I know it’s mean to say it, but it’s important to acknowledge. Jill Filipovic writes about “that which cannot be mentioned” in her great newsletter today. It has to be said: One basic rule of being a person who opines on politics is that you are not allowed to disrespect voters. Voters, you are supposed to say, are very smart and thoughtful people; it is the politicians who are bad, who do not deliver, who do not give them what they want or need. If politicians behaved differently, then voters — good people, rational people — would respond accordingly…. But also, a lot of people are stupid, paranoid, incompetent and irrational. I know, this is a very disrespectful thing to say (“deplorable” would have been more polite). And there are of course some Trump voters who are perfectly kind of their neighbors and I am sure are, in many contexts, utterly decent people. There are some Trump voters who aren’t cult loyalist but normie Republicans who want normie Republican things, like tax breaks for the rich, unfettered capitalism, and women forced into submission.
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Philip Bump took a deep dive into Trump (and Barr’s) successful effort to turn Russia’s manipulation of him into a “fake news” story. There’s a lot there and I can only excerpt a piece of it. But you can read the whole thing with this link: Out there in the broader world, the “Russia collusion hoax” skeptics are abundant, if not a plurality of the public. There has perhaps been no sales pitch offered by Donald Trump that has paid larger dividends than his immediate, long-standing push to cast any questions about Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign as the deranged rantings of weirdo liberals. He’s inculcated an immediate, visceral reaction from members of his base as well as Americans more broadly that when they hear “Russia” in the context of “Trump,” they should dismiss what follows as false and defamatory. This reaction has provided him an enormous amount of space to avoid very serious questions about the ways in which Russia worked to his benefit while he was in office — and may continue to do so. There is news on this front.
Judge Luttig tweet this today, writing, “Prophetic words from Alexander Hamilton to George Washington in 1792 — as apt and timely today as they were over 230 years ago.” “A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this Country can surely never be brought to [monarchy], but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the acts of popular demagogues. The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security. Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy—not that this is the intention of the generality of them.
A hundred years later, they still want to root around in your medicine cabinet Trump wants to have it both ways in the election but I have no doubt that he will take revenge on the abortion rights movement the moment he gets into office. Here’s how he might do it: The next Republican president could effectively ban most abortions through a simple policy change at the Department of Justice, experts and advocates on both sides of the abortion debate say. While Republicans disagree about whether to pursue a national abortion ban that would face long odds in Congress, a GOP president may be able to unilaterally curb access to medication abortion across the country using an obscure 19th-century law. At issue is the meaning of the 1873 Comstock Act, which banned the mailing of “obscene” material like pornography, as well as abortion drugs and contraception. While the law has been cut down over the years, the abortion provision remained but was ignored while Roe v. Wade was in place.
What happens when you gut the liberal arts Finally: an explanation for how the United States of America could elect an under-educated, grandiose, narcissist reality TV star to the presidency. Social media (especially TikTok) is a digital Petri dish for breeding them. This TikTok freak show is completely nuts. The Wrap: The Guardian made the unusual move Wednesday to delete a 21-year-old letter written by Osama bin Laden from their site after several TikTokers urged followers to read the al Qaeda leader’s missive, causing “Letter to America” to go viral on the social media platform. Guardian readers are now met with the message, “This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to the American people,’ as reported in the Observer on Sunday 24 November 2002. The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023.” In a statement to TheWrap, a spokesperson for the U.K. outlet said, “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context.
THE 2025 SOCIAL JUSTICE KITTENS CALENDAR HAS ARRIVED! It’s 2025, and the Social Justice Kittens are back with twelve inspiring new months, each one a stern, colorful reminder that while you enjoy a life of privileged comfort enabled by oppression, these defiant darlings continue their selfless fight for real progress! Never in human history has…
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You know, the ones that have been right instead of wrong Abby Livingston at Puck talks to Tom Bonier about the polling. Bonier happens to have been one of those who’s been consistently right about the elections the last few years in contrast to pundits, pollsters and the media. Abby Livingston: So, what happened last night? Tom Bonier: In November 2022, we learned that abortion rights and the Dobbs decision was politically salient, but that it had its limitations, that it simply wasn’t a magic wand whereby people would universally vote more Democratic. We thought that the effect was uneven in places where the issue was literally on the ballot. One of the challenges for Democrats over the intervening year was, how do we draw the connection between voting for Democratic candidates and protecting abortion rights? The most interesting takeaways last night were in Ohio and Virginia. In Ohio, where there was a literal ballot initiative on guaranteeing abortion access, we saw very high turnout and a very wide margin for the “yes” vote to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.
Good news, right? This seems like good news. I wonder if people will finally start to “feel” it. So far Americans seem to believe we are in a great depression. Paul Krugman had an interesting insight into this phenomenon today: Surveys of consumer sentiment and political polls continue to show that Americans have a very negative view of the Biden economy. There’s still no consensus about the reasons for this disconnect. But there are some new studies that shed some light on what’s going on, and I have a new way of looking at the numbers that may also clarify things. […] Americans say that things are bad; shouldn’t we take them at their word? One answer is: Look at what they do, not at what they say. As it happens, the plunge in consumer sentiment during the Biden years has been similar in magnitude to the plunge during and after the 2008 financial crisis — which is itself a remarkable observation, given that the post-2008 slump dragged on for years, while after Covid we rapidly returned to full employment. However, consumer spending, which stalled during the last crisis, has just kept powering along this time.
It looks possible Axios reports: Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus took an official position against the two-tiered stopgap funding bill aimed at averting a government shutdown just hours before it is set to come to the floor for a vote on Tuesday. New Speaker Mike Johnson met with the group of conservative hardliners on Monday evening in hopes of selling the bill to skeptics. The group isn’t pleased with the legislation, but doesn’t plan to try to oust Johnson over the move. HFC members are furious that the legislation keeps 2023 funding levels intact. Johnson has repeatedly argued that the “laddered continuing resolution” — with some funding lasting until January and the rest until Feb. 2 — would prevent the House from being rolled by a sweeping omnibus spending bill from the Senate. Eight conservatives joined with Democrats in October to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), citing his decision to bring up a resolution that extended current spending levels. That’s a funny way of putting it, don’t you think?
Trump denies that he planned to start a 3rd Party to punish Republicans. But he certainly did: Does everyone remember this from January 23, 2021? Former president Donald Trump threw himself back into politics this weekend by publicly endorsing a devoted and divisive acolyte in Arizona who has embraced his false election conspiracy theories and entertained the creation of a new “MAGA Party.” In a recorded phone call, Trump offered his “complete and total endorsement” for another term for Arizona state party chairwoman Kelli Ward, a lightning rod who has sparred with the state’s Republican governor, been condemned by the business community and overseen a recent flight in party registrations. She narrowly won reelection, by a margin of 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent, marking Trump’s first victory in a promised battle to maintain political relevance and influence after losing the 2020 election. In recent weeks, Trump has entertained the idea of creating a third party, called the Patriot Party, and instructed his aides to prepare election challenges to lawmakers who crossed him in the final weeks in office, including Rep.