The Surprising Figure Some Democrats Think Can Save Joe Biden
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – November 22, 2023
In a bid to save President Joe Biden in the polls, Democrats are turning to a novel, counterintuitive solution: more Donald Trump.
Trump has seemed relatively quiet in the race for the White House. Recently returned to X, formerly known as Twitter, his posts do not receive the torrent of media attention that they did before the January 6 insurrection. Similarly, Trump’s speeches and rallies have received muted attention over the last three years.
Despite this lackluster media presence, he has blown every other GOP candidate out of the water, pulling numbers that nearly quintuple those of his second-place opponent, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, according to composite polling by FiveThirtyEight.
A quieter Trump also seems to be doing better than a vocal and present Biden, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris survey published Monday, which found that the Republican front-runner’s numbers are eclipsing the incumbent president’s, with Trump polling at 48 percent compared to Biden’s 41 percent.
Biden’s own actions have damaged his favorability in recent months. His foreign policy failures and firm stance behind Israel in its conflict against Hamas have severely affected his approval ratings, particularly with minority voters. A joint poll released in early November by The New York Times and Siena College found that support for the U.S. leader had fallen sharply among Black and Hispanic voters. Young voters have also bemoaned Biden’s inability to follow through with campaign promises for mass student loan cancellation, which saw its initial demise at the hands of an ultraconservative U.S. Supreme Court in June.
The solution? Reverse course on a party maxim to oust Trump from the public consciousness, according to Democratic leadership, who no longer feel that ignoring the real estate mogul is an effective tactic and instead are quietly hoping for live broadcasting of his notorious campaign rallies, reported The New York Times.
“Not having the day-to-day chaos of Donald Trump in people’s faces certainly has an impact on how people are measuring the urgency of the danger of another Trump administration,” Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an African American political organizing group, told the Times. “It is important to remind people of what a total and absolute disaster Trump was.”
It’s a surprising about-face. From Trump’s descent down the escalator in June 2015 until January 6, 2021, the consensus among mainstream Democrats was that the media was far too beholden to Donald Trump and that, in the cynical pursuit of eyeballs and profits, they essentially allowed him to act as their assignment editor. The notion that the press was “complicit” in Trump’s rise was widely held during this period, as was the idea that the nation would wake up if they covered him as a dictator in training. The press’s coverage of Trump has become more disciplined and aggressive—when it happens—in the aftermath of January 6. But it hasn’t dimmed Trump’s popularity. Now the hope is that more coverage of Trump’s derangement will damage his candidacy.
Mike Johnson’s America: Revisit landmark SCOTUS decisions and use government to ‘restrain evil’
Andrew Kaczynski and Curt Devine, CNN – November 21, 2023
Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, voiced support for revisiting Supreme Court decisions that struck down restrictions on the use of contraception, barred bans on gay sex and legalized same sex marriages, according to a CNN review of his prior public statements.
On a conservative talk radio show the day the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Johnson underscored Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion that the high court should reconsider those other landmark rulings.
Johnson, citing his years as an attorney against “activist courts,” defended Thomas’ view, insisting that what Thomas was calling for was, “not radical. In fact, it’s the opposite of that.”
“There’s been some really bad law made,” he said. “They’ve made a mess of our jurisprudence in this country for the last several decades. And maybe some of that needs to be cleaned up.”
When asked about Johnson’s post-Roe comments, a spokesman for the congressman told CNN that Johnson “views the cases as settled law.”
Still, CNN’s review of more than 100 of Johnson’s interviews, speeches and public commentary spanning his decades-long career as a lawmaker and attorney paints a picture of his governing ideals: Imprisoning doctors who perform abortions after six weeks; the Ten Commandments prominently displayed in public buildings; an elimination of anti-hate-crime laws; Bible study in public schools.
From endorsing hard labor prison sentences for abortion providers to supporting the criminalization of gay sex, his staunchly conservative rhetoric is rooted in an era of “biblical morality,” that he says was washed away with the counterculture in the 1960s.
“One of the primary purposes of the law in civil government is to restrain evil,” Johnson said on one radio show in 2010. “We have to acknowledge collectively that man is inherently evil and needs to be restrained.”
His vision has been well received as a congressman in his deeply conservative district in western Louisiana. But his surprising rise to the speakership has brought his particularly subtle brand of fire-and-brimstone to second in line to the presidency — delivering him a national platform from which to shape and influence laws.
Johnson’s endorsement of Thomas’ opinion, legal experts say, positioned him significantly outside the mainstream.
“Speaker Johnson embraces a view that is not only outside of the mainstream but is so radical in terms of his endorsement of the Thomas position, that even the extremely conservative Supreme Court majority isn’t willing to go there,” said Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a CNN legal analyst. “It would take the country back more than a half-century.”
The frontlines of the culture war
CNN unearthed more than two dozen radio interviews from Johnson’s time as an attorney at the socially conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) where Johnson litigated and voiced support for what he sometimes described as a battle for the country between the forces of good and evil.
