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“[T]he actual threat to American freedom is coming from the states,” begins Jamelle Bouie’s NYT op-ed:

It is states that have stripped tens of millions of American women of their right to bodily autonomy, with disastrous consequences for their lives and health. It is states that have limited the right to travel freely if it means trying to obtain an abortion. It is states that have begun a crusade against the right to express one’s gender and sexuality, under the pretext of “protecting children.” It is states that are threatening to seize the children of parents who believe their kids need gender-affirming care. And it is states that have begun to renege on the promise of free and fair elections.

That it is states, and specifically state legislatures, that are the vanguard of a repressive turn in American life shouldn’t be a surprise. Americans have a long history with various forms of subnational authoritarianism: state and local tyrannies that sustained themselves through exclusion, violence and the political security provided by the federal structure of the American political system.

For anyone needing a refresher, Bouie means decades of pre-Civil War slavery and 100 years of post-Civil War Jim Crow among other national legacies.

For anyone needing a refresher, the struggle to “establish a universal and inviolable grant of political and civil rights, backed by the force of the national government” is ongoing. It’s summarized neatly in “in Order to form a more perfect Union,” etc.

The same people who resisted (successfully) that perfecting work for most of our country’s history are still resisting it even as they swear they love this country more than you do.

Viewed in this light, our time is one in which we face an organized political movement to undermine this grant of universal rights and elevate the rights of states over those of people, in order to protect and secure traditional patterns of domination and status. The only rights worth having, in this world, are those that serve this larger purpose of hierarchy.

The aspirations of our propertied, white-male framers to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” was, for some, always about securing their own class and privilege. “We the People,” like “freedom,” has been a contested idea since the founding of the republic.

Thus today, we see clockwork moral panics promoted by revanchists since the Civil Rights movement to divert attention from their treacherous — yes, treacherous — efforts to turn back the American clock and the work of perfection the framers envisioned to a time when universal rights were not universal, but closely proscribed by race, class, sex, and more.

Bouie concludes:

The plan, as we have seen with abortion, is to unspool and untether those rights from the Constitution. It is to shrink and degrade the very notion of national citizenship and to leave us, once again, at the total mercy of the states. It is to place fundamental questions of political freedom and bodily autonomy into the hands of our local bullies and petty tyrants, whose whims they call “freedom,” whose urge to dominate they call “liberty.”

What Bouie omits mentioning are the contemporary threats of and actual violence inspired and endorsed to “secure traditional patterns of domination and status.” Anything to distract public attention from authoritarian efforts to put “lessers” back in their places and to make freedom and liberty as exclusive they were when the U.S. Constitution went into effect.

The Wanda Sykes meme (above) references the calculated distraction. Mehdi Hasan retweets a few headlines from yesterday highlighting the predictable threats of violence:

Yep. Stochastic terrorism from the right.

Amazing how conservatives expected all Muslims for years to collectively take blame for terrorist acts they had nothing to do with & yet now they avoid any responsibility for terror that they’re openly and proudly inciting & inspiring. https://t.co/unHL61RJUF

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 27, 2023

Urban jungle edition

Rick Perlstein sent me this from Chicago:

New York, the famous escaped Owl named Flaco:

And the latest from here in Los Angeles, some wonderful news: Mountain Lion cubs!

World, meet P-113, P-114, and P-115.

That’s the designation for three healthy, month-old female mountain lion kittens that biologists recently discovered nestled in a dense patch of poison oak growing around large boulders in the Simi Hills.

The sisters belong to P-77, a 5- or 6-year-old lion who biologists captured and radio-tagged in the same area a few years ago. Researchers hope to do the same with the three kittens late next year, just before the girls get old enough to leave their mom.

Tagging these lions is part of a National Park Service study that’s been going on in and around the Santa Monica Mountains since 2002, in an attempt to determine how the cats survive — or don’t — and what might help to stabilize their threatened existence.

Each year, local mountain lions are killed trying to cross nearby freeways, by poachers, and through exposure to rat poison and other hazards that come with living so close to an urban center. Fenced into the area by the 101 and 405 freeways, and other man-made obstacles in other parts of Southern California, area mountain lion populations are struggling with the effects of inbreeding that researchers say could one day wipe them out. And last year was a particularly brutal one for local mountain lions, including the death of world-famous P-22.

That’s why researchers are excited to see three healthy females born into the area, said Jeff Sikich, lead field biologist for the NPS mountain lion study.

“We need greater genetic diversity for our mountain lion populations,” Sikich said, adding that more females are particularly needed to boost reproduction rates.

A few weeks before they spotted the kittens, Sikich said his team noticed through GPS points from P-77’s radio tracker that she was spending extensive time in one area. Three to five days in one spot might indicate she’d taken down an adult deer she was feasting on, he said. But after she stayed put for a week and a half, in late April, he said they were confident she’d given birth.

So on May 18, he set out with a small team to the area where P-77 had lingered. They waited until her radio collar indicated she’d left the area, then got within 70 meters of the hotspot. One team kept an eye on P-77’s location, so they could steer clear if she started heading back. As they drew closer, Sikich approached alone in an effort to disturb the area as little as possible.

About half the time he goes out searching, Sikich said he hears the kittens first. This time he spotted them, despite the dense poison oak they were hiding in. The plant doesn’t trigger reactions in mountain lions the way it does many humans, he noted. Not as lucky, Sikich climbed in carefully, gloves and mask in place, to grab the kittens and take them back to two researchers waiting nearby.

