Three More Signs Republicans Are in Trouble

Close to two decades ago I decided the Republican Party was headed towards moral bankruptcy as Christofascists were foolishly voted onto positions on city and county committees with many existing members foolishly/cynically believing they could control the science denying, religious extremists, many of whom descended from segregationists.  Time proved that the unwashed cavalierly voted onto these committees were beyond control and they cancer they represented has now spread across the Party and, perhaps belatedly, a majority of Americans are seemingly waking up to the reality of the incompetent, morally challenged horror show the GOP has become. I have long said that the GOP cannot be reformed from within - the members of the Lincoln Project seem to have come to a similar conclusion - and that only electoral disaster will force change on the Party. While Donald Trump has no doubt helped showcase the ugliness of today's GOP, the hopefully looming electoral debacle facing the GOP will impact many others in the Party who prostituted themselves to Trump and tossed aside the needs and wishes of the majority of Americans as they have pandered to Trump, white supremacists and religious extremists.  A column in the Washington Post looks at signs the GOP may be about to reap what it has sown.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans are in deep trouble. It is not simply President Trump’s atrocious national and state polling numbers. It is not merely the growing list of incumbent Senate Republicans facing difficult elections. (Five incumbents are in toss-up seats, according to the Cook Political Report; four are in the next-worst category of “Lean Republican.”) There are three new signs suggesting the Republicans’ grip on power is draining like sand out of an hourglass.

First, for all of Trump’s support among Republicans (not 94 percent as he claims, but generally in the high 80s), there is stunning evidence of what we suspected was underway in 2018. It is not so much that Republicans are abandoning Trump but that voters are abandoning the Republican Party, and now adding to the anti-Trump vote. Gallup reports:

Since January, Americans’ party preferences have shifted dramatically in the Democratic Party’s direction. What had been a two-percentage-point Republican advantage in U.S. party identification and leaning has become an 11-point Democratic advantage, . . . In June alone, there was a three-point increase in Democratic identification and leaning, and a corresponding five-point drop in Republican identification and leaning.

The flight from the GOP just in June, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, suggests millions of Americans may have decided it was unacceptable to identify as Republicans. The implications are ominous for Republicans up and down the ticket. Per Gallup: “Four months before Election Day, Democrats appear to be as strong politically now as they were in 2018 when they reclaimed the majority in the House of Representatives and gained seven governorships they previously did not hold,” . . . . “If the strong current Democratic positioning holds through Election Day, Democrats could build off those 2018 successes to possibly win the presidency and Senate in 2020.”

Second, without directly challenging Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is abandoning Trump’s stances emphatically and quickly. Over the past few weeks, he has become a poster-boy for mask-wearing, bemoaning those who have politicized the issue. He is also caving on the next stimulus bill. . . . She [Nancy Pelosi] also noted that McConnell knows how to read the polls and that he listens to his members. The momentum is with Democrats, and he better hop on board — quickly.

Third, Republicans are panicking over money, as well they should. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Democratic candidates in the 11 most competitive Senate races collectively raised $67.3 million in the second quarter of the year, $20.5 million more than their Republican counterparts, according to fundraising reports filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. The total includes two Republicans who gave almost $6.5 million to their own campaigns.” At least one Republican operative is living in the real world, telling the Journal, “We’re scared to death by what we see.”

The House picture is no brighter. ABC News reports, “House Democrats are outpacing their own previous fundraising records, bringing in nearly $40 million in the second quarter — a signal of both the party’s enthusiasm in the final stretch of the cycle ahead of November and the difficult road ahead for the GOP seeking to take back the majority.” What’s more, reliable third-party groups that normally give big money to Republicans have not been opening their wallets.

Former vice president Joe Biden (never known as a prodigious fundraiser) has been raking it in. The New York Times reports: “Mr. Biden’s campaign announced on Thursday that he entered July with $242 million in the bank, up from less than $60 million at the beginning of April. He still has less money than Mr. Trump, who reported $295 million, but the cash gap is suddenly far less daunting.”

To recap: The GOP is shrinking, Republicans are scrambling to get on the right side of stimulus, and the fundraising numbers indicate donors are figuring out the party will lose big. At some point, all of this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — and a big blue wave.

Let's hope the trend continues and that the GOP suffers horrific electoral losses in November.  It's the only way there will be a chance for a remaking of the Party that will include jettisoning white supremacists and evangelical extremists.

The Republicans Who Want to Destroy Trump

As a former Republican I still find it shocking how debased and horrible the Republican Party has become.  As noted be for, in my view, the party's decline correlates with the rise of Christofascists within the GOP. Not coincidentally, the rise of the Christofascists also correlates with the rise of open racism withing the GOP. These factors are what paved the way for the rise of Donald Trump.  Cruel, racist, dishonest people embraced a cruel, racist, morally bankrupt candidate.  Some in the GOP left early on as I did as soon as I realized where the Christofascists and racists were steering the party.  Other moderate and sane Republicans mistakenly believed that they could fight a rear guard action to save the soul of the GOP.  Now, these former Republicans are working to defeat Trump - a man who embodies everything wrong with the GOP today.  Whether they succeed or not, their efforts are proving welcomed by both Democrats and former Republicans who fled the GOP as a matter of conscience and morality.  A New York Times column looks at these efforts which may not save the GOP but with luck will lead to a horrific defeat for Trump and his GOP enablers in November.  Here are column excerpts:

Should you have any doubt about how passionately George Conway and the other Never Trumpers at the Lincoln Project want to defeat the president, check out their ads.

There are dozens at this point, and the best are minute-long masterpieces of derision, miniature operas of contempt, designed to get into President Trump’s head and deep under his skin. That’s exactly where they’ve burrowed.

They don’t hope to regain control of the Republican Party, because they expect that Trump-ism will survive Trump and that Trump himself won’t shut up simply because voters shut him down.

“I personally think that the Republican brand is probably destroyed,” Conway told me. “It’s destroyed by it having become essentially a personality cult.” He said that he formally left the party, changing his voter registration to unaffiliated, some two years ago, and he doesn’t envision being able to return anytime soon.

But the Lincoln Project’s full-court press for Joe Biden, which involves social media and grass-roots organizing as well as internet and television ads, doesn’t mean that Conway and company are looking for a welcome mat in the Democratic Party. Not at all.

