Month: May 2023

Words to the wise:

I can’t help but feel like a chapter in the evolution of social media is drawing to a close.

Now, surely some of this feeling is a product of my changing perspective. I got my first social media account when I was 19 years old and signed up for MySpace in college; I turn 41 later this month, and it’d be foolish to pretend that more than two decades of maturation hasn’t altered my relationship with social media.

Still, there’s no denying that something has shifted.

Between the haphazard-yet-thorough disassembly of Twitter at the hands of Elon Musk, the driftless and flailing “metaverse” obsessions of Facebook, and the can’t-put-my-finger-on-it-but-something’s-not-right-here vibe of Instagram these days, it’s hard not to feel like we’re at the end of an era. Social media will evolve and persist, but the monoculture days of everyone hanging out in the same few places are winding down.

Like many, I feel a pang of loss for these spaces, spaces from which I’ve taken a lot in the past two decades.

But I’m not here to throw a funeral.

Instead, I view this as a sort of graduation.

Some of us are leaving, headed for new and hopefully exciting places. Others will hang around town for a while, clinging to a moment we’re not quite ready to admit has passed. Things may be better or worse; all we can be sure of is that they’ll be different.

If I can take this moment to imagine us all together in a crowd at some stadium or parade crowd, hungover and sunburnt in our caps and gowns, I’d like to relay a few things I’ve learned from this time we’ve spent together.

I’d like to give my social media graduation speech.

Say less. Some of the greatest, funniest, most memorable things I’ve ever seen on social media were only a few words long. Make your point as economically as possible.

Speak thoughtfully. You don’t know who is listening to you, and what impact a thoughtless or negative statement may have on them. You also don’t know when you’re going to accidentally coin a new term.

You are what you say, not what you say you are. The words coming out of your mouth or off of your keyboard say far more about you than the ones in your bio do, and if you ever have to issue a statement claiming “that’s not who I am”, I have some bad news for you. (Yeah, it is.)

Consider the possibility of other perspectives. You’ll be stunned at what you might learn if you’re just willing to listen and keep an open mind, and you might even make a friend or two along the way.

You are under no obligation to engage someone acting in bad faith on their terms.

Celebrities are just like us. (They’re bored and on their phones most of the time, too.)

To that end—money can buy lots of things, but money alone cannot make you the person you wish you were. (Not even 44 billion dollars of it.)

There is almost always someone smarter than you out there, and there is also someone much dumber than the both of you confidently explaining something in that person’s area of expertise to them right now. Seek out the former, and try not to be the latter.

You do not have to have an opinion on everything. Frankly, it feels great to sit one out from time to time.

One person having a ridiculous opinion does not necessarily indicate a meaningful trend or constituency, and you do not need to write an article about it. (This one’s just for political reporters.)

Punch up, not down, and don’t throw any punches you’re not willing to answer for if word gets back around.

If you plan to share a photograph, make sure you double-check what is in the background first. Someone is going to notice.

Have someone you can privately message your worst ideas to before rolling them out to the wider world. It’ll save you a lot of headaches.

Do not be shy about advocating for yourself and for your work. If you don’t believe in it, why should anyone else?

There may be people out there who think you’re a hack. There are also people who would give anything to do what you do.

You can ask for help. Whether that’s asking for a recommendation on the best sandwich in a new city, seeking non-binding legal advice on a property line dispute, or finding a kind ear when you need it most, you can ask for it. Chances are, you’ll find it.

Likes are free. It costs nothing to share your support, to brighten someone’s day and let them know you’re paying attention to them. It feels pretty good to do so, too.

Cats and dogs make everything better, even in the moments where they’re actively making things worse. (Those make for the best stories, frankly.)

Arguing about food is pointless, but it’s a heck of a lot better than arguing about pretty much anything else. Also, Pop-Tarts are empanadas, deep-dish pizza is soup, and Cincinnati chili is a form of gumbo.

Sometimes people are wrong, and there’s nothing you can do about it. (See item above.)

Know when to walk away. Your health and well-being matter more than winning an argument, and the argument will be there later if you want to come back to it.

Who you spend time with and who you spend your time on matters. You may not realize it as it happens, but they are shaping who you will be tomorrow. Surround yourself with good people, and don’t waste your time or energy on bad people.

It’s never too late to do what you want to do or be who you want to be, but you have to be the one to do it.

