The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, create videos intended to get into Trump’s head. This is one of their best.
Archives for category: Elections
We first heard the term “destroy the administrative state” when Steve Bannon used it in 2015 and 2016. Bannon, a close advisor to Trump, viewed the federal government as a danger to life and liberty. Now, Trump supporters echo that language, and it still sounds bizarre. They may be relying on Social Security and Medicare, they may be drinking clean water and breathing fresh air thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency, they may enjoy daily safety and security thanks to federal regulations, but they are prepared to toss all of it overboard.
They want to get the administrative state out of our lives, except that they don’t. They want the state to control women’s bodies, to limit parental rights to seek medical care for their children, and to control what we can read and what entertainment we can see. They want frozen embryos and fetuses in utero to be declared children, with all the rights of personhood. They want women and girls to be forced to give birth, even if their pregnancy was caused by rape or uncest, even if it endangers the woman’s life, even if the fetus has fatal deficiencies.
No organization has been more influential than the Heritage Foundation in stoking hostility to the Federal government. This venerable D.C. think tank is now planning the second Trump administration.
Over the past year, Heritage gathered rightwing ideologues to draft a document called Project 2025. It is a plan for the next Trump administration.
Here is another link. The section on the federal role in education starts on page 351.
Trump’s allies believe that his ambitious goals in his first term were stymied by career bureaucrats. So they recommend that his first act must be to reorganize the civil service, removing job protections from civil servants, enabling Trump to replace civil servants with Trump loyalists. It’s worth remembering that the civil service was created to eliminate the “spoils system,” the routine practice of filling government jobs with political cronies. Every president currently has thousands of political jobs to fill, but the core functions of government are staffed by experienced civil servants who serve regardless of the party in power.
The Heritage plan would enhance the powers of the President. Every government agency would be staffed by his loyalists. The Justice Department would no longer enjoy a measure of independence; instead it would serve the President. If he wanted to use it to persecute his political enemies, he could. He could carry out his pledges to jail Hillary Clinton and the Biden family. His Justice Department, led by a Trump attorney (Jeff Clark? Robert Hur? Alina Habba?) would follow proper procedures, arrest Trump’s enemies, and charge them with something or other.
With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.
“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking….
The ideas contained in Heritage’s coffee table-ready book are both ambitious and parochial, a mix of longstanding conservative policies and stark, head-turning proposals that gained prominence in the Trump era.
There’s a “top to bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. It calls for stepped-up prosecution of anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail.
There are proposals to have the Pentagon “abolish” its recent diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, what the project calls the “woke” agenda, and reinstate service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
As Politico described it, the Project 2025 plan is the product of numerous rightwing groups that are seeking to roll back nothing less than 100 years of what they see as liberal encroachment on Washington. They want to overturn what began as Woodrow Wilson’s creation of a federal administrative elite and later grew into a vast, unaccountable and mostly liberal bureaucracy (as conservatives view it) under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, numbering about two and a quarter million federal workers today. They aim to defund the Department of Justice, dismantle the FBI, break up the Department of Homeland Security and eliminate the Departments of Education and Commerce, to name just a few of their larger targets. They want to give the president complete power over quasi-independent agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies that have been the bane of Trump’s political existence in the last few years.
And they want to ensure that what remains of this slashed-down bureaucracy is reliably MAGA conservative — not just for the next president but for a long time to come — and that the White House maintains total control of it. In an effort to implement this agenda — which relies on another Reagan-era idea, the controversial “unitary theory” of the Constitution under which Article II gives the president complete power over the federal bureaucracy — Dans has formed a committee to recruit what he calls “conservative warriors” through bar associations and state attorneys general offices and install them in general counsel offices throughout the federal bureaucracy.
Jonathan V. Last edits The Bulwark, an outstanding Never Trump site. He thinks that South Carolina showed big holes in Trump’s vote.
He writes:
Let’s start with the exit polls.
Haley kept it close: independent voters made up 22 percent of the electorate and she won them 62-37. South Carolina is an open primary, so this was a case of independents showing up to vote against Trump in a meaningless contest. That’s bad news for him.
Among people who thought the economy was either “good” (Haley +73) or “not so good” (Haley +1) Haley fought Trump to better than a draw.
This matters because Biden’s theory of the case is that the economy is good and people are going to recognize that. If Biden can even get voters to “ehhh, the economy is not so good,” suddenly voters are much less receptive to Trump.
Haley beat Trump by +9 with voters with a college degree. That’s expected, but still a point of weakness.
Not expected: Among married Republicans Trump was only +3. In recent elections, married voters have been a huge area of strength for Republicans—Trump was +7 among marrieds in 2020. South Carolina shows us that half of a core Republican bloc is turning out to vote against Trump even when his opponent has no chance of winning. Not great for him.
