Two years ago we were reeling from a violent insurrection that he instigated, a global pandemic killing 3,000 people a day in the US and the economy had pretty much come to a standstill and of which he exacerbated with his ignorance and incompetence. But sure, those were the good old days.
He will be whipping his followers to crash the economy this summer as the debt ceiling comes up and with McCarthy giving him huge props for his role in the Speaker vote debacle, no doubt they’ll listen to him. The only hope will be a handful of Republicans in swing districts working with Democrats to force discharge petitions. Oy vey. Gird yourself.
Media Matters reports today on many of the American extremists who expressed support for the Brazilian insurrectionists yesterday which is not surprising. It’s clear that the US right has become quite the inspiration. Here’s an example:
Of course. But then he was probably involved in the planning.
This piece by Anne Applebaum recalls how the American revolution inspired the French Revolution and Haitian slave revolts in the years after independence. And she writes:
The American Revolution also inspired scores of democratic and anti-colonial revolutionaries. Simón Bolívar, remembered as the Liberator in half a dozen South American countries, visited Washington, New York, Boston, and Charleston in 1807 and later recalled that “during my short visit to the United States, for the first time in my life, I saw rational liberty at first hand.” Visits to the U.S. inspired independence leaders from across Africa and Asia, and they still do. Would-be democrats from Myanmar and Venezuela to Zimbabwe and Cambodia reside in the United States, and study the institutions of the United States, even today. As I wrote on January 6, 2021,
By far the most important weapon that the United States of America has ever wielded—in defense of democracy, in defense of political liberty, in defense of universal rights, in defense of the rule of law—was the power of example. In the end, it wasn’t our words, our songs, our diplomacy, or even our money or our military power that mattered. It was rather the things we had achieved: the two and a half centuries of peaceful transitions of power, the slow but massive expansion of the franchise, and the long, seemingly solid traditions of civilized debate.
That tradition was broken, not just by the Trump administration but by the claque of men around Donald Trump who began dreaming of a different kind of American influence. Not democratic, but autocratic. Not in favor of constitutions and the rule of law, but in support of insurrection and chaos. Not through declarations of independence but through social-media trolling campaigns. Many of the actual achievements of this claque have been negligible or, more likely, exaggerated for the purposes of fundraising. Steve Bannon once implied he had influence in Spain, for example, but actual members of the Spanish far right laughed at that idea when I asked them about it in 2019. Bannon’s attempt to set up some kind of alternative, far-right university in Italy ended in failure. At their conferences, on their social-media platforms, and on their countless YouTube channels, the leaders of what one might call the Autocracy International often seek to present themselves as the enemies of communism—even as most of the actual people who really do fight communism, whether in China or Cuba, keep their distance.
In Brazil, the Autocracy International has finally had a “success.” Although public institutions in the country’s capital have been attacked before, most recently in 2013, today’s events in Brasília contained some new elements. Notably, some of the protesters who today sacked the Brazilian Congress, presidential palace, and supreme court; beat up police officers; and broke security barriers were holding up signs in English, as if to speak to their fans and fellow flamethrowers in the U.S. The phrases #BrazilianSpring and #BrazilWasStolen have been spreading on Brazilian social media, again in English, as if some American public-relations company were pushing them. There are clear links, some via radical Catholic organizations, among far-right groups in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Not long ago, members of some of those movements, including ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo, met at a special edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Mexico City.
Still, I suspect that the real influence of the American experience in Brazil comes not from the preening likes of Bannon, the former Trump adviser Jason Miller, or any of the minor figures who have excitedly, and perhaps lucratively, been promoting #StoptheSteal in Brazil, but—as in the 18th century—through the power of example. Note the pattern here: After he lost November’s election, Bolsonaro refused to attend the inauguration of his successor. Instead, he went (of all places) to Florida. He and his followers have been pursuing fictional claims in lawsuits in the Brazilian courts. They then chose January 8, almost exactly two years after the assault on the American capital, to stage their attack—a strange date in some ways, because the sitting president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has already been inaugurated, and the chaotic assault on Congress will not block him from exercising power. Today’s riot makes more sense if the point was to create a visual echo of what happened in Washington.
But the power of example works in other ways too. If Americans want to help Brazil defend its democracy and avoid sinking into chaos, and if we want to avoid #StoptheSteal movements proliferating in other democracies, then the path forward is clear. We need to prove conclusively both that these movements will fail—after all, the American version already did—and that their instigators, from the very top to the very bottom, pay a high price for that failure. The January 6 committee has just made a clear recommendation to the Justice Department, asking for a criminal case to be brought against Trump. The events in Brasília today should remind us that the department’s response to this demand will shape politics not only in the United States, but around the world.
