#/FOX NEWS/POLITICS/HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES/Democrats

[breakingfirst]

Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman says THIS is causing Biden to lose support among black voters 🤡⬆️

[swingleftnewsjunkie]

The Lies They Tell

Trump wasn't the first liar and he won't be the last. But the health of democracy remains in danger as long as Fox News and GOP leaders reject the truth and the public buys it.

[aanews69]

Immerse yourself in the high-stakes world of political strategy as we delve into the gripping narrative behind the latest government shutdown threat over a f...

[deadpresidents]

"Mr. Trump's election demonstrates how American tolerance for the unacceptable is nearly infinite. There are hundreds of absolutely mind-boggling things I could point to from the past decade...But three election in a row, Mr. Trump has been a viable Presidential candidate and our democracy has few guardrails to protect the country from the clear and present danger he and his political appointees will continue to confer upon us. Clearly, Mr. Trump is successful because of his faults, not despite them, because we do not live in a just world...And now Republicans will control the executive branch, the Senate and the House of Representatives. There will be few checks and balances...

...Mr. Trump's voters are granted a level of care and coddling that defies credulity and that is afforded to no other voting bloc. Many of them believe the most ludicrous things: babies being aborted after birth and children going to school as one gender and returning home surgically altered as another gender even though these things simply do not happen. Time and again, we hear the wild lies these voters believe and we act as if they are sharing the same reality as ours, as if they are making informed decisions about legitimate issues. We act as if they get to dictate the terms of political engagement on a foundation of fevered mendacity.

We must refuse to participate in a mass delusion. We must refuse to accept that the ignorance on display is a congenital condition rather than a choice. All of us should refuse to pretend that any of this is normal and that these voters are just woefully misunderstood and that if only the Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently. While they are numerous, that does not make them right.

These are adults, so let us treat them like adults. Let us acknowledge that they want to believe nonsense and conjecture. They want to believe anything that affirms their worldview. They want to celebrate a leader who allows them to nurture their basest beliefs about others. The biggest challenge of our lifetime will be figuring out how to combat the American willingness to embrace flagrant misinformation and bigotry.

As Mr. Trump assembles his cabinet of loyalists and outlines the alarming policies he means to enact, it's hard not to imagine the worst, not out of paranoia but as a means of preparation. The incoming President has clearly articulated that he may dismantle the Department of Education and appears to be giving the wealthiest man in the world unfettered access to the Oval Office. He plans to begin mass deportations immediately and has announced his pick of a Fox News host as the defense secretary -- the list goes on, each promise more appalling than the last.

We would like to believe that many of the ideas on Mr. Trump's demented wish list won't actually come to fruition and that our democracy can once more withstand the new President and the people with whom he surrounds himself. But that is just desperate, wishful thinking. As of yet, there is nothing that will break the iron grip Mr. Trump has on his base, and Vice President-elect JD Vance is young enough to carry the mantle going forward for political cycles to come.

Absolutely anything is possible, and we must acknowledge this, not out of surrender, but as a means of readying ourselves for the impossible fights ahead."

-- Roxane Gay, "Enough", The New York Times, November 17, 2024.

This is one of the best, most spot-on pieces about where we are and what we must prepare ourselves for in the aftermath of Donald Trump's re-election to the Presidency. These gift links will allow you to bypass the NYT paywall and read the entire article, and I urge you to share these links with as many people as you'd like.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A Nazi rally held in Madison Square Garden, February 20th 1939

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 21, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 22, 2024

On Saturday, September 7, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predicted that his plan to deport 15 to 20 million people currently living in the United States would be “bloody.” He also promised to prosecute his political opponents, including, he wrote, lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and election officials. Retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “a fascist to the core…the most dangerous person to this country.” 

On October 14, Trump told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that he thought enemies within the United States were more dangerous than foreign adversaries and that he thought the military should stop those “radical left lunatics” on Election Day. Since then, he has been talking a lot about “the enemy from within,” specifically naming Representative Adam Schiff and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats from California, as “bad people.” Schiff was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee that broke the 2019 story of Trump’s attempt to extort Volodymyr Zelensky that led to Trump’s first impeachment. 

Trump’s references to the “enemy from within” have become so frequent that former White House press secretary turned political analyst Jen Psaki has called them his closing argument for the 2024 election, and she warned that his construction of those who oppose him as “enemies” might sweep in virtually anyone he feels is a threat.

In a searing article today, political scientist Rachel Bitecofer of The Cycle explored exactly what that means in a piece titled “What (Really) Happens If Trump Wins?” Bitecofer outlined Adolf Hitler’s January 30, 1933, oath of office, in which he promised Germans he would uphold the constitution, and the three months he took to dismantle that constitution.

By March, she notes,  the concentration camp Dachau was open. Its first prisoners were not Jews, but rather Hitler’s prominent political opponents. By April, Jews had been purged from the civil service, and opposition political parties were illegal. By May, labor unions were banned and students were burning banned books. Within the year, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was illegal, and denouncing violators paid well for those who did it.

Bitecofer writes that Trump has promised mass deportations “that he cannot deliver unless he violates both the Constitution and federal law.” To enable that policy, Trump will need to dismantle the merit-based civil service and put into office those loyal to him rather than the Constitution. And then he will purge his political opponents, for once those who would stand against him are purged, Trump can act as he wishes against immigrants, for example, and others.

