#extremist house Speaker Johnson

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Michael de Adder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 30, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 31, 2024

Today, according to Clare Foran, Manu Raju, and Morgan Rimmer of CNN, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told his Republican colleagues that he will not bring forward the bipartisan immigration bill senators have been working on for months, calling it “absolutely dead.” 

Although Johnson insisted in November that border security was so crucial that he wouldn’t bring up aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and Gaza until such legislation was attached to it, Trump has made it clear he wants immigration and border security left on the table for him to use as an issue in his run for the presidency.

Instead of addressing border security through legislation, House Republicans instead are moving forward with their plan to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They wrote articles of impeachment even before holding hearings. Today, members of the House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing to mark up those articles, which claim that Mayorkas committed high crimes and misdemeanors because he allegedly breached the public trust and refused to enforce immigration law. 

In all our history, only one cabinet officer has been impeached. William Belknap, whose eight years as secretary of war under President U. S. Grant had been marked by ostentatious displays of wealth and apparent kickbacks from army contracts, was charged with corruption in March 1876 just hours after he tearfully handed Grant his resignation. 

The House charged Belknap with “criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.” The Senate agreed that it had jurisdiction to hold an impeachment trial even for a former government official, for an officer should not be able to escape justice simply by resigning. After hearing more than 40 witnesses, a majority of senators voted to convict Belknap on each of five charges, but no vote reached the necessary two-thirds threshold for conviction, and he was therefore acquitted. 

Almost 150 years later, the impeachment of Mayorkas would be the second effort to impeach a cabinet member. Yet there is no suggestion that Mayorkas has done anything but try to implement the law, even as the administration has repeatedly asked for more funding to make it possible for him to do his job.

In the hearing today, Representative Seth Magaziner (D-RI) noted that “across the system, we are at and above capacity, and so, what should the secretary do? The secretary, because he has not received the funding to provide adequate detention capacity, has to use his judgment for who to detain and who to release. That is not illegal. It is certainly not impeachable. And it is the exact same kind of discretion that every other director before him has used. In the last two years of the Trump administration, 52% of migrants apprehended at the southern border were released, not detained…. Nearly a million people. I did not hear my Republican colleagues trying to impeach the secretary or acting secretary under the Trump administration during those years. But here they are, trying to impeach Secretary Mayorkas for doing the exact same thing.”

Rather than passing the laws the country needs, the extremist Republicans appear to be determined to tee up an issue on which Trump can run for president in 2024. House speaker Johnson has demanded “ZERO” illegal crossings into the U.S., but this is a standard that no previous homeland security secretary has met because it is impossible to wall off every single means of entering this country by water, air, or land. And—despite Republicans’ false claims that Biden has established “open borders”—immigrants were more likely to be released into the country during Trump's term than during Biden’s. 

What is going on here is an attempt of the extremist Republicans to undercut the administration by attacking a key cabinet officer not for actual misbehavior but on policy grounds.  

There is no chance the Senate, dominated by Democrats, will convict Mayorkas even if the House, with its razor-thin Republican majority, impeaches him, but the extremist minority in the House that is going after him is attempting to set a precedent that a minority can stop the government from functioning. 

The cost of that obstruction has been clear in domestic politics over government funding, but it has now become a global issue over the question of U.S. support for Ukraine. Johnson had said he would not bring forward a bill to provide supplemental funding for Ukraine unless it included measures for increased border security; now his rejection of a bill to provide that border security threatens Ukraine aid. 

Ukraine is defending itself against an invasion by Russia, but the struggle there is larger than one between two countries: it is the question of whether the rules-based international order put in place after World War II will survive, or whether the world will go back to a system in which stronger countries can gobble up less powerful ones. 

Military aid for Ukraine is widely popular among Americans and among American lawmakers, who recognize the larger questions at stake. But extremist Republicans are siding with Trump, who has made his preference for Russia and its autocratic leader over Ukraine clear. The realization that a few extremist Republicans are scuttling Ukraine aid has prompted officials from both parties to warn of the consequences if the U.S. stops providing support to Ukraine.

In Foreign Affairs today, Central Intelligence Agency director Wililam Burns noted that the war has weakened Putin’s Russia significantly. Aid to Ukraine has amounted to less than 5% of the U.S. defense budget, “a relatively modest investment with significant geopolitical returns for the United States and notable returns for American industry,” he wrote.

“For the United States to walk away from the conflict at this crucial moment and cut off support to Ukraine would be an own goal of historic proportions,” Burns said. The secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Jens Stoltenberg, has been in Washington, D.C., this week, urging Republicans to back the aid, if only on the grounds that most of the money appropriated goes to support jobs in the U.S. 

The man behind the extremists, Trump, was in the news today for the fact that the political action committees that back him spent about $50 million covering his legal bills in 2023. That money came from donors and arrived primarily in the months after the 2020 presidential election, when Trump lied that he had actually won the election and needed financial support to challenge the results.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

Jeffries says Republicans should stick with bipartisan deal

By LISA MASCARO

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said a deal is a deal, and any discussion of Trump’s new demands for a debt limit increase are “premature.”

