A story in the New York Times today by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman outlined how former president Donald Trump and his allies are planning to create a dictatorship if voters return him to power in 2024. The article talks about how Trump and his loyalists plan to “centralize more power in the Oval Office” by “increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.” They plan to take control over independent government agencies and get rid of the nonpartisan civil service, purging all but Trump loyalists from the U.S. intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Defense Department. They plan to start “impounding funds,” that is, ignoring programs Congress has funded if those programs aren’t in line with Trump’s policies. “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and who now advises the right-wing House Freedom Caucus. They envision a “president” who cannot be checked by the Congress or the courts. Trump’s desire to grab the mechanics of our government and become a dictator is not new; both scholars and journalists have called it out since the early years of his administration. What is new here is the willingness of so-called establishment Republicans to support this authoritarian power grab. Behind this initiative is “Project 2025,” a coalition of more than 65 right-wing organizations putting in place personnel and policies to recommend not just to Trump, but to any Republican who may win in 2024. Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, once considered a conservative think tank, that helped to lead the Reagan revolution. A piece by Alexander Bolton in The Hill today said that Republican senators are “worried” by the MAGAs, but they have been notably silent in public at a time when every elected leader should be speaking out against this plot. Their silence suggests they are on board with it, as Trump apparently hoped to establish. The party appears to have fully embraced the antidemocratic ideology advanced by authoritarian leaders like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, who argue that the post–World War II era, in which democracy seemed to triumph, is over. They claim that the tenets of democracy—equality before the law, free speech, academic freedom, a market-based economy, immigration, and so on—weaken a nation by destroying a “traditional” society based in patriarchy and Christianity. Instead of democracy, they have called for “illiberal” or “Christian” democracy, which uses the government to enforce their beliefs in a Christian, patriarchal order. What that looks like has a clear blueprint in the actions of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has gathered extraordinary power into his own hands in the state and used that power to mirror Orbán’s destruction of democracy. DeSantis has pushed through laws that ban abortion after six weeks, before most people know they’re pregnant; banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity (the “Don’t Say Gay” law); prevented recognition of transgender individuals; made it easier to sentence someone to death; allowed people to carry guns without training or permits; banned colleges and businesses from conversations about race; exerted control over state universities; made it harder for his opponents to vote, and tried to punish Disney World for speaking out against the Don’t Say Gay law. After rounding up migrants and sending them to other states, DeSantis recently has called for using “deadly force” on migrants crossing unlawfully. Because all the institutions of our democracy are designed to support the tenets of democracy, right-wingers claim those institutions are weaponized against them. House Republicans are running hearings designed to prove that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice are both “weaponized” against Republicans. It doesn’t matter that they don’t seem to have any evidence of bias: the very fact that those institutions support democracy mean they support a system that right-wing Republicans see as hostile. “Our current executive branch,” Trump loyalist John McEntee, who is in charge of planning to pack the government with Trump loyalists, told the New York Times reporters, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.” It has taken decades for the modern-day Republican Party to get to a place where it rejects democracy. The roots of that rejection lie all the way back in the 1930s, when Democrats under Franklin Delano Roosevelt embraced a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure. That system ushered in a period from 1933 to 1981 that economists call the “Great Compression,” when disparities of income and wealth were significantly reduced, especially after the government also began to protect civil rights. Members of both parties embraced this modern government in this period, and Americans still like what it accomplished. But businessmen who hated regulation joined with racists who hated federal protection of civil rights and traditionalists who opposed women’s rights and set out to destroy that government. In West Palm Beach, Florida, last weekend, at the Turning Points Action Conference, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) compared President Biden’s Build Back Better plan to President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society programs, which invested in “education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and big labor and labor unions.” She noted that under Biden, the U.S. has made “the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs, that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete.” Well, yeah. Greene incorrectly called this program “socialism,” which in fact means government ownership of production, as opposed to the government’s provision of benefits people cannot provide individually, a concept first put into practice in the United States by Abraham Lincoln and later expanded by leadership in both parties. The administration has stood firmly behind the idea—shared by LBJ and FDR, and also by Republicans Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower, among others—that investing in programs that enable working people to prosper is the best way to strengthen the economy. Certainly, Greene’s speech didn’t seem to be the “gotcha” that she apparently hoped. A March 2023 poll by independent health policy pollster KFF, for example, found that 80% of Americans like Social Security, 81% like Medicare, and 76% like Medicaid, a large majority of members of all political parties. The White House Twitter account retweeted a clip of Greene’s speech, writing: “Caught us. President Biden is working to make life easier for hardworking families.” — Notes: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/07/house-republicans-mccarthy-russell-vought-trump/ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/us/politics/ron-desantis-border-drug-traffickers.html https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1680582110636064768 https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1680940415812354049 https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4098609-gop-senators-rattled-by-radical-conservative-populism/ “I approve this message.” Joe Biden’s Twitter account put that line over an ad using the words of Georgia Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Turning Points Action Conference speech from last weekend, in which she set out to tear down the president’s policies but ended up making him sound terrific. The description she intended to be derogatory—that Biden “had the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on”—was such an argument in Biden’s favor that the Biden-Harris campaign used it to advertise what the Democratic administration stands for: “[p]rograms to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, labor unions.” Generally, Biden and Harris have so far made the case for their reelection by meeting with voters in their home districts, emphasizing job growth and infrastructure investment in those districts, seemingly trying to demonstrate—without fanfare—that a well-run Democratic government can help ordinary Americans. But Greene’s misfire was just too good not to highlight. The programs she