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Colorado, among a number of states, has sought to disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot based on a straightforward reading of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment -- the insurrectionist clause. Yesterday, in Trump v. Anderson, the court ruled 9-0 that no state had the authority to do so. This was a victory for the former president who strived mightily to overthrow the results of his 2020 election defeat, but the five Republican men on the court gave him (and his and their party) a bigger victory. Their decision went much further than necessary to settle the dispute at hand.

And in the course of unnecessarily deciding all of these questions when they were not even presented by the case, the five-Justice majority effectively decided not only that the former president will never be subject to disqualification, but that no person who ever engages in an insurrection against the Constitution of the United States in the future will be disqualified under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Disqualification Clause — as the concurrence of Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson witheringly explain. -- J. Michael Luttig

The concurrence of Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, objecting to the aggressive overreach of the majority, begins by quoting Chief Justice John Roberts (from the Dobbs decision): “If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, then it is necessary not to decide more.” The five Republican men were intent on deciding more (as Judge Luttig noted).

Reaching aggressively well beyond necessity is a pattern with the current Republican majority on the Roberts/McConnell Court. As Nina Totenberg suggested, “You do see something of a court that on some issues is very aggressive. And you’ve seen that in other areas where there isn’t even a decision by a court, and they take the case to review it. Now that’s weird.”

Weird? Well, no. That suggests something odd or even anomalous. By seizing Occam's razor we can carve out a better explanation: partisanship. Totenberg resists asserting that the court is partisan, but partisanship provides an account that's simpler and more clarifying than weird does and is thoroughly well-supported. An explanation that fits this Republican majority like a glove.

At one time, conservative judicial principles included judicial restraint, stare decisis, and respect for the elected branches of government. That's not in fashion at this court. Not by a longshot. Instead of limiting its decision to what is necessary to dispose of the case, it went much further, as Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson write in their concurrence:

Today, the Court departs from that vital principle, deciding not just this case, but challenges that might arise in the future. In this case, the Court must decide whether Colorado may keep a Presidential candidate off the ballot on the ground that he is an oathbreaking insurrectionist and thus disqualified from holding federal office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Allowing Colorado to do so would, we agree, create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork, at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles. That is enough to resolve this case. Yet the majority goes further.
Even though “[a]ll nine Members of the Court” agree that this independent and sufficient rationale resolves this case, SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, JACKSON, JJ., concurring in the judgment 2 TRUMP v. ANDERSON SOTOMAYOR, KAGAN, and JACKSON, JJ., concurring in judgment five Justices go on. They decide novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy. Ante, at 13. Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so. The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement. We cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily, and we therefore concur only in the judgment.

In other words, straying from the text of the amendment and imposing a judgment unsupported by any ruling precedent, the five Republican men precluded any action based on the 14th Amendment's prohibition to disqualify Trump or any other oathbreaking insurrectionist from the ballot apart from the five-man majority's specified "appropriate legislation" by Congress. They invented this constraint. That might seem weird to the uninitiated. But we can see that it serves a partisan purpose.

The 14th Amendment states that the disqualification of insurrectionists can be overcome by a 2/3 majority vote by both the House and the Senate. The justices, yesterday, ruled that if a majority in either house can block appropriate legislation, then the insurrectionists may serve. That's a perverse result, hardly faithful to the words or intent of the 14th Amendment. (These Republican justices often ignore, dilute, or distort the Civil War amendments.)

And as we know, near the end of the McConnell era when it takes 60-votes to pass legislation in the Senate, a minority of Senators may block appropriate legislation. In the other chamber, the Republican Speaker refuses to even bring up legislation that would pass with comfortable majorities, but is opposed by his far right colleagues. Minorities in both houses can block the will of majorities. There will be no appropriate legislation anytime soon. This 5-4 decision debilitates the insurrectionist clause.

The court ruled, without a case before it, that in any future case, no other federal court could enforce the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause. Even if, say, an oathbreaking insurrectionist were to be convicted of his/her actions in a court of law, no court could rule him/her off the presidential ballot. The Republican Supreme Court majority has preserved for itself the authority to decide -- ruling out of order a number of other possible paths to making a decision in a democracy, including by Congressional action (apart from "appropriate legislation" by the lights of the five Republican men) -- and ruling in a way that transparently offers an advantage to the candidate of the political party that appointed the five men in the majority.

The five-man majority is doing the bidding of the Republican Party, the party that planned and participated in the January 6 riot at the Capitol and conspired by other means over many months to overturn the 2020 election. If any elected officials participated in actions in that riot or that conspiracy, the five Republican men on the court have rendered it impossible to bar them from a ballot for president based on the insurrectionist clause.

The court reached out beyond what was necessary to decide the case in order to preclude accountability (most especially for the "petitioner," Donald Trump): "They decide novel constitutional questions to insulate this Court and petitioner from future controversy."

To reiterate, this is a pattern. In another 14th Amendment case, Rucho v. Common Cause, the Roberts Court decreed that gerrymandered legislative districts that gave one political party an advantage -- no matter how extreme -- over another, passed constitutional muster, ruling that the subject was thereby removed from the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Americans were denied constitutional remedies to these undemocratic assaults on voting and elections. Like yesterday's decision, this one favored the Republican Party, which in 2024 relies heavily on voter suppression and gerrymandering to maintain its power.

The decision in Trump v. Anderson is equally outrageous. It seeks to help Donald Trump, who still refuses to accept his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 and is putting on a clinic on delay-delay-delay for escaping legal accountability for criminal conduct. The Supreme Court has invented in this case a new firewall for him -- and for any and all oathbreaking insurrectionists (who in the Trump era reside overwhelmingly in the Republican Party). In reaching beyond what was necessary to decide this case, the Republican majority has tied the hands of Trump's political opponents.

