Month: May 2023

“Texas AGs have often been scoundrels”

Seems the blush is off the Texas rose (Texas Tribune):

For Angela Paxton, June 1 will always be “I love you day,” the anniversary of the first time a baby-faced Baylor undergrad named Ken told her he loved her.

This year, “I love you day” will have a dark cloud looming over it, as that young man, now the attorney general of Texas, faces removal from office by the state Senate — of which Angela Paxton is a member.

On Saturday, the Texas House voted 121-23 to impeach Ken Paxton on a range of charges, at least one of which involved his wife, and at least one of which related to an alleged extramarital affair. Ken Paxton is suspended while the Senate decides whether he should be removed from office.

Paxton’s reputation as a scoundrel did not stop him in Texas from becoming attorney general. He has been under indictment for felony securities fraud for nearly eight years. His lawyers have managed to redirect the case to friendly turf his home county and delay, delay, delay. If it wasn’t beneath him, presidential candidate Donald Trump might tap Paxton for pointers.

On Saturday, the Republican-led Texas House impeached Paxton “over a series of bribery and corruption allegations, including that he had given special treatment to a campaign donor who helped him remodel his house,” reports The New York Times.

Imagine being too corrupt for even the @TexasGOP.

pic.twitter.com/kUQw66OXxZ

— Rachel Bitecofer 🗽💡🔭🦆 (@RachelBitecofer) May 28, 2023

“I am early in my ‘Ken Paxton, WTF’ lessons,” tweeted Jay Rosen, pointing to a backgrounder by Christopher Hooks in Texas Monthly from several days ago:

At the start of this week, the Texas Legislature was sliding toward the conclusion of yet another underwhelming, but basically normal, session. Lawmakers had wasted a lot of time and effort, and soon they would go home. But the calm was illusory. By the end of the week, everything was in flames: blood was sloshing down the Capitol’s marble halls like the building was the Overlook Hotel. Attorney General Ken Paxton called House Speaker Dade Phelan a drunk, urging him to resign and “get the help he needs”; later that afternoon, a House committee announced it had been investigating Paxton for months. The Texas House met Saturday, and after about four hours of debate, voted to impeach Paxton. To paraphrase Mao: everything under the dome is in chaos; the situation is excellent. There’s been a lot of news coverage of the events of the last week. But this being Texas, it’s all underlaid by decades of lore, animosities, and seemingly unaccountable behavior. So if you’re trying to get in on the fun, here’s a primer.

“Texas AGs have often been scoundrels,” the primer begins, letting the uninititated know Paxton follows in a long tradition. Except the term is too restrained to describe the expanse of Paxton’s behaviors.

What follows is another 2,600 words from Hooks outlining Paxton’s running interference for “Nate Paul, an allegedly corrupt Austin real estate kingpin—or former kingpin,” the aforementioned campaign donor and renovator, when the FBI came for Paul. Then Paxton covered up his interference with the investigation. Seven staffers wrote the U.S. Department of Justice accusing Paxton of bribery and corruption. Paxton fired the whistleblowers, Hooks writes, and the Legislature looked the other way.

What’s changed? Hooks offers a few possibilities:

The material facts of the case changed in the past few months. The whistleblowers had a slam-dunk case for illegal termination. Some of them sued. Partly in order to shut down the lawsuit quickly—and to prevent the plaintiffs from liberating AG documents via the discovery process—Paxton settled in February 2023, offering them $3.3 million in taxpayer money. He asked lawmakers to fund the settlement. Even though the dollar amount was trivial, this didn’t sit well with many in the Legislature. Paxton was asking them to eat a turd sandwich so he could protect himself from his own stupidity. It made them look bad. It made the party look bad.

In March, the House Committee on General Investigating opened an investigation into the settlement. The committee is most famous this session for laying the groundwork for the unanimous expulsion of Bryan Slaton, the Republican former representative from Royse City who had sex with a nineteen-year-old staffer after giving her alcohol. The Slaton case was known within the committee as “Matter B.” The Paxton inquiry was known as “Matter A.” The committee has been working on it for months, hiring five investigators. Though their work was clearly diligent and thorough, it couldn’t have been all that difficult: most of the material behind the twenty impeachment charges the committee gave to the House is publicly available. Some of it has been known for the better part of a decade.

And look, these guys all knew what Paxton was. There’s a famous story about Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott that has circulated in Lege circles for years but has never been addressed by either man. When Paxton was a lowly lawmaker and Abbott was the attorney general, the story goes, they ended up in a box together at a football game. Supposedly, Abbott unleashed on Paxton about his unethical and potentially illegal behavior, making his contempt clear. Within just a few years, Paxton was attorney general and Abbott was celebrating him on the campaign trail. Lawmakers and state leaders hadn’t learned to love Paxton, presumably. But taking him on would have eaten up political capital and alienated Paxton’s powerful right-wing backers. So they just . . . didn’t.

The reality is, there was no clear way for the Lege to get rid of Paxton other than by beating him in an election or impeaching him. The first has proven very difficult. Impeachment, which is so alien a process to the modern Legislature that it might as well have come from Mars, needed a hook. Nothing Paxton did before he became attorney general would work—that includes his Servergy escapades. It’s arguably not until this session that the Lege has had a clear case: Paxton asked for taxpayer money to pay off whistleblowers he had illegally fired to cover up other illegal activity. On Friday, the House committee conducting the investigation released a statement in which it underlined the connection. “We cannot over-emphasize the fact that, but for Paxton’s own request for a taxpayer-funded settlement . . . Paxton would not be facing impeachment.”

