U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Virginia Democrat, will run for governor in 2025, the Associated Press reports this morning:
Spanberger, a three-term Democrat, made the announcement in a campaign video, highlighting the importance of lowering prescription drug prices, growing the middle class and easing inflation. In a video titled “What Matters Most,” Spanberger also emphasized the importance of recruiting and retaining teachers “and stopping extremists from shredding women’s reproductive rights.”
“Our country and our Commonwealth are facing fundamental threats to our rights, our freedoms, and to our democracy,” Spanberger said. “While some politicians in Richmond focus on banning abortion and books, what they’re not doing is helping people.”
Spanberger’s run for governor has been rumored since July. Let’s hope she has a Democrat lined up to run competititvely in 2024 for her 7th Congressional District House seat.
The former CIA officer and law enforcement officer for the U.S. Postal Service won her first congressional race in a district that had been held by Republicans for almost 50 years.
The Commonwealth prohibits its governors from serving consecutive terms. That’s led to intense speculation about Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s next political move, as well as early jockeying in effective shadow campaigns for the chief executive’s office.
As for other potential gubernatorial candidates, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, a Democrat, is expected to announce campaign plans soon.
A former Blue Dog and current member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, Spanberger has engaged in the against-the grain centrist and positioning that characterizes Democrats in swing districts. She won her seat from incumbent Dave Brat in 2018 by 2 points, held it by under 2 points in 2020, and won by 4.6 points in 2022 after redistricting.
Spanberger has used her past work in federal law enforcement and the CIA to appeal to independents and moderate Republicans in her swing district while energizing the Democratic base with her background as an organizer with the gun-control group Moms Demand Action.
In the House, she has sought to strike a similar balance, aligning with liberals on abortion rights, for instance, while pushing back at times against the party’s left wing. She was a vocal critic of the “defund the police” rhetoric that some Democrats voiced in the 2020 cycle.
Spanberger never backed Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for House speaker and went further last year by rebuking Pelosi’s handling of legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading stock, accusing her of putting forward legislation that was “designed to fail.”
Spanberger was critical of her party’s messaging and negotiating tactics related to President Biden’s original Build Back Better agenda, telling the New York Times in November 2021 that “nobody elected him to be FDR; they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”
The centrist Democrat has many of the right enemies.
Yesterday, Trump referred to fellow Americans as vermin , evoking the Third Reich.
Former President Donald J. Trump, on a day set aside to celebrate those who have defended the United States in uniform, promised to honor veterans in part by assailing what he portrayed as America’s greatest foe: the political left.
Using incendiary and dehumanizing language to refer to his opponents, Mr. Trump vowed to “root out” what he called “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within,” Mr. Trump said Saturday in a nearly two-hour Veterans Day address in Claremont, N.H.
As far as I can tell, only Kristen Welker on on Meet the Press mentioned it in passing to Ronna McDaniel and the only two mainstream newspapers to headline it are the NY Times (who only discussed it in the story, not in the headline above), in a small article and Forbes.
CNN’s is here and coverage of the comment is 2/3rds of the way down the article.
I’m so old I remember when Hillary Clinton said that there was a “basket of deplorables” in the GOP and the media went into a complete frenzy of pearl clutching over her crude and dismissive treatment of members of the voting public.
Trump — crickets.
This is a huge, huge problem because even if Hillary had been crude and dismissive, she wasn’t drawing up plans to deport or put them in prison camps. Trump isn’t just talking. He’s got all kinds of people working on bringing this to fruition. If he wins, who’s going to stop him?
The Washington Post has an excellent write up today about where the Trump trial stands and what we can expect in the next couple of weeks:
Former Trump Organization insider Michael Cohen testified in state court that his ex-boss Donald Trump instructed him to fudge numbers on annual financial statements so that they would show his desired net worth.
Patrick Birney, a Trump Organization employee, said in court that a top executive told him Trump wanted a bigger bottom line on his annual statements, which were given to banks and insurance companies.
An insurance underwriter, Claudia Mouradian, whose deposition was played at the trial, said she relied on the Trump Organization’s claim that a statement reporting roughly $6 billion in combined golf and real estate assets had beenverified by professional appraisers.
These were among the assertionspresented during six weeks of trial and testimony in a lawsuit brought against Trump and his business by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). Her civil case has sought to prove that the former president, his adult sons and their company deliberately inflated the values Trump included on his annual financial statements to secure better terms from bankers and insurers.
James filed her lawsuit last year, and she is asking New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron to fine the companyat least $250 million and render Trump and his family unable to operate in New York by barring them from borrowing money or owning companies. Trump’s defense has denied wrongdoing.
By the time James’s side rested Wednesday, with the defense team scheduled to begin presenting its case Monday, the attorney general’s office had sought to paint Trump as a figure whose ego relied heavily on how he compared to other billionaires and developers — and had lied in financial records to bolster his own standing.
A mountain of documents presented at the trial also demonstrated the company’s inconsistent and irregular methodologies in compiling the financial statements to his benefit. In total, 25 witnesses were called to discuss documents and share firsthand accounts.
Those included Trump, his adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and his daughter Ivanka Trump, who is not a defendant in the case. Each of them testified of knowing little, if anything, about the creation of financial documents at the center of the trial.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trumptestified this month that they trusted the company’s accountants.
“If they assured me in their expert opinion that these things were fine I would have been fine with that and signed off accordingly,”Donald Trump Jr. said.
Legal analysts and other observers say the testimony thus far haspotential shortcomings, including that no employee has testified that Trump ordered the values to be manipulated — except for Cohen, who previously admitted to lying under oath and has a well-documented, admitted grudge against Trump. And there is also no trail of records leading directly to Trump, who famously avoids communicating by email.
The case has clearly irritated Trump, though, who repeatedly attended and denounced the trial throughout the proceedings. It also carries enormous implications for him and his company.
