Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

It’s that time in the presidential campaign cycle again when Democrats feel the need to express their discontents with their choices and political journalists declare that the party is in a panic. It’s a tradition and it’s always most dramatic when they have an incumbent facing re-election.

I’m reminded of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne in September of 1995, who said, “there is little unity among Democrats or on the center-left on the desirability of reelecting President Clinton.” He was right. At the time there were pitched battles going on among the centrists and the progressives which made the prospect of solidarity in the party a distant dream. The huge Republican win in the mid-term election of 1994 as well as the non-stop scandal-mongering and investigations by the congressional Republicans had Democrats everywhere worrying if Clinton could possibly win re-election. The only thing that seemed to unite the party at the time was a mutual loathing of House speaker Newt Gingrich. 14 months later Clinton won a decisive victory.

Similarly, at the same time in 2012, there were rumblings from certain quarters that it might be wise to run a primary challenge against President Barack Obama as his approval numbers fell to the 30s in some polls. It had been a very rough three years trying to recover from the financial crisis, the rise of the tea party and a political massacre in the 2010 mid-terms. The New York Times reported in September of 2011 “Democrats Fret Aloud Over Obama’s Chances“:

[I]n a campaign cycle in which Democrats had entertained hopes of reversing losses from last year’s midterm elections, some in the party fear that Mr. Obama’s troubles could reverberate down the ballot into Congressional, state and local races. “In my district, the enthusiasm for him has mostly evaporated,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon. “There is tremendous discontent with his direction.”

The media was full of stories of unhappy centrists, moderates and progressives alike, all of whom were sure that Obama was in trouble. 14 months later he beat Mitt Romney in a romp.

It happens in midterm elections too. Just two years ago there were endless stories about Democratic hand wringing in advance of the 2022 midterms, mostly due to the off year win by Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia Governor’s race that supposedly portended a huge trend and the media’s assumption of a red wave like no other. In December of 2021, Thomas Edsall of the NY Times wrote a story headlined, Democrats Shouldn’t Panic. They Should Go Into Shock.

The rise of inflation, supply chain shortages, a surge in illegal border crossings, the persistence of Covid, mayhem in Afghanistan and the uproar over “critical race theory” — all of these developments, individually and collectively, have taken their toll on President Biden and Democratic candidates, so much so that Democrats are now the underdogs going into 2022 and possibly 2024.

I’m sure you will recall just how apoplectic everyone was all the way up until election day. And I’m sure you’ll also recall that that red tsunami turned out to be a tiny pink trickle.

Maybe we should call this the “Democratic panic syndrome” or simply chalk it up to a healthy regard for the vicissitudes of electoral politics. After all, the party in power often loses big in the midterms and after the horror of 2016, it’s surprising that Democrats allow themselves to feel any hope at all in presidential races. (That was the one time Democrats failed to anticipate the worst — and the worst happened.)

Over the Labor Day weekend, the Wall St. Journal released a poll that showed Donald Trump leading the GOP primary race 59% to his closest rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 13%. There’s nothing shocking there, he’s leading by a huge margin in all of them, and that poll was conducted by none other than Trump’s personal pollster, Tony Fabrizio, so one would expect no less. But what got every Democratic pundit gasping and every talking head salivating was the finding that 73% of Americans believe 80 year old Joe Biden is too old to be president while only  47% of voters believe the sprightly 77 year old Donald Trump is similarly unqualified by his age.

The assumption, of course, is that this means Biden is going to lose and Donald Trump will assume the presidency and wreak his revenge on his enemies with relish, which would make anyone panic. (Did I mention this poll was conducted by Trump’s personal pollster?) But it’s important to consider the reality of what is going to be a very bizarre election. Yes, I think we can all agree that Biden is old. Trump is arguably in worse physical shape than he is but he dyes his hair and wears a lot of makeup so he hides the fact that he is also an old man. But like Biden, regardless of the perception that he’s not, he looks perceptibly older these days.

Trump with the leader of Bikers for Trump yesterday. pic.twitter.com/yV79X0Hjaq

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 5, 2023

In a perfect world we would not have a presidential election between two men who were born in the WWII era. It’s 2023 and it’s past time to pass the torch. But we are where we are and there are strong reasons to take a breath and realize that Joe Biden is going into this campaign with some serious advantages that would be stupid to toss aside.

