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The Radical Anti-abortion Agenda 2025

Published by digby on March 26, 2024

Some highlights relating to abortion:

[C]onservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family win
in a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for five decades made a
mockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unborn
children. But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the states
and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should
push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In
particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the
most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying
existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with
statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion. Conservatives should ardently
pursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many women
who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the heroism of every choice to become a mother. Alternative options to abortion, especially
adoption, should receive federal and state support.

In summary, the next President has a moral responsibility to lead the nation in
restoring a culture of life in America again.

In addition, the next conservative Administration should rescind President
Biden’s 2022 Gender Policy and refocus it on Women, Children, and Families
and revise the agency’s regulation on “Integrating Gender Equality and Female
Empowerment in USAID’s Program Cycle.”10 It should remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, in agency publications
and policies, and in all agency contracts and grants that include the following
terms: “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,” “gender aware,” “gender sensitive,” etc. It should also remove references to
“abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “sexual and reproductive rights” and controversial sexual education materials

Respect for Life and Conscience. The CDC should eliminate programs and
projects that do not respect human life and conscience rights and that undermine
family formation. It should ensure that it is not promoting abortion as health care.
It should fund studies into the risks and complications of abortion and ensure that
it corrects and does not promote misinformation regarding the comparative health
and psychological benefits of childbirth versus the health and psychological risks
of intentionally taking a human life through abortion.

The CDC oversaw and funded the development and testing of the COVID-19
vaccines with aborted fetal cell lines, insensitive to the consciences of tens of
thousands to hundreds of thousands of people who objected to taking a vaccine with such a link to abortion. As evidenced by litigation across the country,
it is likely that thousands were fired unjustly because of the exercise of their
consciences or faith on this question, which could have been avoided with a
modicum of concern for this issue from CDC. There is never any justification for
ending a child’s life as part of research, and the research benefits from splicing or
growing aborted fetal cells and aborted baby body parts can easily be provided
by alternative sources. All such research should be prohibited as a matter of
law and policy.

CDC should update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of
modern fertility awareness–based methods (FABMs) of family planning and stop
publishing communications that conflate such methods with the long-eclipsed
“rhythm” or “calendar” methods. CDC should fund studies exploring the evidence-based methods used in cutting-edge fertility awareness.

Data Collection. The CDC’s abortion surveillance and maternity mortality
reporting systems are woefully inadequate. CDC abortion data are reported by
states on a voluntary basis, and California, Maryland, and New Hampshire do not
submit abortion data at all. Accurate and reliable statistical data about abortion,
abortion survivors, and abortion-related maternal deaths are essential to timely,
reliable public health and policy analysis.

Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS
should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every
state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what
gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and
by what method. It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category:
spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child
(such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should
require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every
instance of children being born alive after an abortion. Moreover, abortion should
be clearly defined as only those procedures that intentionally end an unborn child’s
life. Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should
never be conflated with abortion.

Comparisons between live births and abortion should be tracked across various demographic indicators to assess whether certain populations are targeted by
abortion providers and whether better prenatal physical, mental, and social care
improves infant outcomes

Those are just some random references. The document is obsessed with it.

Tragic Morning In Baltimore

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 26, 2024

SCOTUS could make bad worse across the U.S.

You’ve heard by now that a container ship leaving Baltimore harbor struck and collapsed the Key Bridge at 1:28 a.m. Rescue operations are underway. A few people have been rescued from the water; others are believed missing.

The FBI’s Baltimore field office declared it saw “no specific and credible information to suggest any ties to terrorism at this time.” That did not prevent X shitposters from suggesting it. Sure, 1:28 a.m. would be the perfect time for a mass-casualty attack. Morons.

CNN (about 9:20 a.m. ET):

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed early Tuesday morning after it was struck by a 984-foot cargo ship.