“This reckless Republican driven shutdown can be avoided,” Jeffries said at a press conference at the Capitol.

Republicans should “simply do what is right for the American people and stick with the bipartisan agreement that they themselves negotiated.”

Senior Republicans work to fend off shutdown

By STEPHEN GROVES

Senior Republicans broke from a meeting in the House speaker’s office saying they are still working on a bill to avert a shutdown.

Rep. Tom Emmer, the third-ranked Republican in leadership, said the situation was “fluid.”

Rep. Tom Cole, the chief Republican appropriator, said work had been “good.”

“I think there’s a path forward,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, another senior Republican appropriator.

Still, any legislation would need Democratic support to pass Congress, leaving Republican leaders a treacherous if not impossible task of meeting Donald Trump’s demands while also gaining Democratic votes.

Democrats response to saving GOP from shutdown chaos? ‘Hard pass.’

By FARNOUSH AMIRI

Trump and his allies effort to torpedo a bipartisan spending agreement has left Democrats extremely frustrated after spending weeks engaging in good faith negotiations with Republican leadership.

After meeting with his caucus, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries once again rejected any possibility that his members would bail out Republicans as the shutdown threat looms.

“GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check,” Jeffries posted on social media. “Hard pass.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nick Visser at HuffPost:

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) criticized Republicans for tanking a bipartisan government funding agreement, saying the party was bending to the will of wealthy backers and “puppeteers.” The lawmaker’s remarks were a direct attack on billionaire Elon Musk, whose displeasure with the spending bill — aired on X, the social media site he owns — precipitated holiday season chaos in Washington. President-elect Donald Trump demanded Republicans put forward last-minute changes, including raising or eliminating the debt ceiling. But the effort bombed Thursday night after many Republicans and almost every Democrat refused to go along with it, raising the stakes of a government shutdown just days before Christmas. “The Musk-Johnson government shutdown bill has been soundly defeated,” Jeffries, referring to House Speaker Mike Johnson, wrote on Bluesky, a social media site that serves as a counter to X. “MAGA extremists in the House GOP are not serious about helping working class Americans.” “They are simply doing the bidding of their wealthy donors and puppeteers,” he went on. “Unacceptable.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) rightly torches the GOP for bending over for unelected President-elect Elon Musk.

[misfitwashere]

October 27, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

OCT 28

I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way. 

It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight. 

There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas. 

Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.  

Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024. 

On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump. 

Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.  

Meanwhile, the decision of the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post not to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have sparked a backlash. As Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.”

Early on October 26, the Washington Post itself went after Trump backer billionaire Elon Musk with a major story highlighting the information that Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, had worked illegally when he started his career in the U.S. Musk “did not have the legal right to work” in the U.S. when he started his first successful company. As part of the Trump campaign, Musk has emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigrants.

The New York Times has tended to downplay Trump’s outrageous statements, but on Saturday it ran a round-up of Trump’s threats in the center of the front page, above the fold. It noted that Trump has vowed to expand presidential power, prosecute his political opponents, and crack down on immigration with mass deportations and detention camps. It went on to list his determination to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), use the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels “in potential violation of international law,” and use federal troops against U.S. citizens. It added that he plans to “upend trade” with sweeping new tariffs that will raise consumer prices, and to rein in regulatory agencies. 

“To help achieve these and other goals,” the paper concluded, “his advisers are vetting lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.” 

On Sunday the front page of the New York Times opinion section read, in giant capital letters: “DONALD TRUMP/ SAYS HE WILL PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES/ ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS/ USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS/ ABANDON ALLIES/ PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS/ BELIEVE HIM.” And then, inside the section, the paper provided the receipts: Trump’s own words outlining his fascist plans. “BELIEVE HIM,” the paper said. 

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, host Jake Tapper refused to permit Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, to gaslight viewers. Vance angrily denied that Trump has repeatedly called for using the U.S. military against Americans, but Tapper came with receipts that proved the very things Vance denied. 

Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden began in the early afternoon. The hateful performances of the early participants set the tone for the rally. Early on, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, delivered a steamingly racist set. He said, for example: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” He went on: “And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.” Hinchcliffe also talked about Black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins. 

The speakers who followed Hinchcliffe called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” They called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a b*tch,” and they railed against “f*cking illegals.” They insulted Latinos generally, Black Americans, Palestinians and Jews. Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that "Germany is for Germans and Germans only.” 

Trump took the stage about two hours late, prompting people to stream toward the exits before he finished speaking. He hit his usual highlights, notably undermining Vance’s argument from earlier in the day by saying that, indeed, he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”  

But Trump perhaps gave away the game with his inflammatory language and with an aside, seemingly aimed at House speaker Johnson. “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said. 

It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote.

Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan. 

But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him. Tonight’s rally badly hurt that plan. 

As Hinchcliffe was talking about Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris was at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia talking about her plan to spread her opportunity economy to Puerto Rico. She has called for strengthening Puerto Rico’s energy grid and making it easier to get permits to build there. 

After the “floating island of garbage” comment, Puerto Rican superstar musician Bad Bunny, who has more than 45 million followers on Instagram, posted Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico, and his spokesperson said he is endorsing Harris. 