Ninety years ago, as American reporter Dorothy Thompson ate breakfast at her hotel in Berlin on August 25, 1934, a young man from Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo, “politely handed me a letter and requested a signed receipt.” She thought nothing of it, she said, “But what a surprise was in store for me!” The letter informed her that, “in light of your numerous anti-German publications,” she was being expelled from Germany.

She was the first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany, and that expulsion was no small thing. Thompson had moved to London in 1920 to become a foreign correspondent and began to spend time in Berlin. In 1924 she moved to the city to head the Central European Bureau for the New York Evening Post and the Philadelphia Public Ledger. From there, she reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler. She left her Berlin post in 1928 to marry novelist Sinclair Lewis, and the two settled in Vermont.

When the couple traveled to Sweden in 1930 for Lewis to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature, Thompson visited Germany, where she saw the growing strength of the fascists and the apparent inability of the Nazi’s opponents to come together to stand against them. She continued to visit the country in the following years, reporting on the rise of fascism there, and elsewhere. 

In 1931, Thompson interviewed Hitler and declared that, rather than “the future dictator of Germany” she had expected to meet, he was a man of “startling insignificance.” She asked him if he would “abolish the constitution of the German Republic.” He answered: “I will get into power legally” and, once in power, abolish the parliament and the constitution and “found an authority-state, from the lowest cell to the highest instance; everywhere there will be responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below.” She did not believe he could succeed: “Imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights,” she wrote in apparent astonishment.

Thompson was back in Berlin in summer 1934 as a representative of the Saturday Evening Post when she received the news that she had 24 hours to leave the country. The other foreign correspondents in Berlin saw her off at the railway station with “great sheaves of American Beauty roses.” 

Safely in Paris, Thompson mused that in her first years in Germany she had gotten to know many of the officials of the German republic, and that when she had left to marry Lewis, they offered “many expressions of friendship and gratitude.” But times had changed. “I thought of them sadly as my train pulled out,” she said, “carrying me away from Berlin. Some of those officials still are in the service of the German Government, some of them are émigrés and some of them are dead.” 

Thompson came home to a nation where many of the same dark impulses were simmering, her fame after her expulsion from Germany following her. She lectured against fascism across the country in 1935, then began a radio program that reached tens of millions of listeners. Hired in 1936 to write a regular column three days a week for the New York Herald Tribune, she became a leading voice in print, too, warning that what was happening in Germany could also happen in America. 

In an echo of Lewis’s bestselling 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, she wrote in a 1937 column: “No people ever recognize their dictator in advance…. He always represents himself as the instrument for expressing the Incorporated National Will. When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model. If anyone turned up here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he would be recognized and shunned…. But when our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.” 

In less than two years, the circulation of her column had grown to reach between seven and eight million people. In 1939 a reporter wrote: “She is read, believed and quoted by millions of women who used to get their political opinions from their husbands, who got them from [political commentator] Walter Lippmann.” The reporter likened Thompson to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, saying they were the two “most influential women in the U.S.”

When 22,000 American Nazis held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in honor of President George Washington’s birthday on February 20, 1939, Thompson sat in the front row of the press box, where she laughed loudly during the speeches and yelled “Bunk!” at the stage, illustrating that she would not be muzzled by Nazis. After being escorted out, she returned to her seat, where stormtroopers surrounded her. She later told a reporter: “I was amazed to see a duplicate of what I saw seven years ago in Germany. Tonight I listened to words taken out of the mouth of Adolf Hitler.” 

Two years later, In 1941, Thompson returned to the issue she had raised when she mused about those government officials who had gone from thanking her to expelling her. In a piece for Harper’s Magazine titled “Who Goes Nazi?” she wrote: “It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi,” she wrote. “By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.”

Examining a number of types of Americans, she wrote that the line between democracy and fascism was not wealth, or education, or race, or age, or nationality. “Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” she wrote. They were secure enough to be good natured and open to new ideas, and they believed so completely in the promise of American democracy that they would defend it with their lives, even if they seemed too easygoing to join a struggle. “But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis,” she wrote. “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.”

In Paris following her expulsion from Berlin, Thompson told a reporter for the Associated Press that the reason she had been attacked was the same reason that Hitler’s power was growing. “Chancellor Hitler is no longer a man, he is a religion,” she said.

Suggesting her expulsion was because of her old article disparaging Hitler, in her own article about her expulsion she noted: “My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all. That is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people…. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris. Worse things can happen….” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

It’s a “coup!” declared hysterical Republicans.  Were they talking about Donald Trump’s efforts after the 2020 election to overturn the election for which he’s currently facing criminal charges in both federal court and Fulton County, Ga?! Nope! What Republicans from JD Vance down were calling a “coup” was President Biden dropping out of the 2024 race. (I’m serious!)  Arkansas US Senator Tom Cotton wrote on X shortly after the news broke, “Joe Biden succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes.”  “The coup is complete,” wrote Trump loving Representative Paul Gosar from Arizona. That was followed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who also echoed the claim we witnessed a “coup” with Biden dropping out.

Talk of a coup even made it all the way to the top of the 2024 GOP presidential ticket when—in an interview that aired Monday--Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Trump and his running mate JD Vance, “Is it a coup against Joe Biden?” Vance responded point blank, “Yeah, I think it is.” Trump though—perhaps reflecting on what he did after the 2020 election—was uncharacteristically sheepish, offering Watters only this two word answer: “Sort of.”

