Skip to content

Published on

The melding of the evangelical Christian community (that is to say, white evangelicals) with the contemporary Republican Party (led by Donald Trump, a man whose narcissistic fixations and malicious rancor are antithetical to veneration of the Gospel) is unequivocal. Few observers have grappled with this discordant amalgam as resolutely as folks inside the church who are repulsed by Trump.

Journalist Tim Alberta, a Christian ("a follower of Jesus"), believes that God "commanded us to love our neighbor, to turn the other cheek toward those who wish us harm, to show grace toward outsiders and let our light shine so they might glorify our heavenly Father." Raised in the evangelical megachurch that his father led as pastor for many decades, he hasn't strayed from his faith. But -- because he rejected the politics of Donald Trump and the MAGA Republican Party -- he found himself scorned by church members he had known since childhood.

Following the death of his father, Alberta returned home to deliver the eulogy at the funeral:

Now the crowd swarmed around us, filling the sanctuary and spilling out into the lobby and adjacent hallways, where tables displayed flowers and golf clubs and photos of Dad. I was numb. My brothers too. None of us had slept much that week. So the first time someone made a glancing reference to Rush Limbaugh, it did not compute. But then another person brought him up. And then another. That’s when I connected the dots. Apparently, the king of conservative talk radio had been name-checking me on his program recently—“a guy named Tim Alberta”—and describing the unflattering revelations in my book about Trump. Nothing in that moment could have mattered to me less. I smiled, shrugged, and thanked people for coming to the visitation.
They kept on coming. More than I could count. People from the church—people I’d known my entire life—were greeting me, not primarily with condolences or encouragement or mourning, but with commentary about Limbaugh and Trump. Some of it was playful, guys remarking about how I was the same mischief-maker they’d known since kindergarten. But some of it wasn’t playful. Some of it was angry; some of it was cold and confrontational. One man questioned whether I was truly a Christian. Another asked if I was still on “the right side.” All while Dad was in a box a hundred feet away.
It got to the point where I had to take a walk. Here, in our house of worship, people were taunting me about politics as I tried to mourn my father. I was in the company of certain friends that day who would not claim to know Jesus, yet they shrouded me in peace and comfort. Some of these card-carrying evangelical Christians? Not so much. They didn’t see a hurting son; they saw a vulnerable adversary.

Step back for a moment: there is something very wrong with this picture. This is not the evangelical Christianity (or Christianity plain and simple) that Alberta grew up with and continues to accept. The "Church has been radicalized," Alberta writes.

A community that has always felt misunderstood now feels marginalized, ostracized, even persecuted. This feeling is not relegated to the fringes of evangelicalism. In fact, this fear—that Christianity is in the crosshairs of the government, that an evil plot to topple America’s Judeo-Christian heritage hinges on silencing believers and subjugating the Church—now animates the religious right in ways that threaten the very foundations of our democracy. 
“You sound like a hysterical maniac if you say the government’s coming after us. But I believe they are,” Robert Jeffress, the Dallas pastor and longtime Trump loyalist, told me in the book. “It happened in Nazi Germany. They didn’t put six million Jews in the crematorium immediately … It was a slow process of marginalization, isolation, and then the ‘final solution.’ I think you’re seeing that happen in America. I believe there’s evidence that the Biden administration has weaponized the Internal Revenue Service to come after churches.” (The “evidence” Jeffress cited in making this leap—bureaucratic regulations clearing the way for concentration camps—was nonexistent. When pushed, he mentioned a single court case that was ultimately decided in favor of religious liberty.)

Never mind evidence. Grievance, fear of an increasingly diverse America, misinformation and conspiracy theories are enough to fuel the unholy politics aimed at eradicating the wall between church and state, undermining democratic institutions, and embracing authoritarian governance sanctioned by a regressive religious vision.

The stakes couldn't be higher. A far right authoritarian regime is incompatible with the commitment to American pluralism and democratic governance. Americans (whether or not they focus on this dichotomy) will choose ten months from now. But of course the result, while consequential, will hardly settle the issue.

Religious zealots have captured one of our political parties, which seeks to impose a constricted view of what is permitted on all Americans, willing or not. By now this vile alliance has become deeply rooted. No matter what happens in November 2024, the GOP will continue to threaten democratic social norms and to reject realms of individual liberty that it once revered.

Published on

On October 25, eighteen people were killed by a mass shooter in Lewiston, Maine. The day after the shooting, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, in an interview with Sean Hannity, responded to the carnage:

Hannity: This happens with almost every shooting incident. The immediate call by the Left in this country: We need more gun laws. We need more legislation.

