Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

He knows how to fail

When Mike Johnson tried to start a law school it didn’t go well:

In February 2012, Mike Johnson sent an aide on an urgent mission at the college where he had been working to open a law school: Locate a study that he believed would provethe project was financially possible.

For more than a year, Johnson — the dean of the not-yet-opened law school — had been telling donors and the public that the institution, which would focus on training Christian attorneys in northwest Louisiana, was not only achievable, but inevitable.

“From a pure feasibility standpoint,” Johnson, then 38, told the local Town Talk newspaper in 2010 after becoming dean, “I’m not sure how this can fail because … it looks like the perfect storm for our law school.”

But he had still not actually seen a feasibility study commissioned by the parent school, Louisiana College,a private Southern Baptist college in Pineville, La., now known as Louisiana Christian University.

The aide soon returned with disturbing news: The study had been buried in a filing cabinet. And it was all but useless.

Six months later, in August 2012, Johnson resigned as dean of the new school, which never opened even though the college spent $5 million to buy and renovate a Shreveport headquarters, among other expenses detailed in local media accounts.

The feasibility study was a “hodgepodge collection of papers,” with “nothing in existence” related to the need for the new law school, market studies, or “funding sources and prospects,” Johnson wrote the following year, describing the episode in what he called a “confidential memorandum” responding to questions from the Louisiana College Board of Trustees

Johnson’s April 2013 memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post, reveals how he navigated a previous executive management experience as he takes over a much larger organization, the U.S. House of Representatives, and becomes second in line to the presidency. The memo suggests that Johnson encouraged and agreed to lead what he later described as a sparsely researched effort that collapsed soon after he left.

The new speaker’s congressional biography makes no mention of his tenure as dean of the never-opened law school.Before winning election to the Louisiana legislature in 2015, and Congress a year later, Johnson mainly worked as a litigator for conservative causes, once remarking that his profession was “legal ministry.” He has also taught college courses, according to his House financial disclosures.

A spokesman for Johnson did not respond to a request for comment about the failed law school. Several others involved in the effort said Johnson had worked hard to make the project a reality and was not to blame for its failure.

The 2013 memo suggests, however, that when given a leadership opportunity, Johnson oversold his project’s prospects and failed to divulge key problems until after he left the job. In the memo, he blamed others for the problems,writing that the project collapsed because of larger issues at Louisiana College. He also faulted administrators for failing to send him the feasibility study, and said that a crisis involving the college’s accreditation agency undercut his effort to have the law school win operational approval.

“The ordeal created a real hardship for me and my family,” Johnson wrote, saying that he resigned “with great sadness and only as a last resort.”

Joe Aguillard, the president of Louisiana College,later offered an alternative explanation of events — pinningthe blame for the law school’s failure on Johnson, according to a memo written at the time by another board member, Heath Veuleman. Aguillard said that Johnson’s resignation was a selfish decision to pursue a “dream job,” according to the memo,which was obtained by The Post.Aguillard also blamed Johnson’s resignation “for the Law School’s present delays in opening its doors.” After leaving the school, Johnson said in a memo that he had accepted a job at a conservative legal institute in the Dallas area.

Veuleman wrote that Johnsonhad denied these allegations and said in an interview with The Post that the college’s financial and management turmoil made Johnson conclude that he “couldn’t be dean. He was constantly being usurped. … I remember phone calls in which Mike would say, ‘I can’t keep doing this.’”

Aguillard said in a brief phone conversation that he was hospitalized and could not give an interview. His wife, Judy Aguillard, later texted that “my husband loves Mike and mentored him. They are very close.”

Johnson had raised hopes in Shreveport that his project could be transformative for Louisiana’s third biggest city by bringing in its first law school. Today, civic leaders say that whoever was responsible for the failed effort, it was a significant missed opportunity.

He was the leader. And he was clearly unable to get the job done. Maybe he’s learned something since then. If so, I’d guess he’s learned how to grift off the wingnuts even better.

It just doesn’t get any better than this:

The law school was to be named for Paul Pressler III, a retired Texas judge and leader of the Southern Baptist Convention who, after the school’s collapse, was accused in a lawsuit and court affidavits of sexual misconduct or assault by multiple men, including some who said they were underage at the time of the alleged activity.Tim Johnson, who was executive vice president of Louisiana College at the time of the law school’s launch, said there was pushback about making Pressler the namesake due to his “ultraconservative” biblical views, but that the assault allegations were unknown at the time.

Pressler’s lawyer, Ted Tredennick, said the 93-year-old was unable to respond directly due to dementia but rejected the assault allegations on his behalf. “He denied those allegations categorically when they were first made 20 years ago; he has continuously and consistently denied them since; he would deny them today if he were able.” A trial in the lawsuit has been delayed but is expected early next year.

Here’s a good example of his leadership skills:

Gabriel Little, who was in charge of the capital campaign, said Johnson led an impressive effort to recruit faculty, create a curriculum, and present a proposal to win certification from the American Bar Association.

