Saturday, June 17, 2023
J. D. Vance and the GOP Yahoo Caucus
When J. D. Vance first ran for office, he impressed some observers as a bridge between red and blue America. I was less impressed, but as a senator, he’s worse than even I expected; he’s become part of a caucus of panderers who are betraying the people they claim to represent.
I was appalled at his campaign and his rhetoric, but he has turned out to be even worse as a legislator than he was as a candidate.
Vance initially tried to position himself as a reasonable man from humble origins, someone who understood the angst of rural, Forgotten-Man America. He wrote a book about it, and in 2016 he warned the public—in The Atlantic, no less—that Donald Trump was “cultural heroin.” When he moved back to Ohio and stepped into the GOP Senate primary, Vance was running behind Josh Mandel, the hyper-ambitious former treasurer of Ohio, who was saying and tweeting unhinged things as a way of pulling out all the stops to capture a coalition of the most extreme primary voters.
And so Vance retooled both his approach and his personality. He pledged his sword to Donald Trump, who duly endorsed him and lifted him to a win in the primary. Vance then ran as the MAGA candidate, appearing onstage with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and accepting their endorsements. This combination of pusillanimity and shamelessness, along with Trump’s support, helped Vance defeat the centrist Democrat Tim Ryan, and he headed back east to Washington.
What he once wore as electoral camouflage is now tattooed all over him, in yet another fulfillment of the late Kurt Vonnegut’s warning that, eventually, “we are what we pretend to be.”
In politics, you pay at least some of the debt you owe for a crucial endorsement, but Vance is paying it all—including a brutal vig. It’s one thing to hand-wave about supporting the nominee; it’s another entirely to speak up when staying quiet would be just as effective, and perhaps more sensible. But when you’re writing articles defending Donald Trump’s foreign policy—a radioactive subject many Republicans would rather ignore—you’re not just paying off what you owe the sharks; you’re begging to be part of the crew.
But Vance couldn’t resist the intoxicating call of performative irresponsibility, and he has managed to latch on to almost every MAGA hot-button issue in his short time on the Hill. (He even fawned over Tucker Carlson after he was fired by Fox News; most other Republicans quietly treated Carlson’s canceled show like a barrel of industrial sludge that they allowed to sink in a dark lake without trace or comment.) Last week, Vance responded to Trump’s indictment on 37 federal charges by vowing to put a hold on all Justice Department nominees.
[T]he Senate does much of its business, including scheduling votes on nominees, by “unanimous consent.” The current rules of the Senate allow any single senator to put a “hold” on a nominee by withholding such consent, thus preventing the chamber from acting on the nomination. This is a fairly routine maneuver most of the time; sometimes a senator places a hold because of a particular concern or question—or sometimes, because of a political vendetta.
But Vance is just shilling for Trump by preventing the entire Senate from voting on any and all nominees to the Justice Department. This puts him in the exalted company of another Senate giant, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, who is holding up the promotions of some 200 senior U.S. military officers because he’s upset about expanded abortion provisions for service members. (He is also feuding with the Pentagon over various other culture-war grievances.) Vance and Tuberville are engaging in “blanket” holds not against any one person, but against an entire class of nominees.
This is not the Senate’s “advice and consent”; this is the howling of the Yahoo Caucus. . . . the GOP is engaging in a “full-on trashing and undermining of the government,” creating “a civic and physical hazard to America” merely to defend Trump from even mild criticism.
Tuberville has repeatedly shown, much like Trump himself, that he does not understand how the American government actually works. Vance (a graduate of Ohio State and Yale) and Massie (who holds a degree in engineering from MIT) both know better, and that makes their actions even more odious. These legislators are showing contempt not only for their constitutional duty but for their constituents by treating them like credulous rubes in order to harvest their anger and their votes.
Tuberville, perhaps, never had a chance to be a better legislator. Massie might simply be an engineer who knows a lot about one thing and almost nothing about anything else. But Vance is different: He’s an intelligent and educated man who has chosen a shameful path in Congress as if his lifetime of opportunities and second chances never happened.
Friday, June 16, 2023
Republican Priority: Ban Free School Meals, Cut Social Security
States across the country are moving to provide universal free school meals to all our children. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to stop them from doing just that.
The Republican Study Committee (of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members) on Wednesday released its desired 2024 budget, in which the party boldly declares its priority to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, from the School Lunch Program. Why? Because “CEP allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”
[I]t is a meal service program reserved for qualifying schools and districts in low-income areas. The program enables schools that predominantly serve children from low-income backgrounds to offer all students free breakfast and lunch, instead of means-testing them and having to manage collecting applications on an individual basis. As with many universal-oriented programs, it is more practically efficient and, as a bonus, lifts all boats. This is what Republicans are looking to eliminate.
