buttigieg FTW
I wish other Democrats were as good at this as he is.
"what digby sez..."
Month: July 2022
Are there more at home like you, Susan Fisher?
“As voters come to undestand what MAGA has wrought, national political climate likely to get worse for the GOP,” said Simon Rosenberg of NDN in a Friday Zoom followup to Thursday Twitter comments.
Anecdotal confirmation
Nevada Republican activist Susan Fisher will support Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s bid for reelection because of her stand in favor of abortion rights. Fisher canvassed for the 1990 provision added to Nevada’s constitution that codified the right in her state. The Republicans’ 2022 candidate for U.S. Senate would reverse the state constitution.
On a scale of one to 10, how angry is Fisher? “About a nine and a half,” she told CNN. How many more women like her are out there? “A whole lot more than we know,” Fisher believes.
Elsewhere, Republicans struggle to divert attention from the Supreme Court’s attack on women and to stay focused on gas prices:
Republicans are torn between their policy goals and political ones in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, with activists’ rush to capitalize on the ruling running into the political reality that abortion rights remain popular in many of this year’s midterm battlegrounds.
“I don’t think this alters the midterm advantage for Republicans because of Biden’s economic woes,” said former Virginia Republican Rep. Tom Davis. “But in a cycle that is all about turnout, it is a net benefit for Democrats. Angry voters vote.”
For months, all signs have been pointing to a landslide victory in November for Republicans. But some in the GOP now worry that even if they retake the House and make overall gains, abortion politics could cost them a handful of key races — and with a 50-50 Senate, every race matters.
“This a massive gift to the Democrats and one they could not have conjured up for themselves,” said veteran GOP strategist Mike Madrid, noting the portion of Americans saying they want Democrats in control of Congress has risen in polls taken since the decision. “With inflation as high as it is, for the first time I think it’s a jump ball. The Democrats are now back in it.”
“If I were a betting man,” Madrid added. “I would say Republicans pick up a majority, but maybe it’s not as big as it could or should be.”
He’s paid to say that.
The tale of a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio has Republicans scrambling for a response that does not further alienate women across the country. And gas prices are coming down.
Opposition to “the ugliness of MAGA” drove voter turnout in the last two elections, Rosenberg notes. It likely could again. This is not a typical mid-term election.
Still, it’s a long way to November.
â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź
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Dobbs and state trigger laws begin to bite
Film production begins leaving for states friendlier to women’s rights. The film “Eric Larue” was supposed to begin filming in Little Rock, Arkansas last week. Not gonna happen now, say filmmakers:
“Prior to the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v Wade, the film was scheduled to shoot in Arkansas. Since the Federal Court’s overturn, a decision in which Arkansas’ Attorney General has certified and upheld, Act 180 of 2019 has been triggered to go in effect, banning nearly all abortions in Arkansas, including cases of rape and incest. In response to this, the filmmakers have withdrawn production from the state and will now be shooting in and around Wilmington, North Carolina.
— ”Statement from the producers of “Eric LaRue”
The move was unconfirmed by the N.C. Film Office as of Friday.
So long as Democrats in North Carolina’s legislature can sustain Governor Roy Cooper’s veto, Cooper will see to it that abortion services remain legal in the Tar Heel State (Raleigh New and Observer):
The decision isn’t the first time productions have cited state policies on abortion in deciding where to film or produce their projects. In 2019, several major production companies, including Netflix and Disney, threatened to pull productions from Georgia after the state passed a controversial “heartbeat law” that banned abortion after a fetal heartbeat could be detected.
In 2016, North Carolina felt the sting as the free market responded to the state’s passage of House Bill 2, the infamous “bathroom bill.” Capitalists up and took their business elsewhere, as did the NCAA championship.
Several production companies, including Lionsgate, A&E and 21st Century Fox, announced they would either pull projects from the state or not consider the state for future projects due to the controversial legislation.
The law was repealed through a compromise bill in 2017, and major production companies, including Lionsgate, have since returned for filming in the state. Netflix, which chose in 2019 to film the now-hit show “Outer Banks,” which is set in North Carolina, in neighboring South Carolina, due to “remnants” of HB2, has also returned to the state.