There in the field, the team checked the sex of each kitten. They also weighed them, with all three coming in at a healthy three to four pounds. They took biological samples, which they’ll soon use to do some genetic mapping. And they put small, color-coded markers on each ear so they can identify the kittens later if they’re spotted on wildlife cameras. When the kittens get old enough, researchers will try to put radio collars on them.

The team has similarly marked 24 other litters at their den sites since the study started 21 years ago. They marked four additional litters when the kittens were at least six months old and traveling with their mother.

The identity of the kittens’ dad remains a mystery. And Sikich suspects it’ll remain that way even after they do DNA sequencing, since he said they haven’t been following any males in this area of late. That means he likely came from the Santa Susana Mountains, rendezvoused with P-77, and then returned home.

The last two adult males regularly tracked in the Simi Hills were P-64, who died during the Woolsey Fire in December 2018, and P-38, who was poached in July 2019.

This is the first litter of kittens spotted in the entire region since last summer, when researchers tagged two sets of kittens. They spotted three of those kittens on wildlife cameras a month or so ago, Sikich said, so they’re optimistic about survival rates. And they hope to track those lions in late fall to add radio collars.

The most recent litter marked in the Simi Hills was in 2020, when P-67 gave birth to a boy and a girl. But P-67 was found dead that same day, with inflamed intestines and rat poison in her system. Researchers tried to get another area lion to foster the cubs, but eventually had to send them to a conservation center in Arizona.

The Simi Hills are a small habitat area between the larger Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountain ranges, with the 101 and 118 freeways on either side. P-77 has established her adult home range in this area, though she’s previously crossed both freeways and has spent short periods in the Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountains.

As the three new sisters grow, Sikich said it’ll be interesting to see if they stay in this narrow area or if they attempt to cross surrounding freeways to enter larger habitat areas.

Freeway crossings are always treacherous. That’s why construction is underway now on what will be the largest wildlife crossing in the world, with a grass-covered bridge set to cross 10 lanes of the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills.

That project should wrap up in early 2025 — right around the time P-113, P-114, and P-115 will be due to leave their mom’s side.

With any luck, Sikich said researchers will get to “watch” via radio pings as the sisters use the bridge to safely make their way into the world.

I’m a Never GOPer so much of this doesn’t apply to me. But the idea that Ron DeSantis will be a big improvement over Trump is a fallacy and it’s good to see this critique come from those on the center right who see the real threat for what it is. It isn’t just Trump. It’s MAGA, and DeSantis is a first generation MAGA-ite. Tim Miller writes:

In 2024, the chosen one will be Gov. Ron DeSantis. It has thus been decreed by the old-guard members of Conservative Inc. Or at least the ones calculating enough to have survived the MAGA takeover.

Rupert has dubbed him DeFuture. Republican hedge fund donors have taken their Trump tax cut and run. National Review is indistinguishable from a DeSantis Fanzine, lavishly extolling his virtues and wagging their finger at anyone who dares challenge their precious. Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire is not any less effusive and is already cashing in on the new bell cow.

To be honest, I understand this calculation. DeSantis is the golden ticket. He’s the one weird trick that will make all their Trump Troubles go away without their having to suffer any additional political pain or consequences from having made a deal with the devil. DeSantis 2024 will let them be members in good standing on the team again. He will eradicate any nagging doubts about whether they were empowering a man who might bring the constitutional republic they claim to love to its knees.

For most of them, the desire for this trick to succeed is a refreshing change from the last 7 years, because it’s completely authentic. It’s in their bones. The sight and sound of a cherubic, nasal-voiced Ivy Leaguer giving local journalist “elites” the what-for gives them a Matthewsian thrill up the leg. For them, the highlight of 2022 was seeing the triggered libs complain about how Ron had tricked desperate Andres into getting on a plane to Massachusetts as part of an Andover-style prep school prank at the expense of the haughty Martha’s Vineyard librarian who canceled Alan Dershowitz.

That is their shit. Reagan’s revolutionaries had the air traffic controllers, Ron controls his human trafficking by air.

And, hey, who am I to deny them their fun. Might not be my cup o’ joe. Give me a shot of Larry or Liz instead. But we can agree to disagree. Fan-girling for a politician is every content-creating American’s birthright.

The issue for me arises when the DeSantis propagandists turn their fire and start issuing Principled Never Trump purity tests on the OGs. Making demands of those of us who did not spend the last seven years trying to titrate precisely how much lib-owning we needed to do to balance out a few precisely worded tip-toes away from Mr. Trump.

What these folks are trying to do is set up shit-tests in which True Never Trumpers must accede to the DeSantis Dominion—or else they are tarred as being just as hack-ish and disingenuous and grift-y as the anti-antis have been.

Over at the Dispatch, the man formerly known as Allahpundit addressed the psychology of this tete-a-tete quite deftly, explaining the disdain that those of us who have been stalwart on the Trump matter feel for the cowards who danced around it and their loathing of us for our purity tests.

But I wanted to be a bit more forward looking and prescriptive. Offer the “Ron johns” (their stan name is still a work in progress) a guide to how I will treat his campaign against Trump should he pursue one. This way, if they have any doubt about whether I am adhering to Muh Never Trump Principles, they can check back in on it from time to time.

Here goes.

