Republican Assault on Democracy and March Towards Fascism

[LFC]

More Republican plaid shirts on the march.

Texas GOPer Allegedly Banging On Doors Accusing People Of Voting Illegally

A voter in Austin, Texas alleged last week that a precinct chair of the Travis County Republican Party plus an unidentified man had come to her home and accused her of illegally voting by mail, according to the Texas Civil Rights Project.

• The list of people who voted by mail is public, making it easier for voter intimidation campaigns to find targets.

• Mail-in ballots can be canceled after they’ve been sent, so the harassment can work even if the target’s already cast their vote.

• The Texas Secretary of State’s office has gotten at least two complaints of potential voter intimidation, a spokesperson for the office told Vice.
     ○ Sidenote: This is the same secretary of state who deployed “inspectors” to Harris County last month to monitor the elections.

[LFC]

About sums up the fascist party.

Jo 🌻
@jojofromjerz

That it took a shitty midterm and not a deadly insurrection for the Republican Party to finally walk away from donald trump tells you everything you need to know about them.

[LFC]

I imagine Texass would be pretty prototypical for a for a fascist America so this doesn't really surprise me. I'm sure Texass Republicans view it as a feature rather than a bug.

In the dozens of Texas prisons that don’t have air conditioning, new research shows that 13 percent of deaths during the six hottest months every year from 2001 through 2019 were likely due to extreme heat. The study, which was published last week in the academic journal JAMA Network Open, is the first epidemiological evidence that the lack of air conditioning in a large proportion of U.S. prisons is substantially increasing the risk of death for those incarcerated. It also suggests that over 250 Texans lost their lives over the past two decades because of the state’s failure to mitigate indoor heat.

In Texas, where two-thirds of the state’s nearly 100 prisons lack air conditioning, temperatures inside facilities have risen to as high as 149 degrees Fahrenheit. Climate change will only increase the number of dangerously hot days: Historically no Texas county typically saw more than 25 days annually where the heat index rose above 105 degrees F. By midcentury, however, more than a third of counties in the Lone Star State will likely be subject to more than 50 days with heat that high, according to data from the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.

Nevertheless, Texas lawmakers have repeatedly failed to advance bills that would fund prison air conditioning, and prison officials have suggested that heat deaths are not a problem. At a July hearing before the Texas House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee, Texas Department of Criminal Justice executive director Bryan Collier claimed that that there have been zero heat-related deaths since 2012.

“Their numbers are wrong,” said Amite Dominick, one of the new report’s coauthors and the president and founder of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, an organization that is pushing Texas policymakers to fund prison air conditioning.

“I hope it adds further credence to what we’ve been saying all along — that these individuals are dying because the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is refusing to put AC in prisons,”she added. “Our legislators aren’t getting the job done.”

The 271 deaths in facilities without air conditioning — an average of 14 per year — occurred on days that were unusually hot for the region, when the heat index rose above the 90th percentile for the location. On such days, the risk of death rose 15 percent. The study also found that each 1-degree increase in temperature over 85 degrees increased risk of death by 0.7 percent.

These deadly effects were not observed in air-conditioned facilities: The researchers, led by Brown University Ph.D. Julianne Skarha, found no correlation between heat and mortality in the latter. This is not surprising, given that heat-related death is uncommon among the general population — accounting for less than half a percent of U.S. deaths.

[LFC]

Saying it out loud is becoming more and more common. Good. I prefer that America face its fascists head-on, not pretending to be reasonable while quietly tearing democracy apart.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 10, 2022 20:24:17 GMT LFC said:

Saying it out loud is becoming more and more common. Good. I prefer that America face its fascists head-on, not pretending to be reasonable while quietly tearing democracy apart.

He gets credit for being authentic that way.  Authenticity means saying whatever the hell you please if some small segment of your audience will fist pump and say "F*#$ Yeah!" after you say it.  And that's the problem for the rest of us.  Yes we know where this dude stands (could've guessed that anyway) but the wingnuts also know and will rally to him.

[LFC]

Think globally, fascist locally. The lessons of abusing political power permeate the GOP at all levels.

