Shocked customer outraged by company’s insensitive ‘hurricane sale’ offer: ‘Why would someone order [that]?’
Leo Collis – August 27, 2023
Hurricane Hilary has been causing chaos since forming off Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, submerging the town of Santa Rosalia in Mexico and leading many residents in California to evacuate their homes.
But one business saw this as an opportunity to push a “hurricane sale,” and customers were shocked at the brazen attempt to turn the disaster into profit.
In a post on Reddit, one user screenshotted an email app notification after receiving a message from Cromulent Records in California that promised 33% off LPs since SoCal customers were “trapped in the house.”
Photo Credit: u/jmoneyawyeah / Reddit
“Trapped in the house?” one user replied. “I was trapped in a house that succumbed to rising flood waters. Being ‘trapped’ is no fun. … Stick your sale up your money grubbing a**!”
“Why would someone order something to a house that might not exist in a week,” another added.
According to the Associated Press, one person in Mexico drowned in a vehicle swept away by an overflowing stream during severe rainfall, and 850 people were evacuated from the Baja coast by Mexico’s navy as Hurricane Hilary approached.
Meanwhile, many have seen their homes and livelihoods damaged in the heavy rain and flooding.
In California, Hilary arrived August 20, bringing unprecedented rainfall to the Death Valley National Park — an area known for drought. According to CBS, the 2.2 inches of rainfall that day alone was close to the area’s annual average of 2.24 inches. It broke the previous daily rainfall record in the area of 1.7 inches.
The BBC reported nearly 26 million people in southwestern United States were under flood watch, with Hilary later classified as a Category 1 storm as it swept north.
The impact of hurricanes are likely to become more severe as global heat levels rise. According to Earth Justice, rising temperatures make hurricanes more powerful as “storm systems draw their energy from warm ocean water.”
With that in mind, reducing the extent to which planet-heating pollution is released into the atmosphere will be vital to limiting the impact of future extreme weather events.
An ‘obscene’ number of kids are losing Medicaid coverage
Tami Luhby – August 26, 2023
For months, Evangelina Hernandez watched helplessly as her autistic twin sons regressed – their screaming, biting and scratching worsening. The Wichita, Kansas, resident couldn’t afford the $3,000 monthly tab for their 10 prescriptions or their doctor visits without Medicaid.
The toddlers, along with three of their sisters, lost their health insurance in May, swept up in the state’s eligibility review of all its Medicaid enrollees. Hernandez said she only received the renewal packet a day before it was due and mailed it back right away. She also called KanCare, the state’s Medicaid program, and filled out another application over the phone, certain that the kids remained eligible.
Yet, every time she inquired about the children’s coverage, she was told the renewal was still being processed. And though her partner works for an airplane manufacturer, the family can’t afford the health insurance plan offered by his employer.
“My kids are suffering. You can see it,” said Hernandez, who along with her infant daughter, remained on Medicaid thanks to coverage provisions for low-income, postpartum mothers and babies. “The medication they’re on, I can’t afford it.”
Just over a week ago, Hernandez got the call she had been waiting for: The kids’ coverage was reinstated. However, the pharmacy told her it could not immediately fill her sons’ prescriptions because it had to get their new enrollee information – and even then, she could only pick up the medication for one son because there were errors in her other son’s file.
The delays have consequences. Once they start taking the medications again, it will take about a month before their behavior starts to improve, she said.
All across the US, hundreds of thousands of children are being kicked off of Medicaid, even though experts say the vast majority continue to qualify. They are among the more than 87 million people in Medicaid and several million more in the Children’s Health Insurance Program who are having their eligibility checked and are facing possible termination of coverage for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
States regained the ability to start winnowing their Medicaid rolls of residents whom they deem no longer qualify on April 1, when a pandemic relief program expired. Since then, at least 5.4 million people have lost their benefits, according to KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Not every state breaks down their terminations by age. But in the 15 states that do, at least 1.1 million youngsters have been dropped, according to KFF. That includes Texas, where nearly half a million non-disabled children lost coverage between April and the end of July, accounting for 81% of the total disenrolled. In Kansas, Idaho and Missouri, kids make up at least half of those losing benefits.
As many as 6.7 million children are at risk of having their benefits terminated during the so-called unwinding process, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. Roughly three-quarters of them are expected to remain eligible for Medicaid but will likely lose coverage because of administrative issues, such as their parents not submitting the necessary paperwork or errors made by state Medicaid agencies.
This could lead to a doubling of the uninsured rate among children, said Joan Alker, the center’s executive director, noting that Medicaid covers about half of kids in the US.
“Children have an incredible amount at stake here,” she said. “We continue to be extremely worried as we see what’s happening around the country.”
Overall, nearly three-quarters of adults and children who have lost coverage were dropped for so-called procedural reasons, according to KFF. This typically happens when enrollees do not complete the renewal form, often because it may have been sent to an old address, it was difficult to understand or it wasn’t returned by the deadline.
Some people, however, may not return their forms because they know they earn too much to qualify or they obtained coverage elsewhere, such as from an employer.
In Idaho, there were 211,000 youngsters in the state’s Medicaid and CHIP programs in February – accounting for about half of the state’s total enrollees.
But more than 55,000 children had their insurance terminated in the first four months of the unwinding.
“An obscene number of kids are losing their Medicaid,” said Hillarie Hagen, a health policy associate at Idaho Voices for Children.
Among those processed were 33,000 children in families whom the state believes are no longer eligible. Nearly 23,000 of them were dropped for procedural reasons, Hagen said.
Also of great concern is that enrollment in Idaho’s CHIP program has fallen by 16,000 kids during the same period. Hagen expected the number to rise since CHIP has a higher income threshold than Medicaid so some children should have shifted over automatically.
One main reason why so many children – and adults – are losing coverage is because Idaho is focusing initially on households that it knows earn too much or who haven’t responded to the state in the last few years, said Shane Leach, welfare administrator for the state’s Department of Health and Welfare. Idaho continued to check enrollees’ eligibility during the pandemic, though it did not drop those who no longer qualified until now.
The department issues two rounds of notices, sends text messages and posts information in an online portal to let families know they need to return their renewal forms. Even if they miss the deadline, they can regain their coverage, he said.
“If anybody feels that they’re eligible, then reach out and reapply,” Leach said.
Children have higher income limits
Many parents may not realize that even though they don’t qualify for Medicaid anymore, their children may still be eligible because the household income limit for kids to remain covered is higher, said Jennifer Tolbert, an associate director of KFF’s Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured. This is especially true in the 10 states – including Kansas, Florida and Texas – that have not approved the expansion of Medicaid benefits to low-income adults.
Advocates are urging parents to complete and submit the renewal documents even if they think they earn too much to qualify themselves.
In some other cases, children are possibly being dropped because their state is applying the wrong income threshold to them.
In Florida, for instance, parents in a family of four must earn less than $8,520 annually to qualify, but children ages 1 to 5 are eligible if their household income is no more than $43,500, and those ages 6 to 18 can keep their coverage if their family earns less than $41,400, said Lynn Hearn, a staff attorney with the Florida Health Justice Project, an advocacy group.
Children’s enrollment in Medicaid dropped by roughly 154,000 kids, or 5.7%, between May and July, according to a Georgetown analysis of state data. The state does not break down terminations by age.
Hearn and her colleagues have had success in restoring some children’s coverage by appealing to the state and pointing out that the family’s income is less than the eligibility threshold for kids.
Another concern is that youngsters are not being automatically referred to the state’s CHIP program, Florida KidCare, Hearn said.
“I have yet to see a case where the referral happened timely and accurately,” she said.
When asked about the advocates’ concerns, Florida’s Department of Children and Families referred CNN to a fact sheet listing the state’s outreach efforts and enrollee support, including that it has more than 2,700 employees processing cases and assisting participants.
Restoring benefits can be complicated
Once a family loses coverage, regaining it can be frustrating and time-consuming. Tanya Harris spent weeks calling Florida’s Department of Children and Families, waiting on hold for hours at a time, to restore her kids’ insurance.
The Jacksonville resident only learned in late June that they would be cut off after she called the insurer that contracts with Florida to provide her family’s Medicaid benefits. She needed to discuss her 17-year-old daughter’s upcoming spinal surgery. Harris quickly filled out the renewal paperwork on the state’s online portal but was stuck in processing limbo for well over a month.
Tanya Harris, left, spent hours on hold with Florida’s Medicaid agency to restore her children’s coverage. – Courtesy Tanya Harris
Harris, who is on long-term disability from her employer as she battles several health conditions, spoke to multiple supervisors and uploaded verifications of her and her husband’s income and address over and over again.
Though the family regained Medicaid coverage in early August, their headaches aren’t over. Some doctors won’t see the kids until they receive their new insurance information, which Harris hopes will be settled next week. And she’s still not able to get some of their medications.
Meanwhile, her 6-year-old son, who has a severe peanut allergy, cannot sit with his classmates at lunch at his new school until his doctor sends in a medicine authorization form for his EpiPen.
“It was just devastating,” Harris said of the coverage loss. “The kids didn’t get the care that they need.”
Engaging parents
Some advocates are trying to take advantage of the start of the school year to alert parents to the importance of submitting their renewal documents.
In Kansas, where nearly 46,000 youngsters have been disenrolled so far, multiple groups are setting up tables at back-to-school events, working with school nurses and doing outreach through early childhood organizations, said Heather Braum, a health policy adviser at Kansas Action for Children.
KanCare reaches out to enrollees at least four times before their renewal is due to encourage them to return the needed paperwork, said Matt Lara, communications director for the state’s Department of Health and Environment. The agency also paused procedural terminations in May and June to give folks more time to send in their packets, as well as hired extra staff to work in the call center and help process renewals.
However, more should be done to improve the system and make sure eligible children maintain their coverage, Braum said.