Puerto Rican singer and actor Ricky Martin shared a clip from Hinchcliffe’s set with his 16 million followers. His caption read: “This is what they think of us.” Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who has 250 million Instagram followers, posted Harris’s plan. Later, singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande posted that she had voted for Harris. Grande has 376 million followers on Instagram. Singer Luis Fonsi, who has 16 million followers, also called out the “constant hate.”

The headlines were brutal. “MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump's MSG rally,” read Axios. Politico wrote: “Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks.” “Racist Remarks and Insults Mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally,” the New York Timesannounced. “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults,” read CNN.

But the biggest sign of the damage the rally did was the frantic backpedaling from Republicans in tight elections, who distanced themselves as fast as they could from the insults against Puerto Ricans, especially. The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters. 

As the clips spread like wildfire, political writer Charlotte Clymer pointed out that almost 6 million Puerto Ricans live in the states—about a million in Florida, half a million in Pennsylvania, 100,000 in Georgia, 100,000 in Michigan, 100,000 in North Carolina, 45,000 in Arizona, and 40,000 in Nevada—and that over half of them voted in 2020. 

In 1939, as about 18,000 American Nazis rallied inside Madison Square Garden, newspapers reported that a crowd of about 100,000 anti-Nazis gathered outside to protest. It took 1,700 police officers, the largest number of officers ever before detailed for a single event, to hold them back from storming the venue.

—

[fourmsandasilentq]

October 27, 2024 (Sunday)

I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way.

It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight.

There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.

Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.

Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024.

On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump.

Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.

Meanwhile, the decision of the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post not to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have sparked a backlash. As Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.”

Early on October 26, the Washington Post itself went after Trump backer billionaire Elon Musk with a major story highlighting the information that Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, had worked illegally when he started his career in the U.S. Musk “did not have the legal right to work” in the U.S. when he started his first successful company. As part of the Trump campaign, Musk has emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigrants.

The New York Times has tended to downplay Trump’s outrageous statements, but on Saturday it ran a round-up of Trump’s threats in the center of the front page, above the fold. It noted that Trump has vowed to expand presidential power, prosecute his political opponents, and crack down on immigration with mass deportations and detention camps. It went on to list his determination to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), use the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels “in potential violation of international law,” and use federal troops against U.S. citizens. It added that he plans to “upend trade” with sweeping new tariffs that will raise consumer prices, and to rein in regulatory agencies.

“To help achieve these and other goals,” the paper concluded, “his advisers are vetting lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.”

On Sunday the front page of the New York Times opinion section read, in giant capital letters: “DONALD TRUMP/ SAYS HE WILL PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES/ ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS/ USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS/ ABANDON ALLIES/ PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS/ BELIEVE HIM.” And then, inside the section, the paper provided the receipts: Trump’s own words outlining his fascist plans. “BELIEVE HIM,” the paper said.

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, host Jake Tapper refused to permit Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, to gaslight viewers. Vance angrily denied that Trump has repeatedly called for using the U.S. military against Americans, but Tapper came with receipts that proved the very things Vance denied.

Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden began in the early afternoon. The hateful performances of the early participants set the tone for the rally. Early on, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, delivered a steamingly racist set. He said, for example: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” He went on: “And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.” Hinchcliffe also talked about Black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins.

The speakers who followed Hinchcliffe called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” They called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a b*tch,” and they railed against “f*cking illegals.” They insulted Latinos generally, Black Americans, Palestinians and Jews. Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that "Germany is for Germans and Germans only.”

Trump took the stage about two hours late, prompting people to stream toward the exits before he finished speaking. He hit his usual highlights, notably undermining Vance’s argument from earlier in the day by saying that, indeed, he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”

But Trump perhaps gave away the game with his inflammatory language and with an aside, seemingly aimed at House speaker Johnson. “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said.

It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote.

Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan.

But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him. Tonight’s rally badly hurt that plan.

As Hinchcliffe was talking about Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris was at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia talking about her plan to spread her opportunity economy to Puerto Rico. She has called for strengthening Puerto Rico’s energy grid and making it easier to get permits to build there.

After the “floating island of garbage” comment, Puerto Rican superstar musician Bad Bunny, who has more than 45 million followers on Instagram, posted Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico, and his spokesperson said he is endorsing Harris.

Puerto Rican singer and actor Ricky Martin shared a clip from Hinchcliffe’s set with his 16 million followers. His caption read: “This is what they think of us.” Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who has 250 million Instagram followers, posted Harris’s plan. Later, singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande posted that she had voted for Harris. Grande has 376 million followers on Instagram. Singer Luis Fonsi, who has 16 million followers, also called out the “constant hate.”

The headlines were brutal. “MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump's MSG rally,” read Axios. Politico wrote: “Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks.” “Racist Remarks and Insults Mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally,” the New York Times announced. “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults,” read CNN.

But the biggest sign of the damage the rally did was the frantic backpedaling from Republicans in tight elections, who distanced themselves as fast as they could from the insults against Puerto Ricans, especially. The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters.

