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Our Democracy Depends on the Integrity of Our Elections

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2022 //
33

Democracy cannot exist without free and fair elections.

Democracy depends on the general belief that elections are conducted honestly and that the results are reported honestly.

Since the 2020 Presidential election, Donald Trump has told his followers that the election he lost was fraudulent. Despite dozens of court cases that his team lost because they were unable to produce evidence of fraud, Trump insists that he won in a landslide.

Despite multiple recounts and hand recounts, Trump continues to lie.

Despite the testimony of Trump lawyers that Trump lost, Trump continues to claim he won.

Trump’s campaign of lies is a direct threat to our democracy.

NPR undertook an investigation to assess the influence of four election deniers who work at the local level, spreading propaganda and misinformation.

Every citizen concerned about the health of our democracy should read the NPR report. The election deniers can say whatever they want. It’s a free country.

But the public should know who they are and what they do.

If you want to protect our Constitution and our freedoms, be informed to combat lies with facts.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Hoax, Lies

Mercedes Schneider: The Coach’s Prayer Was Neither “Personal” Nor “Private”

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2022 //
59

Mercedes Schneider writes about Neil Gorsuch’s opinion on behalf of the Supreme Court’s extremist supermajority, upholding a coach’s right to engage in “personal” and “private” prayer.

The problem, she points out, is that his prayer was neither personal nor private.

Why did Gorsuch distort/PREVARICATE/LIE ABOUT the facts? My guess is that he is advancing an incremental plan by the Court’s extremists to restore prayer in the schools and overturn the 1962 decision that banned it (Engel v. Vitale).

Mercedes S. does something unusual but necessary. She goes beyond the Gorsuch opinion and reads the rulings against the coach in the appellate court, which show how Gorsuch simply ignored the facts of the case.

The appellate court rejected Coach Kennedy’s claim that he was engaged in personal, private prayer:

Below is the Kennedy backstory as detailed by Ninth Circuit Judge Milan Smith (beginning at page 9), who calls Appellant Kennedy’s supposed silent, private prayer narrative “false.” Smith begins by calling out a colleague on the bench, Judge O’Scannlain, for being taken in by it:

Unlike Odysseus, who was able to resist the seductive song of the Sirens by being tied to a mast and having his shipmates stop their ears with bees’ wax, our colleague, Judge O’Scannlain, appears to have succumbed to the Siren song of a deceitful narrative of this case spun by counsel for Appellant, to the effect that Joseph Kennedy, a Bremerton High School (BHS) football coach, was disciplined for holding silent, private prayers. That narrative is false.

Although I discuss the events in greater detail below, the reader should know the following basic truth ab initio: Kennedy was never disciplined by BHS for offering silent, private prayers. In fact, the record shows clearly that Kennedy initially offered silent, private prayers while on the job from the time he began working at BHS, but added an increasingly public and audible element to his prayers over the next approximately seven years before the Bremerton School District (BSD) leadership became aware that he had invited the players and a coach from another school to join him and his players in prayer at the fifty-yard line after the conclusion of a football game. He was disciplined only after BSD tried in vain to reach an accommodation with him after he (in a letter from his counsel) demanded the right to pray in the middle of the football field immediately after the conclusion of games while the players were on the field, and the crowd was still in the stands. He advertised in the area’s largest newspaper, and local and national TV stations, that he intended to defy BSD’s instructions not to publicly pray with his players while still on duty even though he said he might lose his job as a result.

As he said he would, Kennedy prayed out loud in the middle of the football field immediately after the conclusion of the first game after his lawyer’s letter was sent, surrounded by players, members of the opposing team, parents, a local politician, and members of the news media with television cameras recording the event, all of whom had been advised of Kennedy’s intended actions through the local news and social media.

She adds additional details, all of which demonstrate that Justice Gorsuch and his colleagues bought a fictional tale to advance their zeal to restore prayer in the schools.

Categories Accountability, Lies, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state

Dana Milbank: If Texas Secedes, Good Riddance!

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2022 //
164

Dana Milbank is my favorite columnist at the Washington Post. In this column, he responds to the Texas GOP platform, which proposes that the state secede from the US and become a sovereign nation. Milbank says. “Good riddance!” As a native Texan, I’m ashamed for my state, ashamed that it’s been taken over by theocrats and dumbbells.