Cooper signed Executive Order 263 on Tuesday to protect state access to abortion services:
“It directs Cabinet agencies to coordinate to protect reproductive health care services in North Carolina. As a result of this Order, Cabinet agencies cannot require a pregnant state employee to travel to a state where there are not protections for the health of the pregnant person. It directs the Department of Public Safety (DPS) to work with law enforcement to ensure enforcement of a state law that prohibits anyone from blocking access to a health care facility. The Order also provides protections against extradition for those seeking or providing reproductive health care services in North Carolina and prohibits Cabinet agencies from cooperating in investigations initiated by other states into anyone obtaining or providing reproductive health care that is legal North Carolina. This Order will help make sure patients get the care they need in North Carolina.”
Only so long as Republicans don’t win back their supermajorities in November. Even then, they should know by now: What the market giveth, the market taketh away.
â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź â—Ź
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41% of Americans believe Jesus will come back by 2050.
–Rolling Stone journalist, from the 2022 documentary Battleground
If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.
-from Hannah and Her Sisters, screenplay by Woody Allen
When I switched on the news and saw a coterie of fresh-faced female activists literally cheering the Supreme Court’s reactionary ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, I reflexively yelled at my TV (imitating Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind) …
“Who ARE you people?!”
The rollback of abortion rights has been received by many American women with a sense of shock and fear, and warnings about an ominous decline in women’s status as full citizens.
But for some women, the decision meant something different: a triumph of human rights, not an impediment to women’s rights.
“I just reject the idea that as a woman I need abortion to be successful or to be as thriving as a man in my career,” said Phoebe Purvey, a 26-year-old Texan. “I don’t think I need to sacrifice a life in order to do that.”
The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade was a political victory, accomplished by lobbyists, strategists and campaign professionals over the course of decades. But it was also a cultural battle, fought by activists across the country including those in the exact demographic that abortion-rights advocates warn have the most to lose in the new American landscape: young women.
Often pointed to by anti-abortion leaders as the face of the movement, a new generation of activists say they are poised to continue the fight in a post-Roe nation. Many, but not all of them, are Christian conservatives, the demographic that has long formed the core of the anti-abortion movement. Others are secular and view their efforts against abortion as part of a progressive quest for human rights. All have grown up with once unthinkable access to images from inside the womb, which has helped convince them that a fetus is a full human being long before it is viable.
Many believe the procedure should be banned at conception — that even the earliest abortion is effectively murder. But they embrace the mainstream anti-abortion view that women are victims of the abortion “industry” and should not be prosecuted, putting them at odds with the rising “abolitionist” wing of the movement calling for women to be held legally responsible for their abortions. And overwhelmingly, these young women reject the notion that access to abortion is necessary to their own — or any woman’s — success.
That’s nice. So…who ARE you people?
In my 2013 review of the documentary Let The Fire Burn, which recounted what led up to a 1985-gun battle between Philadelphia police and members of the MOVE organization (resulting in the death of 11 of its members, including 5 children), I wrote:
Depending upon whom you might ask, MOVE was an “organization”, a “religious cult”, a “radical group”, or all the above. The biggest question in my mind (and one the film doesn’t necessarily delve into) is whether it was another example of psychotic entelechy. So, what is “psychotic entelechy”, exactly? Well, according to Stan A. Lindsay, the author of Psychotic Entelechy: The Dangers of Spiritual Gifts Theology, “it” would be:
…the tendency of some individuals to be so desirous of fulfilling or bringing to perfection the implications of their terminologies that they engage in very hazardous or damaging actions.
In the context of Lindsay’s book, he is expanding on ideas laid down by literary theorist Kenneth Burke and applying them to possibly explain the self-destructive traits shared by the charismatic leaders of modern-day cults like The People’s Temple, Order of the Solar Tradition, Heaven’s Gate, and The Branch Davidians. He ponders whether all the tragic deaths that resulted should be labeled as “suicides, murders, or accidents”.
Now, I’m not drawing a direct comparison between the “new generation of [anti-abortion] activists” mentioned in the New York Times piece to members of The People’s Temple or the Branch Davidians; although the anti-abortion movement does share certain theological roots, and its history is not violence-free (clinics bombed, doctors murdered).
