Saturday, September 02, 2023
Canada Issues US Travel Advisory Warning LGBTQ+ Travelers
The summer travel season is winding down, but many of us like to travel in the fall to view changing leaves or winter to either enjoy snow sports, escape to a warmer climate, or celebrate holidays with family and friends. But increasingly, there are warnings that certain places aren’t safe for LGBTQ+ people.
In the latest move, Canada’s government has urged the nation’s LGBTQ+ residents to consider their safety when traveling to the U.S. There’s an advisory on Canada’s official web page for travelers.
“Some states have enacted laws and policies that may affect 2SLGBTQI+ persons. Check relevant state and local laws,” the advisory reads. More Canadians travel to the U.S. than to any other destination.
The government relies on experts “to look carefully around the world and to monitor whether there are particular dangers to particular groups of Canadians,” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters about the advisory, according to Reuters.
Freeland did not mention specific states. However, this year more than 550 anti-LGBTQ+ bills — a record — have been introduced in 43 states around the U.S., and about 80 have become law, the Human Rights Campaign reports.
The laws against gender-affirming care are affecting all LGBTQ+ people, both trans and cisgender, youth and adults. Nearly eight in 10 LGBTQ+ adults report feeling less safe as a result of gender-affirming care bans, and nearly half report that these bans impact the physical and/or mental health of themselves or their loved ones, according to a recent survey by Community Marketing Insight and the HRC Foundation.
Among other topics in this rash of legislation are efforts to limit or ban LGBTQ+ content in schools, restrict drag performances, or allow refusal of goods or services to LGBTQ+ people by those who have religious objections.
Beyond the legislative threats, there have been many protests at drag shows and other LGBTQ-focused events or at school board meetings where queer issues are being discussed. There were more than 160 protests and threats against drag performances in the U.S. in 2022, according to GLAAD.
Sometimes there’s violence, as in a firebomb attack on an Oklahoma doughnut shop that had hosted a drag event and, recently in California, the fatal shooting of a business owner who displayed a Pride flag at her store. And violence against trans Americans remains at epidemic levels.
In April, Equality Florida issued a travel advisory saying, “Florida may not be a safe place to visit or take up residence.”
Florida has been a leader in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including the nation’s first “don’t say gay” law, banning instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools. It also has banned gender-affirming care for trans minors, restricted drag performances, and regulated which restrooms trans people can use in certain venues.
Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, Florida has severely restricted abortion access as well and targeted lessons about racial matters in schools to essentially teach that Black Americans didn’t really suffer under slavery and discrimination. DeSantis has touted his state as “where woke goes to die,” using “woke” as a catchall term for everything the far right hates.
The organization [Human Rights Campaign] declared the state of emergency in June — LGBTQ+ Pride Month. It cited the rise in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and other attacks on the community.
“The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived — they are real, tangible and dangerous,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in making the announcement. “In many cases they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”
HRC has released a guidebook with information and resources to help LGBTQ+ people stay safe while living or traveling in most hostile areas of the U.S. It is part of a larger effort by HRC, which will put out more resources in the next few months.
Even the Virginian Pilot here in tourism dependent Hampton Roads has noted Canada travel advisory - something that hopefully push tourism interests to make it clear to Glenn Youngkin and extremist Republicans that anti-LGBT laws will harm the tourism industry and state revenues:
Canada this week updated its travel advisory to the U.S., warning members of the LGBTQ+ community that some American states have enacted laws that may affect them.
The country’s Global Affairs department did not specify which states, but is advising travelers to check the local laws for their destination before traveling.
“Since the beginning of 2023, certain states in the U.S. have passed laws banning drag shows and restricting the transgender community from access to gender-affirming care and from participation in sporting events,” Global Affairs spokesman Jérémie Bérubé said Thursday in an emailed statement.
“Outside Canada, laws and customs related to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics can be very different from those in Canada,” the statement added. “As a result, Canadians could face certain barriers and risks when they travel outside Canada.”
