Month: August 2022

Marriage equality is not “settled” as far as the Christian Right is concerned

I’ve been writing about the obvious move by the Christian Right to begin the long march to overturn marriage equality. The reversal of Roe makes it clear that they are in the driver’s seat when it comes to the culture war being waged by the Republican Party and the Supreme Court majority and it’s foolish to think otherwise.

Here’s Sarah Posner, an expert on this subject, confirming my instincts on the matter:

After passing the House with the support of 47 Republicans, the Respect for Marriage Act, which would protect marriage rights for same-sex couples if the Supreme Court were to overturn its 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, faces much dimmer prospects in the Senate. There is one reason why: the Christian right still controls the Republican Party. Movement leaders know it took 50 years to reverse Roe, and are committed to a similar strategy to undermine and eventually overturn Obergefell. With abundant clues in the Supreme Court’s June decision overturning Roe that LGBTQ rights could be next on the chopping block, it is unimaginable that movement leaders would sink that goal by allowing this bill to become law.

Republican senators are keenly aware of this. That is why South Dakota’s John Thune and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy accused Democrats of introducing the bill to distract from inflation. It is why Florida’s Marco Rubio called it “a stupid waste of time,” and claimed gay Floridians are “pissed off” about something else — high gas prices. And it is why Maine’s Susan Collins, who was one of the bill’s four original Republican supporters, came up with the laughing-crying emoji argument that, because Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) had struck a surprise deal on Democratic legislative priorities late last month, she would struggle to win fellow Republicans’ support for the marriage bill. “[I]t was a very unfortunate move that destroys the many bipartisan efforts that are under way,” she told HuffPost.

These were opportune but risible excuses.The reality is these Republicans were already seeing an avalanche of opposition from Christian right political advocacy organizations. Family Research Council Action, the political arm of the Family Research Council church, began calling the bill the “(Dis)Respect for Marriage Act” before it reached the House floor. The group reminded Republican lawmakers that their party platform states, “[t]raditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values.” In an email blast, FRC Action sowed fear among its supporters that the bill would be used to persecute them and take away their religious freedom. It reminded them that in the 1970s, the IRS revoked the tax exemption of the segregationist, fundamentalist Christian Bob Jones University over its racist policies, suggesting, despite the fact that it hasn’t happened in the seven years since Obergefell, that universities and nonprofits that oppose marriage equality could face a similar fate. The American Family Association called the bill “an Orwellian attempt to pretend that the Court’s very recent discovery of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage is not controversial and offensive to many people around the country.” The Heritage Foundation called it a “publicity stunt” aimed at “tak[ing] the spotlight off progressives’ radical policies and paint conservatives as bigots — and all this conveniently before the midterm elections.”

Despite the Christian right’s protestations that same-sex marriage is unpopular, it is actually extremely popular, with Gallup earlier this year finding 71 percent of Americans — a record high — supporting it. What’s more, most religious people do not think protections for same-sex marriage infringe on their religious freedom. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, “Majorities of most major religious groups support same-sex marriage,” with one significant outlier: white evangelicals. Only 35 percent of white evangelicals support marriage equality — and their views drive the Republican Party. In the Senate, the filibuster rules reinforce this tyranny of the minority. 

There are two reasons for the Christian right’s dominance of the GOP. One is that while white evangelicals make up just 15 percent of the population, they are highly enthusiastic voters; they made up 28 percent of the 2020 electorate, and 76 percent of them voted for Donald Trump. They make up large swaths of the electorate in red states, and are likely to be motivated to engage in backlash against a Republican senator seen to betray the cause. 

The second reason is that the Christian right — made up of white evangelical activists along with other conservative white Protestants and Catholics — has built a formidable political and legal machine designed to position themselves as defenders of the true faith and the real Christian America. A well-funded constellation of legal and political organizations has been inordinately successful in amassing power, both in Republican Washington, red state legislatures, and the federal judiciary. It is designed to flex its muscles at moments like these. 

That network’s strength has been on full display in recent weeks. The legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom took the lead on a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposing the bill, signed by more than 80 religious right leaders. The letter denounced the bill “in the strongest possible terms,” characterizing it as “an attack on millions of Americans, particularly people of faith, who believe marriage is between one man and one woman and that legitimate distinctions exist between men and women concerning family formation that should be recognized in the law.” 

As I reported for TPM in 2019, ADF has not only led the way in transforming our jurisprudence against church-state separation and reproductive and LGBTQ rights, it has cultivated and cemented relationships that ensure its proximity to power. It counts among its compatriots Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Senator Josh Hawley, who have both been faculty speakers for its training program for aspiring Christian lawyers. In 2019, Hawley single-handedly killed the appointment of a federal judge, nominated by Trump, because he had once litigated a case against ADF. Hawley’s wife, also a lawyer, now works for ADF, and played a key role in the strategy to overturn Roe. 