One thing apparent in Battleground, Cynthia Lowen’s timely portrait of three pro-life activists (Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, and self-described “atheist/liberal/pro-lifer” Terrisa Bukovinac, executive director of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising) is her subjects’ evangelical fervor for their political cause. Put another way, these chirpily hell-bent Christian soldiers all appear to have supped deeply of the sacramental Flavor-Ade.
Lowen opens her documentary with chilling audio-only excerpts (that I’ve never heard before) from a closed-door meeting held 40 days before the 2016 elections between then-candidate Donald J. Trump, members of his inner circle and leaders of the religious right:
Male 1: We’ve all been paid handsomely by the Trump organization.
Male 2: I don’t know about you, but let me just tell you, I do what Mr. Trump says, right? [laughter]
Trump [entering the room]: Hello, everybody. [half-jokingly] This is real power! […]
Steve Bannon [addressing the religious leaders]: The key that picks the lock to this election…is you. Conservative Catholics and Evangelicals who have not voted, who have not been motivated to vote, have to come to the polls. If we don’t win on November 8th, it’s because Evangelical and Catholic leaders have not delivered. Your fate is in your own hands. […]
Pastor Robert Jeffress: There is only one candidate running in this election who is pro-life, pro religious liberty, pro-conservative Justices to the Supreme Court, and there is only one candidate who treats the views of conservative Christians with respect…and that candidate is Donald Trump. […]
Trump: And this president could choose, I mean it could be five. It’s probably going to be three. It could very well be four, but it could even be five Justices. So you get a Hillary Clinton in there, and it’s over. […]
There’s more, but if you were awake and cognizant during the 4 (endless) years of the Trump administration, you’ve already had a major spoiler as to whether that promise was kept.
The anti-abortion forces had another (arguably even more powerful) political ally—Senator Mitch McConnell, who is shown in the film addressing a Susan B. Anthony List meeting:
As Senate Majority Leader, one thing that I get to do that the other 99 [senators] don’t get to do is to decide what we’re going to do. [pauses for laughter] And obviously, that was on full display when I decided not to fill the Scalia vacancy. [cheers and applause].
Oh, that Mitch…he’s a caution, isn’t he?
McConnell may have been winking at the choir with his braggadocio, but the power that one man holds in context of America’s increasingly polarizing culture wars is frightening. As Lowen points out in her Director’s Statement, “Abortion is the low-hanging fruit that compels anti-choice voting blocks to the polls, and what’s at stake is a much broader agenda: the end of separation between church and state. Outlawing abortion is just the beginning.”
Battleground is a thought-provoking, well-made study, but it’s a bit of a dilemma as to whether I can “recommend” it…it’s almost too close to this week’s headlines for its own good (“Tell me something I don’t know.”) Political junkies likely will not find its lede revelatory; namely, that there has been a well-organized, highly motivated political machine laser-focused on overturning Roe v. Wade for decades.
That said, now that it appears anti-abortion activists are one step closer to their coveted “post-Roe nation”, it’s critical “someone” (in this case, a filmmaker) bears witness and documents that moment Reality caught up with the cautionary adage “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
Previous posts with related themes:
Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always
More reviews at Den of Cinema
—Dennis Hartley
Looks like we might have escaped it? Unless the Fed decides to fight the last war.
On Wednesday the five-year breakeven inflation rate fell to 2.48 percent. If that doesn’t mean anything to you — which is completely forgivable if you aren’t a professional economy-watcher — try this: The wholesale price of gasoline has fallen about 80 cents a gallon since its peak a month ago. Only a little of this plunge has been passed on to consumers so far, but over the weeks ahead we’re likely to see a broad decline in prices at the pump.
Incidentally, what are the odds that falling gas prices will get even a small fraction of the media coverage devoted to rising prices?
What these numbers and a growing accumulation of other data, from rents to shipping costs, suggest is that the risk of stagflation is receding. That’s good news. But I’m worried that policymakers, especially at the Federal Reserve, may be slow to adapt to the new information. They were clearly too complacent in the face of rising inflation (as was I!); but now they may be clinging too long to a hard-money stance and creating a gratuitous recession.
Let’s talk about what the Fed is afraid of.