Anti-LGBT Laws and Abortion Bans Are Driving Doctors from Red States
When Jake Kleinmahon and his husband, Tom, decided to move back to New Orleans in 2018, they had plans to live there forever. Kleinmahon, a pediatric cardiologist, earned his medical degree from Tulane University, and despite leaving the state to complete his fellowships, he said he felt drawn to Louisiana.
“At the time there was only one heart transplant doctor in the state of Louisiana,” he said, adding some children who needed heart transplants had to be transferred out of state. “I believe the kids in Louisiana should have the same world class health care as any other part of the United States.”
He accepted a job at a local children’s hospital as director of the pediatric heart transplant program. Kleinmahon and his family started building their lives in New Orleans – they made friends, peeled crawfish with their kids, attended Mardi Gras parades and Saints games, and got involved in community groups.
But this past spring the Republican-led state legislature passed a series of controversial bills that targeted the LGBTQ community.
That’s when Kleinmahon said he started having difficult conversations with his family about leaving the home they love. When he explained to his six-year-old daughter that their family had no choice but to leave New Orleans, she said, “We do have a choice, just one of them isn’t a good one.”
The Kleinmahons join other LGBTQ families who are also facing the same choice. They say they no longer feel safe or welcomed in states that have passed laws targeting their community. Many have made the difficult decision to leave.
In 2023, more than 525 anti-LGBTQ bills were passed in 41 states, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that advocates for the LGBTQ community. Of those bills, more than 220 explicitly targeted transgender people. As of June, 77 anti-LGBTQ bills had been signed into law. Many of the laws enacted have been met with legal challenges from advocacy groups and LGBTQ families. Some have been blocked by judges while the legal battles play out in court.
In Louisiana, Kleinmahon said he lobbied against the laws, calling state lawmakers and writing letters to the state’s senate education committee. But he reached a breaking point when Republican state lawmakers walked out of a senate education committee meeting as opponents of what critics call a “Don’t Say Gay” bill were discussing why it was harmful.
“It really showed that they just don’t care,” Kleinmahon told CNN. “They are not going to support our children; they are not going to support our family. And although we love New Orleans and we love Louisiana with all of our hearts, we can’t raise our children in this environment.”
Kleinmahon said he was also receiving hate mail at his job from people condemning him for being gay and saying he needed to “find Jesus.”
Louisiana Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed three bills, including one that banned gender-affirming care for most transgender minors, and HB 466, the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill that prohibited teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity in class. The state legislature overturned Edwards’ veto of the gender-affirming care ban and the new law will go into effect in January.
Tony Rothert, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, said laws targeting gender-affirming care are “governmental overreach” and encroach on families personal choices.
In Missouri, a law banning gender-affirming care for most transgender children took effect on August 28, unless they were already receiving these treatments prior to that date. The ACLU of Missouri had filed a request to block the law from taking effect as their legal battle played out in court, but a judge ruled against the group in August.
Rothert said if a judge had granted their request, it would have given families with transgender children more time to seek healthcare in other states or make plans to move. “It’s unfortunate for Missouri that we are driving families away,” Rothert told CNN.
Oakley said it has been “painful” for a lot of families to decide whether to uproot their lives.
“It’s at this point that they are finding the place they live to be unlivable,” Oakley said. “This is truly about pushing people out of public life.”
Katherine Sasser said Missouri’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors left her no choice but to move her family to Denver earlier this summer. Sasser said that law meant her 12-year-old transgender daughter would not be able to get puberty blockers – which help delay unwanted physical changes that don’t align with someone’s gender identity. And with her daughter likely needing puberty blockers by next year, Sasser said she didn’t have time to wait and see if the legal challenge against the law would succeed.
But relocating across the country hasn’t been an easy decision, LGBTQ families told CNN.
Sasser, who identifies as queer, said she now feels at ease living in a state where her daughter can legally get the healthcare she needs. Still, Sasser said it was difficult leaving the Columbia community she had grown to love.
