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It was everywhere at the January 6th insurrection

You know by now that Mike Johnson is a far right theocrat who should not be let anywhere near power in our constitutional republic. His beliefs are way beyond the pale even for most evangelicals. But it gets worse. Keen eyes spotted a flag outside his office last week that tells a much more disturbing story:

The flag — which Rolling Stone has confirmed hangs outside his district office in the Cannon House Office Building —  is white with a simple evergreen tree in the center and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven” at the top. Historically, this flag was a Revolutionary War banner, commissioned by George Washington as a naval flag for the colony turned state of Massachusetts. The quote “An Appeal to Heaven” was a slogan from that war, taken from a treatise by the philosopher John Locke. But in the past decade it has come to symbolize a die-hard vision of a hegemonically Christian America.

To understand the contemporary meaning of the Appeal to Heaven flag, it’s necessary to enter a world of Christian extremism animated by modern-day apostles, prophets, and apocalyptic visions of Christian triumph that was central to the chaos and violence of Jan. 6. Earlier this year we released an audio-documentary series, rooted in deep historical research and ethnographic interviews, on this sector of Christianity, which is known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The flag hanging outside Johnson’s office is a key part of its symbology.

The New Apostolic Reformation is a set of networks of Christian leaders that formed in the 1990s around a renegade evangelical seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner. These networks are part of the nondenominational charismatic segment of Christianity (“charismatic” here is a technical term of Christian theology and practice describing a spirituality built around miraculous manifestations and aiming to re-create the supernaturally imbued environment of the early Christian church). Wagner and his cohort believed that they were at the vanguard of a revolution in church leadership that Wagner often described as “the most radical change to the way of doing church since, at least, the Protestant Reformation.”

The hundreds of leaders who joined Wagner’s movement and leadership-networking circles almost all identify as apostles (enterprising church builders) or prophets (who hear directly from God), though some identify as both. In the mid-2000s, these NAR networks collectively embraced a theological paradigm called the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a prophecy that divides society into seven arenas — religion, family, government, education, arts and entertainment, media, and business. The “Mandate,” as they understand it, is given by God for Christians to “take dominion” and “conquer” the tops of all seven of these sectors and have Christian influence flow down into the rest of society. 

Drawn into American politics by this aggressive theological vision, many New Apostolic Reformation leaders became very active in right-wing political circles, including one of Wagner’s key disciples, an apostle-prophet named Dutch Sheets. Sheets is not a household name in Christian politics like Jerry Falwell or Ralph Reed or James Dobson, but he has real influence. Sheets has written more than 18 popular evangelical books, and his Intercessory Prayer has sold more than a million copies. He was an endorser and faith adviser to Newt Gingrinch’s short-lived candidacy for president in 2012, and he openly espoused the lie that Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim.

In 2013, Sheets was given an Appeal to Heaven flag by a friend who told him that, because it predated the Stars and Stripes, it was the flag that “had flown over our nation at its birthing.” Sheets describes this experience as revelatory, and he seized upon the flag as a symbol of the spiritual-warfare driven Christian nationalist revolution he hoped to see in American politics. In 2015, he published a book titled An Appeal to Heaven and rolled out a systematic campaign to propagate this symbol in right-wing Christian circles. That same year Sarah Palin wrote an opinion piece in Breitbart, endorsing the Appeal to Heaven campaign and thanking her “[s]pecial friends, Pastor Dutch and Ceci Sheets,” who had given her the flag.

Sheets and his fellow New Apostolic Reformation leaders were the tip of the spear of Christian Trumpism, endorsing Donald Trump’s candidacy early on and championing his cause to their fellow Christians. Over the course of the 2016 campaign, the Appeal to Heaven flag and the NAR’s vision of a Christianity-dominated America became entwined with Trump, a potent-though-covert symbol.

Since 2015, you can find these Appeal to Heaven flags popping up over and over: in the background of pictures of far-right politicians and election deniers like Doug Mastriano; as wall decorations in state legislators’ offices; at right-wing rallies. It even flew over the Illinois State Capitol for a time at the instigation of the Illinois Apostolic Alliance, a local NAR activist group.

[…]

This is why, if you look closely at the panopticon of videos and pictures of the Capitol insurrection, Appeal to Heaven flags are everywhere. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them punctuating the crowd, including even on the front lines of clashes between rioters and Capitol police officers — a powerful signal of the spread of Sheets’ ideas and influence. 

