“Party of law and order, my ass” Will MAGA stick its fingers in an electrical outlet a second time? What’s the betting line in London on violence erupting if Trump is indicted this week? Gonna drop a missive about it from Heather Cox Richardson right here: Rumors that he is about to be indicted in New York in connection with the $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels have prompted former president Donald Trump to pepper his alternative social media site with requests for money and to double down on the idea that any attack on him is an attack on the United States. The picture of America in his posts reflects the extreme version of the virtual reality the Republicans have created since the 1980s. The United States is “THIRD WORLD & DYING,” he wrote.
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Again, I have to ask, if the GOP base wants someone who owns the libs, nobody does it better than Donald Trump. And if they want more moderate policies, Ron DeSantis certainly isn’t offering any. So what’s DeSantis doing by trying to out Trump Trump? Politico: Gov. Ron DeSantis is often called “Trump 2.0” for his embrace of conservative policies and his take-no-prisoners style of politics. And ahead of the 2024 presidential election — as both Florida men vie to lead the party and ultimately the nation — they have openly feuded over Covid-19 and vaccines and whether DeSantis is truly loyal to the former president, whose 2018 endorsement helped the Florida governor win election. But the men are also very similar in their approach to issues like critical race theory, China and especially their criticism of Democrats and President Joe Biden. How similar? POLITICO collected some of Trump’s and DeSantis’ quotes. See if you can tell who said it. 1.(On fellow Republicans) “Some of these Republicans, they just sit back like potted plants, and they let the media define the terms of the debate.
Meanwhile, this was happening just last year Just don’t suggest that there was collusion. That would be a witch hunt: Federal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties, according to sources familiar with the matter. The company – Trump Media, which owns Trump’s Truth Social platform – initially came under criminal investigation over its preparations for a potential merger with a blank check company called Digital World (DWAC) that was also the subject of an earlier investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Towards the end of last year, federal prosecutors started examining two loans totaling $8m wired to Trump Media, through the Caribbean, from two obscure entities that both appear to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the sources said.
Huckleberry hoist by his own petard He created this monster and now it’s trying to destroy him. I guess Lindsey is banking on the idea that Republicans are so racist that they’ll rally behind moves to go to war with China. And he may be right. But he’s on the wrong side of the argument when it comes to Russia and Ukraine. They support Vladimir Putin, an anti-gay, authoritarian, white nationalist and they don’t give a damn about Ukrainian children. They don’t give a damn about any American children who aren’t the spawn of right wing bigots. And Lindsey, they don’t really care about family values. They’re Trump voters. Think about it.
It’s part entertainment and part GOP activism. But it’s not news. Margaret Sullivan notes that they are knowingly misinforming their audience while claiming to be protected by the first amendment: As it tries to defend itself against the accusation that it knowingly spread lies about the 2020 presidential election, Fox News has touted some lofty notions about the role of journalism in a democratic society. “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners,” said a recent company statement, “but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v Sullivan.” The background, of course, is that Dominion Voting Systems is seeking $1.6bn in damages from the media giant, arguing that Fox News spread damaging falsehoods purporting that the voting machine company rigged the election to defeat Donald Trump.
The AUKUS subs plan will cost Australia way more than that That’s the headline for my latest piece in The Conversation . Using defense procurement as a job creation policy is a really bad idea Australian governments have a long and generally dismal history of using defence procurement, and particularly naval procurement, as a form […]
What they say about assuming Change may indeed make fools of us all, as Ezra Klein writes in reference to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. Was SVB a “bank run by idiots” or a “bank-run by idiots,” posed financial journalist Matt Klein. Perhaps both, the former Klein poses back. History, too, makes fools of us all by keeping a record. Conservatives who once believed they “defend the unchanging ground of our changing experience” now twist democracy into a pretzel to justify minority rule as long as they’re the minority — “Hehehe” — to borrow from an amateur painter in Texas. The Federalist Society faces the uncomfortable realization that “most conservatives couldn’t care less about their high-minded principles, and, even worse, that many of their allies view their attachment to those principles as a quaint — and slightly embarrassing — relic of the bygone era when conservatives still had to be coy about what they actually believed.” That era is not entirely gone.
The Federalist Society goes wobbly on democracy A report from a Federalist Society confab: To those who have followed the Federalist Society closely since its triumphs at the Supreme Court last year, the symposium’s focus on law and democracy may hardly seem incidental. Since its founding in 1982, the Federalist Society has championed “judicial restraint,” the notion that judges should limit their roles to interpreting the law as written, leaving the actual business of lawmaking to democratically elected legislatures. That approach made sense for conservatives when they still saw the federal judiciary as a liberal force dragging the country to the left. But now that conservatives have secured a solid majority on the Supreme Court — and voters in several red states have soundly rejected hard-line positions on abortion — a spirited debate is underway within the Federalist Society about the wisdom of deferring to democratic majorities as a matter of principle.
The right just love bans They’re not waiting for that federal judge in Texas in Wyoming. Look for more of this: Wyoming on Friday became the first state to ban the use of pills for abortion, adding momentum to a growing push by conservative states and anti-abortion groups to target medication abortion, the method now used in a majority of pregnancy terminations in the United States. Wyoming’s new law comes as a preliminary ruling is expected soon by a Texas judge that could order the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval of mifepristone, the first pill in the two-drug medication abortion regimen. Such a ruling, if it stands, could upend how abortion is provided nationally, affecting states where abortion is legal as well as states with bans and restrictions. Legislation to ban or add restrictions on medication abortion has been introduced in several states this year, including a bill in Texas that would not only ban abortion pills but also require internet service providers to take steps to block medication abortion websites so people in Texas could not view them.