Here’s what we know:

  • What happened? Video shows the moment the entire bridge structure falls into the water, as the ship hits one of the bridges pillars. CNN analysis shows that the ships lights flickered and it veered off course before it hit the bridge.
  • How many people are missing? Baltimore’s Fire Chief James Wallace said at least two people have been rescued, but they are searching for upwards of at least seven others. The Maryland Transportation Secretary also confirmed there were contractors working on the bridge at the time of its collapse. Officials noted that the number of missing people could change.
  • How have authorities responded? Wallace said authorities are carrying out a search and rescue operation using sonar and infrared technologies as well as drones. He said they have identified vehicles submerged in the water. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore declared a state of emergency following the collapse of the bridge. The Baltimore branch of the FBI is also at the scene, however the Baltimore police chief said there was no indication of terrorism as a motivating factor.
  • What was on board the ship? The ship was chartered by Danish shipping company Maersk and was carrying their customers’ cargo, the Danish shipping company told CNN. The company said no Maersk crew or personnel were onboard the vessel. It said the ship, DALI, is operated by charter vessel company Synergy Group. 

Frightening video:

Stay tuned.

Just now, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in a case brought to roll back FDA access to pharmaceutical abortion via widely used mifepristone, first approved in 2000 (Washington Post):

The justices will examine rule changes in 2016 and 2021 that, among other things, made the drug available by mail and from a medical provider other than a doctor. Their eventual ruling won’t remove mifepristone from the market but could make it harder to obtain.

At issue, via SCOTUSblog:

Issues: (1) Whether respondents have Article III standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s 2016 and 2021 actions with respect to mifepristone’s approved conditions of use; (2) whether the FDA’s 2016 and 2021 actions were arbitrary and capricious; and (3) whether the district court properly granted preliminary relief.

Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has political as well as medical implications:

It was a telling moment in abortion politics: A federal judge in Texas last year moved to cut off the most popular method to end a pregnancy — and Republicans skipped the celebration.

The reason for the muted response to the ruling, which suspended federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone? Republicans didn’t want to talk about it because the abortion issue had already stung them politically. They were the proverbial dog who caught the car. They finally got the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade after decades of trying, and they soon found that Americans didn’t much like abortion rights being curtailed.

But starting Tuesday, it could become significantly more difficult for Republicans to ignore the electoral liability.

What a morning.

The live feed is here.

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The Campaign You’ve Been Waiting For

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 26, 2024

There are rules here?

The Biden-Harris campaign has taken off the gloves. That was clear from Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. But that night was not a one-off. Donald “91 Counts” Trump is overwhelmed with so many legal fights and threats to his liquidity (and freedom) that he has nearly run out of bandwidth for campaigning for president. Biden-Harris means to increase the pressure and prod Trump’s delicate ego at every opportunity.

“This is the campaign I’ve been waiting for,” Ron Filipkowski posted in response to a bruising press statement from the Biden-Harris campaign (CNBC):

A court ruling that slashed Donald Trump’s civil fraud appeal bond was a financial win for the former president. But the campaign of his rival, President Joe Biden, found a way to capitalize on the news.

“Donald Trump is weak and desperate – both as a man and a candidate for President,” the Biden campaign said in a searing statement Monday afternoon.

“He spent the weekend golfing, the morning comparing himself to Jesus, and the afternoon lying about having money he definitely doesn’t have,” said Biden campaign spokesman James Singer, in response to a Trump press conference earlier in the day.

“His campaign can’t raise money, he is uninterested in campaigning outside his country club, and every time he opens his mouth, he pushes moderate and suburban voters away with his dangerous agenda,” Singer said in a statement.

“America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump.”

Trump campaign spokesmen did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

John Dean called it “a ketchup tossing worthy analysis.”

Mr. Death Tax, GOP pundit/pollster Frank Luntz, responded with a snarky, “No longer the party of ‘when they go low, we go high.'”

DNC chair Jaime Harrison clapped back:

“There are rules here? Oh, no. There are no rules here,” the fictional Terence Mann might reply while wielding a crowbar (he ultimately did not use).

The Biden-Harris team also trolled Trump on Monday for bragging about winning golf championships at a resort he owns and operates.

Elsewhere on the internet, video circulated from last year of the “champion” playing another of his courses.

Spocko noted that while Trump managed to get his half-billion-dollar bond slashed down to $175 million on Monday, he will likely seek revenge on those bankers who laughed at his predicament. MAGA followers may issue new threats against Trump’s targets and even attempt to carry them out. Rachel Maddow Monday night

“I want to ENJOY watching Trump squirm,” Spocko wrote. “I also know that Trump is like a cornered animal and he will extract vengeance on people who aren’t supporting him and who laugh at him. This time around he is promising a blood bath. That’s not funny.”

