Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Leave it to American conservatives to do the heavy thinking!

Didn't mean that post to be humorous, snood. Rather I was pointing to her suggestion that she was part of some activist group (which I suspect, in some form, she is) but that there's likely zero chance she'd identify it because of what it would reveal about her actual motives.

A group of GOP Wyoming state lawmakers want to end electric vehicle sales there by 2035, saying the move will help safeguard the oil and gas industries.

The measure, introduced to the state legislature on Friday, was sponsored by six state legislators, who said in it that electric vehicles will hinder Wyoming’s ability to trade with other states. The bill states that citizens and industries would be encouraged not to purchase electric vehicles before the ban goes into effect.

Ahh got it.
Nah she’d never tell. And I’m not even sure she’s sure of her motives.

Whatever happened to the GOP and their desire to limit government in businesses? Not to mention free choice of consumers.

When asked by Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister, “why don’t you just tell them [Exxon] what to do?” Bush replied: “Nobody tells those guys what to do.”

How dark money groups led Ohio to redefine gas as ‘green energy’

Conservative groups helped Ohio lawmakers push the narrative that the fuel is clean, documents show. They are taking their campaign to other states.

And if it bothers you bunch of hypocrites, well jeez! Icing on the cake!

If you squint your eyes and turn your head just so, it almost looks like the GOP is trying to go backwards in time.

There are probably factions of Americans who will come in out of the cold (non voters), just to vote against the D party. Vote Against Blue No Matter Who.

He realizes the difference in severity between the two cases.....

Today the bill for the elevation of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to House speaker began to come due. McCarthy promised the far-right members of his conference committee seats and far more power in Congress to persuade them to vote for him. 

Now they are collecting. 

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who was removed from committee assignments in the last Congress for her racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories as well as her encouragement of violence against Democrats, has a spot on the Homeland Security Committee. Such spots are usually filled by those with experience in either the military or intelligence, neither of which she has. And security is an odd fit for her: voters in her district tried to get her disqualified from running in 2022 because of her participation in the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election.

Greene has not just that plum assignment, but another on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. That committee manages investigations and has emerged as a coveted spot for the far right as its members prepare to go after figures in the Biden administration. It now includes right-wing figures Greene, Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Scott Perry (R-PA), Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Gary Palmer (R-AL), all of whom refused to acknowledge President Joe Biden’s 2020 election. 

Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who was removed from committees two years ago after threatening Democratic lawmakers on social media, is now back on the Natural Resources committee. He also is now on the Oversight Committee.

The elevation of newer representatives over their more senior colleagues caused hard feelings. Tara Palmeri of Puck reported today that Vern Buchanan (R-FL), who was in line to become the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, confronted McCarthy for putting McCarthy ally Jason Smith (R-MO) in the spot instead. “You f*cked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me,” Buchanan told McCarthy.

There were rumors that Buchanan would consider resigning over the slight, and McCarthy cannot afford to lose any Republicans. His desperation is clear in his embrace of George Santos (R-NY), whom McCarthy appointed to two committees: the House Committee on Small Business and the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Santos is facing pressure to resign as his campaign lies appear to include shady financing. 

But in an op-ed today at NBC News, Santos’s fellow New York representative Democrat Ritchie Torres noted: The presence of this man in Congress is a danger to our democracy and national security, a disgrace to this institution, and a major distraction from the pressing problems that are far more worthy of our time, energy and attention,” but the Republican Party will not disavow him because “House Speaker Kevin McCarthy needs every vote he can get, and he needs George Santos to remain in power.”

House Republicans also appear to be prepared to move forward with an impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. This is part of the Republican focus on applications for asylum at the southern border despite their recent refusal to consider updating legislation, as Mayorkas has repeatedly asked them to. Only once before has a Cabinet secretary been impeached—in 1876—and he was acquitted by the Senate. Two others resigned before impeachment votes were taken, the most recent in 1932.

Greene has her sights set even higher. She called today for the impeachment of President Biden, advising him on Twitter to “resign now.” 

McCarthy also agreed that he would not agree to raise the debt ceiling unless Congress cuts $130 billion in spending for next year, a demand that amounts to taking the nation and the world economy hostage to overturn measures that Congress has already agreed to. Once again, the debt ceiling is not about future spending, it is about paying the debts Congress has already incurred. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling means the United States will default, wreaking havoc on international markets and our own global standing.

