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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months ago

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de Adder

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 8, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 09, 2024

Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices as reporters are covering that information. Daniel Laguna of LevelUp warned that Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on Chinese imports could raise the costs of gaming consoles by 40%, so that a PS5 Pro gaming system would cost up to $1,000. One of the old justifications for tariffs was that they would bring factories home, but when the $3 billion shoe company Steve Madden announced yesterday it would reduce its imports from China by half to avoid Trump-promised tariffs, it said it will shift production not to the U.S., but to Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil.

There are also stories that voters who chose Trump to lower household expenses are unhappy to discover that their undocumented relatives are in danger of deportation. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked Indiana Republican senator-elect Jim Banks if undocumented immigrants who had been here for a long time and integrated into the community would be deported, Banks answered that deportation should include “every illegal in this country that we can find.” Yesterday a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down a policy established by the Biden administration that was designed to create an easier path to citizenship for about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens.

Meanwhile, Trump’s advisors told Jim VandeHei and MIke Allen of Axios that Trump wasted valuable time at the beginning of his first term and that they will not make that mistake again. They plan to hit the ground running with tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, deregulation, and increased gas and oil production. Trump is looking to fill the top ranks of the government with “billionaires, former CEOs, tech leaders and loyalists.”

After the election, the wealth of Trump-backer Elon Musk jumped about $13 billion, making him worth $300 billion. Musk, who has been in frequent contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin, joined a phone call today between President-elect Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.

In Salon today, Amanda Marcotte noted that in states all across the country where voters backed Trump, they also voted for abortion rights, higher minimum wage, paid sick and family leave, and even to ban employers from forcing their employees to sit through right-wing or anti-union meetings. She points out that 12% of voters in Missouri voted both for abortion rights and for Trump.

Marcotte recalled that Catherine Rampell and Youyou Zhou of the Washington Post showed before the election that voters overwhelmingly preferred Harris’s policies to Trump’s if they didn’t know which candidate proposed them. An Ipsos/Reuters poll from October showed that voters who were misinformed about immigration, crime, and the economy tended to vote Republican, while those who knew the facts preferred Democrats. Many Americans turn for information to social media or to friends and family who traffic in conspiracy theories. As Angelo Carusone of Media Matters put it: “We have a country that is pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.”

In The New Republic today, Michael Tomasky reinforced that voters chose Trump in 2024 not because of the economy or inflation, or anything else, but because of how they perceived those issues—which is not the same thing. Right-wing media “fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win,” Tomasky wrote. Right-wing media has overtaken legacy media to set the country’s political agenda not only because it’s bigger, but because it speaks with one voice, “and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.”

Tomasky noted how the work of Matthew Gertz of Media Matters shows that nearly all the crazy memes that became central campaign issues—the pet-eating story, for example, or the idea that the booming economy was terrible—came from right-wing media. In those circles, Vice President Kamala Harris was a stupid, crazed extremist who orchestrated a coup against President Joe Biden and doesn’t care about ordinary Americans, while Trump is under assault and has been for years, and he’s “doing it all for you.”

Investigative reporter Miranda Green outlined how “pink slime” newspapers, which are AI generated from right-wing sites, turned voters to Trump in key swing state counties. Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who studies focus groups, told NPR, “When I ask voters in focus groups if they think Donald Trump is an authoritarian, the #1 response by far is, ‘What is an authoritarian?’”

In a social media post, Marcotte wrote: “A lot of voters are profoundly ignorant. More so than in the past.” That jumped out to me because there was, indeed, an earlier period in our history when voters were “pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.”

In the 1850s, white southern leaders made sure that voters did not have access to news that came from outside the American South, and instead steeped them in white supremacist information. They stopped the mail from carrying abolitionist pamphlets, destroyed presses of antislavery newspapers, and drove antislavery southerners out of their region.

Elite enslavers had reason to be concerned about the survival of their system of human enslavement. The land boom of the 1840s, when removal of Indigenous peoples had opened up rich new lands for settlement, had priced many white men out of the market. They had become economically unstable, roving around the country working for wages or stealing to survive. And they deeply resented the fabulously wealthy enslavers who they knew looked down on them.

In 1857, North Carolinian Hinton Rowan Helper wrote a book attacking enslavement. No friend to his Black neighbors, Helper was a virulent white supremacist. But in The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, he used modern statistics to prove that slavery destroyed economic opportunity for white men, and assailed “the illbreeding and ruffianism of the slaveholding officials.” He noted that voters in the South who did not own slaves outnumbered by far those who did. "Give us fair play, secure to us the right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the difficulty at the ballot-box,” he wrote.

In the North the book sold like hotcakes—142,000 copies by fall 1860. But southern leaders banned the book, and burned it, too. They arrested men for selling it and accused northerners of making war on the South. Politicians, newspaper editors, and ministers reinforced white supremacy, warned that the end of slavery would mean race war, and preached that enslavement was God’s law.

When northern voters elected Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 on a platform of containing enslavement in the South, where the sapped soil would soon cut into production, southern leaders decided—usually without the input of voters—to secede from the Union. As leaders promised either that there wouldn’t be a fight, or that if a fight happened it would be quick and painless, poor southern whites rallied to the cause of creating a nation based on white supremacy, reassured by South Carolina senator James Chesnut’s vow that he would personally drink all the blood shed in any threatened civil war.

When Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, poor white men set out for what they had come to believe was an imperative cause to protect their families and their way of life. By 1862 their enthusiasm had waned, and leaders passed a conscription law. That law permitted wealthy men to hire a substitute and exempted one man to oversee every 20 enslaved men, providing another way for rich men to keep their sons out of danger. Soldiers complained it was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”

By 1865 the Civil War had killed or wounded 483,026 men out of a southern white population of about five and a half million people. U.S. armies had pushed families off their lands, and wartime inflation drove ordinary people to starvation. By 1865, wives wrote to their soldier husbands to come home or there would be no one left to come home to.

Even those poor white men who survived the war could not rebuild into prosperity. The war took from the South its monopoly of global cotton production, locking poor southerners into profound poverty from which they would not begin to recover until the 1930s, when the New Deal began to pour federal money into the region.