No, it’s not. But neither is this. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night interviewed Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about preparations for the fall elections that include combat training and stocking tourniquets in a state that’s ground zero for election deniers.

These are the sorts of people backing Trump in his efforts to make himself dictator through legal means. No, it’s not funny. Not at all.

Or this.

Or this.

Michelle Obama meant well with her comment contrasting Republicans and Democrats. But mockery is not bullying, and different from viscious taunts and threats. Or advocating real violence. Mockery has the benefit of adding to the psychic load Trump already cannot handle. Plus, as I’ve said time and again, Americans want to root for a fighter, to cheer for the underdog who punches back. The fictional George McFly who meekly takes it is cringe-worthy. Nobody wants to vote for him. The guy who cold-cocks Biff Tannen elicts cheers.

Team Biden-Harris has figured that out. Troll away.

Update: Added Right Wing Watch link to clip of “Antisemitic white nationalist Christian fascist Nick Fuentes.”

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It’s A Good Economy, Stupid

Published by digby on March 25, 2024

TNR’s Michael Tomasky with the word:

I’m going to tell you something that I’m pretty sure you don’t know—and that you probably won’t even believe. Ready? Real wages are now growing in the United States at a pace faster than the spike in the cost of living since the pandemic. More than that: For the first time in decades, wage growth is consistently stronger in the middle and at the bottom than at the top.

See, I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. But it’s right there in a recent study by David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew, three well-known economists. Dube just wrote up the results at Project Syndicate, emphasizing: “Importantly, the real wages of the middle quintile are not only higher today than they were before the pandemic, but slightly higher than we would expect based on 2015-19 trends. In other words, the typical American worker’s purchasing power has grown at least as much as it likely would have in the absence of the global challenges posed by the pandemic and geopolitical conflicts.”

If you’re waiting to see this reported in the mainstream media, except by me and my colleague Tim Noah and a small handful of other people, I advise you to stop. It’s not going to happen. In the mainstream media, there’s still largely one Joe Biden–era economic story: inflation, gas prices, people feeling worse off than they did four years ago, and ooh, did he just forget someone’s name again?

He goes on to make the point that, yes, people are affected by higher gas prices and you can’t tell people to feel better about something they genuinely don’t feel better about, which is true. But it’s also important to note, as Paul Krugman has been doing relentlessly, that according to the consumer satisfaction surveys, when people are asked if their own personal finances are good, a large majority says yes, when asked if the national economy is good a large majority says no which indicates that this isn’t about most people feeling the strain in their own lives it’s about what they hear about the national economy which is an abstraction that they’re getting from the media narrative.

He also brings up the fact that the “are you better off than you were four years ago” ploy is ridiculous and that Biden is already hitting that hard in a new ad:

There are two issues the Biden campaign needs to stress going forward. The first is the one raised by this new ad—how much is to be gained politically by reminding the American people of Trump’s hideous handling of the outbreak. I think at this point it’s hard to say. People remember nothing. They probably think it wasn’t Trump’s fault, and he did OK. It’s true that it wasn’t his fault, and let’s remember that he did lay out the money for Operation Warp Speed.

But he did a lot of things wrong, including lying to the American people about the virus’s severity and standing up there at those nightly press conferences making a total ass of himself. A few hundred thousand people died who didn’t have to die. It’s essential to remind voters of that, to tell that narrative. He was a disaster and an embarrassment.

The second issue is the broader comparison of the two economies. Trump’s pre-pandemic economy, as I’ve written before, was good. Trump haters can’t deny it. It wasn’t because of anything he did. He passed a tax cut for the rich. It goosed demand a little, and it did help the stock market. Median household income rose dramatically in one year, from 2018 to 2019.

But it was not the greatest economy in the history of the universe. Trump’s jobs numbers in his first two years lagged behind Barack Obama’s in his last two, 4.5 million to 5.2 million. And both are way behind Biden’s first two-year total of nearly 11 million. And wages, as I noted above, are up. And they’re especially up for the middle class and the poor. This is what “middle-out economics” means.

Granted, Democrats have to be careful how they talk about all this. But they have to find a way, and it has to be completely free of the backtracking and apologetics Democrats so often display. Jobs are up. Wages are up. The stock market is way up. Inequality is down. The deficit is down. Big laws passed under Biden are opening factories and putting people to work. It’s all true.