[A]s California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, and as of this week, Vermont, all move to provide universal free school meals in one form or another—and at least another 21 states consider similar moves—Republicans are trying to whittle down avenues to accomplish that goal.
Along with trying to stop schools from giving all their students free meals, the proposed 2024 Republican budget includes efforts to:
- cut Social Security and Medicare
- make Trump’s tax cuts for the top 1 percent permanent
- impose work requirements on “all federal benefit programs,” like food stamps and Medicare
- extend work requirements on those aged 55–64
- bring back all of twice-impeached and twice-arrested former President Donald Trump’s deregulations, including the weakening of environmental protection.
And that’s just a taste of their hopes and dreams. But don’t mistake it all as just wish-casting: “The RSC Budget is more than just a financial statement. It is a statement of priorities,” the party assures in the document.
The proposed budget would effectively make cuts to Social Security by increasing the retirement age for future retirees. The document seeks to assure people that there would only be “modest adjustments” but does not list what Republicans think the new retirement age should be.
On Medicare, Republicans propose requiring disabled Americans to wait longer before getting benefits and turning Medicare into a “premium support” system, a long-floated Republican idea that essentially turns the government program into a voucher scheme. Such a scheme would remove the guarantee for seniors to have affordable access to Medicare.
As far as taxes go, the party wants to make permanent the individual provisions of Trump’s tax cut bill, which gave a roughly $49,000 annual tax cut to the top 1 percent and only $500 to those in the bottom 60 percent. In doing so, they’d add nearly $2.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The party also wants to eliminate the estate tax, which only impacts those who inherit assets worth at least $13 million.
How working class voters - now a main stay of the GOP - believe this agenda helps them is impossible to comprehend.
Thursday, June 15, 2023
The MAGA Base Now Defines the GOP
Donald Trump was arraigned on 37 federal felony charges for his decision to abscond with extremely sensitive classified documents, store them haphazardly in his wide-open beach club and then refuse to give them back to the government when asked politely to do so. Unless the special counsel's office has found some evidence that will explain this bizarre behavior, we will probably be left arguing about Trump's motives forever. Was it a psychological need to hoard them or simply a product of his extreme mental disorganization? Did he see a monetary value in them or perhaps he had it in mind to use them as leverage for his political future, as he did when he extorted the Ukrainian president to help him sabotage Joe Biden's campaign? We may never know why he did it, but the government doesn't need to prove that. It's enough that he committed a very serious national security breach and then refused to cooperate when they offered for over a year to let it slide.
There was some nervousness as to whether his calls to the MAGA faithful to protest would result in big crowds descending on the Miami courthouse and causing a confrontation along the lines of January 6. A motley crowd of fringe weirdos marched around dressed in costume and carrying huge Trump flags but it was very tame. The Proud Boys didn't even turn up and they're headquartered in Miami.
Trump followers don't really protest, they gather in large numbers to party and see their Dear Leader speak, and he clearly had no intention of holding a press conference on the courthouse steps as another defendant might do. He rolled in with a large convoy and then sneaked out the back in his SUV . . . .
[W]hile nobody seems to be eager to violently storm another government building at the moment, MAGA is operating on a number of different fronts these days. Republicans in Congress have jumped into the protest breach with threats of hearings and work stoppages and blocking of nominations as a way of showing their support for Trump. Activists are writing hysterical social media posts and the right-wing media is fulfilling its duty to the movement as well . . .
So far the GOP presidential candidates are unable to quit Trump's Grand Pageant either despite the fact that their rival has now been indicted on very serious charges of endangering national security. Even those voters who really want a different candidate than Trump have to see that for the pathetic weakness it is.
With the exception of former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie not one of them has offered a full-throated condemnation of Trump's behavior. Most of them can't even bring themselves to say "everyone is innocent until proven guilty and I will await the verdict of the jury." They're all rushing to defend him with shallow "whataboutism" and attacks on the "deep state" and alleged unequal justice that somehow is supposed to give Trump a get-out-of-jail free card.
We all knew that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any voters but it's still a little jarring to realize that the Republican Party is so thoroughly Trumpified that they don't even care if he is found to have stashed nuclear secrets next to the toilet.