She graduated from the University of Missouri, taught for nine years in the school district, raised her three children there and served two years on the school board. But when she finally decided to leave, Sasser said she was grateful that not only her partner but also her ex-husband and his wife agreed to move to Denver for the sake of their family.
“It’s hard, but we are going to be OK,” Sasser said. “But I worry for the families and kids who aren’t.”
On his last night in New Orleans, Kleinmahon said he had mixed emotions as he laid on a mattress in an empty house.
In August, Kleinmahon decided to move his family to Long Island, New York, where he took a job at another children’s hospital developing a heart transplant program. Kleinmahon said he worries his departure will leave a void in the Louisiana healthcare system. There are now only two pediatric cardiologists who manage heart transplants in the state, and they will be expected to serve the same number of patients, he said.
“That is going to affect care,” Kleinmahon said, adding that “the absolute hardest part is me saying goodbye to my patients.” “I don’t know how many families in the last couple weeks have just melted into my arms in tears when I tell them that I’m leaving.”
People will literal die as a result of these laws. Republican legislators and "Christian" hate merchants are truly a scourge on the nation. Moreover, they help to demonstrate yet again that "conservative" religion is one of the great evils of the world.
Friday, September 01, 2023
Has The Trump Reckoning Finally Begun?
The Trump reckoning, long in coming, has arrived — and not just in the array of criminal cases against the former president himself. A pair of powerful rulings in civil cases against two top Trump advisers offers another illustration of how the court system can stand up against the sheer lawlessness of such behavior.
For years, the Trump way — ignore lawful subpoenas, assert unfounded exemptions from compliance and generally run out the clock on legal claims — has been distressingly successful. Stonewalling has proved a particularly successful strategy in the face of congressional investigations.
But that approach has its limits, on welcome display this week in D.C. federal court, where two judges rendered powerful rulings against Trump advisers Rudy Giuliani and Peter Navarro that amounted to: Stop this nonsense. It’s not nice to fool with federal judges. They possess the power to rule against you, especially when you push the limits.
This week’s first case in point is U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell, presiding over a lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, who claim Giuliani defamed them when he accused them of tampering with the election results. Giuliani, through his own obstructionism, managed the feat of losing the case before it went to trial. Howell simply ruled against Giuliani, citing his repeated and flagrant failure to comply with his legal obligations to turn over relevant information to the other side.
Howell’s bottom line: Giuliani gets to go to trial — but only on the question of how much money he owes. “Rather than simply play by the rules designed to promote a discovery process necessary to reach a fair decision on the merits of plaintiffs’ claims, Giuliani has bemoaned plaintiffs’ efforts to secure his compliance as ‘punishment by process,’” Howell wrote. “Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention.”
Facing criminal charges in Georgia and other civil lawsuits, Giuliani might have had strategic reasons for sitting on potential evidence, Howell noted, but that isn’t her concern. “Withholding required discovery in this case has consequences.”
Consequences. How sweet a word. We don’t want judges issuing these default judgments cavalierly, but to read Howell’s 57-page opinion is to understand that this is not a judge acting out of pique or even exasperation — she’s protecting the integrity of the legal process.
As was Judge Amit P. Mehta, Howell’s district court colleague presiding over the criminal case against Navarro for contempt of Congress. A Trump economic adviser who became a player in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results, Navarro was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Like several other Trump officials, Navarro asserted executive privilege and declined to appear. . . . The House voted to hold him in contempt. The Justice Department agreed to prosecute him; he was indicted on two misdemeanor counts, failing to produce documents and failing to appear for testimony. The trial is set for next week.
Mehta, ruling from the bench on Wednesday, said Navarro couldn’t use the executive privilege claim in defending himself because he hadn’t produced enough evidence — any evidence, really — that Trump had asserted executive privilege or ordered Navarro not to comply with the subpoena.