That spectacle in the House last week was pretty inspiring to authoritarians in fledgling democracies as well, I’m sure. We’re showing them how it’s done in many ways.
Considering that the Brazilian police arrested the rioters on the spot rather than let them run around celebrating and then just go on home before being pursued by law enforcement, I’m going to guess that it’s more likely the Brazilians will be the better example than we are.
Judd Legum’s newsletter today reports on an English teacher in Florida who is leading a charge to ban books. She’s doing all the usual banning of LGBTQ material but also wants to make sure her white high school students aren’t made “uncomfortable” by having to read books about race:
Vicki Baggett, an English teacher at Northview High School in Florida, is pushing for the Escambia County School District to remove nearly 150 books from school libraries. In an interview last month, Baggett told Popular Information that she is challenging books like When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball — the story of a sprinter who overcame racial discrimination to become an Olympic champion — because she’s concerned the book could make white students “feel uncomfortable.” Baggett said she has “a responsibility to protect minors” from this kind of content.
While Baggett claims she is keeping inappropriate content away from children, her former and current students tell Popular Information that Baggett openly promoted racist and homophobic beliefs in class.
Peggy Sunday, who graduated from Northview in 2021, told Popular Information that, during a 10th-grade English class, Baggett said she opposed interracial marriage. “[Baggett] said in the Bible somewhere it says that it is a sin for races to mix together and that whites are meant to be with whites and blacks are meant to be with blacks,” Sunday alleged. About 15 students, from a variety of racial backgrounds, were enrolled in the class.
Another student in the same class, Stone Pressley, recalled the same incident. Pressley said that Baggett said she was opposed to “race mixing” because “she wanted to preserve cultures” and “didn’t want everyone to turn the same color eventually.” Pressley said that although Baggett had a reputation for controversial remarks, he found Baggett’s comments on interracial relationships “shocking.” After the incident, Pressley recalled asking his science teacher if it was possible, as Baggett claimed, for everyone to be “the same color one day.”
Another student in the class, Hamza Jacobs, confirmed Baggett’s comments opposing “race mixing.” A fourth student in the class, who asked to remain anonymous due to the nature of the allegations and Baggett’s standing in a small community, also confirmed the episode.
Sunday said that Baggett is known throughout Northview as an “openly racist teacher.” Sunday worked at a local pool and, one day, Baggett asked her about “the black-to-white” ratio. According to Sunday, Baggett then asked two Black students if they “knew how to swim” because “most black people don’t know how to swim.” The incident was confirmed by one of the Black students targeted by Baggett, who asked to remain anonymous. That student said Baggett “asked me and another girl of color in my class ‘could we swim because black people usually can’t.'” Jacobs and Pressley also confirmed the incident.
A Black student in the class also alleged Baggett said that “she didn’t understand why black people get tattoos in black ink” because “you can’t even see them.” Pressley and Sunday confirmed the incident. Sunday and Jacobs recalled Baggett frequently commenting on the hair of a Black female student. Sunday said Baggett questioned why the young woman wore hair extensions and asked if her hair “was heavy or hurt her.”
Popular Information previously reported that, in 2015, Baggett posted an image of the Confederate Flag to her Facebook page. In the December 2022 interview, Baggett defended the posting, because “everyone in my clan fought in the Civil War” and she was not “ashamed of that.” Baggett added that she was a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, which has been designated as part of the Neo-Confederate movement.
The Escambia County School District did not answer a detailed list of questions about Baggett’s behavior but did provide the following statement to Popular Information: “We categorically condemn any form of discriminatory speech. Our mission is to reach all students, regardless of race, background, or gender identity.”
Baggett did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the allegations made by her students. She has, however, continued to submit challenges to books in Escambia County school libraries. Most recently, Baggett challenged a bestselling book of poetry available in high school libraries, The Sun and Her Flowers, on January 5.
She seems nice.
This is just one teacher feeling emboldened to challenge books in the local library using a number of excuses including this blatantly racist rationale of not wanting the white students to “feel uncomfortable” with discussions of race. This stems from the ridiculous CRT debate. Remember this?
On Tuesday, a bill backed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis that would prohibit public schools and private businesses from inflicting “discomfort” on white people during lessons or training about discrimination was approved by the state’s Senate Education Committee, its first hurdle before becoming a law. The bill, SB 148, seemingly grew out of the conservative hysteria over “critical race theory,” which, as a reminder, is an academic concept based on the idea that racism is not about individual people’s prejudices but about institutions and policies.