It is a truism that elected Republican officials are terrified of that Trump base and that's why they cannot bring themselves to defy him, no matter what he does whether it's bragging about assaulting women, coddling dictators or inciting insurrections. Now he's charged with serious violations of national security laws and they are once again falling in line behind him. But maybe that conventional wisdom is backwards now. Trump is actually in a weakened state but these GOP leaders have absorbed the self-serving Trump crusade against the "deep state." They have convinced themselves it is true and/or beneficial for them to claim that Democrats have done the same and got away with it.
Some, like Senate Intelligence Committee member and former Trump critic Marco Rubio wring their hands over how terribly divisive it is and warn that Democrats have opened Pandora's box by, I guess, failing to fire the whole Justice Department for bringing charges against Trump . . . .
This is yet another sign of the ideological bankruptcy of the Republican Party as it goes into the 8th year of Trump's dominance. It's not that Trump's crazy base is ungovernable and they have no choice but to go along if they want to keep their seats. The establishment has taken back the wheel and they are now driving the MAGA bus. They don't have to do this. They want to.
Wednesday, June 14, 2023
LGBT Americans Could Become a :New Class of Political Refugees"
Eleanor McDonough used to be a legislative aide in the Florida State House of Representatives. She was, she believes, the only openly transgender person working there. That was until the wave of oppressive, anti-L.G.B.T.Q. — and specifically anti-trans — legislation being passed in Tallahassee became too much for her to bear.
Two weeks ago, she resigned her position and fled Florida for New Hampshire.
As McDonough told me, it became a “difficult situation” working in the Capitol and “having people debate your existence on both the House and Senate floors, of whether or not you’re going to be able to use the restroom in the building.”
“When you have to take a look at history and what other authoritarians have done when seeking power,” she said, “you have to make a decision of: At what point is it too dangerous to stay?”
McDonough isn’t alone among trans people, queer people in general, and their families registering the danger and considering relocation.
As Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, told me recently, “I think for the first time, at least in my history of the movement, we are seeing this new class of political refugees that are moving to different states because they believe that they’re not safe in their own.” These are gender refugees. Here, in America. Americans.
According to research by the Clark University professor Abbie Goldberg published in January by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, which surveyed 113 parents in Florida who are L.G.B.T.Q. in the wake of the passage of Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law, “56 percent of parents considered moving out of Florida and 16.5 percent have taken steps to move out of Florida.”
The study found that some respondents were already saving money and looking for jobs and houses elsewhere. But the fight-or-flight dilemma that these families face is fraught because, as the study points out, “many felt conflicted,” noting that “they loved their families, friends and communities.” They’re being pushed to choose between the comfort of their chosen tribe and the safety of their families — something no one should have to do. It’s a predicament underscoring that anti-trans laws aren’t noble, but wicked; they don’t protect, they prey.
And as the study notes, for some families with L.G.B.T.Q. members, “moving was currently impossible,” as they were “caring for older family members or other dependents or had jobs that they could not find elsewhere.” . . . . Uprooting and moving to get away from political persecution is a privileged option that’s just not feasible for everyone, at least in the short term.
One high-profile family that resolved to leave Florida is that of Dwyane Wade, who won three N.B.A. championships with the Miami Heat, and the movie and TV star Gabrielle Union. The couple has a transgender daughter, 16-year-old Zaya, and Wade has said that Florida’s anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws are among the reasons they decided to move. In April, he said “My family would not be accepted or feel comfortable there” and in May, he said of Miami, “As much as I love that city, and as much as I’m always going to be a part of it, I can’t — for the safety of my family, that’s what it was for me — I couldn’t move back.”
But, of course, Wade and Union are wealthy and have flexibility and resources — commodities that are beyond the scope of many.
[O]ut of more than 525 anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills introduced around the country in this year’s legislative sessions, “over 220 of those target the transgender community.” . . . “We’re hearing from families all the time who are terrified, who are facing very concrete, practical issues of: My kid is about to lose health care; or my doctor, our family physician who we’ve been seeing for years now, says they won’t treat my child anymore.”
The fear and desperation are so great, Robinson told me, she has even talked to parents who are considering giving custody of their trans children to family members in friendlier states.
This situation — the support for and passage of these laws — is not only sad, it’s obscene and infuriating. And it is deeply rooted in dehumanization and denial.
Last week, a federal judge in Florida granted a preliminary injunction for three trans youths against certain provisions in a state law meant to ban gender-affirming care for minors. In the judge’s scathing ruling, he wrote two short sentences that ring profoundly because they seem to be so often ignored in the crusade against trans people: “Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear.”