But the right wing appears willing to burn down the global economy and to destroy our place in it to impose their will on the country.  

Emboldened, the far right is already insisting it will not raise the debt ceiling. Today, Andy Biggs (R-AZ), who was involved in the planning for January 6, tweeted, “We cannot raise the debt ceiling. Democrats have carelessly spent our taxpayer money and devalued our currency. They’ve made their bed, so they must lie in it.” 

In fact, the national debt skyrocketed under Republican president Donald Trump even before the pandemic, thanks to the big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated would increase deficits by almost $2 trillion over eleven years. In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic hit, the debt had grown to $22 trillion. Trump called it a crisis, but his budget that year increased the debt to $23.2 trillion. The CBO warned that the U.S. had never seen deficits so large in a time of high employment. 

And then the coronavirus hit, and the debt jumped to $27.75 trillion. 

At 5.2% of GDP, the growth of the deficit under Trump was third largest in our history, behind only that under Presidents George W. Bush—who launched two unfunded wars after passing a tax cut and thus presided over deficit growth of 11.7%—and Abraham Lincoln, whose Treasury had to invent a way to pay for a civil war out of whole cloth, resulting in the deficit growing by 9.4% of GDP.  

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the Treasury will hit the debt ceiling on Thursday but can extend extraordinary measures to keep functioning until June. McCarthy has called for Democrats to talk with him about a plan that will permit an increase in the debt limit while cutting Medicare, Social Security, and federal agencies. 

Biden and administration officials say they will not negotiate with the right-wing Republicans who are trying to get their way not through normal legislative channels, but by holding the government—and the global economy—hostage. 

“For the first time since before the Civil War, a fascist party has taken control of the House of Representatives. (I define a party as fascist if it does not accept legitimate election results and does not reject political violence; check, check.)” 
—Michael Podhorzer, Weekend Reading, November 22, 2022

Lots of hard work and savvy grassroots organizing stopped MAGA election deniers from winning battleground Senate seats and offices controlling election machinery last November. Celebrating that achievement—and noting the ways it put a wrench in MAGA’s 2024 coup plans—was and is totally appropriate. 

But let’s get real about what MAGA did achieve. The bitter truth is that MAGA is more dangerous and better positioned to take political power in this country than it was in 2020. 

Fracas in the House shows ultra-MAGA is in charge

The backstabbing fracas among Republicans over who would be Speaker of the House had some entertainment value. And no doubt it alienated some voters from the GOP. But from beginning to end, the underlying politics of the battle proved that Podhorzer’s point quoted above was right on target. Kevin McCarthy may be sitting in the Speaker’s chair, but the fascists-in-suits of the “Freedom Caucus” are calling the shots. 

No way it could be otherwise. Podhorzer again hit the nail on the head, writing that “the Republican Caucus taking power in January will be even less committed to the peaceful transfer of power than the one it succeeds, having purged nearly every one of its members who voted to impeach Trump the second time. Jim Jordan, who assisted the insurrectionists and refused to testify before the January 6th Committee, will chair the Judiciary Committee.” 

With Jordan at the pivot, House investigations of the January 6 Committee, as well as the FBI and other security agencies, were approved as part of McCarthy’s concession list to become Speaker. These need to be understood for what they are: projects designed to protect and legitimize right-wing militia and paramilitary violence and prepare the ground for more of it in the years to come. The timing may be a coincidence, but it’s no accident that leading MAGA figures such as Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller are key advisors to Jair Bolsonaro, whose supporters just rioted and invaded government buildings in Brazil January 6-style. 

A few so-called moderates groused a little about the terms under which the most extreme MAGA stalwarts will pull McCarthy’s strings. But not a single one pushed back against the dictat by election deniers and 2020 coupsters. The House majority is now openly aligned with the January 6 insurrectionists against those who defended what remains of US democracy: Only one of the 222 House Republicans attended the January 6 ceremony honoring police officers and others who faced violent assault from the MAGA faithful.
MAGA operatives run the Supreme Court

Likewise, the current SCOTUS majority are not jurists who have any kind of “conservative” principles. They are as much political operatives as the members of the Freedom Caucus in the House, products of a systematic (and openly proclaimed) 40-year effort by the Federalist Society to turn the judiciary into an instrument of its reactionary political agenda. To today’s Supreme Court “The 20th Century Was Wrongly Decided.”  