Engoron, who is hearing the case without a jury, already ruled before the trial that thecompany’s financial statements were fraudulent and is requesting a receiver be installed to “dissolve” Trump’s entities in the state.
“If you had to win this case on the basis of people who were working with Trump you’d have a hard time,” George Washington University law professor Stephen A. Saltzburg said in an interview.
Saltzburg said James’s strongest point in public remarks to date has been about the significance of thefinancial statements.
“I think it’s going to be proven by the fact that the discrepancies are more than just honest judgment mistakes,” Saltzburg said. “I do think the judge is going to hold those who signed the documents responsible.”
This is a civil case, not a criminal trial, so none of the defendants face any time behind bars as a result. It comes as Trump is facing a looming swirl of legal troubles, including four separate criminal cases filed against him this year. Amid all of these allegations and indictments, Trump is also the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination next year.
When Trump took the stand to testify last week, he clashed with Engoron and belittled James and her case. Her office also succeeded in getting Trump to confirm that he played a role in preparing the statements by sometimes providing input to his staff as they prepared them.
“Is it correct you were responsible for determining the values stated in the financial statement,” Kevin Wallace, a senior attorney on James’s team, asked Trump on direct examination.
“I … have shown that I know more about real estate than other people,” Trump said. “So if somebody would ask me or if I would have an opinion I would — I would give it.”
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Trump attempted to land some surprise counterattacks against the investigators, but didn’t always succeed. He repeatedly highlighted the lengthy legal disclaimers included in his annual statements, at one point pulling a copy of one from his pocket, trying to introduce his own unofficial exhibit at trial.
The disclaimer was no smoking gun — it had been a matter of public recordfor several years since Cohen first discussed Trump’s alleged use of the statements to mislead business partners and provided copies of records to Congress. When Trump, as a witness, was told he couldn’t introduce an exhibit, he added it to his long list of complaints claiming unfair treatment at the trial.
While the trial and lawsuit have taken aim at Trump’s own self-image as a business colossus, experts and legal analysts said James’s case also had limitations.
Other than Trump’s signature on the statements themselves, James produced no company documents showing Trump had a hand in preparing the statements or inflating the values.
Only one witness pointed a finger directly at Trump — and he has publicly acknowledged that he has not always been honest, even under oath.
“I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected … [to] increase those assets in order to achieve the number that Mr. Trump had tasked us,” Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and “fixer,” testified on Oct. 24.
Throughout hours of combative cross-examination, however, Cohen conceded that in February 2019 he told Congress that Trump never actually instructed him and longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg to doctor up his annual net worth reports. Cohen later clarifiedin the ongoing civil trial that while Trump never outright said to order the falsifications, he hinted his expectations like a “mob boss” calling shots in code.
Other witnesses called by James’s side declined to point a finger at Trump. Birney’s testimony largely relieved Trump executives of blame. Accountant Donald Bender, who did Trump’s personal and business taxes for decades, said he relied on the Trump Organization’s figures to compile reports but did not have knowledge of any intentional tampering.
Also, the Trump Organization’s biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, made millions off its relationship with the Trumps. Trump’s primary banker there previously said in a deposition that she was unaware of any bad information Trump or the other family members had given to the bank, potentially undermining the idea that the statements had unfairly benefited Trump.
Trump’s defense has argued that there were no victims in the case and nothing illegal occurred.
When the defense begins presenting its own case, Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s oldest son — who is a defendant in the case, as is his brother, Eric Trump — will return to the stand as the defense’s first witness. Trump’s attorneys are expected to arguethat his financial statements were legitimate, that valuations are subjective and that Trump properties were worth a fortune.
None of the banks were duped, because they did not rely on the statements to verify Trump’s worthiness as a business partner, the defense says.
A pretrial ruling by Engoron remains potentially momentous in the case — albeit with questions about its ultimate meaning.
In the Sept. 26 ruling, Engoron ordered all of Trump’s “business certificates” in the state be canceled. The decision arrived like an earthquake, clearly putting Trump at risk of losing control over his New York empire. But its wording left attorneys to argue what precisely it meant for his company.
New York business certificates allow limited liability corporations (LLCs) to operate under trade names. The Trump Corporation, for instance, has a certificate allowing it to operate under the name Trump International Realty, according to county records. The certificates are sometimes referred to as “DBA” certificates, for “doing business as.”
Engoron’s ruling confused some expertsin part because he canceled the certificates but not necessarily the underlying LLCs, potentially giving Trump’s attorneys a window to argue that the businesses could still be viable.
Legal experts said the effect would be the same.
“The Trump Organization is a partnership of all of these LLCs together, relying on the business certificates,” said Boston College law professor Brian Quinn. Bank loans probably require such affiliations to remain in place, he said.
Cornell University law professor Celia Bigoness said if the certificates were canceled so too would be “all other authorizations that stem from those certificates,” among them basic needs like the ability to collect sales tax.
The judge also ordered a receiver be put in place to “manage the dissolution of the canceled LLCs.”
Gregory E. Louis, associate law professor at CUNY Law School, said Engoron may not have been clear in his phrasing, but that his rulings taken together signaled that “at least Justice Engoron understands the scope of his order” as having dissolved the underlying companies as well.
Despite that setback, Trump has not backed away from the numbers on his statements, brashly explaining during his testimony on Nov. 6 that he felt most of the values were still lower than they should have been.
“The overall number of value is much higher than the number in the financial statements,” Trump testified.
Trump’s attorneys have apparently sought to create a record they could use in any appellate proceedings to help them preserve the company’s structure.
John C. Coffee Jr., a law professor at Columbia University, said Trump may be working against his team’s efforts to build the most effective appeal by focusing so much of his own energy on attacking Engoron.
“I think Trump’s rather volatile performance … [and his] occasional moments of rage does hurt him, because judges basically respect the judiciary and don’t like to be insulted by defendants,” Coffee said.