It does not, as GOP lawmakers and their partners in the right-wing media would have us believe, teach that all white people are racist. (As another reminder, teaching CRT is not actually being required in elementary, middle, or high schools, but you wouldn’t know that by watching Fox News, which would have viewers believe that teachers are telling white kindergarteners to turn over their allowance as reparations.)
The bill, sponsored by State Senator Manny Diaz Jr., reads, in part, “An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”
That bill, the Individual Freedom Act (aka the STOP WOKE Act) was signed into law last spring “prohibits schools and workplaces from any instruction that suggests that any individual, by virtue of their race, color, sex or national origin, “bears responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress” on account of historical acts of racism. The bill also forbids education or training that says individuals are “privileged or oppressed” due to their race or sex.” It was partially blocked last November from being enforced in universities, but it still applies everywhere else.
And they call liberals snowflakes.
This is going to be one battleground on which the 2024 election is going to play out. DeSantis is clearly staking his wingnut credentials on race and gender culture war issues and it’s going to be ugly.
Last Friday night and into the wee hours of Saturday morning, sleepless souls around the nation suffered through the spectacle of sad-sack Kevin McCarthy finally capturing his Holy Grail, the speakership of the House of Representatives. It was a uniquely unedifying spectacle. By the end it became downright uncomfortable watching McCarthy ritually humiliated hour after hour by members of his own party before they finally deigned to give him the gavel he has so desperately coveted for so long.
But then, this is a common practice among Republicans these days. Just look at the way former President Trump treated his own vice president, Mike Pence, a man who ostentatiously abased himself for four long years only to be thrown to a slavering mob (at least metaphorically) when he refused to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. Like McCarthy, Pence also keeps coming back for more, and apparently plans to launch an extremely quest for the presidential nomination in a party that holds him in total contempt.
As Salon’s Amanda Marcottewrites on Monday morning, the Republican display over the past week was only a preview of what’s likely to come. As she puts it, “House Republicans are going to spend the next two years using taxpayer money to wage war on not just democracy, but truth itself.” Even without the side deals McCarthy made with the 20 insurrectionist Republicans who opposed him through most of 15 ballots, the GOP majority was poised to produce a two-year spectacle designed to leave the nation reeling and disoriented, unable to discern fact from fiction, overwhelmed by the magnitude of lies, propaganda and disinformation emanating from a dozen different “investigations.”
It’s not yet clear exactly what has been promised in McCarthy’s various under-the-table deals but we’ve heard in the last few days that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has received assurances about some kind of investigation into former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Justice Department over the treatment of Jan. 6 prisoners. (What Pelosi has to do with that so-called issue is a mystery.) We’ve also learned that Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, will head a new “Church Committee” to conduct yet another investigation of the investigators. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., says the GOP will investigate Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for his alleged “sell-out” to China. That’s just for starters.
These insurrectionists are so intent upon wreaking revenge for the Democrats’ attempts to exert some oversight of Trump’s chaotic four years as president that it’s fair to assume they will go to lengths we haven’t seen in many years. They could even deploy the congressional “inherent contempt” power, not used since 1935, in which the House sergeant at arms is sent to detain any subpoena violators who claim executive privilege or who resist appearing before a congressional tribunal for some other reason. Don’t think it couldn’t happen.
As I and others have warned, the biggest threat from this Republican majority may involve a hostage situation regarding necessary legislation to keep the government funded and functioning. It appears that McCarthy has given away so many of the speaker’s powers that the Freedom Caucus will be able to insist on massive spending cuts to offset raising the debt ceiling. That silly and unnecessary exercise will likely cause havoc in the economy just as it’s righting itself from the dislocations caused by the pandemic. These Republicans are fine with that. They believe they’ll be able to blame the Biden administration if the economy crashes, and they’re downright excited about the possibility of slashing aid to Ukraine while also gutting discretionary spending that has provided crucial support to the American people. Their demands will also require cuts to Social Security and Medicare — which of course would be hugely unpopular, so they’re simply lying and saying they won’t.
It does appear that the GOP’s slim margin in the House will present some possibilities to head that off by using “discharge petitions,” which take a lot of time. But if the Democrats and a handful of relatively sane Republicans play their cards right, it might just work:
For the best-case scenario for governance over the next two years, here's Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) on CNN yesterday effectively saying that he and a group of GOP mods will join Democrats on dispatch petitions for must-pass bills like the debt ceiling and gov't spending. pic.twitter.com/Ae4HCvONgE
That’s not the only card the Democrats have to play. It seems the Republicans, basking in the glow of their overwhelming five-seat majority, have forgotten that there’s another house of Congress on the other side of the building. The Democrats now control the Senate with an actual majority rather than the previous 50-50 split, which means they control the subpoena power within committees. And as Politico reports, Senate Democrats are gearing up for investigations of their own “as a counterpoint to House GOP probes of Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
Basking in the glow of their overwhelming five-seat majority, Republicans seem to have forgotten there’s another house of Congress, where Democrats will run the show.