As the clips spread like wildfire, political writer Charlotte Clymer pointed out that almost 6 million Puerto Ricans live in the states—about a million in Florida, half a million in Pennsylvania, 100,000 in Georgia, 100,000 in Michigan, 100,000 in North Carolina, 45,000 in Arizona, and 40,000 in Nevada—and that over half of them voted in 2020.

In 1939, as about 18,000 American Nazis rallied inside Madison Square Garden, newspapers reported that a crowd of about 100,000 anti-Nazis gathered outside to protest. It took 1,700 police officers, the largest number of officers ever before detailed for a single event, to hold them back from storming the venue.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/

[ridenwithbiden]

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has called out Republicans for acquiescing to billionaire Elon Musk’s demands to thwart a bipartisan spending bill that was needed to fend off a government shutdown this weekend.

In his comments, Sanders derided Musk — who is co-leading president-elect Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency — as an authoritarian oligarchic.

The bipartisan spending bill that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) negotiated with Democrats would have funded the government through March. However, after Musk urged GOP lawmakers to oppose the bill, Johnson, sensing he wouldn’t have enough support from his own party, scrapped the legislation, and put up a new spending bill without Democratic Party input. That bill also failed to pass after Democrats in the House voted against it, with dozens of Republicans opposing the bill, albeit for different ideological reasons.

Musk’s influence within the Republican Party is so inviolable that some in the GOP have actually called for him to replace Johnson as Speaker of the House. Musk and Trump have said that Republicans who do not support the spending bills they endorse should be primaried out of their seats in the 2026 midterm elections. Musk has also said that he’s not opposed to shutting down the government until Trump is inaugurated in mid-January.

“Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is threatening to unseat elected officials if they do not follow his orders to shut down the government during the holidays,” Sanders noted in a recent social media post. “Are we still a democracy or have we already moved to oligarchy and authoritarianism?”

In an earlier post, Sanders derided Musk as being an oligarch who Republicans adhered to.

“The US Congress this week came to an agreement to fund our government. Elon Musk, who became $200 BILLION richer since Trump was elected, objected,” Sanders wrote. “Are Republicans beholden to the American people? Or President Musk? This is oligarchy at work.”

Hours after Sanders’s comments, Musk signaled his support for a neo-fascist political party in Gemarny’s February elections.

In a post on his social media site X, Musk endorsed Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far right, anti-immigrant and antisemitic party that is gaining popularity among conservative Germans.

“Only the AfD can save Germany,” the billionaire wrote.

Musk has previously endorsed other far right figures in Europe, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and United Kingdom Reform party leader Nigel Farage.

Musk has tried to normalize AfD’s views in the past, claiming they “don’t sound extremist” to him and questioning if he was “missing something.”

AfD is vehemently anti-immigration, particularly with regard to Muslims, calling for a “net zero” number of immigrants entering Germany in the coming years. Leaders of the party have repeatedly made racist and antisemitic statements, emphasizing a need to return to a German “identity” and pushing other white nationalist views; AfD leader Alexander Gauland, for example, has described immigration to the country as an “invasion of foreigners” that he and his party intend to fight off.

The party has also called for changes to how Nazi Germany is depicted in historical settings, such as monuments, schools and museums, with Gauland once minimizing the country’s Nazi history as being no more than “just a speck of bird’s muck.” Other AfD members have denied Nazi wrongdoing, including by describing the Holocaust as a “myth.”

Musk’s public support for AfD is just the latest example of the billionaire sharing reactionary viewpoints on X. Musk has, for example, called for the deportation of protesters utilizing the First Amendment to express views he disagrees with. He has also promoted antisemitic, anti-Muslim, transphobic and other bigoted content on his profile, and has shared content denying the Holocaust.

Novelist and political commentator Patrick S. Tomlinson has said that Musk’s support for AfD is illuminating.

“The AfD is Germany’s neo-Nazi party,” Tomlinson wrote on Bluesky. “They are anti-immigration, anti-EU, and unapologetically pro-Putin. The German courts have labeled the entire party extremist. Elon Musk has gone fully mask off.”

Commentator Paul Krugman also weighed in on Musk’s latest endorsement, noting that the billionaire’s statement was “obviously where he was going.”

When it comes to fascist sentiments, Musk “isn’t hiding it at all,” Krugman added.

[the-cimmerians]

People have been digging into the history of this man who, before he was in Congress, worked for anti-LGBTQ+ hate cells like the Family Research Council and what’s now called the Alliance Defending Freedom (it used to be Alliance Defense Fund), the group that’s currently employing Josh Hawley’s wife to overturn the FDA’s longstanding approval on the extremely safe and popular abortion drug Mifepristone.