After the House vote, FRC Action pledged to support primary challengers to any Republicans who voted for the bill. Some won’t face this blowback since they are retiring or have already lost their primaries. FRC Action’s first target was Michigan’s Peter Meijer, who did lose his August 2 primary, but likely would have anyway because of his vote for Trump’s impeachment. Nonetheless, the message certainly is not lost on Republicans in the Senate where, unlike the House, GOP votes are necessary to get the bill past a filibuster. No one wants to be the one who tips the scales in favor of the bill, and incurs the wrath of Christian right operatives and the get-out-the-vote machine at the disposal of a primary challenger. 

If you don’t believe they will do it I don’t think you’re paying attention. They have built the most powerful grassroots machine in American politics and they know how to use it. They are focused and they are ruthless. And they don’t care one whit how popular or unpopular their cause might be.

Of course, the NY Times editorial board is right. It is extremely dangerous to promote right wingers and incompetents for any reason whatsoever, and certainly so when it comes to elected office. As the Times editorial says:

Anyone who proclaims concern about the future of democracy shouldn’t come within a whiff of these democracy-denying candidates, let alone help them win votes…

What if these election deniers actually win?

Exactly. But there’s just one problem. At the bottom of this post is a screenshot of the Times Web site today, the very same day that the Times printed the editorial above. Biden is mentioned exactly one time. T**** is mentioned three times.

This disproportionate number is actually closer than it was during the 2020 election when, on a typical day, I was counting between 4 to 6 mentions of T**** for each Biden mention. The Times did the same thing during 2016, btw, hyping that incompetent racist and misogynist clown over a responsible centrist candidate to the point where it often felt to me that he was running unopposed.

Why does the Times continue to promote dangerous political figures at a level far above reasonable ones? For exactly the same reason that they complain about: it is in their interest. In the case of the Times, articles about extremists sell papers.

The Times would argue that I’m the cynic here. Their business is not politics but the news; they simply print what is newsworthy. That is utterly disingenuous. In this case, when they are printing article after article about an extremist candidate who simply knows how to prey on the press’s bias for attention-getting stunts, the media’s high-minded mission descends to mere publicity and promotion. Seriously, the amount of free publicity that man receives from the mainstream media every year would cost anyone else hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from top PR firms.

So, Mr and Ms Times Editorial Board and General Editor, it’s high time to eat your own dogfood. As you yoursefl have said, don’t come within a whiff (or a woof) of democracy-denying candidates. Stop giving them so much free access to your newspaper.

How the pro-choice advocates made their case in Kansas

The CW on the Kansas vote this week seems to have gelled into this basic message:

[W]hat just happened in Kansas, where voters in a deeply red state voted overwhelmingly to protect abortion rights. By now, you know the toplines: Democrats were motivated and Republicans divided.

But here’s the biggest surprise: Lordy, there were swing voters.

Abortion rights supporters naturally won big in blue counties. No surprise. But they also ran up a huge margin of 68 percent to 32 percent in Johnson County, “a suburban area that was once reliably Republican but that has trended rapidly toward Democrats since Mr. Trump’s entrance into national politics.”

They also won in several counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump.

As the Wapo notes, the victory for abortion rights supports “relied on a broad coalition of voters who turned out in huge numbers and crashed through party and geographic lines…”

Look at this graphic from The Times:

How did that happen? Abortion rights advocates figured out how to talk to Middle America. Via the Wapo:

Abortion rights supporters used conservative-sounding language about government mandates and personal freedom in their pitch to voters, and made a point of reaching out to independents, Libertarians and moderate Republicans.

Organizer Jae Gray explained the strategy:

“We definitely used messaging strategies that would work regardless of party affiliation. We believe every Kansan has a right to make personal health-care decisions without government overreach — that’s obviously a conservative-friendly talking point. We were not just talking to Democrats.”…

And therein lies a powerful lesson about how to talk about abortion in 2022. As Josh Barro points out his newsletter:

The messaging in the Kansas campaign couldn’t be further from the Groups-Speak mush I have complained about previously — no “reproductive justice,” no “men get abortions, too,” — and it also ignored the sometimes-fashionable idea that you should brush right past voters’ internal qualms about the morality of abortion and simply make the case that abortions themselves are good.

Take some time to look at some of the ads that blanketed the airwaves in Kansas. Barro highlights this ad that “doesn’t even mention the word: abortion.” Instead, it emphasizes that the proposed constitutional amendment would lead to “a strict government mandate designed to interfere with private medical decisions… Kansans don’t want another government mandate — superimposing that message over a COVID mask mandate sign.”

Another ad features a local doctor, who emphasizes how extreme the bans could be: “Do no harm. That’s the oath we take as doctors. But now the government wants to force doctors …to break that oath …

“It’s a government mandate that could ban all abortions with no exceptions, even rape and incest”

This ad features Christian pastor who says that the amendment would ‘replace religious freedom with government control.”

This ad stresses the threat to both privacy and freedom:

“It gives government more power over your privacy and your personal medical decisions. Don’t let politicians take away your freedom.”

Another ad emphasized the existing limitation on abortion: “Abortion is already highly regulated in Kansas,” it says. “Taxpayer funding for abortion: outlawed. Abortion after viability: banned. Parental consent: required.“

This ad features a Catholic grandmother…

“Growing up Catholic, we didn’t talk about abortion,” she says. “But now it’s on the ballot … If it were my granddaughter, I wouldn’t want the government making that decision for her.”