Back on planet earth, we know that Biden made the decision to drop out for the same reason politicians have chosen to end their campaigns since time immemorial. As NBC News reported, in reaching his decision, Biden reviewed along with his family and top aides extensive polling data, including how Vice President Kamala Harris would fare in a potential matchup against Trump. It’s true Biden was not happy with the growing calls to drop out after his deeply troubling debate performance three weeks before. However, as NBC News noted At the end of it all, “Biden came grudgingly to accept that he could not sustain his campaign with poll numbers slipping, donors fleeing and party luminaries pushing him to exit.”

That led us to Sunday afternoon when Biden released a letter that informed the nation, “While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.” (President Biden is addressing the nation on Wednesday night where we will find out even more of the details.) That’s not a coup. That is what American politics and democracy have long looked like. True, given it was a president dropping out only a little more than a hundred days from the election, it was both jarring and history making. But at the end, Biden made what he believed was the best choice for himself, his family, his party and his country.

[...] Trump attempted a coup in every sense of the word. Despite losing the 2020 election, he attempted to overturn the results to remain in power. That is why the federal indictment against Trump charging him with four felonies states, “Despite having lost, the Defendant [Trump] was determined to remain in power.”   To that end as the indictment continues, Trump “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.” Trump’s “criminal scheme”--as the indictment describes--included replacing legally elected electors to the Electoral college with fake ones chosen by his campaign to deliver Trump the victory he didn’t actually win. Trump’s illegal plan also included preventing Congress on Jan 6 from certifying the legitimate votes cast for Joe Biden--despite Trump losing every court battle to invalidate these very votes. Then there was the brutal Jan 6 attack on our Capitol, which FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress was an act of “domestic terrorism.” As the Jan 6 House committee’s final report put it: “The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed,” adding, “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”

Dean Obeidallah debunks the right-wing bad faith “coup” attacks against Joe Biden, and rightly points out that replacing Biden with Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee (before the nomination was formalized) is NOT a coup, but the Capitol Insurrection on January 6th, 2021 and Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results were most definitely one.

See Also:

The UnPopulist: Republicans' Bogus Claims that Democrats Acted Illicitly in Replacing Biden

[mariacallous]

Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday that Donald Trump’s recent comments imagining a violent scene with guns aimed at former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney should eliminate him in the race for the White House.

“This must be disqualifying,” she told reporters in Madison, Wisconsin. “Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president.”

The Democratic nominee for president’s remarks come a day after Trump dreamed up a violent scenario for Cheney, a Republican who’s endorsed Harris and appeared with her on the campaign trail.

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” the Republican presidential nominee told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson during an appearance in Arizona.

Trump’s remarks, Harris said Friday, are indicative of how he plans to treat his political opponents if he wins the presidency next week.

“Rep. Cheney is a true patriot who has shown extraordinary courage in putting country above party,” Harris said. “Trump is increasingly, however, someone who considers his political opponents the enemy, is permanently out for revenge and is increasingly unstable and unhinged. His enemies list has grown longer, his rhetoric has grown more extreme and he is even less focused than before on the needs and concerns and challenges facing the American people.”

Trump has made over 100 public threats to “investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents,” NPR reported last week. Most notably, he suggested last month that members of the “radical left” represent “an enemy within” that he’d confront with military force if elected.

Trump has mocked concerns about him imprisoning his political enemies.

“It’s unbelievable. Did you see ‘Donald Trump wants to put us in jail,’” he said in North Carolina on Wednesday, parroting the alarm.

“Donald Trump is going to go after some of the scum that you see back there,” he continued, gesturing to the press pit at his rally. “They’re so dishonest. ‘Donald Trump is doing terrible things. He wants to put us in prison.’ That’s what they’ve been trying to do to me for three years — they got this story mixed up.”

[film-classics]

Tallulah Bankhead - The Wild Child

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead (born in Huntsville, Alabama on January 31, 1902) was an American actress, primarily of the stage, but has also appeared in several prominent films, including an award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). Known as "The Wild Child," her penchant for living life on her own terms, defying societal conventions and hard partying sometimes preceded her talent.

Bankhead was a member of the Bankhead and Brockman family, a prominent Alabama Democratic political family with Irish roots. Her grandfather and her uncle were U.S. senators, and her father was Speaker of the House of Representatives. She was mostly raised in the family estate named "Sunset" in Jasper, Alabama.

Discovering at an early age that theatrics gained her the attention she desired, she wanted to be a performer. Thus, at 15, she submitted her photo to Picture Play, which was conducting a contest, and was awarded a trip to New York plus a movie part based on their photographs. She soon realized her place was on stage rather than screen. After several years in Broadway, Bankhead moved to London, where she found fame and critical acclaim in the West End.

In 1931, under contract to Paramount Pictures she returned to the U.S. and played in a series of roles as a femme fatale in films in films like George Cukor's Tarnished Lady (1931).

Going back to Broadway, Bankhead worked steadily in a series of plays, including brilliant portrayals of Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939) and Sabina in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). Because of her continued success, she was able to command 10 percent of the gross of the play and was billed larger than any other actor in the cast. She also continued to appear in a handful of films, TV shows, and radio shows. Though Tallulah Bankhead's career slowed in the mid-1950s, she never faded from the public eye.

A long time smoker, she died in Manhattan at age 66 due to pleural double pneumonia.