Trump and his lawyers are playing for the appeals courts. We’ll have to see if they are impressed with his case. Somehow, I doubt it.
“We just want the government to function… we’re just tired of it”
On the Sunday shows they’re still drooling over the polls showing that Biden is old and Trump is a vital young man with boundless energy sharp intelligence so they didn’t have much time to look at what happened on Tuesday. It’s too bad because there is a very interesting story that American who don’t follow the news closely but might tune in to Meet the Press would be interested to hear:
Meghan Budden’s family was considering moving if their Pennsylvania school district didn’t change course. She normally isn’t politically active, she said, but felt compelled to volunteer when a slate of Democrats launched bids to take back their school board in Central Bucks School District, just north of Philadelphia.
“I couldn’t have my kids in a school district where these kinds of things were happening,” Budden said.
Standing in the Bucks County Democratic headquarters on election night, Budden sobbed when the results rolled in — Democrats took all five seats up for election.
The room erupted in cheers; friends, neighbors and strangers hugged.
“It was very moving and a very joyous feeling from everyone,” Budden recalled. “And a sense of relief.”
If there was a question about whether the conservative-led school board’s policies reflected the will of the local community, Tuesday’s election may have provided an answer.
Three of the newly elected Democratic school board members will replace Republicans, including the board president, who helpedset a right-wing agenda that aligned with national conservative movements around education. Voters effectively flipped the board from majority Republican to majority Democrat.
A surprising win for Democrats in a politically mixed district
Central Bucks School District is the third largest in Pennsylvania with more than 17,000 students. It’s also in a politically mixed, swing county.
“I wasn’t supposed to win,” said Democratic candidate Heather Reynolds, who beat the board’s current president and sole Republican incumbent in the race.
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Reynolds’ newly won seat represents a part of the district that’s more red than others, she said.
“I think that the community has had enough. They’ve seen what this former board majority has done and they said, ‘No more. We deserve better as a district, as a community. This isn’t who we are.'”
Reynolds said residents and parents were exhausted by the chaos that had become a normal part of monthly school board meetings.
Fiscal responsibility was also high on their list of concerns, she said: In July, the board increased Superintendent Abe Lucabaugh’s salary by almost 40%, making him the second-highest paid superintendent in the state after Philadelphia. Lucabaugh had stood by the board’s controversial policies, even as the district spent at least $1 million on a law firm following claims of discrimination and more than $140,000 on a public relations firm that managed media requests, among other things.
NPR reached out to Central Buck’s Republican board candidates for comment; some declined to be interviewed and others did not respond. Only one candidate was willing to go on the record, Glenn Schloeffel. He said the results were disappointing.
“We put a lot of work into trying to get a successful outcome, and it didn’t go our way.”
Schloeffel believes the board majority got “thrown under the bus” after the accusations of discrimination. And he doesn’t think it’s fair to characterize their decisions around books as a “book ban.” He said the books the current board removed from libraries “were highly graphic and sexual in nature. Absolutely disgusting … There’s no place for that in our schools.”
Republican candidate Steve Mass told the Delaware Valley Journal, “The only winners in Tuesday’s elections are the private schools, who will have their enrollment skyrocket in the next few years when parents see what policies are coming into our district.”
Republicans had one big donor, Democrats received more individual donations
Across the country, school board campaign funding seems to be on the rise. In 2018, a survey by the National School Boards Association reported 75% of elected officials spent less than $1,000 on their campaigns.
But this election cycle, Central Bucks candidates raised about $600,000 combined, as of Thursday, according to campaign finance records.
Local venture capitalist Paul Martino bankrolled the Republican campaigns and donated a majority of their funding — $239,000 of the $279,000-plus total. Martino – whose wife, Aarati Martino, ran for the board as a Republican this year – spent a total of $500,000 on school board races across Pennsylvania in 2021.
He also contributed $40,000 to the Stop Bucks Extremism PAC. During the campaign, the PAC mailed literature to district homes with excerpts from the often-targetedbooksGender Queer and This Book Is Gay. The mailer included the message: “Extreme Central Bucks Democrats are fighting to keep these books in our middle school and high school libraries. Request an early vote ballot to protect our children!”
In total, the Democrats raised over $315,000. The Democrats’ PAC, Neighbors United, raised over $174,000. Its largest donations came from Turn Bucks Blue, a local PAC that supports Democrats throughout the county, and the Pennsylvania State Education Association. Much of the Democrats’ funding came from smaller individual donations, between $50 and $250. Each candidate also had their own PAC.
“We knew what [Martino] spent the last time, so we had to be prepared to respond to that,” said Karen Smith, a Democrat who won her race as an incumbent.
Martino declined NPR’s requests for comment.
Two Independent parents were tired of the chaos
District parent Elizabeth Derham identifies as an independent and has been disappointed with board leadership over the last two years. Derham’s husband, Jeff, is also an independent and would sometimes split his ticket. But this year was the first time he voted blue down the line, along with Elizabeth.
“No one I talk to is for any of this stuff or cares much about some of the things that they’re putting so much effort into,” Elizabeth said of the board’s conservative members.
The Derhams said their votes felt like a small-scale attempt to save their local democracy — and their public school district.
“We just want the government to function… we’re just tired of it,” Elizabeth said. “I just want people to listen to us.”
Now that the election is over, she hopes Central Bucks school board meetings become boring again.
These people are not extremists. They are normies who had the wingnut MAGAs reach right into their homes and try to indoctrinate their children. They did not like it. So they got out there and changed it.
Dan Pfeiffer talks about the public’s view of Trump’s mental acuity in his newsletter today:
The fact that Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in news reports from The New York Times and other sources is puzzling for many of us. How could a chaotic criminal who spews conspiracy theories be on the cusp of returning to the White House? There’s not just one simple answer to how we ended up in this situation; it’s a combination of Biden’s low approval rating, divisions in the democratic coalition, dissatisfaction with the economy, a historic level of cynicism and institutional distrust, and radicalization of the Republican Party. The polarization and demographic makeup of the Electoral College mean that upcoming elections will continue to be closely contested. However, one specific finding in The New York Times/Siena College poll explains Trump’s strength and offers a particular strategy for defeating him again in 2024.
