Month: November 2022

This is what he plans for America:

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis put his weight behind dozens of conservative school board candidates across Florida during the midterms. Now they’re in office — and are purging some educational leaders who enforced Covid-19 mandates.

New board members in two GOP-leaning counties essentially sacked their school superintendents over the span of one week. The ousters were spurred by how the superintendents carried out local policies like efforts to support the rights of parents, an issue inflamed by schools imposing student mask mandates last fall in defiance of DeSantis.

And while not tied to the 2022 election, the school board in Broward County earlier this month fired its superintendent through an effort led by five members appointed by DeSantis. All combined, school boards with ties to DeSantis pushed out three superintendents in November alone — and each of them served over districts that implemented student mask mandates.

“We had a wave in school districts that spit in parents’ faces,” said state Rep. Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay), who earlier this year sought to punish schools with mask mandates. “And now the people who did that are gone.”

In Brevard and Sarasota counties, embattled school leaders have faced immediate pressure from newly-installed board members and offered to leave voluntarily rather than risk a vote on their terminations.

The boards in both counties now have conservative majorities who sought a change in leadership immediately after the midterms. Although school boards are nonpartisan posts, lines between Democratic and Republican candidates were drawn in many counties through endorsements from each party as well as outside groups. The newly-elected board members in these cases support parental rights while opposing critical race theory and teaching gender orientation in schools.

DeSantis in particular used his clout to endorse more than two dozen school board candidates during the 2022 election cycle, a rare move for a Florida governor that came with $1,000 cash contributions from DeSantis and other GOP lawmakers. Most of the candidates DeSantis endorsed won their elections and are now transforming the make-up of school district leadership and will have huge influence over policies affecting hundreds of thousands of students in the state.

Both Sarasota and Brevard’s school boards put the superintendents on the chopping block the same day that new members endorsed by DeSantis and conservative organizations like Moms for Liberty were sworn into office.

Sarasota board members called Superintendent Brennan Asplen’s job into question at a meeting Tuesday night specially called to discuss his contract. After fielding about four hours of public comment, mostly in support of the superintendent, board members vented criticisms over student performance in reading, how he handled masking students and a perceived lack of transparency from Asplen.

Understanding he may not have a job much longer, Asplen offered up his resignation on Monday night — the day before the board met to weigh his ouster. But the superintendent also fought at the meeting to keep his job by attempting to punch holes in the critiques from board members.

“I have a feeling I’m going to be fired after tonight because I just can’t hold this back,” Asplentold the board from as a preface.

Asplensaid that some of the board’s comments were “ridiculous” given that he had been at the school since 2020, a timeframe that included the Covid-19 pandemic. And yet despite the coronavirus uprooting education, Sarasota earned “A” grades from the state both years. The superintendent also claimed he was being shut out by board members since the election and noted that he enacted a mandatory student masking policy for only three weeks, and that was due to Sarasota’s board voting 3-2 in favor of the mandate.

“You have to get the politics out of this school district,” Asplentold the board. “This school district could be No. 1, but we shoot ourselves in the foot every single time. We are getting in our own way all the time.”

It was clear after Asplenaddressed the board that a separation would be imminent. Board members said they felt the relationship with the schools chief was “adversarial” and beyond repair. Many of the claims by Asplenwere “not accurate,” according to new board chair Bridget Ziegler.

“I am very concerned,” said Zeigler, who was endorsed by DeSantis and co-founded Moms for Liberty. “I don’t know how respectfully we build a relationship where we are functioning together for the right reasons with mutual respect.”

One Sarasota board member, Thomas Edwards, noted the similarity between the pushes to remove school leaders in Florida and elsewhere in the country, including in Berkley County, South Carolina, where a newly-elected school board fired a superintendent. Edwards suggested a possible political motive behind the move and lobbied for Asplen to be granted a chance to fix issues spelled out by the board.

“Whatever rationales I’m going to hear tonight, I really have to throw out the window. Because we just have to — all of as a community — look at the tealeaves,” Edwards said.

But Edwards fell short of reaching the majority of the board, including the members endorsed by DeSantis and other conservatives, who voted 4-1 to move forward with negotiating a separation agreement with the schools chief.

[…]

Elsewhere in Florida, new board members endorsed by DeSantis are also scoring leadership roles. In Lee County, for example, new board members Armor Persons and Sam Fisher, both endorsed by DeSantis, were elected as chair and vice chair of the school board, as reported by the Fort Myers News-Press.

With at least three superintendent jobs opening in Florida, these new-look school boards are now facing the critical task of finding new leaders.

Teachers union leaders are staying optimistic that these board members will be focused on supporting educators and staff in local schools, said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. And in choosing a new superintendent, they hope board members will pick candidates who are aligned with the community and not only DeSantis.

“Firing is the easy part,” Spar said. “The hard part is finding the right person.”

Good luck. The only right person will be a right wing zealot. I don’t think that will work out well for teachers who live in the modern world.

How the new House Democratic troika won power

A fascinating look at Hakeem Jeffries’ political stylings:

The strategy behind Hakeem Jeffries’ yearslong ascent to House Democratic leader, as his top allies see it, focused on making the outcome feel inevitable. And in the end, it did.

The New York Democrat culminated a remarkably frictionless climb of the party ladder on Wednesday, securing every vote and avoiding a single challenger. He became the highest-ranking Black congressional leader in U.S. history just 12 days after formally declaring his run.

“He makes it look easy, what is difficult. That’s another sign of a great leader,” Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said.

That effortless appearance took work: Behind the scenes, House Democrats’ biggest power transfer in two decades was hardly a shoo-in. Democrats across the caucus said Jeffries — along with his top lieutenants, Reps. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) — succeeded thanks to years of careful maneuvering to consolidate support from every influential bloc in the party.