“He put together one heck of a presentation for accreditation” by the ABA, Little said.

But as Johnson prepared to do that, he later wrote in his memorandum to trustees, he learned that Louisiana College had run into a roadblock in its own effort to bolster its accreditation statusfrom the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Johnson wrote that the college’s problem with accreditation meant hecould not win ABA approvalfor the law school.

Around the same time, the college faced other struggles. As it moved in a more conservative theological direction, its leaders seized on doctrinal disputes within the Southern Baptist convention to discredit critics, sparking protests by students and some faculty.

Rondall Reynoso, a previous head of the college’s art department, said a culture of fear pervaded the campus — to the point that he stopped using his work computer because of concern that he was being surveilled.

“It was an inquisition-type atmosphere, almost,” Reynoso said, attributing the unrest to what he called the undue influence of the Southern Baptist Convention.

A spokeswoman for Louisiana Christian University, as the school is now known, said no one currently in leadership was serving at the time of the failed law school. The new administration, which took over in 2015, “has worked to address previous deficiencies,” the spokeswoman said, resulting in a 2021 review that affirmed the university’s accreditation “with zero findings of noncompliance.”

Johnson wrote in his memo that the “unrest” on campus was shocking, but others said he should have been well aware of the turmoil from news reports about threats to the college’s accreditation.

“By the time Johnson gets involved, the problems are well-known, but they’re dismissed by hardcore conservatives as a liberal attack,” Reynoso said.

At the same time, concern grew at the college about millions of dollars of deferred maintenance at the Pineville campus, raising questions about plans to spend money to start the law school and other projects.

Johnson wrote in his confidential memorandum that Louisiana College’s conflicts undercut his plans and he had “no choice” but to delay the ABA filing. In addition, he needed to provide information from the law school feasibility study to win over the ABA.

The problem was that he had never seen the study, notwithstanding his bold statement more than a year earlier that the school’s feasibility was beyond question.

He’d heard about the feasibility study but hadn’t seen it. He asked for it bu they just didn’t get it to him. What could he do? Well, he quit:

“… when the law school struggled to raise funds, along with the accreditation issues, “Mike probably saw that it was going to be a long time to do it, if it ever got done, and he was a bright young man and just chose to pursue another path.”

Admitting nothing he covered his ass and moved on.

On Aug. 15, 2012, Mike Johnson wrote Aguillard a letter of resignation. He said that developments “beyond our control” had affected his ability to run the school, citing the college’s accreditation problems that had made it difficult to raise funds and recruit students and faculty.

“Our hands are currently tied,” Johnson wrote, adding that he needed to look out for his family.

Privately, Johnson worked with the college on a public relations strategy to cast the resignation in the best possible light, according to internal documents reviewed by The Post.

The talking points included, “Minimize publicity on Mike’s resignation and keep all necessary messaging brief, positive and consistent,” and “Do not concede law school, but maintain it as a temporarily delayed and scaled-down future project.”

That didn’t happen. The law school never opened. Johnson, meanwhile, was elected as a state representative and then in 2016 to the U.S. House, followed by his elevation last month to the speakership.

It sounds as though the new speaker has the skills to run the House like Trump ran the Trump Organization. Great.

And listen

Michelle Goldberg on “the argument.” It’s not an easy topic and she does a very good job of sorting it out:

Last week, the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law sent a letter to nearly 200 college presidents urging them to investigate campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine for potential violations of federal and state laws against providing material support to terrorism. As evidence for these very serious accusations, the ADL and the Brandeis center offered only the student group’s own strident rhetoric, including a sentence in its online tool kit, which praised Hamas’s attacks on Israel and said: “We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of the Palestinians on the ground.”

Under the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has also ordered state universities to shut chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine. Citing the same tool kit, DeSantis said, “That is material support to terrorism, and that is not going to be tolerated in the state of Florida, and it should not be tolerated in these United States of America.” Virginia’s Republican attorney general has opened an investigation into American Muslims for Palestine, a national group that, according to the ADL, helps coordinate the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine, “for potentially violating Virginia’s charitable solicitation laws, including benefiting or providing support to terrorist organizations.” Several Republicans, including Donald Trump, have called for revoking the visas of pro-Palestinian student activists.

Ever since Hamas’s slaughter and mass kidnapping of Israelis on Oct. 7, there has been mounting fear and fury over the mistreatment of Jews at American colleges and universities. The Homeland Security, Justice and Education Departments are all taking steps to combat campus antisemitism. Congressional resolutions have condemned it. But while plenty of pro-Palestinian students have behaved in appalling ways, many also feel besieged, and for good reason.