“Kids’ medical care in so many situations can be very time sensitive – where they’re getting therapies and treatments and prescriptions,” she said. “If it gets delayed, it can have a permanent impact on their lives. Outcomes can be very different. And that’s inexcusable to me.”
A New Hampshire local has a reputation for asking politicians tough questions. He’s also 15.
Ken Tran, USA TODAY – August 26, 2023
WALPOLE, N.H. — Quinn Mitchell held his phone in his hand as he looked up at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
It was his turn to ask a question at Desantis’ first town hall event in New Hampshire. The Granite State is known for its first-in-the-nation primary, and its voters cherish the state’s strong influence in deciding presidential nominees. Those voters have built a centrist reputation, posing tough questions to candidates no matter their party affiliation.
Mitchell is no different from those Granite Staters. At DeSantis’ town hall in Hollis, he stood up to ask him a question about DeSantis’ now-rival in the 2024 Republican primary, former President Donald Trump.
“Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?” Mitchell asked.
There is one thing that separates Mitchell from New Hampshire’s voters: he can’t vote.
“Are you in high school?” DeSantis asked, seemingly taken aback.
Quinn Mitchell listens to Ron DeSantis at DeSantis Town Hall campaign event in Newport NH on Aug. 19, 2023 Mitchell has met a handful of politicians since he started attending campaign events in 2020 including Amy Klobuchar, Chris Christie and President Joe Biden.
Mitchell is indeed in high school. More specifically, he’s 15 years old and is going into his sophomore year. He’s too young to vote, but he’s been to dozens of candidate events in New Hampshire since the 2024 Republican presidential primary kicked off.
Over lunch in his hometown of Walpole, a small town near the border separating New Hampshire and Vermont, Mitchell told USA TODAY he felt it was his civic duty – especially when he can’t vote yet – to be involved in the Granite State’s unique democratic process.
“I feel like it’s in a way my civic responsibility to ask these questions that need to be asked. I’m here. I have the opportunity, and it’s happening in my backyard,” Mitchell said. “A lot of people are unfortunate to not have the platform to ask those questions.”
A product of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary
Mitchell describes himself as a history buff, reading books about presidential politics since he was just 8 years old. He also maintains a diverse news diet, listening to radio news regularly in his bedroom and reading newspapers across the political spectrum.
When he learned in 2019 that several candidates were gunning for the Democratic nomination he knew he “wanted to be a part of it.”
She “was a candidate I haven’t met, and I was so excited. It’s very weird because I was 11. My friends think it was the weirdest thing ever,” Mitchell said.
That moment was when he started to really involve himself in the state’s presidential primary. After he met Klobuchar, Mitchell attended one of her town halls where she encouraged him to ask a question, unbeknownst to his hobbies. The 11-year-old preteen asked her what she made of special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony to the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, which he remembered “shocked her.”
That moment was so memorable for Klobuchar, he became part of her stump speech on the campaign trail.
But perhaps his fondest memory of the 2020 Democratic primary was when he met President Joe Biden when he was still campaigning for the nomination. After a town hall, Biden motioned for Mitchell to come over and handed him a challenge coin bearing the seal of the vice president.
“He gave me a five minute lecture about what it was, what it’s supposed to mean and the importance of keeping promises,” Mitchell said. They agreed on a promise between just the two of them: the next time Mitchell sees Biden, if he brings the challenge coin, the former vice president owed him a drink.
Over the course of the next few months until the New Hampshire primary, Biden actually owed him multiple drinks. For an 11-year-old, the drink of choice was Coca-Cola.
Mitchell remembers one moment when Biden came prepared for the deal.
“He just pulled this Coca-Cola out of his pocket,” Mitchell said, laughing.
Quinn Mitchell listens to Ron DeSantis at DeSantis Town Hall campaign event in Newport NH on August 19, 2023
Before every town hall, Mitchell said he “has to study a lot” to think about a question a candidate has not talked about yet, but is also relevant to current events.
“I usually have to watch long interviews and press conferences,” he said. For some candidates, he said he spends hours going through their public statements.
“I heard you say that one of the reasons you endorsed Trump is that you really did not want (Hillary) Clinton to be president in 2016. And now based on recent knowledge that Trump was arrested, Trump was prosecuted on criminal charges, do you think that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton would have been the better bet in 2016?” Mitchell asked.
Despite Christie’s identity in the 2024 GOP race as Trump’s chief antagonist, Mitchell’s question made him go on the record. The former New Jersey governor said he would have supported Trump, regardless of his criticism.
When he asks those tough questions, Mitchell said he tries to avoid coming off as “attacking” or politically biased, explaining that he has been to so many town halls out of a pure passion for politics.
“I’ve never been about attacking somebody. I’m just gonna ask the question,” Mitchell said.
Student Quinn Mitchell, of Walpole, N.H. asks a question to Republican presidential candidate former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during a campaign event at V.F.W. Post 1631, Monday, July 24, 2023, in Concord, N.H.
‘Quinn, remember me when you are president’
Mitchell said he wishes more people his age were at least somewhat as invested in politics as he is. He’s tried to get his friends to come along in the past, but they demurred.
“A lot of the people I know, they are really disinterested in politics,” Mitchell said. “I wish there was more youth engagement. I’ve tried to bring some friends but again they tell me ‘No I’m not interested. I’m just gonna play Minecraft.’”
To be fair, Mitchell said he also plays a lot of Minecraft − a popular video game – a reminder to the people around him that he is still 15 years old.
When he’s not traveling to see a candidate or attending a political event, he helps his parents with farmwork. But his other hobbies are still close to his passion for politics. In his spare time, he reads books on history and watches documentaries and older presidential debates.
“I’ll just watch hours of debates. I rewatched the 2016 debate recently,” Mitchell said. It was not a form of studying for the 2024 race, but just out of fun.
“I love watching them,” he said. He’s also tried to get his friends to watch them with him, but unsurprisingly, they’ve turned down his gracious offers.
It’s easy to think Mitchell, with his love for politics and his dedication to meeting every candidate on the campaign trail, is looking to be a politician himself.
Quinn Mitchell listens to Ron DeSantis at DeSantis Town Hall campaign event in Newport NH on Aug. 19, 2023. Mitchell takes great time and dedication preparing for campaign events, sometimes watching hours worth of interviews from politicians.
Biden, along with the challenge coin, signed a copy of his memoir for Mitchell in 2019, writing “Quinn, remember me when you are president.”
And when Christie saw Mitchell at one of his town halls in August, the former New Jersey governor introduced him to the crowd before taking his question.
Someday, Christie said, Mitchell’s political passion will put him in elected office.
“I can’t wait until I’m old enough that he does that, and I’m sitting somewhere in New Jersey watching TV and seeing Governor or Senator Quinn, and I will be completely unsurprised,” Christie said.
But if there’s anything the first-in-the-nation primary has taught Mitchell, he said, it’s that he wants nothing to do with running for office.
“It’s definitely a really good hobby. It’s not video games,” Mitchell joked. But from what he’s seen on the campaign trail, he has no interest in being a politician, saying “you can never make a mistake. It’s extremely stressful.”
Instead, Mitchell said he could see himself going into journalism, considering he has started to build a reputation as an unassuming high school student with a knack for putting prospective presidents on the spot.
He’s recently started a podcast, called “Into the Tussle” where he plans to provide his own unbiased perspective on the presidential nominating process and hopefully talk to people who can actually vote in his home state.
“You have to start somewhere,” Mitchell said. “And I just want to talk about politics.”
Quinn Mitchell listens to Ron DeSantis at the DeSantis Town Hall campaign event in Newport, NH on Aug. 19, 2023. At 15 years old, Quinn Mitchell feels it is his civic duty to show up and ask the tough questions.
Maggie Haberman Reveals Why Trump Pulled That Face During His Mug Shot
Ed Mazza – August 25, 2023
CNN’s Jake Tapper said the look on Donald Trump’s face in his Georgia mug shot is one he’s used before to appear menacing ― but New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said there’s more to it than that.
“It isn’t just that he wants to look menacing, which is certainly true, and he has made that kind of face in photos for years and years and years,” she said. “He doesn’t want to look weak, and that’s what that’s about.”
Donald Trump’s booking photo, taken at the Fulton County Jail on August 24, 2023.
Donald Trump’s booking photo, taken at the Fulton County Jail on August 24, 2023.
Haberman said the desire not to appear weak comes across not just in Trump’s face in the mug shot, but in what he’s doing with the image.
“Circulating the mug shot, fundraising off of it, owning it, using it for press ― that’s all part of a playbook that we have seen him use over and over again,” she said. “But that does not mean he’s enjoying any of this. This is a serious thing. He is facing serious jail time.”
See more of her analysis below:https://www.youtube.com/embed/tP4eSoRnx28?rel=0 View comments (3.9k)
“Trump is in the final stage of cult leadership”: Fulton County arrest elevates his MAGA “martyrdom”
Chauncey DeVega – August 24, 2023
Donald Trump with “TRUMP 2024” flag Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images
Donald Trump continues to be at the center of America’s political universe. His gravity and pull are that powerful.
Later today, Trump, the twice impeached four-time indicted ex-president traitor who attempted a coup on Jan. 6 and who is facing hundreds of years in prison for his political crime spree will surrender to law enforcement authorities in Fulton County, Georgia. Last night, Trump participated in an “interview” with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, where he was allowed an unrestricted platform to lie, spread other misinformation and distortions, and attack his “enemies” and other imagined foes.
In all, this week has been a spectacle of the worst sort. At CNN, Stephen Collinson accurately described it as, “No other GOP leader could confidently snub a prime-time television debate and turn his no-show into an argument for his inevitability. But Trump – as with his attempt to use criminal indictments to advance a political career that has always prospered amid perceptions that he’s being unfairly treated – is changing all the rules of campaigning once again.”