Executive privilege can be claimed only by the actual executive, not a subordinate asserting it for himself. And many legal experts believe the privilege belongs to the incumbent president and can’t be invoked by a president once out of office.
All this is bad news for Navarro’s ability to defend himself against charges that each carry up to a year in prison. But it is admittedly cold comfort for the Jan. 6 committee, which has been disbanded and won’t be able to obtain Navarro’s testimony; there’s no prospect that the House under current GOP leadership would move to do so now.
But, to echo Howell, consequences matter. If Navarro is convicted of contempt, there will be consequences for him — and an ominous lesson for future Navarros. Reckonings take time, but in a system governed by the rule of law, they eventually arrive.
Thursday, August 31, 2023
The GOP Continues Its Lurch Toward Fascism
As anyone who read the indictments from special prosecutor Jack Smith or Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis could attest, the evidence against Donald Trump is overwhelming in both the federal and Georgia cases involving the attempted theft of the 2020 election. But even if you haven't read a word of either, one could surmise the seriousness of the situation from the way Republican leaders are reacting. Trump's defenders are lashing out with the favorite rhetorical device of authoritarians everywhere: Psychological projection.
Take, for instance, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., blabbering on about impeachment inquiries into the baseless conspiracy theories about President Joe Biden. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is making impotent threats of retaliatory investigations. Meanwhile, Republicans, like Rep. Andrew Clyde of North Carolina, are seeking to shield Trump from his legal woes by hijacking must-pass government funding legislation to hinder prosecutors who have successfully secured indictments of Trump. The already shrill tones emanating from Republicans on all levels are reaching glass-shattering decibels. Unfortunately, as is usually the case, they're looking for innocent victims to take their frustration out on — and in some states, the victim is the concept of democracy itself.
In Wisconsin, voters have reacted to the twin Republican assaults on democracy and reproductive rights by electing Justice Janet Protasiewicz to the state supreme court this year. While it was not explicitly a partisan election, Protasiewicz won because she was both loudly pro-choice and critical of her opponent, Dan Kelly, for blatantly supporting Trump's 2020 coup efforts. Wisconsin Republicans have worked hard for a long time to gut democracy in their state to the point where Democrats would have to win by 12 percentage points to get a bare minimum in the state house. The hope is that the new liberal court majority, empowered by voters, can scale back the gerrymandering.
"This is nothing short of an unprecedented coup," the court's conservative chief justice, Annette Ziegler, wrote in an unhinged email to the new, voter-chosen liberal majority. . . . . Ziegler has been using this "coup" language all over the place to demonize the liberal majority. As with most things from Republicans today, the accusation is a confession, on two levels. First, the actual coup effort of recent history, as Ziegler no doubt knows, was conducted by Trump. Second, Ziegler herself had been refusing to re-open the court to allow the new liberal majority to take cases. She's just mad because they rewrote the rules so they can actually do the job voters hired them to do.
In Tennessee, Republicans are also having a tantrum over the fact that voters just keep insisting on their right to choose their own leaders. In April, Republicans in the state legislature expelled two members on false claims of incivility, but in reality, Republicans reject the right of voters in urban districts to elect Black Democrats as representatives. The two were shortly restored to office by voters and clearly Republicans aren't happy about it. The majority voted again on Monday to silence Rep. Justin Jones of Nashville. Again, the pretense was that he was "out of order" during a debate over a gun safety bill.
Democrats walked out in protest and Jones released a video explaining, "What is happening is not democratic. It is authoritarianism."
As with the initial expulsion, what's truly bizarre about this is Democrats have no real power in Tennessee anyway, as it's a red state with its own dose of gerrymandering. But that's how entitled Republicans feel in the Trump era. It's not enough to control all levers of government. The very fact that Democrats still get to vote and speak out at all is viewed as unacceptable.