They’re not fighting to come in from the wilderness. The wilderness is a given. They’re just fighting to get rid of this one sun-hogging, diseased redwood — or orangewood, as the case may be.

It’s easy to miss or minimize how remarkable the Never Trumpers — at the Lincoln Project and elsewhere — are. That’s partly because they’ve been around almost since Trump’s presidential campaign commenced, so they’ve lost their novelty and some of their luster.

But they’ve gained in ranks and grown in determination, to a point where you have to go back to 1972 — when many prominent Democrats endorsed President Richard Nixon, a Republican, over George McGovern, the Democratic nominee — to find anything close.

And even that precedent doesn’t quite hold up. As the historian Timothy Naftali told me, the Democrats for Nixon split with him primarily along ideological lines, and they weren’t trying to undermine an incumbent president. Never Trumpers are doing precisely that, and while they have ideological quibbles with Trump, they’re motivated principally by their belief that he’s something of a monster.

“It’s an unprecedented moment,” said Charlie Sykes, a founder and editor-at-large of The Bulwark, a Trump-bashing publication begun in 2018 by Trump-disgusted Republicans like him. Sykes no longer considers himself a Republican. He described himself to me as “a politically homeless contrarian conservative.”

The Bulwark shares personnel and DNA with Republican Voters Against Trump and Republicans for the Rule of Law, all bastions of Never Trumpers. There’s also a new super PAC called 43 Alumni for Biden, a reference to George W. Bush, the 43rd president. It comprises scores of alumni of his administration who want to see Biden beat Trump, and it intends to release testimonials from former senior Bush administration officials.

As for the Lincoln Project, it’s helmed not by a ragtag band of renegades but by a cluster of strategists who worked for Bush, John McCain or Mitt Romney and were well-connected Republican insiders until Trump’s takeover. The anti-Trump rebellion is distinguished by the pedigree of the rebels.

[S]ome political observers see what the Lincoln Project and its kin are doing as an exercise in protracted political suicide. Even if Trump and his minions get a resounding comeuppance in November, “It seems unlikely that Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh will apologize to the Cassandras and say, ‘You were right all along!’” Matt Lewis, a conservative, wrote recently in a column in the Daily Beast under the headline “The Never Trumpers May Destroy Him. Then What?”

Sykes at The Bulwark conceded: “It’s naïve to think that the Republican Party is going to snap back to sanity anytime soon. The fact that people are talking about Tucker Carlson in 2024 shows you how far they’ve gone.”

There’s an especially rapt audience for takedowns of Trump from conservatives, and Never Trumpers have found themselves in high demand as commentators and book authors.

[W]hen I look at them, I see patriotism, though John Weaver — who, along with Conway, helped to found the Lincoln Project — emphasized a different idea when we spoke. He stressed atonement.

Trump’s election made him revisit how he and other Republican strategists had paved the way for Trump. For instance, Weaver worked for the man who was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump for president.

Sykes spoke of “a revelation” that he has experienced, courtesy of Trump. “The heart of politics is not about the policy,” he told me. “It’s about the values. I can disagree with you on eight out of 10 issues, but if you’re an honorable, honest, empathetic human being, we can do business.” Trump is none of those things. Biden is most or all of them — and will get Sykes’s vote in November.

In exile he and other Never Trumpers have found clarity. They cut to the heart of the matter. That’s reflected in a Lincoln Project ad from late May that begins with a close-up of body bags and then pulls back until those bags form an American flag. These words appear over it: “100,000 Dead Americans. One Wrong President.”

I don’t know that they’ll tip the election. But they sure as hell tell it like it is.

Is It Time to Claim Victory in the Gay Rights Struggle?

Since I came out in mid-life, the changes in the legal rights for LGBT Americans have been stunning.  When I first came out, in Virginia a same sex relationship could land one with a felony convictions, you could be thrown out of the military for being LGBT, same sex couples could not marry and you could be fired at will by bigoted employers - as I was.  In a piece in New York Magazine gay conservative (and former Republican) Andrew Sullivan looks at the changes, starting with this week's stunning U.S. Supreme Court ruling which granted employment non-discrimination protections to LGBT Americans nationwide. I believe that Sullivan's inclination to declare victory is premature for three reasons: (i) contrary to Sullivan's statement, public accommodation protections remain missing in the majority of states - in Virginia we will have them starting July 1st - (ii) there will be years of lawsuits against employers who ignore the new scope of Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and (iii) Christofascists will continue to strive to use alleged religious belief as an excuse for ignoring the law. That said, the wins have been immense and many LGBT rights organizations will find the focus of their efforts much more circumscribed - already Equality Virginia seems largely focused on transgender rights.  Here are highlights from Sullivan's column:

The last major obstacle to civil equality for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people was toppled this week — by another Republican-appointed justice, Neil Gorsuch. (It will surely be one of the ironies of this period that gay equality in America has been judicially delivered by white cis straight men nominated by, respectively, Ronald Reagan and Donald J. Trump). Gorsuch’s reasoning was far more constrained than Anthony Kennedy’s in Obergfell — which guaranteed gays and lesbians the right to civil marriage — and was, in many ways, a punt. He used the “sex” discrimination aspect of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to retroactively grandfather in gay men, lesbians, and trans people. 

I don’t buy Gorsuch’s stated logic for an instant, of course. Rather, the ruling is a way to give gay and transgender people practical protection from discrimination in all states, without creating a new, explicit standard. And it doesn’t even pass Gorsuch’s own standard for textualism.

Gorsuch relies on a very simple idea to counter that point: that “sex” in the 1964 Act meant discrimination on the basis of being male or female, and that because gay men are penalized for having relations with men, rather than women, lesbians with women rather than men, and transgender people because they may no longer be the sex they started out as, it’s all a form of sex discrimination. It makes sense from that semantic point of view — but it’s a stretch on the substance. It dodges the core question of civil rights specifically for gay and transgender people, by subsuming us under the rubric of an existing category, sex. And it does so by mere textual reading of a statute, invoking no grander constitutional principles.

Nonetheless, its impact is immediate and transformative. Every single goal the gay-rights movement set out to achieve in my lifetime has now been won. Gays can marry; we can serve our country openly with pride; we are categorically protected from discrimination in employment [except] and public accommodations in every state.

[T]he remaining business: a battle between religious freedom and gay and transgender equality.