You don’t have to let Trump’s lies stand just because you don’t want to be insensitive to those people who are having a rough time. In fact, it would be political malpractice to do it. He floated on the good economy he inherited from Obama until disaster hit and then he screwed everything up with a disastrous pandemic response. And his entire term was constant, overwhelming chaos. On the other hand, as Tomasky writes:

Biden inherited a horrible economy, got us out of that crisis, suffered through a price crisis that also affected the rest of the developed world, but is now presiding over the greatest monthly job growth in history (yes, at 289,000 a month) and is keeping his core campaign promise of shifting wealth from the top to the middle and the bottom. Why is it so hard to tell that story, Democrats?

It is not difficult.

Trump: Criminal Folk Hero

Published by digby on March 25, 2024

Here’s another excellent insight about Trump’s seemingly inexplicable appeal by Samuel Earle in the NY Times:

In recent months, Donald Trump has been trying out a new routine. At rallies and town halls across the country, he compares himself to Al Capone. “He was seriously tough, right?” Mr. Trump told a rally in Iowa in October, in an early rendition of the act. But “he was only indicted one time; I’ve been indicted four times.” (Capone was, in fact, indicted at least six times.) The implication is not just that Mr. Trump is being unfairly persecuted but also that he is four times as tough as Capone. “If you looked at him in the wrong way,” Mr. Trump explained, “he blew your brains out.”

Mr. Trump’s eagerness to invoke Capone reflects an important shift in the image he wants to project to the world. In 2016, Mr. Trump played the reality TV star and businessman who would shake up politics, shock and entertain. In 2020, Mr. Trump was the strongman, desperately trying to hold on to power by whatever means possible. In 2024, Mr. Trump is in his third act: the American gangster, heir to Al Capone — besieged by the authorities, charged with countless egregious felonies but surviving and thriving nonetheless, with an air of macho invincibility.

The evidence of Mr. Trump’s mobster pivot is everywhere. He rants endlessly about his legal cases in his stump speeches. On Truth Social, he boasts about having a bigger team of lawyers “than any human being in the history of our Country, including even the late great gangster, Alphonse Capone!” His team has used his mug shot — taken after he was indicted on a charge of racketeering in August — on T-shirts, mugs, Christmas wrapping, bumper stickers, beer coolers and even NFTs. They’ve sold off parts of the blue suit he was wearing in that now-infamous photo for more than $4,000 a piece (it came with a dinner with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort).

He does seem to be fully embracing his mob boss image, doesn’t he? Why would he do that?

It’s a canny piece of marketing. A violent mobster and a self-mythologizing millionaire, Capone sanitized his crimes by cultivating an aura of celebrity and bravery, grounded in distrust of the state and a narrative of unfair persecution. The public lapped it up. “Everybody sympathizes with him,” Vanity Fair noted of Capone in 1931, as the authorities closed in on him. “Al has made murder a popular amusement.” In similar fashion, Mr. Trump tries to turn his indictments into amusement, inviting his supporters to play along. “They’re not after me, they’re after you — I’m just standing in the way!” he says, a line that greets visitors to his website, as well.

Mr. Trump clearly hopes that his Al Capone act will offer at least some cover from the four indictments he faces. And there is a twisted logic to what he is doing: By adopting the guise of the gangster, he is able to recast his lawbreaking as vigilante justice — a subversive attempt to preserve order and peace — and transform himself into a folk hero.

Criminal as folk hero? Why not?

In an essay from 1948, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” the critic Robert Warshow sought to explain the unique appeal of gangster fables in American life. He saw the gangster as a quintessentially American figure, the dark shadow of the country’s sunnier self-conception. “The gangster speaks for us,” Warshow wrote, “expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life.”

It is easy to see why gangster fables appeal to so many Republican voters today. They are stories of immigrant assimilation and success, laced with anti-immigrant sentiment and rivalry. Their heroes are creatures of the big city — those nests of Republican neuroses — who tame its excesses through force but never forget God or their family along the way. In many ways, minus the murder, they are ideal conservative citizens: enterprising, loyal, distrustful of government; prone to occasional ethical lapses, but who’s perfect?