Certainly, Trump built on years of Republican voter suppression and other anti-democratic efforts, but this petulant GOP loathing of anything that even smacks of democracy owes quite a bit to his shameless assertion that any election Trump does not win is "fraud." Now that he's been indicted in two separate jurisdictions for his efforts to overturn democracy, Republican leaders are, in a pique of defensiveness, doubling down. Because heaven forbid they admit that having a democracy means letting voters pick who they want as leaders.
It's a sign of how normalized the fascist effect has become in the GOP that barely anyone batted an eye to the violent rhetoric that poured out of Republican leaders and pundits in response to Trump's indictments. Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin was squawking about how conservatives need to "rise up" and threatened a "civil war." Failed Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake was raving about how there needs to be "a street fight, a fist fight" on Steve Bannon's podcast. And, of course, there was the projection, such as with right-wing talk radio host Stew Peters ranting about how Democrats are "the real insurrectionists who have committed sedition," justifying the use of "extra-legal" options to remove them from power.
What is perhaps more surprising and equally dangerous is the number of GOP figures who are propping up fake governments in an effort to undermine the authority of real elected officials. As Right Wing Watch reported, earlier this month, a group of right-wing activists led by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum "held a simulated Article V convention in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia" in hopes of kickstarting an effort to void out the actual Constitution.
It's easy to laugh at this stuff, but it helps build up GOP morale to abuse real power to prosecute Democrats on false evidence and false accusations. On Fox News, for instance, Jesse Watters hosted a GOP political operative named Ned Ryun, who was screaming for the mass arrest of Democrats as retaliation. He didn't even really bother to pretend they had committed crimes to justify it. Certainly, the House Republican chatter about impeaching Biden and investigating the prosecutors falls into this category. The fake grand juries and constitutional conventions only serve to make these abuses of power, used just to prop up lies, seem more legitimate.
All of this comes from the same place: The Republican belief that they should hold all the power, regardless of what voters believe. So much so that they back Trump's criminal efforts to stay in power, despite losing an election. It's all the more reason to hope that the March 4 date for Trump's federal trial for an attempted coup stays put. Republicans clearly need even more persuasion that the fascistic path they are on will lead to no good. They won't wake up overight if their leader gets convicted for his crimes, but the more the cognitive dissonance increases, the harder it will be for them to hang on.
Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
State Bar Trial Shatters Eastman's (and Trump's) Defenses
John Eastman, the lawyer allegedly at the center of the unprecedented and outrageous scheme to overthrow the 2020 election, faces criminal prosecution in Georgia and has been identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal case. And Eastman must defend a bar complaint in California that threatens to revoke his law license.
At a critical hearing last week in the California bar proceedings, designated legal expert Matthew A. Seligman submitted a 91-page report, which I have obtained from the state bar, that strips away any “colorable,” or legally plausible, defense that Eastman was acting in good faith in rendering advice to the now four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump.
This report has serious ramifications for Eastman’s professional licensure and his defense in Georgia. Moreover, his co-defendant and co-counsel in the alleged legal scheme, Kenneth Chesebro, who has employed many of the same excuses as Eastman, might be in serious jeopardy in his Oct. 23 trial.
In his report, Seligman addressed whether “the legal positions advanced by Dr. John Eastman in relation to the counting of electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election” were reasonable. Specifically, he assessed whether — as Eastman, Chesebro and others posited — Mike Pence, as vice president, had “unilateral authority to resolve disputes about electoral votes or to take other unilateral actions with respect to the electoral count” or could “delay the electoral count for a state legislature to take action with respect to a state’s electoral votes and whether a state legislature may lawfully appoint electors after the electoral count commences.”
Seligman reviewed the 12th Amendment, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and “centuries-long practice by Congress” to find that the Eastman positions were so devoid of support that “no reasonable attorney exercising appropriate diligence in the circumstances would adopt them.” In essence, Seligman strips away the pretense that Eastman (and, by extension, Chesebro) engaged in routine legal work.