And the powerful but unassuming trio, which has jokingly referred to itself in private as the “kids table” for the last two years, did it without a formal whip team. With Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top lieutenants still in place, Jeffries and his two deputies instead wooed colleagues with a heads-down mentality, raising gobs of money and listening to what fellow Democrats wanted.

Only one Democrat ever seriously considered challenging Jeffries: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who quickly realized it was too late to marshal a base that could counter the New Yorker’s formidable one. The only other two who might have ran, Pelosi’s No. 2 and No. 3, Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), also got out of Jeffries’ way.

“The committed individuals to Hakeem Jeffries were so high that those considering challenging — it melted away. It became the obvious choice, and everybody just fell in,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), an early Jeffries supporter who’s long introduced him to others as the “first Black speaker.”

Cleaver said he first committed to Jeffries two and a half years ago, back when a group of about 10 Democrats met regularly with the New Yorker to prepare for his eventual ascent.

As another senior Democrat put it: “The race was over before anyone else knew what was happening.”

Democrats were in high spirits Wednesday as they huddled for a closed-door meeting to elect the new triumvirate, with screams and hugs as senior members touted the importance of a new generation of leaders. Just before the leadership election, longtime supporter Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) had the entire caucus on their feet with a rousing speech in which he vowed Jeffries would be speaker in 2024.

“The most important part of a relay race is how you pass the baton,” Meeks said, according to people in the room.

It’s highly unusual that such a massive leadership shakeup would happen with total unity, particularly within a caucus that spent much of this Congress sparring as Pelosi sought to muscle bills through with a razor-thin majority. And it stands in stark contrast to House Republicans’ open battle over the speakership Kevin McCarthy worked hard to secure.

But instead of a slugfest to replace Pelosi and Hoyer, Jeffries and his team quickly locked down support that ranged from conservative Blue Dogs to the progressive “Squad.”

The slate of new Democratic leaders benefited from their representation of almost every slice of the big-tent party. Some supporters quipped that a focus group couldn’t have devised a better-suited trio for the party: a Black man, a progressive woman and a Latino man, collectively representing both coasts and a mix of progressive and moderate views.

Lawmakers close to the troika insist there was never a single conversation where the three decided to run together, but that the decision evolved out of natural chemistry between Jeffries and Clark. They worked closely together in the lead-up to the 2018 midterms, then together led the caucus as chair and vice chair through a tumultuous two years under then-president Donald Trump.

Aguilar lost a vice chair race to Clark after Democrats retook the House but began working more closely with her and Jeffries after he won the position in 2020. Several Democrats said they first noticed the three locking arms around President Joe Biden’s inauguration — the start of what was widely expected to be Pelosi’s final term as leader.

The three have grown closer over the last two years, grabbing dinner together in Washington when possible and recently adding Zoom meetings to coordinate with all three groups of their aides.

Not to mention that they’re known for delivering on the fundraising front, which played an enormous role in Democrats’ closer-than-expected 2022 midterm.

“You would think, after two decades, it would be fighting — who’s going to take this opportunity?” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), a senior centrist who recalled that Jeffries “was there for me in the primary” against a progressive challenger and again in November. “The caucus as a whole is almost like, collective: ‘We agree with the top three.’”

In fact, many Democrats insist they’ve been telling Jeffries to run for the top position for years. (Some even encouraged him privately to challenge Pelosi in 2020, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.)

Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), who came to Congress the same year as Jeffries and later served on his whip team for 2018’s leadership elections, said he urged the New Yorker “a few years ago” to go for the top spot when it became open.

“I knew pretty quickly he had a special set of talents,” Kildee said.

Another longtime ally who’s helped Jeffries solidify support, centrist Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), said he first encouraged the new leader to run for New York City mayor, long before any opening in the party’s upper House ranks.

Perhaps a harder task than winning over moderates, however, was courting progressives in and out of the squad — some of whom view leadership itself, let alone Jeffries’ past as a former corporate lawyer, with a dose of skepticism.

But Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who’d cut against the party’s grain and unseated a longtime incumbent to get to Congress, said Jeffries had mentored him and understood his experiences as a Black man in politics. So when Schiff came to Bowman weeks ago about a potential run for the top slot, Bowman went to Jeffries to reaffirm his support.

“When the Schiff thing was rumored, we did talk, and I may have communicated my support [for Jeffries] before he was even able to ask,” Bowman recalled. “It kind of happened organically.”

The breezy transition at the top of Democrats’ leadership ticket was maintained despite some turbulence down-ballot. After Clyburn decided to seek what’s now the No. 4 position, rather than exiting leadership alongside Pelosi and Hoyer, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) switched gears to seek a newly created perch running caucus messaging — avoiding a matchup against Aguilar.

And Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) made an even sharper move, announcing on Wednesday a longshot challenge to Clyburn for No. 4 leader. Cicilline made a pitch to his colleagues that their leadership needs LGBTQ voices in order to be maximally diverse. That bid, coming the day after the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed Clyburn, is already raising eyebrows in the party.

“I would think upon further deliberation, it’s still not too late for Congressman Cicilline to withdraw,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), a senior Black Caucus member.

But there could have been even more drama: Democrats say that even if Pelosi had stunned her caucus and decided to run again for minority leader, Jeffries wouldn’t necessarily have waited his turn.

“I’m not so sure that, had she run, that he wouldn’t have challenged her,” Larson said.

That’s some very strategic maneuvering right there. Let’s hope he puts that talent to good use.

Michelangelo Signorele has a scoop. And it has the wingnuts hopping mad:

On his first Fox News broadcast following the November 19th mass shooting at Club Q, the LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs in which five people were murdered and at least 17 were injured, Tucker Carlson was undaunted, continuing his relentless smearing of LGBTQ people as “groomers” who are dangerous to children. 