was denigrating are, in fact, enormously popular. Biden has generally stayed out of the headlines that involve the 2024 election, giving Republicans free rein to define themselves for the American people. That definition became clearer this morning, when former president Trump wrote on the right-wing Truth Social network that the Department of Justice’s special counsel Jack Smith has issued him a target letter associated with the investigation into the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A target letter usually means that prosecutors have enough evidence to charge someone with a crime. It offered Trump four days to appear before the grand jury to tell his side of the story, an offer Trump is expected to refuse. Then, it is likely that he will be indicted. Trump reacted exactly as one would expect, called Smith “deranged,” and claiming his own legal troubles were political: an attempt on the part of President Biden to eliminate his chief 2024 rival. (There is no sign that Biden has touched the investigation, but of course Trump tried to eliminate Biden in 2020 by pushing Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden’s work with Ukrainian company Burisma.) Trump harped on the idea that the investigation into his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election is “A COMPLETE AND TOTAL WEAPONIZATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT,” an accusation echoed by Trump loyalists Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Marjorie Taylor Greene, both of whom were also involved in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) also echoed the accusation that the target letter is a sign of political “weaponization” of government, prompting Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) to respond: “As Speaker, you are expected to uphold the rule of law. A target letter does not reveal what evidence the grand jury saw, nor what all the charges might be. Attacking a potential indictment before seeing the evidence and charges is irresponsible.” But if Trump received the target letter on Sunday, why did he complain about it only today? That delay might have had something to do with another legal issue: today’s hearing about the national security documents case, overseen by Judge Aileen Cannon. One of the issues to be discussed at that hearing was setting a date for the trial. The Department of Justice wants to go to trial in December; Trump wants to delay it until after the 2024 election. MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted that today’s target letter changes the calculations for the documents trial because no matter what Cannon decides, it seems likely that Trump will face another federal trial in Washington, D.C., over the events surrounding January 6, 2021. The Washington, D.C., trials for those involved in the events of January 6, 2021, have moved forward with few delays. This week’s bad legal news for Trump did not end there. On Friday of last week, Trump’s lawyers tried to stop Georgia’s probe into his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state. They asked the court to disqualify Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, who has been investigating that attempt, and to stop Willis from using any of the material gathered by the grand jury investigating the case. Yesterday, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously rejected his petition, allowing the probe to go forward. Then, today, Michigan’s attorney general Dana Nessel charged sixteen fake electors who signed fake certificates claiming that Trump had won Michigan’s electoral votes in 2020 with felonies: forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery, election law forgery, conspiracy to commit election law forgery, publishing a counterfeit record, and conspiring to publish a counterfeit record. The sixteen Republicans met in the basement of the state Republican Party’s headquarters and signed fake documents claiming that they were the state’s legitimate electors and that Trump had won the state. Their actions were part of a plan to claim that the electoral votes of certain states were “contested,” allowing then–vice president Mike Pence to reject the votes of those states and throw the election to Trump. The fake electors attested they were “the duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president of the United States of America for the state of Michigan,” Nessel said. “That was a lie. They weren’t the duly elected and qualified electors, and each of the defendants knew it.” “The false electors' actions undermine the public's faith in the integrity of our elections and not only violated the spirit of the laws enshrining and defending our democracy, but we believe also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan and peaceably transfer power in America,” Nessel said. “This plan, to reject the will of the voters and undermine democracy, was fraudulent and legally baseless.” Text messages at the time show that the sixteen were “all asked to keep silent [so] as to not draw attention to what the other states were doing similar to ours!” One of those charged was former co-chair of the state Republican committee, Meshawn Maddock, who called the charges “political persecution.” Legal analyst Renato Mariotti noted that the charges against the sixteen fake electors send a powerful message for those at the state level who might consider abetting Trump in the future. Those fake electors aren’t part of Trump’s inner circle who might get some kind of a reward for their trouble. They are just party operatives who are facing an expensive, stressful, and humiliating experience that could lead to hefty fines or imprisonment. Their example might well make others think carefully before they sign on to similar plans. Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points Memo today that the lines of the 2024 election are coming clearer. Trump’s many legal troubles simply strengthen the loyalty of his base, making his nomination for the Republican presidential candidacy even more likely. But voters in the general election are unlikely to rally to someone facing multiple indictments in several different cases, especially ones related to the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, which horrified most Americans. The Republican Party is now “handcuffed to Donald Trump,” Marshall writes. President Biden’s policy of focusing on his job while letting the Republicans define themselves might be a smart strategy. — Notes: https://www.rawstory.com/georgia-supreme-court-rejects-trump/ https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/14/politics/donald-trump-fani-willis-georgia-grand-jury/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/18/politics/michigan-fake-electors https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/michigan-ag-hits-16-fake-electors-with-felony-charges https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-full-2024-picture-finally-comes-into-view joebiden/status/1681424737384435713 RonFilipkowski/status/1681325293779275778 AWeissmann_/status/1681305658187223040 lawofruby/status/1681313655558914049 tedlieu/status/1681312292464660482
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Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Letter From An American - July 17, 2023
This is one, however, that I think is especially important as we get closer and closer to people finally beginning to realize that there is a very real danger of our country becoming a dictatorship.
Those of you who read my blog know my politics. Most of you already know of Heather Cox Richardson and probably follow her as conscientiously as I do either at Facebook, or Substack, or her podcast.
Her Facebook page describes her as a "political historian who uses facts and history to put the news in context."
She conveys these facts in a straightforward manner with points referenced by footnotes for those of us who enjoy going a little deeper into the rabbit holes of research, AND for those conservative doubters who might, on occasion, read what she has to say.
This is a letter I hope you will read and share with others. And I encourage you t
o read the footnotes.
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