Tom Cruise gets endless rehearsals. We don’t. “Well, this is more than a little terrifying. Shouldn’t we all be paying a little bit more attention?” asks Dan Froomkin. It’s like something out of Mission Impossible. Recent Wagner mercenaries’ moves against Moscow leave the West wondering about Vladimir Putin’s fate, the stability of the Russian state, and the security of the Russian nuclear arsenal (Washington Post): And in recent weeks the drumbeat has intensified, with some well-connected Russian strategic analysts and think tank experts openly proclaiming the “necessity” for Moscow to carry out a preemptive tactical nuclear strike on a NATO country, like Poland — to avoid defeat in the war on Ukraine and to revive Western terror of Russia’s nuclear might. Since the Wagner rebellion, Sergei Karaganov, a former Kremlin adviser and influential Russian political scientist, has doubled down on calls for Moscow to do so.
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They’re super white too… Those numbers of Millennials and Gen Z are just astonishing. NBC News reports: Republican primary voters are older, whiter and much more conservative than the electorate at large. That should surprise no one who follows American politics, but our most recent national NBC News poll captures the profile of what the GOP primary electorate looks like. Thirty-nine percent of Republican primary voters are age 65 and older, compared with 25% of the overall electorate and 25% of Democratic primary voters, according to the poll. Eighty-nine percent of GOP primary voters are white, versus 72% of all voters. And 67% of Republican primary voters say they are conservative, including 41% who are “very” conservative. That compares with 36% of all voters who are conservative, including 18% who are “very” conservative. There are two slight — but significant — changes to the composition of the Republican electorate since the 2016 election cycle, when Donald Trump won the party’s presidential nomination and the White House, per the NBC News poll’s historical results.
It’s awful NeverTrumper Tim Miller has some interesting thoughts on Supreme Court reform: How Normal Is This Court, Really: A Meditation From a Conflicted Man People on the right bristled at a frank comment from President Joe Biden as he exited a press conference last Thursday: “This is not a normal Court,” he said. In their view, this was an example of Biden betraying his promise to be a steward of our norms and institutions and taking an unnecessary swipe at a SCOTUS that has executed constitutionally sound, conservative jurisprudence. Here’s a version of this position that was posted by an pseudonymous anti-Trump conservative I follow on Twitter: I assume we at The Bulwark are part of the “norms” crowd he is referring to, and while I don’t speak for everyone here, my view is that critiques of this Court and discussions of reform are totally legitimate and within the bounds of standard political discourse. For starters, the size of the Supreme Court has changed several times before; the current number of justices was not set out on stone tablets delivered from on high.
You have to love that puts President Trump in quotes… I don’t know who has told him this garbage or if anyone has. He might have just heard something in passing and turned it into this preposterous narrative. And it is true that the more he says this the more his cult will be convinced that he’s the one living in reality while everyone else is involved in a massive conspiracy to destroy Deal Leader. That’s how brainwashing works. But the fact is that he is completely unhinged on this subject and you have to wonder what’s setting him off right now. Maybe it’s this: 28% of Republicans and 31% of Independents say a conviction would make them less likely to support Trump. The good news for him is that most people don’t want to see him in jail. I think that’s ok. You can’t put secret service agents in jail with him and they are required to protect him. Years of house arrest would suit me just fine, along with restrictions on his use of internet and television.
Lolololol! QAnon congresswoman-turned-GOP House leadership darling Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) membership with the House Freedom Caucus has been in question ever since she laid down her life/remaining dignity to back House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in his speakership race. Since then, she’s been picking fights and at odds with members of the rebellious faction for being too tight with the establishment crowd. While there’s been speculation for weeks that the Georgia congresswoman may soon get the boot from the fringe group, it turns out that the Freedom Caucus has actually already voted to punish Greene for forgetting where she came from. Freedom Caucus member Rep.
Last week in Philadelphia Moms for Liberty held a cattle call for presidential candidates at their “Joyful Warriors” conference and they got all the big names to show up. This was quite a get for a group that only started in 2021 by Sarasota Florida school board members Tiffany Justice, Tina Descovich and Bridget Ziegler to protest masking and vaccine mandates in public schools during COVID-19. They are big players now in Republican politics with big donors and major politicians competing for their favor. And like so many others in the GOP they also have ties with the Proud Boys, a far-right hate group and have been designated antigovernment extremists by the Southern Poverty Law Center which they are wearing it with pride, as right wing groups tend to do: Florida GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler, quoted above, also happens to be married to Bridget Ziegler, one of the founders of Mom’s for Liberty so for all its claims to being a grassroots organization, let’s just say they had friends in high places from the very beginning.
TPM reports: As Trump-appointed judges vie to see who can produce the most nakedly partisan rulings completely divorced from precedent and case law, a new contender has thrown his hat in the ring. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty on Tuesday barred Biden administration officials — everyone from Heath and Human Services to the Centers for Disease Control to the FBI — from flagging posts that spread misinformation to social media companies. Doughty ruled that such contact is a violation of the First Amendment. The companies include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, Instagram and many more. The judgment bans the named officials from meeting with the companies, flagging worrying content, emailing or calling the companies about content, following up with the companies or even collaborating with groups like the Election Integrity Partnership to identify troublesome posts. “Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario,” Doughty writes.
Crazy state parties are on their own Reuters reports that GOP donors are getting sick of throwing good money after bad to the Trump kooks who have taken over various state parties: Real estate mogul Ron Weiser has been one of the biggest donors to the Michigan Republican Party, giving $4.5 million in the recent midterm election cycle. But no more. Weiser, former chair of the party, has halted his funding, citing concerns about the organization’s stewardship. He says he doesn’t agree with Republicans who promote falsehoods about election results and insists it’s “ludicrous” to claim Donald Trump, who lost Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020, carried the state. “I question whether the state party has the necessary expertise to spend the money well,” he said. The withdrawal of bankrollers like Weiser reflects the high price Republicans in the battleground states of Michigan and Arizona are paying for their full-throated support of former President Trump and his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman have the story. All these right wingers bellowing about free speech all the time are beyond hypocritical: At first glance, the plight of Katherine Rinderle, a fifth-grade teacher in Georgia, might seem confusing. Rinderle faces likely termination by the Cobb County School District for reading aloud a children’s book that touches on gender identity. Yet she is charged in part with violating policy related to a state law banning “divisive concepts” about race, not gender. This disconnect captures something essential about state laws and directives restricting classroom discussion across the country: They seem to be imprecisely drafted to encourage censorship. That invites parents and administrators to seek to apply bans to teachers haphazardly, forcing teachers to err on the side of muzzling themselves rather than risk unintentionally crossing fuzzy lines into illegality. “Teachers are fearful,” Rinderle told us in an interview.
Is this about privatizing social security to further enrich Wall St? Or maybe they want Donald Trump to be president again? I can’t think of another reason why they wouldn’t just say, “raise taxes on rich people” and leave it at that. (That is the answer to this problem if, in fact, there is one.) After all, other countries are somehow able to provide universal health care and retirement benefits for their citizens. France is experiencing massive protest right now over a proposal to raise the full retirement age from 62 to 64. We should be so lucky. The usual suspects are talking about raising our retirement age to 72! Maybe they should have a chat with Professor Paul Krugman, their own columnist, who exposed the Deficit Scolds just last May (for the hundredth time) during the debt ceiling negotiations. It’s all nonsense.