Dear Residents of DeSantistan,

It’s nice to hear from you. I notice you have had some harsh words for Mr. Trump of late. You might even think he’s a Bad Orange Man? Concur! So lucky for you to have been awoken from your torpor on this matter at the most convenient time imaginable.

Before we get to the meat of my correspondence, I do have to mention that we missed having you on board these past few annums: During the 2016 general election, Impeachment One, the 2020 Republican primary, the 2020 general election, the alarming interregnum, the 2021 Georgia run-off, Impeachment Two, opposing the Trump election deniers in the 2022 midterms, and the recent FBI raid on the former president’s home.

Better late than never.

It’s especially nice to hear that your candidate plans to challenge and defeat Mr. Trump once and for-all. Though you might forgive a bit of tepidness in our anticipation for this event given that he hasn’t actually done anything yet and we’ve been disappointed by your ilk so many times before (see above).

You also might forgive those of us who have spent seven years fighting Trump if we are not super thrilled to jump on board with someone described by Rich Lowry as being not just from the “Trump Wing” of the party but the “Trump fuselage, wing and landing gear.” (This was intended, I believe, as a compliment).

Bearing all that in mind, I want to put forth what I, as a charter Never Trumper, will do and not do in order to provide the aid and comfort you are demanding for your chosen candidate’s campaign against the former president.

We’ll start with the will nots (natch).

I will not be a human shield for Ron to protect him from all the hard (and not so hard) questions about Donald Trump. For example, you might feel like it is not strategic for him to state clearly that it’s bad for the man he supported for president twice to have had dinner with one of the nation’s leading white supremacists. I, for one, am not certain that this convenient silence is good strategy. Maybe it’s true he might need the votes of anti-semites, maybe it’s not. But I am sure that it’s not too much to ask a prospective president what they think about it.

I will not give him a pass when he refuses to provide an answer, any answer, about whether or not he thinks Donald Trump’s coup attempt was a good thing or a bad thing. Given that his only comments to date were supportive of the coup, it feels like his updated views on the matter are something we should hear about before we give him the keys to the kingdom.

I will not practice strategic silence while he exhibits every single behavior of enablement and collaboration with the crazy that got us to Donald Trump in the first place. Here is a good book about the dangers of this approach that I would recommend you check out if you disagree on this point.

I will not pretend that he isn’t anti-vaxcurious, didn’t hire an anti-vax surgeon general, and didn’t oversee a spike in COVID deaths after a life-saving vaccine was available. I am sorry that these facts make you uncomfortable. But perhaps your support of DeSantis would be even more convincing to us if you granted them and said that you still preferred him to Trump?

I will not pretend that his decision to sign and champion a bill that would bar teachers from giving students a word problem that describes my nuclear family is needed to counterbalance the “woke” school system; or a no big deal effort to desexualize schools; or actually an anti-grooming bill; or whatever the latest spin is.

I will not shine his turds when he enacts despicably cruel public policy stunts that serve zero purpose for his constituents, such as tricking Venezuelan asylees into getting on planes from Texas to Massachusetts just so he can earn plaudits from Fox & Friends and the speakers at Kari Lake rallies.

I will not demand that popular and viable Republican governors who have classically conservative principles and acted with a modicum of integrity during the Trump era should stand aside because their presence might hypothetically hurt the candidacy of someone who showed no such courage or fortitude.

And, finally, being Never Trump does not require I participate in your efforts to prop up a man who cut the single most obsequious ad in service to our nation’s worst president. If you haven’t watched that ad in a while, please take a moment to do so now.

Ron DeSantis has released an ad indoctrinating his children into Trumpism

Yikes. Speaking of grooming, I wouldn’t let the person in that video coach my kid, for fear she might be groomed into this creepy cult.

That type of ostentatious service to the irredeemable monster who wanted to turn this great country into an autocracy shows a lack of judgment so extreme that for me—and I suspect many other Never Trumpers—it is forever disqualifying.

But even in spite of alllllll that. Despite his use of state-power to go after people and companies whose politics he doesn’t like. Despite his targeting of families like mine with needlessly spiteful anti-gay legislation. Despite his status as Mr. Trump’s number one ball fluffer. Here are the things I will do when commenting on Ron DeSantis’ primary campaign against a man I still believe is an existential threat to the country:.

Number one: If a hypothetical primary campaign between Trump and DeSantis remains competitive 15 days before the California primary and Ron/Don are the only viable options, I will suck it up, re-register as a Republican, and vote for your man in my states’ nominating contest. I will cast this vote despite his myriad transgressions against decency and Never Trump orthodoxy outlined above (and cut for space). I will write about this vote publicly to explain why it is important to support Trump’s opponents, however imperfect they may be. I will do this before the election, not weeks after the fact when it makes no difference. (Caveats: (1) If there is a competitive Democratic primary in which I have a strong preference, that may change the calculus. (2) If Ron runs a campaign where he pledges to Muslim Ban even harder than Trump did, or some noxious equivalent.)

Not only will I do that, but . . .

Number two: I am willing to go a step further and offer you another olive branch. If your candidate ever shows even the vague outline of a pair of balls and stands up to the man you now agree is a grave threat, I will compliment him for it.

That is right. I will praise Ron DeSantis!

For example, maybe this week DeSantis might consider following in a few of his prospective competitors’ footsteps and saying something to the effect of: “You know, I don’t appreciate that Donald had dinner with two anti-semites, one of whom is the most despicable nazi scum in our entire nation, and if I was president, racist douche canoes such as that would get no hearing from my White House.”