A Pennsylvania state House committee on Tuesday is expected to vote on two articles of impeachment filed against Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a move that could bring the city’s top prosecutor a step closer to being impeached.

The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider the matter Tuesday morning, marking the latest step in the Republican-led effort to impeach Krasner, a Democrat. The articles accuse him of implementing policies that have contributed to a rise in violent crime and of obstructing a legislative committee investigating his office.

The move would mark a significant chapter in the unprecedented legislative effort to remove Krasner from office — but would also be just one step in what could be a lengthy and litigious process.

It would come amid sustained opposition by Democrats, who have said the GOP is attempting to impeach a political opponent over ideological disagreements. And though the issue has been bubbling in the Capitol for several months, a vote Tuesday could come in the waning days of Republican control in the House: Democrats outperformed expectations in last week’s election and are within one seat of taking control of the chamber for the first time in more than a decade.
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Krasner has steadfastly defended his office’s record and slammed the impeachment drive as both a political stunt and an illegal effort to overturn the will of Philadelphia voters. He said he has not obstructed the legislature but has used legal means to challenge efforts to investigate him.

Jane Roh, a spokesperson for Krasner’s office, said in an email Monday evening that House Republicans were “spending their final days in a lame duck majority fighting a lost cause” and “are proving yet again that they have no desire to govern responsibly.”

Jason Gottesman, a spokesperson for House Republicans, said: “This has been and is about lives and protecting Philadelphians who not only deserve to feel safe, but be safe in their communities.”

Asked about the notion that a Republican majority could be seeking to approve a controversial measure in the final days the caucus might control the chamber, Gottesman said: “Members of the House are elected to their positions through the end of their term. Up until then, they have the ability to exercise every part and power of their office.”
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State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Philadelphia Democrat, had a different interpretation, writing on Twitter: “These utterly disgraceful political stunts are exactly why the House GOP members lost so many seats last week.”

[LFC]

Here come the plaid shirts!

Find them, arrest them, prosecute them, and LOCK THEM UP!

[LFC]

Here come the fascist moms, shrilly screeching about things that either don't exist or are completely blown out of all reality. I wonder how many lawsuits they'll generate for the school district and how much it's going to cost them to settle.

On Tuesday evening, the Berkeley County School District in South Carolina swore in the board members who were elected last week, six of whom were endorsed by the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty.

Within two hours, the school board had voted to fire the district’s first Black superintendent, terminate the district’s lawyer, ban critical race theory and set up a committee to decide whether certain books and materials should be banned from schools.

In addition, the board voted to replace the chair with Mac McQuillin, a local attorney and one of the board members backed by Moms for Liberty.

The rapid moves Tuesday in the Berkeley County district, the fourth largest in the state, showed the impact of Moms for Liberty’s focus on electing conservative school board members, and prompted uproar among some community members in attendance.

And you know there's a big heaping pile of right-wing Christian nationalism in all this.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 17, 2022 19:20:04 GMT LFC said:

Here come the fascist moms, shrilly screeching about things that either don't exist or are completely blown out of all reality. I wonder how many lawsuits they'll generate for the school district and how much it's going to cost them to settle.

On Tuesday evening, the Berkeley County School District in South Carolina swore in the board members who were elected last week, six of whom were endorsed by the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty.

Within two hours, the school board had voted to fire the district’s first Black superintendent, terminate the district’s lawyer, ban critical race theory and set up a committee to decide whether certain books and materials should be banned from schools.

In addition, the board voted to replace the chair with Mac McQuillin, a local attorney and one of the board members backed by Moms for Liberty.

The rapid moves Tuesday in the Berkeley County district, the fourth largest in the state, showed the impact of Moms for Liberty’s focus on electing conservative school board members, and prompted uproar among some community members in attendance.

And you know there's a big heaping pile of right-wing Christian nationalism in all this.

Yes, and a push to destroy public education.  They'll want public money for education of course, but it will be given to their church/school/home of choice.  So the whole country can grow up and live in exclusive little bubbles talking only to others like them whether in person or on social media.

[LFC]

Come on, Democrats! Beat the Republicans with this over and over until either they capitulate and apologize or until the 2024 elections. This is the de facto leader of their party and he has openly called for tearing up the Constitution. This is from a TPM reader (paywalled).