Obviously he’s a severe white anti-gay, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-abortion bigot, who wants a national abortion ban and introduced a national Don’t Say Gay bill. [ ]

In 2003, Johnson fought hard for the continued criminalization of gay sex, just as the Supreme Court decriminalized it with Lawrence v. Texas. While working as a lawyer for Alliance Defense Fund, which filed an amicus in the case, he argued in an op-ed for the Shreveport Times that “[s]tates have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse.” He prudishly sneered for the sake of states’ rights to “discourage the evils of sexual conduct outside marriage” — what a goddamned dork — and posited that since you couldn’t then have gay sex within a marriage, then “the state is right to discriminate.” [ ]

But y’all might be particularly interested in Johnson’s advocacy for the weird, creepy, patriarchal and abusive practice of so-called “Covenant Marriage.” Conservative Christian extremists love it because it makes divorce really hard. Like, not even if you both just agree you want to get a divorce. Legum explains:

In Louisiana, for example – the first state to formally recognize covenant marriages – couples seeking a divorce “must go through marriage counseling,” submit evidence, and “be separated for at least a year before a divorce can be granted.” These requirements apply even in cases involving physical and sexual abuse, and increase the chance that a woman continues to experience violence at their hands of their partner.

Even in cases of physical and sexual abuse.

See why conservative Christians love it?

But don’t worry, y’all: Mike Johnson isn’t just the president of covenant marriages. He’s also a client!

Johnson and his wife entered into a covenant marriage in Louisiana in 1999. They’re now “proponents of the cause.” In an interview with ABC in 2005, Johnson said that opting for a covenant marriage was "kind of a no-brainer." 

[tomorrowusa]

Extremist fundamentalists of different religions seem to have more in common with each other than they do with moderates of the same faith. They are invariably intolerant control freaks who feel they have the right to impose their wills on others. MAGA Mike Johnson would fit in well with Iran's theocrats.

Since his fellow Republicans made him their leader, numerous articles have reported Johnson’s religiously motivated, far-right views on abortion, same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights. But that barely scratches the surface. Johnson was a senior lawyer for the extremist Alliance Defending Fund (later the Alliance Defending Freedom) from 2002 to 2010. This is the organization responsible for orchestrating the 303 Creative v Elenis legal arguments to obtain a ruling from the supreme court permitting a wedding website designer to refuse to do business with gay couples. It also played a significant role in annulling Roe v Wade. The ADF has always been opposed to privacy rights, abortion and birth control. Now Roe is gone, the group is laying the groundwork to end protection for birth control. Those who thought Roe would never be overruled should understand that the reasoning in Dobbs v Jackson is not tailored to abortion. Dobbs was explicitly written to be the legal fortress from which the right will launch their attacks against other fundamental rights their extremist Christian beliefs reject. They are passionate about rolling back the right to contraception, the right to same-sex marriage and the right to sexual privacy between consenting adults. Johnson’s inerrant biblical truth leads him to reject science. Johnson was a “young earth creationist”, holding that a literal reading of Genesis means that the earth is only a few thousand years old and humans walked alongside dinosaurs. He has been the attorney for and partner in Kentucky’s Creation Museum and Ark amusement park, which present these beliefs as scientific fact, a familiar sleight of hand where the end (garnering more believers) justifies the means (lying about science). For them, the end always justifies the means. That’s why they don’t even blink when non-believers suffer for their dogma.

There was recently a big experiment in rejecting science with the far right campaigning against COVID-19 vaccinations. That may have cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the US. MAGA Mike would like to apply that to all sectors of life in the US.

Setting aside all of these wildly extreme, religiously motivated policy preferences, there is a more insidious threat to America in Johnson’s embrace of scriptural originalism: his belief that subjective interpretation of the Bible provides the master plan for governance. Religious truth is neither rational nor susceptible to reasoned debate. For Johnson, who sees a Manichean world divided between the saved who are going to heaven and the unsaved going to hell, there is no middle ground. Constitutional politics withers and is replaced with a battle of the faithful against the infidels. Sound familiar? Maybe in Tehran or Kabul or Riyadh. But in America?

By doing anything other than voting Democratic in an election (i.e. voting Republican, wasting a vote on a loser third party, writing in a dead gorilla, not voting at all) people help pave the way for a fascist theocracy in the US.

Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson is already second in line for the presidency. That is WAY too close.

Voting may not always be convenient but theo-fascism is far less convenient.

[meandmybigmouth]

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and two dozen members of Congress assembled at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., last week for the second-annual National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance. The event was chock-a-block with Christian nationalist pastors and featured a clarion call for spiritual warfare, with members of Congress beseeching fellow Christians to “tie the hands of Satan” and to “bind the demonic forces” that are supposedly possessing America.

You're Republican party America! fighting demons and saving america? Wow! . these F***'s are chosen to lead america? You actually trust a political leader that beleives in demons?

[comeonamericawakeup]

House Republicans finally have a speaker, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times, and he's a "right-wing fever dream come to life." After three previous nominees flamed out in the face of GOP opposition, Rep. Mike Johnson last week won the speakership with the near unanimous support of the House majority. "A four-term backbencher" from Louisiana, Johnson benefited from a congenial demeanor and being "too obscure to have enemies." But his record is deeply alarming. He worked tirelessly to overturn the 2020 election results on behalf of former President Donald Trump, who enthusiastically backed him for speaker.

Johnson has blamed mass shootings on the teaching of evolution and said abortion providers should be "imprisoned at hard labor." As an attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian conservative group, he argued in favor of criminalizing gay sex and said that same-sex marriage is a "dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic." It's profoundly troubling that this extremist is now second in line to the presidency-and will preside over the House as it votes to accept the 2024 election results.