Let's step back for a minute to look at the big picture: The Republican Party, which has won the popular vote for president once in the past 20 years -- George W. Bush's 2004 victory -- increasingly relies on the courts, the unelected branch of government, to secure public policy victories. And at the top of the federal judiciary, the Supreme Court, which Republicans have packed with ideologues, increasingly places constraints on the public policy options available to elected officials and individual citizens.

In a previous post, I quoted Jan-Werner Müller's book What Is Populism? Müller describes how Fidesz, Victor Orbán's political party, crafted a partisan constitution in Hungary. The result of their efforts: "the constitution sets a number of highly specific policy preferences in stone, when debate about such preferences would have been the stuff of day-to-day political struggle in non-populist democracies. Moreover, it excluded opposition parties in a double sense: they did not take part in writing or passing the constitution, and their political goals cannot be realized in the future, since the constitution highly constrains room for policy choices. In other words, under the new regime, the constitution makers can perpetuate their power even after losing an election."

As I wrote then:

Whether or not we regard the contemporary Republican Party as populist, Republicans -- long before the Trump era -- have followed the populists' strategy described by Müller: crafting constitutional constraints and commands to favor their party and to disadvantage their political opponents. The GOP has not, of course, sought to re-write the words of the United States Constitution. Instead, the party, through capture of the courts -- and domination of the nation's highest court -- has sought to constrain opponents of the Republican agenda through wholesale reinterpretations of the constitution, creating novel constitutional rights (that advance the Republican agenda), while brushing aside well-established constitutional judgments (effectively ruling Democratic policy choices out of order).

The rulings of SCOTUS's Republican majority too often foreclose change through the political process as practiced in a democracy. Campaigns and elections (and much more) are the stuff of politics. The process ensues as the winners, determined at the ballot box, endeavor to put public policies in place to fulfill their commitments. Yet a determined 6-3 or 5-4 majority, acting with indifference to election outcomes, may short-circuit "the stuff of day-to-day political struggle" (as Müller put it) . . .

This Republican majority has shed the conservative commitment to judicial restraint and stare decisis, it has endeavored to preclude constitutional remedies to assaults on voting, elections, and legislative apportionment, and it has diminished the authority of the other two branches of government to address public policy issues.

That's not weird. That's partisan. It is also profoundly undemocratic.

The Republican majority on this Supreme Court continues to craft a partisan constitution.

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Donald Trump has hitched his 2024 campaign for president on denial that he was the loser in November 2020. This is a lie. He lost by millions of votes and Biden defeated him in the Electoral College.

Trump's Department of Homeland Security reported that, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history." Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general, concluded after the election, "To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election." Furthermore, of the 62 lawsuits filed by January 6, 2021, Trump lost 61; the lone victory, a small one in Pennsylvania, didn't change his loss there.

The Big Lie has been oft repeated by many MAGA fanatics. The My Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell, has been among the most clamorous liars, going so far as to offer a $5 million prize to anyone who could prove him wrong. Someone did: a cybersecurity expert (who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020). Lindell doesn't want to pay up, but less than two weeks ago, a court ordered him to do so.

Last month a prominent election denying group, Georgia's True the Vote, admitted in court that, contrary to its claims that it could prove voter fraud, it had no evidence at all to establish this falsehood. True the Vote's lie was the basis of Dinesh D'Souza's "2000 Mules," his fraudulent 'documentary.'

Keri Lake, who continues to promote Trump's lie about 2020 also continues to deny her 2022 defeat for governor of Arizona. Steve Bannon, who acknowledged before the November 2020 election that Trump would claim voter fraud, also continues to promote Trump's 2020 lie. At CPAC last week, Bannon ranted that Joe Biden is "an illegitimate regime-head. He's a usurper . . . ." He was just getting warmed up. After pronouncing Donald Trump as among the three greatest presidents in U.S. history (with Washington and Lincoln), who is destined to "drive the vermin out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," he declared: "Biden, you and your crime family are nothing but trash, okay."

But Bannon has also followed Lake in denying another, more recent GOP defeat. Last month a Democrat won the special election in New York to replace Republican fabulist George Santos. This election result was entirely uncontroversial. There is no evidence of fraud. There were no claims of fraud, until Bannon, who spun a conspiracy theory to deny the result: "They stole this election in New York."

Why the lies? Because election denialism -- expressed again and again in strident terms; not just about one election, but about election after election when the GOP loses -- is critical to the authoritarian project, in which Bannon plays a leading role. He is in the vanguard of the white nationalist movement to bring down democracy.

The continual stream of lies riles up the base. Many MAGA adherents are sealed within an information bubble so they may actually believe the lies, while others don't bother with truth or falsity, they're just onboard with the fight. The lies delegitimize MAGA opponents: the "vermin," the "trash." Democratic victors are "illegitimate," "usurpers." But there's something else more fundamental:

Elections themselves are delegitimized. When the GOP loses, that's proof of fraud, of a rigged outcome, of being cheated out of victory. And proof as well that the opposition is vile, unworthy of respect, deserving the contempt that MAGA leaders heap on them. Delegitimizing elections serves to dehumanize political opponents.

Democracy depends on losers agreeing that they lost, fair and square. Accepting defeat, but striving to win the next time around. Democracy depends on regarding ones opponents as fellow Americans with whom one has differences, not as vermin or trash.

Free and fair elections are the coin of the realm for democratic governance. Deny legitimacy, refuse to concede defeat, and democracy loses. Trump, Lake, Bannon and other MAGA leaders spread their lies to undermine trust in elections.

When an angry faction of Americans loses trust in elections, then they are more likely to find recourse in illegal, even violent action. That's one lesson of January 6. It's a lesson that hasn't been lost on the evangelists of election denialism. These tribal leaders are paving the way to violence.

