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Month: September 2023

Who’s their daddy?

Published by digby on September 29, 2023

The NY Times:

“I’d shut down the government if they can’t make an appropriate deal, absolutely,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Mr. Trump’s view of how shutdowns work was shaped by his own experience as president, when the longest government shutdown in history took place from December 2018 to January 2019. He incurred the public blame for it, as he publicly embraced the idea of a shutdown while holding contentious talks about a budget agreement with two Democratic leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and the House speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi of California.

“I’ll be the one to shut it down,” Mr. Trump told the leaders in a contentious Oval Office meeting in December 2018 shortly before the shutdown. “I will take the mantle. And I will shut it down for border security.”

There is no reason to believe that Mr. Biden would be granted outsize blame, if any at all, for a shutdown that a group of Republican holdouts in Congress are encouraging. Mr. McCarthy has privately noted what Mr. Trump said publicly at the time in 2018, according to a person with knowledge of Mr. McCarthy’s comments.

In an earlier post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump suggested he believed the shutdown could “defund” the federal investigations he’s facing, although people have told him that such a belief was not likely to become reality, according to a person briefed on the conversation.

“The Republicans lost big on Debt Ceiling, got NOTHING, and now are worried that they will be blamed for the Budget Shutdown,” he wrote. “Wrong!!! Whoever is President will be blamed, in this case, Crooked (as Hell!) Joe Biden!”

Mr. Trump’s view of how shutdowns work was shaped by his own experience as president, when the longest government shutdown in history took place from December 2018 to January 2019. He incurred the public blame for it, as he publicly embraced the idea of a shutdown while holding contentious talks about a budget agreement with two Democratic leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and the House speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi of California.

“I’ll be the one to shut it down,” Mr. Trump told the leaders in a contentious Oval Office meeting in December 2018 shortly before the shutdown. “I will take the mantle. And I will shut it down for border security.”

There is no reason to believe that Mr. Biden would be granted outsize blame, if any at all, for a shutdown that a group of Republican holdouts in Congress are encouraging. Mr. McCarthy has privately noted what Mr. Trump said publicly at the time in 2018, according to a person with knowledge of Mr. McCarthy’s comments.

He was blamed because he caused it. The Republicans held both houses and the presidency. And they still shut down the government. It was stupid.

They say that while Trump is publicly agitating for a shutdown he hasn’t been whipping individual members personally. I’m guessing Matt and Marge are doing that as his surrogates.

Yet Mr. McCarthy, whom Mr. Trump supported at the last minute when he ran for speaker, is facing an existential threat to his leadership, with his Republican critics looking to force him from his role amid the calamity of a likely shutdown.

Aides to Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Trump declined to comment.

People close to both men maintain that the looming government shutdown was not a strain on their relationship, nor was it a sign of a bigger rift. Nonetheless, a person close to Mr. Trump acknowledged that his support for a shutdown was providing encouragement to Mr. McCarthy’s adversaries.

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a leading supporter of a shutdown, said in an interview that one of Mr. Trump’s posts on social media endorsing a shutdown may have had an influence on some members of Congress.

“I think there might have been a few people on the fence who were persuaded by that statement,” Mr. Gaetz said. “I view that as consequential.”

Yet Mr. Trump is not being faulted, at least overtly, for his stance. In Congress, some Republicans dismissed the notion that Mr. Trump could do something to push Mr. Gaetz and his allies in the other direction, away from a shutdown.

“I think it certainly helps with some of these folks when they hear from the former president, like during the speaker negotiations or the debt ceiling,” said Representative Mike Lawler of New York, a Republican member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. But he said it was Mr. Gaetz who was “creating a crisis.”

A person close to Mr. Trump maintained that the former president did not view the situation in terms of helping Mr. McCarthy, nor did he view the speaker as being especially imperiled. Mr. Trump “doesn’t think Kevin needs rescuing,” the person said. In Mr. Trump’s view, the person said, a government shutdown isn’t a terrible thing so long as it’s not consequential.

He means “consequential for him.”

And there has been another issue at play: Mr. Trump’s bid for the White House.

The person close to Mr. Trump insisted the former president had not been frustrated with Mr. McCarthy over his lack of an endorsement in the Republican presidential primary. Yet others who have spoken with Mr. Trump throughout the year said he had raised Mr. McCarthy’s lack of a formal endorsement several times.