The reality that “variations in gender identity and expression are normal aspects of human diversity” should be commonly understood, but it isn’t. Instead, far too many people falsely view gender diversity . . . as a choice rather than a medical condition. They conflate the condition with its effective treatment: transitioning.
The truth is that the broader L.G.B.T.Q. community and the trans community in particular are being bullied in this debate, and the willful ignorance around gender identity is being exploited. L.G.B.T.Q. Americans are being used as pawns in a political battle. We’re being scapegoated by scammers. Safety, even the safety of children, is being callously sacrificed so that public favor can be won.
It’s sick. And it has put many queer people in an impossible, existential bind.
If you live in Virginia, please vote a straight Democrat ticket in November so that Virginia does not become another Florida where the rights of a religiously extreme minority erase the rights of many others, particularly women and LBGT citizens.
The United States v. Donald Trump
Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned today—without incident—and he has now pleaded not guilty to 37 charges tied to the alleged mishandling of classified documents. But before we see more possible indictments (from Georgia or the January 6 investigation), Americans should not lose sight of the astonishing charges read to Trump today in Florida.
Perhaps former Attorney General William Barr—not a man I am given to quoting approvingly—said it best: I was shocked by the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were ... and I think the counts under the Espionage Act that he willfully retained those documents are solid counts … If even half of it is true, then he’s toast.
I’m not so sure about the “toast” part. Trump lucked out by drawing Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed and whose last involvement with one of his cases produced a decision so biased in his favor and so poorly reasoned that a federal appeals court—including two more Trump appointees—overturned her ruling in a judicial body slam. And a Florida jury raises the odds that someone on the panel will simply refuse to convict no matter how strong the case.
[B]efore the inevitable blizzard of motions and delays and general mayhem, I thought we should review the actual charges in the indictment itself.
First, here’s what the government claims Trump took to Florida:
The classified documents TRUMP stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.
Remember, no one on the Trump team is really disputing this. Some Republicans, in a desperate struggle with reality, are suggesting that Trump did nothing wrong, but Trump—who cannot stop talking—says he had the right to take anything he wanted . . .
But perhaps the materials were at least in a safe place: Between January 2021 and August 2022, The Mar-a-Lago Club hosted more than 150 social events, including weddings, movie premieres, and fundraisers that together drew tens of thousands of guests.
Ah. But Trump has a Secret Service detail; could they help protect the documents?
[The Secret Service] was not responsible for the protection of TRUMP's boxes or their contents. TRUMP did not inform the Secret Service that he was storing boxes containing classified documents at The Mar-a-Lago Club.
Meanwhile, Trump’s aides—including his alleged co-conspirator, Walt Nauta—were moving this stuff around. (Nauta was indicted on six counts, including obstruction and making false statements, and he has not yet entered a plea; he requested an extension on his arraignment, now set for June 27.) When some of the boxes toppled over, Nauta apparently took a picture of classified material:
On December 7, 2021, NAUTA found several of TRUMP’s boxes fallen and their contents spilled onto the floor of the Storage Room, including a document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,” which denoted that the information in the document was releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. NAUTA texted Trump Employee 2, “I opened the door and found this …” NAUTA also attached two photographs he took of the spill. Trump Employee 2 replied, “Oh no oh no,” and “I’m sorry potus had my phone.”
Unfortunately, one of Trump’s own lawyers made sure to memorialize Trump’s comments on that issue—because lawyers, despite the Stringer Bell Rule, know when to protect themselves by taking notes:
Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?
Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here? Well look isn’t it better if there are no documents?
In one of the more widely publicized moments described in the indictment, Trump was apparently recorded, during a meeting with a writer working on a book (who was accompanied by his publisher) and two of Trump’s staff, saying that he had a U.S. war plan against a foreign nation (read: Iran) in his hand. He is recorded as admitting both that the document is classified and that he no longer has the power to declassify it. But for those of us who have worked with classified information, Smith adds an important detail:
At the time of this exchange, the writer, the publisher, and TRUMP’s two staff members did not have security clearances or any need-to-know any classified information about a plan of attack on Country A.
If this happened, Trump released classified information to people who should not see classified information.
This incident is particularly galling because one of the president’s former attorneys, Robert Ray, has been arguing that although the charges in the indictment are serious, they don’t show evidence of damage to U.S. national security. This is a risible claim: No one, at this point, can say with any confidence whether American national security has or has not been damaged. We do not live in a movie where intelligence leaks produce clear and instant disasters.