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In December, the Justice department asked the Supreme Court to rule on Trump's immunity claim on an expedited basis. The court sat on its hands. The case went to the Sixth Circuit, where a three-judge panel ruled unanimously against Donald Trump's claim of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. That decision was widely regarded as well reasoned. Moreover, most legal observers regard Trump's claims as farfetched and certainly lacking any support from the Constitution or 235 years of American history.

The Supreme Court is within its lane in deciding to weigh in on this issue, but 4 votes would have been sufficient to take the case on appeal. At least 5 votes were required to grant a stay -- freezing all activity in Judge Chutkan's courtroom on Trump's January 6 indictment.

When the court received the appeal of the Sixth Circuit judgement, it waited two weeks to respond and scheduled oral arguments for late April. A decision is not expected before June, at the earliest. This timeline makes a trial this summer or late fall, before the November election, highly unlikely (though still possible, depending on the decision and a host of other factors).

Should we suspect that the Republican-appointed justices are deliberately acting so as to aid and abet the delaying strategy of their party's presidential candidate? What else are we to think?

The Roberts Court, circa 2024, is far and away the most partisan Supreme Court in my lifetime (1950-present). Republicans hated judicial activism during the heyday of the Warren Court, but -- hey -- he was a Republican. The court's controversial decisions, from Brown v. Board of Education to Reynolds v. Sims to Miranda v. Anderson, et al., were not decisions that boosted the agenda of one party over another. Though they may have been regarded as liberal, this was the era of a Democratic Party of the Solid South. Republicans had not yet adopted the Southern Strategy and abandoned civil rights. The decisions were not partisan.

Even as recently as Bush v. Gore, when the Rehnquist court stepped in to stop the State of Florida from counting ballots and decided the 2000 presidential election, giving it to George Bush, it was not yet considered a partisan court by most observers. This, even though it was dominated by Republican-appointed justices and a Republican majority. Red vs. Blue America was just becoming a thing. Al Gore didn't hesitate to endorse the court's ruling, which he considered legit.

Those days are past. The Trump/McConnell Court has been shown to be highly partisan. Even before the Trump justices were put into place, it had become clear to conscientious observers that harmony with the agenda of the Republican Party, not strict constructionism, textualism, or original intent, most often carried the day with the court. In the Roberts era, in many controversial decisions -- District of Columbia v. Heller, Citizens United, Shelby County v. Holder, among a slew of for instances -- the GOP agenda won 5-4, with Republicans in the majority in each case. A bit later, with a change in the justices in place, the winning rulings for the GOP often became 6-3.

By 2024, the Federalist Society; dark money campaigns; scripted talking points by Republican members of Congress, FNC, and lesser conservative media; billionaires providing the taste of an oligarch's lifestyle to selected justices; the McConnell maneuvers in the Senate; and the extinction of Republican-appointees who more than rarely strayed from the party line to vote against the GOP agenda -- all this has brought us a court that is indelibly Republican. Not conservative: Republican. We can see it every term in their decisions, as they roll back precedents and, looking backward at what they imagine as a more glorious American past, impose their views on all of us who share the country today.

These justices understand the context of Trump's appeals. They know the stakes riding on his bid to return to the White House. They're not stupid. They could have acted with some alacrity so he was more likely to face a criminal trial for his bid to overturn his loss in 2020 before he goes before the voters on November 5.

They chose to act otherwise. We have every reason to assume the worst of the Republican justices. They most assuredly do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.

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A brief note on the attention economy:

Remember the wild plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer? Two investigative reporters, who have been covering the story since it happened, discovered over time that it was "more complicated" than it had first seemed. This, because "an informant and one FBI agent were charged with crimes, another was accused of perjury, and a third was found promoting a private security firm." Did the extremists arrested for the plot pose an actual threat, or were they egged on by undercover agents and at least a dozen confidential informants?

Tucker Carlson and others on the right saw "a setup by the government" and leapt from there to a grand deep state conspiracy. The reporters, who describe painstakingly developing sources over several years to learn what was going on, are more circumspect, more closely connected to actual evidence. Describing a possible setup in Michigan doesn't entail losing oneself down an ideological rabbit hole. Some of their sources and erstwhile fans on the right were baffled, as one of the reporters explains (using a concept, the attention economy, that explains much of the appeal of the web):

There were a couple of moments where people on the right had taken that story and twisted it to fit their narrative. They would say things that I didn’t agree with, and I would challenge them on it. They’re DMing me and one of them expressed a genuine bewilderment and surprise that I didn’t agree with her. She’s like, “You and Jessica have done such amazing work on this story. How could you not believe that the whole thing was a dry run for Jan. 6? How could you not understand that this was part of the deep-state conspiracy?” She wasn’t trolling me. She genuinely was flustered and couldn’t understand why I didn’t see that. To me, it was a little glimpse into the way that the attention economy perverts these stories. This woman massively built up her social media profile based on ranting about this case for two years. And the way she talked about it has evolved and evolved to the point that it became just crazy talk. [My italics.]

Although I don't recall hearing the phrase 'attention economy' before, the idea is familiar. Our attention is a limited resource. We can only spend a finite number of hours on the web. Social media sites that make money on advertising, or have something to sell you directly, have strong incentives to keep you online -- to view the ads, to make online purchases, to increase your commitment day by day. To keep you coming back for more. Sophisticated algorithms play on human nature to hook you.

Once you're caught and looking at the same constellation of websites every day, you lose sight of alternative sources of information and broader perspectives. FBI abuses in a criminal case become an all-pervasive deep state conspiracy. Eventually, what you say becomes "just crazy talk."

