Saturday, November 25, 2023
Why Are U.S. Courts Afraid of the 14th Amendment?
Why are U.S. courts so determined to dilute the 14th Amendment?
Consider the recent ruling upholding former president Donald Trump’s appearance on Colorado’s 2024 presidential ballot. Here we have the latest entry in a dismaying 155-year tradition of American judges stripping that radical amendment to the U.S. Constitution of its intended power.
Judge Sarah B. Wallace’s decision that Trump engaged in insurrection but is nevertheless qualified to run for office is emblematic of the often outright resistance courts have shown to the 14th Amendment’s guarantees and protections. This instance applies to Section 3, which bars any participant in a rebellion against the government of the United States from holding public office. But almost from its inception, all the amendment’s radical provisions have inspired fear and timidity in jurists of every stripe.
The 14th Amendment was conceived of and pushed by the “Radical Republicans” in Congress after the Civil War. They were so named because of their commitment to eradicating slavery and its vestiges from American political life. A number had been abolitionists, and all had seen the threat that white supremacist ideology and the spirit of insurrection posed to the survival of the United States as a republic. Although the South had been soundly defeated on the battlefield, the belief among most Southerners that insurrection was a worthy and noble cause, and that Black people — even if no longer enslaved — were meant to be subjugated to the demands of Whites, was still firmly held.
The 14th Amendment was meant to protect Black people against that belief, and the nation against insurrection, which was understood to constitute an ongoing threat to the future of our country. Frederick Douglass . . . had no illusions about the persistence of the “malignant spirit” of the “traitors.” He predicted that it would be passed “from sire to son.” It “will not die out in a year,” he foretold, “it will not die out in an age.”
It was of this understanding that Section 3 was born. . . . The language is clear: “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States … shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.” William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, widely respected conservative constitutional legal scholars, have combed through the legislative history to answer the question of whether the president is to be considered an “officer of the United States.” . . . They note the “absurdity” of imagining that the Reconstruction Congress would include all other officers, yet exclude those two.
Wallace’s decision is of a piece with courts’ frequent unwillingness to contend honestly with all the radical demands of the 14th Amendment. During Reconstruction and the first half of the 20th century, it was the Supreme Court that left unprotected Southern Black people seeking to vote and engage in the political process in the face of deadly violence by White mobs seeking to disenfranchise them (United States v. Cruikshank, 1875). It was the Supreme Court that held that the 14th Amendment did not protect Black citizens from discriminatory conduct by private actors (Civil Rights Cases of 1883). And it was the Supreme Court that endorsed a system of Jim Crow segregation that essentially nullified the 14th Amendment for Black people in the South for nearly 100 years after its ratification (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896).
In short, post-Reconstruction courts have rarely upheld or applied in full the ambitious demands of the 14th Amendment. Instead, its guarantees have been watered down to accommodate the political forces of the day or repurposed to serve powerful interests (such as the dubious determination that corporations are “persons” entitled to its protections), or treated like an a la carte menu, in which some items — such as the guarantee of privileges and immunities and all of Section 2 (which would reduce state representation as punishment for voter suppression) — are essentially ignored.
The 14th Amendment is treated as a suggestion, but rarely in full measure when the status quo will be upended. . . . The Colorado court’s approach to Section 3 continues this tradition. To find that a president incited a violent insurrection against the United States, but to hold that such a president can still run for public office — indeed to return to the presidency itself — could not stand in starker opposition to the words and spirit of Section 3.
The 14th Amendment has once again proven too bold for the judges empowered to interpret it. Political forces are at play again, this time fearful of a backlash if Trump is removed from the ballot. As this case makes its way through the appellate process and, most likely, to the Supreme Court, it should be understood in the context of how the timidity and unwillingness of judges to acquiesce to the judgment of the 14th Amendment’s framers effectively derailed our democracy’s promise after Reconstruction and until the mid-20th century. We must ensure that it does not do the same in the 21st.