Hundreds of Christian figures supported Trump’s effort to overthrow the 2020 election, but, having spent years researching and tracking the direct influences on Christians who actually showed up on Jan. 6, we contend that no single Christian leader contributed more to this effort to mobilize Christians against the very structures of American democracy than Sheets. One case in point: Sheets and his team were reportedly at the White House a week before the insurrection, strategizing with administration officials, as we reported on Jan. 6, 2023: 

On December 29, 2020 — eight days before the insurrection — Sheets and his team of prophets were in Washington, D.C., staying at the Willard Hotel, the site of the various war rooms overseen by Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. On that day, Sheets, along with 14 other apostles and prophets, had a multi-hour meeting inside the White House with Trump administration officials. Who exactly among White House Staff attended this meeting is unclear (and the Trump administration has made the White House Visitor Logs secret and invulnerable to FOIA requests until 2026). But members of Sheets’ team posted photos of themselves (with White House visitor passes) both outside and inside the building.

The Appeal to Heaven flag was the banner of this mobilization, which brings us back to Mike Johnson and the flag outside his office. What does it signal that the speaker of the House of Representatives is purposely flying this symbol of Christian warfare? 

When Rolling Stone reached out to Johnson’s office for comment, a spokesperson for his personal office noted that all members have three flag posts outside their office and that Johnson flies the Appeal to Heaven flag alongside the American and Louisiana flags. “Rep. Johnson’s Appeal to Heaven flag was a gift to him and other members of Congress by Pastor Dan Cummins, who has served as a guest chaplain for the House of Representatives over a dozen times, under Speakers from both parties,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that Johnson appreciates the “rich history of the flag,” citing its connection to George Washington and John Locke.

Accepting this backstory as true, it does not in any way refute our basic premise that this flag, since Dutch Sheets’ spiritual-warfare appropriation of it in 2013, connotes an aggressive form of Christian nationalism. In fact, Pastor Dan Cummins, whom Johnson credits as the one who gave him the flag, is a mentee of another major NAR leader (and Trump evangelical adviser) named Jim Garlow. Johnson has described Garlow as having “a profound influence” on his life and spirituality.

Garlow and Cummins have long operated as Christian nationalist activists targeting members of Congress. The Appeal to Heaven Flag was flown over Garlow’s former California church beginning in 2017, and Garlow himself has celebrated how the flag “has recently become an important flag in the present day spiritual warfare prayer movement.” If anything, Johnson’s office’s statement only highlights another vector of NAR and Christian nationalist influence on the new speaker.

The Appeal to Heaven flag isn’t Johnson’s only connection to Sheets, either. Johnson has spent his entire career in Congress linking arms with one of Sheets’ top acolytes, a Louisiana apostle named Timothy Carscadden. Carscadden leads a church in Johnson’s district called Christian Center Shreveport. Johnson has spoken at the church, had Carscadden come to Washington, D.C., and expressed his closeness to Carscadden’s views. 

For his part, Timothy Carscadden speaks alongside Dutch Sheets, mimics Sheets’ theological ideas, and shares in Sheets’ vision to see Christianity reign supreme in every sphere of American life. Carscadden’s Facebook profile page is a photo of him holding an Appeal to Heaven flag, and the Louisiana apostle posted his support for the gathering crowds of protesters on Jan. 6, 2021, writing: “We will be live in person and online as we stand with the million plus in Washington DC today. We Appeal To The Courts of Heaven today!!!!”

It is simply untenable to think that Johnson is unaware of what the Appeal to Heaven flag signals today. It represents an aggressive, spiritual-warfare style of Christian nationalism, and Johnson is a legal insurrectionist who has deeply tied himself into networks of Christian extremists whose rhetoric, leadership, and warfare theology fueled a literal insurrection.

Johnson is part of a growing cohort of far-right Republican lawmakers who have embraced Dutch Sheets’ Appeal to Heaven campaign, but unlike most of these lawmakers, Johnson is not a fringe or sideshow figure. He has leapt from the ranks of congressional back-benchers to second in line to the presidency of the United States. His elevation is the apogee (to date) of the normalization of the Jan. 6 riot, its legal façade, and its spiritual diffusion into Republican and Christian communities.