First of all, the power of incumbency cannot be under-rated. In the past 11 presidential elections with incumbent candidates only 4 were unseated. Both the Clinton and Obama re-elections that everyone was so worried about were helped immensely by the fact that there was no primary and they already had fundraising bases and successful campaign experience.

It takes a while for people to catch up to economic good news and Biden has a good story to tell on that front. Reagan, for instance, was underwater in approval in August of 1983 before “Morning in America” and his 1984 landslide re-election. (I’m not suggesting that will happen with Biden — it’s a different world today —it’s just another illustration of how quickly things can improve.)

And there are some other issues in Biden’s favor that are extremely salient at this time such as abortion rights and the attack on democracy, which adds up to a powerful critique of Trump and the authoritarian assault by the Republican party. (Government shutdowns and idiotic impeachments will only help illuminate their extremism) After all, Biden is facing a man who is going to be on trial during most of the campaign next year and could be running as a convicted felon. Yes, his followers will stick with him through it all but the idea that Biden’s age will trump Trump’s criminal status is to suggest that otherwise normal people will prefer an old man who is also a criminal to an old man who has done a good job as president. It’s possible but I’m not convinced it’s likely.

It’s in the Democratic DNA to be nervous nellies. And maybe that’s a good thing. It means they won’t be complacent and will work hard to win the election. For the most part it’s paid off in presidential politics for the past 30 years. But it’s 14 months before the election. Nobody should be losing any sleep just yet.

Salon

Tennessee Three member takes on Marsha Blackburn

Breaking:

Tennessee State Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) has announced a run to unseat Republican U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn in 2024. Johnson’s campaign launched Tuesday with a multicity tour around the Volunteer State.

The state representative is traveling around Tennessee on Tuesday, making a stop in Knoxville at Savage Gardens. She will be joined by Representative Justin Jones in Nashville, campaign Co-Chair Representative Justin J. Pearson in Memphis, and campaign Co-Chair Senator Charlane Oliver in all three cities.

“Gloria has dedicated her life to fighting for justice and standing tall for Tennesseans who have been left out, left behind, or left without a voice,” a press release announcing her campaign launch states. “She is challenging Marsha Blackburn because Tennessee deserves a Senator who will fight for working families not special interest donors and D.C. politicians.”

Best wishes, Gloria! It will be an uphill fight worth having.

AMAZING NEWS! Gloria Johnson, one of the Tennessee Three, just launched her campaign for US Senate against Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee! I can’t think of anyone better to take on & defeat Marsha than Gloria Johnson. Republicans & Marsha should be terrified. This is huge. pic.twitter.com/kAI7fqb3m3

— Victor Shi (@Victorshi2020) September 5, 2023

Update: Website here. Was pressed for time earlier.

Put up or shut up

Holding firm to one’s convictions and principles is easy when they are not being tested. Thomas Paine spoke of it eloquently in December of 1776:

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

We live in such times again. We’ve simply traded Redcoats for red hats. We watched the latter sack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, ,2021 in service to a man and a movement that rejects the principles for which Paine and the Continental Army fought. When times required them to put up or shut up on the principle of “created equal” spelled out in the document that launched the American Revolution, when the democracy the founders fought to establish failed to reelect their plus-sized, gilded princeling, they cut and ran.

So here we are, faced with whether or not to stand with language in the 14th Amendment that disqualifies any woman or man who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from elected office or, like the red hats, to cut and run.

Challenging Donald Trump’s eligibility, some suggest, “would be ‘naive’ and a ‘fantasy,’” Greg Sargent recounts this morning. “One commentator insisted that Americans should just ‘let it go.’”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Free Speech For People (FSFP) mean to stand with the Constitution on the matter. Sargent reminds readers that similar constitutional challenges to candidates’ eligibility are neither rare nor naive, but recent ones may have slipped down the memory hole.

“Birthers,” Trump most prominent among them, promoted lawsuits against Barack Obama’s candidacy. They leveraged state mechanisms in place for just such challenges:

In 2016, a voter challenged Sen. Ted Cruz’s candidacy in Pennsylvania, arguing that he was born in Canada, but the state supreme court ruled for Cruz.