The Republican-led investigating committee on Thursday returned 20 articles of impeachment against Paxton, the Times reports, “charging him with a litany of abuses including taking bribes, disregarding his official duty, obstructing justice in a separate securities fraud case pending against him, making false statements on official documents and reports, and abusing the public trust.”

Welcome to Texas, where even the impeachments are bigger.

The first thing I ever read by Texas’ own Molly Ivins was titled (IIRC), “Inside the Austin Funhouse,” meaning the state capitol where legislators regularly went to “fist city.” On Saturday they suspended Paxton and went to impeachment for the first time in over a century.

It doesn’t get any more twisted than this:

Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, appears to be launching an online community for anti-vaxxers called 4thePURE.

For a lifetime founding membership of $2,500, users will be free to connect with unvaccinated singles and also gain access to a directory of “COVID-19 unvaccinated patriot businesses,” according to Insider. 

In a video promoting the site, which first made the rounds on Twitter on May 9, Flynn delivers a pitch saying, “I’m honored to announce an opportunity to support a new freedom movement sweeping across the nation. 4thePURE is an online community meant to connect likeminded individuals who courageously stood against the COVID-19 jab campaign.”

I hope most of them are under 60 (which I doubt) because otherwise a few of them are probably be going to be dating in the ICU.

DeSantis comes out for de-funding the IRS

It makes my head hurt when I think of how the wingnuts capitalized on a few left wing activists saying “defund the police” whenever I hear these calls to “defund” everything from the FBI to DHS to the IRS. You’d think they’d at least be a tiny bit embarrassed by the raging hypocrisy:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would be “welcoming” of a measure from Congress to defund the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) if he’s elected president next year.

The comments from DeSantis, who officially announced this week that he would seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, came during a conversation with radio host and Second Amendment advocate Dana Loesch on The Dana Show.

During the interview, DeSantis was asked whether he would sign a measure from Congress to abolish the IRS through funding means, as well as what he would replace the system with.

“Are you for a far tax, a flat tax, where do you stand on that?” Loesch asked DeSantis.

“So, the answer’s yes. I think the IRS is a corrupt organization and I think it’s not a friend to the average citizen or taxpayer,” DeSantis responded. “We need something totally different.”

“I’ve supported all of the single rate proposals, I think they would be a huge improvement over the current system and I would be welcoming to take this tax system, chunk it out the window and do something that’s more favorable to the average folks.”

He’s going full crack-pot on taxes too by endorsing a flat tax which, naturally, benefit the richest people at the expense of the poor and middle class. This guy never fails to take the fringiest right wing position on every subject.

I’m sure you’ll recall that Elon Musk recently held a little event with Ron Desantis. It didn’t go well. But that doesn’t mean Ron isn’t grateful:

FLORIDA GOV. RON DeSantis (R-FL) signed a bill regarding spaceflight on Thursday just one day after he announced his presidential run in a glitch-filled interview with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces.

DeSantis signed into law CS/SB 1318 – Spaceflight Entity Liability along with 27 other bills. The law exempts “spaceflight entity from liability for injury to or death of a crew resulting from spaceflight activities under certain circumstances.” The measure also requires “a spaceflight entity to have a crew sign a specified warning statement.”

Florida is a known launching point for SpaceX aircrafts, and the new law could potentially shield Musk and other space flight companies from being sued for accidents that injure or kill crew members.

The law specifies a “spaceflight entity” as a “public or private entity holding a United States Federal Aviation Administration launch, reentry, operator, or launch site license for spaceflight activities or which is otherwise authorized by the United States Government to conduct spaceflight activities.”

I’m so old I remember when Republicans were apoplectic that Hillary Clinton was running for president while her husband ran a global charity because of the “appearance of conflict of interest.” This, however, is completely fine. More than fine. It’s smart.

If you haven’t been following the story of the most corrupt, immoral wingnut AG in the country, here’s a rundown. Let’s see if Republicans can summon the will to do something about him:

The Republican-dominated Texas House has scheduled a vote on the impeachment of the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, for Saturday at 1 p.m.

The vote was set to take place just two days after a bipartisan but Republican-led committee of representatives recommended that Mr. Paxton should be impeached for a range of abuses that may have been crimes.

The attorney general has been handling various legal challenges for years, weathering multiple investigations with few political repercussions. On Friday, Mr. Paxton again denied any wrongdoing and invited supporters to “peacefully” make their voices heard during the impeachment vote at the State Capitol.

Here’s what to know.

Who is Ken Paxton?

Before he become the attorney general in 2015, Warren Kenneth Paxton Jr. worked as a lawyer and state legislator, serving in both the State House and Senate. His wife, Angela Paxton, became a political force of her own and won a seat in the State Senate in 2018.

As the state’s top law enforcement officer, Mr. Paxton has styled himself as a champion of the social issues that drive Texas conservatives, effectively becoming the state’s chief culture-war litigator. His hard-charging style has led some Republican allies to distance themselves, even as voters have remained loyal.

Mr. Paxton has closely aligned himself with — and been endorsed by — former president Donald J. Trump, and he has used his office to challenge the results of the 2020 election. He has also mounted frequent legal challenges to actions by the Biden administration, and has been at the forefront of Republican-led states’ attempts to challenge the president’s efforts to ease some restrictions on migration on the U.S. southern border.