Why Americans Hate a Good Economy
Earlier this month, a Financial Times poll of about 1,000 registered voters found that most Americans believe their financial situation has gotten worse since Joe Biden became president. The economist Claudia Sahm tweeted that the results were “impossible,” adding, “The vast majority of Americans are better off financially. Full stop”—before receiving so much pushback for her statement that she deleted the post. This online drama was part of a larger debate among economists, policy makers, and commentators who have different explanations for why Americans report negative assessments of the economy despite some objective positive measures.
Economists who agree with Sahm are heavily influenced by low unemployment, often considered the standard metric for how the economy is performing. Last month the unemployment rate was down to 3.9 percent. But it’s not just unemployment that’s headed in the right direction. The Consumer Price Index was unchanged. A new paper shows that wage inequality has fallen over the past three years, driven by workers leaving their old jobs for better-paying ones. The U.S. has been adding jobs at a record clip. And wages—adjusted for inflation—may have finally surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
Here are seven possible explanations for what’s going on.
1. People need a second to adjust.
COVID-19 caused an unprecedented social and economic crisis, including job loss for lots of people. In May 2020, roughly 60 million people reported that they had been unable to work in the preceding month because their employer had closed or lost business due to the pandemic. Then inflation kicked in, raising food, energy, rent, and housing prices.
Although price jumps are leveling off, it’s important to appreciate that economic conditions changed really fast in both directions, and people may need time to register what’s going on. One researcher found that although public opinion has “historically followed the business cycle” (it declines during recessions and improves during expansions), the difference now is that pay hasn’t been keeping up with inflation. That’s only just beginning to change. If job growth, wage growth, and low inflation all continue apace, people may well start to feel better about the economy.
2. Inflation is just really that bad.
People seem to be more sensitive to inflation than to unemployment. The Financial Times poll found that 60 percent think avoiding inflation is more important than keeping good-paying jobs; just 30 percent favor the latter. Economists tend to think a good economy is one with a low unemployment rate, but for the public, that’s not enough.
3. Expectations are high.
During the pandemic, the federal government provided Americans unprecedented support. It stopped evictions; it dropped thousands of dollars into personal bank accounts; it paused student-loan repayments; it gave aid to unemployed workers; it provided tax breaks to parents of young children, and billions in aid to state and local governments. In doing so, the government may have raised expectations for what a “good economy” is supposed to feel like.
Real wages are above where they were in January 2020, but they are below where they were in mid-2020. An added wrinkle is that most of the wage growth is accruing to low-income workers, which could explain why middle- and high-income workers don’t believe that the economy is doing better.
4. The rent is too damn high.
Housing affordability hit a historic low in August as high interest rates have meant that the typical family cannot afford to buy. Although inflation overall is slowing, shelter inflation is still rising.
If renters who want to own are frustrated, so are some of the so-called winners—those who have already bought their homes—because they feel locked in place by their low mortgage rate. Moving now comes with the high penalty of giving up that rate.
When asked about current conditions for buying a home, survey respondents are utterly despondent, and that could be coloring their overall perception of the economy. And of course, the main federal response to inflation has been to raise interest rates, which actually increases housing prices as mortgages and the cost of construction rise.
5. The biggest winners are at the bottom.
A new study showing declining inequality found that Americans whose incomes rank in the bottom 10 percent have seen their inflation-adjusted wages rise to new heights since the pandemic. Neither the 50th nor 90th percentile has seen similar real-wage growth.
6. The media loves bad news.
When asked last month why “most people still don’t feel positive or feel good news about the economy,” Biden responded in part:
You all are not the happiest people in the world—what you report …You get more legs when you’re reporting something that’s negative. I don’t mean, I don’t mean you’re picking on me or I’m—just the nature of things. You turn on the television, and there’s not a whole lot about “boy saves dog as he swims in the lake.” You know?
Those who blame the media tend to emphasize the apparent gap between how people discuss their own financial situation and how they describe their feelings about the broader economy. According to the progressive economist Dean Baker, this gap “must be attributable to things that [people] are hearing about the economy from places like Fox News and the New York Times.”