The Lone Star State does not have the best track record as a sovereign power. The Republic of Texas survived only 10 years from independence to annexation by the United States in 1845. Texas seceded during the Civil War — and, with the rest of the Confederacy, was crushed.


But, as the saying goes: If at first you don’t secede, try, try again. The Texas GOP now wants the state to vote on declaring independence.


And the United States should let Texas go! Better yet, let’s offer Texas a severance package that includes Oklahoma to sweeten secession — the Sooner the better.

Over the weekend, while many Americans were celebrating the 167th anniversary of Juneteenth (when Union Gen. Gordon Granger, in Galveston, Tex., delivered the order abolishing slavery) the Texas Republican Party voted on a platform declaring that federal laws it dislikes “should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.”


The proposed platform (it’s expected to be approved when votes are tallied) adds: “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.” It wants the secession referendum “in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”


Yee-haw!


Of course, protections would have to be negotiated for parts of Texas that wish to remain on Team Normal. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and parts of South Texas would remain in the United States, and they will need guaranteed safe passage to New Orleans or Santa Fe, along with regular airlifts of sustainable produce, accurate textbooks and contraceptives.

But consider the benefits to the rest of the country: Two fewer Republican senators, two dozen fewer Republican members of the House, annual savings of $83 billion in defense funds that Texas gets. And the best reason? The Texas GOP has so little regard for the Constitution that it is calling for a “Convention of the States” to effectively rewrite it — and so little regard for the United States that it wishes to leave.


In democracy’s place, the Republican Party, which enjoys one-party rule in Texas, is effectively proposing a church state. If you liked Crusader states and Muslim caliphates, you’ll love the Confederate Theocracy of Texas.


The Texas GOP platform gives us a good idea what such a paradise for Christian nationalists would look like. Texas would officially declare that “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.” It would redefine marriage as a “covenant only between one biological man and one biological woman,” and it would “nullify” any court rulings to the contrary. (The gay Log Cabin Republicans were banned from setting up a booth at the convention.) It would fill schools with “prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments” but ban “the teaching of sex education.” It would abolish all abortions and require students to “learn about the Humanity of the Preborn Child.”


The Texas Theocracy, which maintains that President Biden “was not legitimately elected,” would keep only traces of democracy. It wants the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “repealed,” and it would rewrite the state constitution to empower minority rule by small, rural (and White) counties. It would rescind voters’ right to elect senators and the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

The Texas Theocracy would probably be broke; it wants to abolish the federal income tax, “Axe the Property Tax” and do away with the estate tax and various business taxes. Yet it is planning a hawkish foreign policy! The platform argues that Texas is currently “under an active invasion” and should take “any and all appropriate measures the sovereign state defines as necessary to defend” itself. It imagines attacks by a “One World Government, or The Great Reset” — an internet-born conspiracy belief — and proposes “withdrawal from the current United Nations.” The Theocracy would put the “wild” back in the West, abolishing the minimum wage, environmental and banking regulations, and “red-flag” laws or waiting periods to prevent dangerous people from buying guns.

Above all, the Confederate Theocracy of Texas would be defined by thought police. It would penalize “woke corporations” and businesses that disagree with the theocracy over abortion, race, trans rights and the “inalienable right to refuse vaccination.”

Government programs would be stripped of “education involving race.” Evolution and climate change “shall be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change.” There would be a “complete repeal of the hate crime laws.” The Texas Revolution “shall not be ‘reimagined’” in a way the theocracy finds “disrespectful.” Confederate monuments “shall be protected,” “plaques honoring the Confederate widows” restored, and lessons on “the tyrannical history of socialism” required.

In their platform, the Texas Republicans invoked “God” or the “Creator” 18 times and “sovereignty” or sovereign power 24 times. And the word “democracy”? Only once — in reference to China.

I hope you can read the comments. Readers suggest other states that should secede with Texas.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Guns, Ignorance, Lies, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Texas, Trump

Arizona: Republican Candidates Ridicule the 1/6 Commission

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2022 //
18

Arizona Republican candidates are running as die-hard supporters of Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen. They laugh at the 1/6 Conmisssion and ignore the many Republicans who testified that Trump knew he lost the election but decided to destroy democracy rather than admit he lost.

Is stupidity contagious? Or is it gullibility?

Tens of millions of people have watched the first two Congressional hearings probing the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last year, but several of Arizona’s Republican candidates for governor were not among those viewers.