In this ad, a woman talks about an abortion that she says saved her life.

“It’s an impossible choice,” she says. “I had a three year old son at the time and a husband … if I didn’t have an abortion they would be without their mother and their wife”

Nota Bene: As Josh Barro notes, abortion rights activists did not simply appeal to their base; and they resisted the temptation to scratch their ideological id. Instead, they appealed to values that resonate across the political/cultural spectrum. They met the voters where they were; and treated centrists, conservatives, and even pro-lifers with respect.

It worked.

That’s by Charlie Sykes and Josh Barro, both of whom are conservatives. And I’m sure there is something to what they say. Those messages are (in the main) conservative messages designed to appeal to pro-choice Republicans. But let’s not pretend that these were the key to success. People already knew what they thought about abortion rights. It wasn’t the specifics of the ads that persuaded anyone.

I suppose the “respect” aspect may have been somewhat important in that if they had tried to make the arguments that the Democrats in the state (who made up the vast majority of the “no” vote) would find appealing, the pro-choice Republicans would have been offended and so may not have voted. That’s how they roll.

I wonder if there will ever be a time when conservatives return that “respect” and appeal to Democratic swing voters in their language? I’ve never seen it but I suppose it could happen.

Judge indicts the entire MAGA movement

Conspiracy marketer Alex Jones gets no sympathy from me. But watching Texas District Court Judge Maya Gamble have to address him like a child in the Sandy Hook defamation trial Wednesday might get someone else there. The man is a trainwreck. He is being sued by Sandy Hook families for lies that made their lives an even darker hell after the murder of their children. His claims that the murders were staged led to harasment of the victims’ families and death threats.

Jones seems not to have any understanding of what a trial is or how it works. It is a search for truth. For Jones, truth is whatever he thinks and says on his Infowars show. In the real world, it is not.

“This is not your show,” an exasperated Gamble told Jones.

“You believe everything you say is true, but it isn’t,” Gamble admonished Jones. “Your beliefs do not make something true.”

“Don’t talk,” Gamble said when Jones tried again to interrupt. The man likes to hear himself talk and cannot keep his mouth shut even to save himself. He repeatedly portrayed himself as a victim. Very, very MAGA.

Jones repeatedly went off topic, wandered into hearsay (Gamble had to explain what hearsay is and why it is not fact) and, rather than answering specific questions, Jones self-justified. His testimony in his own defense was a disaster.

NBC News:

Lawyers for Alex Jones appeared to have accidentally sent over the entire contents of the Infowars founder’s phone to the lawyers for the plaintiffs in his defamation trial, according to court proceedings Wednesday.

Mark Bankston, a lawyer for the parents of one of the children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and who are now suing Jones, said during the proceedings that “12 days ago, his [Jones’] attorneys messed up and sent me a digital copy of every text” and email from Jones’ phone.

After Bankston told Jones that the Sandy Hook parents’ legal team had access to years of his texts and emails, he asked Jones, “Do you know what perjury is?”

No more than he does hearsay.

Several days in 2018, Infowars was bringing in $800,000 per day selling conspiracy theories and nutritional supplements.

Bankston holding up a dollar bill: "Are you aware that your attorney" is arguing this is what you should pay? Jones "What does the new york times pay for lying about WMDs?" Bankston, in disgust, says there's no point in asking Jones any more questions and sits down.

— Anna Merlan (@annamerlan) August 3, 2022

Finally, after demonstrating that Jones had lied about his texts about the Sandy Hook massacre, plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Bankston gave up, noting that asking further questions of Jones would not have any point.

Trump and MAGAstan are so far down the rabbit hole they’ve dug that truth cannot reach them. Perhaps Judge Gamble can explain epistemic closure to Jones when the jury returns its verdict.

Deliberations began late Wednesday.

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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.

They’d rather sabotage the republic

People rock-solidly committed to their principles often refuse to participate in activities that violate them. Like people who refuse to eat beef out of concern for climate change. Or people who boycott a hated company’s products or services.

One would think people opposed to democracy who vigorously promote the idea elections are a sham would refuse to particpate. If they had principles. Which they do not. So they do.

In the name of “election integrity,” Republican operatives are recruiting and training thousands of election workers in how to intimidate fellow election workers and voters. Sugar in the gas tank. Sand in the gears.

Politico obtained recordings from training summits this spring that reveal sabotage is the goal. RNC National Election Integrity Director Josh Findlay identifies Cleta Mitchell, an attorney central to former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as a key player:

Publicly, the RNC has insisted its goal is to ensure there are enough trained poll workers to protect the electoral process and ensure partisan parity at polling centers. The recordings, however, indicated that the RNC is relying heavily on people who have spread false or unproven claims of irregularities and conspiracies. The recordings feature Findlay speaking at a number of Mitchell’s “Election Integrity Network” summits, which her group has hosted in battleground states including Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The RNC is just “part of the team,” he told a Florida summit the same month.

While Republicans have said the aim of their “election integrity” effort is to ensure there are well-trained poll workers during the next election, the recordings also feature Mitchell speaking openly about the need to challenge efforts by nonprofit groups aligned with Democrats to create a “new American majority” of young voters, people of color and unmarried women.