With any luck, we’ll reach a deal in Washington, D.C., rather like that achieved in Utah, where, in a very Mormon compromise, key measures against discrimination against gays were balanced with strong protections for religious freedom. . . . . . if Evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics decide to die on the hill of firing gay people, they will experience a brutal defeat, and tarnish what credibility they still have. The Gospels are not about shunning sinners, or pharisaical puritanism. They are about the imperative to see in everyone the image of God.

But this comprehensive victory obviously presents the major institutions of the gay-rights movement with a dilemma: What do they exist for after this?

If current trends are any indication, these groups will simply merge into the broader intersectional left and become as concerned with, say, the rights of immigrants or racial minorities as they are with gay rights. In the political climate on the left at the moment, singling out gays as a separate category is increasingly impermissible.

None of this means that we live in a world where homophobia has ceased to exist, where discrimination is unknown, or where visceral fear of and disgust toward trans people does not endure. In fact, prejudice and discrimination against the unknown or different are part of human nature, and partly because of that, young trans people of color are very much at risk. So we can try to keep shifting the culture — and man, has it shifted — in order to lessen the prevalence of irrational prejudice. And we can ensure equality of opportunity and protections against discrimination in employment . . . . .
As Eleanor Roosevelt is believed to have said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

One of the remarkable truths of gay history is how so many, under social and legal pressures exponentially greater than today, were able to withhold that consent. They were objectively victims, but subjectively free. It took real imagination, courage, and vision for these heroes and heroines of our past — and that past stretches for centuries before Stonewall — to live lives of authenticity and integrity. Now that the formal and legal obstacles to gay and transgender equality have been entirely removed, let’s follow their example, and forge a future that requires the consent and approval of no one but ourselves.

I like the last sentiment.  Part of being a self-accepting LGBT individual is gaining a mindset where you need no one else's approval for who you are.

The Supreme Court’s LGBT Ruling Will Extend Far Beyond Employment Law

Justices Gorsuch and Roberts: targets of Christofascist venom.

Yesterday's much welcomed U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County was limited to Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and focused on employment discrimination.  However, the spill over effect will likely spread much farther and impact the application of other statutes that bar discrimination based on sex.  One likely victim of the ruling - even though court challenges will likely be required - is the Trump/Pence regimes efforts to roll back Obama era rules that bar discrimination in the health care realm. Applying the reasoning of Bostock, the Department of Health and Human Service's re-write of the rules runs head on into what the Court just ruled is illegal discrimination. Yes, the Christofascists are indeed seething because Bostock now provides a further weapon against their demands that the have a license to discriminate. A piece in Mother Jones looks at the likely spill over effects.  The irony, of course, is that a Trump appointee wrote the ruling,  Here are highlights:

On Monday, the Supreme Court handed LGBTQ Americans one of their biggest civil rights victories yet. In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that gender identity and sexual orientation were protected under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on sex discrimination in employment. The decision means LBGTQ folks can no longer lose their jobs simply for being queer. 

“In our time, few pieces of federal legislation rank in significance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” writes Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, in the majority opinion. “There, in Title VII, Congress outlawed discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Today, we must decide whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender. The answer is clear. An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”

The ruling provides some much-needed clarity for lower courts and state officials, who are currently working with a hodgepodge of different (and sometimes conflicting) nondiscrimination policies.  

And though the case was specific to employment discrimination, the implications beyond the workplace are huge. The ruling won’t directly overturn discriminatory policies outside the realm of employment, says Sharon McGowan, Legal Director for Lambda Legal—which argued one of the Title VII cases before the Second Circuit Court—but it does set a precedent that makes it incredibly difficult to exclude gay and transgender people from other laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. 

Take, for example, the Fair Housing Act. In 1974, the act was amended to prohibit housing discrimination on the basis of sex, but to date, only 24 states interpret that to include LGBTQ people (or have passed state legislation that explicitly includes them). One additional state, Wisconsin, prohibits discrimination against gay people, but not transgender people. Through the years, studies have shown that LGBTQ renters and home owners have been overcharged, less likely to secure rental housing or even evicted because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Experts say the Supreme Court ruling could also effect things like Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972—which prohibits sex discrimination in education and has recently been weaponized against transgender student athletes—and health care nondiscrimination policies. 

Just last week, Trump’s Health and Human Services Department released a prepublication version of a rule change that would roll back protections for transgender patients under the Affordable Care Act. The change is meant to undo an Obama-era policy that barred providers and insurance from rejecting care based on gender identity.

“There is still a chance for HHS to see the error of their ways and pull the rule back and fix their mistake, which I hope they will do,” McGowan says. “But assuming that they’re going to continue to forge ahead, they basically have put forth a rule that says ‘we, in the federal government, think that sex discrimination doesn’t mean the things that the Supreme Court has just said sex discrimination means.’

But now, the bad news: Monday’s Supreme Court ruling does nothing for laws that don’t include sex in their nondiscrimination policies—and unfortunately there are more of them than you might think. Federal law prohibits discrimination in public accommodations (e.g. restaurants, retail businesses, parks, libraries) based on race, color, religion and national origin only. The same is true of discrimination prohibitions in certain federally funded programs. 

“I remain more optimistic than I’ve ever been, that we will continue to succeed in rooting out discrimination in all of its forms,” says McGowan. “But I do think that there are going to be issues that that many courts—particularly courts that are hostile to the underlying pinnings of these rulings—may try to find wiggle room maybe where it doesn’t exist. We know that our work is going to continue.”

The struggle for full equality under the law continues.

The Wedding That Started a Republican Civil War

Virginia's gerrymandered 5th Congressional District.

Virginia is rapidly becoming a blue state despite the efforts of the majority of Republicans, particularly those from rural, economically moribund areas of the state.  A minority of Republicans recognize that the either the Virginia GOP changes or the state will have a Democrat majority for the foreseeable future (Republicans last won statewide office in 2009). In a nod to change, 5th Congressional District congressman Denver Riggleman officiated at the wedding of a same sex, mixed race couple, Alex Pisciarino and Anthony “Rek” LeCounte.  Little did Riggleman realize that this simple action would ignite a civil war within the Virginia GOP with the forces of reaction seeking Riggleman's expulsion from the party and primary defeat to replace Riggleman with a knuckle-dragging candidate with past ties to the religiously extreme Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.  As a piece in Politico reports, the forces of reaction won and Riggleman ousted - likely to the delight of Democrats.  Here are highlights:

Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who became a target of conservatives after officiating a same-sex wedding last year, was ousted Saturday by GOP voters in a drive-thru district convention. 