Today, when I received a slew of messages gloating that Trump had won the election and that Republican voters had owned the libs, I could not help but think of that earlier era when ordinary white men sold generations of economic aspirations for white supremacy and bragging rights.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#deAdder #Political Cartoons #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #american history #history #The American south #the Civil War #misinformation #disinformation #crazy memes

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covid-safer-hotties · 4 months ago

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It's disgusting how little movement has been made since this article was published. Biden declared a victory only to be forced to step down by a covid infection this summer. We're done being ignored.

By Jamie Ducharme

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is used to feeling like the only person in the country who still cares about COVID-19. He ignores the side-eye he gets for wearing an N95 mask at parties—a self-imposed policy that makes him “look odd” but kept him safe after a recent work dinner turned into a superspreader event. The oncologist, bioethicist, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania provides each of his students with an N95 and runs four HEPA air filters during lectures. He rolls down the windows when he gets in an Uber and goes hungry on planes so he can wear his mask the whole time. He’s given up one of his favorite pastimes—dining at restaurants—even now that many people don’t think twice about eating indoors.

Emanuel, 65, takes these precautions even though he’s vaccinated and boosted and thus well protected against severe COVID-19. The acute disease doesn’t scare him much—but what could come after does. “The only thing that’s preventing me from leading a normal life is the risk that I’ll get Long COVID,” Emanuel says. “I can’t say why people aren’t [reacting like] their hair’s on fire. This is a serious, serious illness.”

Emanuel’s not totally alone. In a July Axios-Ipsos poll, 17% of people said their biggest fear related to COVID-19 is the possibility of getting Long COVID, a potentially disabling condition in which symptoms linger or emerge well after an acute infection. But at a time when the majority of U.S. adults think there’s little risk in returning to normal, mask wearers, test takers, and social distancers walk a lonely road.

Even public-health agencies seem over it. Throughout 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has rolled back many of its recommended COVID-19 precautions. CDC guidance no longer recommends social distancing, mask-wearing, or screening tests for most people who don’t have symptoms, and unvaccinated people don’t need to quarantine if they’re exposed to the virus. In a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sept. 18, President Joe Biden said “the pandemic is over,” even though “we still have a problem with COVID.”

The following day, chronic disease advocates protested in front of the White House, arguing that Long COVID and the related condition myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome constitute a public-health emergency and demanding that the Biden Administration improve its public-education campaigns, financial support for patients, and research efforts.

The CDC says its COVID-19 guidance is meant to prevent “medically significant COVID-19 illness,” which includes both severe acute disease and Long COVID. The agency contends its lighter touch is warranted now that the vast majority of the U.S. population has good protection against severe disease from being vaccinated, contracting COVID-19, or both. “Our emphasis on preventing severe disease will also help prevent cases of post-COVID conditions, as post-COVID conditions are found more often in people who had severe COVID-19 illness,” Dr. Barbara Mahon, who oversees work on coronaviruses and other respiratory diseases at the CDC, said in response to questions from TIME about the agency’s Long COVID guidance.

But even with high levels of population immunity, Long COVID cases continue to pile up. By the CDC’s own estimate from June, one in five U.S. adults with a known prior case of COVID-19 had symptoms of Long COVID. Having COVID-19 also raises a person’s risk of developing chronic conditions including heart disease, asthma, and diabetes, according to CDC research.

Long COVID can take many forms, including exhaustion, cognitive dysfunction, neurological issues, and chronic pain. People can develop it whether they’re young or old, sick or healthy, vaccinated or not. And while some people get better in a matter of months, recent studies and many patient experiences show symptoms can last years. There is no known cure for Long COVID, and the only way to prevent it is not to get infected at all.

That, a vocal group of experts and advocates say, is why people should resist the U.S.’ collective shrug to the unchecked spread of COVID-19. The virus may not kill or hospitalize as many people as it once did, but it still upends lives every day. Around 1.2 million people in the U.S. became disabled as a result of the virus by the end of 2021, according to the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. Up to 4 million people in the U.S. are out of work because of Long COVID. Specialists who treat Long COVID report months-long waitlists. And in the current “let it rip” phase of the pandemic, all of that may get worse.

“We’re in the middle of the greatest mass-disabling event in human history,” says Long COVID patient and advocate Charlie McCone. And unless people wake up to the long-term consequences of COVID-19, it is “going to continue taking folks out like fish in a barrel.”

President Joe Biden ran on a promise to defeat COVID-19. And for a while, it looked like he would deliver. In the spring and early summer of 2021, the U.S. was recording about 12,000 cases per day. Vaccines were working. Masks were coming off. Life was good.

Then Delta hit, followed by the tsunami of Omicron, and the path out of the pandemic no longer looked clear. The messaging began to shift: the U.S. would learn to live with COVID-19, rather than defeating it. We couldn’t stop all infections, but we could defang them through vaccines, boosters, and treatments like the antiviral Paxlovid. The masks could stay off, even if the virus wasn’t gone.

Many Americans welcomed the return to normalcy. But to McCone, 32, that approach is “a crime against humanity,” given what we now know about Long COVID.

McCone got sick in March 2020. COVID-19 knocked him flat. He almost went to his local emergency room because he was so short of breath, and it took weeks for his respiratory symptoms to improve. After about a month, he finally felt well enough to ride his bike. “I just fell apart,” McCone remembers. The 15-minute ride left him with unshakeable exhaustion—and a sign that this would be no ordinary recovery.

More than two years later, McCone barely leaves the house, except for medical appointments. He still has severe fatigue, chest pain, shortness of breath, and nervous system dysfunction. He can’t work because of his symptoms, and his partner has become his caretaker. His symptoms got even worse after catching COVID-19 again in September 2021, so he’s “petrified” of getting reinfected—a fear he wishes more people shared.

“We’re letting millions of Americans and people across the globe walk, unwittingly, straight into this pit,” he says.

Hannah Davis, a machine learning expert who began researching Long COVID after her own diagnosis, also got sick in March 2020. Davis has testified about Long COVID before Congress and advised federal health officials about the condition. She says those experiences have shown her that health officials understand that Long COVID is a substantial problem, and that, while vaccines reduce the risk of developing it—by some amount between 15% and 50%, studies suggest—they are not failsafe. The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics recently reported that roughly 4.5% of triple-vaccinated adults developed Long COVID after being infected by Omicron. But the government doesn’t seem to want to dwell on these scary stats, Davis says. “It really looks like it’s being hidden intentionally,” she says.