The same principles of the attention economy that apply to the web are also applicable to Fox News Network and its cable rivals. Spend enough time there (while excluding dissonant points of view) and you'll end up uttering crazy talk.

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Just days before the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis complained that conservative media, led by Fox News, were intent on pleasing their viewers (and readers) to keep ratings (and clicks) and profits high, which affected the network's (and websites') coverage of political issues. In other words, though DeSantis would be loathe to admit this: the conservative media's coverage is far from the standards that traditional journalism aspires to.

"He's got basically a Praetorian Guard of the conservative media. Fox News, the websites, all this stuff. They just don’t — they don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers and they don’t want to have the ratings go down.”

Well, the guv hasn't changed his mind. From yesterday's Tampa Bay Times, reporting on remarks made by DeSantis to a small group of donors:

DeSantis said the conservative media’s “business model just doesn’t work if they offer any criticism of Trump,” according to NBC.
“I mean, he said at some point he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote,” DeSantis said. “Well, I think he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and the conservative media wouldn’t even report on it that it had happened.”

That observation accurately critiques FNC et al. and the Trump cult that the Republican Party has become.

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"Welcome to the end of democracy. We're here to overthrow it completely.
We didn't get all the way there on January 6, but we'll endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this, right here"—holds up a necklace with a cross. "We will replace it with this, right here." -- Jack Posobiec at the Conservative Political Action Conference, February 22, 2024.

Posobiec, who regards Roger Stone as a mentor, "has worked with a global network of extreme far-right and pro-authoritarian figures in his activism." He "has collaborated with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites for years, while producing propaganda that Trump and his inner circle have publicly celebrated." The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has reported on his activities, credits him as perhaps "the most active spreader of disinformation among all internet performers in the far-right social media ecosystem." He is deeply involved in spreading conspiracy theories, disinformation, and Russian intelligence-linked propaganda. (These quotations are from a report by the SPLC; this link provides a wealth of additional details about Posobiec's activities and connections.)

Steve Bannon, who moderated the panel that included Posobiec at CPAC, laughed and responded, "All right. Amen," after Posobiec spoke.

They were both smiling, but it is not a joke. Posobiec believes that a Christian-led nation, even by a man hardly emblematic of Christ (and followers whose views are antithetical to the Gospel), is preferable to a democratic republic. They couldn't be more serious. Their views are steeped in white nationalism. They are prepared to overthrow America's democratic institutions to get their way.

“It’s time for real Christians to stand up and take this country back. … This country is not ours. This country is his. He is king. God is king. Christ is king. And, the minute we get that back, we get our country back.”

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National Security, Vladimir Putin, and the MAGA Republican Party

One of Donald Trump's 'sir' stories, which casts doubt on its veracity, nonetheless clearly expresses his contempt for our NATO allies. If Trump were to decide that an ally wasn't pulling its weight, and that country was attacked by Russia, Trump would encourage Putin's troops:

"I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want."

This is Trump, playing the tough guy, while sidling up to Vladimir Putin. The NATO alliance has protected European democracies for 75 years, first as a defense against the U.S.S.R., later against an authoritarian Russia intent on seizing the territory of its sovereign neighbors.

Trump has often sided with Putin. When Putin was described as a killer, Trump responded, "There are a lot of killers. There are a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent?" In Helsinki he accepted Putin's word over the U.S. intelligence community regarding election interference. "President Putin says it's not Russia. I don't see any reason why it would be." And Trump's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was, "This is genius." He admired Putin's misdirection in declaring Ukraine "independent" and pledging to "keep the peace": "You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”

Since Trump has come to dominate the Republican Party, the bipartisan consensus on American leadership in the world has disintegrated. The GOP has fallen in line, while unconvincingly dismissing the significance of the capitulation. Senator Lindsey Graham responded to Trump's remarks on NATO: “Give me a break — I mean, it’s Trump", adding, “All I can say is while Trump was president nobody invaded anybody." While Senator Marco Rubio said, “I have zero concern, because he’s been president before. I know exactly what he has done and will do with the NATO alliance."

The murder of Alexei Navalny

The murder of Putin's critics and rivals is nothing new. In February 2015, Boris Nemtsov -- a politician who advocated increasing political and civil freedom in open opposition to Putin and was organizing against a military incursion into Ukraine -- was assassinated, shot four times from the back as he crossed a bridge in Moscow. Many of Putin's opponents have suffered violent deaths, both in Russia and abroad. Guns, nerve agents, radioactive tea, falls from high buildings, and airplane crashes have silenced them.

“In the years since Nemtsov was murdered, Russia has transformed — to use the language of political science — from a dictatorship of deception to a dictatorship of fear and then, after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, into an outright dictatorship of terror, akin to the one that exerted an iron grip on the Soviet Union for much of the 20th century." -- Alexander Baunov

In recent years, Alexi Navalny has been Putin's most prominent political opponent. His story is a familiar one. The most recent chapter: Navalny's death in a Siberian gulag. By poisoning in all likelihood. While many prominent political leaders across the globe immediately denounced the death and laid the blame on Russia's dictator, Donald Trump was silent for several days. Then this, a lame comparison of his losses in court (where he is finally being held accountable) with the "sudden death" of the courageous opponent of a ruthless dictator:

This fatuous drivel was repackaged for Fox News. "It's a form of Navalny."

While a number of Republican elected officials have condemned Navalny's killing, this hasn't stopped the party from blocking American aid to Ukraine, which -- without further help from the United States -- is literally running out of ammunition to repel the Russians.

All-in with Russian propaganda

Meanwhile, House Republicans' efforts to gin-up a presidential impeachment inquiry were dealt a blow when the source of what they regarded as the critical evidence against the president was charged by the Hunter Biden special counsel with lying to the FBI by passing along disinformation from Russian intelligence officials. The court filing reveals that Alexander Smirnov's lies continue, as he “is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.”