The Jan. 6 investigation in the House was thorough and has now been handed off to the Department of Justice. But there were plenty of loose ends that the Senate may now pick up. Since McCarthy and House Republicans have vowed to rescind the funding for additional IRS personnel, a good hard look at Donald Trump’s recently-released tax returns would be a perfect jumping-off point for a Senate probe of why wealthy people like him never seem to pay their fair share of taxes. It would be very informative to learn more about the IRS failure to conduct the required audits of Trump’s returns while he was president, and why the agency didn’t bother to allocate adequate resources to that task when they finally got around to it.
It might also be useful to learn more about all that foreign money that flowed directly into Trump’s pockets during his presidency, especially now that he’s supposedly running for president again.
Since the Republicans are determined to pursue allegations of corruption against Hunter Biden, it would be irresponsible not to take a look at the $2 billion payoff to Trump son-in-law and former White House adviser Jared Kushner from a Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which came just a few months after he left the Trump administration. Even the Saudi fund’s due diligence committee thought that deal stunk to high heaven. They found that Kushner and his newly formed private equity company was “inexperience[d],” that their own fund would be responsible for “the bulk of the investment and risk,” that Kushner’s fees were “excessive,” and that his firm’s operations were “unsatisfactory in all aspects.” That seems like something the Senate could take a look at.
Politico also notes that the Senate Judiciary Committee might like to learn more about some of the Justice Department decisions made during the Trump administration, and could call former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions to testify. There’s plenty to chew on there.
Those are just a few of the investigations Democrats in the Senate might take up over the next two years. They won’t be as flamboyantly stupid as the House investigations, of course. There’s no point in trying to out-clown the circus. But it would be foolish to let Republicans believe they get to control the narrative in D.C. because they won a narrow majority in one house of Congress. Kevin McCarthy may be at the mercy of the GOP’s insurrection caucus, but Democrats don’t have to be.
Fulton County special purpose grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump and others has finished its final report. By vote of a majority of Fulton judges, the grand jury is now dissolved. Judge Robert McBurney sets Jan. 24 hearing as to whether report will be public.
Filipkowski notes that although the photo on the right was posted by a Bolsonaro supporter during Brazil’s Jan. 8 insurrection, it was taken at a previous rally.
It only took two years. A copycat coup was virtually inevitable (Associated Press):
Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who refuse to accept his election defeat stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace Sunday, a week after the inauguration of his leftist rival, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Thousands of demonstrators bypassed security barricades, climbed on roofs, smashed windows and invaded all three buildings, which were believed to be largely vacant on the weekend. Some of the demonstrators called for a military intervention to either restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power or oust Lula from the presidency.
Where did Brazilian extremists get such ideas? The events in the Southern Hemisphere left a feeling in the pit of my stomach hauntingly familiar from two years ago on Jan. 6. Strongmen fanboys are a plague. What’s more unsettling is that the plague is spreading. And it’s not as if no one saw this coming in Brazil.
Jan. 6 has been studied by authoritarians abroad who see it as a blueprint for armed actions. [Steve] Bannon, an advisor to Jair Bolsonaro, hoped that Brazil (where a 1964 coup led to two decades of military dictatorship) would experience its own Jan. 6 after Bolsonaro’s loss to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Ben-Ghiat warned that “hard-core Bolsonaro supporters persist.”
It took reactionaries another few weeks. Draped in the green and yellow of the Brazilian flag, they mounted their insurrection on Sunday when the Three Powers Square capitol complex in Brazilia was largely unoccupied. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who took office under a week ago was visiting the flood-torn city of Araraquara 500 miles away. Bolsonaro took refuge in Florida before the inauguration.
Bolsonaro’s third son Eduardo visited South Florida after the Oct. 30 election to consult with former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller. He also spoke by phone with Bannon who was in Arizona assisting failed Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Eduardo was in Washington, D.C. for the Jan. 6 attack and helped organize the Conservative Political Action Conference in Brazil.
Bannon is attempting to instigate a coup in Brazil. Eduardo Bolsonaro puts out a video of Steve Bannon this morning, where Bannon tells them their election was stolen and praises people protesting in the streets: “It’s going to be very interesting to see how that plays out.” pic.twitter.com/HvxcJQTDkf
Bannon, of course, christened the rioters for Bolsonaro “feedom fighters.” He’s spent months spreading lies about the election they lost. “Lula stole the Election… Brazilians know this,” Bannon wrote Sunday on Gettr. Jan. 6 organizer Ali Alexander cheered them on over former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social: “I do NOT denounce unannounced impromptu Capitol tours by the people.”