After a perfunctory condemnation of the violence, Carlson pivoted back to railing against “drag time story hour for fifth graders” and “genital mutilation of minors” while a graphic image behind him blared, “STOP SEXUALIZING KIDS.”

The following night, Carlson promoted the grotesque view that the staff and patrons of Club Q — where a drag performance was scheduled on that Saturday night of the attack — had it all coming to them. He brought on a guest who said the shooting was “expected and predictable,” and that “it won’t stop until we end this evil agenda that is attacking children.”

Twisted enough. But even more shocking is the little-known fact that a gay man helped craft, mold and disseminate these bloodcurdling distortions and the horrendous demonization against his own community. 

A gay man supercharges Carlson’s promotion of Florida’s odious “don’t say gay” law, which stigmatizes queer kids, teachers and parents — a brutal campaign in which Carlson at one point said teachers who don’t comply “should get beaten up.” And a gay man empowers Carlson’s crusade against trans teens and and their parents, a crusade in which Carlson stated that hospitals should expect violent threats for providing gender-affirming care.

That gay man, Justin Wells, helped promulgate the kind of hate that leads to violence. A mass shooting that happened in the same kind of nightclub at which Wells, in years past, danced the night away in Miami Beach and elsewhere, liberating himself from the world outside and surely never imagining he’d be shot dead.

Now he’s aided the extremists who deny that sense of safety and liberation to every future generation of queer people.

Wells runs the entire Tucker Carlson operation, and is responsible for imprinting the Tucker Carlson brand, which is all about emboldening white heterosexual male grievance, furthering the racist conspiracy of  “replacement theory” and pushing an increasingly virulent anti-LGBTQ agenda. Wells is Senior Executive Producer of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and also holds the title of Vice President of Tucker Carlson Digital Products.

“He’s been promoted to a level that no other producer has been since, maybe, David Tabocoff at O’Reilly,” a former Fox employee told me, describing how Tabocoff, who was at Fox with Bill O’Reilly for 16 years, produced O’Reilly’s shows, all of his various specials and interviews, and oversaw his entire brand, including his merchandising. 

“I think that Justin has more power than Tabby [Tabacoff] ever had,” another Fox employee, a former producer, countered. “And there’s not another show that out-rates it. Influence-wise, everyone who’s conservative wants to be on Tucker.” Indeed, Wells has his own website, independent of Fox News’s site, JustinWells.com, something that surprised the former Fox News producer.

On the site, Wells touts his accomplishments: “Television Creator & Journalist. Senior Executive Producer & Vice President at Fox News Media.” It brims with photos meant to convey his power and importance: Wells, out on remotes with Carlson, helping to craft the story; Wells, shoulder-to-shoulder with military Special Forces in front of their Airbus chopper; and Wells, meeting with former President Donald Trump. The site describes Wells as “leading the Tucker Carlson Team across multiple platforms at Fox News Media,” and lays out the Carlson Fox empire he oversees.

Angelo Carusone, President and CEO of Media Matters, the media watchdog group that is laser-focused on Fox News and Carlson, observed, “It’s unlikely that any narrative would get broadcast by Tucker without significant buy-in from Justin.” In a clip highlighted by Media Matters in which Wells was interviewed by Carlson on Carlson’s show last year as Carlson’s Fox Nation documentaries began launching, Wells brags about the latitude Fox News executives give him: “They believe in what we’re doing and have since we launched ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’”

It’s beyond horrific to think a gay man has helped to shape and widely disseminate a message of hate against LGBTQ people. This story is not, however, about a warped closet case, tormented by self-loathing, hiding his true self while bashing those like him. And thus, this story is not an outing, which involves exposing someone who covers up their sexual orientation while publicly presenting as heterosexual — though it certainly may be a startling revelation to a great many. It is, rather, about connecting the dots regarding a reality that seems to have been hiding in plain sight.

Wells has been married to another man for almost 10 years, and they openly celebrated their wedding among family and friends. They live together in a residence they purchased in New York shortly after they married. And they also own a country home together, with both names on the deed.

I have reviewed the relevant marriage and property data, and have viewed evidence of their publicly sharing their wedding day with friends. (I’m not referencing this information, nor reporting Wells’ spouse’s name, to protect the spouse’s privacy.)

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I’ve also spoken with individuals who knew Wells in years past, including former Fox News colleagues and members of NLGJA, the association of LGBTQ journalists, a well-known and highly-public organization to which Wells apparently was once a member and a group whose events he most definitely attended over a decade ago. (These people spoke only without attribution because they are either former Fox employees who signed non-disclosure agreements or work for other news organizations, or both.)

Contacted for a response, neither Wells nor his representative offered a statement.

Wells, a veteran Fox News producer who cut his teeth at Fox as a field producer on Greta Van Susteren’s “On the Record” from 2008 until 2016, not only launched “Tucker Carlson Tonight” as Carlson’s executive producer, heading the program’s team in 2016; he became indispensable and in 2018 was given the loftier title of Senior Executive Producer. And as Carlson further pushed white nationalism, attacked transgender people and embraced Hungary’s authoritarian leader Victor Orban, Wells, in 2021, was named a Vice President at Fox News, in charge of all Carlson product that airs on Fox News TV as well as on Fox’s streaming network, Fox Nation.

Wells’ Twitter feed shows how he ramped up Twitter activity in early 2021, after years of relative dormancy after Van Susteren’s show ended, around the time of his promotion to VP and the launching of the Carlson Fox Nation projects. Twitter is also a place where far-right conservatives lobby Wells for coveted coverage on Carlson’s show, and where some even complain when they don’t get it.