Mr. Trump knows that in America, crooks can be the good guys. When the state is seen as corrupt, the crook becomes a kind of Everyman, bravely beating the system at its own game. This is the cynical logic that the gangster and the right-wing populist share: Everyone’s as bad as anyone else, so anything goes. “A crook is a crook,” Capone once said. “But a guy who pretends he is enforcing the law and steals on his authority is a swell snake. The worst type of these punks is the big politician, who gives about half his time to covering up so that no one will know he’s a thief.”

It’s a worldview powerful enough to convince voters that even the prized institutions of liberal democracy — a free press, open elections, the rule of law — are fronts in the biggest racket of them all. This conceit has a rich pedigree in reactionary politics. “Would-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones,” Hannah Arendt warned.

The gangster’s brutality also taps into what Warshow and others of his generation saw as the sadism in the American mind: the pleasure the public takes in seeing the gangster’s “unlimited possibility of aggression” inflicted upon others. The gangster is nothing without this license for violence, without the simple fact that, as Warshow put it, “he hurts people.” He intimidates his rivals and crushes his enemies. His cruelty is the point. The public can then enjoy “the double satisfaction of participating vicariously in the gangster’s sadism and then seeing it turned against the gangster himself.” “He is what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become,” Warshow wrote. Reverence and repulsion are all wrapped up.

[…]

“I often say Al Capone, he was one of the greatest of all time, if you like criminals,” Mr. Trump said in December. It was an interesting framing: “if you like criminals”? Mr. Trump has a hunch, and it’s more than just projection, that many Americans do.

This is so Trump. He’s been exposed as a criminal and instead of protesting it he says the system is rigged or the law doesn’t apply to him: “Yeah, I did it. Waddyagonnadoaboudit?

There are plenty of Americans who love sadism and see mobsters as folk heroes, especially since they’re cultural icons in the movies and TV. But Trump is something else as well — he’s a richie-rich, con-man liar which people don’t love nearly as much when they realize they’ve been had so it may end up working against him in the long run. Right now it’s working like a charm.

I will personally never understand how anyone can be taken in by that obvious imbecile. But there are reasons and I’m always interested to hear what they might be because I just can’t see it myself. I do know that many people revere criminals as folk heroes and he’s embraced the image, so that piece of it does make sense. Whatever it takes…

They all laughed at Trump, but he got his bond reduced. Why? Threats work.

Published by Spocko on March 25, 2024

Two of Trump’s worst nightmares are happening right now, he’s broke and people are laughing at him. It’s glorious!
I told people I enjoyed 24 hours of knowing Donald’s squirming. In this clip you can see how Eric Trump is personally experiencing his Dad’s humiliation at the hands of bankers and bond companies.
Eric Trump Sunday interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo 

“When I came to them saying, ‘Hey, can I get a 1/2 billion dollar bond?’ Maria they were laughing!”

-Eric Trump to Maria Bartiromo on Fox 3-24-2024

It’s interesting that Eric was doing the calling, and they laughed in his face. Why not Daddy? Because they know Donald always get revenge against people who laugh at him and don’t do what he wants.

On Monday we learned Trump got the bond amount reduced to $175 million and a Double Secret Special Extension that kicks the can down the road 10 days. Maybe he’ll get the money from “outside the US” (I noted that Eric used that phrase intentionally twice, he’s setting it up for a “We had to go outside the US because no one would do it in the US!” We’ll probably learn is TOTALLY legal-for people who aren’t running for President. If it is a FEC violation, good luck with enforcement!

Intelligence communities know that money troubles make people vulnerable to blackmail. The experts will look at the laws for a bond, and it might be technically legal if it comes from Jared via the Saudis to Trump. Or it will come from Jeffrey Yass, the billionaire GOP megadonor who has a $33 billion stake in TikTok, and supported the Truth Social IPO.

After he gets the bond Trump will lash out at the people who laughed at him and didn’t give him money. But first he attacked AG Letitia James. There were be new death threats, harassment and attacks on her via social media. Judge Engoron and his clerk will likely get new threats, especially since nothing happened to Trump, OR THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THE THREATS, last time.

When Trump says “They are laughing at our country” He means they are laughing at him. Laughing at him is almost as dangerous as criticizing him. Remember how he made Governors beg for supplies during the pandemic? Trump threatens people’s lives and withholds lifesaving food and supplies–unless they grovel before him.

I was thinking about the next scene after Carrie gets laughed at — she kills everyone.
Then she goes home and tells her mom they all laughed at her and asked for her mother to hold her. Instead, the mother said, ‘I should have killed you when you were born. But I was weak and back sliding.”