TPM Reader JB has this just right …

I appreciated your latest piece about how to use Trump’s latest insane outburst against him. I wonder if it would be useful to have the House and Senate individually pass resolutions affirming the Constitution and condemning Trump’s outburst. If they vote against it, I could see adds in 2 years about how so-and-so Republican voted against the Constitution and effectively for its “termination.” 

This may be too much inside-baseball, something that would be lost down the memory hole, but it also might be a way to hold the entire Congress to account rather than trying to chase all the Republican reps and senators under the rocks they’re trying to hide under.

Josh Marshall (paywalled) has this to say.

Over the weekend, apparently in response to Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” nothingburger, ex-President Donald Trump demanded that the U.S. Constitution be “terminated” and he be reinstalled in the presidential office. A number of you have written in to say, isn’t this a big deal? Shouldn’t you be making a bigger deal of it?

There are many ways to respond to this question, one of which is: here I am writing about it. But on a very basic level, what’s new? Talk is cheap. Trump actually launched an unsuccessful coup attempt two years ago. In the subsequent two years he has repeatedly demanded that he be illegally and unconstitutionally restored to power. My point is not to say this is no big deal but to keep our feet firmly planted on the ground recognizing that this is the political world we’ve been operating in for two years. It is, as far as I know, new that Trump has specifically said the Constitution should be done away with once and for all. But it really just puts the bow on an already wrapped present.

The question isn’t whether you or I think it’s a big deal. It’s not even, directly, what the public thinks. Most of the public probably hasn’t noticed. The question is what Republican elected officials think. Or rather what Republican elected officials can be made to say about it. One clear takeaway from the 2022 midterm is that a majority of voters are wary of Republican extremism and authoritarianism. As long as Republicans don’t abandon the extremism of Trumpism — and there’s little sign that that is anywhere on the horizon — Democrats should keep it front and center, in front of voters at every opportunity. Put simply, they should use it to defeat Republicans just as they used it to defeat Big Lie supporters last month.

What Republicans elected officials think and say is really all that matters. Because the only meaningful metric, the only potential impact of any of this is whether it makes Republican elected officials more likely to lose office. What you think, what you jump up and down about, doesn’t matter. We know what you think. Everyone knows what you think. What matters is forcing Republican elected officials to make a choice between Trump or the Constitution or make them objects of popular contempt for their public refusal to do so. For now they cannot abandon Trump. As Trump becomes more aggressive in his sedition, that will endanger more Republican elected officials.

Donald Trump remains the leader of the Republican Party. He is the frontrunner to be the party’s presidential nominee again in 2024. He is the Republican Party unless and until the bulk of Republican elected officials clearly say otherwise. Last week we saw all these headlines about how Republicans were turning on Trump in droves over his dinner with anti-Semitic influencers Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. This was not close to being true. The criticisms amounted to versions of “I sure hope he chooses better dinner companions!” or “He sure has learned his lesson now!”

Anyone who calls for the overthrow of the federal Constitution is by definition unfit to serve in any office of public trust whatsoever. The fact that such a person is the leader of one party and its probable presidential nominee is a problem not just for the country but for that party. Nothing matters? His supporters don’t care? The 2022 election and frankly the 2020 one too say otherwise.

Over the weekend Republicans tried to slough the whole thing off. They don’t follow his tweets. He’s not allowed to terminate the Constitution. So it’s moot. Democrats need to press this point at every opportunity and in so doing force reporters to do the same.

The ideal is that Trump and what he represents be removed from the political scene altogether. Only Republicans can do that. As long as he is on the scene, Democrats owe it to themselves and the country to keep front and center the fact that Trump speaks for all Republicans, that he continues to represent the danger voters recoiled from in 2022. A lot of people got upset that in 2022 Democrats used Trump extremism to win a number of critical elections. That’s how politics works, how it should work. Don’t beg Republicans to do the right thing. Accept the message behind their actions and make clear to voters that they stand with their leader who wants to overthrow the Constitution. When they decide to change that they know what to do.