Good’s victory came after a day-long convention held in the parking lot of a central Virginia church. He ran as a staunch social conservative, campaigning on a traditional view of marriage, his support to make English the official language of the U.S. and to end birthright citizenship.

A piece in The Atlantic looks at the effort behind Riggleman's ouster and the push to drag the Virginia GOP even further rightward and homophobic and racist.  Here are excerpts:

Virginia Republicans have spent the past decade getting routed in elections. They lost three U.S. congressional seats and control of both chambers of the state legislature in 2018 [and 2019] alone. Yet today, with another tough election less than five months away, Republicans in Virginia’s Fifth District will gather in a church parking lot to decide whether to boot their incumbent congressman, Denver Riggleman, largely because he officiated a same-sex wedding last summer. The unconventional convention will earn the grooms, Alex Pisciarino and Anthony “Rek” LeCounte, a distinction in their first year of marriage that most people never achieve in a lifetime: They started a Republican civil war.

Virginia’s Fifth is a district where Bible Belt activists, suburban moderates, and college-town free-market types mix together in one massively gerrymandered area larger than New Jersey, stretching from the state’s southern border almost all the way to D.C. Riggleman, who owns a distillery outside Charlottesville, was one of the few rookie Virginia Republicans to win a competitive district amid the Democrats’ 2018 wave. But Riggleman’s success, and even an endorsement from President Donald Trump, may not save his job: The idiosyncrasies of Virginia election law mean there is a real risk he will be ousted by his own party. As Virginia turns blue, the question is whether the GOP can stay close enough to the center to hold competitive seats—or whether it will become more extreme as it shrinks.

“We don’t want a party so small that it just fits in the bedroom,” says Riggleman, an Air Force veteran with libertarian leanings on marijuana legalization, social issues, and small-business regulations. His opponent, Bob Good, who declined to speak with me, is a former athletics director at the evangelical Liberty University who has described himself in interviews as a “strong, bright-red,” “biblical,” and “constitutional conservative.” After Good was elected to the Campbell County Board of Supervisors in 2015, one of his first acts was signing onto a resolution declaring the U.S. Supreme Court “lawless” for legalizing same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, comparing the decision to the Dred Scott case.

“We’ve played the ‘Who’s the bigger Christian?’ game in the Republican Party for a long time,” says Matt Hall, a conservative commentator who writes for Bearing Drift, a website focused on Virginia politics. “Bob comes from that minority—that small group of people that says you have to be this way or that way to be a Republican.” Riggleman’s liability, at least in this district, is that he is unwilling to conform to a culture-wars strategy. “Bob Good doesn’t get to define what’s Christian and what’s not Christian,” he told me. “You can say you’re a Christian conservative all day long. What I’m going to say is that I’m going to protect your right to be a Christian conservative. But I’m also going to protect your right to follow any religion that you want to.”

When Pisciarino and LeCounte moved to Charlottesville for graduate school in the summer of 2018, they wanted to get involved in local politics. Pisciarino, who is white, and LeCounte, who is black, were impressed by Riggleman’s record on LGBTQ issues. After Riggleman won, they figured it would be fun to ask him to officiate their wedding, a way of “celebrating the fact that we had a congressman we liked and wanted to elect,” LeCounte told me. . . . . Although they expected that local papers might write a story or two about the congressman’s involvement in their ceremony, LeCounte said, “We were not remotely expecting it to become the kind of story where we’re giving interviews about it almost a year later.”

The backlash was immediate. Melvin Adams, the district committee chair, wrote a post on the district’s website about “inclusiveness,” emphasizing that the Republican Party is committed to recognizing marriage “as the union of one man and one woman.” One Republican group after another in the Fifth District voted to censure or condemn Riggleman: in Cumberland County, then in Rappahannock. “The sanctity of marriage does not need to be redefined because it has been defined for thousands of years as one man and one woman. That’s a standard that I don’t think you can change, because that’s the standard that I believe the God of Creation established in the very first chapters of the Book of Genesis,” Travis Witt, a Bob Good supporter and pastor who serves on the Fifth District committee and the Republican Party of Virginia’s state central committee, told me.

Riggleman may have had an easier time securing his seat in a primary election; he has pitched his campaign as one of broad, conservative-coalition appeal. But the GOP’s Fifth District congressional candidate is about to be chosen by the party’s most ardent activists. Virginia election law allows districts to hold nominating conventions rather than primaries. Out of the roughly 3,500 people preregistered as delegates, some will have to drive several hours to cast their ballot on Saturday morning in the parking lot of Tree of Life Ministries in Lynchburg—Good’s home turf—remaining in their cars to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The whole process is set up to encourage participation from the people with the strongest views.

All of this may end up putting a relatively safe Republican seat in jeopardy. . . . . Choosing the more socially conservative candidate may end being an expensive form of purity: “It will cost the party a lot of money to defend a seat, and possibly lose a seat, that otherwise they’d walk into,” Davis said.

When Bob Good came to Charlottesville, Pisciarino and LeCounte attended one of his campaign events. They wanted to hear for themselves how their wedding had become part of his stump speech. Good moved through that section quickly, presumably because they were there, LeCounte said, but the experience was surreal: “It’s extremely bizarre to watch people argue about what they consider an abstract issue, which is our lives.” Pisciarino and LeCounte haven’t particularly enjoyed receiving calls from reporters to talk about the wedding that might unseat their friend and congressman. But they wanted “to take control of a narrative that was going to include us, one way or another,” LeCounte said. When the couple load up their blue sedan, with its Riggleman and UVA bumper stickers, and drive to Lynchburg today, they won’t just be voting for Riggleman. They’re voting for a different kind of Republican Party.

Sadly, there will not be a different kind of Republican Party in Virginia.  Only more and more electoral defeats will finally force change or see the much deserved death of today Virginia GOP..