In other words, Russian interference in U.S. elections, ongoing by 2016, is continuing. Smirnov's disinformation has fueled the cynical impeachment inquiry, while other sources (including a number of criminals) of Republican talking points have had ties to Russian intelligence. Putin and the GOP often walk in lockstep.

Conservative media universe meets Comedy Central

Why? How have MAGA conservatives come to admire a brutal Russian dictator? Jon Stewart, on a Comedy Central television series, has provided a clear, crisp, solidly truthful answer.

This month Tucker Carlson, fired from Fox News, regained a spot in the limelight with an exclusive interview with Putin -- what Politico called a "2-hour love-in with the Russian president." Carlson also played the oh-so-impressed visitor in Russia. In the pre-Trump, pre-MAGA era this would be baffling. Today, while easy to lampoon, it is hardly inexplicable.

Stewart critiqued Carlson's broadcast, which (as he explained) sought to portray life in Russia as not so much different from life in the U.S. -- and perhaps a bit better (because of Russian subway stations, shopping carts, escalator ramps, wonderfully smelling bread, and cheaper grocery prices). What Carlson failed to acknowledge, Stewart highlighted via a clip from the CBS morning news, showing scenes of Russians, placing flowers at makeshift memorials, being dragged away and arrested as screams are heard: "In Vladimir Putin's Russia, political repression is everywhere. And hundreds have been arrested for daring to honor Navalny so publicly."

Stewart explained why Carlson is so diligently engaged in his duplicitous project: "It's because the old civilizational battle was communism versus capitalism. That's what drove the world since World War II. Russia was the enemy then. But now they think the battle is woke versus unwoke. And in that fight, Putin is an ally to the right. He's their friend."

And that, of course, is why Hungary's Viktor Orbán, known for slowly, methodically snuffing out institutions that have preserved democracy in Hungary, has become a conservative icon. As Hungary has become more authoritarian and less free, MAGA Republicans have rallied around him. Although Trump's expressions of admiration have been confused at times (“He’s probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. He’s the leader of Turkey.”), Republicans have followed his lead. Carlson first among them. CPAC as well.

The contemporary Republican Party has ceased to cherish freedom at home or abroad. The party has become enamored with undemocratic strongmen who impose traditional values (where one ethnic group rules over others, and men over women). It has deliberately chosen to reject democratic governance if it cannot win free and fair elections. While past Republican icons, such as Ronald Reagan, celebrated immigrants, the party now fears them.

The Christian right, dominated by white evangelicals, espouses a contorted view of religious freedom (a concept formed only by severing the establishment clause from the First Amendment) -- for itself, never mind other faiths or philosophies. The Dobbs decision, which stems from a religious view, is the first of many to come. Texas has led the way in suppressing a woman's right to make medical decisions regarding pregnancy, even when her life is at stake. The Alabama Supreme Court decision regarding "extrauterine children," a decision that said frozen embryos have the same rights as living children (while as a result women have fewer), is the latest assault. The concurring opinion of Alabama's chief justice is revealing.

“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote in a concurring opinion that invoked the Book of Genesis and the prophet Jeremiah and quoted at length from the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians.
“Even before birth,” he added, “all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

The GOP circa 2024, sad to say, has quite an agenda. Come November, I don't believe a majority of Americans will endorse it.

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With ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the founders launched our American democracy. It did not satisfy the ideal of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," but it set the course for our country. For about a decade, following the Civil War and passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the Reconstruction era brought us nearer to a multiracial democracy (at least for men; women gained the right to vote with passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920). Reconstruction was short-lived, coming to an end by 1877, replaced in fits and starts by nearly a century of Jim Crow in the Southern states (and restricted rights for black residents of the North as well).

With passage of the Civil Rights Act (in 1964) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the United States approached nearer the ideal of a multiracial democracy. These were bipartisan achievements. The Republican Party, founded in the mid-19th century to oppose slavery (and a Democratic Party committed to white supremacy), endorsed this expansion of democracy.

In fact, as noted in Chapter 4 of Levitsky and Ziblatt's Tyranny of the Minority, which describes how and why the contemporary Republican Party abandoned democracy, a higher percentage of Congressional Republicans, than Congressional Democrats, supported the 1964 and 1965 acts. This stance was consistent with the principles of the party of Lincoln (though it was discordant with Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign).

But with passage of these groundbreaking laws, the two political parties began to shift their allegiances (as Lyndon Johnson foresaw). Over the next several decades, the Solid South shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans, who began actively courting white Southerners with their traditional views of race and culture -- views which came to envelop the national GOP.

The story Levitsky and Ziblatt tell is a familiar one; nonetheless, it is shocking. While I am familiar with the story writ large, and much of the detail they present, the matter of fact presentation hit me with a start about two-thirds of the way through the chapter.

Consider a single paragraph, in the midst of the account of Trump's denying his November 2020 defeat:

But it wasn’t just Trump who refused to accept defeat; it was the bulk of the Republican Party. For weeks after the election, most GOP politicians refused to publicly recognize Biden’s victory. As of December 16, 2021 [sic], only twenty-five Republican members of Congress had done so. The Republican Accountability Project evaluated the public statements of all 261 Republican members of Congress, asking whether they expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the election. A striking 224 of 261 (or 86 percent) of them had. And on January 6, nearly two-thirds of House Republicans voted against certification of the results.
[The correct date: December 16, 2020, weeks after the November 3 election.]

There is nothing new in this paragraph. I follow American politics closely. I watched this drama play out in real time. Republicans have moved step by step toward accommodation of Trump, of his hateful rhetoric, and even of his lies. This has been obvious for all to see.