Should DeSantis try something like that on for size, I will provide the heartiest of atta boys. (And if DeSantis doesn’t say something like that, then maybe you should ask yourselves who and what DeSantis thinks his base is?)

I’m not holding my breath, but hey, who doesn’t love being pleasantly surprised?

So that’s it, that’s the best you’re gonna get from a Never Trumper. If I were you, I would take that deal and run!

But if these terms aren’t amenable because you’d rather have us as foils to curry favor with your MAGA pals—well that’s fine, too. I understand that you have to preserve your viability in case the DeSantis thing doesn’t work out. So in the meantime, good luck with the fanzine, hope Ron makes the maneuvering easy for ya out there on the trail.

Tim

I would never vote for Ron DeSantis, or any of those other Republicans. But then, I’m not a “Never Trumper.” As I said, I’m a Never GOPer. But I think his indictment of DeSantis is right on and should temper all this talk even among Democrats that we should be hoping he wins the nomination. For me, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Trump or DeSantis, it’s a major threat.

When you look at DeSantis’ record and rhetoric I see no reason to think that he woulds not use the levers of power to overturn an election. Look at what he’s used the levers of power to do!Just because he went to Yale doesn’t mean he’s somehow immune from the authoritarian movement that’s building in America. He’s one of its leaders!

There is no difference in practice between an autocratic narcissist and an autocratic ideologue. So, I’m perfectly happy to stick with the popular front that includes these Never Trumpers even if they would be willing to vote for Asa Hutchinson and I’m not. We are not going to have that choice.

DeSantis knows these are the new rules and he’s taking advantage of it:

Officials who work for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration — not his campaign — have been sending text messages to Florida lobbyists soliciting political contributions for DeSantis’ presidential bid, a breach of traditional norms that has raised ethical and legal questions and left many here in the state capital shocked.

NBC News reviewed text messages from four DeSantis administration officials, including those directly in the governor’s office and with leadership positions in state agencies. They requested the recipient of the message contribute to the governor’s campaign through a specific link that appeared to track who is giving as part of a “bundle” program. 

“The bottom line is that the administration appears to be keeping tabs on who is giving, and are doing it using state staff,” a longtime Florida lobbyist said. “You are in a prisoner’s dilemma. They are going to remain in power. We all understand that.”

NBC News is not naming the specific staffers who sent the text messages because it could out the lobbyists who received the messages and shared them.

DeSantis’ office did not return a request seeking comment, but one administration official acknowledged that they were fundraising for the campaign.

“I’m not sure what every EOG staffer does on their free time and after hours, with their first amendment rights, but I wouldn’t be shocked if team eog somehow raised more money than lobbyists,” the administration official said in a text message, referring to an acronym for the governor’s office. “I can confirm I (and many other staff) personally donated.”

“What the f— am I supposed to do? I have a lot of business in front of the DeSantis administration.

FLORIDA LOBBYIST

Generally, political staffers are charged with raising money for political campaigns, and aides on the official side are walled off from those operations.

The legality of the solicitations depends on a series of factors, including whether they were sent on state-owned phones, or if they were sent on state property. A longtime Florida election law attorney said that even if the DeSantis aides are fundraising for the campaign in their personal capacity, off the government clock, it still raised ethical questions.

“At a minimum, even if they are sitting in their home at 9 p.m. using their personal phone and contacting lobbyists that they somehow magically met in their personal capacity and not through their role in the governor’s office, it still smells yucky,” the attorney said. “There’s a misuse of public position issue here that is obvious to anyone paying attention.”

But the practice was still jaw-dropping for those who have long been involved in Florida politics.

NBC News spoke with 10 Republican lobbyists in Florida, all of whom said they couldn’t remember being solicited for donations so overtly by administration officials — especially at a time when the governor still has to act on the state budget.

That process that involves DeSantis using his line-item veto pen to slash funding for projects that the same lobbyists whom they are asking for political cash have a professional stake in. Most of the lobbyists said they felt pressure to give to the governor’s campaign.

I’m pretty sure that’s the point, aren’t you?

Using the power of the office to ensure loyalty by pulling people into a corrupt scheme is right out of the Trumpian playbook. It’s how the mob works and DeSantis has paid close attention.

The Democratic members at least

No Labels has long been a malevolent force in American politics since its inception. This conceit of being above all the partisan mucky muck is insufferable. It’s basically a money making operation for its founders and has never accomplished anything.

Finally, some of the Democrats affiliated with its equally useless House caucus, the “Problem Solvers” have had enough. It took them trying to put Trump back in the White House to do it:

A group of House Democrats with ties to No Labels is turning on the centrist group after it attacked one of their founding members.

On Tuesday, No Labels texted people who live in the district of Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), criticizing the congressman for scoffing at their idea for a unity presidential ticket and claiming it could result in Donald Trump’s return to the presidency.

In its message, No Labels said it was “alarmed to learn that your U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider recently attacked the notion that you should have more choices in the 2024 presidential election.” They called Schneider “out of step” with his voters.

“No Labels is wasting time, energy, and money on a bizarre effort that confuses and divides voters, and has one obvious outcome — reelecting Donald Trump as President.”Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.)

The missive did not go over well with Schneider, who is a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus that No Labels helped start on the Hill.