There is no sugarcoating it: Joe Biden’s age is a significant political obstacle. Many people across the country think he’s too old for the presidency, and even among Democrats, a lot of folks tell pollsters they’d rather have a younger candidate. In one sense, Biden’s age is an insoluble problem. There is no way to make him younger; he will get older as the campaign continues. Certainly, there will be high-leverage moments such as the State of the Union, the Democratic Convention, and the debates where the President can showcase the stamina and vigor required for the job.
There has been a lot of internal debate among the Democratic Party about how to approach the age issue. Handle it with humor, lean into it by emphasizing that wisdom comes with experience, highlight the younger members of Biden’s team, or ignore it entirely. There are merits to all of those approaches. But I think the best way to defuse concerns about Biden’s age is to focus on Trump’s temperament.
Trump’s Temperament Is No Longer the Issue
One particular quote from a participant in The New York Times poll has lingered in my thoughts:
Ms. Fermin, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic as a teenager, worried that Mr. Biden’s immigration policies have put additional economic strain on the country. She voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 over concerns about Mr. Trump’s temperament, but this time around her concerns are largely focused on Mr. Biden. “Biden is too old and doesn’t have the capacity mentally,” she said. “We need somebody stronger. I think Trump can deliver this time.”
Trump’s temperament—his erratic behavior—was always his biggest weakness. I remember seeing focus group reactions in 2019 and 2020 where many voters’ biggest concerns about Trump were his tweets. I know that sounds ridiculous. I thought so at the time. But Trump spending all of his time airing petty grievances on social media was a metaphor for what concerned voters about his temperament. He was focused on the wrong things at the wrong time,and his behavior was both alarming for swing voters and embarrassing for his supporters.
But TheNew York Times poll makes it clear that Trump’s temperament is no longer a driving issue for voters. In 2020, Biden had a 19-point advantage on temperament. In 2023, it’s only four points.
People have forgotten because they haven’t seen him! My God, just his behavior in the courthouse steps is crazy enough but nobody’s seeing it because the media has decided to protect he public’s gently eyes and ears from his antics because well, it’s unseemly. YES IT’S UNSEEMLY! He’s a monster. But unless people can see it with their own eyes they won’t believe it.
Temperament? How about this?
While attacking Jack Smith as “deranged” and “crooked,” Trump now including Smith’s wife and family in his attacks pic.twitter.com/NPCpzV2wfs
Trump: We had no terror during my administration. The only terror we had was Nancy Pelosi. Crazed lunatic. What the hell was going on with her husband? Let’s not ask. She had a wall around her house. *laughs* It didn’t work very well. pic.twitter.com/ioqQCdm8ah
How many people saw that? Only those who love Trump. Nobody even half way normal could look at that and think “well, at least he’s strong…” No he’ s fucking nuts.
Pfeiffer points out in his piece that He was banned by most social media as well but that isn’t the only problem:
In 2023, Trump resurfaced with his legal issues and presidential campaign. He has been reinstated on all major social media platforms. However, there are indications that most Americans might not be fully aware of what Trump is communicating. One reason is that many people don’t follow the news at this early campaign stage. According to Pew Research, the number of Americans who say they follow the news closely has dropped 14 percent since right before the 2018 elections.
People have tuned out because it’s just so awful. It’s also the reason they assume the country is in hell even though they think their own personal circumstances are good as is their state’s. They aren’t getting the full picture anymore.
Secondly, in previous times, individuals who were not actively seeking political news would still come across it inadvertently. Open up Facebook to check in on your nieces or pop on X (formerly Twitter) to see how people are reacting to an NBA trade, and you would almost always see some political news posts. That is no longer the case. Both platforms have tweaked their algorithms to show people less news—specifically, less political news. According to an Axios report based on data from Similarweb, referrals to news sites from Facebook and X have plummeted since Trump left office.
How helpful.
Finally, as I detailed in this post, the news media is not adequately covering the most outrageous statements made by Trump. While political enthusiasts like us may be inundated with Trump’s unconventional remarks, it’s likely that most Americans haven’t been exposed to more than a minute of Trump’s speeches, rallies, town halls, or interviews since before January 6th.
They have self-righteously declared that “there is a cost” to them personally if they show Trump to their audience. I have never understood what that means. Unless you truly believe that everyone in this country is either a delicate flower who will run from the room if faced with reality or they are so craven and stupid that mere exposure to that cretin will convert them to his cult, it seems to me that decent people need to see what he says and what he plans to do over and over and over again.
His lies are activating the craven and stupid and only the truth will motivate the decent people to vote.
Pfeiffer says the Democrats must focus on Trump’s mental fitness and I couldn’t agree more:
While Trump has made some gains in how people view his temperament and mental fitness, the biggest shift has been growing concerns about Biden. These shifts are undoubtedly related to the dramatic increase in concern about the President’s age. In this case, it seems that the only way around is through. The President will have to use the campaign to assuage those concerns. More performances like this great economic speech in Belvedere, Illinois, will go a long way.
The focus has been on Biden for more than two years now. There has been an extensive, messy conversation about his age and fitness for office. Unfortunately, these conversations have drowned out discussion of the President’s voluminous record of achievement. It’s time for Democrats to try to shift some of that focus back to Trump. We need to remind Americans why they hated Trump in the first place. Certain voters who backed Trump in 2016 but shifted to supporting Biden in 2020 due to apprehensions about Trump’s behavior are now contemplating a return to supporting Trump. Millions of people became politically active after 2016 because they perceived Trump as a distinct threat, but some have now returned to the sidelines as their concerns have diminished.