Voters re-elected Mr. Paxton to a third term by a wide margin in November.

What accusations prompted the House investigation?

In 2020, several senior members of Mr. Paxton’s staff wrote a letter urging an investigation into the actions of their boss. The aides accused Mr. Paxton of using his office to serve the interests of Nate Paul, who was a friend of the attorney general and a political donor.

Mr. Paul, a wealthy real estate investor in Austin, had contacted Mr. Paxton after his home and offices were raided by federal agents in 2019. Mr. Paxton took the unusual step, against his staff’s vociferous objections, of authorizing a state investigation of the F.B.I.’s actions. He appointed an outside lawyer who referred to himself as a special prosecutor to do it, though investigators for the House committee said that he had no prosecutorial experience. F.B.I. officials have not commented on their investigation.

At the time, Mr. Paxton said in a statement that he had “never been motivated by a desire to protect a political donor or to abuse this office, nor will I ever.”

In their 2020 letter, Mr. Paxton’s aides said that he had committed bribery, abuse of office and other “potential criminal offenses.” Four of the aides also brought their concerns to the F.B.I. and Texas Rangers.

According to legal filings in the case, the four aides had also relayed their concerns to the attorney general’s office; several weeks later, they were all fired. The aides filed suit after that, accusing Mr. Paxton of retaliating against them.

As the case proceeded, Mr. Paxton’s office produced a 374-page report that concluded, “A.G. Paxton committed no crime.” He has also challenged the suit, but a Texas court of appeals has ruled against him. In February, Mr. Paxton agreed to pay $3.3 million in a settlement with the four former senior aides.

How did that lead to the possibility of impeachment?

Questions over how to pay the settlement prompted more investigation into the 2020 allegations.

Mr. Paxton asked the Texas Legislature for the funds to pay the $3.3 million. Dade Phelan, the Republican House speaker, who is seen as a traditional conservative, did not support that use of state money. A House investigation into the allegations was begun in order to gather information about the funding request, Mr. Phelan’s spokeswoman said.

Many of the investigators’ findings about Mr. Paxton were already known publicly, from the allegations made in the aides’ lawsuit. But the House committee vote on Thursday rendered the first official judgment on those allegations: They were, legislators said, enough to begin the process of removing Mr. Paxton from office.

What do the articles of impeachment say?

The committee filed 20 articles of impeachment against Mr. Paxton on Thursday. As they were being handed out around the House chamber, Andrew Murr, the chairman of the committee and a Republican, said that they described “grave offenses.”

The articles charge Mr. Paxton with a litany of abuses including taking bribes, disregarding his official duty, obstructing justice in a separate securities fraud case pending against him, making false statements on official documents and reports, and abusing the public trust.

Many of the charges related to the various ways that Mr. Paxton had used his office to benefit Mr. Paul, the committee said, and then fire those in the office who spoke up against his actions.

The articles also accuse Mr. Paxton of benefiting “from Nate Paul’s employment of a woman with whom Paxton was having an extramarital affair,” and of intervening in a lawsuit filed against Mr. Paul’s companies by the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Foundation, an Austin nonprofit group.

What other legal issues are confronting Mr. Paxton?

A federal investigation, opened as a result of the aides’ complaints about corruption and retaliation, has not yet resulted in any charges.

But Mr. Paxton has been under criminal indictment for most of his tenure as the state’s attorney general.

In 2015, his first year in that office, Mr. Paxton was charged with felonies related to securities fraud and booked in a county jail outside Dallas. The charges stemmed from accusations that Mr. Paxton had misled investors and clients — for example, by failing to tell investors that he would make a commission on their investment — while doing securities work in the years before he became attorney general.

He has denied wrongdoing in the case, which has yet to go to trial.

This week’s articles of impeachment accused the attorney general of obstruction of justice in that case, alleging that a lawsuit, which was filed by a donor to Mr. Paxton’s campaign, effectively delayed the trial.

What happens next?

The chairman of the committee investigating Mr. Paxton said he intended to introduce the impeachment resolution for a House vote on Saturday at 1 p.m.

An impeachment would mean that Mr. Paxton would be temporarily removed from office pending a trial on the charges in the State Senate, where some of his closest allies, including his wife, would serve as jurors. The Senate proceedings could well be delayed until after the regular legislative session, which ends on Monday. The Senate could reconvene to hold the trial afterward, though the timing remains highly uncertain.

A lawyer from Mr. Paxton’s office, Christopher Hilton, has said that the committee’s process in issuing the articles of impeachment had been “completely lacking,” and that the issues raised had been fully aired during Mr. Paxton’s successful re-election campaign last year.

In what appeared to be a preview of a possible legal challenge to the proceedings, Mr. Hilton also said that Texas law allowed impeachment only for conduct since the preceding election. Most of the allegations in the articles of impeachment involve conduct that occurred before then.

Update!

The Texas House of Representatives has voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, an unprecedented move following a legislative probe that faulted the third-term Republican for a yearslong pattern of corruption, including abusing his office’s powers, retaliating against whistleblowers and obstructing justice.

Under state law, Paxton is now temporarily suspended from his duties as attorney general and will await a Senate trial.

The vote was 121-23, with two members voting “present.”

“The evidence is substantial. It is alarming and unnerving,” said GOP Rep. Andrew Murr, chair of the General Investigating Committee, during his closing statement following hours of debate. The committee recommended 20 counts of impeachment against Paxton.