Legacy:

Won the Variety Award for Best Actress of the Year twice: The Little Foxes (1939) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)

Won the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Actress in a Production for The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)

Won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress for Lifeboat (1944)

Nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Midgie Purvis (1961)

Has had a cocktail at the Rivoli Bar in the Ritz London called "The Tallulah," which is served in Christian Louboutin stiletto

Is the first white woman to be featured on the cover of Ebony magazine

Is one of the very few film actresses and the only stage actress to have a cover on both Time and Life

Honored as one of the 10 most remarkable women in London in 1928

Served as inspiration for the character Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) and Cruella De Vil in Walt Disney Pictures' One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

Is one of the original inductees in the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1972

Inducted in the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1981

Is the main character of Looped, a Broadway play by New York writer Matthew Lombardo, which premiered in 2007

Has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6141 Hollywood Blvd for motion picture

[windandwater]

political ramblings from a recovering news junkie (I had to stop following this stuff, it was giving me health problems)

anecdotally it seems like a lot of people are/were sick of trump and don't want him back, and they just needed a new candidate to actually be excited about.

everyone's takeaway from 2016 was that America just hates women too much to elect one over a racist white man but I said from the beginning that the problem was Hilary herself, whom everyone had too many reasons to hate. imo mostly imagined reasons especially compared to the egregiousness of her opponent. but democrats really underestimated how much people in red states still carry a grudge against her, leftover from the 90s.

but due to America's still-real hatred of women,and racism, I've been wondering whether Kamala really can win against this jackass and I keep thinking about something my boss (another politics wonk, NOVA grown and has worked in journalism and interned in the white house) says, which is that America hates losers, and trump has proved himself a loser--and a criminal, in the actual courts, which the right can try to spin as politically motivated but I think to anyone not following every move it just looks bad. same thing as what happened with the emails investigation with Hilary--people just assume that if there's smoke there's fire. and I don't think most people's mouths are wrapped around the fox news hose of information tight enough to be able to justify every bad thing that happens to republicans to themselves. so I think people have been waiting for an energetic challenger to trump for a long time and they're jumping on this moment. all over the country, not just in what we think of liberal outposts. and I think most Americans are capable of seeing a candidate and not a scary person who doesn't look like them, especially since she's so charismatic and genuinely fun.

I also think we need to reckon with the effects of gerrymandering and really do something to combat it if we get any kind of administration and congressional change because the majority of Americans are not represented at all. you see that in the polling but I've also seen it firsthand when leaving my little liberal city and talking to people in supposedly blood red states. we agree with each other on a lot of things and if we went back to the old way of compromising on bills and issues and stopped this crap of one party being up the ass of corporations and the death cult of the evangelical right, we'd see a lot of real progress. but since that's not really an option, steamrollering over them over and over until the party is destroyed and a new one emerges is the only option for the future here, I think. and to do that we gotta have representative districts. because I think it will happen naturally if Americans are represented.

all of the above applies to voting rights as well.

I like Kamala Harris even though she's not the candidate I would pick. but I also don't think necessarily the progressive base of the party should pick the presidential candidate, in this race we clearly need someone who can pull the party together and build coalitions and it looks like that's her. it's been really interesting to see the country agree with me when normally I don't think I'm on the same page as moderates in this country. maybe the center of the country is finally moving left? or maybe the far right radicalism/fascism has finally hit its breaking point?

I feel the way I did in 2016; absolutely terrified of the election. but it's mixed with the way I felt in 2008; that maybe there's light in the world.

[thosemotivationalquotes]

The importance of the 2024 AZ Senate election - why AZ democrats need to show up this election

As we all know, this election year is extremely important politically. AZ has become a swing state over the last few elections, which means that the state could go red or blue, rather than being a state like TX which is almost always red/republican.

This year there is a very important race for one of the senate seats in AZ. Previously both senate seats were held by democrats, however one of those senators is retiring, we may lose one of those seats if democrats don’t show up to vote in November.

The democratic candidate is Ruben Gallego. His platform as highlights of protecting abortion rights, helping AZ schools, and holding politicians accountable for corrupt acts. He is a veteran and comes from an immigrant family, he is also endorsed by Kamala Harris, and previous served in the House of Representatives for AZ.

The republican candidate is Kari Lake. Lake previously ran in the last governor election and just barely lost - just in case you needed another reminder of why everyone’s vote matters. She was previously a news anchor for Fox 10 News before getting into politics. Her politics run very similar to Trump, and she stated previously that he was her biggest political role model, and she is endorsed by him. She puts a lot of emphasis on border control, pro-life stances, and “don’t California our Arizona”.

I wanted to make this post as a reminder on why it is so important for democrats to vote this election, and not just for president. She was so close to winning last time, so this time let’s make sure she knows that AZ does not want her in office. The person she lost against for governor, Katie Hobbs, was able to make sure abortion was at least somewhat protected after Roe v Wade was overturned, which wouldn’t have happened if people didn’t vote and Lake had ended up winning.

Also, AZ has no excuse absentee voting. This means that there no excuse not to vote since you can request a ballot by mail and send it in, rather than having to go in person. If you are over 18, a U.S. citizen, and have lived in AZ for more than 29 days, please register to vote and show up this election top help protect AZ! If you go to one of the colleges in AZ you, and live here for school, you can register to vote in AZ, if you are not from a swing state originally it may be more beneficial to register in AZ rather than your home state (you can only vote/register in one state).

Register to Vote here, and check out my pinned post for more election resources!

[bouncinghedgehog]

October 14, 2024 (Monday)

As the two presidential campaigns position themselves for the final sprint to the election on November 5, the difference between them is dramatic.