It would be one thing if Johnson was a run of the mill Evangelical who just got a flag from somebody and only vague knowledge of the flag and its association with the insurrection. But he knows exactly what it means and he is a committed theocrat with a long-standing agenda so I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that he knows exactly what he’s doing by displaying that flag. This is not ok. Extremists like Johnson should never be second in line to the presidency. It’s terrifying.

Maybe, maybe not.

I’m not happy about No Labels. for obvious reasons. First, they are nothing but a sabotage operation designed to stop the Democrats from winning the presidency in 2024. Joe Lieberman is one of their leaders. They aren’t trying to hide it. The question is whether or not it would turn out the way they think it will.

Since Manchin is (nominally) a Democrat I think most of us assume it would hurt Biden. But Michael Tomasky has a different idea:

Everybody is in a tizzy about Joe Manchin’s retirement announcement. And maybe they should be. The conventional wisdom for months, or even for a couple years, has been that a presidential candidacy by the West Virginia senator under the “centrist” No Labels banner would mean the end for Joe Biden, and that’s the take in most of the insta-analyses I’ve read over the last 24 hours.

It’s also what I’ve always thought, and it stands to reason. Not because Manchin is a Democrat. But because it has been assumed that he splits the anti-Trump vote. But lately, even before this announcement, I’ve begun to wonder: What if Manchin is more likely to split the anti-Biden vote? In a moment, I’ll get to that case.

But first, let’s address the ramifications of Manchin’s announcement for control of the Senate. This, not the presidential implications, was what the media focused on first—that his decision imperils Democratic control of the Senate.

That’s a kind of base-covering or box-checking journalism that I suppose mainstream outlets feel they have a need to do, but it’s silly. Manchin had zero chance of holding his seat against GOP Governor Jim Justice. Not 10 percent. Not 5 percent. Zero. Justice has been consistently ahead by double digits in recent polls. One outlier poll—conducted, interestingly, for a GOP super PAC—had it at 6; but the most recent public polls pegged Justice’s lead at 12, 13, 22, and 14 percent.

The Democratic Party is all but dead in West Virginia. I say this with sadness, as a native of the state who remembers a day when everyone, from every member of Congress on down to the agriculture commissioner (Gus Douglass!), was a Democrat. The place was never a liberal nirvana, but there were a number of progressives in office, notably Ken Hechler, one of those longtime members of Congress, who’d been a Truman speechwriter and was the only member of the House to march with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery.

Today? Three of the 34 state senators are Democrats. Three! They could hold their caucus meetings in a closet. And only 10 of the 98 state delegates are Dems (there are two vacancies). The three state senators are from the university towns of Morgantown and Huntington. Everywhere else, the party barely exists.

So that Manchin’s seat was lost was already a foregone conclusion, and anyone who argued otherwise was wasting time.

Now let’s get to a possible Manchin presidential candidacy. First of all, I don’t think it’s certain that he’ll run. I’d call it likely but not preordained. No Labels officials have said repeatedly that they don’t want to help reelect Trump. There is of course no reason to take those avowals at face value. But they can be leveraged by an effective Democratic opposition into pressure to force No Labels to stand down if polling shows consistently that it’d be doing exactly that. So I think there is still a chance that No Labels doesn’t field a candidate, or can’t get anyone of Manchin’s stature to agree to accept its nod, and ends up with a Howard Schultz–level figure.

Second, even if Manchin does run, it is no longer manifestly obvious that he hurts Biden more than he hurts Trump. Here’s the case, which rests on three points.

One: Manchin is basically against abortion rights. His ratings record from the pro-life groups is mixed, but that’s because he has a history of voting for larger Democratic bills that contain some language about abortion that those groups don’t like. And he did criticize the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. But on stand-alone abortion bills, he’s been consistently against choice.

The 2024 election is going to be as direct a nationwide referendum on women’s reproductive rights as we’ve ever had in this country. And as we’ve been seeing since last year and saw again Tuesday, masses of voters are heading to the polls to say they want the government to do something to preserve abortion rights. Manchin’s going to be asked about this constantly if he runs. He’ll bob and weave, but if the Democrats do a good job of letting people know about the anti-choice aspects of his record—for example, he was the only Senate Democrat to join 50 Republicans in opposing a 2022 bill that sought to codify Roe v. Wade—very few pro-choice Americans will vote for him. And that category includes not just Democrats but a majority of independents and even some Republicans.