7. Democrats are bad cheerleaders.
A recent paper on partisanship and the economy finds that, going back to the Reagan administration, “individuals who affiliate with the party that controls the White House have systematically more optimistic economic expectations” than those who affiliate with the other party. That is, Democrats think the economy is good under Democratic presidents, Republicans under Republican presidents.
But Democrats may benefit less and suffer more from partisan cheerleading than Republicans, suggest two former Biden-administration economists. “When a Republican is in the White House, Republican survey respondents feel about 15 index points better than predicted about the economy, whereas Democrats feel around 6 index points worse,” they wrote recently. But when a Democrat is in the White House? Republicans feel 15 points worse and Democrats feel only six points better.
Needless to say, the MAGA base and the far right talking heads drive the negativity on the economy even as the real source of grievance of in MAGA world is driven by racism and Christofascist desires to return to the 1950's when those deemed "other" - blacks, gays, women and other non-whites - knew their place and either lived in the shadows or were afraid to demand better for their lives.
Friday, November 24, 2023
Book: Trump Called Evangelicals "Pieces of Shit"
In the heat of the Republican primary of 2016, Donald Trump called evangelical supporters of his rival Ted Cruz “so-called Christians” and “real pieces of shit”, a new book says.
The news lands as the 2024 Republican primary heats up, two months out from the Iowa caucus and a day after Trump’s closest rival this time, the hard-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was endorsed by Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in Iowa.
The new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, by Tim Alberta, an influential reporter and staff writer for the Atlantic, will be published on 5 December. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Early in the book, Alberta describes fallout from an event at Liberty University, the evangelical college in Virginia, shortly before the Iowa vote in January 2016.
As candidates jockeyed for support from evangelicals, a powerful bloc in any Republican election, Trump was asked to name his favourite Bible verse.
Attempting to follow the advice of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, the thrice-married, not noticeably church-going New York billionaire and reality TV star introduced it as “Two Corinthians”, rather than “Second Corinthians”, as would have been correct.
“The laughter and ridicule were embarrassing enough for Trump,” Alberta writes. “But the news of Perkins endorsing Ted Cruz, just a few days later, sent him into a spiral. . . . “When Cruz’s allies began using the ‘Two Corinthians’ line to attack him in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, Trump told one Iowa Republican official, ‘You know, these so-called Christians hanging around with Ted are some real pieces of shit.’”
Alberta adds that “in private over the coming years”, Trump “would use even more colourful language to describe the evangelical community”.
Pursuing the lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud, Trump refused to concede defeat. He has continued to dominate Republican politics, now as the clear frontrunner to be the nominee again.
Trump has maintained that status despite having been impeached twice (the second for inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress) and despite facing 91 criminal charges (34 for hush-money payments to a porn star) and civil threats including a case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.
Evangelicals remain the dominant bloc in Iowa, 55% of respondents to an NBC News/Des Moines Register poll in August identifying as “devoutly religious”. But despite his lengthy rap sheet, Trump’s hold on such voters appears to remain strong.
In October, the Register put him at 43% support overall in Iowa, with DeSantis and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley 27 points behind. The same poll said 44% of evangelicals planned to make Trump their first choice, with DeSantis at 22% and Haley seven points back.
Speaking to Fox News, Vander Plaats said: “I don’t think America is going to elect [Trump] president again. I think America would be well served to have a choice, and I really believe Ron DeSantis should be that guy. And I think Iowa is tailor-made for him to win this.”
Trump’s rivals may yet take encouragement from Register polling, should evangelicals begin to doubt Trump. In the October poll, 76% of Iowa evangelicals said they had a positive view of DeSantis, while 62% said they liked Haley.
Thursday, November 23, 2023
Florida GOP Seeks to Expand “Don’t Say Gay Ban” to Workplaces
A new bill just introduced in Florida aims to expand “Don’t Say Gay Or Trans” provisions to a broad range of workplaces. Targeting government employees, contractors, and nonprofits, the bill sets forth restrictions and bans on policies relating to pronouns, gender identity, and sexuality.