I understand why Democrats started their advertising campaign with positive spots about Biden and his record. Some of that should continue. All of the polling shows that voters like Biden more when they learn about what he has done. There is an information vacuum to fill. However, it’s time to start putting Trump’s erratic behavior and deranged rants back into people’s social media feeds. This can be done with campaign ads and organic content created by progressive allies and shared by all of us.
There is no need to gild the lily with ads filled with ominous music and fear-inducing voiceovers. Just show people Trump is in his own words. The Biden-Harris campaign social media accounts have begun doing exactly that, and we can help them by sharing their content within our networks.
The shared clips shouldn’t be the ones where Trump does his tinpot dictator act. They should be the moments where he acts like a clown. The best way to defeat a wannabe strongman is to make him look like a joke. Increasing concerns about Trump’s mental acuity rise will help Biden defuse the age issue with voters.
If you are reading this newsletter, you don’t need anyone to remind you that Donald Trump is an unhinged lunatic who should not come within 1,000 miles of the nuclear codes. But most Americans have barely thought about Trump in years. Haven’t seen him speak or post on social media. They haven’t heard of Truth Social. In this new media environment, the press and the social media platforms won’t do that work for us. If we want the campaign to be about Donald Trump, we must make it so. There’s no reason to wait any longer.
As you know, I share both the tin-pot dictator and the clownish clips liberally and I’ve been doing it ever since he came on the scene. People need to know what he’s saying. Hiding your head in the sand and pretending that he doesn’t exist hasn’t worked out so well.
I encourage you to send those clips to people you know or post them on your social media feeds. It’s important to remind people who he is because it’s obvious many of them have been subject to the propaganda that his first term was actually a rousing success and others have forgotten who he really is.
He’s gotten worse people and his thirst for revenge and attachment to the fascist members of his MAGA movement is stronger than ever.
He’s always been very proud of his “good German blood”
After being confronted with the party’s leading candidate for president ranting in public about “Communists, Marxists, Fascist and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country” on Meet the Press, there was a time when a Chair of the Republican National Committee would be compelled to say something other than “I am not going to comment on candidates and their campaign messaging.” We are long past that time:
Welker: Are you comfortable with this language coming from the GOP frontrunner?
McDaniel: I am not going to comment on candidates and their campaign messaging. pic.twitter.com/EXjtvydhWl
There was also a time when a person who would say such a thing would not be the front runner for the presidential nomination. Oh sure, there were always Republicans who said things like that. It’s right out of the McCarthy era to denounce the phantom commies who were allegedly destroying the country. But they weren’t presidential candidates with massive followings. They were cranks like Sen. Joe McCarthy who, with his close adviser Roy Cohn, who also advised Donald Trump in later year, ruined a lot of lives with his outlandish accusations but was eventually repudiated by his own party.
I hope everyone realizes that Trump’s definition of “Communists, Marxists, Fascists and Radical Left thugs” isn’t really about ideology, about which he has zero knowledge. They are old cold war epithets which he first heard as a kid and have come back into fashion on the far right. He’s applying them to his political enemies who are Democrats and certain Republicans who he believes have betrayed him. The rest of his post on Veterans Day, which Kristen Welker failed to recite went like this:
The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within, Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our Country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
I’m so old I remember when Hillary Clinton said at a speech that you could put half of Trump supporters into a “basket of deplorables” and the media had a full fledged meltdown with the Trump campaign getting the vapors and issuing a breathless denunciation:
Just when Hillary Clinton said she was going to start running a positive campaign, she ripped off her mask and revealed her true contempt for everyday Americans.
It was rich then and its even richer now. Today, Trump is on the stump threatening daily to exact revenge on his political enemies, which includes Democrats, the press, election officials, the Department of Justice and anyone else he believes has crossed him. It is the main theme of his campaign. But calling these enemies vermin takes it to a whole new level and one which has even more resonance than usual with the current discussion of antisemitism. He’s now blatantly using he language of Nazi Germany to degrade and dehumanize Jews in the 1930s.
If I had to guess, I would say that Trump didn’t come up with that word himself. He’s more of a “rats” guy than a “vermin” guy when it comes to rhetoric. And the fact that he repeated the exact phrase from the teleprompter at a rally later in the day on Saturday indicates that it was a speech writer’s work not his own, although it certainly reflects his feelings on the matter. I suspect it was either written or inspired by his right hand fascist, Stephen Miller, featured heavily in yet another chilling article in the NY Times about the Trump agenda for his second term.
We know he plans to purge the executive branch of civil service employees and turn the entire branch into a patronage grift for cronies and sycophants to do his bidding and nothing else. And we’ve learned that he will gut the Department of Justice and plant right wing lawyers along the lines of John Eastman, the architect of the coup attempt after the 2020 election. They will implement the Insurrection Act on the first day of the term to have in place the mechanism to deter and quell any demonstrations like the Women’s March that took place in 2017, dwarfing the inauguration crowds (which Trump has never gotten over.)
None of that is secret and it’s obviously just the tip of the iceberg. The latest Times expose relates to their plans to completely shut down all immigration and begin a draconian deportation program:
Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.
It goes without saying that he plans to ban immigrants and asylum seekers entry to the country, But he’s got plans to deport millions of people based upon Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” which he relentlessly flogged during his 2016 campaign as well. And, yes, there will be “camps” to hold people for whatever purposes the choose, without due process. He will pay for all this with military funds if the congress refuses to allocate taxpayer money for it.
They plan to revoke visas for any foreigners they might disapprove of for any reason, they will end birthright citizenship “by proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports to them. ” He has promised to deny entry to all Communists and Marxists and asked his rally goers what should be done with “all the ones that are here.” They chanted “deport them, deport them.” Whether that only applies to foreign born commies is left up to the imagination. Much of this will depend upon the Supreme Court but it’s obvious that Trump will have no problem defying their orders. Who will stop him?
Trump’s rhetoric in this regard is also right out of the Nazi playbook:
“Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.”