For Palestinian and Muslim students, the invocation of terrorism law is especially frightening. Attempts to curtail anti-Zionist activism are not new; about 35 states have laws targeting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. But now advocates for Palestinian rights describe a new level of repression. “The ADL is calling for the mass violation of students’ rights in a manner that’s reminiscent of the post 9/11 environment, but with a more intensely Palestinian twist,” said Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at the civil rights organization Palestine Legal. She predicts that if federal and state governments follow through on the ADL’s demands, Palestinian activists will be subjected to an increase in surveillance, infiltration and investigation, even though their groups “pose zero threat and have done nothing but engage in speech 100 percent protected by the First Amendment.”

Columbia University’s Rashid Khalidi, a pre-eminent historian of Palestinian history, readily acknowledged a rash of recent antisemitic incidents on college campuses. But he drew a distinction between interpersonal harassment and an institutional crackdown. “Both sides have feelings of being victimized,” he told me, but the forces arrayed against them are not the same. “The Patriot Act may be mobilized to shut down speech” deemed supportive of Palestinian terrorism. “That’s the difference.”

No one should underestimate how awful the campus climate is for many Jewish students, who’ve experienced a surge in violence and abuse. At Cornell, an engineering student was arrested after threatening to shoot up a kosher dining hall and calling for Jews to be raped and murdered. Demonstrators at a rally in support of Palestinians assaulted Jewish counterprotesters at Tulane; one student had his nose broken. In October, Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean of at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote an opinion essay headlined, “Nothing Has Prepared Me for the Antisemitism I See on College Campuses Now.” In it, he told of a student who insisted that she would feel safe on campus only if the school got “rid of the Zionists.”

This hostile environment stems, at least in part, from the nearly vaunted role played by the Palestinian cause in the left’s understanding of global dispossession. Because America helps underwrite Israel’s military occupation, Palestinians are often viewed as singular symbols of imperialist oppression. For decades, radical Black activists in America have seen, in Israel’s occupation of Palestine, a mirror of their own subjugation, and that identification was supercharged during America’s 2020 racial justice protests, when a mural of George Floyd appeared in Gaza City. In some social justice circles, then, support for Israel is viewed as something akin to support for the K.K.K.

This contempt for Zionism has only accelerated with the pulverizing bombing of Gaza and its thousands of civilian casualties. And too often, on hothouse campuses full of young people with half-formed ideas and poor impulse control, anti-Zionism segues into hatred directed at Jews.

For some Jews on campus, the vituperation against Zionism has been particularly disorienting because, for years now, they’ve been trained in exquisite sensitivity to identity-based slights.

Not all Jews identify with the state of Israel, of course, and activists from Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow have led protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. But many Jews see their relationship with Israel as an essential part of their Jewishness, and even some fierce critics of Israel’s government were shaken by the widespread demonization of the country so soon after Hamas’s atrocities. When they say that the campus climate makes them feel unsafe — a rhetorical trump card in other contexts — they expect official action.

On Wednesday, the presidents of several Israeli universities wrote a letter to their international colleagues calling on them to accord Jewish and Israeli students and faculty members “the same respect and protections as any other minority.” Citing principles of safety and inclusivity, the letter said, “Just as it would be unthinkable for an academic institution to extend free speech protections to groups targeting other protected classes, so too should demonstrations that call for our destruction and glorify violence against Jews be explicitly prohibited and condemned.”

But this demand for protection can collide with the First Amendment rights of Zionism’s critics, and with academic freedom more broadly. “I wouldn’t compare this with the internment of the Japanese Americans in World War II, but the point I’m making is that there are times when people get really upset about what’s happening in the world and do things that are unwise at best and really harmful to people and democracy at worst,” said Kenneth Stern, director of Bard College’s Center for the Study of Hate and author of “The Conflict Over the Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate.”

Stern occupies a unique position in this profoundly polarizing debate. He’s a liberal Zionist and an expert on antisemitism, as well as a committed civil libertarian who critiques the way mainstream Jewish groups wield institutional power to try to silence pro-Palestinian voices.

As he describes in his book, in 1982, he resigned from the left-wing National Lawyers Guild rather than face what felt like a purge for refusing to sign onto a strictly pro-Palestinian line. Years later, he became the in-house antisemitism expert at the American Jewish Committee, but eventually left in part over concern that, in its ardent defense of Israel on college campuses, the group was forsaking a commitment to academic freedom. He helped draft an internationally adopted definition of antisemitism that includes some forms of anti-Zionism. He’s also inveighed, in opinion essays, congressional testimony and in his 2020 book, against the use of that definition, put out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016, to traduce the free speech of Israel’s critics.

“The complexity of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict should make it an ideal subject to teach critical thinking and how to have difficult discussions,” writes Stern. “Instead, it is being used as a toxin that threatens the entire academic enterprise.”

As with the conflict between Israel and Palestine more broadly, there’s plenty of blame to go around. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a libertarian-leaning free speech organization, shared data with me showing that, since 2002, there have been more attempts made to de-platform pro-Palestinian campus speakers than pro-Israel ones. But attempts to shut down pro-Israel speakers, by disinviting or disrupting them, are more likely to be successful.