Finally, your people are out there; you just have to look for them. Wherever we go from here, they’ll still be out there.

(If you can’t find them, try starting a food argument.)

—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)

I think he’s right that social media is in the process of fragmenting and I’m not sure how that’s going to come out. I suppose in some ways it will be a relief to just focus on a niche, but for me that’s not possible since this is what I do. I even read Truth Social every day and watch (some) Fox News. But I can imagine that fatigue has set in among a lot of people and it would be nice to just have … less.

His advice on how to deal with social media is good though. We can all benefit from a reminder to keep things in perspective.

So touching…

Just I and me

They are still out there. Moose Lodge #whatever, or the Elks, relics of a 19th century, white- male America that survive somehow in the 21st. Like Mother’s Day that way, another quaint 19th century tradition that holds on in a time when Americans in increasing numbers harbor suspicions about one another and mutual mistrust is more persistent than inflation.

Ian Ward writes at Politico:

“National divorce” — a term that frames America’s current political crises as symptoms of a deeper social breakup — is suddenly a well-worn phrase. Over a quarter of Americans believe that it might soon be necessary to take up arms against their government. It would be a shocking number if not for the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Ward explores the national mood with Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam (“Bowling Alone,” 2000). Putnam examined the meaning behind the decline of civic organizations like the Moose and the Elks. Social capital in decline.

Putnam told the Denver Post in 2000:

“Virtually every measure of social interaction is down, big time, over the last 25 years.” The most vivid illustration of the trend, Putnam suggests, may be the decrease in league bowling, which has plummeted more than 40 percent since 1980, even though the total number of bowlers in the United States has risen 10 percent – hence the notion of “Bowling Alone.” But regular surveys of consumer behavior, he says, chronicle similar declines in numerous other indicators of social engagement, from church attendance to charitable giving to membership in what he jokingly calls “the animal clubs” (Lions, Elks, Moose, Eagles, etc.).

Even the tradition of having people over for dinner has fallen by 40 percent, he reports.

Putnam believes what’s needed to restore social trust in our griftopian age of Trumpism (“fuck your feelings”), QAnon, and insurrection is a renewed sense of morality:

“I know this sounds really mushy — and I didn’t always believe this — but the data and the history have convinced us that the leading indicator [for societal change] is a sense of morality,” says Putnam when I call him at his home in Cambridge, Mass. “We need a moral reawakening of America. That’s upstream from political choices.”

In Putnam’s mind, that fact is — believe it or not — an enduring source of hope. Although the empirical measurements of social and political trust are continuing to decline, Putnam says, he finds hope in the arguments of young political activists like David Hogg and Greta Thunberg, whose visions of political change are premised on a broader moral transformation of society.

Social capital bottomed out at the end of the 19th century, Putnam argues. What followed in the transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era was an upswing in trust lasting “from the first decade or so of the 20th century until the 1960s.” We may not see another turn of that cycle, but “the 20th century proves that it’s possible to reverse these declines.”

Contra conventional wisdom, Putnam’s research indicates that economics is not the driver of policies “and everything else.”

To me, the astonishing fact was that the leading indicator was actually cultural and moral factors. The first thing that changed was that ordinary Americans became convinced — some through religion, others not — that they had a moral duty to worry about other people, and their morality changed from an “I” morality to a “we” morality. Conversely, the first thing that turned in the other direction [in the 1960s] was actually our sense of moral obligation orders. We went from a “we” society to an “I” society.

Follow that through for a minute, because that’s a very different causal story. This is a narrative in which first of all, people change their hearts. I know this sounds really mushy — and I didn’t always believe this — but the data and the history have convinced us that the leading indicator is a sense of morality. We need a moral reawakening of America. That’s upstream from political choices. It’s only when people begin to think, “Oh, I have an obligation to other people,” that they begin to support parties and policies that actually do close the economic gap.

Trumpism and its grievances are, as I’ve written, “an extension of that unholy amalgam of Jesus Christ, Ayn Rand, and Horatio Alger that passes for Christianity for a lot of Americans, with an unhealthy dose of white nationalism now added to the mix.” It’s not testosterone poisoning as much as an overdose of Americans’ Marlboro-Man, libertarian individualism. Every man for himself run amuck. There’s no we in doomsday-prepper arming for civil war America, just I and me.

It’s the Hoggs and the Thunbergs who give Putnam hope.