The GOP candidates largely dismissed the hearings as political theater and wouldn’t answer a question from The Arizona Republic about former President Donald Trump’s role in the riot.

Meanwhile, their Democratic opponents seized on the chance to call out their conservative competitors as complicit in the false claims of election fraud that fueled the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The hearing is a stark reminder of the lengths at which they will go to attack America.”

“I watched the Jan. 6 hearing because right here in Arizona we face dangerous threats from candidates like Kari Lake who continue to spread conspiracy theories and lies to try to undermine our democracy,” Secretary of State and Democratic candidate for governor Katie Hobbs said.

Lake: ‘I think it’s a waste of time’

Lake, a leading Republican candidate and former Fox 10 news anchor, did not respond to questions for this article. During her campaign, Lake has championed the unproven claims the election was corrupt, and that insurrectionists were held without charges or were welcomed into the Capitol by police.

Lake said in an interview on the conservative channel Newsmax that she would not watch the Jan. 6 hearings, which she dismissed as an effort by Democrats, mainstream Republicans and the media to discredit Trump.

“So this is their effort to try to make Donald Trump and his followers go away forever and it’s not going to work,” Lake said in that interview Friday. “This is theater. They’ve obviously been spinning and splicing and taking different video clips, removing the pertinent parts that would put the truth out there and trying to tell a story that spreads their lies. So I’m not going to be watching it. I think it’s a waste of time.”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Democracy, Elections, Lies, Stupid, Trump

Robert Hubbell: After the Fall of Roe, the Way Forward

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2022 //
153

Blogger Robert Hubbell brings clarity and reason to the abortion debate. The Court’s decision overturns a precedent that had been in place for 49 years. Both Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh pledged to Senators that they would not overturn roe. They lied. What now?

Hubbell writes:

There is much to discuss after the Supreme Court’s brutal ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, but the most important question is, “What are we going to do about it?” We have several effective paths forward and must pursue all simultaneously.

First, Alito claims he is returning the decision of reproductive freedom “to the people and their state representatives.” Let’s ignore (for the moment) Alito’s smoldering bad faith and thinly veiled contempt for the rights of women. We need to flip state legislatures to repeal antiabortion legislation and capture statewide executive offices that can veto legislation abortion bans. While this path is not an answer in every state, it can make a difference in states where the GOP margin of control is thin.

Second, we must demand that Congress pass legislation codifying Roe. That means gaining a 54-seat majority in the Senate, carving out an exception to the filibuster, and retaining control of the House. Will national legislation be challenged? Sure! Will the Supreme Court invalidate it? Possibly, but it is worth the effort.

Will national legislation be challenged? Sure! Will the Supreme Court invalidate it? Possibly, but it is worth the effort.

Third, we must break the Supreme Court. Democrats should expand the Court to thirteen justices. This path also requires holding the House, gaining a 54-seat majority in the Senate, and carving out an exception to the filibuster. Expanding the Court requires only a majority vote in both chambers of Congress and signing of the bill by the president. Will Republicans expand the Court to nineteen? Maybe. But what Republicans might do in the future shouldn’t deter us now. Will tit-for-tat expansions of the Court undermine its legitimacy? It is far too late for that.

Fourth, reproductive choice must be on the ballot in every race. Republicans have finally achieved what they wanted—no right to abortion and no exceptions for rape or incest. We must make every Republican running for every office in the land own the GOP position on abortion in its ugliest manifestation. The outcome in Dobbs is opposed by a strong majority of Americans and should provide a basis for a sweeping Democratic victory in 2022.

Finally, the right to same-sex marriage, same-sex relations, contraception, and other privacy-based rights must be on the ballot in every race. Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence declared war on those rights and invited reactionary legislatures to pass laws to serve as test cases. We would be foolish to assume that the other members of the reactionary majority will not follow his lead, given a chance.

None of these approaches will be easy or provide a complete answer. Readers have already sent emails that preemptively identify the problems with some of these approaches and dismiss their chances of success. But these are the paths available to us. We can choose to pursue them or do nothing. We must pursue them relentlessly until we have regained control of every branch of government, including the Supreme Court. Only then can we reverse the ruling in Dobbs and preserve other liberties grounded in the same right to privacy that supported reproductive rights for a half-century.