Both sides, then, have credible stories to tell about being censored and intimidated. The difference is where that intimidation is coming from. For supporters of Israel, it largely comes from peers and, in some cases, professors. For supporters of Palestine, it comes from powerful outside institutions, including the state.

There is little reason to think that the pressure brought to bear by these outside institutions is making Jewish students any safer. One result of the denunciatory mood that overtook many progressive spaces toward the tail end of the Trump years was to give reactionary ideas a rebellious frisson. You could see this in the little subculture of New York scenesters who adopted the trappings of conservative Catholicism as a rebuke to liberalism, but also in more significant cultural phenomena, like the popularity of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast and the right-wing radicalization of Elon Musk. Among young people, the appeal of right-wing heterodoxy was limited by the fact that relatively few want to give up either a commitment to human equality or premarital sex. Anti-Zionist activism, by contrast, offers something that’s been missing from left-wing politics for years: the chance to stand up for the downtrodden and scandalize elites.

“By trying to censor anti-Israel remarks, it becomes more, not less, difficult to tackle both antisemitism and anti-Israel dogma,” Stern writes in his book. “The campus debate is changed from one of exposing bigotry to one of protecting free speech, and the last thing pro-Israel advocates need is a reputation for censoring, rather than refuting, their opponents.”

Of course, Israel’s partisans already have that reputation. “What can you say about what settlers are doing in the West Bank?” asked Khalidi. “What can you say about ethnic cleansing in 1948,” the year of Israel’s founding? “How can you defend any of those things? They don’t have an argument. They have to shut down debate.” Those who disagree with him might try to prove him wrong.

On Friday afternoon, New York County Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron expanded his gag order in the Trump Organization fraud case. He made clear again that, in essence, he would not stand for any more of Trump’s or his lawyers’ attempts at intimidation via social media or verbal diarrhea:

“The threat of, and actual, violence resulting from heated political rhetoric is well-documented,” Engoron wrote. “Since the commencement of this bench trial, my chambers have been inundated with hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, voicemails, emails, letters, and packages. The First Amendment right of defendants and their attorneys to comment on my staff is far and away outweighed by the need to protect them from threats and physical harm.”

On Oct. 3, 2023, Engoron imposed a gag order narrowly barring Trump from making statements about his staff after he smeared the judge’s law clerk on Truth Social. The order did not prevent Trump from making any statements about the judge or New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the lawsuit threatening the former president’s business empire.

Trump has attacked both the judge and the attorney general via social media repeatedly since that time, without violating the terms of the gag order.

“As I have made clear, as the Judge in this case and the trier of fact, the gag order does not apply to me,” Engoron wrote. “However, I will not tolerate, under any circumstances, remarks about my court staff.”

Engoron already has twice sanctioned Donald Trump, fining him a total of $15,000 for violations.

Don’t play chicken with these children. Get “serious.”

One more time, this is how the Party of Trump rolls:

1. Find the line
2. Step over it
3. Dare anyone to push you back
4. If no one does, that’s the new line
5. Repeat

A Bigger We keeps winning

The last four minutes of this Giridharadas dialogue mentioned on Friday is worth four of your minutes. The left must stop playing defense. We’re winning fights that matter.

We are endeavoring to do a really cool thing in this country, which is to build a country made of the world, a country made of all the other countries…. We are trying to build a country where every kind of person from every last village on this planet can come here and realize more of their potential than they would have wherever they came from. We don’t live up to it a lot, but it is an awesome pursuit.

Tell the story of what we’re fighting for.

And why is he running for president

We’re less than a week in to @repdeanphillips campaign, and it’s clearly one of the best-run campaigns in America.

And by “best-run” I mean you take three-dozen coked-up rabid monkeys, coat them in motor oil, tape knives to their paws, and set them loose in a Cracker Barrel on a…

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 3, 2023

This is what Wilson’s talking about:

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire—Dean Phillips, the newly minted 2024 primary challenger to President Joe Biden, made a lofty promise to hold 119 town halls in New Hampshire in 13 weeks.

But if the other 118 town halls are anything like the first, the Minnesota congressman—and New Hampshire voters—may be in for a painful ride.

By the end of Phillips’ three-hour event in Manchester on Wednesday night, two voters had been thrown out after a tense exchange with the candidate over Israel, one voter stormed out when trying to defend the person who had been thrown out, and the candidate’s team was preparing to scrub the recording of the event from the internet.

Indeed, less than an hour after the doors closed, the Phillips campaign appeared to unlist the livestream of the event from YouTube—meaning no one can watch the video unless they already watched the stream and have the original link.

The Phillips campaign did not respond to a request for comment about why the video was unlisted and whether it had anything to do with an exchange Phillips initially said he was glad to hash out “in front of the cameras.” Notably, the livestream of Phillips’ campaign launch event is still available on his YouTube page.