But it keeps getting worse: Nearly a third of the voters said that Trump isn’t fit to serve as president and Haley won them by Saddam Hussein numbers.
Last data point, which is something I’ve been fixated on since I did The Focus Group a couple weeks ago: Among voters who believe that Trump lost in 2020, his numbers are ghastly.
Important to note: 36 percent of the electorate said that yes, Biden won fair and square. And with those people, Haley was +64.¹
I am growing convinced that forcing Trump to claim that he actually won in 2016—and belaboring that point over and over and over again—is a key to victory in 2024. When people see Trump lying about something they know isn’t true, it pits him against them, makes the relationship between Trump and the voter adversarial. The voters say, “Wait a minute, this guy is trying to scam me.”
And Trump is trapped because he’s so committed to the Big Lie that he can’t back down from it now.
Dan Rather analyzed Trump’s primary wins and spots signs that he is vulnerable because his well-defined base is limited. Due to his extremism, he is not able to have a big tent that would attract independents and even dissident Democrats. Even more telling is that Trump is not unifying the Republican Party. As soon as Trump won the South Carolina, he proclaimed that he had never seen the Republican Party more united. As Rather explains, that’s not really true.
He writes:
NBC’s “Meet The Press” this morning characterized Donald Trump’s South Carolina primary victory as “delivering a crushing blow to [Nikki] Haley in her home state on Saturday, trouncing her by 20 points with nearly 60 percent of the vote. The former president dominated nearly every key group.”
While he did indeed win handily, a deep dive into the numbers provides some interesting context.
The part of the story missing from many news reports is that Trump is slipping from his 2020 numbers. His support is strongest among his MAGA base, which pollsters put at no more than 33% of the electorate. Clearly, he will need more than MAGA to win the White House again.
President Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary with 96.2% of the vote. Trump, who is essentially an incumbent up against a novice at running for national office, could not muster even 60% of his party’s vote. Exit polls from Saturday night should have GOP leaders nervous.
The makeup of South Carolina’s Republican voters does not mirror the country. They are heavily weighted with hard-right “conservatives,” older, white, male, evangelical election deniers. Trump won overwhelmingly among them. But Haley won among independents, moderates, and those who care about foreign policy. And that’s the crux of it.
To win the presidency again, Trump will need to bring all Republicans into the tent. Gallop estimates that 41% of the electorate identifies as Republican. Then it gets really tough. He has to convince a large number of independents and Democrats to vote for him. But how?
- Not by favoring a 16-week national abortion ban
- Not by threatening to pull out of NATO
- Not by defunding Ukraine and supporting Putin’s invasion
- Not by promising “ultimate and absolute revenge” against his political opponents
- Not by refusing to accept the results of elections he’s lost
- Not by promising to be a dictator on day one of his second term
Not by saying things like: “These are the stakes of this election. Our country is being destroyed, and the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me.”
Trump is winning primaries while underperforming. Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to President Obama and current host of “Pod Save America,” writes: “You cannot win the White House with the coalition that Trump is getting in these primaries. He must expand his coalition, persuade people who aren’t already on board and get beyond the Big Lie-believing MAGA base. Through three primary contests, Trump has gained no ground.”
Polls also indicate a majority of voters in swing states would be unwilling to vote for Trump if he’s convicted of a crime. That could happen as soon as April or May.
As Axios writes: “If America were dominated by old, white, election-denying Christians who didn’t go to college, former President Trump would win the general election in as big of a landslide as his sweep of the first four GOP contests.” Fortunately, it is not. America is a rich tapestry of heritages, races, and creeds. Immigrants have long been one of our strengths.
But the likely GOP nominee continues to feed fears about immigration using language tailored to his MAGA base. “They’re coming from Asia, they’re coming from the Middle East, coming from all over the world, coming from Africa, and we’re not going to stand for it … They’re destroying our country,” Trump said Saturday at CPAC, a conference of extreme-right Trump supporters.
“No, Mr. Trump, they’re not,” is the answer of many Americans. There is strong public opinion that what is tearing our country apart is the divisiveness and rancor that comes from Trump, the Republican Party, and their right-wing media machine.
The mainstream press may begin to offer more of this context and perspective as we get deeper into the presidential campaign. One of the things Steady was created to do was offer reasoned context and perspective to news stories. This writing is an example.
Trump remains a real and present threat to win the presidency again in November. But that is not assured. Not nearly, as a deep analysis of early primary results indicates.
There is still a long way to go and many rivers to cross for both major candidates.
John Thompson, historian in Oklahoma, chronicles the always interesting events in the Sooner State. He asks in this post about the role of the media in covering extremism and gross stupidity.