But more to the point, even Ray admitted that the government doesn’t need to prove such harm; that’s not how any of this works.
As a former Defense Department employee, I can only imagine what would have happened had I spirited boxes of classified information to my home and then, after my arrest, said, “Well, sure, I took it, but there’s no evidence I’ve hurt national security. At least not yet.”
Donald Trump is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Unfortunately, it will likely be a long time before we find out if our justice system is capable of holding a former president to account. But if these charges were leveled against any other American citizen, they would be, in Bill Barr’s words, toast.
Trump remains a threat to both democracy and America's national security.
Tuesday, June 13, 2023
Republicans Keep Failing the Same Test
As Donald Trump faces his arraignment on violations of the Espionage Act, Republicans again have the choice of opting to support democracy, the rule of law and the concept that no one is above the law or remaining Kool-Aid drinking cultists who blindly support Trump and the toxic reality of what the Republican Party has become. No doubt some cultists will protest in Miami but the majority of rank and file Republicans will likely shrug their shoulders even as congressional Republicans make statements they know to be false as they condemn the indictments and go through tortured contortions to avoid focusing on the gravity of Trumps crimes and the threat he poses to national security (not to mention common decency). A column in the New York Times looks at the continued refusal of Republicans to decide to support truth and America's democratic system thanks to both a herd mentality and in the case of elected Republicans an unquenchable thirst for power at any cost. Here are column excerpts:
In the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Republican officeholders had three choices.
They could stick with and defend Donald Trump and his riotous allies, and if they were members of the House or Senate, they could vote in support of the effort to overturn the results of the election, in a show of loyalty to the president and, in effect, the rioters.
Or they could criticize and condemn the president as conservative dissenters, using their voices in an attempt to put the Republican Party back on a more traditional path.
Or they could leave. They could quit the party and thus show the full extent of their anger and revulsion.
But we know what actually happened. A few Republicans left and a few complained, but most remained loyal to the party and the president with nary a peep to make about the fact that Trump was willing to bring an end to constitutional government in the United States if it meant he could stay in office.
We have been watching this dynamic play out a second time with Trump’s indictment on federal espionage charges for mishandling classified documents as a private citizen. The most prominent Republican officeholders wasted no time with their full-throated denunciations of the indictment, the Department of Justice and the Biden administration.
“Let’s be clear about what’s happening: Joe Biden is weaponizing his Department of Justice against his own political rival,” said Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, . . . . “This indictment certainly looks like an unequal application of justice,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming,. . . . Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that the indictment was a “weaponization of federal law enforcement” that “represents a mortal threat to a free society,” . . . .
The only notable Congressional Republican to really condemn Trump was Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. “By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others,” he said in a statement. “Mr. Trump brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so.”
All of this is typical. With vanishingly few exceptions, Republicans are unwilling either to discipline Trump, withdraw their support for his political leadership or even just criticize him for his actions. The most we’ve seen, Romney aside, is a nod to the fact that these are serious charges.
There are several ways to think about most Republicans’ reluctance to break with Trump in the face of his egregious lawbreaking and contempt for constitutional government, but I want to focus on two in particular.
The first concerns something that exists wherever there is a relationship between an individual and an institution. That is, it concerns the loyalty of the individual to the institution. Political parties in particular are designed to inculcate a sense of loyalty and shared commitment among their members. This is especially true for officeholders, who exist in a web of relationships and obligations that rest on a set of common interests and beliefs.
Loyalty makes it less likely that a dissenter just ups and walks away, especially when there isn’t a plausible alternative. Few Trump-critical Republicans, for instance, are willing to become Democrats. . . . . strong loyalty to an institution like a political party might lead a dissenting or disapproving individual to hold onto her membership even more tightly, for fear that exit might open the door to even worse outcomes.
“The ultimate in unhappiness and paradoxical loyalist behavior,” Hirschman wrote, “occurs when the public evil produced by the organization promises to accelerate or to reach some intolerable level as the organization deteriorates; then, in line with the reasoning just presented, the decision to exit will become ever more difficult the longer one fails to exit. The conviction that one has to stay on to prevent the worst grows stronger all the time.”
Most things in life, and especially a basic respect for democracy and the rule of law, have to be cultivated. What is striking about the Republican Party is the extent to which it has, for decades now, cultivated the opposite — a highly instrumental view of our political system, in which rules and laws are legitimate only insofar as they allow for the acquisition and concentration of power in Republican hands.