But for someone who grew up in this country, who became interested in politics as a teenager when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts were passed into law, and even someone who has watched with consternation and disdain the transformation of the Republican Party over the past six decades, it is astonishing to recognize where the GOP has landed. Not just nutty backbenchers or Fox News trolls, but "the bulk of the party." Nearly every leader who remains in the party is on board. Most of those who have resisted the party's authoritarian direction have been drummed out of it.

For several years I have often said of Republican leaders (below the ultimate leader, Donald Trump), "There is never a bridge too far." No matter how outrageous Trump's conduct, how reprehensible, transgressive, undemocratic, even antithetical to American interests -- No matter: Whatever they say (or, often, decline to say) initially, finally, when Trump doesn't back down and the conservative media universe backs him up, dissent absolutely evaporates.

The headline in Ramesh Ponnuru's Washington Post column declares the 'big lie' the winner of the 2024 GOP primary. Ponnuru doesn't use that term, but his meaning is clear. He condemns Republican leaders for not squelching that falsehood before a majority of Republican primary voters came to believe it. "The elected Republicans who didn’t want Trump to be the nominee have allowed his narrative about 2020 to go unchallenged for the past three years. Or they have abetted it, letting sane complaints about voting procedures and media coverage cover for Trump’s fantasies about Venezuelan interference with voting machines and the like."

They know it's a lie. They know Trump is a liar. (They often wish he weren't their party's leader.) But -- publicly, when push comes to shove -- there is never a bridge too far. So we find ourselves with a political party that has turned election denialism into a campaign plank.

More shockingly, they are willing to go along with the next step: resorting to violence when they lose. They reveal this in another big lie: that the violent clash at the nation's Capitol on January 6, 2021 was not what we all witnessed. It was, instead, a peaceful protest, no more eventful than a "normal tourist visit." That lie is a subterfuge, an excuse for violence when the party loses a democratic election.

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For most of our evolutionary history, humans lived in tribes. This was critical for our survival. Breaking away from the tribe, or getting cast out, would render a life that was (to wrench Hobbes out of context) "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." We are tribal in nature.

For millennia, a tribal environment increased the odds of overcoming environmental challenges, including competition with other tribes. In such a setting, loyalty -- commitment to the tribe -- strengthened the cohesion of the group, making success more likely. Through social cooperation (made possible within the security of their community) humans increase their prospects for survival and for enjoying an environment in which they can flourish.

Humans have evolved as a tribal species. Tribal loyalty has been selected for. It has been bred into us, providing many advantages. But of course there are downsides as well. Close knit groups feature sharp divisions between those inside and those outside. This dichotomy almost inevitably generates, in some measure, suspicion, hostility, fear, or hatred toward the outsiders. These attitudes may have no reasonable basis. Tribalism has colored the insiders' cognitive judgments: "Although tribal loyalties inspire many noble behaviors, they can impel humans to sacrifice sound reasoning and judgmental accuracy for group belonging and commitment …. In other words, tribal loyalties can lead to tribal biases."

These emotional eruptions render cooperation with others (outsiders) impossible. And, when political tribes face off, that's a problem for democracy.

Tribalism is often referenced in discussion of political polarization (Red vs. Blue America), as it does in today's Washington Post. Without further ado, here is the quote of the day:

“The evolution of cooperation required out-group hatred. Which is really sad,” said Nicholas Christakis, a Yale sociologist and author of “Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society.”

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A recurring theme of this blog is that Republicans have gone off the rails; innumerable posts illustrate this theme. What follows is an overly long account of the January 6 violence, the responses of Republican elites (finally, rejecting truth for lies); placing violence at the center of Trump's conspiracy to overturn the November 2020 election; and suggesting reasons why Republican voters -- apart from the leadership -- accept the lies about January 6, 2021 and November 3, 2020. All this prompted by my consternation that folks on opposite sides of a political divide can't even agree on what's in plain sight.

Violent attack on the Capitol

Sarah Wire, who was in the House chamber on January 6, 2021 to cover Congress's formal acceptance of the Electoral College results, texted about the violent chaos at the Capitol. As rioters fought with police and stormed the building, folks inside (the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, rank and file representatives, senators, staff members and others) sought safety. On the third anniversary of the riot, she provided a more expansive account.

What happened on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol was clear enough at the time. The nation watched the brutal spectacle on TV. What we witnessed was mob violence on a scale few of us have ever experienced. We watched hand-to-hand combat as members of the mob crashed through barricades, scaled walls, and broke through doors and windows; attacked men and women in law enforcement with makeshift weapons ranging from clubs, flag poles fashioned into spears, and bear spray; resulting in injuries to 140 police officers. Five officers died in the aftermath and one protester there in answer to Trump's call lost her life that day. More than 1250 people have been criminally charged at this point, for the savage assaults on the police and the obstruction of certification of the election (among other offenses), resulting in nearly 900 convictions. Leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy.

There was no doubt, no ambiguity during the attack or in the immediate aftermath. We watched it as it played out. We have seen the graphic videotape footage, which is extensive and indisputable. The January 6 Committee hearings and final report were compelling, but far more supportive evidence has come forth since then. Both the Justice Department and the media have continued to add to our knowledge of the clashes that occurred on that day (and the months-long planning that brought them about).

Outrage from both sides of the aisle

In early January 2021, Congressional Republicans as well as Democrats were enraged by the rampage, which put their lives in danger. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the House had pleaded with the Republican president during the riot to call off the violent mob, to which the commander in chief responded, "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are." (This fit the presidential pattern that day. When told that his vice president was in danger -- as the crowd took up the chant, "Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!" -- Trump responded, "So what?")