Obviously we’ve had serious inflation problems over the past year and a half. Much, probably most, of this inflation reflected presumably temporary disruptions of supply ranging from supply-chain problems to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But part of the inflation surge also surely reflected an overheated domestic economy. Even those of us who are usually monetary doves agreed that the Fed needed to hike interest rates to cool the economy down — which it has. The Fed’s rate hikes, plus the anticipation of more hikes to come, have caused the interest rates that matter for the real economy — notably mortgage rates — to soar, which will reduce overall spending.
Indeed, there are early indications of a significant economic slowdown.
But the just-released minutes of last month’s meeting of the Fed’s Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates, suggest considerable fear that just cooling the economy off won’t be enough, that expectations of future inflation are becoming “unanchored” and that inflation “could become entrenched.”
This isn’t a foolish concern in principle. Over the course of the 1970s just about everyone came to expect persistent high inflation, and this expectation got built into wage- and price-setting — for example, employers were willing to lock in 10-percent-a-year wage increases because they expected all their competitors to be doing the same. Purging the economy of those entrenched expectations required an extended period of very high unemployment — stagflation.
But why did the Fed believe that something like this might be happening now? Both the minutes and remarks from the chair, Jerome Powell, suggest that an important factor was a preliminary release of survey results from the University of Michigan, which seemed to show a jump in long-term inflation expectations.
Even at the time, some of us warned against putting too much weight on one number, especially given the fact that other numbers weren’t telling the same story. Sure enough, the Michigan number was a blip: Most of that jump in inflation expectations went away when revised data was released a week later.
And for what it’s worth, financial markets are now more or less sounding the all-clear on persistent inflation. That five-year breakeven is the spread between ordinary interest rates and the interest rates on bonds that are protected against rising prices; it is therefore an implicit forecast of future inflation. And a closer look at the markets shows not just that they expect relatively low inflation over the medium term but also that they expect it to subside after the next year or so, returning thereafter to a level consistent with the Fed’s long-run target.
To be fair, bond traders don’t set wages and prices, and it’s possible in principle that inflation is getting entrenched in the minds of workers and businesses even as investors decide that it’s under control. But it’s not likely.
Also, there may be an element of self-denying prophecy here, with investors marking down their expectations of future inflation precisely because they expect the Fed to slam too hard on the brakes.
Still, it’s disturbing to read reports suggesting that the Fed is getting more hawkish even as the economy weakens and the prospects for sustained inflation are receding.
I don’t know exactly what’s going on here. Part of it may be the all too common tendency of policymakers to double down on a course of action even when the facts stop supporting it. Part of it may be that, having gotten past inflation wrong, Fed officials are, perhaps unconsciously, susceptible to bullying from Wall Street types determined to be hysterical about future inflation. And in part they may just be overcompensating for their previous underestimation of inflation risks.
In any case, there’s an old joke about the motorist who runs over a pedestrian, then tries to fix the mistake by backing up — and in so doing runs over the pedestrian a second time. I fear that something like that may be about to happen in economic policy.
Let’s hope not…
It looks like it might be, at least on the GOP side
Lol. Trump is running and if anyone thinks he will concede gracefully if he loses the nomination they really need to get a brain scan, stat. Seriously, why would anyone think it makes sense to run when he’s running? Why???
As Donald Trump considers another White House run, polls show he’s the most popular figure in the Republican Party. But it wasn’t always that way.
Competing at one point against a dozen rivals for the presidential nomination in 2016, Trump won only about one-third of the vote in key early states. He even lost in Iowa, which kicks off the nomination process.
But he prevailed because those in the party who opposed his brand of divisive politics were never able to coalesce around a single rival. That same dynamic could repeat itself as Trump mulls a new bid for the presidency as soon as this summer.
With a growing list of candidates gearing up to run, even a Trump diminished by two impeachments and mounting legal vulnerabilities could hold a commanding position in a fractured, multi-candidate primary.
“I fear it could end up the same way as 2016, which basically was everyone thought everyone else should get out,” said Republican strategist Mike DuHaime, who advised former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign that year. “I think every major candidate realized that he or she would have a better shot against Trump one-on-one. But of course each person thought he or she should be the one to get that shot and nobody got out of the way. … And then it was too late.”
The anxiety is mounting as a growing list of potential rivals take increasingly brazen steps, delivering high-profile speeches, running ads, courting donors and making repeat visits to early voting states.