Seligman’s report echoes the finding of U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, who, in a matter concerning Eastman’s claim of attorney-client privilege to protect documents from the Jan. 6 House select committee, found that it “more likely than not” that Eastman and Trump had engaged in criminal activity.
If one follows Seligman’s legal and historical analysis, one must conclude Eastman and his legal cohorts (including co-defendant Chesebro) likely knew that their “advice” was beyond the pale. “The historical record conclusively demonstrates that the President of the Senate holds no unilateral power to take any substantive action with respect to the electoral count,” Seligman wrote. “In particular, the President of the Senate holds no unilateral power to reject electoral votes, to resolve disputes about the counting of electoral votes, or to delay the counting of electoral votes.” He concludes, “Dr. Eastman’s decision to advance those unfounded legal positions as part of an attempt to reverse the lawful result of a presidential election violates fundamental precepts of American democracy.”
In oral testimony, Seligman reiterated: “No vice president in American History has ever rejected a single slate of electors.” He likewise confirmed that no vice president had ever delayed the congressional proceeding for any reason.
Seligman’s damning report might well determine the outcome of Eastman’s bar proceedings. However, the implications of the report extend well beyond Eastman’s law license.
- If Eastman engaged in a bad-faith scheme to overthrow the election, then he (and presumably other co-defendant lawyers) lacked any colorable defense under federal law and therefore cannot remove their case to federal court.
- If Eastman engaged in a bad-faith scheme to overthrow the election, none of his or other lawyers’ conversations are protected under the ambit of the First Amendment any more than a memo explaining how to break into a bank would be.
- If Eastman engaged in a bad-faith scheme to block the certification of the election, then one could conclude he and others in the alleged “criminal enterprise” had the requisite criminal intent for state charges including a state racketeering charge.
Seligman’s conclusion shatters not only Eastman’s but also Trump’s most likely defenses.
Trump’s claim of absolute immunity under Nixon v. Fitzgerald requires that his alleged conduct be within the “outer perimeter” of the president’s “official responsibility.” If the entire scheme was not even legally plausible, then certainly Trump’s maneuvering (plus the lack of any constitutional role for the president in certification) must fall outside the outer perimeter of his responsibilities.
Likewise, Trump’s defense under the Supremacy Clause (In re Neagle) also collapses if you follow Seligman’s reasoning. A massive report on Georgia liability by the Brookings Institution explained:
The federal official is not immune from state criminal prosecution “simply because of his office and his purpose,” but instead must meet two conditions: 1) the federal official must have been engaged in conduct authorized by federal law or the Constitution; and 2) the official must have done no “more than what was necessary and proper” to effectuate his federal duty. In other words, a federal officer must actually act pursuant to federal authority, and their conduct must bear an objectively reasonable relationship to achieving a federal goal.
Trump’s engagement in a patently unreasonable scheme would deprive him of the protection of the Supremacy Clause.
And should Trump try to follow other defendants attempting to move the case to federal court, the Seligman analysis would destroy the basis for that request. Under the federal officer removal statute, he could not have acted under “color of office” nor have a colorable federal defense (e.g., absolute immunity, First Amendment, Supremacy Clause). He would have to defend his case in state court.
One additional point is critical: If Eastman’s scheme was patently absurd, a Trump defense based on “advice of counsel” (requiring reasonable advice) would be invalid, especially when a fleet of other attorneys made clear the scheme was illegitimate.
In less than two months, the criminal justice system could render the first decision on whether the defenses offered by these lawyers and their client, Trump, will hold water. . . . if Seligman is right, Eastman’s legal goose — as well as Chesebro’s and Trump’s — might be cooked.
Monday, August 28, 2023
Republicans Are Stuck in the Past
Republicans are warring over the relative virtues of three political eras. Unfortunately for those who want the party to prosper, all of them are in the past.
The weight of the old hung over the GOP last week in the booking of Donald Trump on Thursday at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta and in the Trumpless presidential debate the night before.