Davis believes that’s because the Biden Administration leaned heavily on vaccines as a ticket out of the pandemic and is wary of walking back that messaging now, even as fully vaccinated and boosted people contract Long COVID. A representative for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not directly respond to that allegation when asked by TIME, but emphasized the importance of vaccination and said the department is still working “to understand this new post-infectious landscape.”

“Individuals, communities, and organizations must make decisions that create the right balance between the need to protect themselves and others from the effects of COVID-19 and the need to stay healthy in every sense of the word—such as mental health, getting an education, preventive and chronic disease care, and social interaction,” the CDC’s Mahon said in a statement.

Health officials are not doing enough to prevent transmission of the virus and help people understand its risks, says Kristin Urquiza, who founded the advocacy group Marked By COVID after her father died from the virus in 2020. “Leaders have thrown their hands up in the air and basically said, ‘You do you,’” she says.

The federal government has taken some action on Long COVID. In late 2020, Congress gave the National Institutes of Health (NIH) more than $1 billion to study it. But so far, this funding has yielded no treatments, no preventative tools, and little research that is immediately useful to patients. The NIH’s cornerstone Long COVID research project aimed to enroll 40,000 people; as of August, it had enrolled only about 8,000. That’s in large part because of the complexity and scope of the trial, according to the NIH.

Lawmakers have introduced bills meant to improve research and support for Long COVID, but they’ve reportedly stalled due to a lack of support in Congress. And in August, HHS released two highly anticipated reports on Long COVID—one describing resources available to patients, the other outlining the government’s research agenda—that were largely panned by Long COVID advocates as more symbolic than substantive.

“Many of the resources provided in the reports seem like cold comforts and temporary Band-Aids when a tourniquet and emergency surgery is needed,” Urquiza said in a statement to Rolling Stone about the reports.

The HHS representative told TIME the reports are just the beginning, and the Administration’s work on Long COVID is ongoing. For people with Long COVID, “It can feel like the world is moving on, while leaving them behind,” the spokesperson wrote in the statement. “The Administration’s message to them is that, ‘We see you, we hear you, and we are taking action to help.'”

Some Long COVID advocates and scientists have called for an initiative like Operation Warp Speed—the Trump Administration program that quickly yielded multiple effective COVID-19 vaccines—for Long COVID treatments. But the NIH hasn’t built anything of the sort, says David Putrino, a Long COVID researcher at New York’s Mount Sinai health system. Despite its $1 billion budget for Long COVID research, “There’s been no process change between how they fund things outside of a health emergency and how they’re funding things in the midst of a health crisis,” he says. “We’re still following the same grant application procedures, the administrative load is the same if not more, and they have not hired additional people to program manage the grants.” In a statement, the NIH said application review is handled by an “ample and diverse set of experts.”

Dr. Eric Topol, founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and a prolific parser of COVID-19 research on Twitter, says the NIH is doing good research on the underlying science of Long COVID, but he’d like to see more trials focused on treatments. “You need to do both, because we can’t wait another year or two for the biology to be better defined,” Topol says. (The NIH says it will begin treatment-focused trials this fall. Mahon says the CDC also continues to research Long COVID symptoms, prevalence, and risk factors.)

Research delays are not for lack of intriguing leads. A tremendous amount of Long COVID research has been published in the last two years, most coming out of independent laboratories, Putrino says. From this work, scientists have found multiple possible explanations for Long COVID symptoms: SARS-CoV-2 virus lingering in the body, abnormal immune system activity, reactivation of other viruses previously lying dormant, tiny blood clots throughout the body, and more. These disparate findings suggest that there may be different root causes or subtypes of Long COVID, which means all patients might not respond to the same therapy. But each one suggests a possible path to treatment worth testing sooner rather than later, Topol says.

Nobody knows exactly how prevalent Long COVID is, and some researchers argue that the CDC’s estimate of one patient per five COVID-19 cases is high. But, even using more conservative prevalence estimates, the volume of infections in the U.S. means the scale of the problem is massive. About 60,000 people in the U.S. currently test positive for COVID-19 daily. Even by more modest estimates, that means the seeds for a possibly debilitating condition are planted in thousands of people every day. During just the first two years of the pandemic, at least 17 million people in Europe developed Long COVID, according to a Sept. 13 report commissioned by the World Health Organization.

“If we have millions of people being infected, we’re going to have millions of people getting Long COVID,” Emanuel says. “That’s going to be an ongoing, serious national problem that is going to weigh down the economy, weigh down the disability insurance system, and be tragic for people.”

Journalist and author Katie Hafner, 64, was one of the unlucky people to develop Long COVID after being vaccinated and boosted. She got infected in May and was left with significant fatigue and brain fog. Her Long COVID symptoms were on the milder end of the spectrum and have improved with time, but Hafner says she can still manage only a few hours of work per day and has to carefully monitor her physical and mental energy levels. Her anxiety has also escalated since getting sick.

Hafner’s husband is Dr. Robert Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Between his wife’s experience and his close monitoring of COVID-19 research, Wachter is concerned enough about Long COVID to avoid indoor dining and wear a good mask in crowded areas. For people who aren’t immersed in the research, though, “the cognitive load of doing all this three-dimensional chess [around risk calculation] is too much,” he says. “To me, the CDC hasn’t been very vigorous on Long COVID,” providing less guidance about prevention and risks than it did for acute infections.

Those risks are substantial. Wachter says he’s worried about Long COVID’s impact on the health care system—not just in already overloaded Long COVID clinics, but system-wide. “If it turns out that it markedly increases the rates of some of the biggest medical hazards we have in life”—including organ failure, heart disease, and dementia, as research currently suggests— “the toll of that over years and years will be tremendous,” Wachter says. “I don’t think [the CDC has] done a good job explaining that at all.”

The economic toll could also be massive. Up to 4 million adults in the U.S. are out of work because of Long COVID, costing the economy at least $170 billion in annual lost wages alone, according to a Brookings Institution report published in August. A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis suggests just 44% of people who worked before they got Long COVID are now fully employed, with the remainder either out of a job or working reduced hours.