“The arrows in the culture war are particularly directed at our youth, where the Enemy often has the greatest effect,” read the 2005 webpage for “God & Country,” a Christian local radio show co-hosted by Johnson. “We cannot lose our children to the forces of darkness. Be aware and get active in your kids’ schools.”
Topics discussed on the show included “creation science” in public schools; how to “fight the porn industry”; God’s “design for government”; and “the true meaning of ‘separation of church and state.’”
As an attorney at ADF, Johnson repeatedly battled two organizations in his fight to keep religion in the public square: The American Civil Liberties Union, which he called “the most dangerous organization in America,” and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The groups clashed over prayer in public schools, public displays of nativity scenes and the right to open public meetings with prayer.
“They have convinced an entire generation of Americans that there’s this so-called separation of church and state,” Johnson said in 2008 about the ACLU.
Johnson’s rhetoric has tapped into a “persecution complex” for evangelicals as American culture leans increasingly left on social issues, said Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor.
“They want to feel embattled. They want to fight the culture war,” Burge told CNN.
“When he talks about Griswold and Lawrence, evangelicals know that what he really is saying to them is: ‘Our way of life is under attack and liberalism is on the march. Stand firm in our convictions,’” added Burge, referring to the landmark cases that legalized gay sex and contraception use.
Rep. Mike Johnson speaking outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington during arguments over whether businesses may decline services for same-sex weddings in December 2022. – Michael A. McCoy/The New York Times/Redux
Johnson served not only as an attorney at ADF but a national spokesman for the organization, making appearances on radio and national television where he often addressed so-called “right of conscience” cases involving Christian businesses.
Discussing one case in New Mexico, where a wedding photography company was found in violation of the state’s anti-discrimination laws for refusing to photograph a same-sex couple’s commitment ceremony, Johnson argued anti-discrimination laws did not recognize a “behavior” like homosexuality.
“There are laws on the books that prohibit discrimination against people for their immutable characteristics, their race and creed and that kind of thing,” Johnson said in a 2009 radio interview. “There’s a difference – and the law has recognized a difference – between that and homosexual behavior. As something that you do, not an immutable characteristic of what you are.”
The New Mexico Supreme Court disagreed and ruled against the company, which ADF represented. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Johnson “doesn’t understand the problem with a government compelling its citizens to follow not just religion, but a particular religion,” said Katherine Lewis Parker, the former legal director for the ACLU of North Carolina, who opposed Johnson in a lawsuit related to prayer at official meetings.
In that 2007 suit, three residents in Forsyth County, North Carolina, argued local officials had an unconstitutional “practice of sponsoring sectarian prayer” with specific references to Jesus during meetings. Johnson defended the officials and argued that even in Congress, prayers often contain Christian references, which he called a “logical function of the nation’s demographics.”
During a deposition, Johnson peppered one of the plaintiffs about what type of prayer would be acceptable in county meetings. “So if someone might be offended by virtually any prayer, should we just get rid of prayer entirely?” he asked.
An appeals court ruled against Johnson’s arguments in 2011, though the Supreme Court later ruled in favor of allowing such prayers in a separate case.
“I think he is a true believer and I think he wants to blend religion and government,” Parker said of Johnson.
Homosexuality was a frequent topic for Johnson, which he has called “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle.” In addition to suggesting he hopes the Supreme Court will reverse its decision allowing same-sex marriage, he also wrote in support of Texas’ anti-sodomy laws, which said gay men caught having sex could be fined.
“It recognized a fundamental right, a constitutional right to, to sodomy, which had never been recognized before,” Johnson said at a forum in 2005 on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas — which struck down the ban on gay sex in that state.
Johnson supported an Arkansas law against same-sex couples adopting children, citing it as “good public policy” in 2008. In 2013, he opposed President Barack Obama’s appointment of an “openly homosexual” ambassador, Wally Brewster, to the Dominican Republic, calling it a provocative move against the Catholic country.
Move to government
In 2015, transitioning from his role at ADF to a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, Johnson sparked national controversy with the “Marriage and Conscience Act.” The bill aimed to protect individuals objecting to same-sex marriage on religious grounds but faced opposition from Johnson’s hometown editorial board,businessleaders and even Republicans in the state legislature.
Critics argued it could enable discrimination against LGBTQ individuals by businesses. Following backlash, the bill never reached a vote. In response to the bill’s failure, then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, issued a similar executive order.
“Apparently, defending religious liberty makes one ‘anti-gay’ now,” Johnson wrote on Facebook amid debate on the bill.
Just two years later, Johnson moved from the state legislature to Congress where he’s maintained a 92% rating from the CPAC Center for Legislative Accountability – 11% higher than the average Republican in 2022.
In this 2018 photo, US Rep. Mike Johnson files his paperwork at the secretary of state’s office as he qualified for his congressional re-election bid in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. – Melinda Deslatte/AP
In Congress, Johnson signed on to some of the toughest anti-abortion bills, such as a 2021 so-called “heartbeat bill,” which would essentially outlaw abortion after six weeks. He has repeatedly called states that allow abortion “pro-death” states.