The American news media, political class, and general public will do their best (and will largely fail) to navigate these “historic” events with the goal of finding some sense of balance, normalcy, and clarity in unprecedented times. Unfortunately, it is those same bad habits and norms that helped to create the disaster that is the Age of Trump and ascendant American neofascism in the first place.
So, in an attempt to make sense of what comes next in this truly historic and unprecedented moment with Donald Trump and his criminal indictment(s) in Georgia, wishcasting and other forms of denial by the news media and political elites about the true depth of the country’s democracy crisis, and what potentially comes next, I recently asked a range of experts for their thoughts and insights.
The interviews have been lightly edited for clarity:
Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and author of “Criminology on Trump.”
As Trump is about to be booked in Atlanta, Georgia for orchestrating a criminal enterprise that spanned seven battleground states and involved at least 50 indictable people, and as the GOP is holding its first presidential debate in Milwaukee — whether Trump is present or not. I am feeling very optimistic about the looming legal and political demise of the former president who currently faces 91 criminal charges. I am also feeling optimistic about the likelihood of Boss Trump taking down the GOP with him in 2024 unless the party abandons him starting Wednesday night which seems unlikely even though his poll numbers after the fourth criminal indictment are now plummeting with the general electorate. Meanwhile, while his legal fees have become astronomical — $40 million and counting — his fundraising has been declining since its peak after his first criminal indictment in Manhattan on April 4.
The danger of Trump taking the other Republican candidates and the Republicans off the proverbial cliff with him has to do with how overly invested they are in Trump’s lawlessness and corruption. In short, the Republicans and the GOP have become trapped by their endorsing the Big Lie, by their habitual shielding of Trump from the indefensible, and by their kowtowing to the MAGA base.
This Trumpian dilemma coupled with the former Racketeer-in-Chief’s anti-democratic and authoritarian agenda will certainly be a losing formula up and down the ballots across America, the same as they were in the 2022 midterms only it will be much worse in 2024. Think of landslide elections like Barry Goldwater losing to President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 or President Jimmy Carter’s loss to the former governor of California Ronald Reagan in 1980.
I am looking forward to each of these criminal trials especially because they are “slam dunks” for the prosecution regardless of what Trump or his attorneys and supporters have been saying up to now. Reality check: There are simply no legal defenses for Trump’s criminal behavior other than trying to procedurally dissolve these cases by denying that they were crimes in the first place or to simply make motion after motion in the hopes of delaying these trials from beginning for as long as possible.
With respect to the January 6 and Georgia election fraud and conspiracy cases, neither one has anything to do with free speech or with the weaponization of the Justice Department (DOJ) by either President Joe Biden or Attorney General Merrick Garland. While both of these political talking points may continue to thrive in the Trumpian alternative universe, I believe that their powers of persuasion are already starting to fade or decline as a byproduct of the powerful RICO indictments in Georgia. No matter though, these arguments may have had or have value in the court of public opinion, they will have no value whatsoever in the federal or state criminal courts of law where Trump should ultimately be tried will also be convicted.
I am especially looking forward to these trials as they converge with Trump’s campaigns during the GOP primaries like Super Tuesday in March and in the runup to the general election as well. Although Trump could probably stop campaigning altogether and still win the GOP nomination he won’t have to. Instead of taking to the expensive campaign trail week after week, he will simply transfer what passes for political campaigning, or more accurately, his staged and unhinged tirades of doom, gloom, and bada-bing bada-boom to the courthouse steps each and every day of those first two federal criminal trials that will probably not be televised.
I am looking most forward to the RICO trial and to Trump’s Court TV reality show because it will be televised, and its star defendant Donald Trump won’t say one word because he will never take the stand. More importantly, the trial of Trump’s criminal enterprise will be a most illuminating and entertaining criminal trial. If it materializes, this trial will captivate viewers and audiences like never before and that includes the 9-month-long criminal trial of OJ. Simpson. Watched literally by the whole world, this fairly complex yet easily understood criminal trial will witness the prosecution methodologically taking us through those 161 acts that furthered the conspiracy of their criminal enterprise. When Trump leaves the Fulton County criminal trial daily for perhaps as long as nine months he will uncharacteristically no longer be talking about his innocence or his persecution. Instead, with his tail tucked firmly between his legs Trump will be demonstrating that he is quite capable of keeping his gaslighting mouth shut when it better serves his interests or when his talking will only make a fool of himself even to his sycophantic MAGA base.
Regardless of the facts or the law, people often interpret events like January 6 as they want to see them as opposed to how they actually were. So, while I agree that there are a lot of Republicans, and many more Democrats, as well as people in the news media, the political class, and so on who want to turn the page on Trump, I think it is important to ascertain the different reasons or motives as to why they want to move on.
In the case of Republicans who want to move on from Trump, most of these folks like the other candidates running for the GOP presidential nomination who don’t have a chance of defeating Trump for the nomination want to do so only because they know Trump will be defeated once again and that he has become a terrible election liability for the party. In other words, their distancing themselves from Trump has nothing to do with Trump’s ideology of authoritarianism or his assault on democracy and the rule of law.
With respect to the right-wing political class and Fox News or Newsmax, they fully understand the big picture and what is at stake in the 2024 election but that so far has been okay with them. On the other hand, the true-believing MAGA folks for the most part are rather clueless about politics, crime, and the administration of justice. As for most of the other Republicans at large with the exception of the Never Trumpers, these folks are either deeply confused or they have simply drank the “Kool Aid” or succumbed to Trumpian disinformation, gaslighting, and/or propagandistic brainwashing.
Donald Sherman serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Counsel of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
Nobody goes into government ethics work unless they trend towards optimism, but this is an especially important and optimistic time. After more than seven years of egregious and unprecedented ethics abuses in the campaign, in government, and in his post-presidency, Donald Trump is finally facing real accountability that can’t be undermined by his sycophants in Congress and other parts of the government.
The only way that our nation can move forward and repair our democracy in the wake of the January 6 insurrection is for there to be accountability. More than 1,000 participants in the mob have been charged by DOJ for their role in the insurrection, and now Donald Trump is finally facing charges. The complex and damning indictment brought in Georgia by Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, makes clear that you can’t reach into states to try to overturn their election. With the Georgia grand jury’s indictment of Trump, we also have the potential for a conviction that can’t be pardoned by Trump, or some other Republican president. Not even Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, can pardon Trump under Georgia law. Several elements of the Georgia indictment are especially important for accountability including that being charged with his co-conspirators increases the likelihood of cooperation and that if this matter eventually goes to trial, there are likely to be cameras in the courtroom.
These cases also strengthen the public case made by CREW, and scholars across the ideological spectrum that Trump is legally disqualified from serving in office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Last year, CREW brought and won the first successful case in more than 150 years to remove an official from office for violating the Disqualification Clause – which bars a state or federal officer who takes an oath to defend the Constitution from engaging in insurrection or rebellion against the United States. Although a criminal conviction of any kind is not necessary to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against Trump, it certainly bolsters the public and legal case for his disqualification. As conservative academics William Baude and Michael Pauslen wrote: “On the basis of the public record, former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from again being President (or holding any other covered office) because of his role in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election and the events leading to the January 6 attack.”
A lot of the pundit class went from claiming that Donald Trump was an “existential threat” to our democracy to writing him off or telling us to move on. Funnily enough, we saw similar rhetoric in 2016 as well. CREW is a non-partisan organization, so Trump’s electoral prospects are inconsequential to the need for accountability, but it is important to note that the last time that Trump was on a ballot, he was rejected by the voters and responded by inciting a violent insurrection to overturn our election and steal the presidency from the American people. The Constitution makes clear that insurrectionists like Trump should not and do not get a second chance to violate their oaths. I understand that people are exhausted by Trump and want to reject him at the ballot box. However, his actions make him ineligible to be on the ballot in the first place. Just like the American public can’t elect George W. Bush or Barack Obama in 2024 because of the 22nd Amendment, Trump is also ineligible to serve as president pursuant to the Constitution.
Existential threats don’t disappear in a single election cycle. If the Constitution is not enforced against Donald Trump and other insurrectionists, then our democracy will remain at risk of this kind of attack for the foreseeable future. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was built precisely for this moment in history, and that’s what is at stake. If our country finds itself in a similar place, 50 or 100 years from now, there will need to be a public record of accountability and legal precedent addressing Trump’s egregious conduct. The multiple indictments filed over the summer are a great start. Litigation CREW plans to bring to enforce the Disqualification Clause against Trump is another necessary step. Thankfully the drafters of the 14th Amendment had the foresight to ratify this tool for a future insurrection that they could not entirely predict. We cannot afford to leave any tools of accountability on the table, lest we expose ourselves to an even greater threat to democracy than Trump.
Brynn Tannehill is a journalist and author of “American Fascism: How the GOP is Subverting Democracy.”
This is every 20th Century historian’s worst nightmare come to life. Demagogue unsuccessfully tries to overthrow the government, goes to jail for it, and then goes on to be elected supreme leader on the backs of promises to eradicate communists, degenerates, and his political enemies while restoring power to the herrenvolk.
The worst part is, the polls say things are tied, they have consistently underestimated his strength in elections, and the electoral college gives him a 3.5-4 point advantage (i.e. Biden needs to win the popular vote by 3.5-4 points to have a 50-50 shot of winning the Electoral College). It’s bad for most people with a sense of history, and even worse for me, since I’m considered to be one of the people who need to be eradicated according to the conservative Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership”, which is effectively the GOP playbook for ending democracy and civil rights in the US. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
There are a lot of people who are saying “Trump can’t win,” when fundamentally, NOTHING has changed since 2016 or 2020, except that President Biden has gotten less popular. The indictments don’t move the needle much. The vast majority of Republicans will still vote for him no matter what. It even feeds into the persecution and lost cause narratives popular with his white evangelical base. If you look at conservative media, they’re speculating that it might make him more popular and help “Get Out the Vote” (GOTV) by the base. The sad part is, they might be right: it’s a plausible theory. Independents are swinging a little away from Trump, but they’re not happy with Biden either. If they sit out the election, and Democrats don’t bother voting the way they did in 2016, we’re very much headed for a repeat there.