Many long-haulers who are unable to work have turned to the disability system. But, anecdotally, many have had trouble getting their claims approved, either because they’re outright denied or forced to jump through hoops to prove they’re truly unable to work. A representative for the Social Security Administration said in a statement that, as of August, it had received about 38,000 applications that mention COVID-19, representing about 1% of recent claims—but since decisions are based on functional limitations, not diagnoses, it’s difficult to say how many people have sought support due to Long COVID.

Experts say there is more that can be done, even before new therapies are discovered or developed. To slow transmission and thus lower rates of Long COVID, Topol says the CDC should tell people to isolate for longer than five days after getting infected and campaign harder for people to get booster shots. Emanuel, meanwhile, would like to see better communication about which masks protect wearers from infection; respirators like N95s are more effective than surgical or cloth masks, but many people still walk around in droopy blue surgical masks. Public indoor spaces, like restaurants and schools, should also have enforceable requirements for ventilation and air filtration, given the virus’ ability to spread in the air.

A return to mask mandates would also be a good step, Davis says. But even if none of those changes are enacted, she says the government should at least emphasize how common Long COVID appears to be and that it can affect vaccinated people. She fears many vaccinated people think they’re in the clear and can’t get Long COVID, because the Administration has sung the shots’ praises so much. “We’re just drowning in this sea of misinformation that is not only causing people to poorly think about their own risk, but also putting other people at risk,” Davis says.

Those with Long COVID often say they feel like they’re screaming into the void, trying to get through to people who either aren’t aware of or don’t care about the condition and the possibility it could affect them, too. In grocery stores, Hafner marvels—and seethes—at the bare faces she sees. Sometimes, when she’s the only person wearing a mask, “I think, ‘Am I a pariah?’” Hafner says. “We’re at that point where the people in masks are the outliers.”

For many people who are done with the pandemic and the caution that came with it, a maskless supermarket may seem like a sign of progress. But for those with an intimate understanding of Long COVID, it feels like a bad omen.

“It’s no way to live,” McCone says of his day-to-day existence since developing Long COVID. His worst fear, and one that looks like it may come true if progress isn’t made soon, is that millions more people will have to learn that the hard way.

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misfitwashere · 3 months ago

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November 8, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 9

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#heather cox richardson #letters from an american

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vague-humanoid · 8 months ago

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A quarter of Americans hold unfavorable views of bothPresident Biden and former President Trump — the highest share of "double haters" at this stage in any of the last 10 elections, according to new Pew Research data.

Why it matters: The closely watched bloc has nearly doubled in size since 2020, making this fall's Trump vs. Biden rematch the most dreaded election in modern political history.

The big picture: Top strategists say the race is likely to be decided by 6% of voters in six swing states. Many of them will hold their nose and pick a candidate they dislike in November.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims to be on the ballot in several of those states, offering a third-party option that both the Biden and Trump campaigns are scrambling to neutralize.

Whichever candidate can mobilize more "double haters" to back them in November could have a decisive advantage in the Electoral College, given the razor-thin margins.

Zoom in: Trump has made inroads with Republican critics in recent weeks, using a visit to Capitol Hill — and a handshake with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — to showcase the GOP's post-primary unity.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, whose primary voters represent a huge cross-section of Trump-Biden skeptics, finally endorsed Trump last month.

A steady drumbeat of wealthy GOP donors who condemned Trump after Jan. 6 are once again getting out their checkbooks, unable to stomach a second Biden term.

Between the lines: 67% of "double haters" believe Trump should end his campaign in the wake of his felony conviction, according to a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll.

The Biden campaign sees that and other polling data as evidence that the president will win over this critical bloc of voters by the time Nov. 5 arrives.

"They may dislike both candidates, but the intensity on Trump's negative is higher," Democratic pollster Jefrey Pollock told Axios. "A campaign that has the resources to persuade those individuals has some advantage."

The bottom line: Between 1988 and 2012, at least one of the major party nominees had a favorability rating over 50%. Both Trump and Biden will be lucky to draw much higher than 40% by the time they're nominated this summer.

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yourreddancer · 3 months ago

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Heather Cox Richardson 11.8.24

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mariacallous · 2 years ago

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The US Republican Party has become increasingly authoritarian and extreme in recent years, and it doesn’t seem likely to moderate that in the foreseeable future. Despite performing poorly in the 2022 midterms after running many candidates the public saw as too extreme, the GOP has decided to elevate and empower far-right lawmakers like representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz.

In Florida, books have been removed from school shelves as governor Ron DeSantis tries to reshape the public education system in his own image. Republican lawmakers around the US have passed abortion bans that put pregnant women’s lives in danger. The rights of transgender people are under attack throughout the country.

Nearly half of Republicans say they would prefer “strong, unelected leaders” over “weak elected ones,” according to a September Axios-Ipsos poll, and around 55 percent of Republicans say defending the “traditional” way of life by force may soon become necessary. About 61 percent of Republicans don’t believe the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Finding examples of extremism, a lust for authoritarian leaders, and general antidemocratic beliefs in America is not difficult these days—just spend a few minutes online. The question is how far down the rabbit hole the United States has gone and where it may end up in the not-too-distant future.

“To call a party democratic—committed to democracy—they’ve got to do three basic things: They have to unambiguously accept election results, they have to unambiguously renounce violence, and they have to consistently and unambiguously break with extremists or antidemocratic forces,” says Steve Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University. “I think the Republican Party now fails these three basic tests.”

Levitsky says far too many Republican leaders have flirted with using violence to achieve their political goals and spread lies about the most recent presidential election. He says politicians like DeSantis appear to be experimenting with an authoritarian way of governing in their own states that could be applied at the national level should they successfully run for president.

It’s difficult to find an apt comparison between the Republican Party and authoritarian movements that have risen elsewhere for a variety of reasons. One, Levitsky says, is that Donald Trump took over a party that has existed for nearly 170 years and made it more authoritarian. Historically, authoritarians tend to start their own parties. Another is that a relatively small percentage of the populace was able to wield such great power under Trump.