In another example, eligible voters in Illinois and New Jersey can try to take action via an administrative agency process to prove a candidate is disqualified, according to CREW’s analysis. That agency’s ruling is subject to appeal in state court, likely heading to the state supreme court — and, possibly, the U.S. Supreme Court.

CREW and FSFP will file challenges to Trump this fall. In which states? Wait and see.

Here’s the rub: This only has to work in one state to advance to the Supreme Court. And that’s not wildly implausible.

Yes, many state supreme courts will uphold Trump’s eligibility. [Justin] Levitt, the Loyola Marymount expert, expects them to rule broadly that states don’t have the power to determine Trump’s qualification status under the 14th Amendment in the first place.

This is where things get complicated. State courts often make determinations on whether candidates are qualified (as with Cruz). But Levitt draws a distinction between straightforwardly factual requirements (the candidate must be a natural born U.S. citizen) and ones that demand interpretation (the candidate must not have committed insurrection as defined by the 14th Amendment).

State courts will likely rule that the latter “is not the sort of qualification that a state is free to make a determination on,” Levitt told me, because it’s more of a “political judgment” as opposed to a determination of “fact like age or citizenship.”

“The sky won’t fall if states follow their procedures and make a determination,” Indiana University law professor Gerard Magliocca told Sargent. “This has become serious enough that it must be addressed.”

The world was witness to the faithlessness of the Trump mob. Less visible are the daily actions in GOP-controlled legislatures to render elections pro forma, theater meant to keep nuevo royalists comfortably ensconced in power and as distant from the will of the people as the Atlantic Ocean kept George III.

Jesus was particularly harsh on the hypocrites of his day. In our day, hypocrisy is recorded digitally (and inconveniently), as MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan put on display recently. For Hasan’s targets, as our proprietress says, shamelessness is their superpower.

Fox once warned of a "constitutional crisis" if Hillary Clinton was elected president while under criminal investigation. But now that Donald Trump is running in 2024 amid multiple indictments and trials, they're singing quite a different tune.

Roll the tape! pic.twitter.com/0xnhkS1no5

— The Mehdi Hasan Show (@MehdiHasanShow) September 4, 2023

If it’s to be a showdown with them, then as Jake (Kevin Costner) says in Silverado, “Come on, boys! Let’s start the ball!” Put up or shut up. Let’s have this out.

I’m not going to go into why that is a load of bullshit. The economy hummed along, no thanks to him but rather the recovery from 2008 finally reaching its stride. Our relationship with the world was nearing catastrophic. The border was a nightmare under him. We were still mired in Afghanistan and every day was some kind of chaotic catastrophe because this miscreant didn’t know what he was doing.

This really takes some chutzpah:

Not really. There are many more jobs now, manufacturing is coming back and the world is no longer terrified that the president is going to do something really stupid.

But really, let’s take a look at where we were exactly three years ago today, shall we? When the pandemic hit he and his band of losers couldn’t even get masks and gowns to NY City while the morgues were filling up because he put his son-in-law in charge of “logistics” and he was clueless. Trump, meanwhile, was saying it was no big deal and if we got it we should take snake oil cures and inject disinfectant. On September 3, 2020:

Trump’s answer to all that? On September 3, 2020 he had a rally in Pennsylvania. He said a lot of things, a lot, almost all of it lies as usual. Here’s a bit about the pandemic:

 If I was a Democrat, a different president, and they did the same job, they’d say it was one of the greatest jobs they’ve ever seen. But take a look at what they say about the way they handled the Swine flu. It was a disaster. It was incompetent. They called themselves incompetent. They call, and now they’re coming in like, well, we would have done this and Biden by the way, was against, you remember, xenophobic, racist, because I closed down China.

Then two months later, two and a half, three, and Nancy Pelosi was having dances in Chinatown, right? A month later. No, no problem. I was way ahead. Then Biden comes out and he actually said that I was right, but they said, “Don’t say that, try doing it a little softer than that.” He did it a little bit softer, but we were right. They were wrong. They handled it so badly. Just take a look, because we, I said to my people, “We’ve got to fight this a little bit differently because we’re getting a lot of fake news, a lot of bad people saying things”, and you look at the stats and you look at how we’ve done compared to really much easier and much smaller countries, it’s amazing.

If you took New York out of it, which was a disaster by Cuomo, if you took New York out of those numbers, we would have numbers that would be even better than they are. I could read numbers that would be even much better, because a big percentage of the people that died in this country died because New York was incompetently run by Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo.