Dinesh D’Souza @DineshDSouza

If you want to see how abusively @TuckerCarlson and his @FoxNews team deal with people, read this thread. It’s an exchange between me and Tucker’s executive producer @justinbwells1:16 PM ∙ May 13, 202212,986Likes4,555Retweets

In an exchange he tweeted out earlier this year, far-right conservative Dinesh D’Sousa, who made the bonkers election denial documentary “2000 Mules”, quoted a response he received from Wells as he tried to promote the film: “Dinish. Justin Wells here. VP and EP of everything in the Tucker world. I just want you to know that I/we won’t forget your little stunt today. If you want to decide how much time to give content on the most watched show in America–then I suggest you produce one in the future.”

Before joining Fox News 14 years ago, Wells, as his Linkedin page describes, worked in news at several local TV stations, mostly in Florida. He’d grown up in St. Petersburg, and worked for stations in Tampa, Miami and West Palm Beach. Colleagues remember him out on the gay nightclub and bar scene on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach with his boyfriend of the time, also a TV journalist.

They both became involved in NLGJA, attending events and traveling to conferences, though the boyfriend was, according to these people, more involved. NLGJA, like many such groups, provides networking and connection, and a social life of gatherings and parties. (I’ve attended and spoken at NLGJA events on and off over the years; I have no recollection of having met or known of Wells or his then-boyfriend.)

“I always felt Justin was a little more buttoned up. Timid. Not quite as outgoing as [the boyfriend],” a member of NLGJA remembers, noting how it suited them as a couple. “It’s one of those things where I just saw them as a unit.”

Even after joining Fox in 2008, Wells apparently stayed involved in NLGJA at least for a little while, before breaking up with his long-time boyfriend. But he’s not had any involvement with the group for years, and certainly not since joining Carlson’s show. Some of those who knew Wells in years past are baffled.

A former Fox producer who socialized with Wells and his then-boyfriend remembers a “quiet dude, unassuming,” adding, “if you would have told me in 2008 [when we knew one another] that Justin would be the executive producer of the number one right-wing TV show in America, I would have said you’re out of your mind.”

“It really blows my mind that he — who he is as a person and what he does as a job — it’s beyond the scope,” said another former Fox employee who knew Wells, distinguishing between those working for someone like Carlson and others working at Fox.

“I don’t know if he’s just completely blinded by the money. It’s mind-boggling.” he said.

But not everyone is shocked. “It’s a very clear manifestation of someone who showed their true colors,” said a person in the industry who is highly respected, and who knew Wells for many years. This individual is referring to Wells sharing Carlson’s broader far-right views. “I’m not at all surprised. They are two peas in a pod. Simpatico.”

Still, it’s quite stunning that Wells would work for Carlson, who has a well-known history of visceral homophobia. That’s something that came to light again last year when it became known that Carlson had offered a tribute to Dan White, the assassin of San Francisco supervisor and gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk, in his college yearbook back in 1991, as well as to the late vociferously anti-gay Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who whipped up homophobia during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

I wrote about those jarring revelations when they surfaced last year, as well as about what I dubbed Carlson’s “pathological obsession with homosexuality” throughout his career. Carlson has expressed revulsion at homosexuality, and in one incident he reveled in a violent response. In a TV interview in 2007 he described having smashed a man’s head “against the stall” in a public rest room, after the man “bothered” him.

After an uproar, Carlson claimed the following day he was “assaulted” by the man, implying it was an act of self-defense. But in fact, according his own description, it was not: Carlson said he’d left the rest room after the man had “bothered” him, and then went back with a friend, explaining that they then “grabbed” the man and “hit him against the stall with his head.”

Given these sentiments and incidents, some might think it’s bizarre that Carlson would even want a gay man such as Wells around him. But Carlson also has always reveled in having members of minority groups he bashes standing up for him and against the group, sort of like trophies — much as Trump famously touted “Where’s my African-American?” at a rally, and used his friendship with Kanye West in the past as a way to claim he wasn’t racist. It’s certainly a power trip, having the loyalty of that individual and helping to legitimize pushing hate against the group.

In that respect, Wells, as a gay man, only emboldens Carlson further. He gives him permission to launch the ugly attacks and helps Carlson validate, for himself (and likely for executives at Fox News), the vitriol he espouses. That makes Justin Wells’ presence as the powerful gay man behind Tucker Carlson all the more newsworthy. And all the more dangerous.

Wow …

When they've brought out this loser you know they're freaking out and desperate. pic.twitter.com/KlExx9HHXY

— Michelangelo Signorile (@MSignorile) November 30, 2022

A little bit of good news??? Maybe??

Despite high interest rates and chronic inflation, the U.S. economy grew at a 2.9% annual rate from July through September, the government said Wednesday in an upgrade from its initial estimate.

Last quarter’s rise in the U.S. gross domestic product (the economy’s total output of goods and services) followed two straight quarters of contraction. That previous decline in output had raised fears the economy might have slipped into a recession in the first half of the year despite a still-robust job market and steady consumer spending.

Since then, however, most signs have pointed to a resilient if slow-moving economy, led by steady hiring, plentiful job openings and low unemployment. Wednesday’s government report showed that the restoration of growth in the July-September period was led by solid gains in exports and consumer spending that was slightly stronger than originally reported. Consumer confidence has since taken a gloomy turn, however, falling in October for the second month in a row, the Conference Board reported Tuesday. 

The latest estimate marked the second of three the Commerce Department will provide of economic expansion in the third quarter. In its initial estimate, the department had estimated that the economy grew at a 2.6% annual rate last quarter.