“No Labels’ attacks are the kind of division the country needs less of right now, and it’s a betrayal of every moderate and every problem solver in Congress,” Schneider said in a statement to POLITICO. “I helped form the Problem Solvers Caucus six years ago to reach across the aisle and find common ground, not to abandon my principles. I am as committed today as I’ve always been to the principles that reflect the values and priorities of my district, and to reaching across the aisle for the good of our country.”

Schneider was quickly joined by other members of the Problem Solvers Caucus in chastising No Labels for attacking one of their own and pushing a unity ticket.

“No Labels is wasting time, energy, and money on a bizarre effort that confuses and divides voters, and has one obvious outcome — reelecting Donald Trump as President,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in a statement. “Now, the organization has decided to go one step further and attack a decent, well-respected, and hardworking member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus for the apparent sin of calling them out on their bogus plan.”

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) said in an interview that the attack on Schneider was “in poor taste” and ran “counter to the very principles that certainly are worth pursuing, which is respectful disagreement.” He added that the move against Schneider had roiled the caucus.

“I speak for most of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the Problem Solvers Caucus that we deeply believe in the mission and are grateful for creating space in place for thoughtful dialogue in a time we need it more than ever, but disappointed in this initiative against Brad Schneider,” he said.

Despite the anger with attacks on Schneider, neither Phillips nor his fellow offended Problem Solvers Caucus members said that they would be leaving the caucus. Asked whether he had conveyed his concerns to No Labels or to its co-founder and president Nancy Jacobson, Phillips declined to share any private conversations.

The Problem Solvers Caucus is currently co-chaired by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.). A spokesperson for Fitzpatrick did not respond to a request for comment, but Gottheimer said in a statement that he opposed No Labels’ 2024 efforts.

“Like Brad, this is not an effort I’m personally involved with or supportive of,” he said. “I also believe constructive conversations are the best way to solve problems and resolve disagreements — not personal attacks.”

No Labels defended its message to voters in Schneider’s district.

“Two-thirds of Americans don’t want a rematch of the 2020 election and No Labels is the only organization responding to what they do want, which is more voices and choices in our political process,” No Labels co-executive director Margaret White said in a statement. “Outside the Washington bubble, No Labels’ 2024 presidential insurance project is striking a chord and we’re going to keep working to get ballot access in states across the country. America’s common sense majority is waking up and ready to be heard.”

No Labels has said that it’s raised or received commitments for tens of millions of dollars for its “unity” ticket that it is considering running next year if it deems both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to be too extreme. The group has insisted that it will pull the plug on the venture if it looks like it will become a “spoiler” and result in Trump’s election. But the group’s effort has also received heavy pushback from the moderate Democratic group Third Way, which says it is poised to precisely play that spoiler role.

No Labels has pushed back aggressively at its critics. And its decision to go after Schneider underscores the degree to which it has become singularly focused on its 2024 campaign venture over all other functions, including building alliances on the Hill.

In the message to voters in Schneider’s district, the group suggested a sample email that recipients could send to Schneider’s office. A spokesperson for Schneider said as of late Thursday afternoon, only eight form letters have been sent to the office.

The pushback from some of No Labels’ natural allies adds to the recent turmoil the group has faced. It lost its top communications adviser Mark Halperin earlier this spring and has been roiled by internal staff turmoil.

The group seems to be serious about getting on the ballot in swing states and are trying to recruit someone like Joe Manchin to run as the No Labels candidate. There’s no other way to interpret that than as a move to re-elect Donald Trump. They are clearly hoping to split the Democratic vote.

It’s long past time for the Democratic centrists to understand that these people are objectively pro-Republican. They always have been.

There’s a lot of Trump legal news these days, what with the E. Jean Carroll verdict, the Manhattan hush money indictment, the news that Fulton County, Georgia, D.A. Fani Willis has put local authorities on notice to anticipate “something” coming in August, and a cascade of reporting on special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, with some suggestions evidence that will come to a conclusion very soon.

The possible Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump himself remains more obscure, but with the sentencing of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for plotting the insurrection on Thursday, it’s hard to see how Trump, who incited the riot, isn’t equally implicated in what happened that day. But for some reason one obvious case has gotten very little media attention and, as far as we know, very little attention from investigators: Trump’s cozy financial relationship with the Saudi-sponsored Public Investment Fund, the desert kingdom’s massive sovereign wealth fund. (Its assets are estimated at more than $620 billion.)

It’s not at all surprising that the Republican House isn’t looking into this. They’re busy trying to find disappearing informants in the Hunter Biden laptop case and digging through the Biden family finances. Why the Democratic-led Senate hasn’t bothered is another question. But it’s obvious that Trump and his family are deeply financially involved with the Saudi government, and considering the fact that Trump is running for president yet again, it’s shocking that nobody seems to care. 

It’s unclear how much money has actually changed hands, but Trump admits that he’s been paid a fee, which he calls “peanuts,” by the sponsoring Public Investment Fund, the same Saudi government entity that “invested” in Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s business to the tune of $2 billion just a couple of months after he left the White House. (That’s a deal that makes Hunter Biden’s alleged transgressions look like kids gambling for nickels in the lunchroom.) These tournaments generally bring in millions to the clubs that host them so those are some pretty big peanuts.

According to USA Today, a reporter asked Trump whether his resorts have gotten these tournaments because of his favorable policies toward Saudi Arabia as president. He flippantly replied, “Not at all.” Apparently, his defense of the Saudi government’s assassination and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi wasn’t significant. They just love him, and his golf courses.