Two: He’s just not that popular. And to the extent that he is popular, he is more popular among Republicans than Democrats.

In a recent PRRI poll, Manchin was viewed favorably by 12 percent, while 41 percent viewed him unfavorably. This man who gets so much positive Beltway press was viewed very favorably by 1 percent. This by the way was Americans, not West Virginians. And there’s a recent Morning Consult poll that ranked the popularity of every senator (these were statewide polls). It found Manchin to be one of the most unpopular senators in the country. Now that’s largely because he’s a Democrat in a Republican state. There are only seven senators who are underwater in the poll, and Manchin is one of them (the only senators deeper underwater are Susan Collins, Ron Johnson, and Mitch McConnell, who is down there in Mariana Trench territory).

But here’s the good news for Manchin, according to Morning Consult. Manchin’s 42–48 numbers are actually an improvement over the last time they polled this. And that improvement has been “driven largely by Republican voters.” That echoes the PRRI poll, which breaks down that 12 percent favorable rating by party. Manchin is lowest among Democrats (7 percent), with independents in the middle (13 percent), and Republicans viewing him most favorably (18 percent).

So a surge of disaffected Democrats is going to back this guy? I don’t buy it. In fact, if we agree that somewhere around 55 percent of Republicans are MAGA and 45 percent are not, which seems about fair based on polls, that tells me that there are, at least potentially, more—far more—disaffected Republicans who might pull for Manchin. If he runs, I suspect his polls will tell him this, and he’ll go hunting where the ducks are, as Barry Goldwater put it.

Three: his unapologetic pro–fossil fuel position. Again, it will be up to the Democrats to publicize this properly if he runs. But if they do, he will perform very poorly among voters who want the United States to move away from fossil fuels—and again, that is a category that includes independents and even some Republicans.

So it’s possible the conventional wisdom is way off here. The PRRI poll data seem to support my case. In the Biden-Trump head-to-head matchup, Biden leads 48–46. When they throw in Manchin and Cornel West, Manchin garners 10 percent and West 5, but Biden still leads Trump, 41–38. If Manchin were stealing all his votes from Biden, wouldn’t Trump have been ahead in the four-way?

Manchin is a Democrat in name. But his high-profile positions are essentially Republican ones. Or at least enough of them are that an effective Democratic spin operation can convince Democratic and a majority of independent voters that Manchin just isn’t a real option for them. It would be a delightful thing if we woke up next November 6 to see that Manchin and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cost Trump, not Biden, the White House. It would certainly be the outcome they all deserve.

I don’t pretend to know why so many Democrats hate Joe Biden but some of it’s obviously age (and now, there is real hostility among some over his support for Israel in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks and inability or unwillingness to hold Netanyahu back from slaughtering innocent kids in Gaza.) But there is no one running for president who would do any better and they would all do worse so here we are.

Anyway, his logic makes some sense to me. But I really don’t think we should be taking chances with 3rd Party candidates. And if anyone votes for Trump, Manchin, Kennedy, West or Stein because of age they really should think twice. Every single one of them will be over 70 on inauguration day. Trump will be 78 and Manchin will be 78. Please.

Rep. Stefanik does some more dirty work for Dear Leader. It must be exhausting.

Trump’s lawyers in his NY Fraud trial said they planned to call for a mistrial based upon evidence they saw on Breitbart.com that the judge and his clerk are biased and have broken the campaign finance laws. I’m not kidding.

MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin filled us in on what happened:

Indeed, a Breitbart story published a day earlier aired new allegations about Engoron’s principal law clerk, who has been the subject of multiple attacks by Donald Trump and his legal team that led Engoron to impose a gag order on all of them. Specifically, Breitbart alleged, based on a review of New York State campaign finance data, that the law clerk has made contributions to individual candidates, local Democratic clubs, PACs and the New York County Democrats in amounts and at times that would appear to violate the rule Kise cited.

By Monday, the same day Donald Trump testified, Team Trump went further, telling Engoron that as soon as the AG’s team rested, they intended to move for a mistrial based on unspecified issues that Trump’s lawyers represented would be covered by the gag order but did not relate to their usual complaint: the notes Engoron and his clerk have exchanged. The judge then ordered them to present him with the motion in writing, with a proposed briefing schedule and hearing time, and pledged to return it quickly. Yet no such motion appears on the docket, and a source familiar with the litigation tells me that if such a motion was made under seal or through a similar process, it has not been served on the state.