Johnson: At the end of the day, the problem is the human heart. It's not guns. It's not the weapons. Even today we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves and that's the Second Amendment. That's why our party stands strongly for that.
I agree with the comments of your guest. This is not the time to be talking about legislation. We're in the middle of that crisis. . . .

That deliberately obtuse, cold-hearted response to this "shooting incident" is a familiar refrain from Republican apologists for the deadly gun culture their Supreme Court justices, Congressional caucuses, and state legislatures have brought us.

There have been 578 mass shootings -- defined as an incident in which at least 4 victims have been shot, whether killed or injured (not including the shooter) -- in the U.S. in 2023 as of this morning according to the Gun Violence Archive. The shooting last week in a bowling alley and a neighborhood bar in Lewiston was the deadliest this year.

Axios reports that what was once rare has become a commonplace:

Mass shootings are becoming deadlier and far more common. There were a total of eleven shootings in which at least 12 people died between 1949 and 2011. There have been 14 since then — more than one per year — including the 2017 shooting at a Las Vegas hotel that left 60 dead.

For two centuries, the First Amendment did not prohibit basic regulation of guns; such regulations have been present throughout American history. A radical far-right agenda, championed in recent decades by Leonard Leo's Federalist Society and funded by wealthy supporters, sought to change our conception of the Constitution. Ideologues invented a legal doctrine and pushed to pack the judiciary with zealots determined to impose their fraudulent 'originalist' dogma on the federal courts.

In May 2019, retired conservative justice John Paul Stevens deplored the high court's ahistorical turn regarding the Second Amendment, a turn which rejected well-established legislative history and judicial precedent, and severed the first words of the amendment, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to security of a free State," from its interpretation. Recalling the words of a previous conservative justice, Stevens wrote:

So well settled was the issue that, speaking on the PBS NewsHour in 1991, the retired Chief Justice Warren Burger described the National Rifle Association’s lobbying in support of an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment in these terms: “One of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

With Donald Trump's three appointed justices to the nation's highest court, the far right's judicial crusade has succeeded in great measure. And in no area of public policy has their success been more thorough or more damaging than in their rulings on guns and the Second Amendment. With many issues -- voting rights, reapportionment, civil rights, reproductive freedom, marriage equality, immigration, business regulation, taxation -- the country may eventually succeed in pushing back against rightwing policies. But with guns, going back to a more sensible era, a time when mass shootings were exceptionally rare, may be next to impossible.

Republicans in office have sought to enact and enforce a twisted vision of the role of guns in American life. Through their efforts, the GOP has transformed our country. Easy access to guns, and especially to military assault rifles, has created a booming industry of weapons manufacturers; has led to the astonishing proliferation of guns among Americans; and has ensured that the number of shootings, especially mass shootings with high body counts, have become far more frequent.

With each "shooting incident," and especially with mass casualty events -- at schools, movie theaters, concerts, churches, workplaces, bars, and bowling alleys -- Americans have become more unsettled, more fearful, less safe. And a vicious cycle has begun to develop: more folks decide that they need guns to protect themselves as ordinary activities become fraught with the arbitrary, senseless possibility of getting gunned down.

There's no going back. More guns won't increase the sense of security that folks felt when assault rifles equipped our armed service personnel, and were not scattered among homes and neighborhoods throughout the country. Our risks of a deadly encounter from a deranged killer with a military weapon continue to rise. That's the America that Republican dogma about guns has brought us. It is, without question, a result of an extraordinarily successful campaign to transform our society.

But, instead of acknowledging the consequences of their public policy success, Republicans duck and cover, denying any responsibility for an era that represents the new normal: a time when Americans continue to be slaughtered in high numbers, when our safety and security have been ripped away.

Published on

At last, Donald Trump can stop selling t-shirts emblazoned with the fake mug shots his campaign designed following his April 3 arrest in New York City. (Alvin Bragg and, later, Jack Smith passed on requiring a mug shot after Trump's first three indictments.)

Last week Donald Trump, railing against Fox News Channel, groused that the cable giant was using unflattering pictures of him in its coverage: "they purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back."

Well, maybe he had a point: the chin-pulled-way-back look is pretty unflattering.

But finally, the no-nonsense Fani Willis has given the undisputed leader of the Republican Party what he has been craving.