Most Republicans won’t condemn Trump. There are his millions of ultra-loyal voters, yes. And there are the challenges associated with breaking from the consensus of your political party, yes. But there is also the reality that Trump is the apotheosis of a propensity for lawlessness within the Republican Party. He is what the party and its most prominent figures have been building toward for nearly half a century. I think he knows it and I think they do too.
Monday, June 12, 2023
Will Republicans Belatedly Recognize Trump's Unfitness for Office
Former attorney general William P. Barr could not influence special counsel Jack Smith or Attorney General Merrick Garland in their decision to indict former president Donald Trump. By the time a jury is selected, most jurors (if they had even heard Barr’s remarks) will have forgotten the reaction in the first few days after the indictment. But with the indictment now released — making public the damning series of charges — Barr can play a vital role in helping Republicans accept that their front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination faces the likelihood of trial and conviction — developments that cannot be wished away.
Since he left the Trump administration, Barr has been candid about Trump’s shortcomings. Barr provided testimony to the Jan. 6, 2021, House select committee, saying he told Trump there was no evidence of election fraud. He told the committee, “Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud underway.
More recently, he’s been open about Trump’s unfitness for office. “He does not have the discipline. He does not have the ability for strategic thinking and linear thinking — or setting priorities or how to get things done in the system,” Barr told a Cleveland group in early May. “It’s a horror show, you know, when he’s left to his own devices.”
With regard to the case stemming from Trump’s retention of” classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Barr has been a lonely Republican voice warning that the charges are serious. He said on ABC’s “This Week” on April 9, “I think that’s a serious potential case. I think they probably have some very good evidence there.” In May, he told CBS News, “It’s very clear that he had no business having those documents. . . . Barr added, “The problem is what did he do after the government asked for them back and subpoenaed them. And if there’s any games being played there, he’s going to be very exposed.”
This past week on CBS, he declared, “This is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt. … This would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents, but he jerked them around for a year and a half. … There is no excuse for what he did here.”
Never-Trump Republican Bill Kristol told me, “Bill Barr served Trump, distorted the Mueller report for Trump, defended the indefensible for Trump. But even he acknowledges the classified documents is a crime too far.”
Why should any of this matter? As Trump’s former attorney general, Barr’s willingness to speak out tells Republicans still capable of reason that the case is real, it’s serious, it cannot be brushed off and that the Justice Department didn’t engage in misconduct. Barr could break through the right-wing media bubble that shelters millions of Republicans from reality. They have convinced themselves that Trump is innocent and/or that this will all go away. Even after word of the indictment spread, Republican politicians continued to attack the Justice Department as if it, not Trump, were on trial.
Barr is not alone in calling out Trump’s conduct. After the indictment was unsealed, Trump’s former counsel Ty Cobb told CNN, “I think Trump is in an enormous amount of trouble. This indictment is about as carefully structured and evidentially supported as any indictment in history.” Law professor Jonathan Turley, who frequently defended Trump’s behavior during his impeachments, wrote, “For two years, I have said that the Mar-a-Lago charges — particularly obstruction — represent the greatest threat to Donald Trump. It remains baffling why Trump forced this issue over these documents rather than just give them all back.”
Perhaps, now that the indictment has moved from theoretical to actual, Republicans will come to their senses. And Barr might be just the person to help that process along. Never-Trump strategist Sarah Longwell told me, “Bill Barr being vocal about the seriousness of the documents case will make it harder for many Republicans to casually dismiss this indictment as they did with the [Manhattan district attorney Alvin] Bragg indictment.”
Perhaps this will be too little too late to stop Trump’s 2024 candidacy. However, donors, establishment Republicans and ordinary voters might listen to Barr even though they would not pay attention to the mainstream media or even former GOP New Jersey governor Chris Christie. (On Friday, Christie slammed Trump: “The facts that are laid out here are damning in terms of Donald Trump’s conduct. … Do we really believe that someone who engaged in this type of conduct is going to be the best person to put up against Joe Biden?”)
In the short term, Barr’s remarks might encourage other Republicans, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), to reject Trump’s cries of persecution. Republicans’ awareness of Trump’s unfitness (or at least his unelectability) could then swell. If so, Barr would have done something — finally! — in defense of our democracy and the rule of law.
Sunday, June 11, 2023
Trump’s Indictment Reveals a National-Security Nightmare
Donald Trump, along with one of his aides, has been indicted for federal crimes involving highly sensitive national-security documents. Trump and his enablers are already trying to brush the charges away as the result of a witch hunt over a minor issue, but this indictment shows why Trump was, and remains, a threat to national security.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has successfully petitioned to unseal the indictment of Donald Trump and his aide Walt Nauta on multiple charges revolving around Trump’s removal of classified material from the White House and his belligerent refusal to return them. The charges include making false statements, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding and concealing records, and willful retention of national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act.