“It’s a place the left sees as a great target of opportunity, and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she said, referring to Democratic efforts to register voters from traditionally underrepresented voting blocs.

[…]

At an April 5 Arizona summit, Mitchell spoke mostly about an emerging “new American majority” of people of color, young people and unmarried women that could make conservatives “obsolete.” Her private comments are significant because Democrats have long insisted it is these fears of displacement — and not legitimate election administration concerns — behind the GOP drive to tighten access to voting for certain groups, including through mail.

A party committed to the democratic process might work to expand its appeal to a wider national audience rather than to make the process more exclusive. Democrats do that (for the most part). The GOP, not so much. Instead of boycotting elections, the GOP works at once to undermine them and to elect members who will.

The lunatic fringe is now the establishment in the Republican Party. See Mark Fincham who, after Tuesday’s primary, would as the GOP’s nominee for secretary of state in Arizona, administer elections there in 2024. Fincham attended the Jan. 6 insurrection, believes the Covid pandemic was a hoax, played a part in Trump’s fake electors scheme, and wants to empower the state’s legislature to overrule the will of the people. Among other things.

“With Arizona’s Republican primary voters nominating a full slate of election saboteurs, it cannot be denied that democracy is on the ballot in November,” writes Dana Milbank:

And this isn’t just happening in Arizona. Even before Tuesday’s primaries, six election deniers had already prevailed in gubernatorial primaries this year, according to a tally by the States United Democracy Center. (This includes Doug Mastriano, GOP gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, who crossed police barricades at the Capitol on Jan. 6.) Another five election deniers won primaries for attorney general, and five have advanced to general elections for secretary of state. Those numbers will grow as the primary season advances.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Wednesday to spotlight threats to election workers. Democrats called election officials to describe the challenge to their work from the flood of MAGA threats and intimidation since 2020. Rather than address the subject and implicate their base, Republicans invited witnesses to minimize those threats by promoting a narrative of rising crime in general.

If their policies and opinions are so unpopular that they cannot win elections freely and fairly, Republicans with integrity might moderate them, or else just take their ball and go home. But no. They’ll wrap sabotage in the flag of the republic for which they no longer stand.

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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.

This guy is very bad:

Blake Masters won the GOP Senate primary Tuesday in Arizona, and is set to face off against incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ). 

Masters beat out businessman Jim Lamon and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R).

Masters ran a sometimes menacing campaign that leaned hard into conspiracy theories. He made an explicit endorsement of the Great Replacement theory part of his regular campaign fare, while staking out a position in favor of reducing legal immigration.

The former chief operating officer of billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s hedge fund, Masters has been involved with Thiel on more than just the business side. The two are ideologically sympatico, with Masters fusing Thiel’s signature combination of pro-big business libertarianism and America-only nationalism into the core of his campaign. 

He’s a writer, too. Masters co-wrote a book with Thiel in 2014 composed of notes taken during a class that Thiel taught on how to build startups. It wasn’t Masters’ first brush with the pen, however. As an undergraduate at Stanford, the aspiring senator frequently posted on an online chatroom for the workout program CrossFit and on an obscure libertarian forum blaming the “Houses of Morgan and Rothschild” for the U.S.’s entry into World War I, while also remarking that the “hot button issue of the Holocaust” made it more difficult to argue against U.S. involvement in World War II — “(nevermind that our friend Stalin murdered over twice as many as Hitler … why do we gloss over that in schools?)” he added. 

While the young Thielite has sought to cast himself as a new brand of right-wing Republican, some of his proposals are familiar: He wants to privatize Social Security, for example.

On a key issue in the 2022 midterms, the right to an abortion, he has espoused a position in line with his strident persona, calling for a nationwide abortion ban in the form of a federal fetal personhood law.

He has also capitalized on Trump’s efforts to discredit the 2020 election, earning the former President’s endorsement after releasing an ad claiming that “Trump won in 2020.” That set him apart from an ealry top competitor, Brnovich, who, despite campaign-trail efforts to out-Trump Masters, had accepted the results of the 2020 election.

He isn’t a Christian nationalist like Doug Mastriano. He comes from the “libertarian” faction of the right wing. What they all have in common is the fascism. And this guy is all in.

Who needs ideas when you have Republicans?

Fmr. NJ Gov. & Forward Party co-founder Christine Todd Whitman says there are “so many” top moderate Democrats who've joined the third-party movement.

“Can you name one?” @mehdirhasan asks.

Hear Whitman’s response — and the rest of their convo — tonight on @msnbconpeacock. pic.twitter.com/LcGNQsbxlK

— The Mehdi Hasan Show (@MehdiHasanShow) August 1, 2022

Alexandra Petri on the “Forward Party”

We are not a party of ideas. We are a party of the total absence of ideas. No, rather, our idea is that we will solve problems using good ideas. This is such a good idea we are amazed that nobody has had it before. Do we have any good ideas? No. We are more idea-ideas people than idea people, if you see. Our big idea is to disrupt the party system. Other parties have brought things to the table, but we are disrupting that by bringing nothing to the table. This is sort of a BYO situation, like when you bring stones to make soup and everybody brings everything else.