Supreme Court Rejects Church's Challenge To Coronavirus Rules

I have followed extreme right wing "Christian" organizations and related "family values" groups for over a quarter of a century now and several things are a common theme with them: (i) they view themselves above the law, (ii) they want their toxic version of Christianity to be the established religion in America, (iii) their followers seemingly hate almost everyone, but especially gays, who don't embrace their ugly beliefs, and (iv) most have very strong white supremacist overtones and some groups, like The Family Foundation here in Virginia, traces their roots back to strident segregationists.  Simply put, they are NOT nice people and they hold constitutional democracy in contempt unless they are in control and can discriminate and harm those they dislike - which is most of the nation's population.  

In June, 2016, the leaders of these groups - some of which are certified hate groups - made a pact with Donald Trump where they agreed to support a man who embodies the seven deadly sins if he gave them special rights. They bear a huge responsibility for Trump being in the White House and for his part Trump has delivered in the form of reactionary ideologues being appointed to the federal courts, the undoing of Obama administration policies that protected gays and other minorities, and supporting the myth that they are being persecuted when in reality what they face is a majority of Americans saying they are tired of the hate and bigotry that these false Christians represent.  

Enter the Covid-19 pandemic and many of the right wing churches have objected to social distancing and shutdown orders implemented to control the spread of the virus.  Some filed federal lawsuits challenging such orders and claiming they "discriminated against religion (a church in Virginia among them).  Late Friday, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court  rejected their self-centered and selfish claims and ruled against a church in California and several others.  The ruling should be dispositive of the Virginia lawsuit as well.  NPR looks at this welcome ruling that clearly states these people are not above the law.  Here are story excerpts:

The Supreme Court has rejected a California church's attempt to overturn the state's coronavirus restrictions on in-person religious services.

In a 5-4 decision issued late Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court's liberal bloc in upholding the state's right to impose limits on congregations in order to slow the spread of COVID-19.

"Although California's guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment," Roberts said, in an opinion that denied a request by the South Bay United Pentecostal Church for relief from the rules.

The Chula Vista-based house of worship sued Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, over an order limiting congregations to 25% capacity or 100 attendees, whichever is lower. The plaintiffs told the court its services typically attract 200 to 300 congregants.

Worship services and nonessential retail were halted for more than two months in California, which has recorded nearly 107,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and more than 4,000 deaths.

During the lawsuit's path through the lower courts, the state issued guidelines earlier this week allowing for a limited reopening — but that did not satisfy the plaintiffs, who felt the eased restrictions remained unconstitutional.

In rejecting that challenge, Roberts wrote that the Constitution generally grants broad leeway to state leaders in circumstances of medical uncertainty. In particular, the chief justice found that Newsom's order was consistent in limiting not just religious services, but also various kinds of activities "where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time."

"The notion that it is 'indisputably clear' that the Government's limitations are unconstitutional seems quite improbable," wrote Roberts.

The court's four reliably conservative justices — Samuel Alito Jr., Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas — dissented. Kavanaugh said the guidelines violate the First Amendment because they "discriminate against places of worship and in favor of comparable secular businesses."

In a separate case, the court also rejected a lawsuit from two churches in Illinois seeking to block Gov. J.B. Pritzker's rule limiting religious services to just 10 worshipers. Pritzker later modified the order to allow for up to 100 people at services, and the court denied the churches' request for relief without a noted dissent.

The limits on church services have been a flashpoint in the national conversation surrounding the coronavirus, with President Trump wading into the controversy earlier this month to push for churches' right to reopen. Even as many states — such as California and Illinois — have moved to loosen their restrictions in recent weeks, critics continue to argue that the rules on houses of worship are discriminatory. 

“The precise question of when restrictions on particular social activities should be lifted during the pandemic,” Roberts declared, “is a dynamic and fact-intensive matter subject to reasonable disagreement.” The Constitution leaves such decisions “to the politically accountable officials of the state,” whose decisions “should not be subject to second-guessing” by judges who lack “background, competence, and expertise to assess public health.” Multiple coronavirus outbreaks in California have been traced back to religious services. California has good reason to treat churches more like concerts—where people “congregate in large groups” and “remain in close proximity for extended periods”—than grocery stores, where they can social distance. For courts, that should be the end of the matter.

But Kavanaugh’s assertion that California treats churches and “comparable secular businesses” differently begs the question: what is a comparable secular business? When it comes to the spread of infectious disease, is a church really just like a grocery store, where people spend as little time as possible, separated by aisles and shopping carts, rarely speaking to one another? Or is it more like a concert, where people congregate for lengthy periods, shoulder to shoulder, often speaking or singing and thereby spreading droplets that may contain the coronavirus?
 What is genuinely shocking about Kavanaugh’s dissent is that he does not even address this question. The dispute lies at the heart of the case, and Kavanaugh ignores it. He simply takes it as a given that churches are “comparable” to grocery stores when it comes to risk of spreading COVID-19. By warping the facts, Kavanaugh paints California’s rules as irrationally discriminatory, when in fact they are based on medical advice Newsom has right now. If the justice wants to override public health measures during a pandemic, shouldn’t he at least admit that he’s substituting his own scientific judgment for that of a democratically elected lawmaker’s?

Roberts seems to think so. His opinion ends with a clear swipe at Kavanaugh: “The notion that it is ‘indisputably clear’ that the Government’s limitations are unconstitutional,” the chief justice wrote, “seems quite improbable.” Roberts went out of his way to telegraph his displeasure with the raft of lawsuits contesting COVID-19 restrictions as unconstitutional burdens on religious liberty. Even in borderline cases, he suggested, courts must defer to the people’s representatives if they decide the health crisis requires limitations on public assemblies.

Kudos to Roberts for putting science and medical knowledge above myths and superstition.  Let the charlatans in pulpits and scamvangelist - who put money ahead of public safety - continue to lose money as their flocks stay home.  

How to Win LGBT Equality in the South

After years of effort LGBT Virginians will have non-discrimination protects effective July 1, 2020. What finally allowed this to happen?  The short answer is Democrats took control of the Virginia General Assembly while holding the governor's mansion.  The more detailed answer is that the majority of Virginians finally said "no more' to the Virginia GOP's three pillars of its agenda: demonizing gays, unrestricted gun rights, and pandering to the hate merchants who parade as "Christians" while basically pushing a white supremacist agenda.  With Democrats now able to revise the redistricting process, Republic strength in the state, which relied heavily on gerrymandering, will likely be reduced further. Making similar progress across the rest of the South will be far more difficult as the GOP remains entrenched and blindly follows the dictates of Christofascists even as the lack of non-discrimination protections makes other Southern states less competitive in attracting new businesses - something that ought to priority No. 1 in the age of an economically crippling pandemic.  A piece in The Advocate looks at the situation and concludes that federal legislation may be the only way to bring LGBT protections to the South as a whole (yet another reason to strive to have Democrats take control in Washington, DC).  Here are article highlights:

In a time when COVID-19 has brought such heartbreak to so many and has so disrupted the normal routines of life, it can be hard to yank our attention from the moment we are in. 

