It’s Free States and Slave States again “If you don’t think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you’re not paying attention,” writes Charles Blow, reacting to the Alabama Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling that frozen embryos are children. Destruction of those embryos, even by accident, the court ruled, falls under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. From the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe to plans by Trump-aligned think tanks to restructure the United States to suit Christian nationalists to Alabama’s Tuesday ruling, Tali-bans will pop up all over in a second Trump term. A national abortion ban is clearly on the agenda. “Control of women’s bodies is the endgame,” Blow continues. But is it? Reducing women to birthing vessels and daycare attendants is only one part of the plan. Theists who have long argued that the founders intended to create a Christian nation publish textbooks, build theme parks, ban books, and rail against public education on that basis in a bid to force the rest of us to live according to their worldview. And not just women.
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Page A1: Page A16 This is what we’re dealing with. It shouldn’t have to be this hard. Check this out from Politico: That’s right. He’s four points up in that poll. But that headline is how they chose to frame the story. How about this? What does being beleaguered have to do with student loan forgiveness? How about “determined” or “committed”? Here you can see that they originally had a neutral headline and actually revised it to make it demeaning toward Biden: Every headline is about how poor, old Biden is just floundering, over and over and over again. It’s astonishing.
Oh yes, you are Congressman GOPer, whether you like it or not We’ve been warning about this Christian Nationalist theocratic faction in the GOP for a couple of decades now and nobody ever took it seriously. The chickens are coming home to roost. They got Roe banned, now they’re effectively banning IVF in the states, birth control, LGBTQ rights and even “recreational sex” is now openly on the agenda. And these people have power. Even some Republicans are chaffing at the overt proselytizing: Speaker Mike Johnson delivered a presentation at a weekend GOP retreat that — although it was billed as a map to keeping the House majority — took on a surprisingly religious tone, according to two people in the room. Johnson’s private remarks to a small group of Republican lawmakers at Miami’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel over the weekend alarmed both people, who addressed the speech on condition of anonymity. Rather than outlining a specific plan to hold and grow the majority, these people said, Johnson effectively delivered a sermon.
There are so many great young Democrats right now and Crockett is one of the very best. I wish she was from somewhere other than Texas where she might have a chance at higher office. But she’s a true asset in the House and we should all be grateful to have her.
Christians executed other Christians in colonial Salem If you missed Tuesday’s reporting by Politico’s Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybla on plans to enact a Christian nationalist agenda in a second Trump term, do have a look. Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, now “president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.” If you thought overturning Roe would turn the U.S. into the Republic of Gilead, that assessment was perhaps not alarming enough: One document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. “Christian nationalism” is one of the bullet points. Others include invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era. CRA’s work fits into a broader effort by conservative, MAGA-leaning organizations to influence a future Trump White House.
There are some issues I have always assumed Trump would have more than enough money to finance his campaign. There’s a lot of cash floating around and the MAGA cult loves to give him money. Still, this doesn’t seem like good news: As Donald Trump’s legal troubles consume more and more of his time, they’re also consuming more of his donors’ money—and there’s a huge hole in the bucket. On Tuesday, Trump’s “Save America” leadership political action committee reported raising just $8,508 from donors in the entire month of January, while spending about $3.9 million, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission. Nearly $3 million of that overall spending total was used for one purpose: to pay lawyers. At the same time, the Trump campaign itself reported a net loss of more than $2.6 million for the month of January. It raised about $8.8 million while spending around $11.5 million, according to a separate filing made public on Tuesday.
And he’s no Abraham Lincoln either News came last week of the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny last week. He had survived an attempted assassination by poison in 2020 but eventually returned to Russia, where he was immediately detained and sentenced first to two and a half years, then nine years and ultimately 19 years in prison on charges of “extremism.” In December he was sent to a distant prison in the Russian Arctic. And now he is gone. Navalny was the most famous political dissident in the world, probably since Nelson Mandela. Those who care about such things held out hope that he would survive incarceration, as Mandela did, and prevail one day in a new Russia. In this era of rising authoritarianism, the death of this man — and his bravery in embodying a dream of freedom and liberty, now for the moment crushed — adds more fuel to fears of the creeping fascism now gaining traction around the world.
It ain’t the 60’s, folks JV Last at the Bulwark takes a look today at the way the Republicans now see institutions since they realized that they have lost the educated, financially successful American cohorts. Their first order of business was to create alternative institutions which they’ve done successfully with the media which has made it very easy to control politicians by propagandizing their constituents. A case in point: As a result of losing the popular culture, they now believe that they can only control it by using the power of the state, thus authoritarianism. -Republicans can no longer create popular majorities, but they can take control of the apparatus of government. -The institutions of civil society have historically been a mediating layer between citizens and government. But Republicans have also lost the argument with educated and financially successful voters, leading to their loss of support within many American institutions. -In response, Republicans have decided that the existing institutions of civil society are illegitimate and that all power should be centrally located with the state.
It’s right in front of them and they don’t want to acknowledge it Last night it was reported that the House GOP’s confidential informant, who has been charged with lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden and Burisma (I wrote about that here), was actually working as a Russian agent. It should be the final nail in the Biden impeachment coffin but they seem determined to keep humiliating themselves with this thing (anything for their Dear Leader) so it doesn’t appear they’re ready to roll it up. This piece by Josh Marshall says it all. (It’s from his newsletter which you should subscribe to, it’s really great.) A Bigger Story Than You Can Possibly Imagine I know that’s a big headline that promises a lot. But I think it’s true. David has a good rundown of the events in the Morning Memo. But I want to do my best to set them out on a larger canvas that goes back to the “Hunter Biden laptop” and really all the way back to 2015, a continuing Russian information operation that has been ongoing for almost a decade. Let’s review recent events.
What it means to be an American has always had many definitions and not all of them good. But selling out to an autocratic foreign power in order to keep power at home is a new one. We haven’t actually done that one before. But it’s the natural consequence of the radicalization of the GOP over many years which has culminated in the elevation of a psychopathic conman to lead the party. And here we are.