“That youth moralizing movement has had a real effect on real policies.” I’m hopeful that he’s right.

NC’s Democratic governor rallies support behind a veto

North Carolina rallied on Saturday to sustain Gov. Roy Cooper’s public veto of Republicans’ recently passed 12-week abortion ban.

Politico:

The Democrat decried the legislation, which he vetoed at a rally in downtown Raleigh, as a “complicated and confusing monster bill” that makes patients “navigate a wicked obstacle course just to get care.”

“Standing in the way of progress right now is this Republican supermajority legislature that only took 48 hours to turn the clock back 50 years on women’s health,” Cooper said. “Let’s be clear: This bill has nothing to do with making women safer and everything to do with banning abortion.”

With the GOP holding veto-proof margins in both legislative chambers, Democrats (if even they can maintain a unified front) will need the defection of at least one Republican in either chamber to sustain Cooper’s veto. The blowback on that member would be fierce. After the state Supreme Court reversed a previous ruling against gerrymandered Republican maps, GOP legislators are even now redrawing legislative districts … again.

“If even just one Republican in either the House or the Senate keeps a campaign promise to protect women’s reproductive health, we can stop this ban,” Cooper said. “There are four legislators who made these promises, but I think there may be more who know in their hearts and minds that this is bad.”

While 93 percent of abortions are performed during the first trimester of pregnancy, according to the CDC, abortion-rights advocates argue the legislation would impose unnecessary restrictions on access.

According to a Meredith College poll from February, 57 percent of North Carolina voters support either keeping the state’s 20-week limit or expanding access beyond that, while about 35 percent favor of new restrictions.

If democracy still held in the state, the majority’s opinion might carry weight. As is, it does not.

If approved, the law will reduce the time in which abortions can be performed from 20 weeks to 12 weeks, with exceptions for rape and incest, fatal fetal abnormalities and to save the life of the pregnant person. The bill, which takes effect July 1, would also require patients to have an in-person doctor’s visit at least 72 hours before receiving an abortion.

The devil being in the details, opponents argue the additional rules and restrictions in the bill amount to a ban other means.

It’s not pretty

Most congressional Republicans seem to have shrugged off Donald Trump’s wildly irresponsible suggestion, at Wednesday night’s CNN town hall, that a U.S. debt default would be an acceptable (if not desirable) outcome of the fraught negotiations underway between Kevin McCarthy and the White House. But that doesn’t mean Trump’s comments won’t have an impact.

House GOP leaders continue to pretend that it’s Biden and his Democrats who are risking a default and the baleful economic consequences…

But congressional Republicans varied in how annoyed they sounded in brushing off Trump’s “political advice” (as his close Senate ally J.D. Vance chose to put it). Even some House Freedom Caucus members were clearly irritated, according to Axios:

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) suggested Trump’s comments aren’t having a major impact on how Republican lawmakers approach the debt ceiling, noting that the ex-president is “on the periphery of these things …”

“We’re not going to default on anything,” Higgins added.

Here’s the problem: With McCarthy white-knuckling it over his narrow control of the House (his own debt-limit/spending-cut proposal only passed by two votes), it wouldn’t take much of a rebellion by hard-core HFC types to blow up his negotiating position and/or to threaten his slippery grip on the Speaker’s gavel. And Axios did find some echoes of Trump’s position in the House:

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) leapt to Trump’s defense, telling Axios that “if we enter a default situation, it might actually help us clarify some of our spending problems because a future default, if we don’t get our spending in order, is going to be much worse.”

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-N.C.) said “everything is on the table” as leverage, adding, “Either they agree to cuts, which are modest, or they take responsibility for whatever happens.”

“I agree with [Trump],” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), the chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, told Axios.

It’s unclear whether Trump’s inflammatory comments on the debt situation were a one-off outrage designed to please his howling audience of fans at the CNN event, or a theme he intends to hit regularly as his buddy Kevin McCarthy struggles to get through the crisis without tanking the economy or his own Speakership. If the 45th president isn’t done with trying to blow up the economy that the 46th president is trying to manage, it could get very scary in Washington very soon.

If things go as they have in the past, Biden will offer to compromise something his base cares deeply about, angering his own voters. Meanwhile the establishment Republicans will be thrilled to take the deal but the lunatics won’t budge preferring to blow up the world unless Biden crawls to them on his belly like a reptile and offers to roll back every legislative achievement and thank them for the opportunity. Then we are back to square one.