We are the majority, and American democracy presumes majority rule while protecting the rights of the minority. Republicans are attempting to reverse that presumption by seeking to impose permanent minority rule with no protection for the rights of the majority. That cannot stand. It will not stand. But it is up to us to restore the natural balance to democracy. It is not enough that we vote with greater passion or conviction. We must motivate those who did not believe this day would not come or who were not paying attention. We can do that—if we act with greater passion, conviction, and urgency.

The ruling.

Alito’s final decision is a judicial insult. In a single blow, he has demoted American women to second-class citizens. It is filled with venom and contempt in addressing a contentious issue on which people of good faith can disagree. He refers to physicians as abortionists when they seek to save a woman’s life or terminate a pregnancy forced on a teenager by a rapist. He misrepresents, minimizes, and dismisses the burdens and risks of pregnancy. He substitutes his Catholic dogma for judicial analysis.

Alito’s final version of his opinion changed little from the draft leaked last month. As such, it retains the dishonesty and intellectual sophistry of the “deeply rooted tradition” analysis contained in the draft—an analysis that deliberately misrepresents the American tradition relating to abortion. See Aaron Tang in The Los Angeles Times, Op-Ed: The Supreme Court flunks abortion history.

But most ominously, Alito’s “deeply rooted” analysis signals Alito’s intent to attack other privacy-based rights, such as same-sex marriage. Alito dissented in the Court’s decision recognizing same-sex marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges. Alito wrote in Obergefell, as follows:

          To prevent five unelected Justices from imposing their personal vision of liberty upon the American people, the Court has held that “liberty” under the Due Process Clause should be understood to protect only those rights that are ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’ s history and tradition.’ And it is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights.

There it is: Alito’s analysis in overruling Roe v. Wade does not stop with reproductive rights. It reaches to same-sex marriage. He said so in his dissent in Obergefell. And Justice Thomas made that explicit in his concurrence in Dobbs:

          In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.

Griswold recognized the right to use contraceptives of choice; Lawrence recognized the right to enter into a same-sex relationships; and Obergefell recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry. Justice Thomas notably omitted a right based on “substantive due process precedents”—the right of members of different “races” to marry, a right first granted in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. If the Court reverses Loving v. Virginia, Thomas’s marriage to Ginny Thomas would be illegal in some states.

For a longer discussion of the threat to other rights, see Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, The Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade puts marriage equality in immediate jeopardy.

It will take weeks to understand the implications of Justice Alito’s decision, but a good place to start is with Ian Millhiser’s analysis in Vox, The Roe v. Wade abortion decision, explained.

Finally, for a discussion of self-inflicted damage to the Court’s legitimacy, see Dahlia Lithwick, in Slate, Roe v. Wade overturned: The Supreme Court will pay for abortion decision.

The corruption and illegitimacy of the Supreme Court.

As currently constituted, the Supreme Court is illegitimate and corrupt. It is illegitimate because two justices appointed by Trump resulted from norm-busting “rules” made up by Mitch McConnell on the fly. Gorsuch sits in a seat stolen from an Obama appointee, and Barrett sits in a seat that belonged to the incoming president.

The Court is corrupt because Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett lied to the Senate about their pre-determined intent to overrule Roe v. Wade. And it is corrupt because Justice Thomas has refused to recuse himself from cases in which his wife assisted in an attempted coup.

The trust of the American public in the Court has plummeted to an all-time low of 25%. It will decline further if the January 6th Committee proves that Ginny Thomas funneled information about Court deliberations to John Eastman. It will fall further if the Committee demonstrates that Justice Thomas knew of and condoned his wife’s insurrectionist activities.

Jennifer Rubin succinctly summarizes the death blow to the Court’s legitimacy in her column in WaPo, The Supreme Court eviscerates abortion rights and its own legitimacy. Per Rubin,

The hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of the court’s right-wing justices lead to the conclusion that they have simply appointed themselves super-legislators free to impose a view of the United States as a White, Christian and male-dominated society despite the values, beliefs and choices of a majority of 330 million modern Americans.

The court’s decision may result in women’s deaths. But it has certainly killed off what is left of the court’s credibility. And for that, there is no solution in sight.

Concluding Thoughts.