The following week, McCarthy condemned the violence in no uncertain terms on the floor of the House:

Madam Speaker, let me be clear: Last week's violent attack on the Capitol was undemocratic, un-American, and criminal. Violence is never a legitimate form of protest. Freedom of speech and assembly under the Constitution is rooted in nonviolence. Yet the violent mob that descended upon this body was neither peaceful nor democratic. It acted to disrupt Congress' constitutional responsibility. It was also an attack on the people who work in this institution: Members, staff, and the hundreds who work behind the scenes so that we can serve the American people.

He added, after praising the bravery of the Capitol police, "The President bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump: accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest, and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term."

Trump celebration of the assault

Briefly, a cleavage appeared between Republican leaders (who saw what we all saw) and the outgoing president, who continued to deny what was plain to see. On January 6, 2020, Donald Trump told the participants in the riot, "We love you. You're very special." Trump's campaign kick-off in Waco, Texas, featuring the "J6 Choir" (rioters jailed in D.C.) singing the national anthem, celebrated the violence at the Capitol. More recently, the former president, who is expected to garner the party's 2024 nomination, has referred to supporters convicted for the events of that day as "hostages."

Republicans circle back to embrace Trump's lie

Within a short time, Republicans jettisoned the truth, bending to the will of their leader. GOP officials in Washington and throughout the country abandoned a commitment to democratic rule and bowed to Trump's lies. The representative from Bakersfield, whose overweening ambition trumped fidelity to facts and the rule of law, was among the most prominent to submit. Other Republicans -- save for a handful, most of whom have been summarily drummed from the party -- have followed suit. Two weekends ago, Elise Stefanik, the fourth-ranking House Republican, referenced "the January 6 hostages" and declined to agree to certify the 2024 election no matter who wins.

The Grand Old Party -- that is, the leadership, the party elite -- is foursquare in step with Donald Trump, who blusters that the 2020 election was stolen and that the January 6 riot was a peaceful assembly.

January 6: part and parcel of elaborate conspiracy to overturn the election

Today we know much more about the January 6 assault, which aimed to disrupt the peaceful transition of power after Joe Biden's victory over Trump. The former president, who had a history of election denial going back to 2016 (including rejecting the results of the Iowa caucuses and of the popular vote in the general election), had anticipated a loss in November 2020. His plans to overturn the election (through persuading or intimidating election officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; creating fake electors in seven states; filing a lawsuit, Texas v. Pennsylvania et al, rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court; pushing his Attorney General Bill Barr and the Justice Department; and finally taking extraordinary efforts, including pressuring Vice President Mike Pence, to stop Congress from certifying his election loss on January 6) were months in the making.

(From "Trump's Pattern of Pressure to Overturn the 2020 Election," New York Times. This graphic does not include pressure on his AG, the Justice Department, or the Vice President.)

Violence planned and promised

The violent clash on January 6 was not a peaceful gathering that somehow got out of hand. The violence was planned as a belated effort to overturn Trump's loss. There were many co-conspirators. Among the folks who foresaw what was to come prior to January 6:

Just what Trump wanted

In March 2021, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker interviewed the former president for their book, I Alone Can Fix It. Trump insisted on mischaracterizing the mob violence, but made it clear he approved of the folks who acted out:

“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” Trump said of the rioters. “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before. There’s tremendous proof. There’s tremendous proof. Statistically, it wasn’t even possible that [Biden] won."

Of course there was (and is) no proof, nor even any evidence, of a rigged election. That's Trump's big lie. That's what brought the crowd to the Capitol. And on the shoulders of the big lie, after the convulsion into violence, Trump has constructed the false narrative that the mob consisted of "a loving crowd," a peaceful gathering of his supporters (who, after convictions in federal courtrooms, are now "hostages").

"Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"

While the McCarthys and Stafaniks (among many, many others) appear to have abandoned the truth out of personal ambition -- a practical, if not principled, choice since the alternative is likely to result is losing ones job and being drummed out of the party -- the same isn't true of grassroots Republicans. Yet a significant chunk of the base has accepted Trump's lies and followed the leaders of the party.

When asked (in a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll), "Which comes closer to your point of view: the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 was an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten, or too much is being made of the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2024?" 24% of Republicans responded should never be forgotten (compared with 55% of Americans overall). Seventy-two percent of Republicans responded too much is being made.

Contrast, however, the responses of Republicans to this question: "Do you think the legal punishments for people who broke into the U.S. Capitol have been too harsh, not harsh enough, or have they been fair?" Although 42% of Republicans said too harsh, 17% said not harsh enough and 37% said have been fair. While Republicans' viewed the participants more favorably than other Americans, Republicans did not go all-in regarding the criminal prosecutions.

When asked (in another survey by the same outfit) whether Biden's election as president was legitimate, only 39% of Republicans (and 26% of Trump voters) responded affirmatively. Furthermore, 62% of Republicans (and 64% of Trump voters) asserted (erroneously) that there was "solid evidence" of election fraud.

The man who boasted, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” appears to have been vindicated at least in terms of an ample chunk of his voters. They accept the lies. In accepting the lies, they reject the truth (which is not at all difficult to verify).

Misinformation carries the day among much of the base

The events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and the nature and outcome of the November 3, 2020 presidential election are well-established by ample, unrefuted evidence. Apart from lies, hokum, conspiracy theories, trolling, wishful thinking, and the like, there are no grounds for rejecting that Biden was the legitimate victor in an election untainted by fraud and that a mob staged a riot at the Capitol in an effort to block certification of the election. Yet there is a stark contrast between the views of Trump's most fervent supporters regarding these events and the views of Americans not in Trump's camp.

A significant segment of Republican voters denies the truth of these events. This may be confounding to those of us in "the reality-based community" (as designated by the George W. Bush White House), but perhaps it should not be.