I made a mashup of Eric Trump and Carrie. What I remembered was the “They are all going to laugh at you!” part but it was the attack from Carrie on the people that stood out this time. And I added the violence from January 6th and Trump promises a “Bloodbath.”

Trump is a damaged man. I want to ENJOY watching Trump squirm. I also know that Trump is like a cornered animal and he will extract vengeance on people who aren’t supporting him and who laugh at him. This time around he is promising a blood bath. That’s not funny.

There Is No Bottom

Published by digby on March 25, 2024

Rubio, desperate for the VP nod, attempts a full Pence

It wasn’t pretty:

Can Trump forgive him for this?

Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who once suggested the size of Donald Trump’s hands indicated smaller-than-average reproductive anatomy when he and the future president both ran for president eight years ago, has indicated a willingness to serve as Mr Trump’s vice president should the 45th president succeed in becoming the 47th after the November presidential election.

During one March 2016 primary debate, Mr Rubio responded to Mr Trump calling him “little Marco” by suggesting that Mr Trump’s genitals were undersized by remarking on the size of the New Yorker’s hands.

“And you know what they say about guys with small hands,” said Mr Rubio, who was then a sitting senator while Mr Trump was merely a real estate developer turned reality television host.

The future president defended his manhood shortly thereafter, falsely claiming that no one had ever commented on his hand size before even though the now-defunct Spy magazine had routinely referred to him as a “short-fingered vulgarian”.

“I have to say this, he hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. I’ve never heard of this one. Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands if they’re small, something else must be small,” he said. “I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you.”

I dunno. Stormy says otherwise.

The Method To His Madness

Published by digby on March 25, 2024
YT

Jonathan Chait with an elegant analysis of what Trump’s doing with his valoriztion of the insurrectionists:

“Joe Biden’s team has elevated the ‘threat to democracy’ posed by Trump and his movement to a place of prominence in its appeals to voters,” complained National Review’s Noah Rothman, who has written elsewhere that Trump is no more a threat to democracy than Biden. “Making the cause of the January 6 rioters into a central feature of Trump’s campaign plays directly into Biden’s hands.” This is the extent of the Republican concern: Trump is alienating swing voters who might be receptive to messages about high grocery prices but respond nervously to blood-soaked vows to redeem his martyrs and purify the fatherland.

But there is a perfectly cogent reason why Trump continues to press his most extreme demands, even at the cost of repulsing potential voters. He is no longer willing to accept the alliance of convenience with reluctant partners that held traditional Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and Reince Priebus by his side during his first term. Trump has long demanded fealty from his party, which has made it harder to discern the acceleration and intensification of his work in the days since he effectively clinched the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday. Trump’s primary focus is not outward but inward, tightening his control over the GOP to almost unimaginable levels of personal loyalty.

Trump’s elevation of the insurrection to a matter of holy writ within the party is a matter of both conviction and strategy, consistent with his intention to stifle even the quietest forms of dissent. This is why Trump deposed Ronna McDaniel as head of the Republican National Committee in favor of election deniers Michael Whatley and Lara Trump. McDaniel had dutifully jettisoned her maiden name (Romney). She had strongly suggested the 2020 election was stolen, saying the vote tabulations had “problems” that were “concerning” and not “fair,” without quite stating as fact that Trump absolutely won. All her genuflections were not enough.

This is also why Trump is reportedly bringing back Paul Manafort, who served a prison sentence for bank and tax fraud, and witness tampering and obstruction of justice, and whose business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, was assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort’s skills are hardly irreplaceable. The point of bringing him back, other than the familiar mob logic of rewarding an underling who took his pinch like a man and refused to rat out the boss, is to signal that loyalty to Trump matters more than any other possible consideration. Normal politicians would distance themselves from staffers who committed crimes, especially crimes on their behalf. Trump regards this as the highest qualification.

The day after his rally, Trump wrote about the apostate Republican Liz Cheney, “She should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!,” using his term for the committee that investigated the January 6 uprising. These comments received little attention, perhaps because they were overshadowed by his remarks, made the next day, that “any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.” But the former is more indicative of his intentions. Trump believes that the people who perpetrated the attack on the Capitol should be pardoned and the people who investigated it should be imprisoned.