That group now includes upward of a dozen could-be-candidates, including Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence; his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo; and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Rick Scott of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina. All could run on the former president’s policies.
In the anti-Trump lane, politicians such as Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan are raising their profiles.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is increasingly seen as Trump’s heir apparent, even by Trump’s most loyal supporters, and viewed by Trump allies as his most formidable potential challenger.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and others have said they will not challenge Trump if he does go forward. But others, including Christie, seem to be gunning for the fight, even if they seem to be long shots.
“I’m definitely giving it serious thought. I’m not gonna make any decision probably until the end of the year,” Christie said in a recent interview. He has urged the party to move on from Trump and his ongoing obsession with the 2020 election.
[…]
“It looks like it’s increasingly clear there’s going to be a lot of people running for president. And while I think there’s an appetite for something different, the alternative to Trump needs to coalesce around one candidate,” he said. “That never happened in 2016. And it might not happen in 2024.”
I think it’s hilarious. Either he wins and they all “coalesce” around him or he loses and screams fraud. That’s how he rolls.
They must know this so I assume this is all positioning in case he drops dead. That’s the only way anyone but Trump is going to be on the ticket in 2024. In fact, if for some reason he doesn’t make the ticket and can’t overturn the results he’ll sic his mob on the RINO who beat him and could even run as an independent just to screw them. Don’t think he won’t. We know what he’s capable of.
What do the Trump voters really care about?
What in the HELL do they think he did for the country?
Poor, poor Brett Kavanaugh
He wasn’t able to finish his dessert because protesters were outside the restaurant. (He should count himself lucky. Poor Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn’t get past the cheeseboard.)Alexandra Petri FTW, reporting that there is no right to dinner written into the Constitution or the Bible:
The Bible (technically not the Constitution, but there are people working to fix that!) relates that Adam and Eve ate dinner, once, in public, and this was such a grave offense that they were kicked out of their home immediately and hassled with flaming swords. Mankind was then forced to develop farming and wear pants.
God was very clear on the subject: Dinner is a sin. How could there possibly be a right to it? Jesus ate a nice dinner with 12 friends upstairs in a restaurant one time and he was sent to die in a horrible manner. He who eats dinner will get his deserts, afterwards.
Some argue that even if this made any theological sense, theology should not hold sway in the governance of our country, where there is (or at any rate, used to be) something called the establishment clause that separates church and state. To this, the Supreme Court responds, “You have hit adulthood, and you still believe in Establishment Clause?”
Besides, it is not merely the Bible that suggests you have no right to dinner and are naive and wrong to think that you do. Why, didn’t the philosopher Pythagoras believe that fava beans contained souls, and therefore avoid eating them at all costs? And where are fava beans served but at dinner? (Lunches and dinners, I suppose, if you are creative — but that is not very originalist.)
Can we update our thinking on this point at all, given that Pythagoras was operating in the 6th century BCE and the bean thing sounds made up? No. Tradition is the bedrock of all jurisprudence. To those who would suggest that we evolve, or that we not impose our religious or leguminous beliefs on others, I say, “HERETIC! HERETIC! TORCHES, QUICKLY!”
I understand that all this may seem counterintuitive to Justice Kavanaugh, as a person who lives in the present time and is accustomed to thinking of himself as an entity entitled to respect and endowed with the power to make choices for himself and his family.
He might want his old freedom back, or ask for someone to escort him through the gantlet of protesters who want him to feel bad about his choices, which after all don’t affect anyone other than millions of people whose lives are going to be fundamentally changed and whom he is consigning to a status lower than that of full person with the bodily autonomy and right to direct their lives that this entails.
He might say, “This is a horrible constraint to put on me! I am just trying to live my life, with my family, according to my own lights! I just want to have dinner, like a person!” And I sympathize! I would love to find that this was a right. But there is no right, however seemingly basic, that cannot vanish away like a ghostly mist the second someone remembers that there might be a medieval text, somewhere, out there that disagrees. And the Bible. And the beans. I’m sorry! My hands are tied.
Poor Brett. He just wanted to exercise his right to privacy. Sadly, he doesn’t have one. None of us do.