Trump extolled the virtues of the LIV Golf tour (a rival to the long-dominant PGA), telling reporters, “They have unlimited money, and they love it. And it’s been great publicity for Saudi Arabia. They’ve been great for golf. The Saudis have been fantastic for golf. And … inside their country, they’re going to do some great courses.” Indeed, he has signed at least one development deal to license a golf and hotel complex in the Gulf state of Oman, financed by a Saudi firm.

LIV Golf is a key part of the Saudi regime’s program of “sportswashing,” meaning as a nation’s attempt to use massive investment in sports to cover up for its human rights abuses. (The Saudi fund also took control of the English soccer club Newcastle United in a controversial 2021 deal.) Even aside from the Khashoggi atrocity, many of those horrors happened during Trump’s term, as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took control of the ruling family by force, rounding up more than 400 members of the Saudi elite and torturing them.

Trump, as you may recall, was very impressed.

JUST IN: President Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman at G-20 in Japan, calls him "a friend of mine" and says that he's done "really a spectacular job" and that it's a "great honor" to meet with him. pic.twitter.com/cKvZ8qWFQc

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 29, 2019

“It’s like a revolution in a very positive way,” he said. That’s the kind of support from a U.S. president that lots of money can buy.

Trump has huge investments in his golf course empire, which has suffered because of his Big Lie and the ripple effects of Jan. 6. The PGA tour pulled out of hosting its championship at Trump’s club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and the British Open definitely isn’t coming back to Turnberry, Trump’s Scottish resort. LIV is the only game in town for Trump these days.

This kind of corruption has been going on since Trump entered politics. He never divested from his businesses after he was elected president and people currying favor with him spent many millions at his various properties, including the golf resorts. The Trump International Hotel in Washington (which he sold last year and is now a Waldorf Astoria) was the social center of Republican politics, channeling money directly into Trump’s pockets. The political press occasionally remarked on how unseemly that was and the Democratic Congress clutched its pearls, but of all Trump’s scandals, this one never seemed to bother anyone all that much.

There is some evidence suggesting that special counsel Jack Smith may be looking into Trump’s connections to LIV Golf in connection with the Mar-a-Lago case. The New York Times reported this a couple of weeks ago:

One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts.

Just this week, the Times also reported that the subpoena also asked for the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development deals in China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman since 2017, when Trump became president. Most of the D.C. punditocracy has dismissed this as nothing more than Smith “dotting his I’s and crossing his T’s” before he makes his case. Maybe they’re right. But at least someone is finally taking a look at what exactly was going on while Trump was running his business out of the Oval Office.

It’s never been easy to separate Trump’s financial motivations from his massive ego. He’s excessively subject to flattery and that’s often enough to gain his support. But his relationship with the Saudis clearly has a major financial component, as does Jared Kushner’s, and all of that seems to be tied to their time in the White House.

If Trump were just retiring to his golf resorts and taking advantage of all the contacts he made while president, it might be reasonable just to let it go in the interest of never having to think about him again. But he’s the clear frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination and he’s openly helping the Saudi regime “sportswash” its human rights record while taking unknown millions from it. 

Let’s hope that unlike Robert Mueller, who refused to exceed his mandate and look at Trump’s finances, Jack Smith sees this for the blatant corruption it is. Otherwise, we’re just accepting that it’s perfectly OK for presidents and presidential candidates to do big favors for autocratic foreign governments in exchange for money. Are we really that far gone?

Salon

A very unimpressive debut:

Within hours of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s announcement of his presidential run on Twitter on Wednesday, participants in the audio event celebrated the achievement.

David Sacks, a venture capitalist who moderated the Twitter conversation, declared it “by far the biggest room ever held on social media.” Afterward, Mr. DeSantis, a Florida Republican, said in a podcast interview that he thought by later that day “probably over 10 million people” would have “watched” the event, called a Twitter Space, or a recording of it.

They were wrong on both counts.

According to Twitter’s metrics, the audio event — which was initially marred by more than 20 minutes of technical glitches before it was restarted — garnered a high of about 300,000 concurrent listeners, or those who simultaneously tuned in as Mr. DeSantis made his announcement. As of Thursday, 3.4 million people had listened to the Space or a recording of it, according to Twitter’s numbers.

Those figures fell short of 10 million people and were far from being “the biggest room ever held on social media” compared with past livestreams.

Consider that a 2016 Facebook Live event, featuring two BuzzFeed employees placing rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded, drew more than 800,000 concurrent viewers and a total of five million views within hours of its conclusion. The 2017 livestream of a pregnant giraffe on YouTube brought in five million viewers a day.

The event with Mr. DeSantis was even dwarfed by past audio livestreams on Twitter. Last month, more than three million people at one point concurrently listened to an interview of Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, by a BBC reporter in a Twitter Space, according to the company’s numbers. A recording of that Space said 2.6 million listeners had ultimately “tuned in.” (Twitter did not explain the discrepancy between the concurrent listener count and the “tuned in” figure.)

“Getting a few hundred thousand people to do something for some number of minutes is not that big of a deal,” said Brian Wieser, a longtime media analyst who runs Madison and Wall, a strategic advisory firm. “I’m not quite sure that using Twitter to announce a presidential campaign was the most impactful environment, though maybe Twitter could become that.”