Trump is hunkering down behind what has always appeared to be a plan not to attract voters but instead to create chaos on Election Day. Creating confusion around the election could enable his loyalists to put in place the plan the Trump team concocted in 2020 to throw the election into the House of Representatives or get it before the Supreme Court, stacked as it is with Trump loyalists.

A central piece of that plan appears to be to rile up his supporters to violence, and a few of them have been delivering. News broke yesterday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had advised federal emergency workers to evacuate Rutherford County, North Carolina, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene, because of concerns about their safety after Trump and MAGA Republicans spread the false rumor that federal agents are forcing people off their land to start lithium mining projects. The alert came after the U.S. Forest Service sent an email to federal responders saying that National Guard troops had encountered armed militia saying they were “hunting FEMA.” FEMA officials will no longer go door-to-door with disaster assistance, but instead will stay in fixed locations.

A man has been arrested and charged with threatening FEMA workers with an assault rifle. He was released on a $10,000 bond.

To the extent Trump or his running mate Ohio senator J.D. Vance talks about them, their policies are promises to repair what they insist is the damage caused by President Joe Biden (although the stock market hit record highs again today), or threats that reinforce an authoritarian Christian nationalist worldview. Today, Bill Barrow of the Associated Press explored the extensive overlap of Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing groups and the plans that Trump and Vance have set out.

Both promise to cut taxes for the wealthy, but Project 2025 has more detail about how. Both plan to cut off immigration and to fire federal workers, replacing them with loyalists. Both say the president can decide not to use the money Congress has appropriated (in 2019, Trump refused to disburse the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine until Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to smear Trump’s chief Democratic rival for the presidency, Joe Biden). Both call for slashing government regulations and getting rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs as well as protections for LGBTQ+ individuals and programs addressing climate change.

But perhaps most revealing of both Trump’s ideology and his plan for the election was his statement to Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that he would like to use the military against what he called “the enemy from within…radical left lunatics" to guard the election. While this is a threat to use the power of the government against his political opponents if he is elected—he mentioned California representative and Senate candidate Adam Schiff by name—it also seems likely his loyalists will hear this as a call for violence at election sites.

Trump’s statement has not gone unnoticed.

Tonight, CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper posted a dictionary definition of the word “fascism”: “A populist political philosophy, movement…that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”

On the show, Tapper pressed Republican Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin to comment on Trump’s statement that as commander-in-chief, he would use the military against political opposition. When Youngkin denied that Trump had said any such thing, Tapper replied: “I’m literally reading his quotes to you.” Youngkin’s willingness to deny what was right in front of him did not exactly quell talk of fascism, since in his dystopian novel 1984 about authoritarianism, George Orwell famously wrote: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

If Trump is hunkering down, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz are still pushing ahead, pressing Trump on both his personal weakness and his now open embrace of fascism. Harris’s advisor Ian Sams went on the Fox News Channel today to note that it’s been a month since Trump “did a mainstream media interview, and we got to wonder why. We called this weekend for him to release his medical records…. Donald Trump’s team, I heard him on your air last hour insisting that everything is okay and that…there’s nothing to see here. And your anchor rightly asked, ‘Well, if that’s true, why not just put them out?’”

At 1:12 this morning, Trump posted on his social media site: “I believe it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on Cognitive Stamina and Agility. Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her.” Sams hit that as well, noting that in the middle of the night, Trump felt obliged to write about Harris and a cognitive test “[a]s he refuses to release his medical records, sit with 60 Minutes, or debate her again—instead retreating solely to rambling rallies where he’s increasingly making no sense[.] Is he okay?”

In Erie, Pennsylvania, today, Harris outlined how her proposals for an “opportunity economy” will help Black men, calling for business loans for entrepreneurs, more apprenticeships, rules for cryptocurrency exchanges, and study of diseases that disproportionately affect Black men.

She also continues her outreach to Republicans. Today, former Trump friend and talk show host Geraldo Rivera endorsed her. So did former Wisconsin Republican state senate majority leader Dale Schultz. “I tell people, ‘Look, I didn’t leave the party. The party left me,’” he said. “This is a critically important race, and…Donald Trump should never be allowed in the Oval Office again.”

Today Harris’s campaign announced she will be sitting down with Fox News Channel reporter Bret Baier for an interview on Wednesday from the battleground state of Pennsylvania. The Fox News Channel is scheduled to tape a town hall with Trump in front of an audience of women on Tuesday. It is supposed to air on Wednesday morning, while the Harris interview will air Wednesday night.

At a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, tonight, Harris reiterated Trump’s refusal to talk to any but the right-wing media and recalled his promise to terminate the Constitution. And then she used Trump’s own words against him, playing a video montage of Trump’s calls for violence, his threats against “the enemy within,” and his call for using the military against his political opponents.

“You heard his words, coming from him,” she told the audience. “[H]e considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country…. He’s saying that he would use the military to go after them…. And we know who he would target because he has attacked them before. Journalists whose stories he doesn’t like. Election officials who refuse to cheat by…finding extra votes for him. Judges who insist on following the law instead of bending to his will. This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous…. Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged. And he is out for unchecked power, that’s what he’s looking for.”

In Oaks, Pennsylvania, tonight, Trump was supposed to take questions from preselected attendees at a town hall with South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. He did, at first, although his answers were all over the place and he urged people to vote on January 5. But then, in the hot and crowded space, two people needed medical attention. Slurring, Trump then said: "Let's not do any more questions. Let's just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?" And then he stood on stage and swayed for 39 minutes of songs from his personal playlist before seeming to recall that he was supposed to be talking about the election, which he suddenly told the confused crowd was “the most important election in the history of our country” before turning back to the music.