I think that only the people who are deep down in the weeds, who have read things like the Mandate for Leadership understand the hellscape that awaits us if Trump is elected again. This is going to be orders of magnitude worse than his first term, especially with a fully weaponized Department of Justice and federal bureaucracy via Schedule F.
Rich Logis, a former member of the Republican Party and right-wing pundit, is the founder of Perfect Our Union, an organization dedicated to healing political traumatization, building diverse pro-democracy alliances and perfecting our union.
Trump is in the final stage of cult leadership: martyrdom.
He hasn’t been defrauded and persecuted, he tells his supporters—YOU have been cheated and persecuted. This leitmotif has been present since 2015, but Trump has significantly ramped up the rhetoric, recently. Some of his primary opponents are now mustering up faux courage, saying that, yes, Trump did lose; these opponents have always believed Trump lost, however, and I will continue to posit that candidates such as Pence, Scott and DeSantis are angling for the nomination via a brokered convention. They, and those running the GOP, know that every indictment strengthens Trump’s standing amongst those who matter most to Republican candidates: their primary voters, who are, overwhelmingly, MAGA devotees.
Even having said all this, however, the lower the voter turnout next year, the more likely it could result in a Trump/MAGA victory. The time to begin emphasizing the importance of registering to vote, and turnout, is now. We must leave nothing to chance: Voters of differing political beliefs must form unlikely, but necessary, alliances, to ensure that Republicans suffer electoral losses, next year, up and down the ballot; such alliances have been formed many times in our history, and our current epoch—one in which threats to democracy and democratic institutions are real and prevalent—demands another such alliance.
Right on cue, after yet another Trump indictment, America’s national centrist and center-left press continued rolling out their achingly yearning op-eds and columns wishing, hoping, and praying for a Republican to save the GOP. At this point, I’ve accepted that the press will remain in its well-meaning, but delusional, enchantment of making the GOP great again; it is now self-parody. If our national press devoted less time to a seemingly mythological Republican savior who will never come, and more to highlighting those who left behind the politically traumatic world of MAGA/Trump, I suspect they’d be more bearish on the prospects of repairing the irreparable GOP. I just wish our media recognized that; but, since they don’t, the onus falls on we the people to disabuse Americans, of all political beliefs, that the GOP will finally move on from Trump.
Some cautious optimism: Yes, the GOP is irredeemable. But just as I had my own Road to Damascus epiphany, renouncing my support for MAGA/Trump, let’s pay close attention to those in our lives who remain in the thrall of MAGA abuse and trauma; I anticipate that some may start to doubt their allegiance to Trump. There is, very much, an abuser/abused dynamic with MAGA supporters and Trump. Those who might question their past political choices and votes need to see and hear the stories of those who severed from MAGA; the regretful, understandably, will be ambivalent about publicizing the errors of their ways. They will have fewer qualms, though, if they see living examples of former MAGA/Trump/DeSantis/GOP voters.
MAGA voters are undeserving of being dehumanized, and had some valid motivations for supporting Trump, even though, yes, Trump exploited those concerns and fears. We must, as a nation, build a broad consensus that electing Trump was one of the most egregious mistakes in our history. Admitting when we’re wrong is an unnatural act, but it is possible—and liberating. When I look back at my MAGA time, I remain stunned at the level of political trauma I put upon myself; my hope is that others will begin to recognize their own trauma, which has been, to some extent, self-inflicted.
Joe Walsh was a Republican congressman and a leading Tea Party conservative. He is now a prominent conservative voice against Donald Trump and the host of the podcast “White Flag with Joe Walsh.”
I’ll be blunt. The vast majority of Americans have no clue where this country is at right now. Way too many in the media, commentary, and political world cling to this notion that this is just kind of an extreme political time, that it’s a game that’s gotten a little crazy, but that we’re still playing in the general boundaries of normal society and politics. Bull**it!
This country is on the precipice of sustained violence we haven’t seen in 150-160 years, we are on the verge of complete institutional breakdown, we’re on a path that, if continued, will lead to democracy’s end here.
I have a different perspective than virtually everyone in the political commentariat. I come from the populist Republican Party base, I left that base, and I still engage with that base every day. That base is the animating force of one of our two major political parties. Trump radicalized that base. By radicalized, I mean – they no longer believe in basic truths, they’ve given up on democracy, they eagerly embrace authoritarianism, and they don’t want to simply defeat their political opponents, they want their political opponents destroyed & killed.
This is the stuff I hear from them. Every day for the past 5-6 years. How are we doing? I just described the status of one of our two major political parties. It’s now fully anti-democracy. This isn’t tenable.
So, with all that as context, where are we with Trump? How am I feeling? As concerned and frightened as ever. The media treats this like some game. I was actually on CNN a couple of weeks ago and two reporters on the panel with me talked about the GOP race for president as if it was actually some kind of contest. Still a contest? Bull**it. It never was. The guy leading the anti-democracy cult was always going to be the nominee. It’s no contest. Barring death or a jail cell, Trump will be the nominee, and he has a better than 50/50 shot at getting elected. You heard me right. Assuming Trump is the nominee, he’d be the odds-on favorite against Biden. I know everyone says he can never win a general election. Again, bull**it! Large swaths of independents are privately dying for an excuse to vote for him again. An underappreciated segment of Americans wants that entertaining buffoon in the White House. They’ll never say that publicly.
Trump has moved beyond cult leader. He’s a full-on martyr with his base. I hear it every day. Each new indictment has strengthened his support among “non MAGA” Republicans & conservatives who’ve told me it really seems like they’re piling on him now and he’s being unfairly targeted by the justice system. That’s a powerful narrative.
The chatter about violence that I hear now is greater than what I heard before January 6th. We’re in for 14-15 months of danger this country just doesn’t understand. And danger the media refuses to discuss.
So yes, I’m feeling pretty damned despondent. And angry. We’re only a few years into this storm and so many people still don’t understand the gravity of the approaching storm. We’ve entered a revolutionary period in America. A revolution that will determine whether this great democracy stays united or not. And having most of the country in denial about where we are scares me even more.
Private jet crash in Russia kills 10. Wagner chief Prigozhin was on passenger list
Associated Press – August 23, 2023
FILE – Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin is shown prior to a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on July 4, 2017. A business jet en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed Wednesday Aug. 23, 2023, killing all ten people on board, Russian emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, officials said, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board. (Sergei Ilnitsky/Pool via AP, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More
MOSCOW (AP) — A private jet crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board.
Prigozhin’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in late June. The Kremlin said the founder of the Wagner private military company, which fought alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, would be exiled to Belarus.
But the mercenary chief has since reportedly popped up in Russia, leading to further questions about his future.
A plane carrying three pilots and seven passengers that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg went down more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass. It was not clear if Prigozhin was among those on board, though Russia’s civilian aviation regulator, Rosaviatsia, said he was on the manifest.
Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing emergency officials, that eight bodies were found at the site of the crash.
Flight tracking data reviewed by The Associated Press showed a private jet registered to Wagner that Prigozhin had used previously took off from Moscow on Wednesday evening and its transponder signal disappeared minutes later.
The signal was lost in a rural region with no nearby airfields where the jet could have landed safely.
In an image posted by a pro-Wagner social media account showing burning wreckage, a partial tail number matching a private jet belonging to the company could be seen. The color and placement of the number on the engine of the crashed plane matches prior photos of the Wagner jet examined by The AP.
Also this week, Russian media reported, citing anonymous sources, that a top Russian general linked to Prigozhin — Gen. Sergei Surovikin — was dismissed from his position of the commander of Russia’s air force. Surovikin, who at one point led Russia’s operation in Ukraine, hasn’t been seen in public since the mutiny, when he recorded a video address urging Prigozhin’s forces to pull back.
As the news about the crash was breaking, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at an event commemorating the Battle of Kursk, hailing the heroes of Russia’s “the special military operation” in Ukraine.
Proud purple to angry red: These Florida residents feel unwelcome in ‘new’ Florida
Tom McLaughlin, USA TODAY NETWORK – August 21, 2023
When Alexander Vargas was a senior at Port Orange’s Spruce Creek High School in 2021, he spoke at a school board meeting to fight for recognition of LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week. The school board voted against the idea, but the superintendent later decided the week should be acknowledged.
Jean Siebenaler moved to Florida following her retirement to bask in the warmth of the Sunshine State.
“I finally thought I’d be sitting on the water with an umbrella drink in my hand,” she said.
The Milton resident, a military veteran and retired physician, now says she wonders if Florida was where she needed to relocate after all. Having been politically active in her home state of Ohio, she finds beach time consumed by “steaming and stewing” over the state of the state and local politics.
“It’s very upsetting, the direction we see Florida heading,” she said. “Every day I wonder why I am living here.”
For many, Florida has changed. What was once a proudly purple state has turned an angry red, they say. Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the dedicated backing of a Republican supermajority in the state legislature, is waging war on what he calls “wokeism” — a term he has loosely defined as “a form of cultural Marxism.” But many — people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, non-Christians, teachers, union members, students — feel it is a war against themselves, as they face ridicule, discrimination, and, potentially, violence.
The NAACP, Equity Florida and the League of United Latin American Citizens each issued travel advisories for Florida. The NAACP advisory states, in part, “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ individuals.”
“Under the leadership of Gov. DeSantis, the state has become hostile to Black Americans and in direct conflict with the Democratic ideals that our union was founded upon,” the advisory states.