Mr. McCarthy has all but endorsed Mr. Trump in recent weeks — taking public shots at his chief rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, and talking up Mr. Trump — but he has delayed making it official.

Earlier this year, Mr. McCarthy’s reasoning, according to three people with direct knowledge of his thinking, was that he was eventually going to endorse Mr. Trump but needed to hold off for fund-raising purposes. He has said that major donors who are essential to funding House Republican campaigns would cut off funds if he endorsed Mr. Trump and that he needed to raise as much money as possible from donors who do not like the former president before making the decision official, the people with knowledge of his thinking said.

Another person in contact with Mr. McCarthy, while not disputing that he expressed those sentiments about fund-raising, said that he was one of the most prolific fund-raisers in the Republican Party, and that he expected to raise money regardless of Mr. Trump.

Then there’s this inane demand:

Mr. Trump has also had an eye on expunging his impeachments. He asked Mr. McCarthy and his allies what they’re going to do to clear his impeachments — though it remains unclear whether they have any power to do so.

Despite the lack of formal support, Mr. McCarthy has made sure to tend to the relationship with Mr. Trump since he said in a television interview earlier this year that he was uncertain the former president was the strongest nominee in the general election. That comment enraged Mr. Trump, who told his aides he wanted it fixed.

More recently, Mr. McCarthy has struck a different note, saying: “President Trump is beating Biden right now in the polls. He’s stronger than he has ever been in this process.”

It’s pretty clear who their daddy is and daddy’s calling the shots. Gaetz and his people have their own agenda (God knows what it is other than blowing things up) but they have the putative Republican nominee for president on their side and everyone knows it. Especially MyKevin who’s trying to thread a needle that just isn’t threadable.

New PPP Poll of important swing states

Published by digby on September 29, 2023

I realize that people only want to talk about what a terrible loser Joe Biden is, and I hate to burst their bubble, but it’s not actually true:

New PPP polls in the key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin- where wins for Joe Biden next year would be enough to get him to 270 electoral votes- find him leading Donald Trump by 3 or 4 points in each of them.

Biden is up 48-44 in both Michigan and Wisconsin, and 48-45 in Pennsylvania.

Most recent coverage of the race has focused on Biden’s struggles, and it’s true that he’s not terribly popular with favorability ratings of 42/51, 40/49, and 41/51 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin respectively.

But elections are a choice and not a referendum. And Biden is popular in these key swing states compared to his likely opponent of Donald Trump and his likely foil of Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans.

Trump’s net favorability rating is -23 in Michigan at 35/58, 14 points worse than Biden’s. It’s -20 at 35/55 in Wisconsin, 10 points worse than Biden’s. And it’s -16 at 38/54 in Pennsylvania, 7 points worse than Biden’s.

And as House Republicans move toward shutting down the government this weekend, Biden looks positively popular compared to their brand. In Michigan House Republicans have a 22/60 favorability spread and Kevin McCarthy has a 19/53 approval rating. In Pennsylvania House Republicans have a 22/57 favorability spread and Kevin McCarthy has a 20/54 approval rating. And in Wisconsin House Republicans have a 25/57 favorability spread and Kevin McCarthy has a 22/54 approval rating.

Democrats did very well in this key trio of states last year, winning Gubernatorial races by an average of 10 points in them and flipping legislative chambers in the two of the states that have fair district maps. It’s not surprising against that backdrop to see Biden with leads in them now that exceed his 2020 margins of victory.

It will be close because almost half of America’s voters are in a cult and there’s no obvious way to deprogram them. He’s the world’s greatest sore loser and won’t admit it if he loses again but we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. (It won’t be pretty)

I don’t want to blow smoke and suggest that it will be easy. We are in a dogfight. But it’s not at all predestined that the voters will choose the crazy, criminal sore loser over the old guy who’s done a good job. Are we really that far gone?

The impeachment clown show begins

Published by digby on September 29, 2023

It was worse than we expected

The House Republicans have been promising that the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden was going to be filled with fireworks from the word go. We would see evidence of bribery and extortion and payoffs from foreign companies in the tens of millions of dollars, the “Biden Crime Family” would finally be exposed as the international gangsters they are Donald Trump would be exonerated. Or something. They held their first hearing yesterday and all those fireworks blew up in their faces.