The man in charge of drawing up these plans is Stephen Miller who the Times interviewed for their story. He said:
Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs. Americans will also celebrate the fact that our nation’s laws are now being applied equally, and that one select group is no longer magically exempt.
I don’t think I need to explain the economic consequences of that.
It’s clear that Trump and his henchmen are planning a Nazi-style administration and they aren’t trying to hide it. His campaign told the Times to speak to Miller who generously shared his agenda with the paper. They want people to know what they are plotting. This time no one should assume that it’s just hyperbole. As Miller told the Times, ‘bottom line President Trump will do whatever it takes.” Don’t doubt it.
Joe Biden and the Democratic trifecta got more than 80% of Americans immunized from COVID despite the worst public health disinformation campaign ever. They revived our economy from the depths of the COVID recession faster than any other major country, got Americans much needed money to keep them going in the hardest times, and saved state and local governments from having to make massive cuts in police, fire, and desperately needed public services. They delivered the first gun safety bill in over 30 years. They delivered the biggest infrastructure bill since the interstate highway system was built in the 1950s. They revitalized American manufacturing with Buy in America policies, the CHIPs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. They passed legislation to force Big Pharma to negotiate on drug prices and bring the cost of insulin down right away. They made the biggest investment any country has ever made in clean energy.
The four trillion dollars in investments in the American economy and American people will transform the economy for generations to come.
Biden has not announced plans for a second term, but the Associated Press considers what Biden has planned:
But his ambitions are no secret, and his goals for child care, community college and prescription drugs have been laid out in detail during the Democrat’s his first term. He also has unfulfilled promises on civil rights, such as protecting access to the ballot box, preventing police misconduct and restoring the nationwide right to abortion. Banning firearms known as assault rifles remains a priority as well.
The result is a second-term agenda that could look a lot like Biden’s first-term agenda, with some of the same political challenges. Almost none of this can get done without cooperation from Congress, and many of these goals already have been blocked or pared down because of opposition on Capitol Hill.
Biden has achieved bipartisan victories on infrastructure projects and public funding for the domestic computer chip industry. But Democrats would need to win wide majorities in both the House and the Senate to clear a path for the rest of his plans.
“We’re going to finish as much of the job as we can in the next year,” said Bruce Reed, Biden’s deputy chief of staff. “And finish the rest after that.”
Biden’s campaign expressed confidence that the president’s agenda would stack up well against Republicans in next year’s election. Kevin Munoz, a spokesman, described the election as “a choice between fighting for the middle class or shilling for rich special interests” and he said ”it’s a contrast we are more than happy to make.”
Progress or purges, America? What’s a greater source of American pride?
The UAW proved what I’ve always believed: Wall Street didn’t build America. The middle class built America, and unions built the middle class. pic.twitter.com/REJd3psTC6
The headline on Masha Gessen’s New Yorker conversation with psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton promises to reveal how one maintains hope in an age of catastrophe. It is a fascinating conversation with a man who has studied human depravity, literal fallout from it, and what differentiates “the helpless victim and the survivor as agent of change.” As for how one maintains hope today, the headline is a tease.
“Lifton is fascinated by the range and plasticity of the human mind, its ability to contort to the demands of totalitarian control, to find justification for the unimaginable—the Holocaust, war crimes, the atomic bomb—and yet recover, and reconjure hope,” Gessen writes.
Amidst the bickering over the war in Gaza, less tease and more how-to would have been nice. Given the obvious trajectory of the Trump cult, what’s needed is a way both to avoid being a victim and needing to be change agents after the fact of a period of “psychic numbing” and “malignant normality” that leads to unspeakable evil by banal men and women.
Areeba Shah warns at Salon that networks seem desensitized to Donald Trump’s eliminationistrhetoric. After covering years of it, the malignant normality of it is no longer shocking even if it is news:
“If we don’t call out the rhetoric as extreme, we risk making it normal and acceptable,” Libby Hemphill, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information and the Institute for Social Research, told Salon.
Too late.
Trump’s recent comments about vowing to implement rigorous ideological screening of immigrants to the U.S., particularly suggesting he would turn away anyone who doesn’t like “our religion,” received little coverage. Broadcast news “totally ignored the comments,” Media Matters pointed out. Meanwhile, cable news devoted just under seven minutes of coverage and CNN and MSNBC each devoted about three minutes, with Fox News devoting less than one minute.
Even so, the Washington Post last week alerted readers to Trump’s (and his enablers’) plans to turn a second term into a festival of revenge and retribution that could make Stalin smile. For all its sins, the New York Times has not totally forsaken raising the alarm about mass deportations and more detention camps. The strategist behind Trump’s second-term war on immigrants is a man who’d look at home in a gray uniform: Stephen Miller.
Mr. Trump’s campaign referred questions for this article to Stephen Miller, an architect of Mr. Trump’s first-term immigration policies who remains close to him and is expected to serve in a senior role in a second administration.
All of the steps Trump advisers are preparing, Mr. Miller contended in a wide-ranging interview, rely on existing statutes; while the Trump team would likely seek a revamp of immigration laws, the plan was crafted to need no new substantive legislation. And while acknowledging that lawsuits would arise to challenge nearly every one of them, he portrayed the Trump team’s daunting array of tactics as a “blitz” designed to overwhelm immigrant-rights lawyers.
“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Mr. Miller said, adding, “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”
Blitz, indeed. Spectacular crackdown. Like no one’s ever seen. And Trump’s spirit infuses the effort. But, oh, we’ve seen it before.
His stoking of fear and anger toward immigrants — pushing for a border wall and calling Mexicans rapists — fueled his 2016 takeover of the Republican Party. As president, he privately mused about developing a militarized border like Israel’s, asked whether migrants crossing the border could be shot in the legs and wanted a proposed border wall topped with flesh-piercing spikes and painted black to burn migrants’ skin.