Since I wrote about the “Strange Irresponsible Behavior” of Oklahoma’s Republican extremists, I’ve been conversing with neighbors, reporters, and politicians, wrestling with the ways the press should be handling this issue. Will we look back on such weird stories as just “wacky” distractions from the legislative issues that reporters should be covering in a conventional manner? Or will these seemingly nutty narratives come to dwarf in terms of historical significance the narratives that the press typically focuses on? When, for instance, Gov. Kevin Stitt speaks out of both sides of his mouth about “a potential ‘force-on-force’ conflict between the South and the Biden Administration,” and joining other governors to “send our National Guard to help and to support the efforts of Governor Abbott,” was he implicitly supporting those who are calling for a civil war?
Shouldn’t the press follow the lead of The Independent and ask Stitt what he meant when he called “the clash between Texas authorities and the federal government a ‘powder keg of tension?’” So, should Stitt reveal what he meant when saying, “We certainly stand with Texas on the right to defend themselves.” And, surely the press should seek clarification as to what Stitt meant regarding the National Guard when saying, “I think they would be in a difficult situation: to protect their homeland or to follow what Biden’s saying,” and then promising that Oklahoma, along with other states, “would send our National Guard to help and to support the efforts of Governor Abbott.”
Fortunately, the rally for supporting Abbott didn’t attract the 700,000 or more persons that were sought, and didn’t respond to the Texas Proud Boys’ call for followers to “grab your guns” to stop “brown immigrant invaders.” But, the Washington Post explains, “Whether the rallies erupt or fizzle, extremism researchers say, the consequences will outlast the weekend.” Shouldn’t Stitt be pressured to comment on that appraisal? I certainly believe reporters need to explicitly ask whether saving our democracy must be our top priority.
Who knows? Had those questions been asked, maybe the press could have followed up by asking Stitt which side he would support if Vladimir Putin accepts Trump’s invitation to attack NATO?
A first step toward that goal would be to read Jill Lepore’s The Deadline, and wrestle with what would have happened if Dorothy Thompson hadn’t started the originally atypical coverage of Adolf Hitler, or if Edward R. Murrow hadn’t challenged Joe McCarthy. Lepore, the historian who writes for the New Yorker, further cited the “Golden Age” of the press in the 1960s and 70s which was started when David Halberstam ignored charges of liberal bias and reached “the high mark” of journalism when “interpretation replaced transmission, and adversarialism replaced deference,” even though it meant a writer could no longer “shake hands the next day with the man whom he had just written about.”
Led by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and a few other institutions, the national press now focuses more on the interpretation of MAGA antics. It would be more risky for local journalists to place irrational assertions and legislative actions into a broader context, but since our democracy is in jeopardy, its time to move beyond coverage of routine bills as they move out of committee.
After a conversation on that subject, I got into my car and listened to NPR’s coverage of the Taylor Swift Super Bowl stories – which seemed to be the model for how reporters should cover rightwing absurdities. It began, “Swift’s popularity is being twisted into a threat by a contingent of far-right, Donald Trump-supporting conservatives who have started circulating conspiracy theories about the singer, the Super Bowl, and the 2024 election.” Supposedly, “the NFL had ‘RIGGED’ a Chiefs victory” so “Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.”
NPR then placed this obviously false narrative in the context of Fox news, and “Jack Posobiec, who pushed the baseless Pizzagate conspiracy theory.” It further explained how such memes can endanger women’s health.
On the other hand, who knows? Maybe Swift would have led a halftime coup for Biden if the press hadn’t blown the whistle?
Seriously, why can’t all types of news outlets routinely interrogate legislative sponsors about such lies, pushing them to go on record or publicly refuse to answer questions about where did they learn about furries and the reason for wanting to use animal control to keep them out of school. Or, why the “Common Sense Freedom of Press Control Act” should “require criminal background checks of every member of the news media;” the “licensing of journalists through the Oklahoma Corporation Commission;” the completion of a “propaganda free” training course by PragerU; and a $1 million liability insurance policy; and quarterly drug tests.
When legislators defend corporal punishment of disabled students because it’s the will of God, and requiring the teaching of creationism in classes where evolution is taught, they should have to explain the sources of their legislation, and why they think they are constitutional. Similarly, why would a legislator seek to ban “no-fault divorce,” even though the vast majority of the state’s divorces are based on that law. If every such bill would receive such scrutiny, wouldn’t the public become better prepared to vote for or against political leaders who won’t take a stand opposing the MAGA-driven divisiveness?
Or, conversely, if these bills are dismissed as merely “wacky” and allowed to spread, what will happen to the trust required for a democracy to function?