Figures involved in January 6 are currently applauding what's happening in Brazil pic.twitter.com/oRRplmHKxg
As in the US in 2020, partisan election-deniers focused their attention on the mechanisms of voting. In Brazil, they cast suspicion on electronic vote tabulation machines.
A banner displayed by the rioters on Sunday declared “We want the source code” in both English and Portuguese – a reference to rumours that electronic voting machines were somehow programmed or hacked in order to foil Mr Bolsonaro.
A number of prominent Brazilian Twitter accounts which spread election denial rumours were reinstated after the election and acquisition of the company by Elon Musk, according to a BBC analysis. The accounts had previously been banned.
Mr Musk himself has suggested some of Twitter’s own employees in Brazil were “strongly politically biased” without giving details or evidence.
Belief trumps evidence and facts are disposable with the international authoritarian movement. No government not dominated by them is legitimate. Heads, they win. Tails, you lose. Democracy is for show. Give us what we want or else.
Jamie Raskin, a Democratic Party member of the US House of Representatives and a member of the committee that investigated the Capitol riot, called the Brazilian protesters “fascists modeling themselves after Trump’s Jan. 6 rioters” in a tweet.
David Adler was on the scene with a long thread. Police were underprepared and outmanned. When troops finally arrived to clean out the rioters, the buildings had been ransacked in a fashion familiar from Jan. 6.
A follow-up report from Associated Press early this morning:
In a news conference late Sunday, Brazil’s minister of institutional relations said the buildings would be inspected for evidence including fingerprints and images to hold people to account, and that the rioters apparently intended to spark similar such actions nationwide. Justice Minister Flávio Dino said the acts amounted to terrorism and coup-mongering and that authorities have begun tracking those who paid for the buses that transported protesters to the capital.
“They will not succeed in destroying Brazilian democracy. We need to say that fully, with all firmness and conviction,” Dino said. “We will not accept the path of criminality to carry out political fights in Brazil. A criminal is treated like a criminal.”
So far, 300 people have been arrested, the federal district’s civil police said on Twitter.
Lula flew back to the capitol late Sunday and promised that the malefactors would see justice (Washington Post):
The president arrived in the capital, Brasília, from São Paulo and walked by the shattered windows and ripped artwork in the presidential palace and was then taken by two justices to see the destruction at the Supreme Court, according to the local television station Globo.
“The terrorists who promote the destruction of public spaces in Brasília are being identified and punished. Tomorrow we will resume work at the Presidential Palace. Democracy forever. Goodnight,” he tweeted.
Monday morning, police surrounded an encampment of Bolsonaro’s far-right supporters near the army’s Brazilia headquarters.
“Yesterday’s serious events in Brasilia prove that the so-called “patriotic” camps have become incubators for terrorists,” tweeted Brazil’s incoming justice minister Flavio Dino. “There will be no amnesty for terrorists, their supporters and financiers.”
A day earlier, police located and defused a bomb planted in an airport fuel truck. They arrested a 54-year-old suspect:
Police also found assault-style rifles and other explosives at an apartment rented by the man in Brasilia. [Brazilia Civil Police chief Robson] Candido said the suspect was a registered gun-owner, known as a CAC, a group that has swelled sixfold to nearly 700,000 people since Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 and began loosening gun laws.
Candido also said the man, and those helping him, had tried to activate the explosive device, but it had not gone off. He said it was still unclear how many other people were involved.
“We’ve never had bombs here in Brazil,” he said.
Nearly 2 years to the day the US Capitol was attacked by fascists, we see fascist movements abroad attempt to do the same in Brazil.
We must stand in solidarity with @LulaOficial’s democratically elected government. 🇧🇷
Trump’s multi-pronged Jan. 6 plan was not designed to succeed, yet almost did. Had Trump convinced his Secret Service detail to ferry him to the Capitol after his “Stop the Steal” rally that day, his presence would have provoked even greater violence and perhaps death for some members of Congress.
Bolsonaro was more cowardly still. He observed his rioters from Florida on a Sunday when the Three Powers Square complex was empty of lawmakers. Theymay have had sympathizers among the police and military, but there was no intervention and there were no lawmakers to attack. From Florida with the benefit of plausible denial, Bolsonaro “stopped short of condemning the mob outright,” per The Guardian.
In both riots, government overthrow is a bonus, but not the measure of success. What Bannon and his ilk seek is to undermine faith in democracy itself. Sow enough chaos and public distrust in the institutions of governance and they have paved the way for despots and dictators to fill the power vacuum.
They are not about to stop trying. Not there. Not here.