As he has campaigned for the party’s third straight presidential nomination, his anti-immigrant tone has only grown harsher. In a recent interview with a right-wing website, Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that foreign leaders were deliberately emptying their “insane asylums” to send the patients across America’s southern border as migrants. He said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” And at a rally on Wednesday in Florida, he compared them to the fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, saying, “That’s what’s coming into our country right now.”
Trump and Miller would ship immigrants they round up in railcars without a second thought about the optics. And perhaps to gleefully drive home the point that they mean business.
I was really looking forward to how to maintain hope in an age of catastrophe.
Lucky for me, I’m not a psychiatrist. I can declare this man, his henchmen, and his NAR true believers fucking lunatics and it’s no violation of professional standards.
I am re-posting this piece in observance of Veteran’s Day. -DH
(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 11, 2021)
Dress me up for battle When all I want is peace Those of us who pay the price Come home with the least
–from “Harvest for the World”, by the Isley Brothers
Earlier today, my brother posted this on Facebook:
While going through my father’s stuff after his passing we found a large stack of envelopes. They turned out to be letters from junior high students thanking him for the talk he gave the students on Veteran’s Day. It turned out there were over 14 packed envelopes. One for every Veteran’s Day he spoke with the students. My brothers and I were very close to throwing these out with many of the other miscellaneous papers in my Dad’s cabinets but, without even looking at the contents I decided to keep them. I finally opened them up today and started going through them.
I used to kid my late father about being a pack rat but I am grateful that he was. I recall him telling me about giving classroom talks as part of his work with a local Vietnam Veteran’s group, but today was the first time I have ever seen one of those letters. I remember listening to those cassettes he sent us during his tour of duty in Vietnam.
That mention of the Secret Service refers to the 1968 Presidential campaign. Our family was stationed near Dayton, Ohio that year. For the first 17 years of his military service, my dad was an E.O.D. (Explosive Ordinance Detachment) specialist. Whenever presidential candidates came through the area, members of his unit would work with the Secret Service to help sweep venues for explosive devices in preparation for rallies and speeches.
I remember that he helped prepare for appearances by Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace. I remember him showing me a special pin that he had to wear, which would indicate to Secret Service agents that he had security clearance (I’m sure they are still stashed away in one of those boxes).
Today happens to be Veteran’s Day, but every day is Veteran’s Day for those who have been there and back. In honor of the holiday, here are my top 10 picks for films that deal with the aftermath of war.
Americana – David Carradine and Barabara Hershey star in this unique, no-budget 1973 character study (released in 1981). Carradine, who also directed and co-produced, plays a Vietnam vet who drifts into a small Kansas town, and for his own enigmatic reasons, decides to restore an abandoned merry-go-round. The reaction from the clannish townsfolk ranges from bemused to spiteful.
It’s part Rambo, part Billy Jack (although nowhere near as violent), and a genre curio in the sense that none of the violence depicted is perpetrated by its war-damaged protagonist. Carradine also composed and performed the song that plays in the closing credits. It’s worth noting that Americana predates Deer Hunter and Coming Home, which are generally credited as the “first” narrative films to deal with Vietnam vets.
The Best Years of Our Lives – William Wyler’s 1946 drama set the standard for the “coming home” genre. Robert E. Sherwood adapted the screenplay from a novella by former war correspondent MacKinlay Kantor.
The story centers on three WW2 vets (Fredric March, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell), each from a different branch of military service who meet while returning home to the same small Midwestern town. While they all came from different social stratum in civilian life, the film demonstrates how war is the great equalizer, as we observe how the three men face similar difficulties in returning to normalcy.
Well-written and directed, and wonderfully acted. Real-life WW 2 vet Russell (the only non-actor in the cast) picked up a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; one of 7 the film earned that year. Also starring Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, and Virginia Mayo.
Coming Home – Hal Ashby’s 1978 drama was one of the first major studio films to tackle the plight of Vietnam vets. Jane Fonda stars as a Marine wife whose husband (Bruce Dern) has deployed to Vietnam. She volunteers at a VA hospital, where she is surprised to recognize a former high-school acquaintance (Jon Voight) who is now an embittered, paraplegic war vet.
While they have opposing political views on the war, Fonda and Voight form a friendship, which blossoms into a romantic relationship once the wheelchair-bound vet is released from assisted care and begins the laborious transition to becoming self-reliant.
The film’s penultimate scene, involving a confrontation between Dern (who has returned from his tour of duty with severe PTSD), Fonda and Voight is one of the most affecting and emotionally shattering pieces of ensemble acting I have seen in any film; Voight’s moving monologue in the denouement is on an equal par.
Voight and Fonda each won an Oscar (Dern was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category), as did co-writers Waldo Salt, Robert C. Jones and Nancy Dowd for their screenplay.
The Deer Hunter – “If anything happens…don’t leave me over there. You gotta promise me that, Mike.” 1978 was a pivotal year for American films dealing head on with the country’s deep scars (social, political and emotional) from the nightmare of the war in Vietnam; that one year alone saw the release of The Boys in Company C, Go Tell the Spartans, Coming Home, and writer-director Michael Cimino’s shattering drama.
Cimino’s sprawling 3 hour film is a character study about three blue collar buddies (Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Jon Savage) hailing from a Pennsylvania steel town who enlist in the military, share a harrowing POW experience in Vietnam, and suffer through PTSD (each in their own fashion).
Uniformly excellent performances from the entire cast, which includes Meryl Streep, John Cazale, Chuck Aspegren and George Dzundza.
I remember the first time I saw this film in a theater. I sat through the end credits, and continued sitting for at least five minutes, absolutely stunned. I literally had to “collect myself” before I could leave the theater. No film has ever affected me quite like that.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – John Frankenheimer’s 1962 Cold War thriller (with a screenplay adapted from Richard Condon’s novel by George Axelrod) stars Frank Sinatra as Korean War veteran and former POW Major Bennett Marco. Marco and his platoon were captured by the Soviets and transported to Manchuria for a period, then released. Consequently, Marco suffers PTSD, in the form of recurring nightmares.