I’ll just leave this here:

The Lancet Commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era has just come out with an assessment of Donald Trump’s impact on the health of Americans while he was U.S. President. And, spoiler alert, it wasn’t positive.

That’s assuming that you find many more deaths to be a negative health impact. According to the report, Trump’s policies or lack thereof contributed to the deaths of around 461,000 Americans in 2018. In 2019, about 22,000 deaths resulted from Trump’s dismantling of environmental protection measures alone, based on the Commission’s analyses. And of course, there was 2020, when the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic hit. Many have written about the Trump administration’s failure to mount a scientifically appropriate response to the pandemic. The Commission determined that 40% of Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented had the U.S. only had the same Covid-19 death rates as those of other Group of Seven (G7) nations, namely Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

It’s cute that he’s referencing 4 years ago now, before his biggest challenge hit and flopped miserably. Next year it’s the Democrats who will be asking the old perennial “are you better off now than you were four years ago” not Trump. And while 2019 was no picnic, 2020 was one of the worst years we’ve ever experienced. A look who was leading it.

There seems to be quite the competition developing between two of the worst Repub licans in the country for the exalted position of Trump’s VP:

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE and Kari Lake have been locked in what one source close to Donald Trump describes to Rolling Stone as a “death race” to become his 2024 vice presidential pick.

In public, the far-right congresswoman from Georgia and the failed Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate are happy to present an image of calm unity in their cause to return Trump to the White House. But behind the scenes, the two view one another with intense distrust and disdain, each seeing the other as direct competition for Trump’s political affections, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. 

Exacerbating the situation is the fact that Greene and Lake are the two leading contenders in a very narrow lane in the race to secure Trump’s VP slot, should he win the 2024 Republican nomination next year. It’s the lane of election-denying, shameless Trump diehard who has emerged as a conspiracy-theory-slinging star among the conservative base.

Greene, in particular, has gone beyond simple attempts to raise her own profile in the ongoing Trump veepstakes. In recent weeks, she has moved behind the scenes to tear down Lake, garrulously trash-talking her to others in the MAGA elite, political circles, and conservative media, multiple sources tell Rolling Stone.

In an ironic twist, one of the bigger complaints coming from Greene — who years ago cemented her public image as a QAnon-promoting, school-shooting-survivor-mocking, Jewish-Space-Laser-fearing activist — lately is that Lake is not a “serious” enough person to be Trump’s second-in-command.

“MTG thinks she’s a scammer and not even a conservative,” says one of the sources who’s spoken to Greene about this. The source adds that Greene has privately said that “Lake is a grifter and [is] trying to keep riding Trump’s coattails because she lost [in Arizona], so she’s cozying up on the election-integrity messaging.”

Similarly, according to a different source who personally knows and likes both Lake and Greene, in a conversation with the MAGA congresswoman within the past several weeks, “Kari did come up, and the term ‘grifter’ was used to describe her more than just once…[MTG] thinks it’s complete nonsense that anyone would think it’s a good idea for Donald Trump to consider [Kari] for VP.”

This year, when embarrassing stories have appeared in the news about the Arizona Republican, Lake has at times voiced her suspicions that Greene has been leaking negative information about her to the press, another source familiar with the matter says.

Tensions between Lake and Greene were visible during Trump’s speech at Mar-a-Lago after New York prosecutors indicted him on charges of falsifying business records earlier this year. According to one person in attendance, Greene’s demeanor turned icy after witnessing the loud applause and chants of “Kari won!” — a reference to her failed gubernatorial bid — for Lake. 

Trump has from time to time quizzed confidants on who they think the best possible VP picks could be. Lake and Greene are indeed among the names the former president has repeatedly discussed, when discussing pros and cons with certain allies and senior staffers.

Lol! You love to see it.