But something truly significant has taken place in Virginia this month. The politics of the state’s legislature finally caught up with the values of the state’s people as a law ensuring comprehensive nondiscrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people went into effect. Years and years of tenacious and hopeful work went into this historic bipartisan LGBTQ victory in Virginia — the first statewide win for a comprehensive nondiscrimination bill in the South. 

Winning anywhere in the South matters for the LGBTQ people who are actually impacted by the passage of a law, but it also ripples across the region’s political and cultural climate, and it changes the story: Now, it is possible to pass nondiscrimination legislation here. 

The South demands a multipronged strategy. There are states where it will take too long to win on the state level, and that’s why we must push hard for federal legislation, the most effective way to deliver protections to every corner of the South. 

In many Southern states, legislatures remain a bastion of anti-LGBTQ sentiment — just witness the recent cluster of bills targeting transgender youth that made headlines this year in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, and more. Far-right conservatives continue to be overrepresented in Southern legislatures, and their positions are increasingly out of sync with the growing majority that supports LGBTQ rights. 

Look at North Carolina’s efforts to pass a bill protecting young people from anti-LGBTQ “conversion therapy,” . . . . the bill hasn’t yet moved out of committee — it was held up without even a hearing because Republican leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly wanted it defeated. Specifically,  a small group of powerful legislators who were doubling down on a view held by just the 13 percent of Republicans who opposed banning “conversion therapy.”

Stories like this are a salient reminder that LGBTQ Southerners continue to meet every formal definition of political powerlessness. Indeed, it is a particular variety of political powerlessness when a minority group has the support of an overwhelming majority of the public but still can’t achieve the basic threshold of equal protection under the law because a small group of politically powerful politicians are systematically blocking natural progress. 

Deploying both real-time and long-game organizing strategies is critical in every single Southern state. But this approach creates a patchwork of progress rather than a blanket of protections. That’s why we need to simultaneously focus on the passage of federal legislation like the Equality Act, which passed in the House of Representatives but is currently stalled in the Senate.

More than one-third of all LGBTQ Americans live in the South. This is our home, and we’ll continue to fight for and celebrate progress like this victory in Virginia. Indeed, as millions of Americans face unemployment and grave health and financial challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, nondiscrimination protections in the workplace, healthcare settings, and housing are more essential than ever. 

We are ultimately hopeful about what’s possible in the South. But we simply cannot wait for every state legislature to catch up with the people of the South. 

Every poll you can find and countless stories I could share, from the mountains of North Carolina to the Gulf Coast of Missisissipi, demonstrate that the people of the South are ready for federal LGBTQ protections. The next step is to move from “ready for” to “calling for” and “demanding.” 

This is what it will take to compel Congress to do its job and pass clear and comprehensive protections from anti-LGBTQ discrimination. It’s time that no one — not in the South or in any other region — is left vulnerable to discrimination.

Trump Regime Moves to Scrap Protections for LGBT Healthcare Patients

Trump, Pence and HHS Secretary Azar.

With the Covid-19 pandemic raging one would think that the main focus of the Trump/Pence regime would be on insuring that all Americans have access to quality healthcare without any obstacles.  Sadly, that would be a false assumption.  As Politico is reporting the Trump/Pence regime is continuing on its quest to roll back Obama administration policies that protected LGBT individuals from discrimination and the refusal of medical services which in the LGBT context are part of Trump's efforts to impose the anti-LGBT license to discriminate laws  Trump's motivation for with such vile actions?  To maintain his support among evangelical Christians and Christofascists who cannot tolerate any regulations or policies that restrict their ability to mistreat those they deem "other" and who have a sick need to look down upon others in order to feel superior.  Here are highlights from Politico:

The Trump administration is moving to scrap an Obama-era policy that protected LGBTQ patients from discrimination, alarming health experts who warn that the regulatory rollback could harm vulnerable people during a pandemic.

The health department is close to finalizing its long-developing rewrite of Obamacare’s Section 1557 provision, which barred health care discrimination based on sex and gender identity. The administration’s final rule on Thursday was circulated at the Justice Department, a step toward publicly releasing the regulation in the coming days, said two people with knowledge of the pending rule. The White House on Friday morning also updated a regulatory dashboard to indicate that the rule was under review. Advocates fear that it would allow hospitals and health workers to more easily discriminate against patients based on their gender or sexual orientation.

The Obama administration moved to create its non-discrimination protections in response to advocates and health care experts who said that LGBTQ patients were being turned away from necessary care or intimidated from seeking it out. The broad rule also offered specific protections for transgender patients for the first time and extended protections for women who had abortions. But a federal judge in 2016 blocked those protections following a lawsuit from religious groups, and the Trump administration has steadily worked to weaken the rule before it could take full effect.

In last year's proposal, the health department also proposed changes that went further than simply rolling back the new Obama protections, moving to eliminate similar nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ patients that were contained in other regulations.

"If the final rule is anything like the proposed rule, HHS is adopting changes that would be harmful in the best of times but that are especially cruel in the midst of a global pandemic that is disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities and exacerbating disparities,” said Katie Keith, a lawyer and Georgetown professor who’s tracked the rule.

The health department's top civil rights official also defended the administration's approach to vulnerable populations. “As we have shown in our recent efforts to protect persons from disability and age discrimination during the pandemic, HHS will vigorously enforce civil rights laws as passed by Congress, before, during, and after any rulemaking,” Roger Severino, the HHS civil rights chief, said in a statement. Severino was an active critic of the Obama-era non-discrimination rules before joining the administration. Any rule issued by the Trump administration on LGBTQ protections could be short-lived. The Supreme Court is set to rule on whether the Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQ workers, which could create a new regulatory framework and force health officials to swiftly return to the drawing board.

Given the Trump/Pence regime's anit-LGBT agenda - and that of the GOP in general, I find it dumbfounding that a small percentage of gays continue to call themselves Republicans. It makes about as much sense as a 1930's German Jew joining the Nazi Party.