Nonetheless, the arguments I expected would end up in the promised mistrial motion surfaced on Friday in a different form: a five-page letter to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct from House GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik. And although the letter begins with some partial and misleading quotations from a 2022 hearing and a trial day last week, the thrust of Stefanik’s charges of judicial intemperance and partisan bias come from the same Breitbart article initially floated by Kise on Nov. 3. Citing that piece, she accuses both Engoron and his principal law clerk of flouting the rules against partisan political contributions.

Perhaps most interestingly, while Stefanik is many things — a Harvard alumna, a former White House aide, and most recently, a mom — she is not a lawyer. But her letter is heavily footnoted, including with cites to New York cases, including some concerning the statute of limitations, and conforms with conventions of legal citation, including the telltale ibid., a fancy, lawyerly way of citing to the immediately prior source. 

That doesn’t mean, much less prove, Stefanik’s letter was authored by Trump lawyers. But it bears note that the particular method of her complaint and the use of her voice offer some tactical advantages. (Neither Stefanik’s office nor a representative for Trump immediately responded to NBC News’ requests for comment.)

First and foremost, to the extent that the principal law clerk’s alleged campaign contributions, which we have independently viewed, violate one or more New York rules governing judges and their personal appointees, one lawyer familiar with these rules and their implementation says the remedy for such misconduct would be discipline, not the overturning or invalidation of any decision in the case or even the removal of the presiding judge. Team Trump might have reached the same conclusion and decided against moving for a mistrial.

Second, Stefanik is not only arguably Trump’s most reliable and prominent Republican backer in New York State; she is also a member of Congress who is not subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act. As a result, if her letter was drafted or edited by anyone affiliated with the defense, journalists have no way of uncovering that through the kind of public records requests that, for example, have revealed political machinations between and among executive agencies.

And third, unlike a mistrial motion that Engoron himself could deny virtually on receipt and that would take months if not longer to appeal, a complaint to the state’s judicial conduct commission cannot be dismissed “without authorization by the Commission,” which meets “several times a year.” That means the allegations in Stefanik’s letter could swirl, without any resolution, for some time before the commission can determine whether it warrants investigation or should be dismissed.

Whether, in fact, Engoron and/or his clerk have, in fact, run afoul of the rules on the basis of their contributions remains to be seen. The rules not only allow candidates for judicial office greater latitude in the months before and after their runs, but also pertain only to contributions to political campaigns and “other partisan political activity,” a term that according to my source familiar with the ethics rules, might not include donations to local Democratic clubs, depending on their purpose. 

In the meantime, a spokesman for the New York court system told The New York Times that “Engoron’s actions and rulings in this matter are all part of the public record and speak for themselves. It is inappropriate to comment further.”

Will Stefanik’s letter lead to an investigation or even discipline? Or will it simply fuel the MAGA movement’s ire toward an elected judge and his law clerk? Watch this space.

Elisa Stefanik wants to be the VP choice. I’m not sure Trump thinks she’s glamorous enough (she needs to up her garish make-up and hairspray game) but I guess you never know.

As for whether this will go anywhere, I suppose it could. Why they think it makes sense that a member of congress makes the complaint is beyond me.

Meanwhile:

FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub on Thursday said her Republican colleagues have effectively put former President Donald Trump “in [a] category by himself” by refusing to investigate at least 28 instances where the agency’s professional staff determined that Trump or his family members likely violated regulations. In a statement, Weintraub revealed that there are at least 58 instances where the Federal Election Commission heard allegations against Trump. In at least 28 of those, staff at the Office of General Counsel determined that a criminal investigation was warranted—all of which went overlooked by Republican commissioners, who refused to approve any of Counsel’s recommendations against Trump. “My colleagues purport to be treating the former President and the current President alike, but the data is clear: At the FEC, Mr. Trump is in category by himself,” Weintraub said.

I suspect it will when all is said and done. The union movement’s ascendance in the last couple of years is extremely important and I just hope that the union members who benefit from it will remember who their enemies are — and their friends.

I don’t think the media’s focusing on the right candidate

This is what his people are hearing from him:

In case you were wondering, it’s all lies.

I post this stuff here because I know most people don’t look at what he’s saying because they have lives and they already know that Trump is a narcissistic monster. But it’s easy to forget just how deranged he really is and I think it’s important to have this stuff out there from time to time to remind ourselves of it.