THE WEEK November 10, 2023

Prepare for more movement of the Christian Nationalism as government policy.  Hell-bent on ignoring the separation of church and state. 

🤮🤮🤮

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

1939 MSG Nazi rally

+

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 27, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 28, 2024

I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way. 

It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight. 

There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas. 

Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.  

Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024. 

On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump. 

Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.  

Meanwhile, the decision of the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post not to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have sparked a backlash. As Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.”

Early on October 26, the Washington Post itself went after Trump backer billionaire Elon Musk with a major story highlighting the information that Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, had worked illegally when he started his career in the U.S. Musk “did not have the legal right to work” in the U.S. when he started his first successful company. As part of the Trump campaign, Musk has emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigrants.

The New York Times has tended to downplay Trump’s outrageous statements, but on Saturday it ran a round-up of Trump’s threats in the center of the front page, above the fold. It noted that Trump has vowed to expand presidential power, prosecute his political opponents, and crack down on immigration with mass deportations and detention camps. It went on to list his determination to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), use the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels “in potential violation of international law,” and use federal troops against U.S. citizens. It added that he plans to “upend trade” with sweeping new tariffs that will raise consumer prices, and to rein in regulatory agencies. 

“To help achieve these and other goals,” the paper concluded, “his advisers are vetting lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.” 

On Sunday the front page of the New York Times opinion section read, in giant capital letters: “DONALD TRUMP/ SAYS HE WILL PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES/ ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS/ USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS/ ABANDON ALLIES/ PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS/ BELIEVE HIM.” And then, inside the section, the paper provided the receipts: Trump’s own words outlining his fascist plans. “BELIEVE HIM,” the paper said. 

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, host Jake Tapper refused to permit Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, to gaslight viewers. Vance angrily denied that Trump has repeatedly called for using the U.S. military against Americans, but Tapper came with receipts that proved the very things Vance denied. 

Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden began in the early afternoon. The hateful performances of the early participants set the tone for the rally. Early on, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, delivered a steamingly racist set. He said, for example: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” He went on: “And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.” Hinchcliffe also talked about Black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins. 

The speakers who followed Hinchcliffe called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” They called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a b*tch,” and they railed against “f*cking illegals.” They insulted Latinos generally, Black Americans, Palestinians and Jews. Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that "Germany is for Germans and Germans only.” 

Trump took the stage about two hours late, prompting people to stream toward the exits before he finished speaking. He hit his usual highlights, notably undermining Vance’s argument from earlier in the day by saying that, indeed, he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”  

But Trump perhaps gave away the game with his inflammatory language and with an aside, seemingly aimed at House speaker Johnson. “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said. 

It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote.

Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan. 

But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him. Tonight’s rally badly hurt that plan. 

As Hinchcliffe was talking about Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris was at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia talking about her plan to spread her opportunity economy to Puerto Rico. She has called for strengthening Puerto Rico’s energy grid and making it easier to get permits to build there. 

After the “floating island of garbage” comment, Puerto Rican superstar musician Bad Bunny, who has more than 45 million followers on Instagram, posted Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico, and his spokesperson said he is endorsing Harris. 

Puerto Rican singer and actor Ricky Martin shared a clip from Hinchcliffe’s set with his 16 million followers. His caption read: “This is what they think of us.” Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who has 250 million Instagram followers, posted Harris’s plan. Later, singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande posted that she had voted for Harris. Grande has 376 million followers on Instagram. Singer Luis Fonsi, who has 16 million followers, also called out the “constant hate.”

The headlines were brutal. “MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump's MSG rally,” read Axios. Politico wrote: “Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks.” “Racist Remarks and Insults Mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally,” the New York Times announced. “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults,” read CNN.

But the biggest sign of the damage the rally did was the frantic backpedaling from Republicans in tight elections, who distanced themselves as fast as they could from the insults against Puerto Ricans, especially. The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters. 

As the clips spread like wildfire, political writer Charlotte Clymer pointed out that almost 6 million Puerto Ricans live in the states—about a million in Florida, half a million in Pennsylvania, 100,000 in Georgia, 100,000 in Michigan, 100,000 in North Carolina, 45,000 in Arizona, and 40,000 in Nevada—and that over half of them voted in 2020. 

In 1939, as about 18,000 American Nazis rallied inside Madison Square Garden, newspapers reported that a crowd of about 100,000 anti-Nazis gathered outside to protest. It took 1,700 police officers, the largest number of officers ever before detailed for a single event, to hold them back from storming the venue.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[truthdogg]

Listen to it all. Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Ralph Reed, David Barton, Ginni Thomas and Mike Johnson are tightly connected birds of a feather.

Speaker Johnson has been happy to lie about his long alliances and work with these people and their organizations in his most recent interviews but was proud to tout his support of their philosophies for al of his career.

Johnson is proponent of extremist Christian nationalism and credits Tony Perkins with shaping his career. He is a believer in David Barton’s revisionist history of the US, in which the nation was founded as an anti-democratic Orthodox Christian state formed by God. Only very specific Christians can understand how to govern under this idea of the US, and it seeks to limit the power of anyone else.