Democrats feel vilified because of affiliation
There exist widespread reports of people abandoning the state because they no longer feel welcome here. Following her family’s exodus to Pennsylvania in May, former Brevard County resident and Democratic Party activist Stacey Patel told FLORIDA TODAY, “It’s like breathing, you know? After holding your breath for a really long time.”
Nikki Fried, the state’s former commissioner of agriculture and current Florida Democratic Party chair, predicted 800,000 immigrants had left the state after DeSantis signed SB 1718 into law. It imposes strict restrictions and penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers in the state.
Democrats also count themselves among the groups feeling persecuted. Patel’s family was vilified, she said, for its party affiliation.
Siebenaler, who has stepped into the position of legislative chair for the Democratic Women’s Club of Florida, attended an early June meeting of the Santa Rosa County Commission to call out Commissioner James Calkins for labeling the Democratic Party as evil.
“I took an oath to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” she told the governing board. “And I must speak out against the hate speech that is emanating from the Santa Rosa County Commission dais.”
Calkins has been admonished on several occasions by the public and his peers for his incendiary rhetoric and disruptive behavior. But Siebenaler is not one to typically show up at county board meetings.
“It’s very, very upsetting. We’ve lost all sense of sanity, logic and civil discourse. It’s so difficult to sit in on meetings because it’s such a clown show,” Siebenaler said. “People are so dramatic, so theatrical. It makes me just so sad that we have gotten to the point where the average person doesn’t want to go to these meetings, where all people do is yell and scream.”
Teachers are heading for the exit
Similarly, according to Lisa Masserio, the president of the teacher’s union in Hernando County, a minority segment of that county’s school board attached to Moms For Liberty is creating chaos in that area.
The school district typically provides at its May 30 meeting an accounting of how many teachers will be leaving the school district that year. This year it was announced that of the 49 people not returning to Hernando County schools next year, 33 had voluntarily tendered their resignations.
Masserio estimated the number of resignations had approximately doubled those of the year before and would create “the highest number of vacancies we’ve had in a long time.”
“We’ve seen so many resignations of people who have made the decision ‘I don’t want to teach here,’ ” she said.
Eighty-three percent of the Hernando County teachers with three years or less experience were among those who resigned, said Dan Scott, a former World History teacher at Springstead High School.
Scott, who was in his third year of teaching, was one of “13 or 14” at Springstead alone who chose to pursue another occupation, in large part, “based on the overhead decisions in the government of Florida,” he said.
“There are a lot of limitations being placed on teachers in regards to how we can communicate with students and what kind of content we’re allowed to discuss within the curriculum,” he said. “Education has become a very hostile environment from top to bottom.”
Among the limitations, Scott said, were soon-to-be-imposed sanctions on what text he could use. Among the outrages, a school board member stalking school hallways searching for items that didn’t correlate with the curriculum. In other words, Pride flags, Scott said.
“Not everyone left for the same reasons I did. For me, I didn’t want to teach if I couldn’t teach the truth and if I couldn’t represent students the way I thought I should,” he said. “I let every student be exactly who they wanted to be, whatever religion, whatever they identify as. I tried to give everybody their space. Whenever I couldn’t do that any more I realized I didn’t need to be in this career.”
Scott has returned to school himself to embark on the study of technology and cybersecurity, and Siebenaler remains steadfast in her dedication to battle the state’s continuing rightward trek. “I’m hoping it’s a blip on the historical radar and that I live to see sanity come back,” she said.
Others around Florida are facing what they view as ostracization by their state government in different ways. These are their stories:
‘Fighting with one hand tied behind your back’
David Lucas, left, unwittingly became the poster child for urban renewal in the early 1960s when he was a small child. His father, Harold Lucas, at right, was shopping for fishing poles in Sears on Beach Street in Daytona Beach when a man asked if it was OK if he photographed his son. The elder Lucas said OK, not realizing the photographer was a government official involved in the urban renewal program that wound up leveling many homes and businesses in Midtown.More
David Lucas grew up listening to his 90-year-old father’s stories of how cruel the world was to Black people in decades past.
While the 60-year-old Lucas has been spared much of what his father’s generation endured, he’s been getting an unexpected reality check on how some things have yet to improve for minorities.
The flurry of bills passed in Tallahassee over the past two years that impact voting, immigration, education, guns and LGBTQ+ people has left his head spinning.
“I just don’t understand how they can make so many changes so fast,” Lucas said. “As a Black man it’s alarming because we have so many different fronts we have to fight.”
The new laws have already impacted Lucas and his wife, who works alongside him at their Jamaican food restaurant in Daytona Beach’s Midtown neighborhood.
She’s from Jamaica, and while she’s not a U.S. citizen yet, she’s in the United States legally and has a visa. Some of Lucas’ friends from Jamaica, other Caribbean islands, Russia and Poland also have visas, but others are undocumented.
Several of those friends cleared out of Florida and headed north more than a month ago after a new immigration law left them scared they could be sent back to the countries they chose to leave.
“They were people who had lives here,” Lucas said.
David Lucas and his wife Claudette are shown in front of their restaurant, A Golden Taste of Jamaican Food and Treats, on Mary McLeod Bethune Boulevard in Daytona Beach. Lucas is still trying to digest all the new laws passed in Florida the past two years that impact voting, education, immigration, guns and LGBTQ+ people.
The new law requires employers with 25 or more workers to use the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system to confirm employees’ eligibility to work in the United States beginning July 1. E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information entered by an employer from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to confirm employment eligibility.
The new Florida law imposes penalties for those employing undocumented immigrants, and enhances penalties for human smuggling.
The statute also prohibits local governments from issuing identification cards to undocumented immigrants, invalidates ID cards issued to undocumented immigrants in other states, and requires hospitals to collect and submit data on the costs of providing health care to undocumented immigrants.
Lucas is also bothered by a new law that will allow people to carry concealed weapons without securing a permit, taking a previously required class, or getting fingerprinted.
“You’ll have a lot of armed heroes,” Lucas predicted. “A lot of people don’t know how to use a handgun, but they’ll have their chest poked out waiting for a reason.”
Lucas said permitless carry has him personally worried.
“Now I don’t want to go anywhere there’ll be a lot of people,” he said.
A third of Black men in the United States have felony convictions, which prohibits them from purchasing or possessing a firearm. Lucas is afraid that’s going to mean many of them will be left vulnerable as more people than ever will be carrying concealed firearms without a permit.
Lucas is also bothered by recent changes in Florida laws that could make it more difficult for some people to vote.
“Voting is most important because that’s how things are changed,” he said. “That’s how jobs are created and taken away, laws are created and taken away. If you don’t have the strength of voting, then you’re basically fighting with one hand tied behind your back.”
New laws impacting what’s taught in Florida classrooms are also not sitting well with Lucas.
“I have children now that are in school not learning history the way it happened,” he said.
It appears to him to be an effort to erase pieces of history “like it doesn’t exist.”
Lucas said some people around his age aren’t pushing back on recent changes impacting minorities.
“They close their eyes and hope it’ll get better,” he said. “They say we’ll just have to live with it. Younger people aren’t going to have it. They have groups trying to fight it.”
‘Pretty damn depressed’
Erin Rothrock of Lakeland is a transgender man. He said the current political atmosphere in Florida makes him depressed and scared.
Until recently, Erin Rothrock felt relatively stable and content living in Florida.
Rothrock, a veterinarian and a married father of four (with another on the way), was considering buying into a clinic to become a business owner. His wife has a well-established law practice. Their children are enmeshed in their schools and have plenty of friends.
But Rothrock, a transgender man, no longer feels secure in Florida, his home since 2009.
“Emotionally, if I think about it, I get pretty damn depressed,” said Rothrock, 39, a Lakeland resident. “And I get scared.”
Rothrock said the climate of acceptance in Florida for LGBTQ+ people, and especially for transgender residents, has dramatically altered.
“It really feels like it’s really changed in the last six months,” he said. “Before that, it really felt like — OK, yeah, there are some conservative people around, but things aren’t bad. And now it’s just like — OK, now we have this environment where these conservative ideas and these conservative people are just making life miserable for people that are living here.”
He added: “I mean, it’s really uncomfortable. It’s off-putting. It’s unwelcoming, and it feels dangerous.”
Discussions with other transgender people have lately taken on a fraught quality, Rothrock said.
“So, conversations I’ve had with a lot of other trans people — besides just the usual, ‘Hey, how you doing? How’s life? How’s school? How’s work? How are the kids?’ — it’s ‘How are you doing? How are you feeling? Have you had any problems? Have you had any trouble getting your meds? Are you going to move? Where are you going? I’ve heard this place is safe,’ ” he said.
Rothrock and his family are considering a move out of Florida. He said he knows other transgender people who have already taken that step.
“I’ve got a friend in Canada that’s begging me to move up,” he said. “They’re offering to assist me. I’ve got a friend in New York begging me to move up. They’re offering to help me.”
Rothrock said that what’s happening in Florida seems to counter the prevailing overall trend in the country.
“I feel like nationally there’s a big push and pull because we know that the general consensus is that most people are OK with gay marriage, support gay marriage,” Rothrock said. “They support transgender people being able to transition and use the restroom that they fit into. But I feel like there’s this real pushback from that conservative base. At this point, I think they’ve outmaneuvered the progressive side.”
The push for new laws — in Florida and elsewhere — targeting medical care and other aspects of life for transgender residents seems a reaction against their increased visibility and acceptance, Rothrock said.
“I think it’s that backlash to the small gains in equality that we’ve made,” he said. “You know, we see it time and time again, historically, that whenever minorities get progress and make some advancements, there’s always a backlash. After the Civil War, there were these Jim Crow laws because Black people got too much power. Marriage equality (emerged), and now we have these new transgender restrictions and restrictions on what people can do.”