Division is bad in itself, regardless of what is dividing you, whether it’s a question like, “Do some people, perhaps, not deserve equal protection under law?” What’s bad is the bitterness of the division there, not the fact that some people think there are two sides to the question! And we are here to fix that with our principled dedication to the principle of being dedicated to a principle. Also, we will have the best graphic design of any party if we ever get around to having a slogan, but we probably won’t because that would be polarizing.

Look, we are the Spotify of parties. We are the place people come to listen to music. Why would you expect us to have music here for people to listen to? We’re just a place that has explicitly promised that you will be able to listen to music. That is like expecting a restaurant to serve food, when everyone knows that a restaurant is just a place where people come to be connected with food. A kitchen is what makes food. Most restaurants have kitchens attached, but you shouldn’t presume. Or like arriving at a brand new hospital expecting it to be able to treat your broken leg, even though everyone knows a hospital is just a place for interfacing with the concepts of doctors and nurses. Why would anyone assume that because we have opened and announced our opening we have doctors and nurses?

To anyone who would dare to call this the Fyre Festival of parties — Fyre Festival had those sandwiches. We would not insult you by offering so much. At most, we are the shadow of a sandwich flickering on a cave wall.

People are always saying things like, “I would vote for a generic Democrat,” and then refusing to vote for a specific Democrat. Well, we want to apply the lesson of those polls on a party level: Instead of a specific party, we are just the principle of a party. We are not a party of ideas; we are the idea of a party.

As the House committee on Jan. 6 hearings reveal, we live in a polarized country, and there are people in it who think violence is acceptable and who are working to undermine the legitimacy of our elections. On the other hand, Democrats seem pretty steamed about that. There is only one possible solution that will fix this problem: a third party.

Paul Waldman: Why the third-party talk from Forward goes nowhere

The upcoming elections are going to be absolutely pivotal when it comes to determining which peoples’ rights survive and whether this country continues to function. There are those who say that if you are starting a third party now, it must be galvanized by a very clear, powerful idea — one that makes it worth drawing votes away from both the alternative parties, which are equally falling short. They say that such a party makes sense only if it is buoyed by an idea so undeniable that people will come surging forth from their ideological bunkers to vote for it despite everything else that is going on and all the other things that are at stake.

To those who say that, we say: We will have an idea like that soon! Or at least an idea about that idea! And it’s going to be a doozy!

I think the J6 committee already knows the contents of the missing texts from the Secret Service, DHS and now the DoD. Texts of top Trump officials in the Department of Defense wiped. The “missing texts” investigation is designed to reveal people involved in the cover up. It’s a setup to implicate Trumpers embedded in government. And it’s working, it’s already exposed actions and non-actions taken by Trump appointed Inspector General Joseph Cuffari. Monday, Reps. Bennie Thompson and Carolyn Maloney said they also have new evidence the inspector general’s office stopped trying to recover the missing records over a year ago. Link

.@SamSeder the J6 cmte telling the media the Secret Service texts are "missing" is a set up designed to catch those who tried & are trying to obstruct justice. It's working too, it's exposed IG Cuffari. @MattLech @majorityfm
Good Job #J6committee! @January6thCmte pic.twitter.com/T4J0VEJAxm

— Spocko (@spockosbrain) August 2, 2022

“But Spocko,” you ask, “if the committee has copies of the texts, why didn’t they reveal them?” There are a couple of reasons. Not revealing the content now is giving the committee the opportunity to get more people in to “refresh their memory” and cut deals. They have said this explicitly.

The BS reasons given that the texts are missing are BS. However, they are used to give some people an out if they come forward with more information. (Remember, the J6 committee wants the information, not necessarily to prosecute everyone for all their crimes. That’s the DoJ’s job.)

Put yourself in the shoes of someone who KNOWS what’s in the texts AND KNOWS that the reasons given they disappeared are BS. The committee is giving people an excuse to come forward now and cut a deal. They are SAYING the texts were deleted and missing. They are NOT saying there is no way to ever know what is in those texts. They are expecting people to come forward and say things like “I deleted the texts, but now I remember who told me to.” Or “I really DID send most of them in, but I didn’t send in the encrypted ones on my personal phone. Here they are now.”

Some will keep stonewalling right up until they are presented with copies of their texts. Then they will start with disputing the content, “Fake evidence!” or “You have to prove intent!!!” Or, “I was just following procedure and orders of the head of the protection detail.” Or “Where is your chain of custody for this text, it’s inadmissible in court!” Or, when they really get it, “I plead the 5th.”

I talked to Matt Binder on his podcast Doomed last night. (Link. I start at 1:46.) I asked if he believed the texts were really deleted. He thought they were because of who was doing this and their technical sophistication. I laughed, I shouldn’t have, because he’s correct. The Secret Service DOES have that level of technical sophistication. What I was laughing about was how often people only look in their area of expertise and don’t consider others. *I’m guilty of the same bias. I know about the technical reasons it’s hard to delete texts everywhere AND I pointed out that other agencies, like the NSA, probably have copies. But then Glenn Kirschner pointed out I didn’t even need to go that far!