On a day like today, it does not feel right to end on an optimistic note. Rather, we should acknowledge the anger, frustration, fear, and grief that tens of millions of women in America are feeling after the ruling. There will be a time to rally and rejoin the fight for the dignity and equality of women—a fight we will win.

But today, we should acknowledge what women have lost and give them the time and space to absorb and recover from a once-in-a-generation shock. As they do, everyone in their lives should let them know we are at their side every step of the way. Walk along in silence and listen. Nothing can be “fixed” today, but we can begin the long journey back in the coming days.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Health, Inequality, Injustice, Lies, Trump

Texas Monthly: Will We Ever Learn the Truth About What Happened at Uvalde?

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2022 //
19

Forrest Wilder of the Texas Monthly has been trying to sort out the conflicting accounts of what happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. He learned that everyone in a position of authority has gone silent. Governor Greg Abbott initiated the government response by praising the courage of law enforcement; when he learned that the shooter was left alone in the classrooms for more than an hour, he said he was “livid” about being misinformed.

One authority after another offered accounts and pointed the finger of blame for the slaughter of children and teachers. The State Senate promised a thorough investigation but Lt. Governor Dan Patrick pointedly left the Uvalde representative off the committee.

Now everyone has clammed up. Answers are not likely to be forthcoming until after the Governor’s race in November. A strategically timed response. Family members want to know what happened to their loved ones. They are not likely to get answers until Greg Abbott is safely re-elected.

Wilder writes:

More than three weeks have passed since the terrible events in Uvalde. What was once a torrent of appalling facts about the police response—many of them misleading or false—has now slowed to a trickle of leaks and lawyer-mediated, self-serving narratives. Governor Greg Abbott has pivoted to talking about the border again. Texas Department of Public Safety director Steve McCraw, last seen slipping into a closed-door meeting of a state House investigative committee, has gone quiet. The Uvalde schools chief of police, Pete Arredondo, finally emerged from hiding last week, lawyer at hand, to contradict reports that he had made the call to wait around for more than an hour while the gunman lingered in the classrooms with dead and dying children and teachers; hours later, key parts of his story were contradicted by evidence reported in the New York Times.

For anyone expecting an apology, accountability, or even a clear and concise narrative of what happened at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, well, you may be waiting a while longer—perhaps forever. No one has resigned, no one has been fired, and local and state authorities from the Uvalde CISD superintendent up to the governor have stopped providing updates. Local and state agencies are refusing most requests to release information they are supposed to make available under Texas’s open records law, even to the state senator who represents Uvalde. Off-duty police from around the state, as well as mysterious motorcycle clubs whose members reportedly include former police officers, descended on Uvalde to physically block reporters from talking to families and community members, even after those locals had agreed to talk—a blockade so unusual and aggressive that one veteran Texas journalist has called it “bordering on official oppression.” It’s as if those in power concluded that the answer to communicating poorly was to stop communicating altogether, and to obstruct anyone seeking answers.

Perhaps all will be revealed soon. Perhaps ongoing investigations by the Texas Rangers and the U.S. Department of Justice will bring clarity. Perhaps the Texas House committee, which is taking testimony in private, will emerge with a full report. Perhaps someone will take responsibility. But right now, it seems that authorities are biding their time, waiting for public attention to move on to the next outrage, and hoping to insulate themselves from accountability. “People in Uvalde are angry,” said state senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents the small city. “They want answers. They’re distrusting of law enforcement. The credibility of law enforcement is at stake,” he said. “They’re good people, but they just want honesty, man.”

The inflection point—the shift from a public reckoning to a studied silence—came on May 27, just three days after the nineteen kids and two teachers were killed. That morning McCraw gave a press conference in which he announced to a stunned world that police had committed a grave “mistake.” They had not, as Abbott and McCraw had stated in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, engaged the gunman at the earliest possible moment. Instead, the DPS director said, law enforcement had waited more than an hour before breaching the classroom and killing the shooter.

At the outset of the press conference, McCraw said his only goal that day was to “report facts” and not to “criticize what was done or the actions taken.” But faced with a barrage of pointed questions from the media, McCraw did point a finger—at Arredondo. Without using his name, McCraw said Arredondo, as incident commander that day, was responsible for the dilatory response. It was his decision—a “wrong decision, period”—to treat the gunman as a “barricaded subject” rather than an “active shooter.” It was Arredondo alone who had held back all the gathered law enforcement—Uvalde city police, the county sheriff’s deputies, Border Patrol officers, and DPS state police.