New guidelines on gender-affirming care are affecting adults and not only minors, Rothrock said. He recently had to scramble to find a new provider for his regular supply of hormone treatment and briefly ran out of medication.
“I don’t do well mentally, my mental state declines, when I’m not on my medication,” he said. “So I’ve got a therapist; I talk to her on a regular basis. I do everything I can to mitigate those things. But that’s extra mental baggage.”
‘Fear culture’ in the classroom
There is ‘no way’ retired educator Lillian De La Concepcion Martinez would step back into the classroom to do the work she once loved: teach Spanish and Art History to students in Manatee County.
Born to Cuban parents in Miami and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Martinez served as a hospital corpsman in the U.S. Coast Guard in the mid-1970s, and worked as an educator at Manatee County schools from 1989 until she retired in 2020.
“I’m of a different generation,” Martinez said. “When I showed up to boot camp, my staff sergeant looked at me, because I was this pretty girl, tan, nice clothes and I had this designer luggage with me. Nobody told me I couldn’t bring any clothes and I was carrying my suitcase.”
“He gets all us girls together and says, ‘well you girls are going to learn to cuff like a man or grow hair on your chest.’ Can you imagine that now? It’s almost like people are too sensitive nowadays, they take everything personally,” she said.
Lillian De La Concepcion Martinez
But he is glad she never had to experience the fear her former coworkers say they experience as educators today.
“There is a fear culture in the classroom now,” Martinez said. “I’m glad that I retired when I did, because I don’t know that I would want to teach under these circumstances. They did call me a few months back because they wanted to know if I wanted to come back and teach. I said, not ‘no,’ but ‘hell no.’ There is no way.”
Martinez began her career teaching English to migrant students as a tutor in Manatee County, then as a parent social educator. She attended the University of South Florida at night, and when she graduated in 1999 she became a teacher. Her last teaching job was at Lakewood Ranch High Schoo from 2003 until she retired.
She loves to teach, and always enjoyed using music and poetry and other outside-the-box strategies to teach her students.
“I just have a love for the language, for the culture, so I like to get them enthused,” Martinez said. “I love teaching Spanish 1 because they are fresh, but I really love teaching (Spanish) 4 because I could do so much with them culturally, and with poetry.”
“I think the last couple years (the song) “La Gozadera” was very popular,” she said. “I played that one for my level one kids like their second day. I gave them a sheet and said ‘write down how many countries that they say in Spanish that you recognize,’ just to see what they could hear, and they would surprise themselves when they were able to pick out a lot of words.”
“My kids had to memorize José Martí poems,” she said. “I said ‘guys, it will help with your language’ because of the flow. You can’t come up here and just say, ‘Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crece la palma.’ You have to have emotion. That’s what they had to work on and it helped with their fluency.”
But today, under the watchful eye of parents and politicians, Martinez said she doesn’t know how others would perceive many of the books she kept in her classrooms, or the historically accurate lessons she imparted to her students.
“I had a lot of books in my classroom by Spanish authors,” she said. “Books that I had read, and they were open and free for kids that wanted to take a book and read it. I did have a lot of multicultural-type books. Biographies on Hispanic people, artists. Frida. Dalí. Celia Cruz. Roberto Clemente.”
“And I’m hearing that a lot of those books are being pulled now, because they reflect a culture that’s different,” she said. “What is it, that it could ‘stress them out’ for whatever reason. Like with Celia Cruz, you have to talk about communism. She fled Cuba, and she said as long as Castro was alive she would never set foot in Cuba again. That’s very political. I don’t know if I could teach that now. You know? Because that’s a political statement. And Celia Cruz is Afro-Cuban, she identified as that. Could we even say that?”
Martinez questions the future of art history classes, especially after an incident in March when Hope Carrasquilla, a former principal at the Tallahassee Classical School, was forced to resign after teaching sixth-grade students about Michelangelo’s “David” and showing photos of the masterpiece sculpture.
“Somebody complained that it was pornographic,” Martinez said. “I just rolled my eyes and told a former colleague of mine that is also retired, I said, ‘you wait and see.’ This is after they banned the AP African Studies program. I said ‘pretty soon, they are going to drop AP art history,’ because there is nudity in AP art history.”
She wonders about her lessons about the casta paintings, and how lessons about their historic significance would be perceived today.
The paintings were drawn in the 18th century as a way to establish hierarchical scale of races after Spanish colonization of the Americas led to anxiety over racial mixing between Spanish colonizers, indigenous people and African slaves.
“The casta paintings, it’s treated like a work of art but it’s really an anthropological piece, because of what they documented in that artwork,” Martinez said. “I talked about one, but there were others. It’s really about the mixing of the races, and that white European is No. 1 on the hierarchy.
“I don’t know if that would fly right now,” she said.
“I like history, so I used art to teach something about the stuff that was going on,” she said. “It was never like ‘oh my god, Spaniards were bad, or anything.’ No. Those are just facts, it’s just the way it was. We can’t change history, all we can do is just not repeat it.”
“Gut punch after gut punch’
Andy Crossfield was in an airport in Lyon, France, last year when a fellow tourist from North Carolina learned that he and his wife, Emily, hailed from Florida.
“Don’t you just love your governor?” the woman asked.
Crossfield replied, “Are you kidding?”
Crossfield, a Lakeland resident and a self-described liberal Democrat, said the episode in France offered a reminder of his status as an undisputed political minority in Florida.
A Georgia native, Crossfield moved to Florida in 1978, during the tenure of Gov. Reubin Askew, the state’s third-to-last Democratic leader. Crossfield said that he didn’t become politically engaged until after his retirement in 1997 from a career as a mutual fund wholesaler.
He has since served as president of the Lakeland Democratic Club and an officer with the League of Women Voters of Polk County.
Crossfield, 70, said Democrats and Republicans seem to perceive virtually all occurrences through different lenses. He compared the phenomenon to the 2015 internet fad involving a photo of a dress that some perceived as blue and black and others as white and gold.
“We see instances of an event, and right away we try to figure out, ‘Is that good for my side, or is that bad for me?’ ” he said. “And this is politics taken to the extreme.”
Crossfield said the political divide has become personal for him and fellow Democrats. He said his relationship with his brother, who is conservative, has become strained.
“Everybody’s lost friends and neighbors over this,” he said. “You can’t have anything in common when you wish a completely different future for the country.”
Has Crossfield maintained friendships with any conservative Republicans?
“I try,” he said. “They make it difficult. I mean, they’re intelligent people, but they want to believe the most ridiculous things. I had a woman tell me — that I had a pretty good relationship with, I guess — that COVID was a fake. All these people that were dying, (it) was just a lie. And that (former President Donald) Trump had intercepted the virus and had his people manipulate it into something benign.”
Andy Crossfield, a self-described liberal Democrat living in Lakeland, holds a spark-spitting, windup u0022Trumpzillau0022 toy in his office.
Crossfield said it is “humbling” to be a Democrat in Florida at this point. He is highly critical of the policies promoted by DeSantis and the Legislature.
“We seem to have Jim Crow 2.0 now, because the attack on voting rights is very frightening,” he said, “The restrictions that Florida has put on people who just want to register people to vote is outrageous.”
Crossfield said he now avoids watching the news because he finds Florida’s politics so irksome.
“I think the electorate, the populace, is responsible for this,” he said. “Life is so hard that they’ll take somebody who wants to stick it to somebody they don’t like, rather than make my life better. I hate to say that, but that’s what it looks like to me.”
Crossfield lives in Polk County, which has not elected a Democrat to any partisan office in well over a decade. In recent cycles, some Republican legislators and county commissioners have been reelected without opposition.
“We have a catch-22 that I don’t know how to solve,” he said. “You can’t get quality candidates unless you have support from the grassroots. And you can’t get grassroots support after gut punch after gut punch results from elections without a quality candidate. I don’t know what breaks first.”
Crossfield empathized with liberal friends who yearn to flee the state.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of people who say, ‘Well, I’m going to leave,’ ” he said. “Somebody on Facebook posted this thing, saying, ‘Don’t leave Florida. Fix it’. And I think I responded, ‘Florida is not an old car that would shine with a little TLC. In fact, every time we take it in for repairs, the mechanic is stealing parts off of it.’ That’s where we are.”
When asked if he has become depressed about Florida’s politics, Crossfield found optimism in the performance of Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz, an evangelical Christian and a Republican who has defied some expectations by supporting the removal of a Confederate statue from a downtown park and by not blocking the city’s issuance of LGBTQ Pride proclamations.
Crossfield said he now concentrates on small, concrete measures to improve the lives of his fellow citizens. For example, he and others in the local chapter of the League of Women Voters are promoting the distribution of gun locks.
“All we’re trying to do is just pick these areas that we can make some good, some change,” he said. “And yeah, that gives me hope.”
‘To hell and back because of who they are’
Transgender Stetson University student Alexander Vargas wants the same things other people his age do: To finish college, find a career he enjoys, and share his life with friends and family. Some new state laws are making his day-to-day life harder, including one measure that’s making it more difficult for him to find a bathroom he can legally use.More
Alexander Vargas is a 19-year-old college student. His biggest worries should revolve around getting good grades, figuring out what kind of a career he wants after college, and deciding what he wants to do for fun every weekend.
Instead the Stetson University psychology major is always reminding himself to steer clear of public men’s restrooms so he won’t get fined for using bathrooms that align with his gender identity, but not the gender he was assigned at birth. Stetson officials have set him up with a one-person restroom he can use on campus, but once he leaves school property, bathroom access becomes a problem again.
He’s also adjusting to new state government rules that have made it more complicated for him to get the testosterone his doctor prescribes so he can more fully live as a male.
The young transgender man is trying to figure out if he should move to another state where basic day-to-day living wouldn’t be such a struggle, and he could escape the worsening anti-LGBTQ+ climate in Florida.