Marco’s memories of the captivity are hazy; but he suspects his dreams hold the key. His suspicions are confirmed when he hears from several fellow POWs, who all share very specific and disconcerting details in their dreams involving the platoon’s sergeant, Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey, in a great performance). As the mystery unfolds, a byzantine conspiracy is uncovered, involving brainwashing, subterfuge and assassination.
I’ve watched this film maybe 15 or 20 times over the years, and it has held up remarkably well, despite a few dated trappings. It works on a number of levels; as a conspiracy thriller, political satire, and a perverse family melodrama. Over time I’ve come to view it more as a black comedy; largely attributable to its prescience regarding our current political climate.…which now makes it a closer cousin to Dr. Strangelove and Network). (Full review)
Sir! No Sir! – Most people who have seen Oliver Stone’s Born On The Fourth Of July were likely left with the impression that paralyzed Vietnam vet and activist Ron Kovic was the main impetus and focus of the G.I. veterans and active-duty anti-war movement, but Kovic’s story was in fact only one of thousands. Director David Zeigler combines present-day interviews with archival footage to good effect in this well-paced documentary about members of the armed forces who openly opposed the Vietnam war.
While the aforementioned Kovic received a certain amount of media attention at the time, the full extent and history of the involvement by military personnel has been suppressed from public knowledge for a number of years, and that is the focus of Zeigler’s2006 film.
All the present-day interviewees (military vets) have interesting (and at times emotionally wrenching) stories to share. Jane Fonda speaks candidly about her infamous “FTA” (“Fuck the Army”) shows that she organized for troops as an alternative to the more traditionally gung-ho Bob Hope U.S.O. tours. Eye-opening and well worth your time.
Slaughterhouse-Five – Film adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut stories have a checkered history; from downright awful (Slapstick of Another Kind) or campy misfires (Breakfast of Champions) to passable time killers (Happy Birthday, Wanda June and Mother Night). For my money, your best bets are Jonathan Demme’s 1982 PBS American Playhouse short Who Am I This Time? and this 1974 feature film by director George Roy Hill.
Michael Sacks stars as milquetoast daydreamer Billy Pilgrim, a WW2 vet who weathers the devastating Allied firebombing of Dresden as a POW. After the war, he marries his sweetheart, fathers a son and daughter and settles into a comfortable middle-class life, making a living as an optometrist.
A standard all-American postwar scenario…except for the part where a UFO lands on his nice manicured lawn and spirits him off to the planet Tralfamadore, after which he becomes permanently “unstuck” in time; i.e., begins living (and re-living) his life in random order. Great performances from Valerie Perrine and Ron Leibman. Stephen Geller adapted the script.
Stop-Loss – This powerful and heartfelt 2008 drama is from Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce. Co-written by the director along with Mark Richard, it was one of the first substantive films to address the plight of Iraq war vets.
As the film opens, we meet Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), an infantry squad leader leading his men in hot pursuit of a carload of heavily armed insurgents through the streets of Tikrit. The chase ends in a harrowing ambush, with the squad suffering heavy casualties.
Brandon is wounded in the skirmish, as are two of his lifelong buddies, Steve (Channing Tatum) and Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). They return to their small Texas hometown to receive Purple Hearts and a hero’s welcome, infusing the battle-weary vets with a brief euphoria that inevitably gives way to varying degrees of PTSD for the trio. A road trip that drives the film’s third act becomes a metaphorical journey through the zeitgeist of the modern-day American veteran.
Peirce and her co-writer (largely) avoid clichés and remain low-key on political subtext; this is ultimately a soldier’s story. Regardless of your political stance on the Iraq War(s), anyone with an ounce of compassion will find this film both heart wrenching and moving. (Full review)
Waltz With Bashir – In this animated film, writer-director Ari Forman mixes the hallucinatory expressionism of Apocalypse Now with personal sense memories of his own experiences as an Israeli soldier serving in the 1982 conflict in Lebanon to paint a searing portrait of the horrors of war and its devastating psychic aftermath. A true visual wonder, the film is comprised of equal parts documentary, war diary and bad acid trip.
The director generally steers clear of polemics; this is more of a “soldier’s story”, a grunt’s-eye view of the confusion and madness of war, in which none are really to blame, yet all remain complicit. This dichotomy, I think, lies at the heart of the matter when attempting to understand what snaps inside the mind of those who carry their war experiences home.
The film begs a question or two that knows no borders: How do we help them? How do we help them help themselves? I think these questions are more important than ever, for a whole new generation of psychically damaged men and women all over the world. (Full review)
A War – This powerful 2015 Oscar-nominated drama is from writer-director Tobias Lindholm. Pilou Aesbaek stars as a Danish military company commander serving in Afghanistan . After one of his units is demoralized by the loss of a man to a Taliban sniper, the commander bolsters morale by personally leading a patrol, which gets pinned down during an intense firefight. Faced with a split-second decision, the commander requests air support, resulting in a “fog of war” misstep. He is ordered home to face charges of murdering civilians.
For the first two-thirds of the film Lindholm intersperses the commander’s front line travails with those of his family back home, as his wife (Yuva Novotny) struggles to keep heart and soul together while maintaining as much “normalcy” she can muster for the sake their three kids. The home front and the war front are both played “for real” (aside from the obvious fact that it’s a Danish production, this is a refreshingly “un-Hollywoodized” war movie).
Some may be dismayed by the moral and ethical ambivalence of the denouement. Then again, there are few tidy endings in life…particularly in war, which (to quote Bertrand Russell) never determines who is “right”, but who is left. Is that a tired trope? Perhaps; but it’s one that bears repeating…until that very last bullet on Earth gets fired in anger. (Full review)
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.
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.
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.