Trump celebrated his fourth indictment by featuring his Fulton County mug shot on his campaign website (immediately below), by posting it on X (marking a return to the renamed Twitter), and plastering it on merch ("including T-shirts, mugs, koozies and bumper stickers”) that he's selling to folks who are eager to profess their allegiance.

Trump's criminal mug shot -- a bit of theater, a way to dominate a media cycle, a sure money-maker for the ex-POTUS and his lawyers, and a fitting tribute to his contempt for the rule of law -- is destined to become among the most iconic photographs documenting the man's place in history.

August 26, 2023 update: Trump reportedly raised $7.1 million in the two days since he was booked at the Fulton County Jail and $4.18 million on Friday alone, a 24-hour record for the campaign. Meanwhile, a senior advisor to Trump's 2024 election bid has threatened others trying to cash in on the mugshot:

If you are a campaign, PAC , scammer and you try raising money off the mugshot of @realDonaldTrump and you have not received prior permission …WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU you will NOT SCAM DONORS

Published on

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni have for many decades enjoyed an extraordinarily lavish lifestyle secretly funded by four billionaire benefactors, each with strong ideological and financial interests in cases before the court.

A portion of the bounty ProPublica uncovered:

At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.

If there is precedent for anything approaching this level of corruption of the nation's highest court, which is currently dominated by Republican-appointed, activist judges intent on imposing their vision on the country and on the other branches of government, we haven't witnessed it in my lifetime (beginning almost smack dab in the middle of the 20th century).

At least one of the billionaires, Harlan Crow, provided funding for a fawning documentary about Justice Thomas, who shamelessly cloaks himself as just a regular guy with modest tastes:

You know, I don't have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States. I prefer going across the rural areas. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that.
There's something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer that. I prefer being around that.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing normal about the opulent luxury Clarence and Ginni Thomas have become accustomed to since the justice's appointment to the high court in 1991 – at least not for regular folks who can only dream of a gaggle of billionaires shoveling money at them.

The documentary highlights something beyond the hobnobbing with the fabulously wealthy that the billionaires' largess permitted. Also funded: manufacturing a mythology regarding Thomas (which he fueled with his self-flattering comments about being a normal, regular guy). In their telling, Thomas has become a legendary historical figure. He is revered as an icon in the conservative movement. A "legal titan" in the words of court-packer extraordinaire, Mitch McConnell.

The private jet trip to meet with deans of Yale Law School and view the room where they intended to display Thomas's portrait is just another element of the campaign to glorify him, which has served to boost the man's personal ego, the conservative legal movement, and the public's view of the justice and the court. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern are impressed by the scale, expense, and strategy underlying the enterprise over more than 30 years:

It turns out that this massive publicity blitz was built on decades of work—expensive work—to canonize Thomas. Harlan Crow, ProPublica reported on Thursday, flew the justice to New Haven on his private jet so he could inspect his new portrait at Yale Law School, which Crow subsidized with a $105,000 gift. Cringier still in Thursday’s report is the fact that Thomas ally-slash-attorney-slash-biographer-slash-luxury vacation partner Mark Paoletta, along with his wife, wrote and performed a song for the justice while on a group vacation to the Grand Tetons, memorialized as a “special tribute.” (Sokol, the billionaire, funded the extravagant trip, and flew Thomas out on his private jet.) Photos from the Thomases’ various excursions with their benefactors consistently show the justice surrounded by rapturous, awe-struck admirers. “Have you met a Supreme Court justice?” Huizenga asked the waitress in the private golf lounge at the Floridian’s golf and yacht club before she took their order. “This is Clarence Thomas.” Again, Thomas was an “honorary member” of the club and paid no dues.
These benefactors invest in the justice strategically. Crow helped to fund the Clarence Thomas wing of Savannah’s Carnegie Library, where he was honored for his service to the country. The library is right around the corner from the Clarence Thomas Center for Historical Preservation, another Crow-backed project. Down the road lies the Pin Point Heritage Museum (underwritten by Crow); from there, it’s not too far to Thomas’ mother’s house—which Crow owns. He says he purchased it because he has plans to turn it into a museum honoring Thomas. There will undoubtedly be a ceremony, a private jet, and an invitation-only event to celebrate that, too.

Suffice it to say, the Republican Party – which engineered the capture of the court – sees no problem with this state of affairs, so the current Congress will not act to change things, nor will the court itself. While this ugly story of corruption is so massive that it's hard to deny, Republicans will continue to avert their gazes to a fundamental problem of integrity and trust. We will have to wait for another day to set things right.