Huzzah! Right? No, of course not:

Economists expect the economy to eke out modest 1% annualized growth from October through December, according to a survey of forecasters conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The nation’s manufacturing sector is slowing despite an easing of supply chains that had been backlogged since the economy began rebounding from the pandemic recession two years ago. And inflation is threatening to weaken the crucial holiday shopping period. Retailers say inflation-weary shoppers are shopping cautiously, with many holding out for the most attractive bargains.

That’s so weird. I have been reading this for the past several days:

Shoppers spent big over a record-breaking five-day holiday shopping weekend, shelling out more than ever on the year’s premier online shopping day.

Consumers spent $35.4 billion online over the five-day period, according to data from Adobe Analytics. On Cyber Monday — the biggest shopping day of the long weekend — sales hit a record $11.3 billion, a 5.3 percent jump from last year, while online Black Friday sales ticked up 2.3 percent to $9.12 billion.

U.S. shoppers also spent on Thanksgiving and the weekend, with sales hitting $5.3 billion on Thursday and a combined $9.6 billion on Saturday and Sunday.

The figures are not adjusted for inflation, which has been hovering at decades-high levels, experts note. That suggests consumers could be spending more for less.

“If inflation is up 8 percent and sales are up 5 percent or so, people are definitely buying less — there’s no question about that,” said Forrester analyst Sucharita Kodali. She cautioned that without in-person sales numbers, it’s hard to see a full picture.

Still, there’s some bright news for retailers. It seems more people are opening their wallets and searching for deals before peak gift-giving season hits.

A record 196.7 million people shopped over the weekend, according to the National Retail Federation. That “shattered expectations by more than 30 million,” according to the trade group’s president and chief executive, Matthew Shay.

I guess that’s bad. But the last we heard (about 3 weeks ago) inflation was easing too. We’ll see how it goes. But I have always observed that it takes months to wring gloom and doom out of the reporting on the economy and as a result people say it’s getting worse even if it’s getting better.

The GOP names hard core Trumpers to figure out what went wrong

Back in 2012, the Republican Party, feeling stung by its electoral losses, decided to do a serious postmortem to discover why it was having such a hard time in national elections. GOP leaders had convinced themselves that they had an excellent chance to beat Barack Obama and take control of the Senate, and from their point of view the stars seemed to be aligned.

Their presidential nominee that year, Mitt Romney, had been a popular and reasonably successful governor of a blue state (Massachusetts) and Democrats were defending 23 Senate seats in that cycle (including two independents) while Republicans only had to defend 10. It was the first congressional election after the 2010 redistricting, and looked to be brutal for Democrats in the House. But Obama won re-election handily, while Democrats also gained two seats in the Senate and eight in the House. At that point Republicans had only won the popular vote for president once in 24 years, and they understood that something was wrong.

So the Republican National Committee decided to convene a panel to take a look at why their party had gone off the rails and offer advice on how to change course. This was officially called the Growth and Opportunity Project, but became almost universally known as “the autopsy.” The group conducted more than 36,000 online surveys, 3,000 group listening sessions, 800 conference calls and 50 focus groups and produced a 100-page report it described as the “most comprehensive post-election review” ever done. The upshot was pretty simple: By and large, the American people simply did not like what the Republican Party was selling.

At a rollout of the plan at the National Press Club, one of the participants, Sally Bradshaw, put the conclusion starkly:

The party has been continually marginalizing itself and unless changes are made it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future. Public perception of our party is at record lows. Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents and many minorities think Republicans don’t like them or don’t want them in our country. When someone rolls their eyes at us they aren’t likely to open their ears to us.

Bradshaw also mentioned that the party needed to do better with women and address their “unique concerns.” Another participant, Glenn McCall of South Carolina, said that the party seemed “intolerant and unaccepting of differing points of view” pointing out that “if our party isn’t welcoming and inclusive, young people and increasingly other voters will continue to tune us out.”

This was widely perceived as a badly needed wakeup call. The assumption across the political world was that the Republicans were serious about retooling both their policies and their messaging, and would avoid nominating candidates like Todd Akin of Missouri, who famously declared that a woman couldn’t become pregnant from a “legitimate rape” and lost a highly winnable Senate seat. The GOP was also expected to tone down its anti-immigrant rhetoric and move toward “the middle,” where it could appeal to more women and people of color in hopes of once again building a majority coalition. 

Things did not go as planned. On the day of the report’s release, a gadfly by the name of Donald Trump tweeted: “New @RNC report calls for embracing ‘comprehensive immigration reform. Does the @RNC have a death wish?” He added:

.@RNC report was written by the ruling class of consultants who blew the election. Short on ideas. Just giving excuses to donors.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2013

No one paid any attention to his political ravings back then. But fast forward three years, and guess what? Trump was winning the Republican presidential nomination, and torching all his GOP rivals, by doing exactly the opposite of everything the autopsy recommended. Politico reported at the time on the hysteria building among the autopsy’s authors — and the growing excitement among many Republicans over this new “movement” that promised to deliver a glorious election victory without having to cater to all those undesirables. That story featured an interview with one GOP operative from North Carolina:

“I spend a lot of time in beauty/barbershops, on the block and where ordinary people are,” she said. “They like Trump and his in-your-face style. He is viewed as sticking it to ’em. If Trump becomes the nominee then we should accept it and help him win and become a great president.”

Six years on, we all know what happened. Trump has announced his Vengeance 2024 tour and is hoping to once again haul his people out to watch him “stick it to ’em” and vote him back into office. But the climate has shifted as the losses keep piling up. The only election the Republicans have really won since Trump came on the scene was that flukey victory in 2016, and this week RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, announced a plan for yet another autopsy in the wake of the party’s unexpectedly bad performance in this month’s midterm elections.