Mark Meadows had no business being anyone’s Chief of Staff
I hate to see Mick Mulvaney rehabilitating himself as a pundit on CBS but his POV on this subject is worth looking at simply because he was the White House Chief of Staff for over a year. Maybe it’s sour grapes at being replaced by Meadows but I think he’s probably right anyway:
While former White House counsel Pat Cipollone spent his day being deposed by the House Jan. 6 select committee, former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney discussed with CBS News’ Catherine Herridge what he thinks happened inside the White House during the assault on the Capitol.
Mulvaney, who preceded Mark Meadows as chief of staff and overlapped with Cipollone, said it was easy to imagine Cipollone’s warnings to then-President Trump’s aides regarding Jan. 6, 2021, as he listened to top Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson testify before the committee in late June.
“‘Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,'” Cipollone said, according to Hutchinson’s testimony. “That movement” referred to the possibility of Trump heading to the Capitol along with a mob of supporters as members of Congress ceremonially counted the Electoral College votes. He was ultimately thwarted in his desire to go to the Capitol, instead spending the rest of Jan. 6 at the White House.
Mulvaney, who is a CBS News contributor, told Herridge that as he was watching the testimony, he felt that, “yeah, I could absolutely see Pat saying that … I can hear that- that sentence in his voice coming through my head.”
After Hutchinson testified, Mulvaney tweeted that it had been a “very, very bad day for Trump.”
He called Cipollone “a man of integrity” though he noted that “we didn’t get along personally,” and said he has not spoken with him “in awhile.”Â
Mulvaney said that in his experience in the White House, Trump welcomed conflict among his advisers. He “would love to have people in a room who would fight with each other, who had differences of opinion.” But in the final days of his presidency, Mulvaney — who was ousted from his job in March 2020 — said he feared that model “simply broke down,” and “the normal people were not there — that for whatever reason, it was only the crazies.”Â
While the Capitol was under attack on January 6, Mulvaney had no insight into what was happening inside the White House.Â
“No one would return my calls, no one would return my texts,” he told Herridge. He added, “I tweeted at the president of the United States to try and get somebody to engage.”Â
Mulvaney said he learned more about what happened from a text conversation with a friend who he said was inside the White House on January 6. Mulvaney said that conversation occurred while Hutchinson was testifying.Â
“I texted and I said, ‘You know, if I listen to Cassidy closely, it sounds like Mark was either completely incompetent at the job or was having a nervous breakdown,'” Mulvaney said. “And the person texted back, it was a little bit of both.”Â
In hearing Hutchinson’s version of events, Mulvaney marveled at the “chaos in the building.” He said what he heard represented nothing less than “a complete breakdown in the operation of the West Wing.”Â
The job of chief of staff is, he said, “to tell the president stuff he doesn’t want to hear.”Â
Right. I’m sure Mick was up in Trump’s face every day. Sure he was. But of all the COS’s in Trumps White House Meadows was almost certainly the most incompetent.
I wrote this a few months after Meadows took the job. It was clear from the start that he was clueless:
President Trump has gone through almost as many chiefs of staff in three and a half years as Barack Obama did in two terms. His first was former Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus, who was in so far over his head he didn’t make it past the first six months. He was replaced by retired Gen. John Kelly, who had first been appointed as Trump’s secretary of homeland security. The hope was that a skilled leader with management experience could instill discipline and tame the palace intrigue, but in the end, Kelly found that Trump was uncontrollable and all else flowed from that so he was out as well.
Then came the former Tea Party congressman from South Carolina, Mick Mulvaney, who had been serving simultaneously as head of the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (Multiple appointments, often of people who serve only in an “acting” capacity, are a hallmark of the Trump administration.) This past spring, with the coronavirus pandemic raging in the Northeast, Trump lost faith in Mulvaney too and he was “moved” to the job of special envoy for Northern Ireland. His replacement was another Republican congressman, former Freedom Caucus leader Mark Meadows of North Carolina. As shocking as this may be, it appears he may be the worst one yet.
Meadows entered Congress in 2012, two years after Mulvaney, and both were part of the Tea Party surge. But while Mulvaney has an impressive CV from Georgetown and the University of North Carolina, practiced law for many years and held statewide office in South Carolina before running for Congress, Meadows was pretty much a cipher before he was elected.