Update: More background to the attack from the Washington Post, including
On Telegram, an organizing hub for Brazil’s far right, a viral video taken down by authorities called for the murder of the children of leftist Lula supporters.
Despite their seeming similarities, Brazilian researchers said, Bolsonaro supporters are careful not to draw too many comparisons to Jan. 6 in the United States because doing so could trigger arrest for inciting anti-democratic acts, a crime in Brazil. If Jan. 6 is referenced, as it was in a handful of posts this week, the utterances appear in code, said Viktor Chagas, a professor at Fluminense Federal University in Rio de Janeiro state who researches online, far-right movements.
Still, Chagas said, Sunday’s riot was “a clear attempt to emulate the invasion of the U.S. Capitol, as a reproduction of Trumpist movements and a symbolic signal of strength and transnational connections from the global far right.”
Impaired grandpa at Mar-a-Lago tonight cheering up his guests by talking about imminent nuclear war and saying that Biden “convinced Putin to go into Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/tAmnVkl54u
First of all, he’s talking about the thing he says nobody should talk about. Then he says he brought in professors to tell him what we have known since the dawn of the nuclear age, but fails to tell them that he was really looking for permission to launch a first strike if he wanted to. (That’s surely the reason why they all wove a lurid story of Armageddon.) Then this rambling moron says Biden has lost his mind and lies about what he said about Ukraine by putting his own words in Biden’s mouth.
This is a reminder you probably don’t really need but I put it here because we just saw the House GOP majority, including the new speaker, ostentatiously lick his boots over the weekend giving him credit for finally securing McCarthy’s win. He’s not done yet.
Howie Klein sent this out to Blue America members today:
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley was complicit in the sacking of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He should have been removed then.
Next year he’ll have to face Missouri voters and explain himself.
Today he got the opponent best equipped to hold him to account and to represent the interests of Missourians in the Senate—Lucas Kunce.
In his announcement this morning, Kunce, a 13-year Marine veteran, said
“When things get tough, Missourians deserve someone who will stand up for them, not run for the nearest exit. Our politicians have betrayed Missouri. They’ve forgotten that their job is not only to defend our democracy, but also to fight for the people in it. Josh Hawley is 0 for 2. The frontline in the fight for democracy is right here in Missouri.
Communities across our state have been stripped for parts by power-hungry politicians who have no idea what it’s like to live a single day as an average Missourian. Unlike Hawley, I’m no stranger to real life. When times were tough for my family growing up in Jeff City and we were on the edge, our community came together and supported us.
Everyday people know what it means to look out for each other, to serve their community, and to fight for the place they call home. Those are the Missourians I’m fighting for this race. Those are the Missourians who are fed up with Josh Hawley being a fraud and a coward. And that’s why we’re going to beat him.”
As Americans look on in horror as extremists in the House— Hawley’s fellow insurrectionists— bring the government to a halt fighting with each other. And how ironic would it be for McCarthy to be elected speaker on January 6, the anniversary of the coup he— and Hawley— countenanced?
This morning Politico reported that even mainstream conservatives are furious at the extremists. “Some members are privately angry that McCarthy is empowering hard-liners with rules changes to the point that they worry it will be difficult, if not impossible, to govern. There’s also concern about policy commitments he’s considering for the far right, including a vote on steep budget cuts that defense hawks will never swallow. Many Republicans are fed up with his apparent willingness to hand plum committee posts to his detractors— especially, talk of possibly awarding them gavels.” This is the kind of nihilism people like Josh Hawley have built performative careers around, while accomplishing nothing for Missourians.”
Meanwhile, this morning members of Congress gathered at the Capitol to mark the second anniversary of the January 6th riots. Hawley was not among them. In fact, the only Republican member of Congress who was, was Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who told reporters “There’s a lot of terrible emotions. A terrible day that we can never let happen again.”
True enough. Does Hawley feel the same way? I don’t think so. AP reported today that “The homes or offices of four elected Democratic officials in New Mexico have been hit by gunfire over the past month.” Bernalillo County Commissioners Adriann Barboa and Debbie O’Malley, plus state Senators Linda Lopez and Moe Maestas were attacked by this extremists straight from the Hawley wing of the Republican Party. No one was killed— this time.
As Lisa Lerer and Reid Epstein wrote in the NY Times yesterday, “As the chaos and confusion on the House floor stretched into a third day, Republicans made it abundantly clear who was leading their party: absolutely no one… [T]he party is confronting an identity crisis unseen in decades. With no unified legislative agenda, clear leadership or shared vision for the country, Republicans find themselves mired in intraparty warfare, defined by a fringe element that seems more eager to tear down the House than to rebuild the foundation of a political party that has faced disappointment in the past three national elections.”