What that likely means is that either Kevin McCarthy will let the country default or he will put some kind of deal or a clean debt ceiling hike on the floor that will pass with bipartisan votes. If it’s the latter, one of the nuts will put forth a motion to vacate the chair and he will probably be gone.

If you look back at the tortured debates over this in 2011 and 2013 you’ll see that the Freedom Caucus (formerly known as the Tea Party) will drag this out, possibly shut down the government, put the US credit rating at risk and even possibly default. It’s what they do. They are even more crazy than they used to be (as if that’s possible) so this could easily hurtle out of control. But in 2013, Obama refused to negotiate with them over the debt ceiling, saying that the cuts that had gone through in the “sequester” from 2011 were enough of a compromise.

It took months and months of wrangling, extending the debt ceiling in small increments before they finally passed a clean bill in 2014. It was widely considered to be a loss for Republicans but I’m not sure why. They won the presidency and both houses in 2016. Approval ratings don’t mean much if they win elections in spite of them.

So fasten your seat belt, this is going to be a bumpy ride. The House Republicans are all batshit crazy. The best hope we have is that the Senate passes a clean debt ceiling and Kevin McCarthy can’t stomach a default so he lets it be raised on a bipartisan basis with just a handful of Republican votes — dooming his speakership. How likely is that?

This long article about Jack Texeira, the Air Force airman who shared classified material to an online group friends is just chilling. (I have included a gift link for those who don’t have the Washington Post sub. so you can read it.) This guy was far more than just an innocent little Christian boy who liked to chat online. He fits the profile of most mass shooters with white supremacist views. Here’s the opener:

Jack Teixeira, dressed in camouflage fatigues, his finger wrapped around the trigger of a semiautomatic rifle, faced the camera and spoke as though reciting an oath.

“Jews scam, n—–s rape, and I mag dump.”

Teixeira raised his weapon, aimed at an unseen target and fired 10 times in rapid succession, emptying the magazine of bullets.

The six-second video, taken at a gun range near Teixeira’s home in Massachusetts, affords a brief but illuminating glimpse into the offline world of the 21-year-old National Guard member, who stands accused of leaking a trove of classified military intelligence on the group-chat platform Discord.

Previously unpublished videos and chat logs reviewed by The Washington Post, as well as interviews with several of Teixeira’s close friends, suggest that he was readying for what he imagined would be a violent struggle against a legion of perceived adversaries — including Blacks, political liberals, Jews,gay and transgender people — who would make life intolerable for the kind of person Teixeira professed to be: an Orthodox Christian, politically conservative and ready to defend, if not the government of the United States, a set of ideals on which he imagined it was founded.

Teixeira’s love of guns, which first drew him to an online community of friends, was intertwined with a deep suspicion of the government that he served as an enlisted member of the Air National Guard. But Teixeira did not consider himself a whistleblower, according to friends.

By the time of his arrest, filings by federal prosecutors show that Teixeira had amassed a small arsenal of rifles, shotguns and pistols, as well as a helmet, gas mask and night-vision goggles, all under the roof of the house where he lived withhis mother and stepfather. The Post obtained and verified two videos taken at their home in Dighton, Mass., where the FBI arrested Teixeira last month.

Filmed from the shooter’s perspective, the first video shows a person identified by a Discord user as Teixeira firing an AR-style weapon into the forest. Another video shows the gunman firing a pistol into the woods behind Teixeira’s home, including two rapid volleys that suggest the weapon may have been modified. It isn’t clear what legal or illegal modifications Teixeira may have made, though devices like binary triggers and typically illegal auto sear accessories can make semiautomatic guns fire quicker than they are designed to shoot. A separate photograph shows an AK-style weapon resting on a table outside the family home next to a helmet with attached night-vision goggles.

For Teixeira, firearms practice seemed to be more than a hobby. “He used the term ‘race war’ quite a few times,” said a close friend who spent time with Teixeira in an online community on Discord, a platform popular with video game players, and had lengthy private phone and video calls with him over the course of several years.

“He did call himself racist, multiple times,” the friend said in an interview. “I would say he was proud of it.”

There is much, much more about his online and offline life, including the involvement of his parents and parents of his friends one of whom tells the Post “When did serving your country and being a Christian become a bad thing?”