Thom Hartmann connects the dots: the Republican Party is now controlled by Vladimir Putin. The Republicans do only what is in the interest of Putin. His goal, as it was in 2016 and 2020, is to get Trump elected. Trump is subservient to Putin. Trump wants to block American aid to Putin. So does House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called a two-week recess as Ukrainian forces are running out of ammunition. How do you define GOP these days? Guardians of Putin? Goons of Putin? Other ideas?
There’s little doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin has succeeded in achieving near-total control over the Republican Party. They’re gutting aid to Ukraine (and have been for over a year), working to kneecap our economy, whipping up hatred among Americans against each other, promoting civil war, and openly embracing replacing American democracy with authoritarian autocracy.
Putin has declared war on queer people, proclaimed Russia a “Christian nation,” and shut down all the media he called “fake news.” Check, check, check.
Over the past two years, as America was using Russia’s terrorist attacks on Ukraine to degrade the power and influence of Russia’s military, Putin was using social media, Republican politicians, and rightwing American commentators to get Republican politicians on his side and thus kill off US aid to Ukraine.
The war in Gaza is making it even easier, with Putin-aligned politicians like Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) tweeting: “Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately.”
Most recently, the three-year “Biden bribery” hysteria Republicans in the House have been running — including thousands of hits on Fox “News” and all over rightwing hate radio — turns out to have been a Russian intelligence operation originally designed to help Trump win the 2020 election. The Russian spy who’d been feeding this phony info to “Gym” Jordan and James “Gomer Pyle” Comer is now in jail.
Russia’s battlefield, in other words, has now shifted from Ukraine to the US political system and our homes via radio, TV, and the internet, all in the hopes of ending US aid to the democracy they’ve brutally attacked.
And the momentum is following that shift: Russia is close to having the upper hand in Ukraine because of Putin’s ability — via Trump and Johnson — to get Republican politicians to mouth his talking points and propaganda.
Now, with Speaker “Moscow Mike” Johnson shutting down the House of Representatives so nobody can offer a discharge petition that would force a vote on Ukraine aid (and aid for Palestinian refugees, Taiwan, and our southern border), it’s becoming more and more clear that Vladimir Putin is running the Republican party via his well-paid stooge, Donald Trump.
I say “well paid” because Donald Trump would have been reduced to homelessness in the early 1990s if it weren’t for Russian money, as both of his sons have said at different times. He’d burned through all of his father’s estate, even stealing a large part of it from his siblings. He’d lost or hidden almost two billion dollars running a casino.
As Michael Hirsch noted for Foreign Policymagazine:
“By the early 1990s he had burned through his portion of his father Fred’s fortune with a series of reckless business decisions. Two of his businesses had declared bankruptcy, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the money pit that was the Trump Shuttle went out of business in 1992. Trump companies would ultimately declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy two more times.”
He’d been forced to repeatedly declare bankruptcy — sticking American banks for over a billion dollars in unpaid bills — after draining his businesses of free cash and stashing the money in places he hoped nobody would ever find.
No American bank would touch him, and property developers in New York were waiting for his entire little empire to collapse. Instead, a desperate Trump reached out to foreign dictators and mobsters, who were more than happy to supply funds to an influential New York businessman…for a price to be paid in the future.
He sold over $100 million worth of condos to more than sixty Russian citizens during that era, and partnered with professional criminals and money launderers to raise money for Trump properties in Azerbaijan and Panama. According to Trump himself, he sold $40 to $50 million worth of apartments to the Saudis.
He then partnered with a former high Soviet official, Tevfik Arif, and a Russian businessman, Felix Sater, who’d been found guilty of running a “huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia.”
As the founders of Fusion GPS wrote for The New York Times in 2018:
“The Trump family’s business entanglements are of more than historical significance. Americans need to be sure that major foreign policy decisions are made in the national interest — not because of foreign ties forged by the president’s business ventures.”
Thus, when it came time to run for president, Trump had to pay the price. He and the people around him were inundated with offers of “help” from Russians, most associated directly with Putin or the Russian mafia.
Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had been paid millions by Putin’s oligarchs and ran Trump’s campaign for free. Reporters found over a dozen connections between Russia and the Trump campaign, and during the 2016 campaign Trump was secretly negotiating a deal to open a Trump tower in Moscow. Trump’s son and his lawyer met with Putin’s agents in Trump Tower.
Putin’s personal troll army, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) based out of St. Petersburg but operating worldwide, began a major campaign in 2016 to get Trump elected president.
Manafort fed Russian intelligence raw data from internal Republican polling that identified a few hundred thousand individuals in a half-dozen or so swing states the GOP thought could be persuaded to vote for Trump (or against Hillary), and the IRA immediately went to work, reaching out to them via mostly Facebook.