Following the leaders

First of all, the true believers in Trump's alternate reality are following their leaders. Congressional Republicans have been among the worst of the bad examples, though Republican officials (elected and appointed) throughout the nation have not fared much better.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have observed that political parties and their leadership play a critical role in safeguarding democratic institutions.

Potential demagogues exist in all democracies, and occasionally, one or more of them strike a public chord. But in some democracies, political leaders heed the warning signs and take steps to ensure that authoritarians remain on the fringes, far from the centers of power. When faced with the rise of extremists or demagogues, they make a concerted effort to isolate and defeat them. Although mass responses to extremist appeals matter, what matters more is whether political elites, and especially parties, serve as filters. Put simply, political parties are democracy’s gatekeepers.  -- Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die

There have been few Republican leaders willing to stand up for truth, for democratic institutions, and for the rule of law in the face of Trump's MAGA lies -- making it easier for voters to accept the lies without question (though many grassroots Republicans have not been led astray). What's clear: as gatekeepers, Republican elites have been utter failures.

Praetorian Guard of conservative media

Fox News Channel's starring cast is every bit as influential as Republicans who stand for election (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Mark Levin, and other luminaries count as Republican leaders), a fact illustrated by Ron DeSantis's remarks on the "Praetorian Guard of the conservative media — Fox News, the web sites, all the stuff." The failure of the DeSantis campaign undoubtedly has many authors, but it's hardly far-fetched to suggest that the influence of FNC (and conservative media overall) has the potential to overwhelm tens of millions of campaign dollars, personal visits to all 99 Iowa counties, and smug trolling of the libs.

Anyone -- whether Democrat, Republican, or even the Trumpiest MAGA Republican -- aware of the $787 settlement Fox paid to Dominion, and the revelations about the willingness of the FNC millionaires (on air and off air) to lie to retain viewers, has more than sufficient reason to question the reliability of the channel as a source of information. But perhaps the Fox News audience, taught for generations to distrust the mainstream media, wasn't paying attention to the devastating portrait of Fox painted by the unseemly saga. Regardless, they are standing with Republican leaders (prominent figures in the party in virtue of their elected positions or advocacy).

Doing the research

Among MAGA voters who take matters into their own hands -- putting in the work, double checking the conspiracy theories they have found online -- they are even less likely to figure out that they are deep into a rabbit hole than folks who don't take the initiative. Their 'research' reinforces their belief in the misinformation they plugged into a Google search. Sad but true. This is the conclusion of a scholarly review of online research and misinformation. The report at the Nieman Lab offers details and a link to the paper in Nature.

Doing the research, it turns out, reinforces the lies, at least among folks who believe the lies.

Striking a tribal pose

Nearly two years ago, Sarah Longwell hosted a focus group "to find out why Trump 2020 voters hold so strongly to the Big Lie." (That is, the Big Lie about the election outcome. I suggest that the same dynamics apply to false beliefs about January 6.)

What she found was that their belief was less "a fully formed thought" (which might be refuted with facts or evidence), than "an attitude or a tribal pose" that they bought into as a matter of course. (It's tough to refute an attitude or tribal pose. So trying to reason with these true believers is highly challenging.)

They simply couldn't accept the election results, and were angry and mystified that others rejected their view, offering comments such as:

  • “I can’t really put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t feel right.”
  • “Something about it just didn’t seem right.”
  • “It didn’t smell right.”

Longwell noted that "the Big Lie has been part of their background noise for years." (Jonathan Chait has observed, "Many conservatives have believed for decades, without requiring any evidence for their conviction, that Democrats in cities, especially cities with large non-white populations, engage in massive, undetected voter fraud routinely.")

"Attempts to set the record straight tend to backfire," Longwell explained. Tell a Trump supporter that Biden won the election and they take that pushback as evidence that the election was stolen. She concludes:

These voters aren’t bad or unintelligent people. The problem is that the Big Lie is embedded in their daily life. They hear from Trump-aligned politicians, their like-minded peers, and MAGA-friendly media outlets—and from these sources they hear the same false claims repeated ad infinitum.

Four Corners of Deceit

More than a decade ago, Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners about the four corners of deceit. They were government, academia, science, and the media. Each of them represented sources of information that conservatives should not trust. They represented liberal ideology, which should be rejected out of hand.

Newt Gingrich was onboard with this campaign. And Republicans have embraced it. Fox News Channel carved out an arena apart from the mainstream media that Limbaugh, Gingrich, et al. loathed. Conservatives have been taught: Don't believe what you read or hear from any sources likely to stray from the party line. Government, academia, science, and the media: across the board, these sources are untrustworthy.

The classic critique (overdue by 2012, when it was presented) by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, which described the Republican Party as an insurgent outlier, included the observation that the GOP was "unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science."

Today, much of the Trump MAGA base rejects sources of information that challenge their partisan convictions. They have placed themselves inside a conservative media silo. There is ample evidence to justify challenging Trump's big lies (about the 2020 election and events of January 6). But if the MAGA response to this evidence begins and ends with rejection of the source (because it is on Limbaugh's list), then finding the way to the truth is blocked. (This is likely a factor in the failure of doing the research as a path to finding the truth.)

The contemporary Republican Party

The willingness to reject truth, principle, and commitment to democratic institutions is endemic among the leadership of the contemporary Republican Party. Rather than defending democracy and the rule of law, the party has taken an authoritarian turn. MAGA Republicans do not accept the outcome of elections that Republicans lose. They justify violence to overturn elections by pretending that there was no violence. Hence the big lies about November 3, 2020 and January 6, 2021.

For much the base: Following the leader (and leaders) and expressing agreement with ones tribe is the way to go.