“It is truly an American holocaust,” Johnson said in May 2022 on local DC radio. “The reality is that Planned Parenthood and all thesebig abortion (providers), they set up their clinics in inner cities. They regard these people as easy prey. I mean, it’s true.”
Johnson also supportedplans to change Medicare and Social Security benefits while increasing the retirement age, emphasizing urgency in addressing escalating entitlement.
He has blamed booming entitlements costs in part on abortion.
“And you don’t have 40 or 50 million able-bodied workers in the economy,” Johnson said on a podcast he co-hosts with his wife. “That would be paying taxes into the system to be able to support their elderly, you know, neighbors and friends.”
On numerous occasions, Johnson also voiced approval for a Louisiana state trigger law – passed in 2006 – which banned abortion without exceptions for rape and incest the day Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Rep. Mike Johnson speaks during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on July 14, 2022 in Washington, DC. The committee heard testimony on threats to individual freedoms after theUS Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade decision on abortions. – Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
“I’m grateful to be from Louisiana, one of the dozen states or so that has a trigger law that will automatically become an abortion free state, pro-life,” Johnson said in 2022.
For Johnson and those who share his worldview, such policies have spiritual implications not only for individuals but the entire nation, said Philip Gorski, a professor and chair of the sociology department at Yale University who has studied Christian nationalism.
“There is much more at stake for Johnson and others who crome from that conservative Christian subculture,” he said. “There is this view the United States is a Christian nation which has entered into a sacred covenant with God that involves upholding certain standards of Christian morality, and when those standards are violated, when those precepts are broken, it threatens the entire country with divine wrath and all kinds of decline.”
Efforts to keep Trump in office
In this screenshot taken from a congress.gov webcast, Rep. Mike Johnson speaks during a House debate session to ratify the 2020 presidential election at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. – congress.gov via Getty Images
Following Trump’s 2020 reelection defeat, Johnson played a pivotal role in efforts to overturn the election – urging his colleagues to sign onto the Texas Attorney General’s longshot lawsuit aiming to throw out the results in key swing states.
“It was rejected by a bipartisan majority of the Supreme Court,” Eisen told CNN, but Johnson was willing to “perpetuate the loser as the winner and to twist the law and the facts to support that.”
Johnson also endorsed some fringe conspiracies, including the unsubstantiated belief that voting software machines were manipulated.
On January 6, 2021, Johnson voted to object the election results, later saying he was doing his “duty to uphold the Constitution.”
For Johnson, the vote to keep Trump in office reflected a striking evolution from his past critique of Trump in 2015, whom, as first reported by the New York Times, he openly labeled as “dangerous,” lacking “character,” and devoid of a “moral center.” It was the apex of the transactional relationship between the religious right and former TV star.
During a church service in 2022, reflecting on the conclusion of Roe v. Wade, Johnson remarked that much of the credit belonged to Trump.
“There is a lot of credit to go around, but you have to acknowledge, Donald Trump for all of his, peccadillos, okay? Bless him,” Johnson said. “He was true to his word.”
Texas businesses say abortion ban costs state nearly $15 billion a year
Ryan Chandler – November 20, 2023
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Forty Texas companies and business leaders are entering the fight against Texas’ abortion ban, filing a brief with the Texas Supreme Court that argues the “ambiguity” in the laws medical exceptions cost the state an estimated $14.5 billion in lost revenue every year.
Austin-based dating app giant Bumble is leading the effort, submitting an amicus brief ahead of the high court’s arguments in Zurawski v. Texas. Lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski is challenging the state’s abortion ban after she nearly died of sepsis due to a pregnancy complication. She says the Texas abortion ban’s vague medical exceptions prevented her doctor from providing a medically necessary abortion until she had nearly died.
“We feel it’s our duty not just to provide our workforce with access to reproductive health care, but to speak out – and speak loudly – against the retrogression of women’s rights,” Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said. “Texas’s confusing medical exceptions increase business costs, drive away talent, and threaten workforce diversity and well-being.”
Dozens of other companies signed onto the brief, including South by Southwest, Zilker Properties, ATX Television Festival, and Central Presbyterian Church.
The brief cites research from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) to arrive at their claim that Texas’ abortion ban costs the state nearly $15 billion annually. They assert that the ban translates to women earning less, taking more time off work, and leaving the workforce.
IWPR’s research estimates more than 80,000 women between 15 and 44 could enter the workforce without the abortion ban.
“An uncertain and confusing Texas regulatory environment is creating professional and personal difficulties for those who work and travel in Texas, as well as adversely impacting employee recruitment and retention, and creating obstacles for attracting new businesses, visitors and events,” law firm Reed Smith explained.
Supporters of Texas’ abortion ban argue the law does not preclude doctors from performing medically-necessary abortions. Rather, they say doctors are unfamiliar with the law’s exceptions.
“These stories are heartbreaking, they’re tragedies,” Texas Right to Life’s John Seago said. “Those kind of medical emergency situations clearly can be fixed by education… we have to fill in that gap to protect mothers and their children to make sure that our laws are actually protecting life, not jeopardizing life.”
The state will defend the abortion ban in front of the Texas Supreme Court on Nov. 28.