“Moving out of Florida is a last resort if things get worse, like if I can’t receive my gender-affirming care,” Vargas said. “I could move to another state and switch schools. It would be the easiest way to do it.”
He has both a “Plan B” and a “Plan C,” but he hopes he never feels compelled to use either one. Vargas would prefer to stay right where he is.
Vargas has a very supportive family he still lives with in eastern Volusia County. His partner and job are in the area.
He would love to finish his last two years of college at Stetson as he progresses toward his goal of working with autistic children and using art therapy as a form of communication for the kids when they become nonverbal.
“My life is here, and the thought of uprooting it is terrifying,” he said.
Vargas has been called a freak and he’s had slurs hurled his way.
He’s seen others in Florida subjected to the same things.
“I have trans friends who’ve been to hell and back because of who they are,” Vargas said.
Two years ago, when he was a senior at Spruce Creek High School, he found the courage to speak out.
Vargas attended a school board meeting to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community in the wake of a board vote that shot down recognition of LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week. The school superintendent eventually decided the week should be acknowledged.
Vargas knows his family and friends have his back, and that empowers him to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. But if things ever do get bad enough for him in Florida, he’ll start a new chapter somewhere else.
“I’m just waiting for that last straw,” he said.
Fighting against misinformation and fear
Grace Resendez McCaffery, the publisher of the Pensacola-based La Costa Latina Newspaper, a Spanish-language newspaper that covers Northwest Florida and South Alabama, has lived in Florida for 30 years after moving from her hometown of El Paso, Texas.
She founded La Costa Latina Newspaper a year after Hurricane Ivan hit in 2004. She saw the need in the region for a Spanish-language publication, and her newspaper has become a hub of information for the Hispanic community in the Panhandle.
Since DeSantis signed SB 1718, which targets immigrants who lack a permanent legal status, Resendez McCaffery has worked to fight against misinformation about the new law as well as make the broader community aware of its impact on the Hispanic community.
She said it’s discouraging to see a law like SB 1718, but is more worried about the state’s actions being adopted at the national level.
“I don’t have plans to leave,” Resendez McCaffery said. “I have imagined what would happen if our governor became the president.”
“If these types of policies became national policies, I think that would be pretty unpleasant,” she said. “And I have toyed with the idea that I might have to somewhere (out of country).”
Grace Resendez McCaffery, right, and Jessica Rangel, 21, hug as they and other protestors in support of DACA gathered at the corner of Palafox and Garden Streets in Pensacola on Sept. 5, 2017. United States attorney general Jeff Sessions announced the end of the DACA program.
In the meantime, Resendez McCaffery sees her mission as getting accurate information out to her community.
“My concern is an individual’s need right now,” she said. “They’re hungry, or they need housing, or they need just some support to know that not everybody hates them. Sometimes that’s all they want to know. And so, I know that my purpose here is to kind of relay that.”
Heartbreak and anger
In March, Jason DeShazo spoke to a Florida Senate committee while dressed as Momma Ashley Rose, his drag character, in a demure yet colorfully checkered dress with a fluffy blond wig.
“Do I look like a stripper?” the Lakeland resident asked members of the House Judiciary Committee, as they considered a bill intended to curtail drag performances.
With the legislative session over and the law taking effect July 1, DeShazo said it is a bleak time for Florida’s drag performers and the LGBTQ+ population in general.
“It’s kind of a mix between heartbreaking and anger, right?” said DeShazo, 44. “You just want to kind of shout it from the rooftops, like, we’ve got more important things to worry about. We worry about a drag queen reading stories to children when children are having to learn how to do active-shooter training and how to get away from active shooters in schools. And you’re telling me that I’m the issue?”
DeShazo, a gay man, has been performing in drag for more than 20 years. He created Momma Rose Dynasty, a nonprofit that he says has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support LGBTQ-oriented charities.
DeShazo specializes in “family friendly” shows and readings, at which his matronly character serves up affirmation and acceptance for youngsters who are LGBTQ or unsure about their sexuality or gender.
Last December, about a dozen men wearing Nazi attire showed up to protest a Lakeland event DeShazo had organized. The demonstrators projected lights onto the venue’s exterior bearing such messages as “Warning: Child grooming in process” — a claim DeShazo vehemently rejects.
An Orlando high school canceled DeShazo’s appearance in March as Momma Ashley Rose at a long-planned “Drag and Donuts” after-school event, under pressure from the Florida Department of Education.
And then the Legislature passed and DeSantis signed the bill officially titled “Protection of Children.”
“It’s just something that we never thought we would have to go through again,” DeShazo said. “This is stuff that our community went through in the ‘50s, ’60s and ’70s. It’s just kind of a shocker that drag has become such a target — not only just drag, but the trans(gender) community, too, is a huge target with what’s happening politically right now.”
Jason DeShazo of Lakeland performs as the drag queen Momma Ashley Rose. He said he is shocked that drag performers have become such a political target in Florida.
Since the Nazi incident, DeShazo said he has been forced to spend hundreds of dollars at every event for extra security. He has also bolstered protections at his house in response to death threats.
In May, the group Fathers for Freedom urged supporters to “accost” parents who took children to a tea party brunch in Lakeland staged by DeShazo’s organization. He said he was relieved that no protesters actually showed up.
“So, it is a daily fear,” he said. “I mean, I can honestly tell you that there are times I’m walking through a grocery store and I’m having to look over my shoulder because you never know, right? Especially now that my face as a boy and in drag is out there.”
DeShazo said he sought legal help to review the new law, and he is confident that his performances do not violate it. His costumes do not feature prosthetic breasts, one of the elements identified in the law as potentially lewd when used in “adult live performances.”
DeShazo said he knows of two drag queens who have already fled Florida and another who is making plans to leave. But he is determined to stay.
“I have no judgment for anyone that wants to leave because I think everyone has their own reasons — and valid reasons,” he said. “But for me, of course I want to pack up and leave. I don’t want to have to sit here and worry about my life and worry about what laws are going to be passed next to dehumanize me. But who’s going to stay and fight if we all leave? If everyone who is different, that they’re trying to drive out of here, leaves, who’s going to be here to stay and fight for the ones that can’t leave?”
Does DeShazo feel that as a gay man and a drag queen he is no longer welcome in Florida?
“Politically, 100%,” he said. “It’s been known that we’re not welcome here. It’s been known that we’re not wanted here. But it definitely seems like the people don’t necessarily agree; the majority don’t agree.”
The publicity surrounding the taunts by neo-Nazis in December produced an outpouring of solidarity, DeShazo said.
“I think people are starting to see other people’s true colors, like, other people’s true discriminations and hate,” he said. “At the same time, we’ve had a huge influx of support, right? I would say 90% of the contacts we get are support, are love, are ‘We thank you for what you’re doing. Keep fighting; we stand with you.’ But that 5% to 10% is a lot to weigh you down because that could make a huge difference.”
Should Biden be getting more credit for his massive climate bill?
Mike Bebernes, Senior Editor – August 21, 2023
“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
What’s happening
President Biden held a press conference last week to celebrate the first anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act — a bill he called the “the largest investment in clean energy and climate action ever” — becoming law.
The IRA passed through the Senate last August by the narrowest possible margin after months of negotiations among Democrats. Although the bill’s name targeted the soaring inflation of the time, the legislation was essentially a sprawling collection of programs designed to supercharge the country’s green energy transition through investments and tax incentives. It also included a handful of non-climate provisions, including rules to lower the cost of prescription drugs and billions in extra funding for the Internal Revenue Service.
While even the president concedes that the IRA shouldn’t be credited for falling inflation, the bill has already helped drive more than $100 billion into green energy production and created more than 170,000 clean energy jobs — many of them in Republican parts of the country. The White House argues that this is just a preview of the IRA’s full impact, which won’t be realized for several years. One estimate predicted that the bill could result in as much as $1.2 trillion in green energy spending over the next 10 years.
Yet despite these massive investments, voters aren’t giving Biden credit for leading the effort to make the bill a reality. More than half of Americans disapprove of his handling of climate change, and a strong majority say they know little or nothing about what the Inflation Reduction Act has done, according to a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
Why there’s debate
Many political analysts say that stuffing a bunch of individually popular initiatives into a single bill created a piece of legislation too complicated for voters to wrap their heads around. The slow process of launching major energy projects also means that many Americans haven’t yet seen the impact of the IRA in their communities.
But others say Biden’s real problem is that he’s taking the wrong approach to climate change in the first place. Republicans argue that the IRA is far too large and will end up wasting extraordinary amounts of taxpayer money by imposing the Democrats’ green agenda on the country. Many progressives, on the other hand, say climate-minded voters are disappointed that the bill isn’t nearly big enough and that Biden has undermined his own case by approving fossil fuel projects throughout his presidency.
What’s next
Biden’s effort to draw more attention to the IRA’s benefits is part of a larger effort to change voters’ minds about his stewardship of the economy, which have remained stubbornly low despite persistent growth and tumbling inflation. Convincing Americans that “Bidenomics” is working will likely be a core focus for the president throughout his reelection campaign.