It was impactful. It cemented the impression that DeSantis is a terrible poitician.

All the way to Idaho

NPR:

The U.S. Supreme Court Court on Thursday significantly curtailed the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the nation’s wetlands and waterways. It was the court’s second decision in a year limiting the ability of the agency to enact anti-pollution regulations and combat climate change.

The challenge to the regulations was brought by Michael and Chantell Sackett, who bought property to build their dream house about 500 feet away from Idaho’s Scenic Priest Lake, a 19-mile stretch of clear water that is fed by mountain streams and bordered by state and national parkland. Three days after the Sacketts started excavating their property, the EPA stopped work on the project because the couple had failed to get a permit for disturbing the wetlands on their land.

Now a conservative Supreme Court majority has used the Sackett’s case to roll back longstanding rules adopted to carry out the 51-year-old Clean Water Act.

Heather Cox Richardson:

This decision will remove federal protection from half of the currently protected wetlands in the U.S, an area larger than California. Homeowners, farmers, and developers will have far greater latitude to intrude on wetlands than they did previously, and that intrusion has already wrought damage as wetlands act like a sponge to absorb huge amounts of water during hurricanes. From 1992 to 2010, Houston, for example, lost more than 70% of its wetlands to development, leaving it especially vulnerable to Hurricane Harvey, a category 4 hurricane that in 2017 left 107 people dead and caused $125 billion in damage.

The decision said that the EPA had overreached in its protection of wetlands as part of the Clean Water Act, and that Congress must “enact exceedingly clear language” on any rules that affect private property. This court seems eager to gut federal regulation, suggesting that Congress cannot delegate regulatory rulemaking to the executive branch. As investigative journalist Dave Troy put it, “If [the] EPA can’t enforce its rules, what federal agency can?”

Justice Elena Kagan warned that by destroying the authority of the EPA, both now and in the West Virginia v. EPA decision last June that restricted the agency’s ability to regulate emissions from power plants, the court had appointed itself “as the national decision maker on environmental policy.”

Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog:

Four justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – agreed that the CWA does not apply to the wetlands on the Sacketts’ lot, but they disagreed with the majority’s reasoning. In an opinion joined by the three liberal justices, Kavanaugh contended that “[b]y narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.” For example, Kavanaugh noted, under the court’s new test, the wetlands on the other side of levees on the Mississippi River will not be covered by the CWA, even though they “are often an important part of the flood-control project” for the river. Moreover, Kavanaugh added, the court’s new test “is sufficiently novel and vague” that it will create precisely the kind of regulatory uncertainty that the majority criticized.

Yeah, so? says the majority.

Seven years after his death this is still Justice Antonin Scalia’s court, argues Richard J. Lazarus of Harvard’s law school. Scalia wanted to gut the law in 2006 but fell short of the votes (Washington Post):

None of this was compelled by law. Even Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh rejected Alito’s majority view, announcing that he “would stick to the text.” Congress spoke clearly in the Clean Water Act about its ambitions and backed that intent up with deliberately sweeping language to provide the EPA with the discretionary authority it needed to realize those goals. Our nation’s waters are far cleaner as a result. Yet, for the second time in less than a year, an activist Supreme Court has deployed the false label of “separation of powers” to deny the other two branches the legal tools they require to safeguard the public.

Scalia might have been pleased. Our nation should not be.

Thank, Mitch McConnell.

Not necessarily a bad thing

Like many of you, I’m still catching up with people and places not visited since the pandemic hit in early 2020. Daily rituals have filled the gap, pecking along here on a schedule being one of them. Daily walks being another. The expression “even keel” comes to mind.

Memorial Day rituals are back on in full, finally, and perusing all the local events this weekend, I may when finished here scratch out a list of events to stop by. “Keep Asheville Weird,” the bumper sticker says, but even normal weird feels good.

Headed for a beer.
Shirtless guy in a kilt pushing a stroller to my left.
Groundhog on his hind legs eating a banana peel to my right.
Typical day in the neighborhood.

— @TomSullivan@mstdn.social (@BloggersRUs) May 20, 2023

Brian Klaas argues that rituals contribute to social, not just personal, stability. They are “a potent force, sometimes enlisted for good, other times not,” but for that not to be ignored: How about some pro-democracy rituals?

Here’s the problem: the political right and authoritarian movements have perfected the art of the ritual. They have tapped into this ancient wisdom, harnessed it, used it to mobilize their members and fasten them together. And it works.

The political left and pro-democracy movements, by contrast, have often unilaterally disarmed, jettisoning rituals, even looking down upon them, then scratching their chins with perplexed bafflement as to why they keep losing battles that they should be winning. “We’re the party of reason,” some will say. Congratulations! But reason isn’t fun.

Sure, rituals like Nazi salutes are associated with some of mankind’s worse moments and lock-her-ups smack of brainwashing, conformism, and jettisoning of critical thought. On the other hand, Klaas argues, “If we don’t satisfy our intrinsic craving for them, demagogues may swoop in and fill that void,” as you may have noticed.

“Donald Trump is a ritualistic ringmaster,” Klaas writes, his instinct for it “an impulse emanating from the lizard-like parts of our brains, unthinking, an impulse that he follows even if he couldn’t explain why he does it or how it works.”

Trump rallies are rife with ritual. The song list, the hats, the chants, the ritual vilification of the press and, of course, THEM. They are a natural binding agent for believers, “authoritarian super glue.” They build cohesion, a sense of community. They define a movement.