Specifically, it would prohibit state and local government employees as well as any contractors engaged with the government from changing their pronouns or honorifics if they do not match their assigned sex at birth. It would also bar them from instructing on gender identity or sexuality, similar to “Don’t Say Gay Or Trans” laws already active in the state education system. The legislation would establish “biological” pronouns as official state policy.
The bill also would establish protections for what it calls “deeply held biology-based beliefs.” It may even prevent all nonprofits in the state from mandating any “training, instruction, or other activity on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression,” a clause that could destroy LGBTQ+ nonprofits across Florida.
The bill, HB599, was introduced by Representative Ryan Chamberlin, a Republican. The bill is split into two sections, with the first section applying to government employees and contractors, which it defines as “an individual, partnership, corporation, or business entity” that “enters or attempts to enter into a contract for services” with any state, county, municipality, or special district of Florida.
These definitions encompass a huge number of businesses, such as stadiums, convention centers, major hospitals, insurance agencies, and more. For these businesses, as well as for all government workers, the bill would declare that it is the state’s policy that “a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex.” It then would bar covered employees from sharing pronouns that “do not correspond to that person’s sex,” effectively banning social transition at work for these employees.
The bill also would enshrine a new phrase into law: protections for employees “deeply held religious or biology-based beliefs.” The phrase “deeply held religious beliefs” has longstanding precedent in constitutional law and is used to overturn laws judged to be violating someone’s freedom of religion.
Deeply held “biology-based” beliefs, however, are not something that has ever been a part of any law. It would appear that this line is meant to provide religious-based protections to people who assert that their misgendering of transgender people and using transgender people’s old names is part of their “biology-based” rights.
The bill is not limited in its application to government employees and contractors, however. A separate section of the bill would apply to “nonprofit organizations or an employer who receives funding from the state.” In the most broad reading of this section, separating “nonprofit organizations” from “employers who receive funding from the state,” it would bar all such organizations from mandating “training, instruction, or other activity on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
This provision is severe in its potential impact. Virtually every LGBTQ+ organization would be radically affected by it and would likely have to shut down. It would be nearly impossible for an LGBTQ+ organization to run without providing instruction, training, and “other activity” around gender identity or sexuality. It would be a blatant power grab by the state targeting organizations critical to the government and would further drive LGBTQ+ activism and organizing underground in the state. If enforced broadly, this section could have a similar impact to laws in Russia designed to shut down LGBTQ+ organizations there.
This section would have impacts far beyond LGBTQ+ organizations as well. The provisions would apply to “any organization that is exempt from taxation” including “s. 501” organizations. This would include, for instance, 501c4s, which are crucial during election cycles and could be used to target left-leaning organizations running election ads. Many of these organizations have LGBTQ+ employees and provide instruction and accommodations for their employees, which would be barred by the state if this gets passed into law.
It could also have impacts on medical organizations that do business with state and local governments. Planned Parenthood, a 501c3, heavily provides care for LGBTQ+ people, and such a law could be used to target the organization statewide. Likewise, many state hospital systems that do business with the government often must educate employees and patients on HIV and AIDs, which is impossible to divorce from LGBTQ+ issues. Community health clinics would, similarly, have to contend with these provisions.
This legislation represents an early move in what promises to be a challenging year for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in 2024. Historically, Florida has often been the breeding ground for new laws aimed at the LGBTQ+ community. This bill might well serve as a precursor to the next “model policy” that could be replicated in multiple states, and bears close watching.
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
Be Very Afraid of Speaker Mike Johnson
Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, voiced support for revisiting Supreme Court decisions that struck down restrictions on the use of contraception, barred bans on gay sex and legalized same sex marriages, according to a CNN review of his prior public statements.
On a conservative talk radio show the day the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Johnson underscored Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion that the high court should reconsider those other landmark rulings.
Johnson, citing his years as an attorney against “activist courts,” defended Thomas’ view, insisting that what Thomas was calling for was, “not radical. In fact, it’s the opposite of that.”
When asked about Johnson’s post-Roe comments, a spokesman for the congressman told CNN that Johnson “views the cases as settled law.”