Later that day, Abbott held his own press conference. The governor, not known for his emotional range, seemed eager to convey outrage. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, he had praised law enforcement for their “amazing courage” and averred that without their actions, “it could have been worse”—the “it” referring to the 21 deaths. Abbott wanted everyone to know that he had been wronged. “I was misled. I am livid about what happened,” he said. What happened, he explained, was that in the aftermath of the shooting “law enforcement officials and non–law enforcement officials” had debriefed him on the shooting. Abbott had taken notes by hand, writing everything down “in detail” and “in sequential order.” The information he then provided the public was a “recitation” of those facts.

Who had given him such bad information? What consequences would they face? If the governor was so angry, surely heads would roll. But Abbott offered no names, no accountability. In an unusually quick turnaround after an open records request, the governor’s office released his notes this week to a Houston television station. But the nine pages of scrawl confirmed only that Abbott had been misled, not who had done the misleading.

At the May 27 press conference, Abbott signaled that he was moving on. He admonished law enforcement leaders to “get to the bottom of every fact with absolute certainty” as part of their investigations. Ever since, Abbott, McCraw, and other officials have stopped answering questions or publicly sharing information, pointing to the ongoing investigations. It’s an all-purpose excuse. Republicans in the Legislature are using the investigations as a reason to avoid calling for a special session on gun violence prevention. They’re also conveniently postponing, perhaps forever, a discussion about gun safety; as one state senator put it, “bad facts make bad law.”

The story goes one. Subscribe to The Texas Monthly and finish reading.

Categories Accountability, Fake, Guns, Lies, Texas

Trump Blasts Pence for Refusing to Overturn the Election, Violate the Constitution

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2022 //
81

Donald Trump, a man without any religious faith or moral principle, addressed an evangelical religious convocation called “Faith and Freedom” in Tennessee. He used the occasion to ridicule the Republicans who did not support his attempt to demolish the rule of law and the Constitution so he could have a second term in office. He is a very sore loser.

NASHVILLE — Former president Donald Trump used an evangelical conference here to ridicule former vice president Mike Pence for upholding the Constitution on Jan. 6, 2021, choosing an audience that represents Pence’s political base as a venue to attempt to undermine him.


“Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be historic,” Trump said in his first remarks about his onetime governing partner amid Jan. 6 committee hearings revealing the intense pressure Pence withstood in deciding to go forward with his constitutional role certifying the election.

“Mike did not have the courage to act.” He added: “Mike was afraid of whatever he was afraid of.”
Trump also referred to Pence, who did not attend the conference, as a “human conveyor belt” for his role in moving the election process forward, saying that he had considered labeling him as a “robot.”

Trump’s own aides have testified they told the president it would not be constitutional for Pence to move to overturn the election.

Trump also attacked Adam Kinzinger, calling him a crybaby. Kinzinger responded far too generously on Twitter.

Categories Elections, Lies, Trump

The Most Shocking Story Yet About the Failed Coup

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2022 //
29

As we watched the January 6 Commission and its interviews, we have seen the connecting of the dots in the most audacious effort in our history to overturn the results of a free and fair election. We have seen overwhelming evidence of a conspiracy to destroy our democracy and our Constitution. 2020 was not a close election. Trump could not bear the thought, the reality that he lost. He lost. He is a loser.

Among the many devious, dishonest plots to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election, the following story may be the worst, in my judgment, although there are surely other contenders.

Michael Kranish of The Washington Post told the story of Trump’s attempt to appoint a new Attorney General in early January 2021 who would send letters to several states informing them that their electors should be withdrawn due to serious concerns about election fraud. Trump met with an official, Jeffrey Clark, in the Justice Department who wanted to be appointed Attorney General and stop the certification of Biden. Clark’s superiors said he was totally unqualified and threatened to resign en masse if Trump elevated him. Faced with the threat of a mass resignation of the top officials at the Justice Department, his own appointees, Trump backed down.

Three days before Congress was slated to certify the 2020 presidential election, a little-known Justice Department official named Jeffrey Clark rushed to meet President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to discuss a last-ditch attempt to reverse the results.


Clark, an environmental lawyer by trade, had outlined a plan in a letter he wanted to send to the leaders of key states Joe Biden won. It said that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” about the vote and that the states should consider sending “a separate slate of electors supporting Donald J. Trump” for Congress to approve.