Both events underscored that differences in the party are defined in large part by competing loyalties to three political yesterdays: First is the one associated with Trump. The second is the tea party rebellion during the Obama years. And the third — glowing in a sacred conservative stratosphere — is the tradition of Ronald Reagan.
Of course, there is some mixing and matching of the eras. Former vice president Mike Pence, the mixologist in chief, offers a lot of Reagan, a few dashes of tea party and an inevitable bow to the good things he ascribes to the “Trump-Pence” administration. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is the hardest to place, which is why she did well in last week’s debate: She had some feel of the future about her.
[T]he GOP’s wistful longing for a lost age is an ongoing and serious condition. Dispatching Trump and the era he represents is important not only to his GOP rivals but also to the country as a whole. He is a threat to the constitutional order and democracy itself. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson are invaluable voices in a contest they cannot win because they are willing to say so.
But all of the former president’s rivals are struggling to dethrone him because they still have not come to terms with the other side of Trump, which was innovative. He moved past Reaganism. He co-opted the tea party, drawing its supporters in by echoing their nativism on immigration and backing tax cuts, without embracing its anti-government message in full.
Unlike most Republicans, Trump speaks the language of frustration experienced by Republicans who no longer believe the promises of global capitalism . . . . A man who had no business being president secured the GOP nomination in 2016 precisely because he understood, as his opponents didn’t, that many in the rank and file did not want to hear about cuts to Social Security or Medicare, hated NAFTA and other trade agreements, were skeptical about the Iraq War, and longed for an economy in which those who did not attend college could count on a decent living.
Trump’s “again” in his MAGA slogan thus does a lot of work. It certainly speaks to a nostalgia in his largely White constituency for old racial and cultural arrangements. Trump offers racist texts and subtexts, bows to religious traditionalism and tosses in some old-fashioned red-baiting.
But “again” also captures a craving in the battered regions of the country for the economic stability associated with the three decades after World War II. Trump has no coherent plan for restoration other than the blunderbuss of higher tariffs, but his supporters cheer him for acknowledging what they yearn for.
Trump’s Republican opponents are handcuffed not only by their reluctance to risk alienating his loyalists by taking him on but also by their ideological fealty to Reagan’s market faith and tea party thinking.
A cadre of GOP politicians (Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida among them) have begun to challenge market purity, but they are a small minority — and do not want to take Trump on.
Successful parties find a way to honor their traditions while absorbing new realities. Dwight D. Eisenhower broke the Democrats’ 20-year hold on power in 1952 by broadly accepting the reforms of the New Deal. It’s often forgotten that in 2000, George W. Bush adjusted to Clintonism, ran on “compassion” and spoke of reforming education and immigration.
In 2023, our economic challenges call for reinvention. Like it or not, “Bidenomics” accepts that it’s not the 1980s or 1990s anymore. The GOP’s policy imagination is still stuck in the era of Lee Greenwood, the venerable country singer the party reveres.
The first Republican president had a plan for this. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present,” Abraham Lincoln said in 1862. “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
Republicans who understand the urgency of preventing a catastrophic Trump second term have a lot of disenthralling to do.
Sunday, August 27, 2023
Hillary Was Right: The GOP Base of Deplorables
"Hurt dogs sure do holler." That was the saying that came to mind in 2008 when then-candidate for president Barack Obama drew outrage from Republicans because he described their voters as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them." The phrase came to mind again in 2016, when Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton used the memorable phrase "basket of deplorables" to describe supporters of Donald Trump. Since a cardinal rule of politics is "insult your opponent, but never their voters," the mainstream media picked up and amplified the umbrage-taking from Republicans.
What wasn't discussed very much in all this media coverage: The truth value of either Clinton's or Obama's comments. And what a shame, because both of them were right.
New polling out this week from CBS News proves, as many feared, Trump's fourth set of indictments — he now faces 91 felony charges across four jurisdictions — has only caused the GOP to rally around their seething orange leader. (And let's not forget this comes after a jury recently found him responsible for sexual assault.)