Perspectives
Most Americans can’t make sense of such a massive and complex bill
“I think part of the issue is they have to cram so many things in these giant bills, to get everybody on board and something for everyone to get passed. So it’s really hard for the public to wrap their head around. … It’s very, very tricky when it’s hard to know what’s in it.” — Nova Safo, Marketplace
Americans aren’t seeing the effects in their everyday lives
“While the Inflation Reduction Act is bringing dramatic savings to Medicare recipients, and offers rebates and tax credits to consumers for energy-saving home improvements and electric vehicle purchases, nothing in it really addresses the day-to-day expenses most Americans incur, like groceries and gas.” — Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, to HuffPost
The IRA isn’t remotely enough to change our climate trajectory
“It left the U.S. with no realistic path toward meeting its stated goal of zeroing carbon emissions by 2050. At the rate we’re still pumping planet-heating carbon into the atmosphere, today’s heat waves could come to seem downright pleasant.” — Mark Gongloff, Bloomberg
The IRA is bad policy and voters know it
“Even if you give the bill the most charitable take possible, it’s just throwing money at failed programs and wasted resources.” — Alex Salter, economist at Texas Tech University, to Washington Times
The president has repeatedly undercut his own climate message
“Biden has also faced the ire of climate progressives for somewhat undercutting his landmark moment with an aggressive giveaway of oil and gas drilling leases on public land … and for incentivizing the use of technologies such as carbon capture that have been criticized as an unproven distraction at a time when the world is baking under record heatwaves.” — Oliver Milman, Guardian
Voters will begin to appreciate the IRA once the projects it’s funding get off the ground
“I think, over the long run, a lot of these Republican skeptics, they’re going to start to see jobs in their district, investments. And I think they’re going to come along with the clean energy technologies of the 21st century.” — Leah Stokes, UC Santa Barbara professor of environmental politics, to PBS NewsHour
The media has mostly ignored the actual impact of the IRA
“I’ve covered a lot of policy fights, and a huge problem in how policy coverage is done is there is all this attention to the fight to pass a bill — the Affordable Care Act, the Trump tax cuts, the Inflation Reduction Act. And then the bill passes. And if the fight stops, attention just drops off a cliff.” — Ezra Klein, New York Times.
These Voters Share Almost No Political Beliefs, but They Agree on One Thing: We’re Failing as a Nation
Ruth Igielnik – August 20, 2023
A Jackson, Miss., precinct worker cuts individual “I Voted in Hinds County” stickers from the roll, Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023. Each voter in Hinds County receives a sticker upon receipt of a paper ballot. Voters statewide are selecting their party’s nominees for a number of county and statewide offices in their respective Democratic or Republican primaries. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More
There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on. But one area where a significant share of each party finds common ground is a belief that the country is headed toward failure.
Overall, 37% of registered voters say the problems are so bad that we are in danger of failing as a nation, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.
Fifty-six percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said we are in danger of such failure. This kind of outlook is more common among voters whose party is out of power. But it’s also noteworthy that fatalists, as we might call them, span the political spectrum. Around 20% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they feel the same way.
Where they disagree is about what may have gotten us to this point.
Why Republicans say the U.S. is in danger of failing
Republican fatalists, much like Republican voters overall, overwhelmingly support former President Donald Trump. This group is largely older — two-thirds of Republicans older than 65 say the country is on the verge of failure — and less educated. They are also more likely than Republican voters overall to get their news from non-Fox conservative media sources like Newsmax or The Epoch Times.
Many of these gloomy Republicans see the Biden administration’s policies as pushing the country to the verge of collapse.
“Things are turning very communistic,” said Margo Creamer, 72, a Trump supporter from Southern California. “The first day Biden became president, he ripped up everything good that happened with Trump; he opened the border — let everyone and anyone in. It’s just insane.”
She added that there was only one way to reverse course: “In this next election if Trump doesn’t win, we’re going to fail as a nation.”
Many Republicans saw the pandemic, and the resulting economic impact, as playing a role in pushing the country toward failure.
“COVID gave everyone a wake-up call on what they can do to us as citizens,” said Dale Bowyer, a Republican in Fulton County, Indiana. “Keeping us in our houses, not being allowed to go to certain places, it was complete control over the United States of America. They think we’re idiots and we wouldn’t notice.”
Why Democrats say the U.S. is in danger of failing
While fewer Democrats see the country as nearing collapse, gender is the defining characteristic associated with this pessimistic outlook. Democratic and Republican women are more likely than their male counterparts to feel this way.
“I have never seen things as bleak or as precarious as they have been the last few years,” said Ann Rubio, a Democrat and funeral director in New York City. “Saying it’s a stolen election plus Jan. 6, it’s terrifying. Now we’re taking away a woman’s right to choose. I feel like I’m watching the wheels come off something.”
For many Democrats, specific issues — especially abortion — are driving their concern about the country’s direction.
Brandon Thompson, 37, a Democrat and veteran living in Tampa, Florida, expressed a litany of concerns about the state of the country: “The regressive laws being passed; women don’t have abortion access in half the country; gerrymandering and stripping people’s rights to vote — stuff like this is happening literally all over the country.
“If things continue to go this way, this young experiment, this young nation, is going to fall apart,” he said.
More than just on the wrong track
Pollsters have long asked a simple question to take the country’s temperature: Are things in the U.S. headed on the right track or are they off in the wrong direction?
Americans’ views on this question have become more polarized in recent years and are often closely tied to views of the party in power. So it is not surprising, for example, that currently 85% of Republicans said the country was on the wrong track, compared with 46% of Democrats. Those numbers are often the exact opposite when there’s a Republican in the White House.
Views on the country’s direction are also often closely linked to the economic environment. Currently, 65% of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. That’s relatively high historically, although down from last summer when inflation was peaking and 77% of Americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction. At the height of the recession in 2008, 81% of Americans said the country was headed in the wrong direction.
What seems surprising, however, is the large share of voters who say we’re on the verge of breaking down as a nation.
“We’ve moved so far away from what this country was founded on,” said William Dickerson, a Republican from Linwood, North Carolina. “Society as a whole has become so self-aware that we’re infringing on people’s freedoms and the foundation of what makes America great.”
He added: “We tell people what they can and can’t do with their own property and we tell people that you’re wrong because you feel a certain way.”
Voters contacted for the Times/Siena survey were asked the “failing” question only if they already said things were headed in the wrong direction. And while this is the first time a question like this has been asked, the pessimistic responses still seem striking: Two-thirds of Republicans who said the country was headed in the wrong direction said things weren’t just bad — they were so bad that America was in danger of becoming a failed nation.
“Republicans have Trump and others in their party who have undermined their faith in the electoral system,” said Alia Braley, a researcher at Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab who studies attitudes toward democracy. “And if Republicans believe democracy is crumbling, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that they will stop behaving like citizens of a democracy.”
She added, “Democrats are often surprised to learn that Republicans are just as afraid as they are about the future of U.S. democracy, and maybe more so.”
Legal scholars increasingly raise constitutional argument that Trump should be barred from presidency
Katelyn Polantz, Reporter Crime and Justice – August 19, 2023
Brandon Bell/Getty Images/FILEWashingtonCNN —
Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that 2024 Republican candidate Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result.
The latest salvo came Saturday in The Atlantic magazine, from liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig, the former federal appellate judge and a prominent conservative who’s become a strong critic of Trump’s actions after the election.
Not all in the legal community agree – and what the scholars are proposing would need to be tested in court.
Yet Luttig and Tribe’s writings capture a conversation about the Constitution and the 2021 insurrection that is likely to grow heading into the 2024 election season.
They and others base their arguments on a reading of part of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War provision that excludes from future office anyone who, previously, as a sworn-in public official, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion … or [had] given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the government.
The pair write: “Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point.
“The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again.”
Law review scrutinizes Trump
Just last week, two members of the Federalist Society, a legal organization that has substantial sway among conservative legal thinkers, released a law review article making a similar argument.
“In our view, on the basis of the public record, former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from again being President (or holding any other covered office) because of his role in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election and the events leading to the January 6 attack,” law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen wrote for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. “The case for disqualification is strong.”
In writing about Trump’s speech from the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, to his supporters who then overran the Capitol, Baude and Paulsen said Trump delivered a “general and specific message” that the election was stolen, calling on the crowd to take immediate action to block the transfer of power before falling silent for hours as the insurrection progressed.
“Trump’s deliberate inaction renders his January 6 speech much more incriminating in hindsight, because it makes it even less plausible (if it was ever plausible) that the crowd’s reaction was all a big mistake or misunderstanding,” they write.
The law professors argued current and former officeholders who took part in supporting or planning the efforts to overturn the election for Trump should also be “stringently scrutinized” under the Constitution should they seek bids for future public office.
Baude and Paulsen also noted that Trump’s “overall course of conduct disqualifies him” from eligibility as a candidate, regardless of whether he is convicted of criminal charges related to the 2020 election – which he now faces in Georgia state court and in federal court – or whether he is held liable in a major civil conspiracy lawsuit related to the attack.
“If the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of Presidency,” the law review article said.
The pair also looked at the historical intentions of this section of the 14th Amendment, which barred Confederates after the Civil War from holding office again, because if they were to be allowed, the US would never be able to engage in “effective ‘reconstruction’ of the political order” and newly freed formerly enslaved people wouldn’t be properly protected.
“Not since the Civil War has there been so serious a threat to the foundations of the American constitutional republic,” Baude and Paulsen wrote about the Capitol attack and Trump’s illegitimate attempt to hold onto power.
They note that more people died and were injured as a result of the January 6, 2021, attack than in the 1861 Battle of Fort Sumter that began the Civil War.
Question for courts
While the articles from legal scholars amount to opinions at this time, it’s possible the court systems in various states could be asked to look at Trump’s viability as a candidate in 2024 – especially if secretaries of state or other state officials disqualify Trump from their states’ ballots.
Luttig and Tribe acknowledge the question of Trump appearing on ballots in 2024 might ultimately have to be decided by the Supreme Court.
“The process that will play out over the coming year could give rise to momentary social unrest and even violence. But so could the failure to engage in this constitutionally mandated process,” Luttig and Tribe write.
Previously, advocacy groups contested the ability of Republican members of Congress Marjorie Taylor Green and Madison Cawthorn to be ballot candidates in 2022 because of the 14th Amendment and their vocal support of the Capitol rioters. But judges decided neither could be disqualified.
However, one convicted Capitol rioter, Couy Griffin, was removed from an elected county office he held in New Mexico by a judge.
This story has been updated with additional information.