Final note: let's commemorate the four billionaires making the payoffs to Thomas: Harlan Crow (of course), H. Wayne Huizenga, Paul "Tony" Novelly, and David Sokol. And I'll add a fifth billionaire, one who has famously hosted Samuel Alito: Paul Singer.

Published on

Yesterday (hours before the latest Trump indictment), I commented on a poll that established Trump's commanding lead over his GOP rivals no matter how damning the evidence of his unfitness to govern (by my lights, of course, as a small-d democrat): "... I am tempted to think: Republicans will be ready to ditch Trump by the time voting starts in 2024, won't they? But we're not following the rules of the 1960s or '70s or '80s ... are we?" My answer, in the negative, matches the answer political scientist Julia Azari gives today (hours after the latest Trump indictment) to a similar question, more elegantly framed than mine:

Going back to Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, there’s a strain of American commentary that keeps waiting for the Trump action or revelation that turns the tide against him, presenting such clear and devastating evidence that the public and his party can’t help but turn on him. The Aug. 1 indictment seems like a straightforward candidate for this: It quotes the president of the United States calling his vice president “too honest” for refusing to overturn certified election results — even as an insurrection interfering with the peaceful transfer of power was under way. What could more clearly contradict the version of U.S. democracy that we all learned in school — the one where we respect election results, and in which the first peaceful transfer of power after an election loss, from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson after the election of 1800, was a major point of national pride?

She offers a response beginning with these words, "I don’t think it works like that in 2023."

Nope. Not with a starkly divided electorate, increasing partisanship that colors our divergent worldviews, and recent history "with a few Republicans abandoning the former president, many rallying around him and a substantial number forced to defend things they really don’t want to defend."

I've read the indictment, which retraced much of the ground covered by the January 6 Committee. The evidence is clear and overwhelming. I expect a guilty verdict. Unless Trump (or, less likely, another Republican) wins the presidency in 2024, I believe the man will end up in jail.

But this will hinge on the outcome of the 2024 election. And as Ed Kilgore observes, the latest indictment "will inevitably focus the intraparty and interparty debate already underway on the events of the last presidential election." Kilgore anticipates that "as has so often been the case since he came down that escalator in 2015, this strange man and his obsessions will remain center stage."

The stakes for constitutional democracy and the rule of law couldn't be higher.

Published on

Results from the New York Times/Siena College poll suggest that as we wait for additional indictments of Donald Trump, the former president holds a commanding lead over his rivals in the 2024 Republican primary. Impeachments, indictments, increasingly authoritarian pronouncements, contempt for the rule of law, an agenda drenched in revenge, and the unending torrent of lies, including the big lie that he didn't lose in 2020, hardly deter his strongest supporters.

“He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore,” David Green, 69, a retail manager in Somersworth, N.H., said of Mr. Trump. “You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump’s my guy. He’s proved it on a national level.”

That's a metaphor, right? An allusion to dominance, strength, swagger – manliness, as regarded by men who would be altogether more comfortable if only women (among others) knew their place. While imprecise and ill-defined, if I interpret the metaphor correctly, "all the men" refers to the folks who populate the 21st century Republican Party, with a message directed at those who are not all-in with Donald Trump.

The MAGA base – defined by Nate Cohn as those polled who "strongly support" Trump and who have a "very favorable" view of him – comprises 37% of the party. They don't need much convincing. They're not fussing over what Trump says or does, no matter what that is. He's their man.

An equal percentage – 37% – are designated as persuadable. They'd prefer another candidate without Trump's baggage (in mainstream parlance), but they won't rule out voting for Trump if it comes to that. They need to stop being a little sissy, while crying about everything, and just get in line behind Trump.

And, if they're listening, the quarter of the party that is not open to Trump needs to reconsider and get in line too (if they haven't become too comfortable in wives' underpants to get the message).

Nate Cohn advises us that within the MAGA base, there are no second thoughts about Trump:

The MAGA base doesn’t support Mr. Trump in spite of his flaws. It supports him because it doesn’t seem to believe he has flaws.
Zero percent — not a single one of the 319 respondents in this MAGA category — said he had committed serious federal crimes. A mere 2 percent said he “did something wrong” in his handling of classified documents. More than 90 percent said Republicans needed to stand behind him in the face of the investigations.