What transpired at the Rex Theatre on Wednesday night is only known to the handful of reporters who were there, and a crowd that consisted of many of the candidate’s personal contacts. Phillips’ mother, DeeDee, was in the crowd; his wife, Annalise, sang with the opening band.

At first, the 54-year old presidential hopeful was seemingly off to an auspicious start. The Phillips advance team kitted out the venue with extra lighting, at least five camera rigs—including an intricate setup with a retail value of over $12,000 for a jib and digital camera alone—and an open-air control room, where an event staffer could be heard loudly whispering commands for the camera men.

With such high production value, it’s unlikely the event was meant to only be watched live and not archived for curious voters to watch later.

But expensive equipment could not save Phillips from some self-inflicted wounds.

“I was a hockey goalie in Minnesota, so I’m used to taking shots,” Phillips said of criticism leveled at him in recent weeks from a Democratic Party that is uniformly uninterested in his primary challenge. “In fact, my mother is here, and she never went to my hockey games because it was very difficult. But now, she has to watch this! But those shots inspire me.”

But the candidate could seemingly not handle a shot from Atong Chan, a 23-year-old Black woman from Manchester who said she was born in a refugee camp in Kenya. Chan grilled Phillips on why he hasn’t yet called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

“I have to tell ya,” Phillips said after a four-minute buildup to the thrust of the question about a ceasefire, “I took note of it, you didn’t mention—how do you feel about the Israeli babies? And moms, and dads, and grandmas, and hostages in Gaza who were brutally murdered. Before I answer your question, I want to understand if that empathy is across humanity, or only for Palestinians?”

The congressman’s immediate response did not land well.

“For you to say that makes me feel like you—” Chan said, before Phillips cut her off.

Heavy crosstalk ensued. Chan accused Phillips of gaslighting her, and when the congressman tried to respond, another man in the crowd came to Chan’s defense. Toward the end of the nearly 15-minute exchange, Chan and a friend were escorted out of the building as she began yelling at Phillips.

The optics were more than ironic for Phillips, whose long-running slogan—which adorns the side of his campaign bus—is “Everyone’s Invited!”

“This is so embarrassing for you,” Chan told the candidate, “and you want to make it seem like it was embarrassing for me.”

While Phillips was supposed to take questions from voters that night, he wasn’t supposed to take them from the press. The initial word from the campaign was that the candidate was on a “media blackout” until his Friday night appearance on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher—but the candidate eventually succumbed to a swarm of reporters.

In a press gaggle, Phillips accused The Daily Beast of being part of the problem—what he earlier characterized as the “rage industrial complex” in the media—for wanting to ask him about the heated exchange with Chan.

“What you’re doing right now is what you do, which is to focus on one thing—this is exactly what I’m talking about, I’m so glad you asked that—this is what attracts the eyeballs,” he said.

“It’s the fights. It’s the division,” Phillips continued. “And you’re not going to ask a single question about the 99 percent of other people in the room who were thoughtful, respectful, had just as much interest in coming here to have their questions issued and answered.”

Chan, who said she voted for Biden both in the 2020 New Hampshire primary and in the general election, told The Daily Beast she’s considering sitting out 2024 altogether after the interaction with Phillips.

“It’s like he’s cosplaying something he’s not,” she said of the congressman.

Although Phillips has made the case that Biden’s polling numbers are bad—which is correct—his message that Democratic voters should elect a third-term House member in order to avoid a second Donald Trump term seems to have a limited constituency.

Phillips’ campaign launch in New Hampshire last week was more memorable for its awkward moments and a non-answer the candidate gave to The Daily Beast about a past donation from conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, whose ties to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have come under immense scrutiny following investigations from ProPublica.

But the town hall wasn’t all rough patches. At one point, Phillips opened up about a deeper motivation behind his run. He described traveling to Vietnam to visit the site where his father died during the war, collecting a jar of dirt to commemorate him. At just 6months old when his father died in that helicopter crash, Phillips has lived his entire life under the trauma of a tragedy ultimately stemming from a president’s decision to send troops into war.

Falling back into his happy warrior brand, Phillips cast the Israel blowup as a case study in the political divisions he says he is trying to mend.

“In a way,” Phillips said as fading screaming could be heard from the lobby, “I’m glad this occurred in front of you and in front of the cameras.”

Another rich guy who thinks he’s God. And he’s willing to give vast sums to “consultants” (Steve Schmidt) who are doing a very bad job. Wilson has an ax to grind against Schmidt but he’s not wrong.

Maybe No Labels can put him and Doug Burgam on their ticket and squeeze them for a few extra million.

A different kind of soother for a Friday afternoon

This is what we call a happy thought in these troubled times:

Whenever I look at the latest polls and start to freak out about Donald Trump winning the presidency again, I calm myself by remembering that the guy is very likely going to be an at-least-once convicted felon by next November. While that won’t bother his fans, I still think it will bother enough swing voters that he will lose, and maybe spectacularly.