Rob Crilly of the U.K.’s The Daily Mail wrote: “I was at Trump's golden escalator launch, flew out of Washington with him in 2020 and have probably been to 100 rallies, give or take. Have never seen anything like tonight.” The headline over Marianne LeVine’s Washington Post story about the event read: “Trump sways and bops to music for 39 minutes in bizarre town-hall episode.

"The scene comes as Vice President Kamala Harris has called Trump, 78, unstable and called into question his mental acuity.”

[togglesbloggle]

I think my killer app for saving the world would be an algorithm that trawls social media sites and newspaper comment sections. For any given defined class of argumentation, it would classify and quantify (in absolute numbers or as a fraction) (anonymized) posts by type- including retweets and reblogs, correctly classifying either support for a proposition or a mockery/dissent-type reblog.

We keep having this problem, right? Where we can't distinguish in our little monkey brains between "<X> argument exists", "<X> argument has backing from a politically significant fraction or faction of the population," and "<X> has a clear path to implementation that would present risk of grave harm." The flat structure and large base of social media sites means that there will always be at least some arguments for <X> available for us to find, and when you throw in our inability to distinguish between existence-of-argument and salience-of-argument, it works everybody in to a really dangerous position of fear and factionalism. It would be so nice to say, e.g., "yes, proponents of walkable cities are often somewhat blind to disability concerns, but people actively hostile to disability accommodations represent only 2.7% of the total, compared to 78.5% who will readily incorporate disability accommodations if the topic is broached." In other words, to really have a sense of what the conversation as a whole looks like (even if it was buggy and subject to the occasional serious error), instead of one dominated almost entirely by my own cognitive biases and local network effects, and thereby gain the ability to simply dismiss certain types of argument as coming from an inconsequential fraction of the population.

I think probably the example where I most badly wanted something like this was in 2016-2017, when there were huge concerns of an upswing in white nationalism in general and Nazism in particular. And I just... don't know whether that was real at all? Reports and concerns about this resurgence were everywhere, but there was no quantification of this whatsoever, nor any real attempt to do so. And it would have been so comforting to say that "eh, the amount of Nazis in the world seems to be stable, we're just hypersensitive to existing skinhead rallies because of the white house situation," or, "here's roughly the amount of support that white nationalism has now gained, here's how it compares to long-term trendlines and total population." Numbers are always soothing to me, because they're inherently tractable.

We talk a lot about fact-checking, but a parallel thing I'd love would be salience-checking. If Fox news or whoever does a special interest story about The Democrats What Support Euthanizing Christians, the best response would be to dismiss the argument on grounds that some trusted calculation shows that the view simply isn't characteristic of the Enemy Faction, no matter how rhetorically convenient it would be for things to be otherwise. Channel that "nobody would seriously believe <X>" instinct in to a more correct and useful "<X> is below the lizardman constant, or only a factor of 2-3 above it."

[beardedmrbean]

Embroiled in controversy over his position on the Israel-Hamas conflict, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., was subjected to more scathing press that cited local Jewish leaders adamantly opposed to his re-election.

Bowman, considered a member of the left-wing "Squad" in Congress, was the subject of a Jewish Insider piece headlined "No More Bridges to Burn in Westchester," referencing the suburban New York City county that makes up much of his district and is also home to the largest Jewish population outside the Big Apple.

The former junior high school principal is in the political fight of his life against a more moderate Democrat, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, and has even lost the support of some fellow progressives over his criticism of Israel.

According to the Jewish Insider piece, Bowman asked a local Westchester Jewish leader in 2022 whether he had photographs of the two of them together as he tried to rally support for his election. "Do you have pics of us … so I can show the world I’m friends with Jewish people[?]" according to contents of a text reportedly viewed by the outlet.

The Jewish leader told the outlet he had at least one image from an event Bowman attended after a promise to support a House bill favoring former President Trump’s Abraham Accords Mideast peace deal.

Bowman later reportedly withdrew his support for the legislation, and the Jewish leader said the overall situation made him "uncomfortable."

That situation and other content in the piece caused outrage among Jewish activists, including StopAntisemitism founder Liora Rez, who told Fox News Digital it is time for Bowman to "find a new job."

"Jamaal Bowman has consistently made clear in his statements and actions his animus toward Israel and the Jewish people," said Rez, who escaped antisemitism as a refugee from the Soviet Union.

"His hostility to individuals, including his own constituents, simply because of their faith and ethnic background is sickening, and he and his bigoted views deserve no recognition in Washington."

Bowman’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the Jewish Insider piece.

Another local Jewish leader, Rabbi Evan Hoffman, recently told the New York Post he would support Latimer as Jewish constituents are reportedly organizing a "Vote Shabbat" drive to oppose the incumbent.

"Bowman is opposed to Israel and more subtly the Jews in his own district," Hoffman said.

Bowman has spoken out on the BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement against Israel, calling it a "nonviolent protest opportunity to hold Israel accountable." Pro-Israel activists consider it conversely antisemitic and an effort to hurt Israel.

Bowman’s opponent, Latimer, has gotten the opposite reception. A February report from The Intercept said support from AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – has constituted more than two-fifths of his fundraising war chest. Bowman has, in turn, accused the group of trying to "buy" the race.

Former Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., a fellow progressive who represented the district across the Tappan Zee Bridge from Bowman, notably chose to endorse Latimer this year.