Fergawdsakes:

“Murderers.” “Criminals.” “We are watching you.”

These are just a handful of the threats and abuse sent to meteorologists at AEMET, Spain’s national weather agency, in recent months. They come via social media, its website, letters, phone calls – even in the form of graffiti sprayed across one of its buildings.

Abuse and harassment “have always happened” against the agency’s scientists, Estrella Gutiérrez-Marco, spokesperson for AEMET, told CNN.

But there has been a rapid rise recently, coinciding with extreme weather in Spain. A severe drought has shrunk water levels to alarming lows, exacerbated by record-breaking April temperatures.

The abuse got so bad that in April, AEMET posted a video on Twitter calling for an end to the harassment, and asking for respect. Even the government intervened. Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for the ecological transition, posted on Twitter in support of the agency: “Lying, giving wings to conspiracy and fear, insulting … It is time to say enough.”

The harassment of meteorologists by conspiracy theorists and climate deniers is not a phenomenon confined to Spain.

National weather services, meteorologists and climate communicators in countries from the US to Australia say they’re experiencing an increase in threats and abuse, often around accusations they are overstating, lying about or even controlling the weather.

In Spain’s case, much of the trolling revolves around the rehashing of an old conspiracy theory: so-called “chemtrails.”

Under many of the agency’s Twitter posts, especially those that refer to more extreme weather, users have posted images of blue skies, crisscrossed with wispy, white trails. They falsely claim the trails contain a cocktail of chemicals to artificially manipulate the weather – keeping rain away and causing climate change.

It’s a theory roundly rejected by scientists.

Airplanes do release vapor trails called contrails, short for condensation trails, which form when water vapor condenses into ice crystals around the small particles emitted by jet engines.

But scientists have been clear: There is no evidence “chemtrails” exist.

In April, meteorologist Isabel Moreno wrote a tweet saying “rain skips Spain,” with an image of a band of rain stretching across Europe but missing Spain almost entirely. She was completely unprepared for the response.

“It was one of the hardest experiences in social media in my life,” said Moreno, who appears on the Spanish TV channel RTVE. “I received HUNDREDS of responses to an (apparently) inoffensive tweet,” she told CNN in an email.

Many accused her of covering up weather manipulation.

“Do not take us for idiots,” said one. “They dry us up, and you are the spokesperson for those who do it,” said another. And on, and on.

While there were plenty of supportive messages, too, it was scary, Moreno said. “I have never seen either that amount of responses nor that level of aggression.” It took days for her to be able to go onto Twitter again without feeling anxious or stressed.

This is happening all over the world apparently. The article cites similar problems in France, Australia and the US.

Why is this happening?

Some disinformation experts draw a straight line from the conspiracies that flourished during the Covid pandemic – when experts faced a slew of abuse – to the uptick in climate conspiracies.

People need “trending” topics on which to hang these theories, said Alexandre López-Borrull, a lecturer in the Information and Communication Sciences Department at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Spain.

As Covid-19 fades from the headlines, climate change has become a strong rallying point. There’s been a big increase in “insults directed at all organizations related to the weather,” he told CNN.

“It’s a logical evolution of the broader trend around pushback on institutions, and the erosion of trust,” said Jennie King, the head of Climate Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank focused on disinformation and extremism.

These kinds of conspiracies are usually grounded in the idea that a set of institutions is “using the pretext of climate change, or the pretext of solving public policy issues, to enact some insidious agenda,” she told CNN.

And the weather is an easy way in. Many aspects of climate science can feel very technical or abstract, but the weather is something people interact with frequently, said King.

“It’s a much more immediate way to bring a wider audience into that skepticism … planting seeds of doubt against the climate agenda writ large,” she said.

The role meteorologists have in explaining how climate change affects the weather, especially extreme weather, is a particular flashpoint.

Extreme weather can be alarming, especially when there are consequences and sacrifices, such as Spain’s water restrictions.

Conspiracy theories feed on this fear by offering a simple, enticing explanation, said López-Borrull. It’s easier to believe climate change is fake, or a manipulation by powerful people, than get your head around the complex problem and what it means for society.

“Change is hard and scary,” Francis said

There have always been conspiracy theories but the internet turbo charges them. And the rejection of science by tens of millions of people is very worrying.

(But not without struggle, it seems)

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, addressed the 2023 graduates of Johns Hopkins University:

The time is of the essence, and it is that essence that I would like to talk about today. One of the most common truisms on Earth is the advice to value or at least not waste time. Why has it become so widespread?

Every person eventually realizes that time is the most valuable resource on the planet, not oil or uranium, not lithium or anything else, but time. Time. The very flow of time convinces us of this. Some people realize this sooner, and these are the lucky ones. Others realize it too late when they lose someone or something. People cannot avoid it. This is just a matter of time.

Now, you can look back at the time you have spent here at the university studying—did you get everything you needed from it? You have even more time ahead of you, a whole lifetime. These are the careers you will build. This is your parents’ pride, which they have every right to, if they raised the children who graduate from Johns Hopkins. These are your families who, I wish you this, will bring you love. These are your children and grandchildren who will inherit a piece of your soul.

Will you be able not to waste this time of your life? This topic seems trivial, but these are very, very difficult questions for every person. How you answer them is how you live. And while it is still possible to find new deposits of oil or lithium, and if in the future humanity can start mining resources in space, it is still purely science fiction to live longer than has been given.