Mueller’s report and multiple journalistic investigations have noted that the most common message out of Russia then was directed at Democratic-leaning voters and was, essentially, “both parties are the same so it’s a waste of time to vote.”
A report from Texas-based cybersecurity company New Knowledge, working with researchers at Columbia University, concluded, as reported by The New York Times:
“‘The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,’ the report says. Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.
“The report says that while ‘other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively by dozens.’ In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.
“The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us.”
And it appears to have worked in suppressing the potential Black Democratic vote in swing states.
A 2018 bipartisan Senate report found the Russian efforts consequential, as the BBC headline on that analysis summarizes:
“Russian trolls’ chief target was ‘black US voters’ in 2016.”
The news story summarizes:
“A Senate inquiry has concluded that a Russian fake-news campaign targeted ‘no single group… more than African-Americans.’ …
“Thousands of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and You Tube accounts created by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) were aimed at harming Hillary Clinton’s campaign and supporting Donald Trump, the committee concludes.
“More than 66% of Facebook adverts posted by the Russian troll farm contained a term related to race.
“African-American community voters were discouraged from voting, and from supporting Hillary Clinton.”
Between the information compiled by Oxford Analytica and the details passed along from the GOP to Prigozhin via Manafort, a mere margin of 43,000 votes across a handful of swing states —all mictotargeted by Russia — handed the electoral college to Trump, even though he lost the nationwide vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million ballots.
So now Trump has succeeded in making the entire GOP a party to his long-term debt to Putin and his oligarchs. “Moscow Mike” Johnson has blocked any aid to Ukraine for over a year; the last congressional appropriation for foreign aid was passed in 2022, when Nancy Pelosi ran the House.
Meanwhile, under Trump’s and Putin’s direction, Republicans in Congress are doing everything they can to damage the people of the United States.
They believe it will help them in the 2024 election if they can ruin the US economy while convincing American voters that our system of government is so corrupt (“deep state”) that we should consider replacing democracy with an autocratic strongman form of government like Putin’s Russia. Tucker Carlson is even suggesting that Russia is a better place to live than the US.
They revel in pitting racial, religious, and gender groups against each other while embracing a form of fascism that pretends to be grounded in Christianity, all while welcoming Putin’s social media trolls who are promoting these divisions.
Republican-aligned think tanks are working on Project 2025, a naked attempt to consolidate power in the White House to support a strongman president who can override the will of the people, privatize Social Security and Medicare, shut down our public school system, fully criminalize abortion and homosexuality (Sam Alito called for something like that this week), and abandon our democratic allies in favor of a realignment with Russia, China, and North Korea.
Trump got us here by openly playing to the fears and prejudices of white people who are freaked out by the rapid post-1964 “browning” of America. Putin jumped in to help amplify the message a thousandfold with his social media trolls, who are posting thousands of times a day as you read these words.
Now that Putin largely controls the GOP, today’s question is how far Republicans are willing to go in their campaign to bring the USA to her knees on behalf of Putin and Trump.
— When Congress comes back into session next week, will they take up Ukraine aid?
— Will they continue their opposition to comprehensive immigration and border reform?
— Will they keep pushing to privatize Social Security with their new “commission”?
— Will they work as hard to kneecap Taiwan on behalf of President Xi as they have Ukraine on behalf of Putin?
— Will they continue to quote Russian Intelligence propaganda in their effort to smear President Biden?
— Instead of just 7 Republicans going to Moscow to “celebrate” the Fourth of July, will the entire party move their event to that city like the NRA did? Or to Budapest, like CPAC did?
Or will the GOP suddenly start listening to the rational voices left in their party, the Mitt Romneys and Liz Cheneys who still believe in democracy (even if they want to gut the social safety net and turn loose the polluters)?
Public school parents and concerned citizens in North Carolina have hoped that the General Assembly (legislature) would fully fund the Leandro decision of 2022, which requires full funding of public schools. The original Leandro case was decided thirty years ago!
But the leaders of the General Assembly, which has a veto-proof majority, went to court to ask the new members of the court to overturn the Leandro decision.
The GOP majority is committed to charter schools and vouchers, not public schools, even though the vast majority of children in the state are enrolled in public schools.