Still, CNN’s review of more than 100 of Johnson’s interviews, speeches and public commentary spanning his decades-long career as a lawmaker and attorney paints a picture of his governing ideals: Imprisoning doctors who perform abortions after six weeks; the Ten Commandments prominently displayed in public buildings; an elimination of anti-hate-crime laws; Bible study in public schools.
From endorsing hard labor prison sentences for abortion providers to supporting the criminalization of gay sex, his staunchly conservative rhetoric is rooted in an era of “biblical morality,” that he says was washed away with the counterculture in the 1960s.
His vision has been well received as a congressman in his deeply conservative district in western Louisiana. But his surprising rise to the speakership has brought his particularly subtle brand of fire-and-brimstone to second in line to the presidency — delivering him a national platform from which to shape and influence laws.
Johnson’s endorsement of Thomas’ opinion, legal experts say, positioned him significantly outside the mainstream.
“Speaker Johnson embraces a view that is not only outside of the mainstream but is so radical in terms of his endorsement of the Thomas position, that even the extremely conservative Supreme Court majority isn’t willing to go there,” said Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a CNN legal analyst. “It would take the country back more than a half-century.”
CNN unearthed more than two dozen radio interviews from Johnson’s time as an attorney at the socially conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) where Johnson litigated and voiced support for what he sometimes described as a battle for the country between the forces of good and evil.
“The arrows in the culture war are particularly directed at our youth, where the Enemy often has the greatest effect,” read the 2005 webpage for “God & Country,” a Christian local radio show co-hosted by Johnson. “We cannot lose our children to the forces of darkness. Be aware and get active in your kids’ schools.”
Topics discussed on the show included “creation science” in public schools; how to “fight the porn industry”; God’s “design for government”; and “the true meaning of ‘separation of church and state.’”
As an attorney at ADF, Johnson repeatedly battled two organizations in his fight to keep religion in the public square: The American Civil Liberties Union, which he called “the most dangerous organization in America,” and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Johnson’s rhetoric has tapped into a “persecution complex” for evangelicals as American culture leans increasingly left on social issues, said Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor.
“They want to feel embattled. They want to fight the culture war,” Burge told CNN.
“When he talks about Griswold and Lawrence, evangelicals know that what he really is saying to them is: ‘Our way of life is under attack and liberalism is on the march. Stand firm in our convictions,’” added Burge, referring to the landmark cases that legalized gay sex and contraception use.
Johnson “doesn’t understand the problem with a government compelling its citizens to follow not just religion, but a particular religion,” said Katherine Lewis Parker, the former legal director for the ACLU of North Carolina, who opposed Johnson in a lawsuit related to prayer at official meetings.
Homosexuality was a frequent topic for Johnson, which he has called “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle.” In addition to suggesting he hopes the Supreme Court will reverse its decision allowing same-sex marriage, he also wrote in support of Texas’ anti-sodomy laws, which said gay men caught having sex could be fined [in Virginia it was a felony involve jail time].
In 2015, transitioning from his role at ADF to a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, Johnson sparked national controversy with the “Marriage and Conscience Act.” The bill aimed to protect individuals objecting to same-sex marriage on religious grounds but faced opposition from Johnson’s hometown editorial board, business leaders and even Republicans in the state legislature.
Critics argued it could enable discrimination against LGBTQ individuals by businesses. Following backlash, the bill never reached a vote. . . . In Congress, Johnson signed on to some of the toughest anti-abortion bills, such as a 2021 so-called “heartbeat bill,” which would essentially outlaw abortion after six weeks. He has repeatedly called states that allow abortion “pro-death” states.
Johnson also supported plans to change Medicare and Social Security benefits while increasing the retirement age, emphasizing urgency in addressing escalating entitlement.
Following Trump’s 2020 reelection defeat, Johnson played a pivotal role in efforts to overturn the election – urging his colleagues to sign onto the Texas Attorney General’s longshot lawsuit aiming to throw out the results in key swing states.
