And another day of Democracy Porn, GOP evolution on Jan 6, SCOTUS power and resentment, how Rs pass legislation most Americans don’t want, protecting the status quo, and identifying as transgender or nonbinary comes to a close:
“As if denying that heavy rain causes flooding, Republicans continue to insist that the prevalence of guns has nothing do with the prevalence of shootings.” -- Max boot
Deaths
US: 1,035,031 (+747)
World: 6,326,550 (+3172)
Cases
US: 86,988,671 (+206,267)
World: 538,112,366 (+1,537,163)
You Can’t Run on Defending Democracy if Democracy Is Broken. But putting on display weeks of what I’ve (perhaps crassly) started calling Democracy Porn can only do so much. People have to believe our electoral system, in some way, works for them. If not, an issue arises: What is this week’s massive spectacle TV show actually defending? Institutions? Democracy? Rule of law? You mean the things that…don’t seem to be working at all for so many people? Let’s remember: Over the past few years, a central thesis of the Democrats’ message has been to protect institutions of democracy. And that worked—they won. Yet, now with that power? Not much has be changed. Democrats failed to enshrine reforms like eliminating the filibuster and passing voting protections, among many others. They have often fallen short in making the institutions strong enough to be cheered. Partly as a result, everything else is broken, too. After a heartbreaking deluge of mass shootings, Congress can’t pass gun reform. The Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe as the federal government more or less sits on its hands. Police, transit, housing, and health care remain fundamentally broken. COVID relief could have heralded a larger social welfare state if enshrined, fulfilling all those heady pieces about Joe Biden’s New Deal; instead, Democrats couldn’t even keep around the expanded child care tax credit, which had lifted many out of poverty. For all the paying attention to court cases, scandals, reports, hearings, and impeachment(s) that would finally oust Trump, he’s been fine. Carbon filters into the sky…January 6 was the more obvious of the antidemocratic moments of the past few years. But as Ari Berman has written for us, it is the slow-moving destruction of election law that could papercut our system to its knees. We’re living through a dirge of democracy; January 6 was a high note. If someone savvier takes up the reins, the next coup will likely be horrible, but also boring—and it might even be exceedingly popular…There is only one solution: Shit has to work. I get that’s not easy, but democracy has to function as a way to make the lives of people tangibly and materially better. If it does not, people won’t believe in it. Democrats need to not only defend democracy in hearings, they have to make it popular in real life. Or else it seems like all there is is the show.
Capitol attack’s full story: Jan. 6 panel probes US risks. The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol played out for the world to see, but the House committee investigating the attack believes a more chilling story has yet to be told -- about the president and the people whose actions put American democracy at risk...The result of the coming weeks of public hearings may not change hearts or minds in politically polarized America. But the committee’s year-long investigation with 1,000 interviews is intended to stand as a public record for history. A final report aims to provide an accounting of the most violent attack on the Capitol since the British set fire in 1814, and ensure it never happens again. -- Come November, we will see if Americans want democracy, no matter how flawed it is, or give it up for fascism.
Then and now: GOP lawmakers’ evolution on the Capitol riot. Most every Republican lawmaker expressed outrage in the days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Some even blamed then-President Donald Trump. But the larger GOP narrative shifted in the weeks and months that followed. Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy, who had said in the hours after the attack that it had been “the saddest day I have ever had serving as a member of this institution,” went on to visit Trump at his Florida home only weeks after the riot. Others went further, with some Republican lawmakers defending the rioters or playing down the violence of the mob that beat police officers and smashed its way into the Capitol. The rioters, echoing Trump’s falsehoods about widespread fraud in the election, temporarily stopped the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
The Supreme Court Is Not Supposed to Have This Much Power. Contrary to what many people have come to believe, judicial supremacy is not in the Constitution, and does not date from the founding era. It took hold of American politics only after the Civil War, when the Court overruled Congress’s judgment that the Constitution demanded civil-rights and voting laws. The Court has spent the 150 years since sapping our national representatives of the power to issue national rules. These judicial decisions have destroyed guardrails that national majorities deemed vital to a functional, multiracial democracy—including protecting the right to vote and curbing the influence of money in politics. Even worse, the Court’s assertion of the power to invalidate federal laws has stripped Americans of the expectation, once widely shared, that the most important interpretations of the Constitution are expressed not by judicial decree but by the participation of “We, the People,” in enacting national legislation...This bears repeating: Judicial supremacy is an institutional arrangement brought to cultural ascendancy by white people who wanted to undo Reconstruction and the rise of organized labor that had followed. And that makes sense, as judicial supremacy can harness the power of an entrenched minority and use that power to undermine the more democratic legislative branch...Through the 21st century, the justices overwhelmingly have exercised their claim of supremacy over Congress to insulate the wealthy and powerful from federal labor laws, federal voting laws, federal civil-rights laws, federal campaign-finance laws, and federal health-care laws. Decisions such as Citizens United and Shelby County are typical examples of how the Court has overruled Congress to make it harder for ordinary people to participate in American democracy on equal terms. But their damage goes beyond even that: Because the limits of our constitutional imagination can extend no further than the opinions of those who happen to sit on the Court, judicial supremacy has also impoverished what we think is possible through democratic politics—and through organizing for political change at the national level...The thing stopping Congress from reversing each wrongheaded decision the Court issues this month therefore isn’t the Constitution. It’s our failure to demand more from our elected representatives.