The North Carolina Supreme Court is weighing whether to reverse a 2022 decision that allows judges to order the transfer of hundreds of millions — and potentially billions — of dollars to fund public schools. In November 2022, the Supreme Court’s former Democratic majority ruled that the courts can order state officials to transfer funds to try to provide students their constitutional right to a sound basic education. During oral arguments Thursday, an attorney for Republican legislative leaders Sen. Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore asked the court’s current 5-2 GOP majority to overturn that 2022 ruling. “The court has recognized time and time again that if a decision is wrongly decided, if it conflicts with the constitution, if it conflicts with prior precedent …. then it should be overturned and corrected at the next possible moment,” said attorney Matthew Tilley. “This is the next possible.” WILL COURT OVERTURN PRECEDENT? But attorneys representing school districts, the State Board of Education and the state urged the justices to stand by the 2022 decision. “It has been the rule of this court for over 100 years that the court will not disturb its prior holding in the same case, even if it would have overturned that holding on a properly presented petition for rehearing,” said attorney Melanie Dubis. “We do not have a properly presented petition for rehearing in this case.
“Nevertheless, that is what the defendant-intervenors are blatantly asking this court to do, to go back and overturn Leandro IV, which is binding precedent cited merely 14 months ago.” That view was echoed Thursday at a rally held across the street from the court hearing and in statements from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the state’s Democratic legislative delegation. “Public school children are at the most important crossroads in our history,” Cooper said in a statement Thursday. “Will our Supreme Court be courageous enough to protect those children, or will it once again protect the power of the politicians who would rather give billions in tax breaks and private school vouchers for the wealthy?” The court is expected to issue a ruling this year.
This week’s court hearing is the latest chapter in the now 30-year-old Leandro school funding lawsuit that was initially filed in 1994 by low-wealth school districts to get more state funding. Over the years, the state Supreme Court has ruled that the state constitution guarantees every child “an opportunity to receive a sound basic education” and that the state was failing to meet that obligation. In November 2021, Superior Court Judge David Lee ordered the state treasurer, controller and budget director to transfer $1.75 billion to fund the second and third years of an eight-year plan developed by a consultant. The plan is meant to try to provide every student with high-quality teachers and principals. The eight-year plan is estimated to cost at least $5.6 billion. Just days before the 2022 midterm elections flipped the court from Democratic to Republican control, the Supreme Court upheld Lee’s order. The Democratic justices said that the courts had deferred long enough for the state to implement a plan to provide a sound basic education. Soon after taking control, the court’s GOP majority blocked enforcement of Lee’s order.
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article285710266.html#storylink=cpy
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article285710266.html#storylink=cpy
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article285710266.html#storylink=cpy
Robert B. Hubbell writes a sensible blog about politics today. In this post, he eviscerates the proposal by Ezra Klein of The New York Times that Biden should step down before the Democratic National Convention and let the delegates choose a replacement.
Why should he step down? Because of his age.
Why should he stay in the race? Because he has been an excellent President, and he is the Democratic Party’s best candidate to beat Trump. Because Biden is wise and thoughtful, and Trump is neither. Because Biden respects the Constitution and Trump does not. Because Biden wants to defend democracy, and Trump does not. Because Biden understands the value of international alliances, and Trump wants to destroy them.
Hubbell writes:
Republicans and Russian trolls and bot farms will continue to spread disinformation about President Joe Biden to an eager American press and the surprisingly insecure American public. The report of special counsel Robert Hur has caused otherwise sober Democratic supporters and observers to consider a terrible proposal by Ezra Klein that Joe Biden drop out at the Democratic convention and anoint a different Democratic candidate who will begin campaigning for the presidency with three months to go and a ten-point deficit (at least). For my views on Klein’s proposal, read on!
Ezra Klein creates a small panic in the Democratic Party.
I received a steady stream of emails over the weekend asking me to comment on Klein’s proposal—something I did at length in Friday’s newsletter. (Always a puzzler when that happens; I try not to take offense.) Most of the emails commented favorably on Ezra Klein’s proposal. Others who support Biden and recognize that it would be terribly risky to switch from Biden at the last moment want to have a “respectful conversation” about the idea of Biden dropping out.
Expletive deleted! (Rhymes with “bulls-eye” and “base-hit.”)
At root, Klein’s idea credits the falsehood being promoted by Robert Hur, Trump, Fox News, and Putin’s army of bots that Joe Biden is incompetent to hold the presidency. We cannot fall for the false narrative that Joe Biden is unfit merely because he is 80 and is not the same person he was at 70 or 60 or 40 or 30.
Worse, having a ‘respectful public conversation’ about the proposal allows Republicans to change the narrative from the fascist rhetoric that Trump is spewing each day to a made-up controversy that is the functional equivalent of the “But her emails . . . ” fake controversy that the press swallowed hook, line, and sinker in 2016.
Every second people spend talking about Ezra Klein’s ridiculous idea is a second that we are not discussing Trump’s threat to abandon NATO, round up millions of immigrants, turn the FBI into a political hit squad, jail Joe Biden’s family, banrefugees from Gaza, begin “strong ideological screening of all immigrants, reboot his ban on travelers from Muslim-majority nations, and start his presidency as a “dictator for a day” (which, by the way, is the same thing as “a dictator,” because once you overthrow the Constitution to become a dictator, you cannot repair that wound.)