Will Red States Residence Bear the Cost of GOP Idiocy?

Alabama governor, Kay Ivey.

The last number I heard was that 12 states still have no "stay at home" or mandatory "social distancing" orders.  All 12 are states with right wing Republican governors who seemingly see Covid-19 as purely a blue state problem.  Florida likely belatedly adopted such a measure but even then exempted church gathers from the social distancing requirements and the ban on large gatherings.  As one friend stated, if these Christofascists would only infect themselves and die, it might be a positive thing socially, but unfortunately, they will infect others and put medical personnel at risk,  Sadly, from 25 years following right wing "Christian" groups, the last thing they think about is others, it's always all about them.  The governor of Alabama - a state where George Wallace would not be able to be elected today because he'd be too liberal - exemplifies the idiocy that courses through GOP controlled governors' mansions.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon and what may come home to roost in this sates.  Here are article excerpts (Hobby Lobby mentioned in the article is privately owned by Christofascists):

Kay Ivey, the Republican governor of Alabama, put down a marker last week in affirming that it was “not the time to order people to shelter in place.”

“Y’all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York state, we are not California,” she said, suggesting that the fate of hard-hit parts of the country would not be shared by Alabama.

In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Parson said he was not inclined to “make a blanket policy,” adding, “It’s going to come down to individual responsibilities.”

And in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a statewide stay-at-home order this week under growing pressure as his state’s death toll mounted, a Tampa-area megachurch pastor who was arrested for holding services in violation of a local order announced Thursday he was considering reopening the church in time for Easter and is “praying and seeking the Lord for wisdom.”

[G]overnment and private-sector leaders across a large swath of the country remain defiant that the devastation unfolding in New York and other seemingly faraway cities should not curtail life in their own communities.

In some cases, skeptics have been slow to acknowledge the science behind the spread of the novel coronavirus. In others, such as Florida, politicians took heed of demands from the business community, which lobbied DeSantis as recently as during a Monday webinar to balance medical imperatives with economic needs. Elsewhere, adamance about local autonomy was pronounced. Some, meanwhile, maintained that it was religious authority that mattered.

Experts are now warning that a group of governors in the South and the Great Plains — largely Republican-led states — risk acting too late.

Alabama, for example, has more than 1,100 cases, with just five counties untouched by the virus. New infections have risen as sharply as in California.

In some cases, the resistance has led to rising political tensions, with often Democratic mayors imposing orders of their own that they acknowledge have limited effect when surrounding jurisdictions do not act. “As a city, we need to operate as if we could be anyone else,” said Mayor Randall Woodfin of Birmingham, Ala. “I think we’re in the middle of a storm.”

Lyda Krewson, the mayor of St. Louis, said her city’s stay-at-home order was undermined by the absence of a blanket policy, warning, “We have a fluid society, frankly.”

The pleas have not been from politicians alone. Joining Krew­son and others in appealing to the Missouri governor was the state’s medical association, which sent a letter to Parson saying a statewide order was the “only way to curb the exponential spread of covid-19 in Missouri.” In Texas, the state’s hospital and nurses associations sent a joint letter to the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, telling him, “The time has come for Texas to issue a statewide stay-at-home order.” Abbott announced a new statewide directive Tuesday but refused to call it a stay-at-home order.

“Part of the problem is just reluctance to wrap your head around the fact that the numbers could get that bad that fast,” said W. Craig Fugate, a former FEMA administrator.

He singled out the South, saying, “It’s almost a different approach, waiting to know it’s bad. I’m afraid that by the time they have reports of cases, it’s already too late.”

Effective planning has been thwarted by the multiple models available to state officials, who choose to rely on certain numbers and not others, the official said, based on a “political decision that is out of the hands of the responders.”

Interviews with mayors, business leaders and health officials in states where stay-at-home orders were recently imposed illustrated how decisive Tuesday’s White House briefing was to their thinking, as Trump struck a newly solemn tone and his advisers unveiled grim projections even with best-case mitigation efforts.

DeSantis acknowledged as much in remarks Wednesday, saying of his statewide order, “I did speak with the president about it.”

The industries exempted from his order, including landscaping and boating in addition to food service and others, resembled the catalogue of essential services requested by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, which sent a letter to DeSantis outlining its view of an appropriate government response on March 22., . . . . “we must be mindful that the policies intended to protect human health and curb the pandemic do not also cause an even worse effect on the economy and jobs.”

After initially barring local jurisdictions from ordering residents to stay at home, Arizona’s governor, Republican Doug Ducey, this week reversed himself and issued a statewide order.

But Will Humble, a former director of the state’s health department, said it was unenforceable. “It says it’s a stay-at-home order, but try to find something that’s not exempted that wasn’t already closed,” he said.

Within states that have issued sweeping directives, there has also been defiance from businesses, as well as religious leaders and vacationers.

The decision by Hobby Lobby to reopen stores in multiple states that had ordered nonessential businesses closed prompted state law enforcement officials to send cease-and-desist letters to the company, which is based in Oklahoma City. . . . . Hobby Lobby’s corporate office did not respond to a request for comment.

Florida Pastor Arrested for Defying Social Distancing Ordinance

Howard-Browne.

Despite gubernatorial orders imposing social distancing measures and restrictions on gatherings of more than 10 people, mega-church pastors and scamvangelists like Jerry Falwell, Jr., have ignored the orders and held church services and gatherings that could increase the spread of coronavirus thereby putting the lunacy and social irresponsible nature of Christofascists on open display. In Texas, three pastors are challenging the constitutionality of a stay-at-home order issued by Texas officials in Harris County (which encompasses Houston).  The whining charlatans claim the mandate improperly tramples on individual freedoms by closing churches.  Their related bitch is that the order failed to designate gun stores “essential” businesses.  Of course, the real reason for their complaint is that they will miss out on collections at services if they comply with the order, showing once again that money is their true god.  Also of note is that among these pastors is notorious anti-LGBT activist and hate group leader Steven Hotze, who has compared LGBT individuals to murders, rapists, and pedophiles. 