After the leak, the Supreme Court seethes with resentment and fear behind the scenes. The Supreme Court is riven with distrust among the law clerks, staff and, most of all, the justices themselves after the leak of the draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. One source tells NPR "the place sounds like it's imploding."
Parents of children injured and killed during last month's mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde implored members of the House Oversight Committee to act quickly on gun control measures in an emotional hearing.
Armed man arrested for threat to kill Justice Kavanaugh. A man carrying a gun, a knife and zip ties was arrested Wednesday near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland after threatening to kill the justice...Roske told police he was upset by a leaked draft opinion suggesting the Supreme Court is about to overrule Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case. He also said he was upset over the school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, and believed Kavanaugh would vote to loosen gun control laws, the affidavit said.
GOP push for SCOTUS security bill after arrest outside Kavanaugh’s house. - But they are not concerned about the safety of kids in school, or people going to concerts or the movies, or attending church, or stopping by the grocery store.
How Republicans pass abortion bans most Americans don't want. Ohio offers a case study of how US politicians enact extreme abortion measures that don’t align with voters’ views but face little accountability at the polls – an issue even more at stake this month as the supreme court is on the verge of issuing a decision that will probably overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to an abortion. In Ohio and elsewhere, politicians are protected by their ability to draw their own political districts every 10 years, distorting them in such a way as to virtually guarantee their re-election. Republicans drew the lines in Ohio in 2011 and have held a supermajority in the state legislature ever since. “We can kind of do what we want,” Matt Huffman, the top Republican in the Ohio senate, told the Columbus Dispatch recently…That kind of gerrymandering will probably serve as an invisible, virtually impenetrable fortress that will allow lawmakers across the US to continue to push extreme abortion measures that are unsupported by the public. Although public attitudes about abortion can be complex, the vast majority do not support overturning Roe v Wade and a majority supports legalized abortion in some form. State lawmakers who have pushed measures criminalizing abortion and outlawing it entirely have ignored those attitudes. — And this goes beyond just the abortion issue.
“This is a thread on Republican messaging. The press doesn’t want to have a direct conversation with you about this. So as a former Republican who is now a consistent Democratic voter, I will. Thread.” — I encourage you to read the whole thread, but the bottom line is the following:
“Here is the Republican message on everything of importance:
“1. They can tell people what to do.
“2. You cannot tell them what to do.
“This often gets mistaken for hypocrisy, there’s an additional layer of complexity to this (later in the thread), but this is the basic formula.”
Exxon’s stock is poised to notch its first record high in eight years. Exxon’s rally coincides with a surge in crude prices, powered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that has boosted oil companies’ business outlooks. Brent crude has soared more than 50% in 2022 and is trading above $100 a barrel for the first time since 2014. The energy sector is by far the top-performing sector in the S&P 500, up 67% in 2022 while the broad U.S. stock index is down 13%. -- Oil companies are raking in record profits by gouging people at the pump. Biden does not control the price of gas. Republicans are playing you.
San Francisco ousts liberal DA Chesa Boudin in heated recall. San Francisco residents voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to recall progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin following a heated campaign that captivated the country and bitterly divided Democrats over crime, policing and public safety reform in the famously liberal city.