That scenario got a little more likely Thursday when the California judge overseeing a misconduct trial against Trump attorney and coup-plotter John Eastman made a “preliminary finding” of culpability on Eastman’s part for his attempts to halt the certification of the 2020 election results.

What’s the upshot? No, Eastman isn’t guilty of anything just yet. But he is now closer to being disbarred, and that could make it more likely that he flips. MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance wrote on X: “If John Eastman loses his license in the bar proceeding, it incentiv[iz]es him (or would incentivize a rationale person) to plead & cooperate in the criminal case to avoid prison (since he’s already lost his license).”

Eastman is one of the 19 defendants in the Fulton County, Georgia, RICO case against Trump and others for conspiring to steal the election. Four named defendants in that case have already pleaded out and agreed to provide testimony against other defendants: lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Kenneth Chesebro and bail bondsman Scott Hall.

And don’t forget former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who got an immunity deal from special counsel Jack Smith in Smith’s January 6–related case against Trump. It was revealed just last week that Meadows has testified under oath in that case three times since agreeing to the deal. It was this news that led Chris Christie to go on Morning Joe and crow: “This is deadly. It’s done. [Trump]’s going to be convicted. It’s over.”

On top of all this, of course, was the main Trump family drama of the week, the testimony by his sons in the New York attorney general’s case against the Trump Organization. Don Jr. in his testimony tried to pin any misstatements about Trump family property values on Mazars, the accounting firm the Trumps used; Eric basically denied that he worked on financial statements. Ivanka Trump is set to testify next week, after a judge late Thursday denied her motion that requiring her to testify during a school week would place an “undue hardship” on her (these people are so shameless). The case could cost the family $250 million.

But the real cases are likely to cost Donald Trump a lot more: the White House. His future. His freedom.

I’m telling you, this is all going to catch up with Trump at the worst (or, depending on your point of view, the best) possible time. Yes, Judge Aileen Cannon down in Florida did Trump a favor this week by suggesting she might postpone next May’s trial date in the Trump case she’s hearing, the one about the classified documents. She might move it to after the election.

A bummer, and she’s a hack, as she’s already proven to us. But fine. The other cases will proceed. And high-profile people who had direct contact with Trump have flipped and will testify against him. Christie, whatever else we think of him, is a former federal prosecutor, so when he says what he said about Meadows, he’s speaking from experience.

We’re entering what’s going to be a maddening and horrifying time. In all likelihood, none of these other Republican candidates is going to make a charge at Trump. They’re just too afraid of him. Nikki Haley criticized him obliquely a few days ago, but no one (save Christie) is going to tell the truth about him because they know what will happen to them: They’ll sink like stones. So they’re in an impossible position—of their own making, by the way, because every one of them cheered Trump’s rise—whereby if they don’t go after the front-runner, he’ll be untouched and stay 25 points ahead of the field, and if they do, it will hurt them, and Trump’s lead will likely only grow.

So we’re in for 10 weeks—until the January 15 Iowa caucuses—of poll after poll showing Trump ahead and probably gaining. No piece of bad news will matter. He’ll roll in Iowa. Next will come New Hampshire. No date has yet been set for that primary, but it’s expected to be sometime in January. In New Hampshire, Trump is if anything further ahead than he is in Iowa. Then there’s not another GOP primary until South Carolina on February 24 (there will be Nevada and Virgin Islands caucuses on February 8). In other words, if Trump wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, the race is basically over, and there will be a full month of headlines calling Trump victorious and unstoppable.

Actually—not all headlines. In fact, on the very day, January 16, that we’ll wake up to headlines blaring, “Trump Sails to Victory in Iowa,” we will also be greeted by this headline: “E. Jean Carroll Damages Trial Against Trump Starts Today.” Remember that New York Judge Lewis Kaplan has already said that Trump raped Carroll in the normally understood sense of the term. So readers, and voters, are going to be reminded of that. Then the January 6 trial, the one in which Meadows flipped, starts the day before Super Tuesday. And so on.

Trump is a cornered animal. As the walls close in, he is going to go insane. Nothing in his pampered life has prepared him for the reckoning that’s coming his way. He’s gotten out of everything, from the Vietnam draft to all the bankruptcies, to the impeachments, when he obviously committed high crimes and misdemeanors. His skating days are over.

I pray for that every night.

DeSantis: I know Donald Trump and a lot of his people have been focusing on things like footwear. I’ll tell you this. If Donald Trump can summon the balls to show up to the debate. I’ll wear a boot on my head. pic.twitter.com/CF11I4JtOT

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 3, 2023

I’ll be so glad when I don’t have to see or read about this guy anymore:

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis on Thursday contributed to the seemingly never-ending discourse about whether or not he wears lifts in his boots by outlining a bizarre scenario in which he would wear a boot on his head at next week’s GOP primary debate.