In fact, Clark’s bosses had warned there was not evidence to overturn the election and had rejected his letter days earlier. Now they learned Clark was about to meet with Trump. Acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen tracked down his deputy, Richard Donoghue, who had been walking on the Mall in muddy jeans and an Army T-shirt. There was no time to change. They raced to the Oval Office.

As Rosen and Donoghue listened, Clark told Trump that he would send the letter if the president named him attorney general.


“History is calling,” Clark told the president, according to a deposition from Donoghue excerpted in a recent court filing. “This is our opportunity. We can get this done.”

Donoghue urged Trump not to put Clark in charge, calling him “not competent” and warning of “mass resignations” by Justice Department officials if he became the nation’s top law enforcement official, according to Donoghue’s account.

“What happens if, within 48 hours, we have hundreds of resignations from your Justice Department because of your actions?” Donoghue said he asked Trump. “What does that say about your leadership?”


Clark’s letter and his Oval Office meeting set off one of the tensest chapters during Trump’s effort to overturn the election, which culminated three days later with rioters storming the U.S. Capitol. His plan could have decapitated the Justice Department leadership and could have overturned the election.


Clark’s actions have been the focus of a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation and an ongoing probe by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and now are expected to be closely examined during June hearings by the House committee investigating the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.


After the New York Times reported in January 2021 about Clark’s actions, he said he engaged in a “candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president,” denied that he had a plan to oust Rosen, and criticized others in the meeting for talking publicly and “distorting” the discussion.
Now, however, key witnesses have provided Congress with a fuller account of Clark’s actions, including new details about the confrontation that took place in the Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting, which lasted nearly three hours.


A reconstruction of the events by The Washington Post, based on the court filings, depositions, Senate and House reports, previously undisclosed emails, and interviews with knowledgeable government officials, shows how close the country came to crisis three days before the insurrection.

The evidence, which fills in crucial details about Clark’s efforts, includes an email showing he was sent a draft of a letter outlining a plan to try to overturn the election by a just-arrived Justice Department official who had once written a book claiming President Barack Obama planned to “subvert the Constitution.”

But larger mysteries could still be solved at an upcoming Jan. 6 committee hearing slated to examine Clark’s actions, including the crucial question of whether Clark and his allies were acting on their own initiative — or whether they were one piece of a larger, well-planned effort to keep Trump in power. That question gets to the heart of the committee’s professed mission: proving there was a “coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
Clark, 55, and his lawyer, Harry MacDougald, declined to comment.


The House committee unanimously voted to hold Clark in contempt of Congress after he declined in December to answer most questions on grounds that his interactions with Trump were privileged. But Clark later appeared before the committee and asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, CNN reported; his testimony from that appearance has not been released.


Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who participated in the Judiciary Committee’s investigation, said investigators should key in on whether Clark was working on behalf of others not yet identified.
“It certainly could be a symptom of a much larger and more coherent plan than has currently been disclosed,” Whitehouse said. Clark “does not appear to have elections expertise or experience, which raises the question, did he really sit down at his computer and type it out or does somebody produce it for him?…”

Trump met in the White House with Clark and the top officials in the Justice Department, including Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue. Trump told them of his plan to make Clark the Attorney General. They were outraged.

Trump repeatedly went after Rosen and Donoghue, saying they hadn’t pursued voter fraud allegations.


“You two,” Trump said, pointing to the two top Justice Department officials. “You two haven’t done anything. You two don’t care. You haven’t taken appropriate actions. Everyone tells me I should fire you.”


Trump continually circled back to the idea of replacing Rosen with Clark.


“What do I have to lose?” the president asked, according to Donoghue.


“Mr. President, you have a great deal to lose,” Donoghue said he responded. “Is this really how you want your administration to end? You’re going to hurt the country, you’re going to hurt the department, you’re going to hurt yourself, with people grasping at straws on these desperate theories about election fraud, and is this really in anyone’s best interest?”


Donoghue warned Trump that putting Clark in charge would be likely to lead to mass resignations at the Justice Department.


“Well, suppose I do this,” Trump said to Donoghue. “Suppose I replace [Rosen] with [Clark], what would you do?”


“Sir, I would resign immediately,” Donoghue said he responded. “There’s no way I’m serving under this guy [Clark].”