For example, at a rally over the weekend, Trump said the following:
I’m also going to indemnify all police officers and law enforcement officials throughout the US to protect them from being destroyed by the radical left . . . Once [criminals] see things happening that they never thought would happen to them, it’ll all stop overnight.
Let’s unpack Trump’s statement. He promises that he will protect and hold harmless (i.e., indemnify) police officers who “do things” to criminals “they never thought would happen to them,” a clear reference to police brutality. Trump is proposing a jack-booted police force that uses violence “with impunity” against “criminals” who have yet to be convicted of any crimes!
Every American citizen, media outlet, and political writer—including Ezra Klein—should spend every waking minute from now until November 5, 2024 telling anyone who will listen that Trump has proposed the creation of the equivalent of the Nazi Brown Shirts—a thuggish paramilitary that used violence and intimidation to fuel Hitler’s rise to power.
Trump’s threat to “indemnify” law enforcement for doing “things criminals never thought would happen to them” is not in the same universe of concern about the fake controversy over Joe Biden’s age. Every minute wasted on Joe Biden’s age is a minute not talking about Trump’s promise to unleash a violent police force on presumed-to-be-innocent-until-proven-guilty American citizens.
Many observers will say, “But Trump doesn’t really mean it. He can’t indemnify police officers from brutality.” Okay, I accept the argument: Trump is, therefore, spewing despotic fantasies that have no grounding in reality—a profound form of mental illness incompatible with being president of the U.S. And yet, sober Democrats who support Joe Biden want to waste our time asking to consider having a “respectful” conversation about Joe Biden’s age.
Those “sober Democrats” are doing Trump’s (and Putin’s) work, even if their intentions are pure and patriotic.
The flaws in the plan are too numerous to catalog, but here are a few:
Every replacement candidate (except one) starts with a 10 to 12 percentage point deficit to Trump, whereas Joe Biden is polling (at least) even with Trump. As Simon Rosenberg wrote on Sunday,
This week’s independent general election polling of registered voters finds a close, competitive race (Biden-Trump): Emerson 44-45 Economist/YouGov 44-44 Morning Consult 42-43 And a reminder that Biden led 47-45 (2 pts) in last NYTimes poll.
But in polling done in February, Gavin Newsom trails Trump by 10 points and Gretchen Whitmer trails by 12 points. (So far as I can tell, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro isn’t being polled nationally, only in Pennsylvania.)
But guess who is within striking distance of Trump (3 points)? Vice President Kamala Harris—who is never mentioned by readers who suggest that it is a good idea for Biden to step aside.
Why pass over the candidate in the strongest position (according to polls) to succeed Joe Biden in favor of candidates who sit at the bottom of a deep gravity well? I will let the readers suggesting the “Biden steps aside strategy” answer that question, but Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo describes what would happen if Biden steps aside and Kamala Harris is passed over:
I think if Biden stepped aside and then Harris was passed over, that would be like lighting a stick of dynamite at the center of the Democratic coalition.
There are no easy or obvious answers, but plenty of bad ones. Ezra Klein’s proposal pretends that none of the bad answers exist.
Finally, there are no “party bosses” to manage the Democratic Party’s selection process if Biden were to step aside. With no primary election results to guide the process, the 72-hour race on the convention floor for the nomination would be “nasty, brutish, and short.”
So, please, can we stop talking about the Ezra Klein strategy? It is a horrible idea because Joe Biden is a strong candidate who is an incumbent president with a phenomenal track record of success. He has the wisdom and experience to guide the nation through a difficult time. And he beat Donald Trump in 2020. He can do so in 2024.
The last point (even though I said “finally” above), is that it is incredibly disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of Americans working their tails off to elect Joe Biden to suggest that their work is part of a big game of, “Just kidding, made you look!” They believe in Joe Biden and are willing to work hard for him because they believe in him. Let’s not abuse their well-placed trust in and admiration for Joe Biden.
We have a regular reader named Joel (no last name) who worked for years in a union job in New York. I think he is/was an electrician, but I’m not certain. Nor do I know if he is retired. I do know that he reads economic data with care and knows how to put economic trends into perspective.
Joel wrote in response to a post about the success of Bidenomics, which referred to voters’ concerns about inflation:
The qualifier about inflation is over the top.