It is hard to fathom that "not a single one" among the MAGA base thought Trump had committed serious federal crimes. And then there are Republicans not quite so boxed off from truth and facts and evidence, but still on board:

“I think he’s committed crimes,” said Joseph Derito, 81, of Elmira, N.Y. “I think he’s done terrible things. But he’s also done a lot of good.”

As an avid observer of American politics over more than half a century, I am tempted to think: Republicans will be ready to ditch Trump by the time voting starts in 2024, won't they? But we're not following the rules of the 1960s or '70s or '80s, when my understanding of politics evolved, are we?

Not at all. By 2012, the Republican Party had become "an insurgent outlier." It had taken a decade or two to get to that point and the party is much further off the rails today than ever before.

Today's GOP is Trump's party.

Published on

In just the past two terms, the Trumpified Supreme Court ended women’s constitutional right to an abortion, limited the state of New York’s ability to limit concealed carry firearms, struck down affirmative action in college admissions, blocked Joe Biden’s student-debt forgiveness plan, squashed the separation of church and state in a school-prayer case, gutted the Clean Water Act, and backed LGBTQ+ discrimination. This Supreme Court is so deeply emboldened to reshape society that one can’t help but be relieved when they don’t completely shred the Voting Rights Act or when the majority of justices—though not all of them—reject a fringe, right-wing legal theory that could blow up elections in America. – Molly Jong-Fast

This is not a normal court. – President Joe Biden

Those assessments match my own, although in several prominent cases two or three Republican-appointed justices sided with their Democratic-appointed colleagues. Do John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett comprise a new center for the court?

There may be a center, but it is not centrist, said Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund. If the court's rulings can be unpredictable, "so is Russian roulette," she said.

While there were, in some eyes, ‘surprising’ liberal victories, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern note that those rulings 'had the effect of leaving the law in place, a set of status quo decisions dressed up as liberal “wins.”'

In other words, the court’s Republican majority aggressively pushed its extreme agenda, continuing to overturn long established rights recognized by Supreme Court majorities of the past, while declining to endorse the craziest, least supportable doctrines pressed by the conservative legal movement – though several justices were onboard for the crazy (in dissenting opinions). That’s not movement toward the center; that’s a distorted view created by the court’s control of the docket (as Steve Vladeck has argued).

The court accepted a bevy of radical cases, and then only sided with the radicals in some, but not all instances. Furthermore, as I have repeatedly argued, in recent years, the 5-4 and 6-3 decisions decided by the Republican majority are predominantly results-driven, unguided by any consistent, coherent judicial principles. The most extreme justices freely cherry-pick history and, when history is not on their side, they make it up. The former was true of Justice Thomas’s 2022 ruling striking down New York gun restrictions, while the justice took the latter route in his decision banning affirmative action (as Adam Serwer demonstrates).

President Biden, while acknowledging an aberrant supreme court, has been unwilling to embrace substantial reform of the court – such as expanding the number of justices and increasing Congressional control of the court’s docket (something that was in place “for most of the court’s history”). Each of these is politically out of reach in any case. They will have to wait for another time, when Democrats control the White House, the House, and a Senate unbound by the filibuster. That day will come, though not soon enough.

Published on

“The modern right has achieved its successes knowing that it represents a minority of the country. This is why its leaders lie all the time about their true intent." -- Michael Tomasky

Anyone who follows contemporary political debates will have noticed that American conservatives' rhetoric on behalf of their political program is inevitably drenched in lies. Yes, this is a contentious way to put the point, but it is glaringly true.

Whether the subject is the January 6 riot at the Capitol (even among folks, like Kevin McCarthy who at one time forthrightly acknowledged the truth, but now deny it) or the insistence that Congressional Republicans are absolutely not intent on cutting funding for Social Security or Medicare (when GOP caucus members can be counted on to propose such cuts within days of issuing their blanket denials), conservatives (and the major political party that embraces movement conservatives) persistently resort to falsehoods to advance their arguments.

Yes, this is a pet peeve of mine. Something is very wrong when you must lie to make your case politically. While enduring this is chronically annoying, it is hardly a mystery why it happens. The Republican agenda is unpopular. Republicans nationally can't tell the truth about it without suffering at election time. To state -- straightforwardly, truthfully, and without sleight-of-hand duplicity -- their views and intentions would be an election loser. They represent a minority faction of Americans. When elections are free and fair, and the outcome is up for grabs, the right can't be counted on to be truthful. Instead, "it's leaders lie all the time ...."