“There’s a minority of the population that’s pretty reactionary and, by a bunch of measures, fairly authoritarian in really all Western democracies,” Levitsky says. “The question is, how are they channeled into politics? What’s exceptional about the United States is that 25 percent or so was actually able to wield national power. Is MAGA comparable to far-right parties in Europe? Yeah. With the exception of maybe Golden Dawn in Greece, though, probably more openly authoritarian.”

Authoritarian movements of the past share characteristics with what we’re seeing in the US today—from Turkey and Hungary more recently to the rise of fascism in the 1920s—but the US governmental system and political parties present particular hurdles and windows of opportunity.

Assuming democracy remains intact in the years to come, Levitsky thinks the GOP will have to eventually moderate its stance in response to changing demographics. The current extremism will not be sustainable if the party hopes to win enough elections to wield power in the future. However, Levitsky thinks any adjustments could take longer than one would hope.

“The problem is our incentives—the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, the fact that sparsely populated territories are dramatically overrepresented in our electoral system—allows the Republicans to wield a lot of power without winning national majorities,” Levitsky says. “If the Republican Party actually had to win over 50 percent of the national vote to control the Senate, to control the presidency, to control the Supreme Court, you would not see them behaving the way they’re behaving. They would never win.”

It remains to be seen whether Trump will be the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election, but there’s clear evidence that the effects of his actions wouldn’t simply disappear if he wasn’t controlling the party. A lot of Americans have been radicalized since he first took office, and it’s not easy to roll that back.

“I think the consensus is that democracy is not in the clear, and that’s because the rhetoric and actions of the GOP have emboldened their supporters to sort of accept certain behaviors that we wouldn’t have thought were in line with democracy,” says Erica Frantz, an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University. “Suddenly it’s OK to question if our elections are free and fair. Suddenly it’s OK to be provocative and suggest you might use violence if the election doesn’t go your way.”

Frantz says large sectors of the US population accept the authoritarian messaging Trump spearheaded, and that is likely going to have lasting effects. She says the fact that Trump was successfully removed from office despite his attempts to overturn the election in 2020 is a big deal, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to protect American democracy.

“I don’t think we’re going to backslide to dictatorship. The probability is higher than before Trump, but it’s still low compared to many other countries,” Frantz says. “It is very possible that we’ll muddle along for quite some time in this situation where undemocratic norms are being spouted and perpetuated by one of our main parties.”

In terms of what supporters of democracy can do in the face of an authoritarian movement, there’s no silver bullet—but there are ways to push back. Levitsky says it’s important to form large coalitions to “isolate and defeat” authoritarians, which means uniting democracy supporters on the left and the right.

A. James McAdams, a professor of international affairs at the University of Notre Dame, says those who oppose authoritarianism need a strong message that will appeal to people who might be pulled in by authoritarian leaders.

“If you look back historically, one of the big problems in democracies has always been that the forces of reason can’t figure out what they stand for,” McAdams says. “We’re at a point in history today in the United States and Europe where moderate parties aren’t sure what to say.”

You also need to support and strengthen democratic institutions like the courts, McAdams says. He says this is particularly important because weak courts are often part of the reason authoritarians are able to take power and chip away at democracy, such as in Latin America in the 1970s.

“If you do have stable democratic institutions—particularly viable courts—then there’s a lot of bullshit that you can overcome,” McAdams says. “Perhaps the greatest victory for American institutions in the Trump age was that the courts weren’t overpowered.”

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yetisidelblog · 3 days ago

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Trump is working overtime to weaponize the Pentagon to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. It’s a misuse of billions of taxpayer dollars, an egregious abuse of national security resources, and it’s sure to have devastating consequences — for immigrants and servicemembers alike.

If you find it abhorrent, you’re far from alone. A recent Axios-Ipsos poll revealed that 62 percent of people across ALL parties oppose using money allocated to the U.S. military to pay for deportation efforts. That opposition ticks even higher — to 72 percent — when people are asked about active duty servicemembers being tasked with finding undocumented immigrants.

That’s not all: Using military resources to detain and deport immigrants isn’t just morally wrong, it’s also financially reckless, cravenly politicizes servicemembers, and may be illegal.

Despite this, the Trump administration has already begun to use aircraft, intelligence systems, and to deploy troops to strengthen a deportation machine capable of devastating millions of lives.

Congress can stop him by refusing to fund this horrible machine, but we know that polling won’t be enough. It’ll take the strength of an entire movement, tirelessly speaking out, to stop the kind of abuse and harm this White House is capable of.

We know that polling won’t be enough. It’ll take the strength of an entire movement, tirelessly speaking out, to avoid further abuse and harm. Together, we will remind Congress that Trump’s schemes aren’t just bad policy, they’re bad politics — exactly the kind of message that can push lawmakers to block taxpayer funds allocated for military operations from being used to target undocumented immigrants.

@upontheshelfreviews

@greenwingspino

@one-time-i-dreamt

@tenaflyviper

@akron-squirrel

@ifihadaworldofmyown

@justice-for-jacob-marley

@voicetalentbrendan

@thebigdeepcheatsy

@what-is-my-aesthetic

@ravenlynclemens

@thegreatallie

@writerofweird

@anon-lephant

@mentally-quiet-spycrab

@therealjacksepticeye

@bogleech

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newstfionline · 17 days ago

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Friday, January 24, 2025

Trump Starts Countdown Toward Tariffs on America’s Largest Trading Partners (NYT) When President Trump did not follow through with his promise to immediately impose new tariffs on his first day in office, business executives and others who support international trade breathed a sigh of relief. That relief was short-lived. On Monday night, just hours after his inauguration speech, Mr. Trump said he planned to put a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico beginning on Feb. 1, claiming that the countries were allowing “mass numbers of people and fentanyl” to come to the United States. On Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump said he would also put an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese products by the same date, accusing China of sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada, which was then crossing into the United States. Mexico, China and Canada account for more than a third of the goods and services that are imported to or bought from the United States, supporting tens of millions of American jobs. Together, the countries purchased more than $1 trillion of U.S. exports and provided nearly $1.5 trillion of goods and services to the United States in 2023, the last year government data is available.