Keep in mind that they decided to hold this preposterous hearing two days before the government is set to shut down because a tiny rump faction of extremists in their party is demanding that they get everything they ever wanted or they’ll hold their breath until they turn blue. Nobody knows exactly what that is other than to torture Speaker Kevin McCarthy and make America miserable again. It’s been reported that they have no plans to table their “inquiry” when the government is shut down even though their staff won’t be paid and all regular business is usually curtailed until an agreement is reached. Not this time. It’s full speed ahead.

It would be one thing if they had even bothered to prepare for this silly hearing. But clearly they did not. The day before the hearing we caught a glimpse of just how bad it was going to be when Jason Smith, R-Mo., the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the committees tasked with pursuing the “inquiry,” was asked a question by NBC reporter Ryan Nobles during a press conference.

That was a perfect preview of what was to come in the hearing the next day. They have been blatantly manufacturing what look like WhatsAp messages based upon IRS summaries of what was allegedly in them. In the hearing on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., caught them red-handed creating a fake Whats Ap message that totally distorted the actual text.

The fabricated text message implied that back in 2018 Joe Biden’s brother James told Hunter Biden that he would “work with” his father alone for some nefarious purpose to give Hunter a “safe harbor.” Even though, once again, Joe Biden wasn’t in office at the time which these Republicans don’t seem to realize means that he wasn’t in a position to commit treason or whatever they think he’s done, they sure made it sound suspicious.

But more importantly, the rest of the summary, which they left out, showed that Hunter (then in the throes of substance abuse disorder) needed help from his father to pay for his alimony and his kid’s school tuition and his uncle Jim was offering to talk to his Dad to help out. This had nothing at all to do with business of any kind. It’s a personal text dealing with a family matter. They knew that and they purposefully doctored the text to make it sound fishy. I doubt it’s the only time their “evidence” has been similarly manufactured.

That was pretty much how it went all day long with Republicans stepping in it over and over again. The Democrats, led by the extremely competent Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin and aided by excellent committee members, Ocasio-Cortez, NY Rep. Dan Goldman, Jasmine Crockett, D-Tx., Maxwell Frost, D-Fl., and more all of whom obviously did much more homework than any of the Republicans who babbled their way through the hearing, casting aspersions and throwing out innuendo with no evidence that the president had done anything wrong.

Even their “star witnesses” who had no evidence of their own to present, testified that a president could not be lawfully impeached with the evidence that has been presented although one of them, the perennial GOP impeachment witness Jonathan Turley, did say it was absolutely fine to go on a fishing expedition to see if they can find something that would fit the bill. (He didn’t say it quite that way, but that’s the gist of it.)

It’s clear that the plan is to use the hearings to curry favor with their Dear Leader, smear Biden and hope that a smoking gun emerges that they can use as an excuse to vote to impeach. But it seems that they themselves have lost the thread and no longer even know what they are accusing the president of doing. When confronted with facts, they can’t explain it.

Their Republican colleagues were dismayed. Stephen Neukam of The Messenger reported that one GOP aide told him “Comer and staff botched this bad. So much confusing info from Republicans and Dems are on message. How can you not be better prepared for this?”

The right wing media, or certain elements of it, also seem to be shocked that the hearing was such a train wreck. Fox News’ Neil Cavuto seemed somewhat befuddled by what he’d just watched:

I don’t know what was achieved over these last six-plus hours. The way this was built up — where there’s smoke there would be fire…but where there’s smoke today, we got more smoke…The promise of explosive testimony and proof …did not materialize today. The best they could say now after this six-plus hours of testimony back and forth is that they’re going to try to get more bank records from Joe Biden and his son. Said that they’re needed to determine if a crime was committed. Understood. But none of that was presented today, just that they would need those records to further the investigation after months of Republican probes that failed to provide anything resembling concrete evidence.

That is exactly correct. On the other hand, some of his colleagues were convinced that this is all part of a master plan:

I think we can all agree that blowing witnesses at a House inquiry would be a risky strategy. That’s something you definitely want to save for the trial.

Sadly, this will not be the end of it. It’s very likely that they will proceed to an impeachment vote and it’s also quite likely it will fail which is going to make Donald Trump very, very unhappy. They’d better hope that he is so busy with the two civil cases and 91 felony indictments he’s juggling that he doesn’t have time to pay close attention to this farce.