One might think that it would be wise for Republican leaders at least to dust off that report from 2013 and take a look, just in case those ideas about growing the party instead of shrinking it might have some merit after all. If anything, the conditions they cited nearly 10 years ago are even more relevant now. Consider what Ari Fleischer, former George W. Bush press secretary and devoted Trump acolyte, told Politico in 2016:

The fact remains, America’s demography is changing and that won’t stop. … So let’s just say Donald Trump wins the election because of his unique appeal to blue-collar Democrats. The report will be valid for his successor most likely. Demographics is demographics, and what we said remains important.

But that’s doesn’t seem to be where they’re going at all. McDaniel announced that the panel will be packed with Trump-friendly right-wingers, including longtime Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, Trump-endorsed tech-bro Blake Masters — who just lost his Arizona Senate race — and Christian-right lobbyist and anti-abortion zealot Tony Perkins, along with newly-elected Trump endorsees like Sen.-elect Katie Britt of Alabama, Rep.-elect Monica De La Cruz of Texas and Rep.-elect John James of Michigan.

Anyone who thinks that particular group will be “charting a new path” needs to have another think again. This autopsy will almost certainly find a way to affirm that Republicans lost because they weren’t Trumpy enough. To reach any other conclusion would amount to repudiating the party’s base voters and the slightly tarnished Dear Leader they still worship.

Salon

Yes, the GOP has moved much more to the right than the Dems have moved left

The analysis of members’ ideological scores finds that the current standoff between Democrats and Republicans is the result of several overlapping trends that have been playing themselves out – and sometimes reinforcing each other – for decades.

-Both parties have grown more ideologically cohesive. There are now only about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans left on Capitol Hill, versus more than 160 in 1971-72.

-Both parties have moved further away from the ideological center since the early 1970s. Democrats on average have become somewhat more liberal, while Republicans on average have become much more conservative.

-The geographic and demographic makeup of both congressional parties has changed dramatically. Nearly half of House Republicans now come from Southern states, while nearly half of House Democrats are Black, Hispanic or Asian/Pacific Islander.

This is all very obvious. But if you listen to the mainstream press you would be forced to conclude that both sides have become much more extreme. Of course it’s not true.

A skill for our times

The white power movement does not care who the dictator is. Donald Trump was just handy, says Kathleen Belew, author of “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America.” Given Jeff Sharlet’s Vanity Fair piece this morning exploring militias in Wisconsin, that assessment feels about right. The right fringe is dug in.

Also here's your regular reminder that the Oath Keeper verdict, the Buffalo verdict, the Mar a Lago dinner, and the Proud Boys elections to local offices are part of THE SAME STORY about a rising and militant white power movement

— Kathleen Belew (@kathleen_belew) November 30, 2022

Conservatives do not back down. They double down. The sedition conviction Tuesday of Oath Keepers Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs may cut off the head of the snake, as some suggest, but it will regrow. Violent anti-government sentiment predates Donald Trump. It predates Barack Obama. It predates Timothy McVeigh. Making it whither will require cutting off its food and oxygen.

Belew appeared with Rachel Maddow this week. The point of the white power movement is the seizure of power and establishment of a white ethnostate.

Maria Ressa, author of “How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future,” gave “The Late Show” a crystal clear look at how surveillance capitalism has eroded the shared set of facts that sustains any democracy. Social media is an agent of that erosion.

No facts, no truth, no problem.

Social media uses free speech to stifle free speech and splinter society, Ressa warns. “If you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth. If you don’t have truth, you can’t have trust. Without these three, we have no shared reality. We can’t solve any problems. We have no democracy.”

And that’s just fine with the far right. “Yes, let’s leave democracy behind. The new fascists liked the idea of hastening the end of a liberal order,” Sharlet writes. No facts, no truth, no problem.

Christian Nationalism has been trending for 2 straight days and I'm glad. It can't be dismissed anymore as fringe or slur. Adults outright embrace it. We found 25% of Americans, 45% of Republicans, & 58% of Evangelicals say Christian Nationalist describes them very/somewhat well. pic.twitter.com/9CUwZsB7UP

— Samuel Perry (@profsamperry) November 30, 2022

The Christian right stands adjacent to the militia fringe somehow. That we should explore. Except they insist on imposing their facts and their truths on the rest of us. It’s a good bet those will be white facts and white truths.

Jeff Sharlet road-trips into the darkness of hearts

In preparation for his journey through Wisconsin, Jeff Sharlet read Barbara F. Walter’s “How Civil Wars Start.” People he met there are preparing as well. For civil war. For the government to come for their guns. For China to invade.

A 1972 pamphlet titled “Wisconsin Death Trip” inspired the visit. The flags he saw everywhere inspired photographs (Vanity Fair):

Trump 2024, two years ahead of time; and the red, white, and blue of the Confederacy, the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden. There are so many now. There’s new folk art too: handpainted “Fuck Biden” placards, homemade “Let’s Go Brandon” billboards, and DIY “Never Forget Benghazi” banners.

And the coffin leaning against a garage like an early Halloween decoration. This is militia country. The Supreme Court overturned Roe while Sharlet was there. Abortion meant something other to Rob:

Rob called himself “pro-choice,” but that term means something different in his vernacular. He meant the choice of whether or not to murder a baby is up to you. “If you choose to do something that’s medically possible, I’m going to leave it between you and God, until it affects me in the state of readiness of my defense.” Readiness. It requires panopticon paranoia, looking for threats down every sight line. Rob looked at falling birth rates. He looked at what he considered Mexico’s invasion. He looked at what he suspected would be civil war according to a rural/urban divide—in which, even though he lived in town, he would side with the land he held outside of it. He looked at China, he noted they ended their population control program in 2021, he contemplated 1.4 billion Red Chinese divided by half and then by some factor again to account for age and thinks of hundreds of millions of Chinese wombs churning out multiple Chinese babies (in fact, the Chinese birth rate is falling) and he thought, “they’re getting ready.” For the future war. “You start prepping several generations ahead to have bodies when you lose so many bodies that you need a level of fresh bodies you never dreamed you’d have to dig into.” 