A conflicted public (NYT) There is a tension in U.S. public opinion about President Trump’s immigration plans. After the past four years of record immigration, much of it illegal, most Americans support mass deportations. In a recent Times-Ipsos poll, 55 percent of adults said they favored “deporting all immigrants who are here illegally.” Dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s relatively open immigration policies—especially among working-class voters, across races—helped Trump win the election. Still, most Americans are uncomfortable with the specific policies that would be necessary to deport anywhere close to all undocumented immigrants. Only 38 percent of U.S. adults support using the military “to find and detain undocumented immigrants,” an Axios-Ipsos poll found this month. Only 34 percent said they supported separating families as part of rapid deportations. Trump and his aides will risk a public backlash if they wrongly believe that Americans will support almost any deportations. Many Americans will find it hard to accept the expulsion of undocumented immigrants who have lived here for many years and built stable lives.

Get ready for the world’s first trillionaires (CNN) Move over billionaires. The first trillionaires are on their way. Five people are expected to amass at least $1 trillion in wealth within the next decade, if current trends continue, according to Oxfam’s annual inequality report, released Sunday. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest person worth more than $430 billion, should cross the mark in just under five years. He will soon be joined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and family. 2024 was a very lucrative year for the world’s wealthiest individuals and families, fueled in part by a soaring US stock market, Oxfam found. Their net worth expanded so quickly that Oxfam revised its estimate from last year that only one trillionaire would be crowned in the next decade.

New wildfire in Los Angeles area (Bloomberg) A new fire is spreading rapidly north of Los Angeles, threatening one of California’s main transportation arteries. The Hughes Fire quickly spread to more than 10,000 acres, spurring evacuation orders around Castaic Lake in northern Los Angeles County. Two Interstate 5 off-ramps were closed in the evacuation area and the vital link between northern and southern California was affected by heavy smoke. The LA fires are reviving trauma for homeowners battling insurers over claims. When the last of the embers from what’s set to be the costliest wildfire on record are tamped out, thousands of Los Angeles residents who lost their homes have a new nightmare to face: completing an insurance claim so they can begin to rebuild their lives. For many, the process will likely take years and result in a lower payout than they expect.

The Gulf of Whatnow? (AP) What’s in a name change, after all? The water bordered by the Southern United States, Mexico and Cuba will be critical to shipping lanes and vacationers whether it’s called the Gulf of Mexico, as it has been for four centuries, or the Gulf of America, as President Donald Trump ordered this week. North America’s highest mountain peak will still loom above Alaska whether it’s called Mt. Denali, as ordered by former President Barack Obama in 2015, or changed back to Mt. McKinley as Trump also decreed. But Trump’s territorial assertions, in line with his “America First” worldview, sparked a round of rethinking by mapmakers and teachers, snark on social media and sarcasm by at least one other world leader. And though Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put the Trumpian “Gulf of America” on an official document, it was not clear how many others would follow Trump’s lead. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum joked that if Trump went ahead with the renaming, her country would rename North America “Mexican America.” On Tuesday, she toned it down: “For us and for the entire world it will continue to be called the Gulf of Mexico.”

UN chief warns gangs could overrun Haiti’s capital without additional international security support (AP) Gangs in Haiti could overrun the capital, Port-au-Prince, leading to a complete breakdown of government authority without additional international support for the beleaguered national police, the United Nations chief warned. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a report released to coincide with a Security Council meeting Wednesday on the deteriorating situation in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country that “time is of the essence.” Further delays in providing the police with additional officers for the multinational force trying to curb gang violence or additional assistance “carry the risk of a catastrophic collapse of national security institutions,” he said. “This could allow the gangs to overrun the entire metropolitan area, resulting in a complete breakdown of state authority and rendering international operations, including those to support communities in need, in the country untenable,” Guterres said.

EU needs to end its military dependency on the US and arm itself ‘to survive,’ says Tusk (AP) The European Union cannot rely on the United States to defend it and must increase military spending and security preparedness to help Ukraine and deter Russia from targeting any more of its neighbors, top EU officials warned on Wednesday. “Ask not of America what it can do for our security. Ask yourselves what we can do for our own security,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose country holds the EU presidency, said, paraphrasing a quote from U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961. In an address to EU lawmakers, Tusk urged the 27-nation bloc to “take control” of its own security and to identify its weaknesses. “If Europe is to survive, it must be armed,” he said.

‘In every street there are dead’: Gaza rescuers reckon with scale of destruction (BBC) On the first full day of peace in Gaza on Monday, rescue workers and civilians began to reckon with the sheer scale of the destruction to the Strip. Gaza’s Civil Defence agency—the strip’s main emergency response service—said it feared there were more than 10,000 bodies still buried under the vast sea of rubble. “In every street there are dead. In every neighbourhood there are people under the buildings,” said Abdullah Al-Majdalawi, a 24-year-old Civil Defence worker in Gaza City. The UN has previously estimated that 60% of structures across Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the war has left more than two million Gazans homeless, without income, and completely dependent on food aid to survive.

U.S. Security Contractors Going to Gaza to Oversee Truce, Officials Say (NYT) American security contractors have been enlisted to help handle the return of displaced Palestinians to the Gaza Strip’s devastated north, the next step in the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, according to four officials familiar with the matter. The contractors are poised to help secure a key zone that splits Gaza in two and is known as the Netzarim corridor. The contractors are intended to screen vehicles ferrying Palestinians from the enclave’s south for weapons. In the early days of the war, the Israeli military ordered a mass evacuation of northern Gaza, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee south. For months, Israeli soldiers have patrolled the Netzarim corridor in part to prevent Palestinians from heading back north. But under the terms of a 42-day cease-fire now in its fifth day, Israeli troops are set to partially withdraw over the weekend and allow Gazans to head north. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has said for months that Israel will not allow armed fighters to return to northern Gaza.

Over 20,000 Palestinian Children Orphaned by War in Gaza (Drop Site News) Eleven-year-old Mohammad Sharaara lies alone in a hospital bed at the Nasser Medical Complex. He is the sole survivor of six members of his family killed in an Israeli strike on their home in Khan Younis last month, including both his parents. Mohammad lost his left leg in the bombing. He is receiving treatment to recover and resume his life with a permanent disability, but has no one to care or provide for him. For the children of Gaza, the carnage is unprecedented in recent history. Over 14,500 children have been killed since October 2023, according to the health ministry. Of the 1.9 million people—9 out of 10 residents in Gaza—who have been internally displaced, half of them are children, according to UNICEF. Many of the children who survived, belong to a new generation of Palestinian orphans. Mohammad is one of approximately 20,000 orphaned children who have lost one or both parents since Israel’s war on Gaza began 15 months ago, according to Ismail Al-Thawabtah, director general of the Government Media Office. More than 40% of families in Gaza are taking care of children not their own, he added.