Most people apparently don’t think he’ll pick either but it’s astonishing that they are even being discussed. Personally, I think this is the more likely pick:

Here’s Marge today:

Marjorie Taylor Greene: “You’re going to tell me that back in the Ice Age, how much taxes did people pay, and how many changes did governments make to melt the ice?” (@acyn) pic.twitter.com/5m8770qY26

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) September 5, 2023

The demagogue liar Vivek is the future of the GOP, god help us. But AOC is the future of the Dems — and they are very lucky to have her:

Ocasio-Cortez, who at 29 became the youngest woman and youngest Latina to serve in the House of Representatives, is now 33, twice re-elected and comfortable in her political skin. She could hardly be described as an old hand but nor does she channel the shock of the new. She deploys social media with enviable authenticity; she grills congressional witnesses like a seasoned interrogator; she is an object of perverse fascination for Fox News and rightwing trolls; she has been around Washington long enough to draw charges of “co-option” and “selling out”.

“AOC Is Just a Regular Old Democrat Now,” ran a headline on New York magazine’s Intelligencer website in July. The article’s author, Freddie deBoer, argued that Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance on the Pod Save America podcast to announce her endorsement of Joe Biden for president in the 2024 election was her “last kiss-off to the radicals who had supported her, voted for her, donated to her campaign, and made her unusually famous in American politics”.

The Ocasio-Cortez who sits for an interview with the Guardian is clearly aware of the leftist’s eternal dilemma – purity versus pragmatism – and determined to navigate it with care. She makes clear that Biden cannot take progressives for granted next year but urges Democrats to unite against the bigger threat of “fascism” in America. She condemns the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, but wants the US to be clear about its aims there and acknowledge “the anxieties of our history”.

[…]

A self-described democratic socialist, Ocasio-Cortez has not been afraid to buck Democratic leadership, including by voting against a deal that Biden negotiated with Republicans in May to raise the debt ceiling. In 2020 she made the provocative comment that, in any other country, she and Biden would not be in the same party. Yet she has endorsed his re-election in 2024. Does that mean she has travelled towards him or he towards her?

“I think it means that we have a US political system that’s not parliamentary, to my envy of many other countries,” she replies deftly. “There were so many people that were so up in arms about that comment, which I likely maintain to this day. But I find that parliamentary systems allow for a larger degree of honesty about the political coalitions that we must make. It’s not anything negative towards the president or towards anybody else.

“It’s just a reality that we have very different political coalitions that constitute the Democratic party and being able to define that, I actually think grants us much power. It’s to say, listen, I am not defined by nor do I agree with all of the stances of this president, and I’m sure neither does he with mine.

“But that does not mean that we are not in this together against the greater forces and questions of our time, and I think being able to demonstrate that ability to coalesce puts us in a position of far greater strength than, say, the Republican party who are at each other’s necks to the extent that they can’t even fund the government.

There has been no greater rallying point for Democrats of all stripes than Trump. As Paul Begala, a former White House adviser, has observed: “Nothing unites the people of Earth like a threat from Mars.” Ocasio-Cortez, a celebrated member of “the Squad” of House progressives, regards continued solidarity as imperative for as long as the quadruple-indicted former president menaces US democracy.

She warns: “We should be candid about the fact that his chances as the nominee are still the strongest, probably out of the entire [Republican] field, and what that means. There’s very real danger here because with our electoral college, we know it doesn’t matter how many millions more votes you get. It’s about the smattering of states who just represent a few thousand votes’ difference between Trump and Biden.

“We are not in 2020, and seeing what that turnout may look like is something that I’m sure keeps many of us up at night. But that being said, I know that this is why, to me, support of President Biden has been very important, because this question is larger than any policy differences. This is truly about having a strong front against fascism in the United States.”

Thank you, thank you.

Read the whole thing if you have time. She talks about the challenges of combating climate change in the face of the power structure that is aligned against doing that. She talks about Latino politics and Ukraine and all of it is highly intelligent and incisive. Even if you disagree with some of her points, you can’t help but be impressed with her ability to articulate her point of view in a way that is understandable and persuasive.

This person is an idealist who instinctively seems to see the system’s cogs and wheels and is thinking through how to make the necessary changes while understanding what she’s up against. She’s the best.

Michael Luttig makes the case that the question of whether the 14th Amendment precludes Trump from running again will be decided shortly by the Supreme Court:

I don’t doubt the Supreme Court will decide this. I do doubt that they will uphold the idea that Trump is disqualified from running. It would be the most shocking decision ever. And I don’t think anyone can even guess what it might mean politically. I have my doubts that it would end well but who knows?