Gaetz, Boebert, Biggs, Good, Norman… there’s not a centimeter of difference between Hawley and any of them. John Fredericks, a syndicated right-wing radio host and former chairman of Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns in Virginia told the Times reporters that “Nobody is in charge. Embrace the chaos. Our movement is embracing the chaos.”
That ideology of destruction defies characterization by traditional political labels like moderate or conservative. Instead, the party has created its own complicated taxonomy of America First, MAGA and anti-Trump— descriptions that are more about political style and personal vendettas than policy disagreements.
This iteration of the Grand Old Party, with its narrow majority in the House empowering conservative dissidents, represents a striking reversal of the classic political maxim that Democrats need to fall in love while Republicans just fall in line.
“The members who began this have little interest in legislating, but are most interested in burning down the existing Republican leadership structure,” said Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who embodies the party’s pre-Trump era. “Their behavior shows the absence of power corrupts just as absolutely as power does.”
Elizabeth Sena, Lucas’ pollster, told reporters that
“Missouri presents the most compelling case for Democrats to flip a GOP-held Senate seat next cycle. At the ballot initiative level, Missourians continue to vote on issues championed by Democrats— raising the minimum wage, fighting back against Right to Work, and passing medical marijuana. It will take a different kind of Democrat— someone who can speak to moderates and independents and make the direct contrast with an extremist like Josh Hawley.”
I hope you can sense the immense opportunity this gives us– to help bolster the Senate and unseat a traitor at the same time. Please, give what you can, if you can –and if you can’t, please help spread Lucas Kunce’s fantastic campaign launch announcement video everywhere on social media.
Historian Joanne B. Freeman discusses previous battles over the speakership and it’s always fascinating to see how much of our current fights are rooted in our past. She concludes with this:
It’s tempting to laugh at the strut and fret that took place in the House, much of it seemingly signifying nothing. But it was not just theatrics, and it was not a joke. It was a symptom of a dysfunctional party that is questionably anchored in a democratic politics, and a glaringly obvious sign of things to come. Given Mike Rogers’s near-lunge at Matt Gaetz on Friday night, it’s also an eerie echo of things past.
The House has elected a speaker, but that won’t put an end to the internecine Republican battles. They will continue, entangling Congress and stymieing national politics in the process. Politics is a team sport that requires captains, congressional politics, even more so. Today’s congressional Republicans are not a team; they have no captain and they have displayed their failings for all the world to see.
In effect, we’re witnessing the rupture of the Republican Party, the ultimate outcome of Republicans’ continuing failure to stand up to the extremism in their ranks. In choosing to remain silent in the face of their right wing’s politics of destruction, they have essentially endorsed it. Their silence in the face of Donald Trump’s lies and his election loss denial did much the same, laying the groundwork for the upheaval that we’re watching now.
That upheaval reflects the state of our nation — but it’s shaping the nation as well. The speakership battles of 1855-56 and 1859-60 schooled the nation in the power of sectional threats, defiance and even violent opposition. The public learned their lesson and responded in kind. The lessons of our speakership battle are yet unknown.
It’s encouraging to think that there are moderate Republicans who don’t support this brand of politics. There are certainly many. But until they organize themselves and oppose their in-house opposition, they’re pushing the nation ever closer to a dangerous edge — and defining the Republican Party in the process.
I don’t think there really are any “moderate” Republicans unless being moderate means always capitulating to extremists. Kevin McCarthy is their leader and that says it all. In the end, they clearly don’t really care about much of anything .
I would not count on any pushback from within. The only thing that will stop them is the majority of Americans decisively voting them out of power. And they’d better hurry.
Bolsonaro followers are ransacking the presidential palace, the congress and the Supreme Court today. He is ensconced at Mar-a-lago with Trump right now:
Brazilian congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son, has visited Florida since the Oct. 30 vote, meeting Trump at Mar-a-Lago and strategizing with other political allies by phone. He spoke with former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who was in Arizona assisting the campaign of GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, about the power of the pro-Bolsonaro protests and potential challenges to the Brazilian election results, Bannon said. He lunched in South Florida with former Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller, now CEO of the social media company Gettr, and discussed online censorship and free speech, Miller said.
Neither Trump nor Eduardo Bolsonaro responded to requests for comment.
Those conversations have mirrored debates unfolding in Brasília, where Bolsonaro’s supporters are discussingnext steps for his populist conservative movement. That movement is facing a reckoning not unlike that of the American right after Trump’s 2020 loss over how to sustain itself when its charismatic standard-bearer has been defeated.