Voting Rights Act ruling is latest attempt by Trump-nominated judges to overturn Supreme Court precedent
Joan Biskupic, Senior Supreme Court Analyst – November 20, 2023
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
A US appellate court decision Monday undercutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 rejects decades of precedent and appears likely to provoke a confrontation at the US Supreme Court, where the milestone law has been increasingly under attack.
At stake are the voting rights of Blacks, Hispanics and other racial minorities that have been vindicated under a section of the VRA prohibiting discrimination based on race. Section 2 has helped ensure that states draw legislative and congressional districts fairly and that minority voters have an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
The Supreme Court – as recently as June – has reaffirmed Section 2. But US appellate judge David Stras, the author of the majority opinion in Monday’s case from Arkansas, observed that Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have called a key provision of the law into question. His ruling Monday could ultimately gut the law’s protections.
Monday’s appellate court ruling – essentially getting out ahead of the high court – seems certain to instigate a new voting-rights showdown as the nation heads into a presidential election cycle.
The decision is the latest example of former President Donald Trump’s influence over the federal judiciary. Stras, one of Trump’s first appellate court appointees, defied Supreme Court precedent to bolster a conservative interpretation of the law backed by Thomas and Gorsuch, who was Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee.
In Monday’s groundbreaking decision, the 2-to-1 panel of the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that private plaintiffs, such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or American Civil Liberties Union, have no right to bring litigation on behalf of voters under Section 2. Stras was joined in the majority by Circuit Judge Raymond Gruender, an appointee of former President George W. Bush.
Citing Thomas and Gorsuch, Stras said it has been an “open question” as to how far the law goes. Yet that notion has never drawn as Supreme Court majority.
“For much of the last half-century,” Stras, a former Thomas law clerk, acknowledged, “courts have assumed that Section 2 is privately enforceable.”
But, he added, “A deeper look has revealed that this assumption rests on flimsy footing…”
The decision swept back the history of the legislation and longstanding court interpretations, saying Congress had failed to explicitly detail that private parties could challenge VRA violations. Only the US attorney general has that explicit right, the ruling said.
The dissenting judge countered that a foundational principle of American law is that “where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy.” Judge Lavenski Smith, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, added that Congress never intended enforcement of the law – “so foundational to self-government” – to be left only to the federal government.
Conservative assault on Voting Rights Act
The justices on the contemporary court have been deeply divided over the reach of the act passed at the height of the Civil Rights movement and only after the March 1965 “Bloody Sunday” attacks on marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama.
The high court, dominated by conservative jurists, has over the past decade curtailed federal voting protections, giving states more latitude for redistricting and other electoral practices.
But last June, a 5-4 majority reinforced the act’s protections against discriminatory voting lines by invalidating an Alabama map found to have diluted Black voting power. The Alabama legislature had packed much of the state’s African American population into one district and divided the rest among other districts.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote for the slim cross-ideological majority, said Alabama’s arguments flew in the face of precedent. “The heart of these cases,” he wrote, “is not about the law as it exists. It is about Alabama’s attempt to remake our Section 2 jurisprudence anew.”
Thomas, one of the dissenters in that case of Allen v. Milligan, specifically noted at the time: “The Court does not address whether Section 2 contains a private right of action.” Only Gorsuch joined that portion of Thomas’ dissenting opinion, which echoed a point Gorsuch made two years earlier that Thomas signed on to.
Ruling against the Arkansas State Conference NAACP, which had contended the state diminished Black voting power in redistricting, Stras said neither the text nor structure of the VRA gives private plaintiffs a clear right to sue under Section 2.
“If the 1965 Congress clearly intended to create a private right of action, then why not say so in the statute?” he wrote.
Referring to other voting-rights advocates that had joined the state NAACP, he added, “The advocacy groups argue that courts have been adjudicating Section 2 claims brought by private plaintiffs for years, so they must be available. But assuming their existence, and even discussing them, is different from actually deciding that a private right of action exists.”
That contradicts longstanding Supreme Court and lower federal court interpretations of the law, Chief Judge Smith wrote in his dissent.
“Rights so foundational to self-government and citizenship should not depend solely on the discretion or availability of the government’s agents for protection,” Smith said, citing research showing that “over the past forty years, there have been at least 182 successful Section 2 cases; only 15 were brought solely by the Attorney General.”
Smith contended the 8th Circuit majority should have left resolution of whether Section 2 can be invoked by private plaintiffs to the justices – rather than trying to “predict the Supreme Court’s future decisions.”
Trump has big plans for a second term. Critics say they pose a threat to democracy.
Ben Adler, Senior Editor – November 20, 2023
Donald Trump in 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is developing plans to use the federal government to punish his political opponents if he wins a second term next year, and critics — including some prominent Republicans, even some staffers from his first term — say these plans would imperil American democracy.
On the campaign trail, Trump has made numerous public references to exacting revenge upon detractors and rivals, including promising to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden for unspecified crimes. Earlier this month, in a speech and in a post on Truth Social, he referred to left-wing Americans as “vermin.”