Back in the day, presidential campaigns started on Labor Day — in the election year! And it wasn’t that long ago. I remember George Bush Sr saying, “I’ll get into on labor day” when asked when he was going to hit the trail in 1988. Sure, you have the conventions in the summer but the barnstorming and advertising didn’t really kick in until then. I’m not nostalgic about much but that’s one thing that was better in the good old days. The permanent campaign is exhausting.

Well, it looks as though Joe Biden is keeping with the tradition, sort of. he appears to have kicked off his presidential campaign in earnest today. He went after Trump directly:

🔥 President Biden hammers Trump on Labor Day:

"It wasn't that long ago we were losing jobs in this country. In fact, the guy who held this job before me was just one of two presidents in history who left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected."

"By the way,… pic.twitter.com/wKHIUIk9VJ

— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) September 4, 2023

Maybe it’s just that everyone has accepted the fact that barring some unusual circumstance that knocks him out, Trump is the nominee and he has a record that needs to be attacked since he’s been out there saying his term was heaven on earth and people are starting to believe it.

Good. As much as I wish we could ignore all this for a while, it’s time to engage and engage seriously.

Outside the California State Capitol last month, a fitness trainer turned school board president fired up the crowd at a parental rights rally, telling them they were all fighters in “a spiritual battle” for their kids and must answer the call from God.

Sonja Shaw, who was elected to the Chino Valley Unified School District board of education last November with an assist from a local megachurch and its Christian nationalist pastor, didn’t equivocate in naming the enemy: state Democratic officials who are challenging her right-leaning policies—and drafting laws that hinder book bans and protect teachers from harassment.

“Today we stand here and declare in his almighty name that it’s only a matter of time before we take your seats and we be a God-fearing example to the nation, how God is using California to lead the way,” Shaw crowed, adding, “We already know who has won this battle. You will be removed in Jesus’s name! You, Satan, are losing.”

Now Shaw is in the national spotlight in wake of her Chino school board passing codes that ban pride flags in classrooms and force educators to inform parents if their children identify as transgender—the first such policy to be passed in the state.

This summer, Shaw’s school board meetings, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles, became chaotic spectacles, ones that attracted the Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists and pitted them against students and parents protesting what they’re calling anti-LGBTQ practices that endanger children. When California superintendent of schools Tony Thurmond appeared at the July meeting in opposition, Shaw unceremoniously silenced him.

Weeks after state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a civil rights probe into Shaw’s “gender disclosure” policy, his office sued the school board. Bonta said the policy violates the California constitution and state law, and would cause LGBTQ+ students, “mental, emotional, psychological and potential physical harm,” according to a press release.

Other right-leaning school boards across the state have followed Chino Valley Unified’s lead. Shortly before filing suit against the Chino board, Bonta issued statements denouncing the Anderson Union High School District, Temecula Valley Unified and Murrieta Valley Unified school boards’ decisions to pursue “copycat” anti-trans policies.

“These students are currently under threat of being outed to their parents against their will, and many fear that the District’s policy will force them to make a choice: either ‘walk back’ their constitutionally and statutorily protected rights to gender identity and gender expression, or face the risk of emotional, physical, and psychological harm,” Bonta said.

To concerned observers in Chino, Shaw’s tack is not unlike what’s happening at school boards across the country, with brawls over curriculum, social emotional learning, and the banning of books that focus on race and LGBTQ issues. Extremist groups like Moms for Liberty have spawned a mainstream narrative that public schools are “indoctrinating” children with “woke” ideology and into believing they’re a different gender.

But in Chino Valley, the school board’s new direction appears to be spurred on by a man behind the curtain: Shaw’s megachurch pastor Jack Hibbs.

Of course.

Indeed, three of the board’s five members belong to his church, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills.

At the Sacramento rally, Hibbs boasted of his congregation’s work in electing Shaw. Calling her a “true modern-day Deborah,” Hibbs said the soccer mom “heeded the call to run for the school board” and that “when churches get involved and get informed, people vote.”

God, Hibbs said, installed Shaw into her position.

“Get on your knees every night,” Shaw told the crowd. “All day I talk to him. People probably think I’m crazy, but I’m really just talking to God all day.” After reciting a Bible verse, she added, “I have looked demons straight in the eye and with God’s authority rebuked them back to hell where they belong.

“You can do that too, trust me.”

Residents have long raised alarms about the school board’s religious bent. And Pastor Hibbs and members of his megachurch congregation appear to be more involved than ever in Chino’s public schools.