Trump then turned to Steve Engel, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, whom Trump reportedly had considered for a seat on the Supreme Court.
“Steve, you wouldn’t resign, would you?” Trump asked.

“Absolutely I would, Mr. President. You’d leave me no choice,” Engel responded, according to Donoghue’s account. Engel declined to comment.

“And we’re not the only ones,” Donoghue said he told Trump. “You should understand that your entire department leadership will resign. Every [assistant attorney general] will resign. … Mr. President, these aren’t bureaucratic leftovers from another administration. You picked them. This is your leadership team. You sent every one of them to the Senate; you got them confirmed. What is that going to say about you, when we all walk out at the same time?”

Donoghue then told Trump that Clark had no qualification to be attorney general: “He’s never been a criminal attorney. He’s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. He’s never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury.”
Clark objected.

“Well, I’ve done a lot of very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that,” Clark said, according to Donoghue’s deposition.

“That’s right,” Donoghue said he responded. “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”

Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, told Trump that Clark’s proposed letter was “a murder-suicide pact,” according to Donoghue’s deposition. “It’s going to damage everyone who touches it. And we should have nothing to do with that letter. I don’t ever want to see that letter again.” Cipollone declined to comment.

Read the rest of the story if it is not behind a paywall.

The account goes on, filling in details about Clark’s effort to be named Attorney General of the United States and overturn the election. It is a shocking story. Had Trump appointed Clark, some Republican-led states might have recalled their electors. The Constitutional process, the orderly transition of power, would have been halted. The nation would have endured an unprecedented crisis. Trump would have been in control of the military and the levers of government.

No one knows what would have happened next.

My favorite part of the story:

“That’s right,” Donoghue said he responded. “You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”

Categories Accountability, Biden, Corruption, Courage, Democracy, Elections, Lies, Trump

Michael Gerson: The Pathetic Response of The GOP to the 1/6 Hearings

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2022 //
23

Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, describes the response of Republicans to the first day of public hearings of the January 6 commission:

The Jan. 6 committee’s riveting televised opening night might not have converted the pro-Trump revisionists, but it has left them without excuses. The evidence is overwhelming that a sitting president gathered a violent mob and charged it with intimidating members of Congress and his own vice president into illegally reversing the outcome of a presidential election on the basis of an obvious lie.

There is only one narrative about Jan. 6 that history will accept: the evidence meticulously gathered and presented by the House select committee.

In some ways, pressing the case against former president Donald Trump is not hard, because he confirms its general outlines. He still seems to regard the riot as the highest expression of MAGA loyalty to his person. He still insists he should be reinstated as president. He still seems to believe then-Vice President Mike Pence was a weak-kneed traitor for refusing to overturn the constitutional order. Because Trump can’t admit error, he often effectively admits guilt.

The response of congressional Republican leaders to Thursday’s hearing — that it is more important to focus on inflation than sedition — has demonstrated their vast political and moral shallowness. The juxtaposition of testimony by U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards (“I was slipping in people’s blood”) and a tweet from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee account (“All. Old. News.”) was telling.

One imagines a 20-something GOP staffer straining (and failing) to be clever. The contrast between the police officer’s sacrifice and the tweeter’s infantile partisanship raises some questions: Is anyone teaching young Republicans that public service can be honorable and costly? Why doesn’t some mature public official shake these shills and urge silence in the presence of patriotic virtues they don’t possess?

Categories Democracy, Lies, Republicans, Trump

The Moral Collapse of Today’s Republican Party

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2022 //
75

Peter Wehner, once a loyal and very conservative Republican, now excoriates the moral collapse of the GOP.

He writes in The Atlantic:

The sheer scale of Donald Trump’s depravity is unmatched in the history of the American presidency, and the Republican Party—the self-described party of law and order and “constitutional conservatives,” of morality and traditional values, of patriotism and Lee Greenwood songs—made it possible. It gave Trump cover when he needed it. It attacked his critics when he demanded it. It embraced his nihilistic ethic. It amplified his lies. When House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy—a man who for a few fleeting hours after the January 6 insurrection dared to speak critically of Donald Trump—traveled to Mar-a-Lago a few days later to kiss his ring, it was an act of self-abasement that was representative of his party, his morally desolate party.

Categories Accountability, Hypocrisy, Lies, Republicans, Trump
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