Salon

Still chilling

Published by digby on September 29, 2023

That was the day Senator Dianne Feinstein first came to national attention and she never left it. She became mayor and then ran for the senate in the 1992 “year of the woman” becoming one of the most powerful women in American government.

Dianne Feinstein now has a complicated legacy with many people loathing her for being old and refusing to step down. And she had a centrist viewpoint that often drove progressives crazy.

But she was great on guns and really tried to do something about the carnage. And I’ll always be grateful for what she did on the great stain of American torture. Her Senate investigation was serious, so much so that the CIA actually infiltrated it. And she defied President Obama to release the summary of the torture report that exposed the grotesque practices this country perpetrated in the War on Terror.

RIP.

Republican quagmire

Published by digby on September 29, 2023

They made this mess for themselves and they can’t get out of it.

It’s over for 2024. But they somehow believe it will all right itself for 2028. They are as delusional as always.

The remaindered class of the Republican presidential field was in survival mode last night in Simi Valley, where seven candidates took the stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to make their case, however weakly, against Donald Trump. They were visibly feral from the start, thirsty for airtime, stomping all over each other for a breakout moment, or a fight, whichever presented itself first.

[…]

Privately, however, the Republican professional class is more cynical than ever following last night’s debate. Here are the four things that everyone is thinking, but not yet saying out loud.

Donors Are Already Giving Up

Trump’s rivals know that to make it to Iowa, they need to quickly convince donors sitting on the sidelines (or those disillusioned by former Golden Boy DeSantis) that their anemic campaigns deserve an infusion of fresh capital. A strong showing at the debate can do that. Alas, despite being so cash starved, no candidate substantially rose above the pack. “I don’t care about the JV things,” said one major donor. “People aren’t writing big checks off the back of this, no one is inspired.”

At the very least, donors need to see candidates rising in the polls, and the only way to do that is to take a bite out of someone else’s numbers. That’s why Vivek Ramaswamy, the jabbering billionaire-ish millennial wild card, who arrived on the scene mere months ago, and whose polling hovers around that of Nikki Haley and DeSantis, has become a constant target. There was hope in Haley’s camp that with another strong showing this week, donors might start opening up their wallets.

And last night, Haley was feisty: she stuck her jabs, something she’s been reluctant to do in the past, and she scored the moment of the night with her takedown of Ramaswamy (“every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber”). She sparred with Tim Scott, whom she appointed to the Senate as governor in 2012, and she even took a shot at the race’s number two, DeSantis, though both did well enough that neither is likely to net much movement over the other. “No ‘big looks like seven figure moves’ for Nikki Haley,” the major donor said. “There’s nothing there to radically change [the dynamic of the race]. This isn’t the time to make the big ask.”

DeSantis met expectations, improving upon his stilted performance from the last debate (despite his creepy smile), but on the whole he has unperformed. “DeSantis’ people are like, ‘Wow, look what he did.’ He was better; it wasn’t a breakout,” said the major donor. “He just wasn’t as agitated and weird as the last time.”

The cool reception to DeSantis among donors has been compounded by a sense that the Florida governor doesn’t necessarily need the money, given that he had $12 million hard dollars in the second quarter, even if he has burned through it, not to mention the $100 million or so sitting inside his super PAC, the Jeff Roe-Axiom controlled vehicle Never Back Down. Donors I’ve spoken to are saying they’re in wait-and-see mode, needing DeSantis to make some substantial improvements on his own before they throw good money after bad.

And it’s not just DeSantis who is losing the support of the Republican money class. “Their backers’ realize it’s coming to an end soon,” said an advisor to major donors. “It was totally apparent, when they were talking over each other and trying to slam each other.” Soon, the candidates will have to disclose their Q3 fundraising totals before the third debate, in Miami, which is when we’ll really learn who’s running on jet fumes and who has the juice.

Of course, there are the candidates for whom money is no object. Doug Burgum, the tech billionaire turned North Dakota governor, seems to have figured out a way to buy his way onto the stage every time, despite his low name ID with voters. Tim Scott still has the financial support of Oracle mega-billionaire Larry Ellison, who, as my partner Teddy Schleifer has reported, has committed tens of millions of dollars to Scott’s presidential bid.