During an interview on Newsmax, the Florida governor—who has denied wearing any sort of height-boosting footwear—first responded to the chatter by saying that “this is no time for foot fetishes” because “we’ve got serious problems as a country.”

He went on to mention how Donald Trump has weighed in on the topic. On Tuesday, the former president’s campaign declared “#BOOTGATE” to be the “KISS OF DEATH” for DeSantis.

“I know Donald Trump and a lot of his people have been focusing on things like footwear,” DeSantis said. “I’ll tell you this: If Donald Trump can summon the balls to show up to the debate, I’ll wear a boot on my head.”

This is a perfect illustration of why he has done so badly. First, he’s re-running his Florida comrade Marco Rubio’s strategy in 2016 which flopped badly. Calling out Trump’s manhood just isn’t effective among Republicans because they don’t like seeing Dear Leader insulted. That’s his job. Also, why in the hell would he voluntarily bring this thing up again? It’s reaching Dukakis-in-a-tank levels of humiliation. And yet,  “DeSantis’ campaign was apparently so thrilled with his jab at the Republican front runner that it sent out a press release shortly afterward with that quote in the subject line.”

He’s just not good at this.

Trump opens up his rally in Houston, TX, with the national anthem sung by J6 insurrectionists:

“I call them the J6 hostages. Not prisoners, I call them the hostages…When that came out it went to the number one song. It was beating everybody. It beat Taylor Swift.” pic.twitter.com/NP60KT15OL

— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) November 2, 2023

It did not beat Taylor Swift.

I have been documenting Donald Trump’s plans for his restoration ever since he was exiled to his Palm Beach Elba on January 20, 2021. It was clear from that moment on that he was plotting his comeback and the people around him weren’t just licking their wounds and preparing to move on, they were readying plans to ensure that the second term permanently solidified their power. They’ve been hard at work ever since.

They had begun the project the previous fall, with a plan called “Schedule F” which was implemented just 13 days before the election. The presidential edict called for the stripping of all the executive branch departments, from the FBI, the intelligence agencies, the Pentagon and, of course, the usual suspects, the EPA and the IRS. Biden reversed this upon taking office and the congress passed some roadblocks to using it in the future but nobody believes they will be effective if Trump, or frankly, any Republican, once again assumes the presidency. (Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has endorsed this concept promising to “slit the throats” of government bureaucrats if he were to take office.)

Trump has been giving speeches on the subject although they don’t get much coverage in the mainstream media. In the summer of 2022, before the had announced his run he addressed his own vanity “think tank,” the America First Policy Institute:

“We need to make it much easier to fire rogue bureaucrats who are deliberately undermining democracy or, at a minimum, just want to keep their jobs. They want to hold onto their jobs. Congress should pass historic reforms empowering the president to ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent or unnecessary for the job can be told—did you ever hear this—‘You’re fired, get out, you’re fired.’ [You] have to do it. Deep state. Washington will be an entirely different place.”

Needless to say, Trump’s notion of who is corrupt, incompetent or necessary is purely dictated by their loyalty to him personally.

There is also Trump’s Agenda 47, a laundry list of extremist right wing “policies” described by Salon’s Chauncy DeVega,this way:

Agenda 47 would consist of an end to birthright citizenship, further criminalizing transgender people and the LGBTQI community more broadly, expanding the thought crime and other censorship laws to end the teaching of “critical race theory” and to defeat “Woke” and “Black Lives Matter”, attacking academic freedom and replacing it with “patriot education”, implementing a national stop and frisk law, pardoning the Jan. 6 terrorists, putting homeless people in camps or some other designated area under threat of arrest, building high tech “freedom cities”, ending the professional civil service and replacing it with right-wing political appointees and other such partisan agents, gutting the Department of Justice and other parts of the government that opposed Trump’s attacks on democracy and the rule of law, executing drug dealers, starting a trade war with China, and making “peace” with Vladimir Putin by withdrawing support for the Ukrainian people and their freedom struggle. In many ways, Agenda 47 is a continuation of the fascist and other authoritarian policies Trump put in place during his first regime but now made even more extreme and cruel.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? And let’s not forget Project 2025, a very special plan by the Heritage Foundation to be ready on Day One with a full roster of MAGA replacements for all those Deep State bureaucrats Trump and his minions will be firing. Peter Dans, the director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project said, “we need to flood the zone with conservatives. This is a clarion call to come to Washington. People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, ‘This is my lifetime moment to serve.’”

The Heritage Foundation has experience with this sort of thing. They were tasked with staffing the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, another daft Republican experiment to rebuild a fantasy government based entirely on their conservative ideology. You may remember how that turned out:

Andrew Burns, 23, a Red Cross volunteer who had taught English in rural China, felt going to Iraq would help him pursue a career in humanitarian aid. Todd Baldwin, 28, a legislative aide for Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), thought the opportunity was too good to pass up. John Hanley, 24, a Web site editor, wanted to break into the world of international relations. Anita Greco, 25, a former teacher, and Casey Wasson, 23, a recent college graduate in government, just needed jobs.