He is repeatedly described as an “Orthodox Christian” but I’m not sure exactly what it refers to. And a long portion of the article discusses what these people suggest were “jokes” about killing government agents, blowing up buildings etc. which is apparently just normal discourse among young white men who hang out in these online communities.

The gun obsession, the racist views, the anti-government beliefs — he is young Tim McVeigh. They all are. This kid is an extremely dangerous person who I am convinced was caught before he committed a mass act of violence. Every “red flag” was out there, and it appears that his peers and the adults who knew him pretty much all agree with his sociopathic worldview.

They aren’t alone. Here’s the de-facto leader of the House Republicans weighing in on the leaking charges:

“… and a lot more” does a lot of work here, all of which I’m sure she endorses as well. We know she loves guns, that’s for sure.

Read the whole article if you have time. It’s breathtaking.

Scary stuff happening in Florida schools

DeSantis has the nerve to accuse these people of “grooming” and “indoctrination:”

Adam Tritt, a high school English teacher in Palm Bay, Florida, was shocked when his school’s librarian – eager to comply with Florida’s new law restricting “inappropriate” books in schools – removed one-third of the books on his classroom shelves, including a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry that was not on her list of approved books.

Vivian Taylor, a seventh-grade teacher in Miami, says she was told to hardly discuss Emmett Till – the 14-year-old victim of one of the US’s most notorious lynchings – in her civics classes because under Florida’s year-old “stop woke” law, “people say you’re not supposed to talk about that because it will make children uncomfortable”.

Carol Cleaver, a middle-school science teacher in Pensacola, says that when LGBTQ+ students who are feeling hopeless or depressed approach her to discuss their emotional troubles, she, different from before, often balks at telling them about a crisis support hotline for young LGBTQ+ people. She fears that if she mentions it, she will get in trouble under the Parental Rights in Education bill (known as the “don’t say gay” law) backed by Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.

As the summer holidays approach, Florida teachers are feeling anxious, confused and beaten down by new laws, championed by DeSantis, that limit how issues of race can be taught, what teachers can say about sex, especially about homosexuality, and what books are permitted in schools. In promoting this legislation, DeSantis angered many teachers when he denounced “indoctrination in our schools” and let his press secretary accuse teachers of “grooming” students.

In interviews with the Guardian, Florida teachers said they’re feeling more disrespected, unappreciated and under attack than ever before, worried that they’ll be fired or otherwise punished if they run afoul of the controversial – and often vague – new laws. As a result of these laws and their emboldening parents to challenge and even castigate teachers, many Florida teachers say they’re considering either giving up teaching or finding a teaching job in another state – all when Florida, which ranks 48th among states in teacher pay according to a recent study, is already suffering from a shortage of 5,300 teachers. Florida teachers complain that DeSantis – who is expected to announce plans to run for the Republican presidential nomination – has targeted them as part of a culture war aimed at winning over GOP voters.

“All this is just one more rock on the scale toward leaving,” said Arian Dineen, a middle school teacher in Stuart, 100 miles north of Miami. “I have many friends and colleagues who are genuinely afraid.” Afraid, for instance, of being accused of teaching critical race theory, an esoteric theory about race, rarely taught outside universities, that a DeSantis-backed law bars schools from teaching.

“There are many more important things for the governor to be worrying about,” Dineen added. “We have a housing affordability crisis, a health insurance crisis, a housing insurance crisis. It’s absurd for the governor and legislature to be worried about teachers indoctrinating students on things we don’t even discuss in class.”

In signing the “stop woke” bill, DeSantis said: “No one should be instructed to feel … shamed because of their race. In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools.” When DeSantis signed the “don’t say gay” bill, he said parents “should be protected from schools using classroom instruction to sexualize their kids as young as five years old”.

DeSantis’s office did not respond to questions from the Guardian about Florida teachers’ complaints about the new laws.

Latonya Starks, a fourth-grade teacher in Fort Myers, said there was one big reason keeping her from taking a teaching job in another state: she is waiting for her 17-year-old son to finish high school.

“We’ve seen this chipping away at how people view us as educators,” Starks said. “There’s this supposed woke agenda, and we’re supposedly teaching students to hate themselves because they’re white. All I know is that myself and my colleagues, we present the facts, present true and honest history, but many people are believing what they’re hearing from DeSantis and anyone in his wheelhouse. That’s been really hard. You feel like people are looking at you like you’re doing something not so nice to their kids.”