Nevertheless, the bar for making each subsequent debate keeps rising higheMike Pence, Chris Christie, Scott, and Burgum who have yet to qualify for the next debate, where the R.N.C.-imposed threshold has been raised to 70,000 unique donors and 4 percent in the polls. Those numbers become harder and harder to reach as the electorate becomes more educated about the candidates, up-for-grabs voters begin to lock their choices in, and the top frontrunners begin to coalesce. From here on out it’s a zero sum game.

The Debates Aren’t Working

If the debates are supposed to be an exercise in consolidating around one candidate in a heavyweight match against Trump, then they’re not working. It’s not just because there haven’t been clear winners of the first two debates. As Michael Scherer recently noted, even if you combined the polling of all seven candidates on the stage into one person, that person would still be losing to Trump by 20 points.

Sure, if there was only one candidate against Trump, money would surely pile in from the likes of the Koch network and the deepest-pocketed anti-Trump donors. But alas this seems unlikely, and not simply because no candidate has emerged so victorious from a debate that they’ve started substantially stealing support from the others on stage. This Hail Mary consolidation argument was made in 2016, too, but the hypothesis remains unproven.

At the very least, it’s boldly presumptuous to assume that if DeSantis were to drop out his supporters would rally around Haley or Scott instead of just flocking to Trump. “I don’t know that there was much said on the stage last night that would shake the people who were with Trump from not being with him,” said a longtime party aide. “It’s possible that there are soft leaning voters towards Trump, maybe an Iowa or New Hampshire voter who found Christie’s line that Trump is disrespecting the voters by not showing up compelling. It’s just so not close. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to be.”

The Youngkin Pipe Dream

If you want to know just how disappointed donors are with the current batch of candidates, you can see it in the latest crop of trial balloon stories about Glen Youngkin parachuting into the primary race after Virginia’s midterm elections. It wasn’t lost on anyone that the day after the debate, Robert Costa landed an op-ed piece at his old stomping grounds, The Washington Post, channeling the billionaire lovefest for Youngkin from the likes of Tom Peterffy and Rupert Murdoch, who are pushing him to make a late entry and save the old G.O.P. establishment from the current crop of bozos. Costa reports that “alarmed Republicans” are attending a “Red Vest Retreat” next month, where they plan to pressure him to enter the race. His piece quotes the top shelf of establishment Republicans, from John Bolton to Bill Barr, who seem high on Youngkin. In a seemingly coordinated media move, Youngkin appeared on Fox News two hours later, where he was asked about running in 2024.

Of course, it’ll take much more than money; Youngkin may struggle to get on the ballot in many states, depending on what time he decides to make his grand entrance. And he would still face the same problems as every other candidate on the stage. Indeed, if the Youngkin wishcasting demonstrates anything, it’s only to underscore that many donors are morons or naifs when it comes to understanding the reality of the modern G.O.P.

“I think Youngkin’s people are smart to harness unhappiness among the donor class for the current candidates,” said the longtime party hand. “There’s nothing that would change the race with the Youngkin candidacy that isn’t being offered by the other candidates. It’s not like Glenn Youngkin is going to get in the race and a significant number of Trump voters are going to say ‘He’s the guy we’re missing.’ And he’s not going to take from all of the rest of the candidates, especially not from the likes of Tim Scott or Nikki Haley. For Youngkin to get into the race, he needs to peel off 20 percent of Trump’s share and get all of the candidates’ voters. ”

Sure, it’s all well and good for Youngkin, who is term-limited and can draft off the chatter, keeping his name out there and giving him a reason to keep flirting with donors. “The Youngkin chatter feels planted and planned out because we’re so disappointed that DeSantis isn’t the clear alternative,” said an Iowa operative. “It helps Youngkin’s brand, but I hope this isn’t consultants trying to make a couple bucks.”

Time to Start Thinking About 2028

Some of these candidates are surely taking their last big swings at national politics, such as Mike Pence and Chris Christie—I doubt we’ll see them reemerge in 2028. But with each passing day, I hear more and more chatter about the next presidential election, and how this current class of also-rans may be positioning themselves for the next four years, whether it’s Trump or Biden in the White House.