While Trump touts his first term as a historic success, he and his closest allies view it as largely a failure. Trump, in this view, was manipulated by staffers loyal to the traditional party into letting figures like Robert Mueller and Anthony Fauci undermine him. Mike Pence’s refusal to cooperate in Trump’s plot to steal the election was the ultimate betrayal. Trump’s project is to ensure that a second term faces no sabotage.

An effective Trumpist government has difficulty functioning under the rule of law. If Trump’s staffers and allies believe that carrying out his orders, some of them plainly illegal, will lead to prison or other punishment, they will again hesitate to follow them. That belief is one he has to stamp out, especially as he faces multiple criminal charges for his attempts to steal the election in 2020.

Republican traditionalists complain that Trump is needlessly alienating potential allies on the right who could help him build a winning coalition. “This pursuit of a personal agenda and personal power is weakening the Republican Party at a time when it could have a historic victory and make historic progress in ‘making America great again,’” former attorney general William Barr told Bari Weiss in 2022. “I think the approach that Trump follows is weakening the Republican Party, not strengthening it.” This complaint is significantly undercut by the fact that Barr says he will likely support Trump anyway in 2024, as will oncereluctant allies like Mitch McConnell and New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu. Having ensured himself of their vote, he can demand total subservience, creating an atmosphere in which even muted expressions of discontent bring unbearable social sanction upon any who dare utter them.

Among the true-believing Trumpists, there’s no confusion about what Trump’s relentless demands of cultlike submission are trying to accomplish. “The Judas Iscariots of the American Right need to understand that their betrayal comes at a cost,” rails a recent column in American Greatness, one of the new pseudointellectual organs that have sprung up in the Trump era to meet conservative audience demand for sycophantic content. “Excommunication is not enough. Their treachery deserves relentless psychic pain.” It adds that Mike Pence, the New York Times columnist David French, and others “should never be allowed back into respectable conservative company under any circumstances.”

As Chait later points out, this may be a mistake in traditional political terms but in Trumpian terms it makes perfect sense. He’s much more concerned with loyalty and sending the message that anyone who commits violence in his name can act with impunity. He’s ready to blow the whole country up whether he wins or loses.

I Hear You

Published by digby on March 25, 2024

Trump gets another break:

A New York appeals court agreed to slash millions off of the bond Donald Trump must post to cover a $454 million civil fraud verdict while he appeals it, reducing it to $175 million after the real estate mogul claimed he’d have to sell properties at a loss to raise cash.

The ruling Monday comes on the day Trump faced a deadline to either pay the fine or post a bond for 120% of the judgment to put it on hold while he appeals. That would have amounted to nearly $545 million dollars. He has 10 days to post the bond, the court ruled.

The decision means Trump may be able to push ahead with his appeal without the risk of his assets being seized by New York Attorney General Letitia James for lack of payment. The appeals court did not offer any explanation behind their decision.

Read the order. There’s more. This is a huge win for Trump.

They don’t call him Teflon Don for nothing.

Four Years Ago Today

Published by digby on March 25, 2024

Never forget


This was a common refrain:

How about this nonsense?

You can’t make this stuff up:

The idea of ​​a joint declaration by the seven important industrialized countries on the corona crisis is on the brink , according to information from European diplomatic circles . The reason is a dispute over what the pandemic should be called.

Accordingly, the State Department insists on the name “Wuhan virus”. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo represents the line of his president. Donald Trump speaks mostly of the “Chinese virus” at press conferences and on Twitter.

The other G7 members reject a label that suggests the pandemic is a Chinese problem.

They propose the term “Covid-19” also used by the World Health Organization (WHO). No agreement could be reached in the negotiations of the political directors of the G7 foreign ministries.

This is ridiculous.

I don’t know if Pompeo has a larger agenda. They do seem to be looking for a confrontation with China out of this whole thing but it’s unclear exactly what they think they’ll get out of it. But first and foremost, this is being done to appease Little Lord Fauntleroy in the White House who constantly needs to be reassured that his juvenile, re-election “branding” is being carried out at the highest levels of government.

I guess it doesn’t matter if they can issue a joint statement. But you would think that international cooperation would be a top priority during a global pandemic. Apparently not.

This response was catastrophic. It divided the nation even more than it already was and resulted in a massive number of unnecessary deaths and ongoing trauma which he is making worse each day by refusing to go the fuck away.