Christian Nationalism is a series of half-truths and lies, designed to put a specific group of conservative white men into power. And it now holds the gavel in the US House of Representatives.

[mariacallous]

A growing Christian supremacist movement that labels its perceived enemies as “demonic” and enjoys close ties to major Republican figures is “the greatest threat to American democracy you’ve never heard of,” according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The SPLC, a civil rights organization that monitors extremist groups, released its “Year In Hate And Extremism 2023” report on Tuesday. A significant portion of the report, which tracked burgeoning anti-democratic and neo-fascist movements and actors across America, is devoted to the New Apostolic Reformation, “a new and powerful Christian supremacy movement that is attempting to transform culture and politics in the U.S. and countries across the world into a grim authoritarianism.”

Emerging out of the charismatic evangelical tradition, the NAR adheres to a form of Christian dominionism, meaning its parishioners believe it’s their divine duty to seize control of every political and cultural institution in America, transforming them according to a fundamentalist interpretation of scripture.

NAR adherents also believe in the existence of modern-day “apostles” and “prophets” — church leaders endowed by God with supernatural abilities, including the power to heal. In 2022, a handful of these “apostles,” the report notes, issued what they called the Watchman Decree, an anti-democratic document envisioning the end of a pluralistic society in America.

The apostles claimed they had been given “legal power and authority from Heaven” and are “God’s ambassadors and spokespeople over the earth,” who “are equipped and delegated by Him to destroy every attempted advance of the enemy.”

And who’s the enemy? Basically anyone who does not adhere to NAR beliefs. NAR adherents see their critics as being literally controlled by the devil.

“There are claims that whole neighborhoods, cities, even nations are under the sway of the demonic,” the report states. “Other religions, such as Islam, are also said to be demonically influenced. One cannot compromise with evil, and so if Democrats, liberals, LGBTQ+ people, and others are seen as demonic, political compromise — the heart of democratic life — becomes difficult if not impossible.”

This rhetoric has become increasingly widespread among Republican lawmakers, including former President Donald Trump, who last year referred to Marxists and atheists as “evil demonic forces that want to destroy our country.”

That Trump would use NAR-inspired rhetoric is unsurprising considering his relationship with Paula White-Cain, an NAR figure who delivered the invocation at Trump’s inauguration in 2017 and at the kickoff of his 2020 reelection campaign, as noted by Paul Rosenberg in Salon. White-Cain also delivered the invocation at Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C. — the event that eventually became the insurrection at the Capitol.

The attack on the Capitol was largely inspired, the report suggests, by NAR’s theology of dominionism. “NAR prayer groups were mobilized at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as well as supporting prayer teams all over the country, to exorcise the demonic influence over the Capitol that adherents said was keeping Trump from his rightful, prophesized second term,” the report states.

Major Republican figures took part in such events on or around the day of the attack. Mike Johnson, who is now the speaker of the House, joined the NAR’s “Global Prayer for Election Integrity,” which called for Trump’s reinstatement as president, in the weeks leading up to the attack on the Capitol. Johnson has also stated that Jim Garlow, an NAR leader, has had a “profound influence” on his life.

Ultimately, the SPLC report is an attempt to ring the alarm bells about the NAR, ”the greatest threat to U.S. democracy that you have never heard of.

“It is already a powerful, wealthy and influential movement and composes a highly influential block of one of the two main political parties in the country,” the report continues. “So few people have heard of NAR that it is possible that, without resistance in our local communities, dominionism might win without ever having been truly opposed.”

The SPLC’s report, according to a press release, also documents 595 hate groups and 835 antigovernment extremist groups in America, “including a growing wave of white nationalism increasingly motivated by theocratic beliefs and conspiracy theories.”

“With a historic election just months away, this year, more than any other, we must act to preserve our democracy,” Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center and SPLC Action Fund, said in a statement. “That will require us to directly address the danger of hate and extremism from our schools to our statehouses. Our report exposes these far-right extremists and serves as a tool for advocates and communities working to counter disinformation, false conspiracies and threats to voters and election workers.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

Donald Trump was NOT convicted by Joe Biden, he was NOT convicted by the Judge, he was NOT convicted by the District Attorney.  Donald Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers. A jury, I should note, that Trump was personally “very much involved” in picking per his lawyer Todd Blanche on CNN Thursday night. And that conviction happened in the state where Trump committed his crimes after a full trial that lasted more than a month where Trump was represented by a team of very experienced lawyers who presented his best defense. That is how our Constitution and criminal justice system works. There were no surprises here. As I predicted in my article before the trial began, “Trump is going to be a Convicted Felon by June." That was based on my experience as a trial lawyer and after reviewing the evidence the prosecutors had laid out in their pleadings. Common sense said that the only reason Trump paid Stormy Daniels “hush money” ten years after their affair —but just a week before the 2016 election—was to defraud voters of the truth. To that end, Trump falsified business records to conceal his illegal scheme. The jury saw the facts as they were, hence Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts and is now a CONVICTED FELON.