This, Klaas argues, the left has lost to its detriment.

I humbly submit to the skeptics that your energy is best spent not on opposing rituals that people enjoy, appointing yourself the anti-ritualistic Fun Police, but rather making sure that rituals are used to celebrate the right things: inclusive, democratic nationalism, heroic public service, and true patriotism, not the fake kind. Too often, the political left attacks problematic rituals—for good reasons—but fails to come up with alternatives that could fill that human need we all have to be part of something larger.

Throughout human history, we’ve turned to ritual to reflect our values and reinforce ideas. In the past, religion was the bastion of ritual. It still is today, for some. But for others who have no church, or who care about our civic church, we need to provide replacement rituals. In America, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was a great idea (though I wish rituals around it were more widely celebrated).

The New Age movement of the 1990s seemed driven in part by a need on the left to replace the ritual and symbolism once provided by older religions. Stripped of our myths by science, believers scrambled frantically to reconstruct their interior landscape from a pastiche of mystical icons. Modern otherwise, we are perhaps navigating the 21st century with a pre-Enlightenment collective unconscious. The keel that keeps us stable lies partly in our genetic memory, in our discounted lizard brains.

Klaas concludes:

Democracy, too often, is treated as a static feature of the status quo. That’s completely wrong. We speak of constitutions and institutions as though they have magical properties, hallowed features that will automatically endure. But ideas, institutions, and values are only as strong as the people who actively uphold them. When a democracy is under threat, as many are today, pro-democracy movements require more than the business-as-usual “I’ll do my bit and vote every few years” approach.

We need to recognize our mistake: criticizing problematic rituals should not lead to eliminating them altogether. To fight for democracy, and to reclaim patriotism and nationalism from those who make a mockery of what those concepts are supposed to mean, we need to produce new hubs of collective effervescence. And this is where studying flawed rituals rather than just condemning them is worthwhile.

The Trump Rally is not a template, but it does offer a lesson.

Netroots Nation (in Chicago this year in July) has its own rituals that cement the progressive tribe. There are appearances by political celebrities, of course: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and Tennessee State Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, plus Rep. Maxwell Frost, Rep. Chuy Garcia, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Summer Lee, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, among others. My friend Anderson Clayton, the new Gen Z chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, will be there along with three other women leading state parties.

"A small group of people coming together can really make something happen if they believe in it."

North Carolina Democratic party chair @abreezeclayton shares her journey into the political sphere and how she plans to tackle voter outreach. pic.twitter.com/sP2fFj3elj

— GMA3: What You Need To Know (@ABCGMA3) May 25, 2023

But even the foolish nonsense builds community. The annual Pub Quiz with its silly team names, costumes, and won almost every time by the California team. Leaving with a sense that in all the awfulness there are thousands like yourself working every day to preserve our freedoms.

The 2022 elections, Anat Shenker-Osorio emphasized in a Thursday Zoom briefing, was a referendum on FREEDOMS. The left needs to reclaim the word from those threatening them in the name of freedom. We abandon patriotic ritual to the right at our peril.

Some Texas pols are apparently surprised to learn that the state Attorney General is a crook:

The head of a Texas House panel was aghast Tuesday after investigators laid out wide-ranging corruption allegations against scandal-soaked Attorney General Ken Paxton, calling them “alarming to hear.”

“It curls my mustache,” said Rep. Andrew Murr, a fellow Republican, who no doubt was already familiar with the accusations that have swirled around Paxton for years.

Paxton, a staunch conservative in his third term as the state’s top prosecutor, now finds himself facing possible impeachment proceedings—on top of an ongoing FBI investigation and a long-stalled indictment.

His response has been to attack House Speaker Dade Phelan, accusing him on Tuesday—when word of the probe emerged—of drinking on the job. On Wednesday, after the litany of allegations was unveiled during a three-hour hearing, Paxton claimed Phelan, a Republican, is a “liberal” who wants to “sabotage my work.”

The investigators led the House committee through years of alleged misconduct that they believe broke the laws Paxton is sworn to uphold.

At the heart of of the matter are claims that Paxton used his office to assist a donor—real-estate developer Nate Paul—who then allegedly helped him remodel his home and hired his mistress.

Four Paxton aides who flagged the AG’s intervention in Paul’s affairs were fired.

“Each of these four men is a conservative Republican civil servant,” investigator Erin Epley told the House committee. “Interviews show that they wanted to be loyal… and they tried to advise him well and strongly. When that failed, each was fired after reporting General Paxton to law enforcement.”

As the FBI opened an inquiry, the aides filed a whistleblower suit against Paxton, who asked the state to pay them a $3.3 million settlement. Phelan balked at that, and the committee investigation was launched in March.

Shockingly, Paxton was accused of crimes long before this episode. In 2015, the rookie AG was indicted on securities fraud charges in a case that has been tied up in appeals ever since; Paxton denies the allegations and voters re-elected him twice since his indictment.

Paxton has also been named in a lawsuit by the State Bar for Texas, which accused him of misconduct for claiming voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Joe Biden’s win in several states.

What happens next to Paxton is murky. The House Committee took no action, and the Legislature’s session ends on Monday.

Will he ever be held accountable? I doubt it. Texans re-elected this monster as Attorney General knowing that he’s a criminal. Apparently, that’s what they like about him.