If there’s one thing for certain, the MAGA phenomenon that Trump unleashed will still be a major factor in American politics next cycle, and how you tangled with him this year may affect your chances in 2028. (They’ll likely all want his endorsement, and his base, probably even if he’s incarcerated.) It may explain why all of the candidates, except for Christie, have essentially tip-toed around the man and his record, in hopes of preserving their viability. Of course, it’s a Catch-22: If they started attacking Trump from the beginning, maybe they wouldn’t be in this position now, looking like a bunch of “JV” players who never stepped up. I’m sure Mike Pompeo is privately relieved that he didn’t jump in.

As f​or DeSantis, who’s endured relentless attacks from Trump, how he manages the support of the median Trump voter will be critical to whether he has a political career beyond Florida in the years to come. If he becomes a big champion for Trump, a warrior-surrogate on the trail, that may provide a lifeboat to keep his prospects alive from this cycle to the next. But it’s a hard pivot to manage, as evidenced by the path of Ted Cruz, the last Roe-advised presidential client, who famously bowed to Trump, and was accepted back into the fold, but never quite recovered his political mojo.

“It’s worse if you stay in, you get 10 percent in Iowa and then you want to be there next time? How he handles the drop out, and if he joins the Trump team, is what matters more,” said a G.O.P. operative. “What does he do with the loss? I don’t know that he could suck it up and do that, because he’s kind of a dick. It’s definitely personal.”

R.I.P. DiFi

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 29, 2023

Interesting times just got more interesting

Photo 2020 by Senate Democrats via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Minutes ago (Associated Press):

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a centrist Democrat who was elected to the Senate in 1992 in the “Year of the Woman” and broke gender barriers throughout her long career in local and national politics, has died. She was 90.

Three people familiar with the situation confirmed her death to The Associated Press on Friday.

Feinstein, the oldest sitting U.S. senator, was a passionate advocate for liberal priorities important to her state — including environmental protection, reproductive rights and gun control — but was also known as a pragmatic lawmaker who reached out to Republicans and sought middle ground.

She was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and became its first female president in 1978, the same year Mayor George Moscone was gunned down alongside Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall by Dan White, a disgruntled former supervisor. Feinstein found Milk’s body.

Feinstein had been in declining health for some time and had obvious memory issues.

New York Times:

Her condition had grown more acute over the past several months, after a bout with shingles that caused serious complications, including a case of encephalitis, and prompted her to begin using a wheelchair in the halls of the Capitol.

Ms. Feinstein’s long and very public decline shone a spotlight on the advanced age of members of Congress and particularly the Senate, where many continue to serve long after retirement age.

Her staff was being officially informed of her death at 9 a.m.

Politico notes the impact on the Democrats’ hold on the Senate:

Her death, confirmed by a person with knowledge of the situation, brings Senate Democrats’ functional majority to 50 votes, with Republicans holding 49 votes. Two other Democratic senators tested positive for Covid this week — and the majority of the caucus is calling on indicted Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to resign.

Interesting times just got more interesting.

Feinstein had previously announced she would not run for reelection in 2024. President Joe Biden responded by lauding Feinstein (with whom he served in the Senate) as “a passionate defender of civil liberties and a strong voice for national security policies that keep us safe while honoring our values.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) will select a replacement to serve out the remainder of her term.

Stay tuned if you weren’t already.

Astrochurch

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 29, 2023

Manufacturing culture war test cases

A Washington Post investigation pulled back the curtain on a legal advocacy group’s decades-long efforts to sherpa conservative culture war test cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled in June that Colorado’s public accommodations law could not force web designer Lorie Smith to design wedding web sites for gay couples because it violates her religious beliefs. The 6-3 decision was not about discrimination, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote. No. Coercing Smith to create a message with which she disagrees violates her First Amendment rights.

Smith, SCOTUSblog reminds us, is “a devout Christian who owns a website- and graphic-design business [who] wanted to expand her business to include wedding websites – but only for heterosexual couples, and she wanted to post a message on her own website to make that clear.”

Here’s what stood out as weird. Smith cited a request from a man named “Stewart” as the basis for her lawsuit. Except when contacted by The New Republic, Stewart knew nothing about the case (NPR):

“I was incredibly surprised given the fact that I’ve been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years,” said Stewart, who declined to give his last name for fear of harassment and threats. His contact information, but not his last name, were listed in court documents.

That much we knew. And now?

Among the wedding vendors represented by the Christian nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom were a photographer from Kentucky, videographers from Minnesota and a pair of Arizona artists who created stationery. Each challenged local laws barring businesses from discriminating based on sexuality, which the plaintiffs said violated their First Amendment rights.