But why am I talking about this now? Recently I was on the frontline again in one of the most fiercely fought areas of the frontline against the Russian occupiers. I went to personally award the best fighters and to congratulate our marines on the Day of Marines of Ukraine. And you know, the front in Ukraine consists of very, very different people who are fighting for freedom and independence. These are people of all ages, and among them are exactly the same folks as you are now. Some of them have already passed their graduation ceremony and others are only dreaming about it.

“THIS CENTURY WILL BE OUR CENTURY, A CENTURY WHERE FREEDOM, INNOVATION, AND DEMOCRATIC VALUES REIGN. A CENTURY WHERE TYRANNIES THAT REPRESS THEIR OWN AND SEEK TO ENSLAVE THEIR NEIGHBORS WILL VANISH FROM US ONCE AND FOR ALL. BUT ALL OF OUR TOMORROWS, AND THE TOMORROWS OF OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN, DEPENDS ON EACH OF OUR TODAYS.”

They and you have similar hopes for life, similar expectations from life. But there is a fundamental difference that comes down to the question of time. The time of your life is under your control. The time of life of our folks on the frontline, the time of life of all Ukrainians who are forced to live through this terrible Russian aggression, unfortunately, is subject to many factors that are not all in their control. Where will the next Russian missile or another Iranian killer drone hit, which Russia is so fond of launching at Ukraine? Will our air defense systems be able to save all the lives at risk? What moment in the battle can be the most risky and which one could be decisive? And how long will this war last? We are trying, we are trying to get a grip on the time of our lives, what is happening to us.

And by the way, if anyone here is going to become a politician, remember that this is exactly what your job will be—to master time. To make the time of your people and country’s life under the control of your people and country under any circumstances, so that your people receive an answer to any question about what the time of their life will be like.

There may be calm times when it is a simple task for politicians. There may be very, very restless politicians who complicate seemingly simple tasks so that they create real crises. There may be different things, and unfortunately there may still be wars. Of course, I do not wish anyone to feel like they are in my shoes, and it’s impossible to give a manual on how to go through life so as not to waste its time.

However, one piece of advice always works. You have to know exactly why you need today and how you want your tomorrows to look like. You have to know this when you are a politician and have to achieve a certain goal for your country. You have to know this when you are a soldier and you have to defend your position so that the whole country is protected. You have to know this when you just have to go through life. Sometimes, however, when you are young and when you are a student, you still need to waste some time. What is life without it? But only sometimes, and when no one else depends on you.

I’m proud that Ukraine is not losing a single day in its defense against Russian terror. Every day we do everything, everything to become stronger, to give more protection to people, to save more lives. The United States has also not lost a single day in helping Ukraine repel the Russian aggression. President Biden, a strong bipartisan coalition in Congress, and most of all the American people have, like the generations before them risen to this occasion and are leading the free world to secure freedom in Europe. We Ukrainians believe a free and secure Ukraine is the final step in the struggle to liberate Europe from the evil of tyrannies. This struggle that brought your great-grandparents to the shores of northern France some 80 years ago.

And I have no doubt you will all soon become great doctors, lawyers, engineers, and titans of new technologies and new businesses. Also, I’m certain a few among you will heed the call to serve and become members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, and yes, yes, maybe president one day. Of course after President Biden. Of course. And please somebody of you, please. We don’t need surprises.

And I’m certain you, as your forefathers, will continue to lead the free world. And this century will be our century, a century where freedom, innovation, and democratic values reign. A century where tyrannies that repress their own and seek to enslave their neighbors will vanish from us once and for all. But all of our tomorrows, and the tomorrows of our children and grandchildren, depend on each of our todays. On each of our todays.

Thank you, Johns Hopkins, for your attention. Thank you very much. Thank you America for your support. Slava Ukraini!

“Tyrannies that repress their own”? See post below. They are uncomfortably close.

sto·​chas·​tic (stə-ˈka-stik) stō-

“[T]he actual threat to American freedom is coming from the states,” begins Jamelle Bouie’s NYT op-ed:

It is states that have stripped tens of millions of American women of their right to bodily autonomy, with disastrous consequences for their lives and health. It is states that have limited the right to travel freely if it means trying to obtain an abortion. It is states that have begun a crusade against the right to express one’s gender and sexuality, under the pretext of “protecting children.” It is states that are threatening to seize the children of parents who believe their kids need gender-affirming care. And it is states that have begun to renege on the promise of free and fair elections.

That it is states, and specifically state legislatures, that are the vanguard of a repressive turn in American life shouldn’t be a surprise. Americans have a long history with various forms of subnational authoritarianism: state and local tyrannies that sustained themselves through exclusion, violence and the political security provided by the federal structure of the American political system.

For anyone needing a refresher, Bouie means decades of pre-Civil War slavery and 100 years of post-Civil War Jim Crow among other national legacies.

For anyone needing a refresher, the struggle to “establish a universal and inviolable grant of political and civil rights, backed by the force of the national government” is ongoing. It’s summarized neatly in “in Order to form a more perfect Union,” etc.

The same people who resisted (successfully) that perfecting work for most of our country’s history are still resisting it even as they swear they love this country more than you do.

Viewed in this light, our time is one in which we face an organized political movement to undermine this grant of universal rights and elevate the rights of states over those of people, in order to protect and secure traditional patterns of domination and status. The only rights worth having, in this world, are those that serve this larger purpose of hierarchy.