Starks said that ever since DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill 14 months ago, she’s been anxious and unsure about what to do when pre-teen girls tell her they are having their first menstrual period without fully understanding what was happening to them. Starks fears getting into trouble under the new law, which prohibits teachers from saying anything about sex that is not “age-appropriate”.

“Before I would have explained everything and said, ‘It’s OK, sweetheart. I’ll get you to the clinic,’” Starks said. “Now I feel nervous about what I can and can’t say.”

Brandt Robinson, a high school history teacher in Palm Harbor, north-west of Tampa, still feels the sting from when an activist for the conservative lobbying group Moms for Liberty berated him at a school board meeting, accusing him of teaching critical race theory and “engaging in Marxist indoctrination of our youth”. She also asserted that part of Robinson’s African American history curriculum was “inherently racist”.

“There have been some moments of real anxiety and even some terror,” Robinson said. “The point is intimidation. The point is that we will self-censor and shy away from material. I think all this promotes intolerance and undermines many of the core values of education. Everything we do as teachers to promote critical thinking is undermined by what they are doing. They’re very much modeling the kind of indoctrination that they’re so fast to accuse other people of.”

Robinson, who has a master’s in American history and helps develop curriculum and train teachers, said some social studies teachers have told him they’re so afraid that they have modified some lessons. “In the past, they might have had a student read a slave narrative or read aloud from primary sources about slavery, but they might not now.”

The reason: they fear being accused of making students uncomfortable. Florida’s “stop woke” law prohibits teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin”. Florida requires that educators teach about slavery in many history and social studies classes, but many teachers say the new law has caused them to balk at teaching about Jim Crow, lynchings or the horrors of slavery for fear of being accused of making white students feel uncomfortable.

DeSantis and his accomplices basically want to indoctrinate kids into white supremacy. It’s not as if they aren’t unconscious of their biases and haven’t questioned them as might have been the case for many in the past. (Not that that’s an excuse.) In this case, they know exactly what they’re doing and are gleefully intimidating teachers and administrators into making sure students are taught white supremacy, patriarchy and intolerance — or else. It’s super dangerous, cultural revolution stuff.

… as long as the victim is a designated enemy of wingnuttia

The latest from the worst Governor in America:

Gov. Ron DeSantis voiced his support for Daniel Penny, the Marine charged in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely, in a tweet Friday.

“We must defeat the Soros-Funded DAs, stop the Left’s pro-criminal agenda, and take back the streets for law abiding citizens,” DeSantis wrote in a tweet with a fundraiser for Penny’s legal funds. “We stand with Good Samaritans like Daniel Penny. Let’s show this Marine… America’s got his back.”

This is a man who wants to be president of the United States. And people keep telling me that he would be better than Donald Trump. Why?

Basically, this law and order candidate is declaring that unarmed mentally ill people who make people uncomfortable can be killed with impunity.

There’s a big story in the NY Times today about how DeSantis is “re-tooling” his sputtering campaign. Here’s an excerpt:

In six short months from November to May, Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 run has faltered before it has even begun.

Allies have abandoned him. Tales of his icy interpersonal touch have spread. Donors have groused. And a legislative session in Tallahassee designed to burnish his conservative credentials has instead coincided with a drop in the polls.

His decision not to begin any formal campaign until after the Florida legislative session — allowing him to cast himself as a conservative fighter who not only won but actually delivered results — instead opened a window of opportunity for Mr. Trump. The former president filled the void with personal attacks and a heavy rotation of negative advertising from his super PAC. Combined with Mr. DeSantis’s cocooning himself in the right-wing media and the Trump team’s success in outflanking him on several fronts, the governor has lost control of his own national narrative.

Now, as Mr. DeSantis’s Tallahassee-based operation pivots to formally entering the race in the coming weeks, Mr. DeSantis and his allies are retooling for a more aggressive new phase. His staunchest supporters privately acknowledge that Mr. DeSantis needs to recalibrate a political outreach and media strategy that has allowed Mr. Trump to define the race.

Changes are afoot. Mr. DeSantis is building a strong Iowa operation. He has been calling influential Republicans in Iowa and is rolling out a large slate of state legislator endorsements before a weekend trip there.