“It was rejected by a bipartisan majority of the Supreme Court,” Eisen told CNN, but Johnson was willing to “perpetuate the loser as the winner and to twist the law and the facts to support that.”
Johnson also endorsed some fringe conspiracies, including the unsubstantiated belief that voting software machines were manipulated.
During a church service in 2022, reflecting on the conclusion of Roe v. Wade, Johnson remarked that much of the credit belonged to Trump.
Has Anyone Noticed That Trump Is Really Old?
Donald Trump is an old man.
He’s 77 years old. When Trump was born, Harry S. Truman was president and Perry Como topped the year’s pop charts. Betty White hadn’t yet started her career in film. Israel and Pakistan didn’t exist. Korea was a unified country, and Vietnam was not. The pioneering computer ENIAC was just four months old.
Trump’s cultural references are dated, and only getting more so. . . . The same goes for his political touchstones. His view of immigration, in which foreign countries dispatch their undesirables en masse, seems to be shaped largely by the 1980 Mariel boatlift. His trade policy is steeped in ’80s-era fears of Japan. He rails against “Communists” and “Marxists” like a Cold Warrior of yore (only with a peculiar affection for the Russians, rather than enmity).
Trump’s older sister died recently—at the age of 86. His younger brother died in 2020; another brother died in 1981. . . . . And these days, Trump sure seems to struggle with mental acuity. At a rally in Iowa, he confused Sioux City with Sioux Falls, a city in South Dakota, and had to be corrected by a state senator. He said that Kim Jong Un rules a nation of 1.4 billion, appearing to confuse the North Korean leader he so admires with China’s Xi Jinping. He has on multiple occasions mixed up his past election opponents, confusing Barack Obama for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and Jeb Bush and George W. Bush. (The campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis put together a long thread of such mix-ups.)
All of this might seem blazingly obvious, or else just mean-spirited and ageist. But these signs of decrepitude are relevant because of an odd dynamic of the presidential race, which is headed inexorably to a Trump-Biden rematch that most Americans don’t want. Biden’s age has received intense, and well-deserved, scrutiny; he’s already the oldest president in American history . . .
Yet Trump’s own aging has not received nearly so much attention in the press or from the public. Next to Biden, Trump just doesn’t seem as old. But he is elderly—less than four years younger than Biden. To the extent that old age is an issue for a presidential contender, it should be an issue for both.
Why has Trump managed to get a pass? Long attuned to the power of appearances, Trump has focused on how he looks. He is often mocked for his heavy orange makeup, his hair dye, and the elaborate nest of hair he constructs atop his head, but those embellishments have also done their job, making him look less old than he might otherwise.
He has also been lucky in his opponents. Biden’s campaign has no interest in talking about age, given the polling about the president (though his aides surely don’t mind coverage of Trump’s gaffes). And Trump’s ostensible rivals for the Republican nomination were until recently hesitant to attack him, which meant they were unlikely to question his robustness, though now DeSantis is starting to emphasize the issue.
Trump’s tendency to bluster has probably also helped hide his aging. Biden’s tone of voice is soft and sometimes slow; he sounds old, in a simple aural sense. If you look at what Trump is saying, especially written out, much of it is unintelligible. But it’s barked out in that familiar overbearing voice, papering over the disturbing substance.
Finally, detecting a decline in Trump may be challenging because his language and reasoning skills started at such a low place. His pronouncements in the 2016 campaign and throughout his presidency could be baffling or nonsensical. Asked at a recent event whether Trump was losing it, former Attorney General Bill Barr said, “His verbal skills are limited.” The audience chuckled, but Barr seemed entirely serious.
But what Barr didn’t say was that Trump was slipping, perhaps because this is who Trump has long been. In that sense, a discussion of time’s ravages on Trump seems misplaced. During his years in the White House, a few incidents of physical struggles—lifting a glass, walking down a ramp—raised just the sorts of doubts that are being raised about Biden now.
I argued at the time, during the 2020 presidential campaign, that the discussion missed the point: “There is extensive evidence that Trump is unfit to serve as president for reasons that have nothing to do with his physical health.”