When Trump learned of the indictment yesterday, he and his devoted coterie of Republican apologists, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, got right to work trying to minimize the charges as a politically motivated “weaponization” of the law. Even Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who (at least in theory) is running against Trump, felt the need to side with the most notorious Florida Man now facing justice. . . . . the fact that DeSantis and others feel the need to placate such paranoia is indicative of how unhinged the GOP base has become.
Smith, however, isn’t pussyfooting around: The charges—38 of them—are a big deal. And before the GOP gaslighting reaches supernova levels, let’s also bear in mind that what Trump actually did is a big deal too. He claimed that he declassified, by fiat, boxes of classified information, and then appears to have left all of that material sitting in ballrooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms.
To understand the severity of the charges against Trump, consider a thought experiment: Imagine that Vladimir Putin is one day driven from the Kremlin, perhaps in a coup or in the face of a popular revolt. He jumps into his limousine and heads for self-imposed exile in a remote dacha. His trunk is full of secret documents that he decided belong to him, including details of the Russian nuclear deterrent and Russia’s military weaknesses.
Now imagine how valuable those boxes would be to any intelligence organization in the world. . . . To get even a peek at such Russian materials would be an intelligence triumph. . . . Trump, meanwhile, left highly sensitive American documents lying around at a golf resort like practice balls on the driving range. According to the indictment:
The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP’s presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club—including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.
Actually, it might be harder to steal practice balls. “The Storage Room,” the indictment notes, “was near the liquor supply closet, linen room, lock shop, and various other rooms.” These are not exactly low-traffic areas.
Normally, when there is spillage of classified material—and such events are common, including during presidential transitions—it’s treated much like the spillage of toxic waste: Even if it’s an accident, everyone involved must cooperate to find the source of the spill, evaluate the amount of danger, and contain and clean the area. What Trump has already admitted to doing . . . is like driving off with a truckload of toxic chemicals, splashing them around, and then, when the guys in the hazmat suits show up, telling them he had every right to dump out the barrels on his own property and that they can go take a hike.
Trump did all of this while leaving some of the most tempting intelligence targets in the Western world open to theft or reproduction. The indictment is both astounding and horrifying, with pictures of classified materials sitting in unsecured boxes around Mar-a-Lago that could give hives to anyone who’s ever held a security clearance . . . .
In any decent democracy, this intentional and defiant recklessness with classified material would be added to the list of acts that should prohibit Trump from ever holding any position of government responsibility ever again.
Trump’s enablers, however, will try to set the agenda, just as they did when Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed his report in 2019 on Trump’s alleged collusion with the Russians. Back then, Attorney General William Barr performed a major act of civic sabotage by bowdlerizing Mueller’s findings before anyone saw the actual report.
Trump-supporting Republicans are attempting to replicate Barr’s dishonest play by convincing Americans that Joe Biden and Merrick Garland have personally indicted Trump over a nothingburger. Like many who have commented on the documents fiasco, McCarthy, Elise Stefanik, Josh Hawley, and others must know that this is a flat lie, but it’s a lie that will work on millions of people.
Smith and the government of the United States have made clear that Donald Trump has yet again betrayed his country. The rest of us should say so to our fellow citizens—and to those craven elected representatives who refuse to admit it—loudly and clearly.
Florida Anti-LGBTQ Laws Prompt Families to Flee
ORLANDO — Arlo Dennis has decided on a deadline to get their family out of Florida: July 1.
That is the day a slate of new laws signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis targeting the LGBTQ community take effect. Doctors will be allowed to deny care based on their moral beliefs. The use of preferred pronouns will be banned in public schools. And children will be barred from attending drag shows, among other measures. One law that prohibits gender-affirming health care for transgender people under the age of 18 is already being enforced.
The Republican governor vying to become president in the 2024 election championed the bills as part of his “Florida Blueprint.” His critics call it “the slate of hate.”
For Dennis, they add up to a difficult but urgent decision to flee. “I’m a trans adult. I have gender nonconforming children, and these laws are just so specifically targeting our communities that I don’t feel like my parenting relationship is going to continue to be respected,” Dennis said. “We just low grade don’t feel safe.”