In its petition asking the high court to hear the Colorado case, ADF cited favorable decisions it had won in those three cases. Winning meant its clients were free to express their beliefs about marriage through their work “without fear of government punishment,” ADF said in a statement after one ruling.

But an examination by The Washington Post of court filings, company records and other materials found that two of the three vendors cited in ADF’s September 2021 petitionhad stopped working on weddings, and the other did not photograph any weddings for two years. Three additional vendors represented by ADF in similar lawsuits elsewhere also abandoned or sharply cut back their work on weddings after they sued local authorities for the right to reject same-sex couples, The Post found.

Such developments led an opposing lawyer and a judge in two of the cases to separately question whether ADF’s plaintiffs truly intended to exercise the rights they sued for — or if their claims were instead manufactured to be test cases in a national litigation campaign.

Astroturf meets astrochurch

It gets better. ADF was founded in 1993, the Post reports. One of its founders, Marlin Maddoux, “argued in a book published that year that Christians should ‘shift to an all-out culture war’ and build a ‘well-funded, well-trained army of religious rights attorneys’ to prosecute it.”

ADF also had a hand in formally establishing companies for some of its clients, The Post found. Lawyers associated with the legal group signed incorporation paperwork and helped to draft company policies that were later used as a basis for the wedding lawsuits. ADF promoted some of its lawsuits with videos and images of plaintiffs photographing women in bridal gowns at what The Post found were staged events featuring ADF employees.

Legal advocacy groups that challenge federal law in court often seek out individuals who are well-suited to serve as the face of their lawsuits. But ADF’s behind-the-scenes involvement in the businesses and public profiles of a nationwide roster of similar clients — some of whom subsequently showed wavering commitment to the weddings industry — reflects how aggressive the group has been in pursuit of that goal as it sought to overturn laws barring discrimination based on sexual orientation.

It gets better.

In an interview with The Post, ADF senior counsel Jonathan Scruggs said the group’s clients had sincere interests in working in the wedding industry. “These are real companies, real businesses, people who are trying to live their lives,” Scruggs said.

Scruggs, who argued several of the cases in court, said the fact that multiple ADF plaintiffs abandoned the wedding industry did not undermine their claims. “Unfortunately, sometimes in the natural progression of people’s businesses, they happen to close,” Scruggs said.

ADF seems to exist to manufacture culture war test cases for “conservative Christian leaders who opposed LGBTQ+ rights.” The Scottsdale, Ariz. legal firm with 90 lawyers on staff and “maintains a nationwide network of more than 4,000 “allied attorneys” — described as “Christians committed to using their God-given legal skills to keep the doors open for the Gospel.” ADF “collected nearly $97 million in contributions in the 12 months ending June 2022 — a 27 percent increase over the previous year and almost double its 2016-17 total.”

Read the whole thing. Smith’s is not the only case ADF fought in which the plaintiffs subsequently moved on to other ventures than the ones on which ADF “manufactured cases to expand religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws.”

We’ve seen the same thing with the Texas abortion vigilante law and North Carolina’s independent state legislature theory case. The right complained bitterly for years about “activist” judges until they had in place enough of their own activist judges.

Trump says, “shut up, shut up, shut up!!!”

Published by digby on September 28, 2023

He’s upset that the RNC is hosting debates he refuses to attend:

The former president cloaked his effort to shut down opponents by claiming to be concerned about the Republican Party.

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday called for the cancellation of further GOP debates, perhaps hoping to deprive his rivals of a national stage under the guise of what he claims is best for the Republican Party.

“They have to stop the debates. Because it is just bad for the Republican Party. They are not going anywhere. There is not going to be a breakout candidate,” Trump told the right-wing Daily Caller.

“I am very concerned about the RNC not being able to do their job,” the multi-indicted frontrunner added about the Republican National Committee (RNC).

His comments doubled down on his campaign’s order Wednesday to halt the debates, which Trump has studiously avoided while he enjoys a large polling lead. He confirmed to the Daily Caller that he would also not attend the third one.

“It’s clear that President Trump alone can defeat Biden,” campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said in an earlier statement.