Some preppers stockpile freeze-dried food and weapons. Rob thought the country should be stockpiling cannon fodder as well. He’d never heard of the “great replacement theory” but was convinced he’d thought it up on his own.

Jerry didn’t consider himself a zealot. “Almost nobody” Sharlet met was pious. Jerry’s ideas were not his own either:

Not a word Jerry said was fully his own. I’d been listening to Fox, to right-wing radio, as I drove, and I’d already heard variations of every syllable he uttered. Jerry followed the news. He was a follower. He had not been a good student as a boy, he said. But now he had learned his lesson. The lesson was fear, the lesson was bitter, the lesson was that other people were getting more than their fair share. That grievance flowed naturally for him from his feelings about baby killers—as if women, by getting to choose, were getting more than their fair share too. He fretted about the Menominee Reservation, two miles away from the country home to which he’d retreated from Green Bay, because, he said, the city had grown “too risky,” not just with crime but those he claimed would barely allow a white man to speak anymore. The Menominee, though, were worse in his view. “A lot of them I believe are the type of people who want what you and I have. And they’re willing to take it.” 

I'm grateful to @VanityFair for giving me the opportunity to make the photographs for my new story, a kind of tribute to my mentor Michael Lesy's 1973 book of words and pictures, Wisconsin Death Trip. Lesy's book was about 1890s; my death trip is now. https://t.co/zm9BLfcWST pic.twitter.com/giYLueBfvE

— Jeff Sharlet (@JeffSharlet) November 30, 2022

It’s a longer read than time allows to describe here. But it’s worth yours.

You may not have heard about this one…

This is an unsung story that’s hugely significant. Bolt’s Magazine takes a look at the huge Democratic gains in state houses in 2022, achieved against all odds:

Republicans were confident that they would build up power in statehouses and inflict a “bloodbath” on Democrats. Instead, they failed to win any new legislative chamber, their seat gains are minuscule by recent standards, and their strongest showings are concentrated in places they already dominate.

Democrats, meanwhile, flipped four legislative chambers and allied with centrist Republicans to wrestle a fifth chamber away from the GOP.

The results have deflated conservative ambitions to channel backlash against the sitting president to leap ahead in states, like they did in 2010 and 2014. Two years into President Barack Obama’s term, in 2010, the GOP gained more than 600 legislative seats and unleashed a torrent of right-wing laws that undercut unions and restricted voting rights. In 2014, they gained roughly 250 seats, according to data compiled by Ballotpedia. Democrats returned the favor in 2018 by gaining more than 300 legislative seats, powered by President Donald Trump’s widespread unpopularity. 

No such wave occurred in 2022. Republicans gained only 22 legislative seats this fall out of more than 6,000 that were on the ballot, according to Bolts’s review of the latest available results. (Bolts has identified roughly a dozen seats across the country whose results are pending potential recounts and will adjust its calculations as the final results are known. One legislative race in New Hampshire has ended in an exact tie after a recount.) 

And it gets worse for Republicans. While they managed to net a few seats overall, their biggest gains came in chambers that they already massively control, such as the West Virginia or South Carolina houses, or else in New York, where they are deeply in the minority. 

By contrast, Democrats soared in closely-divided legislatures and seized four previously GOP-held chambers: Michigan’s House and Senate, Minnesota’s Senate, and Pennsylvania’s House. In addition, the GOP seems to have lost control of Alaska’s Senate; a group made up of centrist Republicans and Democratic senators announced on Friday that they would form a coalition to run the chamber. We may not know until 2023 if a similar coalition emerges in the Alaska House, or if the GOP can coalesce to win control of that chamber.

What does it mean?

Michigan and Minnesota may be the two most intriguing states heading into the 2023 legislative sessions given their new Democratic majorities. In 2018 and 2019, Colorado and Virginia Democrats similarly gained control of a legislature after long being locked out of power, and they rapidly adopted a flurry of progressive priorities such as abolishing the death penalty.

Democrats in Michigan and Minnesota have already signaled a desire to strengthen labor and environmental laws. The shifts will also have major repercussions for criminal justice policy and voting rights. Minnesota Democrats  are pushing for legislation legalizing marijuana, while Michigan Democrats lawmakers will now be in power to oversee the implementation of new voting protections that the electorate approved in November.

Pennsylvania Democrats won’t control the entire state government since the GOP retains the state Senate, but their new majority in the House has huge implications: It immediately kills a package of constitutional amendments that would have restricted abortion rights, among other drastic changes. Republicans in the legislature were looking to get around the governor’s veto power, but this required them to pass amendments they adopted this year in next year’s session again. “We stopped these constitutional amendments in their tracks,” a Pennsylvania Democrat told CBS.

In the 35 states where one of the parties defended their existing trifecta—including California, Illinois, and New York for Democrats, and Georgia, Florida, and Texas for Republicans—upcoming legislative sessions will see the heaviest activity, with measures strengthening or restricting access to abortion likely to be at the frontlines. 

Among many issues, Bolts will track the fate of abortion rights in states run by the GOP, as Florida Republicans have already signaled they will champion new restrictions, and whether New Mexico and Oregon Democrats return to landmark voting rights bills that stalled this year.

Red states solidified their majorities so they will be doing their thing too as will Blue states which likewise cemented their power. With a Supreme Court throwing our rights back to the states there is going to be a lot of action there as well.