“He definitely indicated that if he gets in, he will work exceptionally hard — nothing will be below him,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa evangelical leader whom Mr. DeSantis hosted recently for a meal at the governor’s mansion. “I think he understands — I emphasized that Iowa’s a retail politics state. You need to shake people’s hands, look them in the eye.”

Still, his central electability pitch — MAGA without the mess — has been badly bruised.

A book tour that was supposed to have introduced him nationally was marked by missteps that deepened concerns about his readiness for the biggest stage. He took positions on two pressing domestic and international issues — abortion and the war in Ukraine — that generated second-guessing and backlash among some allies and would-be benefactors. And the moves he has made to appeal to the hard right — escalating his feud with Disney, signing a strict six-week abortion ban — have unnerved donors who are worried about the general election.

“I was in the DeSantis camp,” said Andrew Sabin, a metals magnate who gave the Florida governor $50,000 last year. “But he started opening his mouth, and a lot of big donors said his views aren’t tolerable.” He specifically cited abortion and Ukraine.

I wonder how they feel about vigilantism? (They’re probably fine with it…)

This is what’ they’re counting on:

Mr. Trump’s compounding legal woes and potential future indictments could eventually have the opposite effect — exhausting voters, which is Mr. DeSantis’s hope. 

They’re also hoping he drops dead. Other than that, good luck shaking Trump loose from that base. The legal woes only bind them closer together.

Not ready for prime time:

The DeSantis team seemed to buy its own hype.

Days before the midterms, the DeSantis campaign released a video that cast his rise as ordained from on high. “On the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a protector,’” a narrator booms as Mr. DeSantis appears onscreen. “So God made a fighter.”

For years, the self-confident Mr. DeSantis has relied on his own instincts and the counsel of his wife, Casey DeSantis, who posted the video, to set his political course, according to past aides and current associates. Mr. DeSantis has been written off before — in his first primary for governor; in his first congressional primary — so both he and his wife have gotten used to tuning out critics.

Today, allies say there are few people around who are willing to tell Mr. DeSantis he’s wrong, even in private.

In late 2022, the thinking was that a decision on 2024 could wait, and Mr. Trump’s midterm hangover would linger. Mr. DeSantis published a book — “I was, you know, kind of a hot commodity,” he said of writing it — that became a best seller. And Mr. DeSantis was on the offensive, tweaking Mr. Trump with a February donor retreat held only miles from Mar-a-Lago that drew Trump contributors.

But it has been Mr. Trump who has consistently one-upped Mr. DeSantis, flying into East Palestine, Ohio, after the rail disaster there, appearing with a larger crowd in the same Iowa city days after Mr. DeSantis and swiping Florida congressional endorsements while Mr. DeSantis traveled to Washington.

One Trump endorser, Representative Lance Gooden of Texas, backed the former president only hours after attending a private group meeting with Mr. DeSantis. In an interview, Mr. Gooden likened Mr. DeSantis’s decision to delay entry until after a legislative session to the example of a past Texas governor, Rick Perry, who did the same a decade ago — and quickly flamed out of the 2012 contest.

“He’s relied, much like Rick Perry did, on local political experts in his home state that just don’t know the presidential landscape,” Mr. Gooden said.

He relied on his wife who is desperate to be seen as the next Jackie Kennedy (and Hillary Clinton although she’d never admit it.)

The article doesn’t really show that he’s capable of changing his chilly personality and there’s little reason to believe that his “anti-woke” campaign is enough to combat the Trump circus. He’s a monster so I can’t say I’m sorry to see it.

Looks like Erdogan demanded @elonmusk censor his political opposition a day ahead of the election and he immediately complied.

Musk is either the world’s most sanctimonious hypocrite, coward and fraud or actually wants to censor the opposition to help Erdogan. Or both.

If you want to buy the platform to help right wing governments around the world, just say it with your chest. It’s your money, go for it, but spare us the free speech BS.

Old twitter rejected 50% of these demands, which isn’t perfect. New Twitter complies 100%.

“to ensure twitter remains available” clearly means Erdogan threatened to block twitter completely if it didn’t serve his regime. @elonmusk said ok cool you got it boss. Good luck at the polls tomorrow.

Originally tweeted by Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) on May 13, 2023.

Musk is a right winger who is pretending to be a “free speech” absolutist. That should be obvious by now.

I’m sure most of you know that Pepe the frog is an alt-right, white nationalist symbol.