This might be why:

Donald Trump’s speech to Michigan autoworkers on Wednesday was viewed by fewer than half as many people as the second Republican presidential debate on Rumble, a video streaming platform launched as an alternative to YouTube and popular with many right-leaning content providers. The two events took place simultaneously, with the GOP frontrunner opting to skip an official debate for the second time.

In total the debate, broadcast by the Republican Party, received 1.25 million views on Rumble versus 522,000 for Trump speech, which was shared on his official channel.

That’s his own channel. As I write this I don’t know what the TV ratings were but I’m going to guess Fox got higher ratings than his pathetic speech did on Newsmax.

He’s an attention hog so it makes sense that he’d be upset. He also doesn’t want to take any chances. So he wants them all shut down. Let’s see if it works. Will it make him look weak if they don’t? Stay tuned.

Marge’s stand

Published by digby on September 28, 2023

This from Punchbowl is just astonishing. It represents a failure of education that a faction of Republicans has absolutely no knowledge of history and is too stupid and arrogant to listen to anyone who does:

One week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a plea for additional American aid, a sobering reality has set in on Capitol Hill — Congress has no clear path, as of this moment, to approve new funding for the embattled U.S. ally.

The issue has become tied up in the dispute over government funding, with Speaker Kevin McCarthy refusing to include new Ukraine aid in any stopgap spending measure over fears that a conservative revolt could cost him his post. In some ways, McCarthy’s own standing has become tied to this issue.

Ukraine in general has become such a charged issue for House Republicans that party leaders late Wednesday night stripped a small portion of Ukraine aid from their version of the FY2024 Defense spending bill. That came just hours after the House overwhelmingly defeated an amendment to strip this exact same funding from the bill. The vote was 330-104. Those 104 “no” votes were all Republicans — nearly half the GOP conference.

Think about that — the House voted against removing the funding from the bill, yet the GOP leadership did it anyway because they may not be able to pass the Defense package if they don’t. This is because they’re only using GOP votes to jam though funding bills, and Ukraine is toxic to many House Republicans.

This doesn’t mean Congress won’t eventually appropriate new funding for Ukraine; there are clear supermajorities in both chambers that back Ukraine aid. Yet right now, supporters don’t have a viable plan to get it across the finish line, with House Republicans remaining the chief roadblock.

The dynamic is worrying many top lawmakers. They say the congressional debate is creating a level of uncertainty about the United States’ commitment to Ukraine, and that’s playing right into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hands.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he’s using what’s going on right now to bolster [Putin’s] position and undermine the Western world’s position,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who backs long-term funding for Ukraine, told us. “This whole debate — I mean, it’s BS.”

In early August, President Joe Biden asked for $24 billion to meet Ukraine’s military, economic and humanitarian needs through the end of the year. That number has now been trimmed to $6 billion in a bipartisan Senate stopgap funding proposal designed to keep the government open past Saturday’s deadline — one that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell backs.

At one point during those behind-the-scenes talks on the short-term funding bill, the White House and State Department came up with the $6 billion figure, estimating that would keep the funding spigot turned on for Ukraine over the duration of that Senate stopgap bill — 47 days.

Many Senate Republicans now prefer a clean CR so that Congress can consider and pass a longer-term Ukraine package in a single vote next month. Their preference is to pass a year’s worth of funding that could sustain Ukraine through the 2024 presidential election. These Senate Republicans also believe it would help McCarthy and House Republicans avoid a government shutdown by taking the Ukraine Issue off the table for the moment.

Yet this year-long number could be truly staggering — something in the range of $60 billion to $80 billion. That’s going to be a very difficult vote. So voting multiple times on smaller packages would guarantee that the fissures over Ukraine inside the GOP remain in the headlines.

“We can’t be doing this every three months,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told us. “It’s going to have to pass eventually. There’s too much support for it.”

House Democrats, meanwhile, want GOP Ukraine supporters like McCaul to be more aggressive in pushing for a vote. The House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), said that without their nudging, McCarthy “is giving all the appearances of having decided to abandon Ukraine.”

“OK, how are you going to make it not a problem? Because the sit-around-with-your-thumb-up-your-ass plan doesn’t seem to be working at the moment,” Smith said.

If McCarthy does this it will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he will literally do anything to preserve his speakership — and he will probably lose it eventually anyway.

This is all about Marge. She’s the leader of the anti-Ukraine faction. And this is one she wants very badly. It even goes beyond her loyalty to Trump.