A rebel group is advancing on eastern Congo’s largest city and over 100,000 people have fled (AP) The M23 rebel group’s advance toward eastern Congo’s largest city has displaced over 178,000 people in the past two weeks, the United Nations said, as the fighters closed in on Goma on the border with Rwanda. The M23 has been making significant advances, though it was unclear whether the rebels will try to capture Goma, which they seized in 2012 and controlled for over a week. Congolese authorities said Tuesday its fighters seized the town of Minova, on a key supply route for Goma, a regional hub for security and humanitarian efforts. M23 is one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in mineral-rich eastern Congo in a decades-long conflict that has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. More than 7 million people have been displaced.

Hurkle-durkling, Scotland’s proud tradition of lazing in bed (Washington Post) On vacation, you might suppress the urge to seize the day. Instead, you sink deeper into the sheets, disappearing under the duvet like the moon behind a cloud. By all appearances, you are doing nothing. But, quite the opposite: You are hurkle-durkling. Hurkle-durkling is not a cutesy term generated by AI or the travel PR machine. It’s a 19th-century Scottish word that the Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines as “to lie in bed or lounge about when one should be up.” The practice is experiencing a resurgence. The custom even appears in Hilton’s 2025 trends report, where the hospitality company noted a growing interest in hurkle-durkling, a more alert version of the sleepcation, among hotel guests. Both trends fall under the booming category of wellness tourism. Unlike other wellness experiences, such as sylvotherapy (you need to hike to the forest to bathe in it) or snowga (yoga in snow), hurkle-durkling takes no effort whatsoever.

#headlines #news

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plethoraworldatlas · 7 months ago

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The largest progressive Latinx political organization in the U.S., Mijente, said Thursday that it will not be officially endorsing a presidential candidate in the 2024 race—but emphasized that its non-endorsement doesn't mean it believes Latino voters should be disengaged from the election or the fights that will continue regardless of who wins.

In a video featuring organizers and community members from across the country, Mijente grapples with the reality that many Latino voters and rights advocates are "currently disillusioned with the Biden administration."

An Axios-Ipsos poll in April found that while Latino voters support the Democratic Party on issues such as abortion rights and immigration, support for President Joe Biden among the community had fallen precipitously to 41%, down from 55% in December 2021.

Biden, who is facing pressure to step aside in the presidential race, has recently cracked down on migrants' ability to seek asylum, and he expanded former President Donald Trump's Title 42 rule aimed at swiftly deporting immigrants.

#us politics #biden administration #joe biden #vote uncommitted #pass the torch

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sergejbiohazardov · 8 months ago

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Какие-то новости

BDSN 154.154.30..06.24.

Политика, стихия

Лесные пожары охватили три провинции в Турции. Протесты в Тель-Авиве, призывают к досрочным выборам и сделке с ХАМАС по освобождению заложников. Укра��на бомбила РФ. НАТО рядом с границей Белоруссии собрало 10 батальонных тактических групп, на что РБ грозит применением ядерного оружия.

Местное.

Юрмала поднимает цены на общественный транспорт не для местных, стоимость одной поездки составит 90 центов, а на 5-м автобусном маршруте «Булдури - станция Кемери» цена билета вырастет до 1 евро 10 центов. Регистраторы билетов в новых поездах Латвии до сих пор не работают, потому что весной поменялись виды и тарифы билетов и не успели переконфигурировать. С понедельника можно заключать брак без свидетелей. До 31 октября можно бесплатно сдать анализ крови на боррелиоз собак, образец сыворотки крови нужно сдать в лабораторию в Риге, ул. Лейупес, 3, или в любой региональный пункт приема образцов Bior.

Разное.

Помощники Байдена объяснили его неудачное выступление на дебатах поздним временем их проведения. Дебаты начались в 21:00 по местному времени. По их словам, публичные мероприятия с президентом США перед камерами обычно проводятся с 10:00 до 16:00. За пределами этого временного диапазона Байден с большей вероятностью допускает словесные ошибки и утомляется, рассказали источники издания Axios. Так же NBC пишет, что участие Байдена в предвыборной гонке зависит от решения его жены. Свыше 70% американцев считают, что умственное состояние Байдена не позволяет ему бороться за переизбрание на пост президента США. При этом избиратели США почти не изменили мнение о Байдене и Трампе после дебатов, — 538/Ipsos poll. За Байдена готовы проголосовать 46,7% избирателей, за Трампа - 43,9%.

Ахуенное оправдание для руководителя страны и обладателя красной кнопки. Стадо понимающе блеет. И то что жена решает - очень повесточно. Все эти непонятки с опросами во многом показательны. Либо опросы мощно пиздят, либо куча избирателей реально тупые. Я бы поверил в оба варианта.

Очки ночного видения в прошлом: ученые изобрели пленку ночного видения для любых очков, которые достаточно наклеить на линзы, чтобы четко видеть в темноте. Обычно инфракрасный фильтр используют военные и охотники, но теперь он станет доступен для всех.

Предлагаю эту плёнку лепить везде. Зачем не знаю. На всякий случай.

А на фото приз конкурса изображений, созданных нейросетями, который забрала реальная фотография. Эксперты высоко оценили снимок свернувшегося фламинго, но оказалось ее автору просто удалось запечатлеть редкий момент. Выходку мужчина объясняет победами сгенерированных изображений на соревнованиях фотографий и желанием провернуть нечто обратное. Пацан сказал, пацан сделал.

#какиетоновости #картинканемоя #BDSN #news #sergejbiohazardov

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vibetribune · 10 months ago

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 10 months ago

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Pedro X. Molina :: @newcounterpoint :: @pxmolina

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 1, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 02, 2024

On Tuesday, March 26, Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over Trump’s election interference case, put Trump under a gag order to stop his attacks on court staff, prosecutors, jurors, and witnesses. On Wednesday, Trump renewed his attacks on the judge and the judge’s daughter. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton took the unusual step of talking publicly about what threats of violence meant to the rule of law. Walton, who was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, told Kaitlan Collins of CNN that threats, especially threats to a judge’s family, undermine the ability of judges to carry out their duties.