The Court majority and the entire MAGA coalition it serves are committed to “repealing the New Deal and Great Society safety net; unions and protections for working people; environmental regulations, civil and human rights for anyone who is not a white straight cisgender Christian male, and the very concept of public goods.” Put another way, they’re gunning for your Social Security and Medicare, your rights to vote, control your body, breathe clean air.

Red wave hit 35 states

Another indication of MAGA’s continuing strength is the midterm results in states where a blatant MAGA election denier was not contending for either the governorship or a Senate seat. In the 15 states where such MAGA candidates were prominent, the anti-MAGA majority turned out and prevailed. But in the other 35 states, the results were very close to the expected “red wave.” Republican turnout exceeded Democratic turnout. Black voter turnout was down, with both voter suppression and weaknesses in Democratic and progressive efforts contributing to the problem. 

The problem was especially acute in the South. Chris Kromm, writing in Facing South, points out that “Republicans gained about 55 legislative seats” in that region. He added that “Republicans hold majorities in all of the South’s 26 legislative chambers save one: the Virginia Senate, where Democrats cling to a narrow 21 – 19 majority.” Republicans hold trifectas—control of both the legislatures and the governorship—in 22 states. And with “states’ rights” coming back courtesy of the MAGA Supreme Court, we can expect to see more voter suppression, more gerrymandering, and more repressive legislation generally everywhere the GOP holds power. These states will become “authoritarian enclaves” within the U.S. federal system, reprising a model of government pioneered in the Jim Crow South after the rollback of Reconstruction.

Trump may be fading, MAGA is not

Then there’s all the media buzz about the GOP “moving beyond Trump,” complete with coverage of the maneuvers undertaken by other Republicans with presidential ambitions. Trump may indeed be fading, but rather than marking MAGA’s decline, his demise is a sign that the torch is passing to leaders who bring a more disciplined and strategic approach to the drive toward one-party authoritarian rule. 

Among those, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis currently has the inside track. DeSantis has “already absorbed all the lessons of Trump…without the baggage,” notes Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University who is an expert on fascism and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. 

DeSantis “already rules Florida the way a fascist would, if that fascist were an American politician without access to his own military force who did not (yet) enjoy the power to shut down media he did not like.” His latest stunt—demanding an investigation of medical experts who offered accurate information during the pandemic—only underscores how absolutely ruthless he is.

All across MAGA world, the level of coordination between office-holders, top Republican officials, and armed fascist groups is now a matter of record, documented in several sections of the January 6 Committee Report. Active participation with or acquiescence to that coordination—meaning support for right-wing political violence—is now all but universal in the GOP. And valuable as the January 6 report is, it doesn’t point out the central roles Christian Nationalism and white supremacy play in the worldview and practical strategy that drove the insurrection—and still pervades the MAGA-controlled GOP today.

2024: A coup in different form

As MAGA prepares for 2024, Fox News and other right-wing media, weaponized white evangelical churches, and well-funded efforts to spread disinformation further buttress their bid for total governmental power. The tactics they’ll use are unlikely to duplicate those of 2020. But the goal—replacing majority rule with a white minority theocratic state—the U.S. variant of fascism – remains the same.

It’s going to take an outpouring of resistance even greater than 2020 to simply hold the MAGA vs. anti-MAGA stalemate we have now, much less push MAGA to the margins and start a new progressive cycle in U.S. politics. Resistance must be full-spectrum – electoral engagement to defeat MAGA candidates at every level in the 2024 balloting is absolutely essential but not enough. Year-round organizing in key constituencies; day-in and day-out fights over issues that affect the rights, health, and well-being of the popular majority; and the construction of a more united social justice trend that can take independent initiative are also a must. 

Turning those general guidelines into concrete strategies and plans is complicated. But getting focused and staying focused on the level of danger posed by MAGA’s drive for power is the crucial first step.