This has not changed. The idea that Trump has the stamina for the presidency but Biden does not has little evidence to back it up—and even if he did, that would be no reason to risk another round of his administration.
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
Trump: A Reason Europe Is Rearming
Poland is building one of the West’s most muscle-bound militaries, on course to deploy more battle tanks than Britain, France, Germany and Italy – combined.
How will leaders in Poland — and, to varying degrees, others across Europe — manage the inevitable economic and political fallout of major military buildups in the face of Moscow’s aggression and Washington’s distraction?
Credit Warsaw with a baseline of strategic sanity. It faces a revanchist enemy in Russia, which invaded Poland in 1939 and subjugated it for decades after World War II. This month, a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to eliminate “Polish statehood in its entirety.”
And don’t forget, Poland lives in a hostile neighborhood. It is bordered in part by Belarus, a Russian puppet; by Ukraine, which Putin is determined to subjugate; and by Kaliningrad, a Russian outpost bristling with weapons. Defense was one of the few major policies that was not a subject of debate in Poland’s bitterly contested elections last month.
Yet Poland is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, covered by the United States and 29 other Western allies’ commitment to its defense if attacked. More than 10,000 American troops are stationed in Poland, and 80 percent of military hardware heading for Ukraine passes through Polish transit points.
So what’s it worried about?
Beyond Russia’s snarling, there is a simple explanation: Donald Trump.
Trump repeatedly told White House aides in 2018 that he wanted to pull the United States out of NATO, a move that would leave the bloc leaderless and neutered.
“It would be extremely stressful if America pivoted away from Europe, and that’s the worry with Trump,” a top European diplomat told me. “Every foreign ministry is thinking about this.”
When Trump threatened to withdraw the United States from NATO, Poland was spending roughly 2 percent of annual economic output on defense. It is on track to double that next year, and Warsaw looks likely to increase military outlays further, especially if the war in Ukraine drags on.
Almost no other NATO country, including the United States, spends as much on defense as a percentage of gross domestic product. . . . Poland’s spending binge — for top-shelf fighter jets, attack helicopters, rocket launchers, air defense systems and artillery, as well as tanks — is impelled by the rising threat from Russia, which has shifted its own economy onto a wartime footing. But Warsaw’s buildup is also a hedge against Trump’s return to the White House and the chance that he will set NATO adrift.
That prospect has set alarm bells ringing across Europe.
In Germany, for years a defense-spending laggard, Chancellor Olaf Scholz last week committed the government to a long-term military expansion, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars annually through the 2030s. But the German economy is limping through a recession, the budget is constrained by a constitutional debt limit, and the hollowed-out army has struggled to fill its ranks with recruits. Which social programs will Berlin raid to pay for a beefier new military?
President Emmanuel Macron has embarked on France’s biggest military spending increase in a half-century, earmarking nearly $450 billion to boost outlays through the end of the decade by a third. His parallel effort to push Europe to take ownership of its security through better military and industrial coordination — and less reliance on Washington’s weaponry and leadership — springs from a clear-eyed assessment: The United States, distracted by China and entertaining the possibility of Trump’s return, is an unpredictable ally.
An enduring defense buildup in Europe depends partly on robust economies and healthy demographics. Both look anemic these days. Birthrates are low across the continent — Poland’s population is projected to shrink by a tenth by 2050 — and Europe’s post-pandemic economic rebound trails the United States’.
Russia has shifted to a wartime economy to finance its aggression in Ukraine and very possibly elsewhere. As an autocracy, it is less susceptible to the mounting pressures that will result. Europe’s ability to respond will shape the West’s new security posture as much as or more than anything Washington devises. That challenge looms right now.
Monday, November 20, 2023
Trump Dreams of an American Fourth Reich
Donald Trump’s hate sermons are becoming even more intense and combustible. As he comes ever closer to openly quoting Adolf Hitler and the other 20th-century fascists, his behavior is clearly intentional and strategic.