“I think it’s important in order to preserve our democracy that we maintain the rule of law,” Walton said. “And the rule of law can only be maintained if we have independent judicial officers who are able to do their job and ensure that the laws are, in fact, enforced and that the laws are applied equally to everybody who appears in our courthouse.”

On Friday, former president Trump shared on social media a video of a truck with a decal showing President Joe Biden tied up and seemingly in the bed of the truck, in a position suggesting he was being kidnapped.

A threat of violence has always been part of Trump’s political performance. In 2016 he urged rallygoers to “knock the crap out of” protesters, and they did. They also turned on people who weren’t protesters. Political scientists Ayal Feinberg, Regina Branton, and Valerie Martinez-Ebers studied the effects of Trump’s 2016 campaign rhetoric against marginalized Americans and found that counties where Trump held rallies had a significant increase in hate incidents in the month after that rally.

Trump’s stoking of violence became an embrace when he declared there were “very fine people, on both sides,” after protesters stood up against racists, antisemites, white nationalists, Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis, and other alt-right groups met in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they shouted Nazi slogans and left 19 people injured and one protester, Heather Heyer, dead.

In October 2020, Trump refused to denounce the far-right Proud Boys organization, instead telling its members to “stand back and stand by.” The Proud Boys turned out for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, where they helped to lead those rioters fired up by Trump’s speech at The Ellipse, where he told them: “You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing…. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump’s appeals to violence have gotten even more overt since the events of January 6.

And yet, on Meet the Press yesterday, Kristen Welker seemed to suggest that there is a general problem in U.S. politics when she described Trump’s attacks on Judge Merchan as “a reminder that we are covering this election against the backdrop of a deeply divided nation.”

But are the American people deeply divided? Or have Trump and his MAGA supporters driven the Republican Party off the rails?

One of the major issues of the 2024 election—perhaps THE major issue—is reproductive rights. But Americans are not really divided on that issue: on Friday, a new Axios-Ipsos poll found that 81% of Americans agree that “abortion issues should be managed between a woman and her doctor, not the government.” That number includes 65% of Republicans, as well as 82% of Independents and 97% of Democrats. The idea that abortion should be between a woman and her doctor was the language of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, overturned in 2022 with the help of the three extremist justices appointed by Trump.

Last week, the Congressional Management Foundation, which works with Congress to make it more efficient and accountable, released its study of the state of Congress in 2024. It found that senior congressional staffers overwhelmingly think that Congress is not functioning “as a democratic legislature should.” Eighty percent of them think it is not “an effective forum for debate on questions of public concern.”

But there is a significant difference in the parties’ perception of what’s wrong. While 61% of Republican staffers are satisfied that Congress members and staff feel safe doing their jobs, only 21% of Democratic staffers agree, and Democratic staffers are significantly more likely to fear for their and others’ safety. Women and longer-tenured staffers are more likely to be questioning whether to stay in Congress due to safety concerns. Eighty-four percent of Democratic staffers think that agreed-upon rules and codes of conduct for senators and representatives are not sufficient to “hold them accountable for their words and deeds,” while only 44% of Republicans say the same.

Republicans themselves seem split about the direction of their party. Republican staffers were far more likely than Democrats to be “questioning whether I should stay in Congress due to heated rhetoric from my party”: 59% to 16%. “The way the House is ‘functioning,’ is frustrating many members,” wrote one House Republican deputy chief of staff. “We have to placate [certain] members and in my nearly ten years of working here I have never felt more like we’re on the wrong track.”

One Republican Senate communications director blamed extremist political rhetoric for the dysfunction. “[W]ith the nation being in a self-sort mode, it is easy to never hear a dissenting opinion in many areas of the country. People in DC, who work in the Capitol, generally have a collegiate approach to each other. The American people don’t get to see that—at all. From the outside it appears to be a Royal Rumble and bloodsport. It’s reflected in the [way] people, regular citizens, now view one another.”

A Republican House staff director wrote that Congress is “a representative body and a reflection of the people writ large. When they demand something different of their leaders, their leaders will respond (or they will elect different leaders).”

Burgess Everett and Olivia Beavers of Politico reported yesterday that nearly 20 Republican lawmakers and aides have told them they would like Trump to calm down his rhetoric. They appear to think such violent commentary is unpopular and that it will hurt those running in downballot races if they have to answer for it.

It seems unlikely Trump will willingly temper his comments, since threatening violence seems to be all he has left to combat the legal cases bearing down on him. Over the course of Easter morning, he posted more than 70 times on social media, attacking his opponents and declaring himself to be “The Chosen One.”

Tonight, Trump posted a $175 million appeals bond in the New York civil fraud case. He was unable to secure a bond for the full amount of the judgment, but an appeals court lowered the amount. Posting the bond will let him appeal the judge’s decision. If he wins on appeal, he will avoid paying the judgment. If he loses, the bond is designed to guarantee that Trump will pay the entire amount the judge determined he owes to the people of New York: more than $454 million.

Trump and his campaign are short of cash, and there were glimmers last week that the public launch of his media network would produce significant money if he could only hold off judgments until he could sell the stock—six months, according to the current agreement—or use his shares as collateral for a bond. The company’s public launch raised the stock price by billions of dollars.

But this morning the company released its 2023 financial information, showing revenues of $4.1 million last year and a net loss of $58.2 million. The stock plunged about 20%, wiping out about $1 billion of the money that Trump had, on paper anyway, made. The company said it has not made any changes to the provision prohibiting early sales or using shares as collateral.

Tonight, Judge Merchan expanded the previous gag order on Trump to stop attacks on the judge’s family members. Trump has a right “to speak to the American voters freely and to defend himself publicly,” but “[i]t is no longer just a mere possibility or a reasonable likelihood that there exists a threat to the integrity of the judicial proceedings,” Merchan wrote. “The threat is very real.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Rule of Law #Judge Merchan #threats of violence #neo-nazis #KKK #white nationalists

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