The aspirations of our propertied, white-male framers to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” was, for some, always about securing their own class and privilege. “We the People,” like “freedom,” has been a contested idea since the founding of the republic.

Thus today, we see clockwork moral panics promoted by revanchists since the Civil Rights movement to divert attention from their treacherous — yes, treacherous — efforts to turn back the American clock and the work of perfection the framers envisioned to a time when universal rights were not universal, but closely proscribed by race, class, sex, and more.

Bouie concludes:

The plan, as we have seen with abortion, is to unspool and untether those rights from the Constitution. It is to shrink and degrade the very notion of national citizenship and to leave us, once again, at the total mercy of the states. It is to place fundamental questions of political freedom and bodily autonomy into the hands of our local bullies and petty tyrants, whose whims they call “freedom,” whose urge to dominate they call “liberty.”

What Bouie omits mentioning are the contemporary threats of and actual violence inspired and endorsed to “secure traditional patterns of domination and status.” Anything to distract public attention from authoritarian efforts to put “lessers” back in their places and to make freedom and liberty as exclusive they were when the U.S. Constitution went into effect.

The Wanda Sykes meme (above) references the calculated distraction. Mehdi Hasan retweets a few headlines from yesterday highlighting the predictable threats of violence:

Yep. Stochastic terrorism from the right.

Amazing how conservatives expected all Muslims for years to collectively take blame for terrorist acts they had nothing to do with & yet now they avoid any responsibility for terror that they’re openly and proudly inciting & inspiring. https://t.co/unHL61RJUF

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 27, 2023

Urban jungle edition

Rick Perlstein sent me this from Chicago:

New York, the famous escaped Owl named Flaco:

And the latest from here in Los Angeles, some wonderful news: Mountain Lion cubs!

World, meet P-113, P-114, and P-115.

That’s the designation for three healthy, month-old female mountain lion kittens that biologists recently discovered nestled in a dense patch of poison oak growing around large boulders in the Simi Hills.

The sisters belong to P-77, a 5- or 6-year-old lion who biologists captured and radio-tagged in the same area a few years ago. Researchers hope to do the same with the three kittens late next year, just before the girls get old enough to leave their mom.

Tagging these lions is part of a National Park Service study that’s been going on in and around the Santa Monica Mountains since 2002, in an attempt to determine how the cats survive — or don’t — and what might help to stabilize their threatened existence.

Each year, local mountain lions are killed trying to cross nearby freeways, by poachers, and through exposure to rat poison and other hazards that come with living so close to an urban center. Fenced into the area by the 101 and 405 freeways, and other man-made obstacles in other parts of Southern California, area mountain lion populations are struggling with the effects of inbreeding that researchers say could one day wipe them out. And last year was a particularly brutal one for local mountain lions, including the death of world-famous P-22.

That’s why researchers are excited to see three healthy females born into the area, said Jeff Sikich, lead field biologist for the NPS mountain lion study.

“We need greater genetic diversity for our mountain lion populations,” Sikich said, adding that more females are particularly needed to boost reproduction rates.

A few weeks before they spotted the kittens, Sikich said his team noticed through GPS points from P-77’s radio tracker that she was spending extensive time in one area. Three to five days in one spot might indicate she’d taken down an adult deer she was feasting on, he said. But after she stayed put for a week and a half, in late April, he said they were confident she’d given birth.

So on May 18, he set out with a small team to the area where P-77 had lingered. They waited until her radio collar indicated she’d left the area, then got within 70 meters of the hotspot. One team kept an eye on P-77’s location, so they could steer clear if she started heading back. As they drew closer, Sikich approached alone in an effort to disturb the area as little as possible.

About half the time he goes out searching, Sikich said he hears the kittens first. This time he spotted them, despite the dense poison oak they were hiding in. The plant doesn’t trigger reactions in mountain lions the way it does many humans, he noted. Not as lucky, Sikich climbed in carefully, gloves and mask in place, to grab the kittens and take them back to two researchers waiting nearby.

There in the field, the team checked the sex of each kitten. They also weighed them, with all three coming in at a healthy three to four pounds. They took biological samples, which they’ll soon use to do some genetic mapping. And they put small, color-coded markers on each ear so they can identify the kittens later if they’re spotted on wildlife cameras. When the kittens get old enough, researchers will try to put radio collars on them.

The team has similarly marked 24 other litters at their den sites since the study started 21 years ago. They marked four additional litters when the kittens were at least six months old and traveling with their mother.

The identity of the kittens’ dad remains a mystery. And Sikich suspects it’ll remain that way even after they do DNA sequencing, since he said they haven’t been following any males in this area of late. That means he likely came from the Santa Susana Mountains, rendezvoused with P-77, and then returned home.

The last two adult males regularly tracked in the Simi Hills were P-64, who died during the Woolsey Fire in December 2018, and P-38, who was poached in July 2019.

This is the first litter of kittens spotted in the entire region since last summer, when researchers tagged two sets of kittens. They spotted three of those kittens on wildlife cameras a month or so ago, Sikich said, so they’re optimistic about survival rates. And they hope to track those lions in late fall to add radio collars.

The most recent litter marked in the Simi Hills was in 2020, when P-67 gave birth to a boy and a girl. But P-67 was found dead that same day, with inflamed intestines and rat poison in her system. Researchers tried to get another area lion to foster the cubs, but eventually had to send them to a conservation center in Arizona.