Published on

Two law professors, Robert L. Tsai and Mary Zeigler, distinguish between partisan judges (who identify with a political party) and movement judges (who identify with a social cause). In the case of Republican-appointed nominees from the latter group, they have largely come out of one of two distinct movements: the anti-abortion movement and the conservative legal movement.

Although I agree that “Sometimes, the public, incorrectly, views movement judges as interchangeable with partisan judges,” the distinctions the authors make are hardly surprising for observers of the political battles waged over the federal courts since the 1980s (or earlier). Nonetheless, their analysis clarifies a (small-d) democratic predicament.

Neither the anti-abortion movement (led by white evangelical Christians), nor the conservative legal movement (championed by Leonard Leo and his deep-pocketed donors, often of dark-money), are committed first and foremost to the Republican Party. The party is a vehicle. The SCOTUS majority in the Dobbs decision was determined, by hook or by crook, to overturn Roe – never mind the consequences for the Republican Party. At this stage, the decision appears to be an electoral loser for Republicans (though not in their primary elections, where movement activists wield exorbitant influence).

Like last year’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling, the court majority brushed aside precedent, judicial restraint, concern for the court’s legitimacy, and scrupulous adherence to any purported principles (‘originalism,’ ‘strict constructionism,’ ‘textualism’) promoted in recent decades by the Federalist Society. This imperious majority cherry-picked history in both rulings, as it has in other decisions, when it hasn’t ignored history altogether because it conflicted with the justices’ results-oriented reasoning.

But whatever else these decisions were, they constituted victories for the Republican Party, which is in the thrall of activists of both social movements. Not all victories are popular; not all are winners at the ballot box. The country’s movement judges are a product of the Republican Party’s relentless campaign to capture the courts.

This is crucial to the Republican Party’s strategy because their agenda is broadly unpopular, especially with an increasingly younger, more diverse electorate. What Republicans can’t win at the ballot box, they can impose through an unrestrained judicial branch, with the power to neuter and dominate the other branches of government – the political branches, where Americans are empowered to cast ballots.

As Tsai and Ziegler put it:

“What we are seeing now on the Supreme Court is a bloc of justices receptive to conservative social movements on key legal issues, and that raises the risk of judge-driven oligarchy: the recalibration of constitutional law for the benefit of the few over the interests of the many.”

Published on

1 - From 1978 to 1995, a misbegotten loner savagely acting out against contemporary society rained terror on unsuspecting Americans, killing three and injuring twenty-three. I'd forgotten many details about Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, but today's news conveys reminders. Among the most disturbing facts is found in this brief paragraph:

Kaczynski kept himself busy with correspondence. He periodically donated the hate mail addressed to him — as well as his many exchanges with fans — to a special collection at the University of Michigan library.

The man received fan mail (in addition to hate mail). The Unabomber had fans. One hopes not that many and few in positions of authority.

2 - Boris Johnson, a well-documented liar, resigned from Parliament in protest over an investigation of his conduct by his colleagues. The former Prime Minister's response was altogether predictable. He decried a "witch hunt" and denounced the committee conducting the investigation as a "kangaroo court" intent on carrying out a "political hit job."

Here's what I found significant: the leadership of the Conservative Party has not gone to the mat in defense of Johnson or his lies. Few Conservatives in office (or in partisan rightwing media) have rallied around him.

3 - Donald Trump has been indicted by a federal grand jury. Among the charges: violation of the Espionage Act that bars willful retention of national defense information (31 counts); withholding or concealing boxes of documents in a federal investigation (3 counts); making false statements (2 counts); and engaging in a conspiracy to obstruct justice (1 count).

Ample evidence of many of the facts alleged have been clearly established by Donald Trump's own words. To cite a single instance: lacking concern for protecting national security, Trump sought to defy a subpoena by insisting: I don't want anybody going through my boxes.

My boxes. How well that sums up the former president's attitude when the law conflicts with his personal preferences.

Trump's flouting the law is all too familiar to anyone who has watched him for the past eight years, yet few leaders in the GOP dare to confirm what's in plain sight. Those who speak out mimic Trump's slander of law enforcement and launch political attacks. From Speaker McCarthy to Senator Graham, from Governor DeSantis to former Governor Haley , from Fox News to state parties throughout the country the Grand Old Party is replete with Trump wannabes and defenders.

Never mind truth, the rule of law, the nation's security, or country over party. Those are brushed aside, while the most unrestrained partisans (following the example of Trump himself, over many months' time) increasingly indulge in violent rhetoric.

Our democracy is threatened by the corrupt status quo within one of our two major political parties.