Cooperating witnesses have testified under oath about their texts

The J6 committee has interviewed over 1,000 witnesses–for over a year. Most of them cooperated. Cooperating witnesses turn over texts, from their private phones and messages sent on encrypted services.

Those who don’t take the deal to provide information will be sent to the DOJ, where they might cut deals to avoid prosecution there. Some will be charged with obstructing justice, others will have the charges dropped if they cooperate.

Jill-Wine Banks has pointed out that the J6 hearings are a public education process. Things happen in order for a reason. If the committee had just revealed the crimes shown in the texts, everyone would be focusing on that crime. Now we can add obstruction of justice to the sedition crimes. Thee public is learning about other people involved in ordering phones wiped, or the people who decided not to investigate wiped phones. Nobody knew the name of Tony Ornato or Inspector General Cuffari until recently. Cuffari might not have been in ANY planning or received of text messages about the coup, but now he might be charged with obstruction of justice.

The J6 committee is not playing 3 dimensional chess, they are just planning 3 moves ahead and anticipating the responses of their opponent. Prosecutors do this all the time.

What is frustrating for people is seeing a political party that fails to prepare for their opponents tricks, and and not using their excesses against them. I think the J6 committee has thought at least 2 steps ahead. What I can’t know now is if the DOJ and the Democrats will drop the ball on the 3rd step, which is pushing to prosecute people for their crimes. The “good” news is that as more people talk the Democrats can use that against the Insurrectionists, coup plotters & justice obstructors. And the pressure on the DOJ to publicly indict continues to mount.

They are predictable. Use their threats against them!

We know how TFG & his people act. They lie. They threaten anyone who challenges them. Politicians with primaries. Witnesses and whistleblowers with death threats. When someone does challenge them they’ll destroy the entire board rather than accept a loss. (Like how Charlie X melted the chess pieces at the end when he lost.)

We know how they act. Prepare for their witness tampering & death threats!
Prepare for them destroying the board! Catch them red handed!

There is a reason that the committee offered anonymity to the person talking about the calls that Pence’s Secret Service protection detail made to their loved ones. That person represents the people in the Multi-Agency Communications Center that has all the comms from that day heard in real time, like the Secret Service radio traffic that we saw coupled with the VP’s exit from the Capitol.

His comment “I don’t like to talk about it.” had two meanings. 1) It’s disturbing and 2) “If they find out it’s me, I’m a dead man. “

I know a lot about computer surveillance & security, corporate & political butt covering, how our political journalists & experts think and how the RW media drives RW victim narratives. But I’ll admit I’m not as knowledgeable about how the behind the scenes deal cutting works to get information. Or how deal cutting works at the DOJ to reduce penalties for certain crimes.

I’ve found that people often come at a problem from their area of expertise. I’d like to hear from OTHER kinds of experts too. Someone who can explain the political reasons no one mentions the NSA or other agencies, “This story is being used to avoid revealing the truth because a deal is being cut.” Or someone who will say,”The committee can’t say where they got the texts, it would reveal sources and methods.” Or “The committee doesn’t want to acknowledge that multiple friendly agencies and countries like Canada, Britain and Israel have copies. Also, unfriendly countries have copies too which they can use as blackmail.” That would set off Trump people screaming about the intelligence community being out to get them.

For a legal cases the DOJ might have to show they got the information from a different source than over the air monitoring . They might not want to mention and that the NSA can break all the encryptions of all the apps being used. (Remember how the British didn’t want the Germans to know they had cracked their code.)
(BTW, this process of covering up for the NSA signal intelligences is something that the NSA did with the DEA after they provided information about drug dealers. The DEA used the information the NSA gave them and then went back and find a legitimate source that they could use in a court of law. )

Last week I said the excuses for missing Secret Service texts are BS & the NSA likely has copies.
Then @glennkirschner2 pointed out the J6 cmte has interviewed over 1,000 witnesses–for months.
Lots of cooperating witnesses turned over texts.
I wasn't thinking 4th dimensionally! pic.twitter.com/zj2wAypGVz

— Spocko (@spockosbrain) August 2, 2022

We need to think in multiple dimensions to understand why certain things happen, or don’t happen.
We are fighting people who break norms, rules and laws. They are willing to lie, cheat, steal, threaten to destroy others and our entire system to win.

If it was ISIS we’d know, but it’s Insiders, Proud Boys & Oath Keepers

Imagine ISIS had attacked congress on January 6th, attempted to hang the VP and kill the Speaker of the House. They didn’t succeed. We would expect our intelligence agencies to have ALL of ISIS’ communications, right? To pull it off ISIS had to have people in the Capitol Police, the Secret Service, DHS & DoD. Everyone in the country would expect the NSA to have a copy of ISIS’s communications with the insiders. One way to find the insiders is to look for who is covered their tracks.

To root out insiders you need cooperators and leverage. Evidence of obstruction is leverage.

I expect deals are being cut now to get more information. In the future the committee can reveal the content of the texts (or texts themselves) if necessary. The committee’s job is to gather information and tell the story of what happened. They are doing a good job. The DOJ’s job will be to prosecute the crimes revealed using admissible evidence. The committee doesn’t have to.