Jones’ former district, now mostly represented post-redistricting by Rep. Michael Lawler, R-N.Y., also hosts a large Hasidic population in Rockland County.

"I’m making this endorsement [of Latimer] to stand up for my Jewish constituents because Representative Bowman and I have very different views on Israel," Jones told the Associated Press.

Bowman’s supporters, however, sing his praises as much as his critics do the opposite. Angela Davis-Farrish, an official with the New Rochelle Municipal Housing Authority, praised the lawmaker in a Politico piece after the introduction of legislation to establish a rent ceiling for certain families on government assistance.

He is also endorsed by New York’s Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Republican contender primed to face either Bowman or Latimer is Dr. Miriam Flisser, a pediatric consultant who previously served as mayor of Scarsdale.

The district, however, is rated D+20 by the Cook Partisan Voting Index, which suggests that the eventual Democrat nominee is a heavy favorite in November.

[misfitwashere]

November 21, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 22

Today, former Florida representative Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for the office of attorney general. He did so shortly after CNN told him that they were going to report that the House Ethics Committee had been told there were witnesses to yet another sexual encounter between Gaetz and a minor in 2017. There was already evidence that he had sent more than $10,000 to two women who later testified in sexual misconduct investigations. The notes explaining the payments said things like: “Love you,” “Being my friend,” “Being awesome,’ and “flight + extra 4 u.” 

Trump transition spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer told Will Steakin of ABC News that discussions of Gaetz’s payments “are meant to undermine the mandate from the people to reform the Justice Department.” 

Gaetz’s withdrawal turns attention to Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. As host of the weekend edition of Fox & Friends, Hegseth has no relevant experience to run a crucial United States government department, let alone one that oversees close to 3 million personnel and a budget of more than $800 billion. 

According to Heath Druzin of the Idaho Capital Sun, Hegseth has close ties to an Idaho Christian nationalist church that wants to turn the United States into a theocracy. 

Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic did a deep dive into Hegseth’s recent books and concluded that Hegseth “considers himself to be at war with basically everybody to Trump’s left, and it is by no means clear that he means war metaphorically.” Hegseth’s books suggest he thinks that everything that does not support the MAGA worldview is “Marxist,” including voters choosing Democrats at the voting booth. He calls for the “categorical defeat of the Left” and says that without its “utter annihilation,” “America cannot, and will not, survive.” 

Like Gaetz, Hegseth is facing stories about sexual assault. Yesterday, officials in Monterey, California, released a police report detailing a 2017 sexual assault complaint against Hegseth. The report recounts chilling details of a drunk Hegseth blocking a California woman from leaving a hotel room and then sexually assaulting her. A nurse reported the alleged assault after the woman underwent a rape exam. Hegseth says the encounter was consensual, but he paid the woman a settlement in exchange for a nondisclosure agreement. He was never charged.

Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, is also short on experience in the field of the department she has been tapped to oversee. She once incorrectly claimed to have a bachelor’s degree in education when she was trying to get a seat on the Connecticut Board of Education and is known primarily for her work building World Wrestling Entertainment. And she, too, has been entangled in a sex abuse scandal. In October, five men filed a lawsuit claiming that she and her husband, Vince McMahon, were aware that former ringside announcer Melvin Phillips was assaulting “ring boys” who were as young as 13.

A spokesperson for the Trump transition said of McMahon’s misrepresented credentials: “These types of politically motivated attacks are the new normal for nominees ready to enact President Trump’s mandate for common sense that an overwhelming majority of Americans supported two weeks ago.”

But Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence makes McMahon look like a prize. As military scholar Tom Nichols points out in The Atlantic, former representative TulsI Gabbard is “stunningly unqualified” to oversee all of America’s intelligence services, including the Central Intelligence Agency. Nichols notes that her constant parroting of Russian talking points and her cozying up to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad make her “a walking Christmas tree of warning lights” for our national security.  

Former Republican governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley suggested that Gabbard is “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer” who has no place at the head of American intelligence. A Russian state media presenter refers to Gabbard as “our girlfriend” and as a Russian agent.

And then there is Trump’s tapping of Robert Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has no training in medicine or public health and, in addition to being a prominent critic of the vaccines that have dramatically curtailed disease and death in the U.S., is an outspoken critic of the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

There are a number of ways to think about Trump’s appointments. The people he has picked  have so little experience in the fields their departments handle that Erin Burnett of CNN suggested that he is simply choosing them from “central casting”—a favorite phrase of his—to look as he imagines such officials should. Indeed, as Zachary B. Wolf of CNN pointed out, while President Joe Biden vowed to make his Cabinet look like America, Trump’s picks look “exactly like Fox News.” Trump has actually tapped a number of television hosts for different positions. 

That so many of his appointees have histories of sexual misconduct is also striking, and underlines both that they share his determination to dominate others and that they do not think rules and laws apply to them. 

But there is another pattern at work, as well. In a piece he published on November 15 in his “Thinking about…” newsletter, scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder explained that destroying a country requires undermining five key zones: “health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence.” The nominations of Kennedy, Gaetz, Hegseth, and Gabbard, as well as the tapping of billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to run the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to destroy the administration of the government, are, according to Snyder, a “decapitation strike.” 