Read the whole story over at Bolts. It should make us feel a little bit better about the possibilities for the future. The sane people are fighting back. It’s going to be a pitched battle for some time but the other side certainly isn’t running away with it.

By the way, Bolts is a reader supported site that’s worth a donation. You can do that here.

Kanye and Fuentes say it was a set-up.

I don’t know if I believe them. They are as full of shit as Trump. And their narrative will only help Trump’s minions and sycophants distance Dear Leader from them. (He won'[t be comfortable with that because he would have to admit that he got played.) So I don’t know where this lands. But it is delicious….

Just two days before Thanksgiving, Donald Trump was planning to have a private, uneventful dinner with an old friend: Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.

The two had arranged to break bread Tuesday night at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida after weeks of private phone conversations as Ye lost lucrative partnerships and became a mainstream cultural pariah for antisemitic remarks, according to those familiar with the talks between the two men.

But Trump was walking into what may have been a trap in Mar-a-Lago’s gilded halls — one that leveraged his own penchant for spectacle and showmanship against him. Ye arrived with three guests, including white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes.

Trump has since said he didn’t know Fuentes or his background when they dined together, a claim Fuentes confirmed in an interview, but others at the crowded members-only club figured out his identity. News of the meeting prompted an avalanche of criticism, from some Republican rivals and allies of Trump and his then-week-old presidential campaign. 

In damage control, Trump’s campaign is now instituting new vetting procedures and gatekeeping efforts as details emerge about how Fuentes and the former president found themselves at the same table, according to two people briefed on the plans.

[…]

The headline-grabbing attention on his guests — and therefore the subsequent fallout — were all but ensured by Trump before the dinner when he made a grand entrance at about 8 p.m. on Nov. 22 to meet his guests. 

“We saw everybody in the dining room get up and start applauding, and then the president entered,” Fuentes told NBC News. “He greeted us, and he invited Ye into dinner and Ye said that he wanted to bring us with him to the table. So we walked in and Ye took some pictures with some of the guests in the dining room and then we sat down at the table.”

Trump made sure they sat at his specially reserved table on the patio, for all to see, according to Fuentes.

But the dinner wasn’t the happy photo-op the president had planned.

Ye criticized Trump for not doing enough to help pay the legal bills of those arrested in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots; and he also told Trump he might run for president against him and said Trump should instead be his running mate — all of which angered the former president, who attacked Ye’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, according to two dinner participants and Ye, who blasted out a “Mar-a-Lago debrief” video to his 32.2 million Twitter followers the next day. 

“Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes,” Ye said in the video.

Fuentes said that he praised Trump as “my hero” and criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his potential GOP primary challenge to Trump, but he also told him to his face at the dinner that the one-time 2016 insurgent was in danger of becoming a scripted establishment bore who could lose in 2024.

[…]

One longtime Trump adviser, who didn’t want to go on the record criticizing his preferred candidate, said it was clear that Fuentes’ presence was part of a headline-grabbing setup. 

“The master troll got trolled,” the adviser said. “Kanye punked Trump.”

As advisers to Trump have attempted to quell the backlash, some have insisted that the former president was essentially tricked by the rapper and his guests — a suspicion backed up by Milo Yiannopoulos, the anti-Trump, far-right provocateur who is now acting as a political adviser to Ye.

Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor who was banned from Twitter in 2016 for inciting a racist campaign against the comedian Leslie Jones, told NBC News that he was “the architect” of the plan to have Fuentes travel with Ye in the hopes of slipping him into the dinner with Trump. The intent, according to Yiannopoulos, was for Fuentes to give Trump an unvarnished view of how a portion of his base views his candidacy.

Yiannopoulos persuaded a former Trump 2016 campaign adviser from Florida, Karen Giorno, to give Ye a ride to Mar-a-Lago, which she said led her to become an accidental member of Ye’s dinner party. Yiannopoulos said he also wanted Giorno to brief Ye on Trump and politics and, if she went to the dinner, to lend a sense of political gravitas to the discussion. The fourth member of the party was a man Ye later identified as a parent of a student at his private school in California, Donda Academy. (Donda shut down for the year after Ye’s antisemitic remarks.) Yiannopolous said he was unsure of why the man traveled with them.

Yiannopoulos said Fuentes is serving in an advisory capacity to Ye. Giorno is not an official member of the unofficial Ye campaign team but flew to Los Angeles to meet with them this week.

“I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he’s missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with,” Yiannopoulos told NBC News. 

“I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end,” he added. 

And, Yiannopoulos said, he arranged the dinner “just to make Trump’s life miserable” because news of the dinner would leak and Trump would mishandle it. 

Fuentes echoed the sentiment: “I hate to say it but the chickens are coming home to roost. You know, this is the frustration with his base and with his true loyalists.”

Trump fumed afterward that Ye had betrayed him by ambushing him. “He tried to f— me. He’s crazy. He can’t beat me,” Trump said, according to one confidant, who then relayed the conversation to NBC News on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

“Trump was totally blindsided,” the source said of Fuentes’ presence. “It was a setup.”

Some in Trump’s orbit had cautioned him not to have dinner with Ye, under fire for antisemitism, in the first place, according to two sources who had been briefed on an internal damage assessment the campaign performed after the controversy erupted.

But Trump is known for refusing to heed cautious counsel, guardrails and gatekeepers. So he went ahead with the dinner alone, telling confidants that he thought Ye needed his counsel and, one confidant told NBC that Trump acknowledged he wanted the rapper to be seen because “it would be fun for the members” of Mar-a-Lago.

Maybe he should leave the celebrity perks to his PR people now that he’s running for president…