The Chesa Boudin Recall was a Fight to Protect the Status Quo. Elected in 2019 on a promise to radically transform the city’s legal system, Boudin quickly became the target of a years-long smear campaign and bitter recall fight, driven by a burgeoning alliance between the local press, police unions, major conservative outlets like Fox News, and the city’s allegedly “progressive” class of wealthy tech investors...But the status quo has created a pretty solid quality of life for, say, realtors who dumped money into the Boudin recall campaign...But even with those failures in mind, Boudin’s stated ideology hinted at a world in which the indigent actually deserve some rights. His office, for example, stopped assigning cash bail for certain charges and the city did not burn down. What would stop Boudin or his successor from chipping away at the system even further? The wealthiest San Franciscans simply could not allow this. So with a gigantic war chest, Boudin’s opponents mounted a transparently bad faith campaign to pretend the city was on fire, even though it was not...Despite these facts, in polls, many of the city’s residents said they no longer “felt” safe. Some on the left have frustratedly explained this as yet another case of mass delusion. But perhaps people could be excused for feeling some lack of safety right now—albeit for reasons that go far beyond the actions of any individual prosecutor. Since March 2020, amid a failed national response to the pandemic, more than 1 million people have died, the economy has crashed, and Americans have learned—whether they’re willing to accept it or not—that we’re all one, particularly nasty germ away from potential societal collapse. Meanwhile, we’ve gotten no relief from a staggering list of other problems—poverty, inequality, a complete lack of affordable housing, unattainable health care, endless student loan debt, and mass shootings, to name a few. Americans are desperate for real, meaningful action on those issues, but the federal government has offered little more than a thumbs-up in response. No sane person would feel safe in such a country. But that’s hardly Chesa Boudin’s fault. We could, of course, begin addressing these issues by breaking the stranglehold the uber-wealthy have over our public sphere. But, rather than allow those thoughts to enter the public consciousness, the media has helped make a progressive DA the scapegoat for America’s slow decline. And so, Boudin lost. Behind his defeat we see a new playbook for protecting an inequitable status quo that makes us all less safe. As long as the rest of us feel unsafe, the wealthy get to rest easy at night.
California voters send a stark message to Democrats on crime and homelessness. Voters in two of the most liberal cities in America sent a clear message to the Democratic Party on Tuesday: they want their leaders to refocus on the most basic functions of government by ensuring their safety, protecting their quality of life and restoring order.
DeSantis spokeswoman retroactively registers as foreign agent. The Foreign Agents Registration Act, requires that people working on behalf of a foreign government, political party or entities to register as a foreign agent. Its purpose is "to promote transparency with respect to foreign influence within the United States by ensuring that the United States government and the public know the source of certain information from foreign agents intended to influence American public opinion, policy, and laws, thereby facilitating informed evaluation of that information,” the Department of Justice says on its website.
Facebook's 2018 algorithm change boosted local GOP groups, research finds. The new paper adds to a growing collection of data-based research that shows Facebook has consistently amplified content from conservative accounts. It is the first to suggest that an algorithm change Facebook announced in 2018 amplified Republican causes at a hyperlocal level, allowing the Republican Party to reach a wider audience and potentially affect local and state elections. Reactions, comments and shares began to trend down on Republican posts by 2021, and the gap between local Republican parties and their Democratic counterparts began to narrow again. The data ends in April 2021. -- And why are we still using Facebook?
Larry Nassar sex abuse victims seeking over $1B US from FBI for failing to intervene. There's no dispute that FBI agents in 2015 knew that Nassar was accused of assaulting gymnasts, but they failed to act, leaving him free to continue to target young women and girls for more than a year.
More than 5% of young adults, and about 1.6% of the general population, in the U.S. identify as transgender or nonbinary, according to the Pew Research Center. The survey also found 1 in 5 U.S. adults said they personally know a nonbinary person. A similar Pew survey from last year found an increase — from 18 percent in 2018 to 26 percent in 2021 — in the number of Americans who said they knew someone who preferred using gender-neutral pronouns.
The NFL’s first out trans cheerleader readies for her Carolina Panthers debut. Lindsay is one of 30 members of the 2022-2023 TopCats, the cheer squad that roots for the Carolina Panthers from the sidelines and during energetic halftime performances. She disclosed that she was trans on paperwork for her audition for the team, Buzzfeed News recently reported, but the squad director said it was her talent and integrity that won her the spot.
A ‘dangerous and deadly heat wave’ is on the way, the weather service warns. More than 25 million people are under heat alerts, and more than 50 daily high-temperature records could be broken through the weekend – including in Death Valley, California, one of the hottest places on earth.
No, you’re not imagining it — package sizes are shrinking. It’s the inflation you’re not supposed to see. From toilet paper to yogurt and coffee to corn chips, manufacturers are quietly shrinking package sizes without lowering prices. It’s dubbed “shrinkflation,” and it’s accelerating worldwide.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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