“Imagine that you are a foreign leader who wishes to destroy the United States,” Snyder writes. “How could you do so? The easiest way would be to get Americans to do the work themselves, to somehow induce Americans to undo their own health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. From this perspective,” he explains, “Trump's proposed appointments—Kennedy, Jr.; Gaetz; Musk; Ramaswamy; Hegseth; Gabbard—are perfect instruments.  They combine narcissism, incompetence, corruption, sexual incontinence, personal vulnerability, dangerous convictions, and foreign influence as no group before them has done.”

But that destruction of the United States is so far still aspirational. The constant references to Trump’s supposed “mandate” are misleading. He did not win 50% of the vote, meaning that more voters chose someone other than Trump in the 2024 election than voted for him, and even many of his voters appear to have misunderstood his policies. 

According to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Trump’s loyalists have tried to shore up support for his nominees in the Senate by threatening the Republican senators: "If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.” 

That threat is a direct assault on the Constitution, which gives to the Senate the power to advise the president on senior appointments and requires their consent to a president’s choices, and one that also hands the U.S. government over to an international billionaire. Forcing a leader’s political party to get into line behind that leader is the first task of an authoritarian, who needs that unified support in order to attack political opponents. 

But, so far, the threat hasn’t worked: it could not save Gaetz in the face of public outcry. 

Almost as soon as Gaetz withdrew his name, Trump presented former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi as his replacement for the attorney general post. In March 2016, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) found that the Trump Foundation illegally donated $25,000 to support Bondi at a time when she was considering joining a lawsuit against Trump University. Her office ultimately decided not to join the lawsuit. 

Bondi defended Trump in his first impeachment trial, during which she was a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel. She supported Trump’s campaign to insist—falsely—that he won the 2020 presidential election. She is also a registered lobbyist for Qatar. 

Meanwhile, Republican perceptions of the economy have changed abruptly. As Philip Bump of the Washington Post notes, since Trump’s election, there’s been a 16-point drop in the percentage of Republicans who say they were doing worse a year ago than they are now. 

While that change is due to Trump’s election, in fact Biden’s policies continue to deliver. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters today that for the second year in a row, the average price of a Thanksgiving dinner has fallen. According to the American Farm Bureau, that price fell 5% this year, with the cost of turkey down 6%. Gasoline to travel for the holiday is also down to its lowest point in more than three years, by about 25 cents per gallon since this time last year, falling to below $3.00 a gallon in almost 30 states. 

Tonight, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggested that Americans should keep scorecards of the country’s economic numbers, “charting where inflation, unemployment and GDP were at the end of Biden’s term and regularly updating it with Trump’s latest numbers.” He noted that “the country is now covered with embryonic factories, businesses, economic redevelopment projects and more courtesy of Joe Biden’s CHIPS act and the Inflation Reduction Act,” and predicted that Trump will claim credit for all Biden accomplished. 

Keeping track would help preserve those projects in the face of threatened Republican cuts and at the same time prevent Trump from being able to claim more credit for his administration than it has earned. 

—

[head-post]

Trump’s team compiles list of Pentagon officers to sack

Members of US President-elect Donald Trump’s team are compiling a list of military officers who will be fired, according to Reuters.

An unprecedented reshuffle at the Pentagon could change as the Trump administration takes shape. In the past, the Republican leader has actively criticised defence chiefs during a campaign of firing “woke” generals and those responsible for the troubled withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. A second source said the new administration is likely to focus on US officers associated with Mark Milley, Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Every single person that was elevated and appointed by Milley will be gone. There’s a very detailed list of everybody that was affiliated with Milley. And they will all be gone.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff is made up of the top officers of the US military, as well as the heads of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, National Guard and Space Force.

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice as his defence secretary, has also targeted Milley’s successor, Air Force General C.Q. Brown. However, some current and former US officials deny the possibility of such a major change, saying it would be unnecessary and disruptive at a time of global turmoil, with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Trump visited Biden at White House

Trump and President Joe Biden met at the White House and discussed the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East on Wednesday despite deep differences, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said.

They discussed important national security and domestic policy issues facing the nation and the world. It was indeed very cordial, very gracious, and substantive.

Biden argued that supporting Ukraine was good for US national security because a strong and stable Europe would prevent America from being drawn into a war. Trump, in turn, promised to quickly put an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but did not specify how to do it.

Meanwhile, Edison Research predicted that Republicans would have a majority in the House of Representatives. This means that Trump’s party will control both houses of Congress. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk also joined Trump in meeting with Republican lawmakers.

The White House said Trump’s team, which announced some of the new president’s cabinet members, has yet to sign agreements that will lead to office space and government equipment.

Trump assembles his team

Trump’s team is led by two billionaires, Howard Lutnick, CEO of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, and Linda McMahon, chairman of the board of directors of America First Policy Institute and former head of the Small Business Association. McMahon is working on political strategy, while Lutnick is recruiting people for the future administration.

Robert Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate, has an honoured place on the “transition team.” Another Trump ally who has joined his party is former Democratic member of the House of Representatives Tulsi Gabbard. However, a key role in shaping the future administration is likely to be played by Trump’s two eldest sons, Eric and Donald. It was Donald Trump Jr. who convinced his father to choose J.D. Vance as his running mate.

Trump nominated Fox News host Pete Hegseth, a National Guard veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as US defence secretary. Florida Congressman Mike Waltz will become US National Security Advisor. Trump also appointed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Thomas Homan to be in charge of US immigration policy and border security.

The Republican appointed Elon Musk to reform the administration. The Federal Trade Commission may be headed by Vance adviser Gail Slater or the department’s current commissioner, Mellisa Holyoak. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is likely to become the head of the Department of Energy.

Read more HERE