Voters gonna vote

Brett Meiselas at Meidas Touch:

As Republicans try to cope with their crushing losses suffered during Tuesday’s elections, multiple MAGA firebrands have taken aim at one particular target – Taylor Swift. But Swift’s fervent fanbase, known as Swifties, are ready to fight back.

On Tuesday, the iconic superstar encouraged her fans to vote, writing on Instagram, “Voters gonna vote!” and sharing a link to Vote.org.

Last month, following a similar call to action, Swift was reportedly responsible for registering more than 35,000 people to vote.

That kind of muscular power-flexing by women seriously gets under the skin of pasty male misogynists (and worse).

Right-wing extremist and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec seethed in an unhinged post on X about “THE CHILDLESS, UNMARRIED ABORTION ARMY MOBILIZED BY BARBIE, TAYLOR SWIFT, AND TIKTOK THAT IS CRUSHING REPUBLICANS AT THE BALLOT BOX.”

In the words of Taylor Swift, you need to calm down.

Charlie Kirk, who runs the extremist organization Turning Point USA, a radical group attempting to pull young voters into the MAGA movement, could not contain his rage during his podcast.

“Taylor Swift is going to come out in the presidential election and she is going to mobilize her fans, I’ll be nice…and we’re going to be like ‘Oh why, where did all of these young female voters come from’… We better have a plan for that… Taylor Swift, I think she put up one voter registration link and she registered millions and millions. And let’s be honest, all the Swifties want, is swift abortion.”

Political activist Olivia Julianna responded by posting the Kirk rant on TikTok, told Swifties “you know what to do,” and posted her own link to Vote.org. The clip garnered 1.6 million views in 24 hours.

@0liviajulianna #taylorswift #swiftie #oliviajulianna ♬ original sound – Olivia Julianna

“It remains unclear why MAGA Republicans think it is smart to pick a fight with the Swifties,” Meiselas adds.

Um, ’cause the haters gonna, etc.?

Of, by, and for the most power-hungry

Ed Walker blogs at emptywheel. His message this Veterans Day: “Is it too much to ask Republicans to accept majority rule?”

Apparently, yes.

Ohio Republicans wasted no time in announcing their defiance of the constitutional amendment passed Tuesday that secured reproductive freedoms. The amendment passed 57-43:

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Four Ohio Republican state lawmakers are seeking to strip judges of their power to interpret an abortion rights amendment after voters opted to enshrine those rights in the state’s constitution this week.

Republican state Reps. Jennifer Gross, Bill Dean, Melanie Miller and Beth Lear said in a news release Thursday that they’ll push to have the Legislature, not the courts, make any decisions about the amendment passed Tuesday.

“To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative,” said the mix of fairly new and veteran lawmakers who are all vice-chairs of various House committees. “The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.”

The wording of that “ambiguous ballot initiative”? It was the Ohio GOP’s wording. And still they lost.

Democrats’ former Ohio state chair David Pepper posted a letter signed by 27 GOP legislators from the Ohio House Pro-Life Caucus pledging to defy the amended constitution:

Pepper writes:

Specifically, they pledge: “We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based on perception of intent. [ie. the new Constitution] We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in this state, and we will continue that work.”

There are so many ways to respond to the specifics of their statement. Here are a few:

1) “perception of intent”? — it’s the law. The Constitution! Not some ephemeral “intent.” And while they now claim confusion, THEY were the ones who claimed that the words of the Amendment were both clear and sweeping, trying to scare voters to vote No. They spent millions running ads on all of this. They put out government propaganda on it, using your tax dollars. Yet now they say the language is confusing and cloudy, so they don’t plan to respect it.

2) “everything in our power”? Your power is bound by the Constitution you are now pledging to defy. You have NO power to defy the Constitution you swear an oath to.

3) “We were elected”? Almost all of you are in districts that were rigged (by you) to guarantee victory. The people didn’t have a choice. And your districts are in open violation of the same Constitution you now pledge to violate. This week’s Issue 1 vote is far more legitimate than your exercise of power in districts that violate Ohio law (due to your leadership’s intentional violation of that law)

There are more retorts, but I’ll stop there. Because they don’t get us very far, even if they need to be said.

What this is, again, is a declaration that they plan to violate both the new law and the clear will of the people of Ohio as best they can.