As we have heard over and over the committee wants to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Part of that is by changing the laws. But also, in a world were top lawbreakers are never punished, they have to expose all the cooperators on the way to the top. We are on the way. Yesterday Ex-White House counsel Pat Cipollone was subpoenaed by federal grand jury.

Nothing is more important

Amid worsening economic numbers — and President Biden’s lowest approval rating to date — a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll suggests that Democrats’ best chance for a boost before November’s pivotal midterm elections would be to pass the climate change, tax and prescription drug bill that Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a key Democratic centrist, finally agreed to support last week.

The survey of 1,557 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 28 to Aug. 1, found that Americans favor — by wide margins — each major component of the sweeping “reconciliation” deal that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer negotiated with Manchin.

When told, for instance, that “Democrats in the U.S. Senate just put forward a surprise $369 billion climate and energy package that promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030,” nearly half of Americans (47%) say they favor it, while less than a third (30%) say they’re opposed.

That gap then widens even further — to 61% favor and 14% oppose — when respondents are told that “the Democrats’ new Senate package would also lower the cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time while capping out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 a year.”

And when the deal’s funding mechanism is described — “the Democrats’ new Senate package would also raise an estimated $451 billion in new revenue over the next decade primarily by requiring large corporations to pay the taxes they owe, while setting aside $300 billion for deficit reduction” — a majority of Americans (53%) still say they favor it. Just 19% are opposed.

At a time of bitter polarization, these are strikingly positive results for any bill explicitly associated with one party and not the other. Independents support each element of the Manchin-Schumer deal by the same wide margins as Americans overall — and even a plurality of Republicans favor (47%) rather than oppose (27%) its prescription-drug reforms.

Between this and abortion rights and January 6th and Donald Trump and his batshit crazies, the Dems have a chance.

He made a choice

I’m with JV Last on this:

A few days ago Peter Meijer went crying to Bari Weiss’s Substack about how terrible the mean Democrats are for running ads which accurately—and negatively—described his primary opponent, the conspiracy-nut and MAGA standout John Gibbs.

It was deeply unfair, Meijer wrote,

[Y]ou would think that the Democrats would look at John Gibbs and see the embodiment of what they say they most fear. That as patriots they would use every tool at their disposal to defeat him and similar candidates that they’ve said are an existential threat. 

Instead they are funding Gibbs. . . .

Over the past year, in private and in public, these Democratic colleagues praised the courage of Republicans like me. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called my vote “an impressive display of courage and integrity.” To leading Democrats, we were the Good Republicans. 

At the same time, to some in my party, we were Bad Republicans—RINOs at best, traitors at worst. After the impeachment vote, I was immediately censured by two county parties in my old district. In my new district, the Republican Party of the largest county repudiated me a few weeks ago. The Michigan GOP Chair joked about my assassination. There have been too many online threats to count.

Watching this unraveling inside my party has been utterly bewildering. The only thing that has been more nauseating has been the capacity of my Democratic colleagues to sell out any pretense of principle for political expediency—at once decrying the downfall of democracy while rationalizing the use of their hard-raised dollars to prop up the supposed object of their fears. 

He’s right. It is unfair. Just like it’s unfair that some people are born into $50 million trust funds. The world can be a cold, cruel place.

But I want to unpack Meijer’s complaint—and by extension, the complaints of all of the other anti-antis who are upset this morning about the choices Republican voters keep making.

Let’s start with the DCCC: They ran ads explaining to Michigan voters what sort of crazy person Meijer’s opponent was. These were not positive ads. They accurately described Gibbs’s nuttiness.

These ads were purely negative. But also the DCCC knew what they were doing. They were helping Gibbs by raising his name ID with voters who would see the negatives as positives—by voters who want crazy. These DCCC ad buys were, as I wrote at the time, foolish, dishonorable, and dangerous.

But also, they are not the whole story. They are, in fact, only a very small part of the story.

---

2. Don’t Cry for Peter Meijer

Yes, he voted to impeach Donald Trump when the evidence clearly warranted impeachment. That’s not nothing. In fact, it’s a really big something. Good for him.

On the other hand, Meijer has spent the last year-plus running away from impeachment and just kind of hoping that his voters would forget about it.

He took no preemptive action to defend himself against the most salient issue for Republican primary voters. He did not aggressively defend himself. He did not make his affirmative case for impeachment. He simply went into turtle guard and hoped for the best.

All while he kept blaming Democrats for the world’s problems.

I want to re-highlight two passages from his little cri de coeur. Bear with me:

I was immediately censured by two county parties in my old district. In my new district, the Republican Party of the largest county repudiated me a few weeks ago. The Michigan GOP Chair joked about my assassination. There have been too many online threats to count.

Watching this unraveling inside my party has been utterly bewildering. The only thing that has been more nauseating has been the capacity of my Democratic colleagues to sell out any pretense of principle for political expediency . . .

Hit pause here for a second: Peter Meijer says that Democrats opportunistically running a negative ad that accurately described his opponent was more nauseating than members of his own party threatening him with violence and death.

I’m sorry, but that’s forked up.

A few weeks ago I proposed an analogy:

Let’s pretend that you make Coxonium and this product is poison.