Historians said such dehumanizing of one’s political opponents is frequently used by fascist dictators. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded by saying, “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”
According to the Washington Post, Trump has privately said he would direct the Department of Justice to investigate officials from his first term who have since criticized his tenure, including:
Former White House chief of staff and retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly
Former Attorney General William P. Barr
Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark A. Milley
Former Trump White House special counsel Ty Cobb
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley in 2022. (Ting Shen/Xinhua via Getty Images) (Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images)
According to his advisers, Trump intends to fire up to tens of thousands of career government professionals and replace them with his allies, and will refuse to spend congressional appropriations on programs he opposes.
The New York Times has reported that Trump’s plans to crack down on illegal immigration will include:
Using military funds to erect detention camps
Using a public-health emergency law to shut down asylum requests at the border
Ending birthright citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants
Trump also reportedly plans to send the military into Mexico to combat drug cartels, with or without the Mexican government’s permission.
A number of high-profile Republican elected officials, conservative legal scholars and veterans of Trump’s first term in office have said Trump’s intentions would weaken the justice system and threaten the rule of law. Here are some of the most notable criticisms:
Former Rep. Liz Cheney. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images)
“He cannot be the next president, because if he is, all of the things that he attempted to do, but was stopped from doing by responsible people around him at the Department of Justice, at the White House Counsel’s Office, all of those things, he will do. There will be no guardrails.”
“His policies are not centered around improving the lives of his supporters or Americans in general, it’s centered around consolidating power for Trump, and that way he can wield it to enact that revenge on anyone he deems as an enemy. And that is what is scary.”
“Making prosecutorial decisions in a nonpartisan manner is essential to democracy. The White House should not be meddling in individual cases for political reasons.”
National security adviser John Bolton in 2018. (Evan Vucci/AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
“He doesn’t think in policy directions when he makes decisions, certainly in the national security space. It’s all connected with how things benefit Donald Trump. … In a second Trump term, we’d almost certainly withdraw from NATO.”
“Donald Trump represents a failure of character, which is changing, I think, in many respects, the psyche of our nation and the heart of our nation. And that’s something which takes a long time — if ever — to repair.”
When It Comes to Disdain for Democracy, Trump Has Company
By Jamelle Bouie – November 17, 2023
Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times
It makes perfect sense to treat Donald Trump as the most immediate threat to the future of American democracy. He has an ambitious plan to turn the office of the presidency into an instrument of “revenge” against his political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups.
But while we keep our eyes on Trump and his allies and enablers, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that antidemocratic attitudes run deep within the Republican Party. In particular, there appears to be a view among many Republicans that the only vote worth respecting is a vote for the party and its interests. A vote against them is a vote that doesn’t count.
This is not a new phenomenon. We saw a version of it on at least two occasions in 2018. In Florida, a nearly two-thirds majority of voters backed a state constitutional amendment to effectively end felon disenfranchisement. The voters of Florida were as clear as voters could possibly be: If you’ve served your time, you deserve your ballot.
Rather than heed the voice of the people, Florida Republicans immediately set out to render it moot. They passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that more or less nullified the amendment by imposing an almost impossible set of requirements for felons to meet. Specifically, eligible voters had to pay any outstanding fees or fines that were on the books before their rights could be restored. Except there was no central record of those fees or fines, and the state did not have to tell felons what they owed, if anything. You could try to vote, but you risked arrest, conviction and even prison time.
In Wisconsin the same year, voters put Tony Evers, a Democrat, into the governor’s mansion, breaking eight years of Republican control. The Republican-led legislature did not have the power to overturn the election results, but the impenetrable, ultragerrymandered majority could use its authority to strip as much power from the governor as possible, blocking, among other things, his ability to withdraw from a state lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act — one of the things he campaigned on. Wisconsin voters would have their new governor, but he’d be as weak as Republicans could make him.
It almost goes without saying that we should include the former president’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election as another example of the willingness of the Republican Party to reject any electoral outcome that doesn’t fall in its favor. And although we’ve had only a few elections this year, it doesn’t take much effort to find more of the same.
I’ve already written about the attempt among Wisconsin Republicans to nullify the results of a heated race for a seat on the state Supreme Court. Voters overwhelmingly backed the more liberal candidate for the seat, Janet Protasiewicz, giving the court the votes needed to overturn the gerrymander that keeps Wisconsin Republicans in power in the legislature even after they lose a majority of votes statewide.
In response, Wisconsin Republicans floated an effort to impeach the new justice on a trumped-up charge of bias. The party eventually backed down in the face of national outrage — and the danger that any attempt to remove Protasiewicz might backfire electorally in the future. But the party’s reflexive move to attempt to cancel the will of the electorate says everything you need to know about the relationship of the Wisconsin Republican Party to democracy.
Ohio Republicans seem to share the same attitude toward voters who choose not to back Republican priorities. As in Wisconsin, the Ohio legislature is so gerrymandered in favor of the Republican Party that it would take a once-in-a-century supermajority of Democratic votes to dislodge it from power. Most lawmakers in the state have nothing to fear from voters who might disagree with their actions.