The kicking and gouging for every last sliver of power is further proof that the GOP is no longer a political party but an extremist authoritarian faction that refuses to accept democratic outcomes. Republican pedants insist the nation is a republic, not a democracy (meaning a pure democracy), despite the word vote appearing in the U.S. Constitution dozens of times and majority over a dozen

Their intense efforts at rigging elections, twisting the law, and mining it for loopholes for defying the will of the people is exhausting. Politicians have always done so in vying for advantage. But the effort today reinforces just how strong the temptation is to seek power for its own sake. The Trump cult’s plan for wringing service from the meaning of public servant can be no clearer.

Now Democrats in New York state are taking up the game with fresh intensity. God help us.

Update: Pepper later this morning reinforces why the extreme gerrymandering since the 2010 election is so toxic to democracy and feeds both radicalism and cynicism.

… there’s now an entire generation of officeholders in the majority who’ve come to power, remained in power, and in some cases, risen to higher levels of power, without ever winning a contested election. A contested, general election.

Some were appointed to their initial office and never faced one real election. Others…had a single moment where a narrow group of voters mattered, and that was that. The rest of their careers career, the voters have never been given another choice. They’ve never had to campaign again. And for most, that’s the only politics they know.

On the flip side, there’s a generation of folks who’ve aspired to be public servants but are locked out. Completely shut out, no matter their skills or the quality of their campaigns.

He’s not talking about a fraction or even half in places like Ohio.

“I’m talking about almost every member of the current majorities. An entire generation of them.”

You wonder why democracy scares the bejesus out of them. It’s almost as scary as nonwhite, non-Christians and women taking control in their lives.

Japan is filled with cute critters, but these pint-sized squirrels are at the top of the list. The Japanese dwarf flying squirrel and Siberian flying squirrel are known for their big eyes, small stature, and overall adorable appearance. In fact, they’re so popular in Japan that they’re even used as the design on Sapporo’s metro card.

The Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (Pteromys momonga) is only found on Japan’s Honshu and Kyushu islands. Living in sub-alpine forests and boreal evergreen forests, these nocturnal animals blend into the trees with their coloring. With their body measuring up to 20 centimeters and their tail growing up to 14 centimeters, their small size can make them hard to spot.

A family of Japanese dwarf flying squirrels
pic.twitter.com/eh0hIhGd7S

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) November 7, 2023

Though the name might confuse you, these squirrels don’t fly. Instead, they use a membrane called the patagium to glide from tree to tree. Feasting on seeds, fruit, tree leaves, buds, and bark, these squirrels forage at night and spend their days tucked into the holes of trees. These rodents only mate once or twice a year, but their population is abundant and the IUCN has it listed as an animal of “Least Concern.”

Marge continues to make friends and influence people

I knew girls like her in high school. They all became criminals:

After Rep. Lauren Boebert helped get Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus over the summer, Greene has been on a payback mission against her former friend-turned-nemesis. And after a date at Beetlejuice The Musical turned into a national conversation about groping, Greene has resorted to a playbook familiar to any woman who survived high school: She’s telling GOP colleagues, according to lawmakers, that Boebert is a “whore.”

One Republican lawmaker, who has heard Greene use that word multiple times to describe Boebert, told The Daily Beast that Greene has been at this campaign for some time.

“Calling her a whore, that’s not new,” this GOP lawmaker said. “She’s been doing that for a while.”

Another GOP lawmaker also witnessed Greene refer to Boebert as a “whore.”

This second lawmaker additionally claimed Greene had trashed Boebert in a conversation with Donald Trump, though this member had no knowledge of the specific language Greene used in that conversation—just that the two had discussed Boebert. Yet another GOP member who speaks to Trump told The Daily Beast that Greene had, in fact, made “disparaging” remarks about Boebert to the former president, though again, this person didn’t have specifics about what Greene had said to Trump.

Trump didn’t return a request for comment via a spokesperson.

When The Daily Beast asked Greene about these accusations this week, the Georgia Republican didn’t deny them. Instead, she went on a tirade against this reporter.

“Why are you working on a story?” she asked. “Because you like to write trash, you just can’t help yourself.”

Greene continued that this reporter was “drawn to the gossip and the drama.”

“You just love it so much, you got to create it, and make it more, and bigger, and nastier,” she said.

Greene’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment. Boebert declined to comment.

Greene is in no position to call anyone a whore.