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.
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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.
He’ll come for “the good ones” next At last night’s S. Carolina town hall, Trump was asked what the actual plan was for the rounding up of immigrants: Here’s one of his lackeys today: The Washington Post reports today: Faced with a surge of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018 and 2019, Donald Trump’s White House discussed ways to more aggressively deploy the resources and the might of the U.S. military. Aides and officials spoke privately about detaining migrants on military bases and flying them out of the country on military planes — ideas that the Pentagon headed off. Throughout his presidency, Trump himself would frequently demand to send troops to the border and catch people crossing. “He was obsessed with having the military involved,” said a former senior administration official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. That approach and unfinished business have taken on renewed significance and urgency as the country confronts another migrant crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border, and as Trump closes in on the Republican presidential nomination.
I agree with Josh Marshall on this. The brouhaha over Ezra Klein’s article agitating for Biden to drop out at this late date has been overwhelming and it’s not helpful. The idea of choosing a new candidate at the conventions is downright fanciful. Not gonna happen. I like Ezra. We are friendly acquaintances and he’s done a ton of good work so I’m not inclined to slag him. But he’s wrong about this and Josh Marshall has the best essay explaining why: A number of you have written in to ask about Ezra Klein’s audio essay “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden: It’s requires them to embrace an old-fashioned approach to winning a campaign.” Is it a good argument? Does it change the equation? What do I make of it? Just for the purposes of cutting to the chase: my answers are “not really,” “no” and “not much.” But Klein is a smart, articulate guy and sitting at the top of the Times op-ed page he has vast influence. So I wanted to break the argument down into its moving parts.
Biden is fine there and it’s nice to see him mingling with an average family and chatting about their lives. But what’s most interesting is the family itself — a dad raising two boys on his own, living a middle class life trying to build a future for his kids. He’s a school principal and the boys are average all-American teenagers. It just seems so … normal. I guess I need to be reminded of that sometimes. Anyway, here’s today’s Hopium from Scott Rosenberg. (There’s a lot more and you can subscribe here.) Trump is not winning the election, or favored, and analysts simply must stop claiming he is – They way our post-Dobbs electoral success and increasingly powerful grassroots is being overly discounted and Trump’s strength as a candidate is being exaggerated has begun to feel a lot like the false red wave media narrative of 2022. Take a look at these four independent polls of registered voters (not adults) released in the past week.