The Simi Hills are a small habitat area between the larger Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountain ranges, with the 101 and 118 freeways on either side. P-77 has established her adult home range in this area, though she’s previously crossed both freeways and has spent short periods in the Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountains.

As the three new sisters grow, Sikich said it’ll be interesting to see if they stay in this narrow area or if they attempt to cross surrounding freeways to enter larger habitat areas.

Freeway crossings are always treacherous. That’s why construction is underway now on what will be the largest wildlife crossing in the world, with a grass-covered bridge set to cross 10 lanes of the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills.

That project should wrap up in early 2025 — right around the time P-113, P-114, and P-115 will be due to leave their mom’s side.

With any luck, Sikich said researchers will get to “watch” via radio pings as the sisters use the bridge to safely make their way into the world.

I’m a Never GOPer so much of this doesn’t apply to me. But the idea that Ron DeSantis will be a big improvement over Trump is a fallacy and it’s good to see this critique come from those on the center right who see the real threat for what it is. It isn’t just Trump. It’s MAGA, and DeSantis is a first generation MAGA-ite. Tim Miller writes:

In 2024, the chosen one will be Gov. Ron DeSantis. It has thus been decreed by the old-guard members of Conservative Inc. Or at least the ones calculating enough to have survived the MAGA takeover.

Rupert has dubbed him DeFuture. Republican hedge fund donors have taken their Trump tax cut and run. National Review is indistinguishable from a DeSantis Fanzine, lavishly extolling his virtues and wagging their finger at anyone who dares challenge their precious. Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire is not any less effusive and is already cashing in on the new bell cow.

To be honest, I understand this calculation. DeSantis is the golden ticket. He’s the one weird trick that will make all their Trump Troubles go away without their having to suffer any additional political pain or consequences from having made a deal with the devil. DeSantis 2024 will let them be members in good standing on the team again. He will eradicate any nagging doubts about whether they were empowering a man who might bring the constitutional republic they claim to love to its knees.

For most of them, the desire for this trick to succeed is a refreshing change from the last 7 years, because it’s completely authentic. It’s in their bones. The sight and sound of a cherubic, nasal-voiced Ivy Leaguer giving local journalist “elites” the what-for gives them a Matthewsian thrill up the leg. For them, the highlight of 2022 was seeing the triggered libs complain about how Ron had tricked desperate Andres into getting on a plane to Massachusetts as part of an Andover-style prep school prank at the expense of the haughty Martha’s Vineyard librarian who canceled Alan Dershowitz.

That is their shit. Reagan’s revolutionaries had the air traffic controllers, Ron controls his human trafficking by air.

And, hey, who am I to deny them their fun. Might not be my cup o’ joe. Give me a shot of Larry or Liz instead. But we can agree to disagree. Fan-girling for a politician is every content-creating American’s birthright.

The issue for me arises when the DeSantis propagandists turn their fire and start issuing Principled Never Trump purity tests on the OGs. Making demands of those of us who did not spend the last seven years trying to titrate precisely how much lib-owning we needed to do to balance out a few precisely worded tip-toes away from Mr. Trump.

What these folks are trying to do is set up shit-tests in which True Never Trumpers must accede to the DeSantis Dominion—or else they are tarred as being just as hack-ish and disingenuous and grift-y as the anti-antis have been.

Over at the Dispatch, the man formerly known as Allahpundit addressed the psychology of this tete-a-tete quite deftly, explaining the disdain that those of us who have been stalwart on the Trump matter feel for the cowards who danced around it and their loathing of us for our purity tests.

But I wanted to be a bit more forward looking and prescriptive. Offer the “Ron johns” (their stan name is still a work in progress) a guide to how I will treat his campaign against Trump should he pursue one. This way, if they have any doubt about whether I am adhering to Muh Never Trump Principles, they can check back in on it from time to time.

Here goes.

Dear Residents of DeSantistan,

It’s nice to hear from you. I notice you have had some harsh words for Mr. Trump of late. You might even think he’s a Bad Orange Man? Concur! So lucky for you to have been awoken from your torpor on this matter at the most convenient time imaginable.

Before we get to the meat of my correspondence, I do have to mention that we missed having you on board these past few annums: During the 2016 general election, Impeachment One, the 2020 Republican primary, the 2020 general election, the alarming interregnum, the 2021 Georgia run-off, Impeachment Two, opposing the Trump election deniers in the 2022 midterms, and the recent FBI raid on the former president’s home.

Better late than never.

It’s especially nice to hear that your candidate plans to challenge and defeat Mr. Trump once and for-all. Though you might forgive a bit of tepidness in our anticipation for this event given that he hasn’t actually done anything yet and we’ve been disappointed by your ilk so many times before (see above).

You also might forgive those of us who have spent seven years fighting Trump if we are not super thrilled to jump on board with someone described by Rich Lowry as being not just from the “Trump Wing” of the party but the “Trump fuselage, wing and landing gear.” (This was intended, I believe, as a compliment).

Bearing all that in mind, I want to put forth what I, as a charter Never Trumper, will do and not do in order to provide the aid and comfort you are demanding for your chosen candidate’s campaign against the former president.

We’ll start with the will nots (natch).

I will not be a human shield for Ron to protect him from all the hard (and not so hard) questions about Donald Trump. For example, you might feel like it is not strategic for him to state clearly that it’s bad for the man he supported for president twice to have had dinner with one of the nation’s leading white supremacists. I, for one, am not certain that this convenient silence is good strategy. Maybe it’s true he might need the votes of anti-semites, maybe it’s not. But I am sure that it’s not too much to ask a prospective president what they think about it.