Thankfully, in Florida one of this type of religious extremists in the Tampa area has been arrested for failure to comply with that state's ban on large gatherings. A piece in New York Magazine looks at the mega-church pastor who has ignored the ban on large gatherings for weeks now, endangering both his lemming like parishioners and the larger community.  Here are article highlights: 

You knew it had to transpire sooner or later: a religious leader claiming both spiritual and constitutional immunity from laws aimed at protecting people from COVID-19. As it happens, the first “martyr” to this dubious cause was a controversial Tampa pentecostal minister named Rodney Howard-Browne who has been defying official guidelines on protecting the members of his flock for weeks now. Here’s the Tampa Bay Times’ write-up of the arrest he deliberately provoked:

The pastor of a Tampa megachurch who held two services on Sunday for scores of worshipers was arrested Monday for violating a county order requiring residents to stay at home to limit the spread of coronavirus. Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, co-founder of the River at Tampa Bay Church, turned himself in to the Hernando County jail and was booked on Hillsborough charges of unlawful assembly and violating quarantine orders during a public health emergency, jail records show.

He got sprung on bail immediately, and will likely use the incident for massive publicity purposes.

Howard-Browne encouraged personal contact and claimed his sanctuary contained “machines” that would “kill every virus in the place,” making it “the most sterile building in…all of America.” He is also, of course, arguing the local order he defied violated his religious liberty rights. . . .

Howard-Browne has also suggested those believers who fear the coronavirus are “pansies,” and as reported in the New York Times, has argued he’s fighting a global socialist conspiracy:

“Because the climate change narrative for global governance failed,” Mr. Howard-Browne said in a video of the [March 15] service, “they are using the World Health Organization to then come in and take over the control of nations.” He added, “There’s going to be forced vaccines” to “kill off many people.”

You might think Howard-Browne is cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs and dismiss him as a fringe character. But he seems to have some friends in high places: He shared a photo to Facebook on July 11, 2017, as he stood over President Donald Trump with his hands on the president’s back. Vice President Mike Pence can be seen amongst the men in the group, with his head bowed in prayer.

If the spread of the infection could be limited to these pastors and their followers, a cynic might argue that it would be a good thing - Darwin's theory in action, if you will  - but they selfishly will be exposing others.  It is also disturbing that this type of lunatic has access to the White House.

Trump's Anti-Science Agenda Has Made America Far Less Safe

One characteristic has defined the Trump/Pence regime: facts and objective reality do not matter and pandering to far right ideology has usurped all other considerations.  Part of this process has involved a war on science - which both shows the lie of the Christofascists' world view and is hostile to the fossil fuel industry - in order to deny the reality of climate change, the truth about sexual orientation, and a host of other issues upon about which the right wing, racist, ignorance embracing GOP base is in  denial. Coupled with this is a hatred of government bodies that further scientific knowledge, including, sadly the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense.  No doubt the Trump/Pence decision to disband this organization was motivated in part by a incorrect belief that pandemics can only occur in what Trump views as "shit hole countries" peopled by non-whites.  Coronavirus has shown the idiocy of both this underlying motivation and the move to disband the group.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this disastrous decision.  Here are highlights:

When President Trump took office in 2017, the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense survived the transition intact. Its mission was the same as when I was asked to lead the office, established after the Ebola epidemic of 2014: to do everything possible within the vast powers and resources of the U.S. government to prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic.

One year later, I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like covid-19.

The U.S. government’s slow and inadequate response to the new coronavirus underscores the need for organized, accountable leadership to prepare for and respond to pandemic threats.

In a health security crisis, speed is essential. When this new coronavirus emerged, there was no clear White House-led structure to oversee our response, and we lost valuable time. . . .  The specter of rapid community transmission and exponential growth is real and daunting. The job of a White House pandemics office would have been to get ahead: to accelerate the response, empower experts, anticipate failures, and act quickly and transparently to solve problems.

It’s impossible to assess the full impact of the 2018 decision to disband the White House office responsible for this work. Biological experts do remain in the White House and in our government. But it is clear that eliminating the office has contributed to the federal government’s sluggish domestic response. What’s especially concerning about the absence of this office today is that it was originally set up because a previous epidemic made the need for it quite clear.

[I]in 2016, after the formidable U.S.-led Ebola response, the Obama White House established the global health security office at the National Security Council and asked me to lead the team. We were to prepare for and, if possible, prevent the next outbreak from becoming an epidemic or pandemic. 

Our team reported to a senior-level response coordinator on the National Security Council staff who could rally the government at the highest levels, as well as to the national security adviser and the homeland security adviser. This high-level domestic and global reporting structure wasn’t an accident. It was a recognition that epidemics know no borders and that a serious, fast response is crucial. Our job was to be the smoke alarm — keeping watch to get ahead of emergencies, sounding a warning at the earliest sign of fire — all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm blaze.

Shortly before Trump took office, we were watching many health security threats, including a rising number of cases in China of H7N9 influenza, a deadly strain with high mortality but low transmissibility between people. . . . . We were focused on naturally occurring diseases and potential bioterrorism — any and every biological threat that could cause a major global health and security emergency. 

Another critical task came in early 2017, when we began transitioning pandemic preparedness to the incoming Trump administration. As a civil servant and the head of the directorate, I remained at the White House for several months after the transition. I attended senior-level meetings and directly briefed the homeland security adviser and the national security adviser. After I left the White House that March, pandemic preparedness remained on the agenda; my office remained intact under the leadership of my well-respected successor, Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer; and the national security adviser was tracking H7N9 and other emerging threats.

It’s unclear whether the decision to disband the directorate, which was made in May 2018, after John Bolton became national security adviser, was a tactical move to downgrade the issue or whether it was part of the White House’s interest in simplifying and shrinking the National Security Council staff. Either way, it left an unclear structure and strategy for coordinating pandemic preparedness and response. Experts outside government and on Capitol Hill called for the office’s reinstatement at the time.

In his remarks Wednesday night, [Trump] the president talked about travel bans and the resilience of the U.S. economy but made little specific mention of the public health crisis unfolding across America — exactly the kind of detail a dedicated NSC pandemics infrastructure would have pushed to address.

Pandemics, like weapons of mass destruction and climate change, are transnational threats with potentially existential consequences. No single department or agency can be responsible for handling them. Pandemic threats may not arise every year, but the White House should constantly prepare for them. We can’t afford for federal decision-makers to waste time relearning old lessons when they should be innovating and acting. 

One can only wonder how many Americans will lose their lives because of Trump's stupidity and hostility to science and objective facts.