The Brazilian right has some advantages heading into the new year, when leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will take office. While Bolsonaro lost, his party and allies made gains in Congress and governorships. Tens of thousands of his supporters continue to camp outside military bases in over 20 cities, some calling for commanders to intervene in the vote.
Demonstrators have been photographed holding handmade signs reading “#BrazilianSpring” and “#BrazilWasStolen” in English, demonstrating the close ties between right-wing movements in the two countries. The phrases have trended on Brazilian Twitter several times this month. “Brazilian Spring” was coined shortly after the election by Bannon, he and others say; he has since dedicated several episodes of his podcast to an election he’s calling one of the most consequential political events in the world.
Some of Bolsonaro’s advisers, including Bannon, want him to contest the results, an effort that would probably fail but would encourage protesters. On Tuesday, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party filed a request with Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court to invalidatethe votes recorded by some 250,000 machines that were manufactured before 2020. Fact-checkers say the inquiry is premised on false information about older machines.
Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the president of the electoral court, said the machines were used in both the first and second rounds, and said the party should also request a review of first-round votes — which could put at risk the election of its candidates who won. He gave the party 24 hours to respond.
Others want to move on to bigger fights that they believe could have greater international appeal. Central to this approach would be an attack on the legitimacy of the country’s top courts, which can kick people offline and arrest them if they post misinformation about the electoral process or other “anti-democratic content.” While many Brazilians see the courts as a bulwark of democracy, the judiciary is increasingly being accused by legal scholars of overreach and political targeting. Many rulings are sealed, and terms such as “misinformation” and “fake news” — the English phrase, used by Trump to describe coverage he found unflattering, is written into Brazilian law — have no clear definition.
Brazil’s supreme and electoral courts, which are among the most muscular regulators of online speech in any democratic nation, have in recent weeks ordered tech companies to remove the social media accounts of several pro-Bolsonaro politicians and journalists, and in September ordered raids at the homes of business executives accused of promoting election disinformation and defending a military coup in a WhatsApp group.
Bolsonaro has not conceded the loss, and has encouraged supporters to maintain their protests outside the military bases. But he has instructed his chief of staff to proceed with the transition to Lula’s administration, parts of which are continuing apace, people told The Washington Post.
Miguel Lago, executive director of the Rio-based think tank Institute for Health Policy Studies, said Bolsonaro’s three-week silence has “cost him critical time when he could have further rallied the troops.”
American friends, themselves reeling from the historic underperformance of Republicans in the U.S. midterm elections, are acting as cheerleaders and advisers. Bolsonaro and Trump built a strong alliance when both were in office, Trump seeing a kindred spirit in the bombastic, social media-driven Bolsonaro. Trump’s advisers were drawn to Bolsonaro’s love of guns, his nationalism, his willingness to antagonize Brazil’s long-standing allies and slash environmental regulations, and his embrace of culture wars.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s third son, was often the glue in relationships between the two worlds. He has made multiple trips to Mar-a-Lago during his father’s tenure and was in Washington during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. He helped bring the Conservative Political Action Conference to Brazil.
Some insiders say the Brazilian movement is bigger than any one leader.
“What’s happening in Brazil is a world event,” Bannon told The Post. “The people are saying they’ve been grossly disenfranchised. [The movement] has moved beyond the Bolsonaros in the way that in the U.S. it has moved beyond Trump.”
Brazilian congresswoman Carla Zambelli, a Bolsonaro supporter, also traveled to the United States after the election. In Washington, she tried to drum up international support after Brazil’s top court kicked her off social media this month, costing her nearly 10 million followers. She had chased a Lula supporter in São Paulo while wielding a gun and had encouraged protesters blocking highways after Bolsonaro’s loss, but the reasons for the ban are not publicly known. The full court ruling in her case has not been released.
Zambelli told The Post she met with several U.S. politicians to call for the restoration of her online megaphone and attempted to appeal the ban with the Organization of American States.
Zambelli said the idea that an elected official can be censored by an opaque court that is openly antagonistic to one party should resonate globally. She said she hoped to bring together politicians and supporters in both countries “on this international front for freedom of expression.”
Supporters of those whose social media use has been restricted by the court have tweeted messages to Elon Musk, Twitter’s new owner, to reinstate their accounts.
The restrictions impact only the feeds of Brazilian users. Twitter executives looked into them at the behest of Musk but determined that the company couldn’t unblock them without running afoul of the Brazilian government, according to a person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them freely.
Miller told The Post that Bolsonaro wasn’t running against Lula but against Brazil’s supreme court. He described it as a “supreme court, an attorney general, the FBI and the U.S. attorney all rolled up in one.” Gettr, his company, has appealed to the Brazilian court to restore Zambelli’s profile to its service.