A tectonic shift in how the LGBTQ community perceives its welcome is underway in a state famed for both a vibrant gay history in pockets like Key West and a past filled with examples of intolerance and aggression. While some of the new legislation builds on previous laws, gay rights advocates say they are alarmed by the sheer number of bills and the increasingly hostile rhetoric from DeSantis and Republican state lawmakers
In recent weeks, several civil rights groups have issued travel advisories for Florida, warning LGBTQ tourists to reconsider plans to visit the Sunshine State. The overall impact of the laws make Florida “openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the nation, said in its warning in May.
Two Florida communities have canceled annual Pride parades out of concern that they will unintentionally break a new law that makes it a third-degree felony to have a child present at “an adult live performance.” Some transgender families are placing their children in private schools. And a growing roster of LGBTQ families and individuals are opting to leave.
NBA superstar Dwyane Wade announced that he had moved his family to California in part because he feared his transgender teenage daughter “would not be accepted or feel comfortable” in Florida. A NASA engineer left for Illinois after concluding the new bills amount to the state “attempting to erase trans people.”
Those who cannot afford to relocate are turning to GoFundMe to raise money to leave a state they say has become a dangerous place for them and their children. Advocates for transgender Floridians have started Transit Underground, an informal coalition to help connect those leaving with volunteers who offer transportation and temporary housing.
Florida is home to several cities famed for embracing gay life and culture but, as with many states, its history with the LGBTQ community has been uneven.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Johns Committee, a state-sponsored investigative panel, targeted civil rights activists suspected of ties to communists. Its work eventually homed in on Florida universities. A 1959 report by the group alleged that “homosexual professors were recruiting students into ‘homosexual practices’ and they in turn were becoming teachers in Florida’s public-school system and recruiting even younger students.”
A decade later, former beauty queen Anita Bryant launched what some now see as a precursor to the DeSantis-backed measure critics call “Don’t Say Gay,” which bars classroom lessons related to gender identity and sexual orientation in K-12 public schools.
Despite that complicated past, gay pride flourished in parts of the state. Glamorous hotels and restaurants catering to the gay community sprang up in Miami Beach in the 1970s and remain fixtures today. Thousands flock to Key West for Pride Month and New Year’s Eve, when the island city does a ball drop hosted by a drag queen.
There and elsewhere, many have felt the worst was behind them, particularly after the Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriage in 2015, said Scott Galvin, director of Safe Schools South Florida, which works with LGBTQ youth. “We thought, we’ve arrived, the struggle is over,” . . . Even after the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, many in the gay community felt a sense of solidarity. . . . “Even people who were not LGBTQ felt attacked,” Dennis recalled after a gunman killed 49 people in the gay nightclub. “After Pulse, I remember hearing a man, he looked like a regular good old boy, say ‘These are my gays. Don’t mess with them.’”
When DeSantis last year signed the Parental Rights in Education Act, known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Galvin said he was taken aback. . . . Then he was hit directly: Miami-Dade County schools, which for 20 years had welcomed Galvin’s nonprofit to host an annual empowerment day for LGBTQ students, refused to authorize the event this year, citing the new law.
“When all of this started, we had a hard time motivating people in the LGBTQ community who don’t have children,” Galvin said. “You know, you’re 35 years old and you’re hitting up the clubs, life is great, so what happens in schools doesn’t affect you, right?” Now, he said, “they’re starting to realize that we’re all under attack.”
During a hearing over a bathroom bill, state Rep. Webster Barnaby (R) lashed out against those speaking against the legislation, likening them to people who are “happy to display themselves as if they were mutants from another planet.”
“The Lord rebuke you, Satan, and all of your demons and all of your imps who come parade before us,” Barnaby said, looking at the speakers . . . The harsh rhetoric continued even after the bills were passed. At a bill signing event in May, DeSantis was joined by Rep. Randy Fine (R), who sponsored some of the anti-LGBTQ legislation. Fine likened the bills as part of a broader war of good against evil. “There is evil in this world, and we are fighting it here today,” Fine said.
“What is happening now is taking us back not 50 years, but 100 years,” said Caitlin Ryan, a founder of the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University in California. “It is extremely destructive.”
Still, many are also vowing to stay and defend their rights, . . . Dennis has been a community organizer in Orlando and said they will miss “the tenacity and the creativity and the resilience of community.” “It feels like I’m jumping off a sinking ship and being like, well, I got my life raft, y’all take care of yourselves,” Dennis said. “But we can’t stay in Florida.”
We cannot allow this legalization of hate to overtake Virginia.
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