Yet now we see Trump and MAGA reject the jury verdict by attacking it as “rigged,” a “sham,” etc. MAGA House Speaker Mike Johnson called the verdict, “the weaponization of our justice system.”  Marco Rubio weighed in on Twitter, writing, “The verdict in New York is a complete travesty that makes a mockery of our system of justice.”  The always awful MAGA Rep. Elise Stefanik, posted, “Today’s verdict shows how corrupt, rigged, and unAmerican the weaponized justice system has become under Joe Biden and Democrats.”  Spineless Tim Scott said on CNN Thursday night, “This was certainly a hoax, a sham” with the even worse Ted Cruz stating, “This entire trial has been a sham, and it is nothing more than political persecution.” And the list goes on and on. But this is no surprise, it’s part of MAGA telling us they reject our Constitution and the foundations of our democratic Republic. After all, Trump and MAGA rejected the 2020 election results because Trump lost. They rejected the criminal justice system when they smeared the indictments against Trump as being a sham. And now they publicly reject our jury system, which is one of the cornerstones of the US Constitution as laid out in the Sixth Amendment.

The question that must be asked is given Trump and MAGA reject our elections, our criminal justice system, the rule of law and our Constitution, what exactly do they support?! The answer is simple: Convicted Felon Trump. That’s it. [...] Let me repeat what I’ve been writing and saying for months: Don’t count on the courts, the prosecutors or a jury to save us from Donald Trump. We are the only ones who can do that by coming out in huge numbers to defeat him this November. This may sound jarring but it’s the truth: MAGA is a cancer. If allowed to metastasis, it will kill our democratic Republic that so many sacrificed so much to defend. The good news though is that the cure to MAGA cancer is right in front of us. All it takes is voting in big numbers this November.

The butthurt MAGAs crying and whining about Convicted Felon Donald Trump being convicted on 34 charges for business records falsification is more proof that the extremist anti-American MAGA cult needs to be crushed at all costs.

See Also:

Vox: Why the ludicrous Republican response to Trump’s conviction matters

MMFA: MAGA media rage in response to Trump's 34 guilty verdicts

RWW: MAGA Martyrdom Machine Portrays Felon Trump as Victim, Vows Revenge

HuffPost: Right-Wingers Are Already Promising Vengeance After The Trump Verdict

Daily Kos: Republicans choose MAGA lunacy over the law after Trump's conviction

[never-was-has-been]

Get ready for more of this in large doses, coming from the new Speaker Of The House (R) Mike Johnson - Evangelical Extremist.

[mswyrr]

The second pillar of the argument Texas is making is the so-called “compact theory” – an idea that has not been entertained by serious people in a long, long time. According to the compact theory, the constitution is just a contract that entails certain duties the federal government, and especially the president, has to fulfill. If those duties are neglected, the states, understood as sovereign entities, are free to disregard federal authority, ignore federal law, and, ultimately, leave the Union. This is precisely the argument slave states used to justify secession. As Mark Joseph Stern succinctly put it with regards to Abbott’s statement: “This language embraces the Confederacy’s conception of the Constitution as a mere compact that states may exit when they feel it has been broken.” Honestly, it makes sense for Abbott and today’s reactionary Right to adopt these neo-confederate arguments. In a way, they are just explicitly emphasizing the tradition in which their political project stands, as they are once again defying the federal government and deploying “states’ rights” in order to justify inhumane brutality in service of upholding white nationalist domination. The fact that this argument was resoundingly defeated – politically and on the battlefield – does not matter to them: The Republican Party and the extremist Right are all in. Among the first to announce support for Greg Abbott was Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. 25 Republican governors have endorsed the position of Texas, pledging their support for Abbott’s fight against the federal government and for the legal theories justifying it; some are even vowing to send their national guards, itching to escalate the situation further. That is something Donald Trump would very much like – he has already called on Republican states to “deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border.” And nothing mobilizes rightwing extremists like a standoff with the federals in service of white domination: Elon Musk is on Abbott’s side, propagating Great Replacement conspiracies, the barely concealed subtext of this whole thing, by accusing Biden of wanting to bring in immigrants as illegal voters. And far-right activists have called for a “Take back our border” rally. What could possibly go wrong. [...] But as much as I am professionally obligated to caution against facile historical analogies, Republican states are, right now, openly and aggressively endorsing the argument that led this country into a Civil War. There are, at the very least, some very concerning echoes; and more importantly, there are powerful traditions and continuities. Republican governors are proudly taking up the “states’ rights” mantle to defy the federal government. On the level of the underlying political project and vision of what America should be, there is a fairly direct line from the secession of slave states to today’s neo-confederate use of the “compact” theory as a way to justify the cruel crackdown on an “invasion” of people of color. And as much as the Civil War analogy may tend to invoke misleading associations, it can actually be helpful if it alerts people to the seriousness of the situation and to the prospect of violence. Because the fact that we will not get a rematch between vast armies dressed in blue and gray meeting on the battlefield does not mean the current situation isn’t extremely volatile and dangerous, or that there won’t be violence. There is likely going to be a lot more political violence.