In 2018, Meadows was revealed to have exaggerated his college career — he only received an AA degree rather than a BA, as he had claimed. He ran a restaurant in North Carolina for a while and has owned real estate development companies both in Florida and North Carolina. His previous political experience came as a county-level Republican chairman and as a member of North Carolina’s economic development board. That was pretty much it until he ran for Congress eight years ago.
He won that first race in a recently gerrymandered district with little trouble, since he had an R after his name. Meadows roared into Congress carrying the Tea Party banner and started making waves almost immediately. Like the rest of his class, which felt they had a mandate to do everything humanly possible to obstruct the Obama administration’s agenda, he became a leader of the right-wing faction that later branded itself the Freedom Caucus.
After being in office for only eight months, Meadows made a name for himself as the author of a letter demanding that the Republican House majority zero out all funding for Obamacare in the must-pass spending bill, threatening to shut down the government otherwise. He got 79 of his colleagues to sign the letter and it squeezed then-Speaker John Boehner into holding a vote on it, which Boehner did not want to do amid already delicate budget negotiations. Meadows was not a team player:
“This type of vote could potentially hurt our long term goals. I understand that,” he said. But he said that’s not his concern.”My job first is to make sure I represent the people back home,” Meadows said. “I don’t believe that when I get here that people expect me to look at the political implications. That’s for somebody else to focus on.”For him, getting rid of Obamacare is priority No. 1. “[T]o ignore that would be to ignore our duty to represent the people back home,” he said.
He said his constituents wanted him to fight against Obamacare “regardless of consequences.” That gambit was just the first of many more attempts to ditch the Affordable Care Act, shut down the government, wreck the U.S. credit rating and otherwise cause untold damage to the country.
Meadows was 100% a creation of the Tea Party at the height of its power. Activists in the movement interviewed him, vetted him and got him elected. His comments above reflected the movement’s simpleminded arrogance that represented the final, steep decline of what had once been a functioning political party.
By 2015, Meadows was a major power in the House Freedom Caucus — essentially a creation or offshoot of the Tea Party movement — which successfully ousted Boehner for failing to deliver enough of the Tea Party agenda. He soon became a major thorn in the side of Boehner’s successor, Paul Ryan, for exactly the same reason.
So it was somewhat surprising to see Meadows embrace Donald Trump wholeheartedly in 2016, even joining him on stage and leading the crowd in exuberant chants of “Lock her up!” chants. Whatever else Trump may be, he’s not much of a Tea Partier. But Meadows made it clear from the beginning that he sees his job as giving his far-right voters exactly what they want, no matter what, and they wanted Trump. It wasn’t long before he was backing primary challenges to recalcitrant GOP representatives who failed to show sufficient fealty to the president.
By 2019, Meadows was so deeply bound to Trump that he announced he wouldn’t run for re-election and made it known that he would love to be his chief of staff. A few months later the prize was his, and according to this report from the Washington Post he has — unsurprisingly — not only failed to quell the White House chaos but reinforced the president’s worst instincts. Meadows reduces everything to partisan politics, is openly contemptuous of scientists, doctors and other experts and eggs on Trump to play hardball no matter what, in the middle of the pandemic crisis and the ensuing economic disaster.
In other words, just as he blindly did the bidding of the Tea Party without regard to the consequences, Meadows is now channeling their new leader, with the same disastrous results for his party and the country. It’s ironic that the man who founded a group that was often called the “Caucus of No” has turned out to be the perfect yes-man — the last thing America needs in Donald Trump’s White House.
Too many “people familiar with” sources
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot appeared last night on CNN to speak (sort of) about former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s closed-door testimony Friday.
“Not contradicting is not the same as confirming,” Lofgren said.
“He could say so and so was wrong, which he did not say. There were things that he might not be present for, or, in some cases, couldn’t recall with precision. My sense was that he, as I say, he did appear voluntarily. I think he was candid with the committee. He was careful in his answers, and I believe that he was honest in his answers,” she said.Â
Lofgren was vague about new things the committee learned.
CNN’s other reporting cites “three different sources familiar with Cipollone’s testimony” in its reporting, calling it very important and extremely helpful. Treat that with all the seriousness it’s due.
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