It was in part because of this gerrymander that abortion rights proponents in the state focused their efforts on a ballot initiative. The Ohio legislature may have been dead set on ending abortion access in the state — in 2019, the Republican majority passed a so-called heartbeat bill banning abortion after six weeks — but Ohio voters were not.
Aware that most of the voters in their state supported abortion rights and unwilling to try to persuade them that an abortion ban was the best policy for the state, Ohio Republicans first tried to rig the game. In August the legislature asked voters to weigh in on a new supermajority requirement for ballot initiatives to amend the state Constitution. If approved, this requirement would have stopped the abortion rights amendment in its tracks.
The supermajority requirement failed. And last week, Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to write reproductive rights into their state Constitution, repudiating their gerrymandered, anti-choice legislature. Or so they thought.
Not one full day after the vote, four Republican state representatives announced that they intended to do everything in their power to nullify the amendment and give lawmakers total discretion to ban abortion as they see fit. “This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law,” their statement reads. “We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.”
Notice the language: “our power” and “our laws.” There is no awareness here that the people of Ohio are sovereign and that their vote to amend the state Constitution holds greater authority than the judgment of a small group of legislators. This group may not like the fact that Ohioans have declared the Republican abortion ban null and void, but that is democracy. If these lawmakers want to advance their efforts to restrict abortion, they first need to persuade the people.
To many Republicans, unfortunately, persuasion is anathema. There is no use making an argument, since you might lose. Instead, the game is to create a system in which, heads or tails, you always win.
That’s why Republican-controlled legislatures across the country have embraced partisan gerrymanders so powerful that they undermine the claim to democratic government in the states in question. That’s why Republicans in places like North Carolina have adopted novel and dubious legal arguments about state power, the upshot of which is that they concentrate power in the hands of these gerrymandered state legislatures, giving them total authority over elections and electoral outcomes. And that’s why, months before voting begins in the Republican presidential nomination contest, much of the party has already embraced a presidential candidate who promises to prosecute and persecute his political opponents.
One of the basic ideas of democracy is that nothing is final. Defeats can become victories, and victories can become defeats. Governments change, laws change, and most important, the people change. No majority is the majority, and there’s always the chance that new configurations of groups and interests will produce new outcomes.
For this to work, however, we — as citizens — have to believe it can work. Cultivating this faith is no easy task. We have to have confidence in our ability to talk to one another, to work with one another, to persuade one another. We have to see one another, in some sense, as equals, each of us entitled to a place in this society.
It seems to me that too many Republicans have lost that faith.
U.S. and China reach a deal on fighting climate change. Here’s what it means.
Ben Adler, Senior Editor – November 15, 2023
U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua before a meeting in Beijing, China, July 17. (Valerie Volcovici/Reuters) (REUTERS)
The United States and China may be at odds over everything from the Russia-Ukraine war to the status of Taiwan, but the world’s two largest economies just showed they can still work together on climate change.
The two superpowers jointly announced on Wednesday that they’ve agreed to a deal to rapidly increase the share of energy that comes from renewable sources and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
Committing to helping the world triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.
Reducing power sector emissions by the end of the decade.
Reducing future emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
Halting deforestation by 2030.
The timing
Bifacial photovoltaic solar panels at the Roadrunner solar plant, owned and operated by Enel Green Power, near McCamey, Texas, Nov. 10. (Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images) (Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The deal comes as scientists express growing alarm over the quickly escalating increases in warming and effects witnessed throughout the year, such as more extreme heat waves, wildfires and storms.
October was just the world’s fifth consecutive month of record-high global average temperatures.
The next round of U.N. climate negotiations, called COP28, is set to begin on Nov. 30 in Dubai. More than 60 countries, including the U.S., have recently called for the agreement produced there to include the tripling of renewable energy goals. The G20 also embraced that target in September.
The full moon sets behind a wind farm in the Mojave Desert in California, Jan. 8, 2004. (Toby Melville/Reuters) (REUTERS)
Experts are hailing Wednesday’s announcement as a welcome sign.
“It’s very promising to see the U.S. and China diplomatically engaging on climate change again, after the broader challenges in the relationship sort of brought that to a halt,” Pete Ogden, vice president for climate and environment at the United Nations Foundation, told Yahoo News. “To see that re-energized going into the COP is encouraging and hopefully something they can build on.”
But while the potential impact is huge, other experts note that the actual emissions reductions from this agreement is unclear.
“Since China’s power sector emissions are so large, any decline this decade could avoid a lot of emissions,” Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director for international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Yahoo News.
How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025
Jonathan Swan – November 15, 2023
Former President Donald Trump during a campaign event at Stevens High School in Claremont, N.H. on Nov. 11, 2023. (Sophie Park/The New York Times)
Former President Donald Trump declared in the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign: “I am your retribution.” He later vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political adversaries, starting with President Joe Biden and his family.
Beneath these public threats is a series of plans by Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House.
Some of these themes trace back to the final period of Trump’s term in office. By that stage, his key advisers had learned how to more effectively wield power and Trump had fired officials who resisted some of his impulses and replaced them with loyalists. Then he lost the 2020 election and was cast out of power.