I decide to run ads promoting Coxonium that say,

Coxonium is good for your health! Tastes great, goes down smooth, and cures whatever ails you!

If people buy Coxonium, maybe that is my fault? I have lied to them about Coxonium and what it does. Sure, maybe they should have done their own research. Not relied on a single ad. Checked the news to see if anyone had died from Coxonium. But whatever. I’ve still got some culpability. I was selling people a bill of goods.

But what if I run Coxonium ads like this:

Coxonium is poison. Real, genuine poison. If you take it, you will probably die. Do not buy Coxonium because it will kill you.

And what if people who see this ad say, “Well shit, Lurleen. I been fixin’ to git myselfs some poison and damned if that Coxonium don’t look like the finest poison there is. Let’s buy it!”

Is that really on me and the ad?

Because it seems to me like the culpability lies with the guy who loves poison and can’t wait to buy it, even after being told what it does.

Meijer and his apologists are insisting that his own voters lack agency and that they would have made “the right choice” if only Democrats hadn’t told the voters who and what John Gibbs is.

And like I said up top: We are not children. Raising Gibbs’s name ID probably did help the guy.¹

But at the end of the day, the problem isn’t that Democrats tricked Republican voters into choosing John Gibbs.

The problem is that Republican voters want John Gibbs.

And Peter Meijer can’t bring himself to say that.

---

Here is another question, courtesy of Christian Vanderbrouk:

Meijer lost primarily because he was abandoned by his own party.

Who were his top campaign surrogates? Did GOP leaders rally to his support? Any Fox News stars or conservative influencers? https://t.co/9g84KkX8ug

— Christian Vanderbrouk 🇺🇸🇮🇱🇺🇦 (@UrbanAchievr) August 3, 2022

Speaking only for myself, I did not see Kevin McCarthy barnstorming Meijer’s district to give him cover for his impeachment vote. And how much money did McCarthy’s Congressional Leadership Fund PAC spend in defense of Meijer?

Did you see lots of Very Concerned Conservatives attacking Gibbs for the last three months in order to protect Meijer? Or anyone from Fox? Or anyone from . . . anywhere, really?

No. Meijer was on an island with his impeachment vote and his money, fending for himself.

Presumably, that’s because elected Republicans and members of Conservatism Inc. felt they couldn’t defend Meijer without getting on the wrong side of Republican voters.

It was only when the DCCC ran those ads that you saw some of the anti-anti types pop off about the race—because it was a chance to kind-of, sort-of defend Meijer by taking shots at Democrats.

---

Here are the three take-aways from Peter Meijer and the Good Republicans now mourning his loss:

(1) Republican voters are who they are. There’s no helping it. You can’t expect them to choose wisely if they have full knowledge of the candidates.

(2) Republican elites can’t get their hands dirty defending Good Republicans like Meijer, because it might make them toxic. And you can’t expect them to risk their own necks just to save a guy like Meijer.

(3) Instead, it is the job of Democrats to protect Good Republicans from Republican voters.²

Now maybe all of this is correct. I’m open to that possibility. But if so, then at least we should admit that this is an enormous ask of Democrats.

Hey there Team Blue: While you guys are out there defending democracy from guys like Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy—who we will absolutely have to support in 2023 and 2024 sorry—could you also take a dive here and there so that those of us on Team Normal don’t lose our places in the party? Thanks!

And also, we should note that this is the kind of ask that Republicans have historically not been willing to shoulder themselves.

WATCH: Hugh Hewitt announces that he will vote in the Democratic primary in Virginia on March 3rd. #MTP #IfItsSunday@hughhewitt: "I'm voting for Bernie Sanders." pic.twitter.com/AiqCDukM7T

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 19, 2020

A year and a half ago I wrote that the central fact about institutional Republicans is that they are terrified of their voters.

The nature of the conflict within the Republican party right now is only superficially about Trumpism. At root, it’s between two types of power: Popular power versus institutional power.

And the way to know which side has the advantage is to watch how Republicans behave in private and contrast that with how they behave in public. . . .

If the institutions within the Republican party were strong, they would exert their will then their voters to follow it. They would shape popular opinion. Instead, these institutions dare only to assert their will under the cover of darkness, out of sight from their voters.

That’s the definition of weakness.

Unfortunately for Republicans, very few of their votes are made in secret. And so ultimately these weak men and women will be shaped by the preferences of their voters, who command a large bloc of popular power. . . .

A party that is afraid of its voters is not sustainable. Either the voters will leave or the party institutions will transform to their liking.

This is the central fact. Peter Meijer does not want to acknowledge it. Neither do many other Republicans.

Because to acknowledge it would require difficult choices: They would either have to buckle under, or admit that they are no longer in-step with the party and find new identities for themselves.

Which is why they blame Democrats for the choices of Republican voters.

It’s the only way they can hold onto their residual self-images

If Peter Meijer were the One True Patriot everyone says he is he would not be a member of the insurrectionist Republican party. He would switch parties. He would have won his seat again since he was redistricted into a more Democratic seat. He chose to stay with the party that has made a fetish of licking Donald Trump’s boots. That was his choice.