Last week, in an interview with right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, Hibbs said that he brought the policy language to the school board after Republican state Assemblyman Bill Essayli’s “parental notification” legislation died without a hearing.

“He came back thinking he was defeated,” Hibbs said. “What we did is that we read his bill and we took the verbiage from that bill and then introduced it to our unified school district school board and they voted and adopted the verbiage.

“Guess what happened?” Hibbs continued. “We found out something, Charlie, that the most powerful politics is local…”

Hibbs then turned to Bonta’s lawsuit against the board, saying, “We’re going to take that on, we’re going to make sure that this goes to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The pastor, who hasn’t returned messages left by The Daily Beast, wasn’t shy about his fight on the school board’s behalf.

Before he signed off, Hibbs told Kirk that children are “groomed” into trans ideology in the classroom and that schools want to “castrate your children” and “mutilate them.”

Ahead of the parental notification vote in July, Hibbs also urged people to flock to the fiery board meeting. “We’re asking people to show up by the thousands,” he said in a video announcement on the church’s Facebook page. “Please make it a priority.”

Churches have long been hubs of political activism for people all over the political map. It stands to reason that this particularly virulent form of Christian bigotry would be involved in the homophobic fever that’s broken out on the right. Trans rights seems to have pushed them over the bend but gay marriage lies underneath it all as the main affront. They’re already trying to get it on the books in the states if they can get the high court to reconsider. It worked with abortion.

Nor their cultural blemishes

Predictions of calamity always attend change, be it cultural, economic or political. Preachers love to associate natural catastrophes with God’s judgement against unbelievers (until the storms and floods strike their own communities). Somehow, change always seems to bring out the doomsayer in us.

So, it’s interesting that as church attendance declines, former churchgoers still maintain their sense of morality despite theocrats’ claims that that’s not possible. Daniel K. Williams writes in The Atlantic that, if nothing else, people shedding their churchgoing identities does not means losing their moral and political ones:

So, as church attendance declines even in the southern Bible Belt and the rural Midwest, history might seem to suggest that those regions will become more secular, more supportive of abortion and LGBTQ rights, and more liberal in their voting patterns. But that is not what is happening. Declines in church attendance have made the rural Republican regions of the country even more Republican and—perhaps most surprising—more stridently Christian nationalist.

Williams suggests taking part in a church community may have a moderating effect on one’s politics:

In fact, people become even more entrenched in their political views when they stop attending services. Though churches have a reputation in some circles as promoting hyper-politicization, they can be depolarizing institutions. Being part of a religious community often forces people to get along with others—including others with different political views—and it may channel people’s efforts into charitable work or forms of community outreach that have little to do with politics. Leaving the community removes those moderating forces, opening the door to extremism.

I didn’t see that coming. Church communities may not be as diverse as the Bronx, but membership does require a modicum of tolerance.

So perhaps it is not unsurprising that people without a lot of tolreance to spare are not regular churchgoers, as PRRI found earlier this year. While they attend church more than the average American, “roughly half of all Christian nationalists rarely, if ever, go to church.”

The nation’s most historically Catholic states, such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have retained the Democratic leanings that they had half a century ago, when more residents went to church. As white Catholics left church, they continued to practice the values of the Social Gospel that perhaps they or their parents or grandparents had learned there, and they channeled those energies into the political community. Although perhaps breaking with the church on issues of sexuality, gender, and abortion, they continued to embrace the ethic of concern for the poor and marginalized, and insisted that the government champion these causes. But among dechurched white evangelicals (a group heavily concentrated in the South and rural Midwest), the political values that remain are focused on culture wars and the autonomy of the individual.

Unless you’re an individual female.

Perhaps it is not so surprising. The influence of regional settlement patterns carry induring weight in local culture, folkways and mores. They even influence how we die. What religious beliefs settlers brought with them, or what cultures relocated with them from settlers’ (and the enslaveds’) places of origin may be too deeply intertwined to separate. Chicken or egg?

As Jamelle Bouie implied the other day (or as I read in), in places settled by enslavers those atop the social hierarchy never quite shed their feudalism whetever their Bibles tell them about Jesus setting men free. It is not as surprising, then, that in the region that brought us The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, states now insists they may control what women do with their bodies far beyond their borders.