And, in a poll finding that really is astonishing, Trump voters claimed they trust the notorious fraudster more than anyone. A whopping 71% of Trump voters claim "what he says is true." Only 63% of them say that about family and friends, 56% about conservative media figures and 42% about religious leaders. The word that comes to mind is "cult."
"Cult leaders must be dynamic, charismatic, and convincing because their goal is to control their members to acquire money or power-related advantages," said Joe Scarborough on MSNBC in response to the poll Monday.
Political scientist Brian Klaas tweeted, "you need to understand what an authoritarian cult of personality is, because that's what it has become."
MAGA is a cult, but it's a mistake to view Trump followers like DeSantis does, as "listless vessels" for Trump. Take this poll with a strong grain of salt, as it's unlikely that so many people are so delusional as to truly see an honest broker in the chronic liar and criminal that is Trump. Instead, the poll is a reminder that Trump backers are both deplorable and bitter clingers.
That poll doesn't measure a sincere belief in Trump's trustworthiness. It measures people who, consumed with bitterness towards the more liberal majority, are clinging to Trump even harder in a pathetic bid to save face. Which, as anyone who has studied cults can tell you, is a surprisingly strong factor in why people squelch their doubts to stay in the cult. They were warned so many times that this was a mistake that they stick around, hoping to prove the skeptics wrong.
The rally-round-Trump effect is fundamentally an eff-you-liberals response. This is demonstrated by the way this sentiment surges around every embarrassing reminder that the man is a criminal, and an idiotic one at that. There's a pattern emerging to the MAGA reaction to Trump indictments. The first swell of emotions is a tantrum, full of "how dare you" screaming, as they metaphorically (or literally in some cases) follow their leader's ketchup-throwing ways. Once that crybaby reaction fades, however, you can see concerns about betting it all on a profligate criminal start to seep in.
It's unsurprising that the conniption fit is especially strong after the RICO charges against Trump and 18 co-conspirators were announced in Atlanta because the face of these indictments is Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. A Black woman having the power to charge Trump triggers both the racism and the sexism that fuels the Trumpist movement. When the prosecutor reading charges is Jack Smith, a stern-looking white man from the Justice Department, it's a lot harder for Republicans to tap that bitter clinger energy that makes them so deplorable. But now they're in high dudgeon because they refuse to accept a world where a Black woman has the right to make accusations against a rich white man.
It would be funny if these folks weren't a massive threat, and not just to democracy. As Obama said, they bitterly cling to their guns. Violence is the inevitable result of all this rage. They may not be rioting at the courthouse, but, as I wrote in March, the MAGA fury is being redirected at women, LGBTQ people, and racial minorities, the people that MAGA believes they shouldn't have to share power within a democratic system. There was yet another reminder this weekend of how bad things have gotten when a California store owner named Lauri Ann Carleton was murdered by a 27-year-old man. The reason the 66-year-old mother of nine was shot in cold blood? Because, police say, she flew the LGBTQ pride flag outside her clothing store, Mag.Pi.
The irony of all this is, if you read both Obama and Clinton's comments in context, they were actually far more charitable than the media coverage would lead one to believe.
Trump is barely literate, but, likely due to his own narcissism, he's especially adept at manipulating people's ego defense mechanisms. He's managed to get his followers to believe that, if they admit he sucks, it's as good as saying they also suck. That's hard for anyone to do, but especially people who have spent their whole lives being told they're the only "real" Americans.
The irony here is that this stubborn unwillingness to face the truth about Trump is a big factor in the MAGA deplorability. Having the humility and grace to let liberals be right about Trump would crack open the door to the possibility there are other things liberals are right about, from the facts of history to vaccines to climate change. Republican voters aren't really the dead-eyed zombies DeSantis invoked. But it may be something worse: Millions of grown adults slamming their hands over their ears and singing loudly, "nah nah I can't hear you."
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