Since leaving office, Trump’s advisers and allies at a network of well-funded groups have advanced policies, created lists of potential personnel and started shaping new legal scaffolding — laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency they hope will commence on Jan. 20, 2025.
In a vague statement, two top officials on Trump’s campaign have sought to distance his campaign team from some of the plans being developed by Trump’s outside allies, groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who remain in direct contact with him. The statement called news reports about the campaign’s personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical.”
The plans described here generally derive from what Trump has trumpeted on the campaign trail, what has appeared on his campaign website and interviews with Trump advisers, including one who spoke with The New York Times at the request of the campaign.
Trump wants to use the Justice Department to take vengeance on his political adversaries.
Allies of Trump have also been developing an intellectual blueprint to cast aside the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigatory independence from White House political direction.
Foreshadowing such a move, Trump had already violated norms in his 2016 campaign by promising to “lock up” his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, over her use of a private email server. While president, he repeatedly told aides he wanted the Justice Department to indict his political enemies, including officials he had fired such as James Comey, the former FBI director. The Justice Department opened various such investigations but did not bring charges — infuriating Trump and leading to a split in 2020 with his attorney general, Bill Barr.
He intends to carry out an extreme immigration crackdown.
Trump is planning an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.
Bolstered by agents reassigned from other federal law enforcement agencies and state police and the National Guard, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would carry out sweeping raids aimed at deporting millions of people each year. Military funds would be used to erect sprawling camps to hold detainees. A public-health emergency law would be invoked to shut down asylum requests by people arriving at the border. And the government would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to parents without legal status.
Trump has plans to use U.S. military force closer to home.
While in office, Trump mused about using the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, an idea that would violate international law unless Mexico consented. That idea has since taken on broader Republican backing, and Trump intends to make the idea a reality if he returns to the Oval Office.
While the Posse Comitatus Act generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for domestic law enforcement purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception. Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act to use troops to crack down on protesters after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, but was thwarted, and the idea remains salient among his advisers. Among other things, his top immigration adviser has said they would invoke the Insurrection Act at the southern border to use soldiers to intercept and detain migrants who enter the U.S. illegally.
Trump and his allies want greater control over the federal bureaucracy and workforce.
They have adopted a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory, which says the president can directly command the entire federal bureaucracy and that it is unconstitutional for Congress to create pockets of independent decision-making authority.
As part of that plan, Trump also intends to revive an effort from the end of his presidency to alter civil-service rules that protect career government professionals, enabling him to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. After Congress failed to enact legislation to block such a change, the Biden administration is developing a regulation to essentially Trump-proof the federal workforce. However, since that is merely an executive action, the next Republican president could simply undo it the same way.
Trump allies want lawyers who will not restrain him.
Politically appointed lawyers sometimes frustrated Trump’s desires by raising legal objections to his and his top advisers’ ideas. This dynamic has led to a quiet split on the right, as Trump loyalists have come to view the typical Federalist Society lawyer — essentially a mainstream Republican conservative — with disdain.
In a potential new term, Trump’s allies are planning to systematically install more aggressive and ideologically aligned legal gatekeepers who will be more likely to bless contentious actions. Trump and his 2024 campaign declined to answer a series of detailed questions about what limits, if any, he would recognize on his powers across a range of war, secrecy and law enforcement matters — many raised by his first term — in a New York Times 2024 presidential candidate survey.
Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025
By Jamelle Bouie – November 14, 2023
Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times
Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of plans meant to give the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.
Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.
With the help of these unscrupulous allies, Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals. He would use the military to crush protests under the Insurrection Act — which he hoped to do during the summer of 2020 — and turn the power of the federal government against his perceived enemies.
“If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump said in a recent interview on the Spanish-language network Univision.
As the former president wrote in a disturbing and authoritarian-minded Veterans Day message to supporters (itself echoing a speech he delivered that same day to supporters in New Hampshire): “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”
Trump has other plans as well. As several of my Times colleagues reported last week, he hopes to institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants. His aides have already drawn up plans for new detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, where anyone suspected of illegal entry would be held until authorities have settled the person’s immigration status.
Given the former president’s rhetoric attacking political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups, like the homeless — Trump has said that the government should “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” — there’s little doubt that some citizens would find themselves in these large and sprawling camps.
Included in this effort to rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible is a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas — who harbor supposedly “jihadist sympathies” or espouse views deemed anti-American. Trump also intends to circumvent the 14th Amendment so that he can end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants.
In the past, Trump has gestured at seeking a third term in office after serving a second four-year term in the White House. “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said during his 2020 campaign. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” This, too, would violate the Constitution, but then, in a world in which Trump gets his way on his authoritarian agenda, the Constitution — and the rule of law — would already be a dead letter.
It might be tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes or the ravings of a lunatic who may eventually find himself in jail. But to borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally.
They may fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country, and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could, and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico.
He even suggested, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, that he would reject an election defeat. Four years later, he lost his bid for re-election. We know what happened next.