According to the Department of Labor Real Median Income is higher than in 2019. The thing about that is that it does not matter what year you pick . It is calculated in 1984 dollars. Simply how much can you purchase with your income today compared to 1984 or in any given year after 1984. So at least 50% can purchase more than they could in 2019 when nobody complained about inflation. Then there is the question of who that 50% is ? Most of the wage gains in the past few years have gone to the bottom 2/5ths of the wage ladder. So presumably those hurt worst by inflation were higher income wage earners who after paying more for eggs and steak still managed to book a trip to Europe or a Disney Cruise in record numbers.
Then there are the poor millennials who can not afford to buy a house! The problem there again home ownership among younger Americans is higher today than it was in 2019. I will help agent 77 a bit with this. The Pandemic and working from home drove a whole bunch of wealthier millennials out of rental apartments in major cities to houses in the burbs making the primary assets of many Boomers a lot higher.
It is well accepted by most economists that “Animal Spirits ” (thank you John Maynard Keynes) drive markets one way or the other. What many economists are not willing to admit is the role of Media in driving those “Animal Spirits .”
Long before Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022, the media started hyping inflation like it was the late 1970s. Gas in September of 2021 was historically cheap at $3.21 a gallon. It was way higher in 2007-8 and it was was between $3.60 and $3.90 a gallon for 4 whole years from 2011 till 2015. Between increased income and millage the average worker was working far less hours to fill a tank. As Neil Irwin at the NYTimes pointed out. and Yet the Media including the NYTimes managed to find a station a 100 miles off the coast of California (sarcasm)that had gas at $5.99 a gallon. Portraying families as having to choose between baby milk and gas.
Those including Yellen and Krugman who called the spike in prices transitory and due to supply chain issues were absolutely correct. This was not a wage price spiral. Their problem was like most “liberals” they lacked the strength of their convictions and apologized as those supply chains actually started easing.
Meantime bad news sells. Nobody had to convince Republicans (47% of voters) that the Economy was terrible they blamed Biden for the Bad Economy the day he won the Democratic Nomination. However normal Americans whose brains were not yet eaten out by the MAGA virus were convinced that inflation was out of control. Convinced that it was 1981 all over again and this before Putin invaded Ukraine. Which also was also a short lived spike. With inflation starting to ease by June of 2022.
Corporate America took note. If the people expected inflated prices they were going to give it to them. As they laughed all the way to the bank with record profits.
In a complete reversal:
” Strikingly, over half of this increase (53.9%) can be attributed to fatter profit margins, with labor costs contributing less than 8% of this increase. This is not normal. From 1979 to 2019, profits only contributed about 11% to price growth and labor costs over 60%,” EPI.
And now we are told by the Media that Americans are disappointed that prices have not come down. As a reminder for those with short memories.
Or the few here not over 60. Most prices do not come down short of a Depression.
In Sept 1984 when Reagan’s ad declared “Morning in America” :
UNEMPLOYMENT: was 7.3% not 3.7% a pathetic improvement of 0.2% from when he took office in 1981.
INFLATION: was 4.3% not 3.4% as it is today.
The FEDERAL FUNDS Rate was (for those thinking interest rates are high) was 11.30% not 5.33%. Again for those with no memory outside of a few recent recessions a rate not high at all.
If 1984 was morning in America it was a cloudy one at best. Biden has brought a bright sunny day. With some of the most pro worker / working class policies since FDR.
Christian Nationalists are already preparing for their roles in a second Trump administration. It is ironic that the religious zealots cluster around one of the most non religious figures in American life. I recall an anecdote from the book by Trump’s “fixer”Michael Cohen, when a group of evangelical Christians meets with Trump and lay their hands on him, all together. When the earnest group leaves, Trump laughs with Cohen. They both know that he’s a master con man, and he conned them.
Politico writes:
An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.
Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.
Christian nationalists in America believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life. As the country has become less religious and more diverse, Vought has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.
One document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. “Christian nationalism” is one of the bullet points. Others include invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era.
CRA’s work fits into a broader effort by conservative, MAGA-leaning organizations to influence a future Trump White House. Two people familiar with the plans, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, said that Vought hopes his proximity and regular contact with the former president — he and Trump speak at least once a month, according to one of the people — will elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term.
The documents obtained by POLITICO do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies. But Vought has promoted a restrictionist immigration agenda, saying a person’s background doesn’t define who can enter the U.S., but rather, citing Biblical teachings, whether that person “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history.”
Vought has a close affiliation with Christian nationalist William Wolfe, a former Trump administration official who has advocated for overturning same-sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives.
Vought, who declined to comment, is advising Project 2025, a governing agenda that would usher in one of the most conservative executive branches in modern American history. The effort is made up of a constellation of conservative groups run by Trump allies who’ve constructed a detailed plan to dismantle or overhaul key agencies in a second term. Among other principles, the project’s “Mandate for Leadership” states that “freedom is defined by God, not man.”