Trump publicly admires and praises tyrants and demagogues and views them as role models. If he returns to power in 2025, he intends to create an American Fourth Reich. Consider Trump's speeches, interviews and social media posts over the last few weeks.
At a rally in Hialeah, Florida, last Wednesday, Trump painted a picture of a hellish (predominantly white) America overrun by serial killers and other human monsters from foreign (and predominantly nonwhite) countries, insisting that only he could save (white) America from the death and contamination caused by Democrats and “the left.”
The Atlantic’s John Hendrickson continues from there: . . . . This was a dystopian, at times gothic speech. It droned on for nearly 90 minutes. Trump attacked the “liars and leeches” who have been “sucking the life and blood” out of the country. Those unnamed people were similar to, yet different from, the “rotten, corrupt, and tyrannical establishment” of Washington, D.C. — a place Trump famously despises, and to which he nonetheless longs to return.
Over the past seven or years or s, I have watched many of Trump’s speeches. This was one of the most frightening and most disturbing I have seen. It was fascinating in much the same way as witnessing the aftermath of a horrible car accident or watching a horror movie.
On Friday, in an interview with Univision, Trump threatened to use the Department of Justice to put his political enemies in prison: “They have done something that allows the next party … if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.” Trump also defended his regime’s cruel family separation policy (and by implication concentration camp system) that targeted millions of brown and Black migrants and refugees.
These white supremacist plans are part of a larger project to revoke birthright citizenship, invoke the Alien Enemies Act to imprison or deport (or worse) the Trump regime’s perceived enemies, and using the law more generally as a weapon to crush dissent and resistance.
Last weekend, on Veterans Day, Trump escalated his Nazi-style threats by declaring that his political enemies to be "vermin" or human poison to be purged from the system. That came at a MAGA rally in New Hampshire and also in a post on his Truth Social platform . . .
At a fundraising event in San Francisco last Tuesday, President Biden spoke out against Trump’s antisemitism and white supremacy: “In just the last few days, Trump has said, if he returns office, he’s gonna go after all those who oppose him and wipe out what he called ... the vermin in America — a specific phrase with a specific meaning…. It echoes language you heard in Nazi Germany in the '30s.”
Declaring that the enemies of the regime and the Great Leader are mentally ill and then imprisoning them for "treatment" is a common practice in authoritarian states.
Predictably, the mainstream news media and responsible political class responded with performative shock and surprise at Trump’s week-long channeling of Hitler and Nazism. In fact, Trump’s hateful behavior and language are no surprise.
For at least the last seven years (and for decades before that), Trump has shown himself to be a casual antisemite. He reportedly once slept with a copy of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet next to his bed. It is no coincidence that professed Nazis, white supremacists and other hate-mongers are among Trump’s strongest supporters, or that he refuses to publicly disavow or condemn them.
It appears that the American news media and political class, and by implication the mass public, have already forgotten that since at least September Trump has publicly spread conspiracy theories about being “stabbed in the back,” suggesting that the country is being “poisoned” by immigrants and that “good Jews” should support him while “bad Jews” will be punished for their “betrayals.”
But the mainstream media is bored with Trump's rhetoric and has now largely moved on. That irresponsible choice further normalizes Trump’s evil and the larger neofascist assault on the country’s democracy and civil society.
It is nearly incredible that the presumed nominee of one of the country’s two institutional political parties is explicitly channeling Hitler and the Nazis. That should be dominating the news. Trump's Fourth Reich aspirations constitute a national emergency. But America is an unhealthy society where all this will likely be normalized as just "culture war" tactics or political "polarization."
If Donald Trump's American neofascist movement did not have tens of millions of followers, it would not pose an existential threat to democracy. History is full of examples of “good people” who become capable of doing horrible things to others once they are given permission and encouraged by fascist leaders, fake populists and demagogues.
Trump’s Fourth Reich will not be an exact copy of its German counterpart from nearly a century ago. Instead, Trump’s Fourth Reich (or that of his successors) will be adapted to fit contemporary America’s cultural norms, values and institutions. The final horror is still evolving, but the threat and dangers are very clear. The American people are running out of time.
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