In addition to Trump’s words, which we should treat as a reliable guide to his actions, desires and preoccupations, we have his allies, who are as open in their contempt for democracy as Trump is. Ensconced at institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, Trump’s political and ideological allies have made no secret of their desire to install a reactionary Caesar at the head of the American state.
As Damon Linker noted this month in his essay on these figures for Times Opinion, they exist to give “Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.”
Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.
And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.
“That’s game over”: Legal experts say new Jenna Ellis revelation is beyond “devastating” for Trump
Igor Derysh – November 14, 2023
Jenna Ellis John Bazemore-Pool/Getty Images
Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis told prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., that a senior aide to the former president told her he was “not going to leave” the White House even after losing numerous legal challenges.
Ellis in a video of a confidential proffer session with prosecutors obtained by ABC News and The Washington Post said that Trump aide Dan Scavino told her “the boss” would refuse to leave the White House even though she told him that their cause was “essentially over.”
“And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, ‘Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave,'” Ellis recalled. “And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said ‘Well, the boss’, meaning President Trump — and everyone understood ‘the boss,’ that’s what we all called him — he said, ‘The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.'”
Ellis added: “And I said to him, ‘Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize?’ and he said, ‘We don’t care.'”
Ellis also told prosecutors that Scavino’s statement “indicated to me that he was serious and that was in furtherance of something that he had discussed with the boss.
EXCLUSIVE: ABC News has obtained video from Georgia prosecutors' interview with ex-Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, in which Ellis tells them she was personally informed by a top Trump adviser that Trump was "not going to leave" the White House — despite losing the 2020 election.… pic.twitter.com/J9c4bm9cbZ
New York University Law Prof. Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel for the Pentagon, told CNN that Ellis’ revelation could be key evidence in the Fulton case as well as Trump’s federal election subversion case in D.C.
“She’s adding something that’s golden evidence for prosecutors both in Georgia and in DC, which is, they don’t have to prove this but if they can show that Trump knew he lost and was still trying to hold on to power, that’s it,” he said. “That’s game over. And that’s exactly what she says is the context of the conversation.”
Gwen Keyes, a former DeKalb County, Ga., district attorney, told MSNBC that Ellis’ testimony may be key to the Fulton case.
“That is a key element of every one of the crimes that is listed in the indictment,” she said. “That being that the defendants knew that they were perpetrating a lie, and so this goes right to the heart of that.”
Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who was also on the segment, pointed out that the conversation between Ellis and Scavino took place after the safe harbor deadline to resolve state disputes, after state electors met to cast their vote and after the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s legal challenge.
“You might remember, that Jenna Ellis testified before the Jan. 6 Committee, that at a holiday party, Donald Trump said to Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, ‘I don’t want people to know that we lost. It’s embarrassing, figure it out. We need to figure it out.’ So, all of this together paints a really damaging picture for Donald Trump,” he said.
Fellow former TrumpWorld attorney Sidney Powell told prosecutors in her proffer session that she knew nothing about election law when she sought to challenge Trump’s loss.
“Did I know anything about election law? No. But I understand fraud from having been a prosecutor for 10 years, and knew generally what the fraud suit should be if the evidence showed what I thought it showed,” she told prosecutors.
Though Trump has denied that Powell was ever his attorney, Powell described being in close contact with him and said he frequently called her for updates on the legal efforts, even after his campaign publicly distanced from her.
“He always wanted to know where things were in terms of finding fraud that would change the results of the election,” she said.
Powell also confirmed reporting that Trump was “willing to appoint me a special counsel” to investigate fraud and seize voting machines, though the effort fell through.
“I called Mark Meadows the next morning just to run it to ground, and said, ‘Hey, when can I come pick up my badge and my key?'” Powell said. “He essentially laughed — I mean he said, you know, ‘It’s not going to happen.'”
Powell said she was present when multiple advisers told Trump that he lost and prosecutors questioned why the president followed her advice instead of the others.
“Because I didn’t think he had lost,” Powell replied, later adding: “I saw an avenue pursuant to which, if I was right, he would remain president.”
"The boss is not going to leave."
Video excerpts show former Trump lawyers telling Georgia prosecutors about efforts to overturn 2020 election.
National security attorney Bradley Moss said the revelations from Ellis and Powell were “devastating.”
“Trump never had any intention of complying with the election results. He was told repeatedly in the presence of a convicted co-defendant that he had lost. He ignored it and conspired with his lawyers to overthrow the election anyway,” he tweeted.
“Devastating is an understatement,” agreed former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman, adding: “The series of revelations from the video interviews of the Defendants to pleaded guilty in Fulton County really serves to validate Willis’s strategy of charging broadly then giving pleas. The testimony is just overwhelming.”
Trump attorney Steve Sadow in a statement to ABC News called the “purported private conversation” described by Ellis “absolutely meaningless.”
“The only salient fact to this nonsense line of inquiry is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021, and returned to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,” Sadow said. “If this is the type of bogus, ridiculous ‘evidence’ DA Willis intends to rely upon, it is one more reason that this political, travesty of a case must be dismissed.”