For months they wondered what they had in common, how their names had come to the attention of the Pentagon, until one day they figured it out: They had all posted their resumes at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank.

They didn’t have any experience doing things like building a stock market from scratch or running Massive infrastructure reconstruction projects in a country that had been razed by “shock and awe.” But the Heritage Foundation did make sure they were all staunchly pro-life so there was that.

The CPA was an utter disaster, of course. And I think we can be sure that the same level of expertise will be tapped for the US Government if Schedule F, Agenda 47 and Project 2025 Are implemented.

This week the NY Times reported on yet another project in the works, this one spearheaded by the odious Stephen Miller and Trump’s former body man turned hatchet man, John John McEntee. Under the auspices of yet another Trump affiliated institution, the “MAGA ACLU” called American First Legal these two have been tasked with finding legal advisers for a new Trump administration who will not be unduly constrained by musty old traditions like “the rule of law” or “the Constitution.” Think John Eastman or Jeffrey Clark, although those two will likely no longer have law licenses by that time and may even be in jail. (It’s unclear if that would be an impediment to serving in a new Trump administration.)

What’s most interesting about this new project is that they have decided that they no longer want the input or participation from the Federalist Society which is now considered a bunch of RINOs who can’t be trusted:

“The Federalist Society doesn’t know what time it is,” said Russell T. Vought, a former senior Trump administration official who runs a think tank with close ties to the former president. He argued that many elite conservative lawyers had proved to be too timid when, in his view, the survival of the nation is at stake.

Such comments may surprise those who view the Federalist Society as hard-line conservatives. But the move away from the group reflects the continuing evolution of the Republican Party in the Trump era and an effort among those now in his inner circle to prepare to take control of the government in a way unseen in modern presidential history.

The purges have begun, I guess. It was only a matter of time.

All of these various agendas and projects are designed for one purpose only, to “deconstruct the administrative state” as former Trump adviser and podcaster Steve Bannon has called for. And considering the Republican party track record, not to mention Donald Trump’s, the prospects of it being successful are very dim. They aren’t competent at much of anything when it comes to governing anymore but they are very good at tearing things down and causing chaos, destabilizing everything they touch.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s been a worse time in our history for such a stress test on the US government and our democracy. It’s important to make sure they don’t get the chance to transform any of these plans into action.

Salon

Be as excited about expanding freedom

Anand Giridharadas presents a video conversation about what inpired “The Persuaders” at The Ink :

A year from now, America will face a defining choice between authoritarianism and freedom, hatred and love, exclusion and inclusion, and, as of now, it’s a dead heat.

It shouldn’t be. It doesn’t have to be.

Early in the conversation, Giridharadas says:

In a moment in American life in which the contest is not small government versus big government, blue versus red, left versus right, high taxes versus low taxes, in which the contest is really pro-democracy versus anti-democracy, some of us versus all of us … it was a dead heat. And sometimes we do well in the dead heat. And that means 49-46. A couple states more than that, and sometimes we lose the dead heat. But as a writer, as opposed to being a campaigner who has to eke out these narrow victories, I have the luxury of stepping back a little bit and saying, hold on.

We are going to the American people in this era and saying, “Here is fascism, and here is freedom.” And before you get to gerrymandering, just polling, just asking people what they want, it’s 50-50 … ish.

I’m not saying all the rigging stuff is not happening, and it magnifies the problem, but I think I started from the premise of we’re being a little bit easy on ourselves when we blame the rigging. The honest truth is we are presenting the American people in this era with a referendum on fascism and freedom, and the jury is really, really out. And a lot of people are really excited about the fascism option.

The left needs to build what it has failed to so far: a “galvanizing, inviting, seductive movement…. I think we need to throw a more fun party.” Right now, the dytopian, dehumanizing, Bizarro America movement the right leans into “reads as the more fun time.” At the same time, the left’s movement (what there is), is “the most inclusive platform, perhaps in any country in the history of the world,” yet reads as “tedious, moralistic, scoldy, wonky … we are playing the fiddle of wonkery while democracy burns.”

A recent arrival from Florida here organizes a monthly Democratic Happy Hour unconnected with the local Democratic Party. What’s great about it is that there is no program, no speakers (outside of election season), no volunteer signup sheets, no trainings. Just drinks and political conversation with like-minded people at some local brew pub. Low barrier to entry. No asks. Great for noobs and new arrivals.

I much prefer it to the more serious “Drinks with Dems” affairs in town. Why? Ladder of engagement-wise, it’s less programatic and more fun. Those who want to get their hands dirty with campaigns will get there on their schedule. Too often activists organize their events to attract other activists rather than to cultivate new ones by making friends first. On making our movement a fun time, Giridharadas is spot on.