I will not give him a pass when he refuses to provide an answer, any answer, about whether or not he thinks Donald Trump’s coup attempt was a good thing or a bad thing. Given that his only comments to date were supportive of the coup, it feels like his updated views on the matter are something we should hear about before we give him the keys to the kingdom.

I will not practice strategic silence while he exhibits every single behavior of enablement and collaboration with the crazy that got us to Donald Trump in the first place. Here is a good book about the dangers of this approach that I would recommend you check out if you disagree on this point.

I will not pretend that he isn’t anti-vaxcurious, didn’t hire an anti-vax surgeon general, and didn’t oversee a spike in COVID deaths after a life-saving vaccine was available. I am sorry that these facts make you uncomfortable. But perhaps your support of DeSantis would be even more convincing to us if you granted them and said that you still preferred him to Trump?

I will not pretend that his decision to sign and champion a bill that would bar teachers from giving students a word problem that describes my nuclear family is needed to counterbalance the “woke” school system; or a no big deal effort to desexualize schools; or actually an anti-grooming bill; or whatever the latest spin is.

I will not shine his turds when he enacts despicably cruel public policy stunts that serve zero purpose for his constituents, such as tricking Venezuelan asylees into getting on planes from Texas to Massachusetts just so he can earn plaudits from Fox & Friends and the speakers at Kari Lake rallies.

I will not demand that popular and viable Republican governors who have classically conservative principles and acted with a modicum of integrity during the Trump era should stand aside because their presence might hypothetically hurt the candidacy of someone who showed no such courage or fortitude.

And, finally, being Never Trump does not require I participate in your efforts to prop up a man who cut the single most obsequious ad in service to our nation’s worst president. If you haven’t watched that ad in a while, please take a moment to do so now.

Ron DeSantis has released an ad indoctrinating his children into Trumpism

Yikes. Speaking of grooming, I wouldn’t let the person in that video coach my kid, for fear she might be groomed into this creepy cult.

That type of ostentatious service to the irredeemable monster who wanted to turn this great country into an autocracy shows a lack of judgment so extreme that for me—and I suspect many other Never Trumpers—it is forever disqualifying.

But even in spite of alllllll that. Despite his use of state-power to go after people and companies whose politics he doesn’t like. Despite his targeting of families like mine with needlessly spiteful anti-gay legislation. Despite his status as Mr. Trump’s number one ball fluffer. Here are the things I will do when commenting on Ron DeSantis’ primary campaign against a man I still believe is an existential threat to the country:.

Number one: If a hypothetical primary campaign between Trump and DeSantis remains competitive 15 days before the California primary and Ron/Don are the only viable options, I will suck it up, re-register as a Republican, and vote for your man in my states’ nominating contest. I will cast this vote despite his myriad transgressions against decency and Never Trump orthodoxy outlined above (and cut for space). I will write about this vote publicly to explain why it is important to support Trump’s opponents, however imperfect they may be. I will do this before the election, not weeks after the fact when it makes no difference. (Caveats: (1) If there is a competitive Democratic primary in which I have a strong preference, that may change the calculus. (2) If Ron runs a campaign where he pledges to Muslim Ban even harder than Trump did, or some noxious equivalent.)

Not only will I do that, but . . .

Number two: I am willing to go a step further and offer you another olive branch. If your candidate ever shows even the vague outline of a pair of balls and stands up to the man you now agree is a grave threat, I will compliment him for it.

That is right. I will praise Ron DeSantis!

For example, maybe this week DeSantis might consider following in a few of his prospective competitors’ footsteps and saying something to the effect of: “You know, I don’t appreciate that Donald had dinner with two anti-semites, one of whom is the most despicable nazi scum in our entire nation, and if I was president, racist douche canoes such as that would get no hearing from my White House.”

Should DeSantis try something like that on for size, I will provide the heartiest of atta boys. (And if DeSantis doesn’t say something like that, then maybe you should ask yourselves who and what DeSantis thinks his base is?)

I’m not holding my breath, but hey, who doesn’t love being pleasantly surprised?

So that’s it, that’s the best you’re gonna get from a Never Trumper. If I were you, I would take that deal and run!

But if these terms aren’t amenable because you’d rather have us as foils to curry favor with your MAGA pals—well that’s fine, too. I understand that you have to preserve your viability in case the DeSantis thing doesn’t work out. So in the meantime, good luck with the fanzine, hope Ron makes the maneuvering easy for ya out there on the trail.

Tim

I would never vote for Ron DeSantis, or any of those other Republicans. But then, I’m not a “Never Trumper.” As I said, I’m a Never GOPer. But I think his indictment of DeSantis is right on and should temper all this talk even among Democrats that we should be hoping he wins the nomination. For me, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Trump or DeSantis, it’s a major threat.

When you look at DeSantis’ record and rhetoric I see no reason to think that he woulds not use the levers of power to overturn an election. Look at what he’s used the levers of power to do!Just because he went to Yale doesn’t mean he’s somehow immune from the authoritarian movement that’s building in America. He’s one of its leaders!

There is no difference in practice between an autocratic narcissist and an autocratic ideologue. So, I’m perfectly happy to stick with the popular front that includes these Never Trumpers even if they would be willing to vote for Asa Hutchinson and I’m not. We are not going to have that choice.