The model of the current Republican Party is to be a Trumper in the sheets and quasi-normal Republican on the streets. By upping the ante yet again and calling for the overthrow of the Constitution itself Trump has given Democrats another cudgel to make that two-step flimflam unsustainable. It’s just a matter of using it.

[LFC]

The white supremacists, Christian nationalists, and white fragility addicts are now well entrenched in the GOP. Some believe the recent election losses may mark a shift but others, who I happen to agree with, are less optimistic.

The Atlantic piece is a good read. Here's a few tidbits.

Other officials inside the GOP coalition have pushed through the boundaries Trump has weakened. Gosar and Greene both appeared at Fuentes’s America First Political Action Conference. So did Republican Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers, who called the audience at one of the events “patriots,” and declared, “We need to build more gallows. If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them, and use a newly built set of gallows, it’ll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country.”

The Republican-controlled Arizona State Senate censured Rogers this year for threatening her colleagues, but she was nevertheless fulsomely embraced by Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Arizona governor this year. Other prominent GOP candidates, including Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, also associated with white and Christian nationalists or directly echoed themes from those movements this year.

In a similar vein, in the days before the election, McCarthy made clear that he would restore committee assignments to Greene and Gosar, whom the Democratic majority had stripped of such roles for their association with extremists and embrace of violent imagery. McCarthy also promised Greene and other hard-line conservatives that he would authorize an investigation into the government’s prosecution and treatment of the January 6 insurrectionists, many of whom are extremists tied to white and Christian nationalism.

“After Trump’s rise, these barriers became softer and softer, and they really broke down in the aftermath of January 6 altogether,” Hayden said. “And now you have this kind of opening between the fringe world and the mainstream world in a way that is very difficult to separate.”

Polling by the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center has found that only about one in 11 Republicans expresses directly favorable views of white-nationalist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers (whose leader, Stewart Rhodes, was convicted this week of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 attack).

But a much larger slice of Republican partisans express views that might be called white-nationalist adjacent. In various polls, preponderant majorities of GOP voters have said that discrimination against white people is now as big a problem as bias against minorities, that Christianity in the U.S. is under assault, and that the growing number of immigrants threatens American values and traditions. About half of Republicans have expressed agreement in other polls with tenets of white nationalism, including the racist “replacement theory” that elites are importing immigrants to undermine the political power of native-born white people, the core Christian-nationalist belief that “God intended America to be a new promised land,” and the assertion that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”

Only a minuscule percentage of those Republican partisans might contemplate violence or join extremist organizations, Neumann and other experts point out. But the receptivity of so many Republican voters to arguments, even if less virulent, that overlap with those championed by white- and Christian-nationalist organizations may be a crucial reason for party leaders’ reluctance to confront Trump and others, like Greene, who have associated with such groups. Given the extent of such views inside the GOP coalition, Neumann said, Republicans feel no political incentive to reject the far right “other than out of the goodness of their heart and moral clarity. And apparently that wasn’t enough.”

Robert P. Jones, the president and founder of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute and the author of White Too Long, a history of Christian nationalism, is less optimistic. He believes Christian-nationalist beliefs are spreading more widely among Trump’s followers because they believe “they are at a kind of ‘last stand’ moment” for their vision of a white-Christian-dominated America. “The unwillingness of party leaders, time and time again, to denounce Trump for giving these voices support and cover has allowed them to move into the center of the GOP today,” Jones wrote to me in an email. “I would be surprised if we didn’t see increasing numbers of GOP party leaders openly associating with these voices in the future, particularly leading up to the 2024 presidential election.”

Greenblatt is also less sanguine. The Anti-Defamation League tracked more than 2,700 anti-Semitic incidents in 2021—the highest annual total it has ever recorded and triple the number of incidents it documented as recently as 2015, the last year before Trump emerged as the GOP’s leading man. Furthermore, Greenblatt is unconvinced that the current Republican distancing from Trump will last any longer than it did in earlier episodes, such as Charlottesville. And he worries that Musk is on course to radically increase the volume of racist and anti-Semitic hate speech on Twitter, which was already a problem before Musk bought the company.

On all of these fronts, Greenblatt sees what he calls “the normalization of extremism” hardening in ways that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. “Society itself is at risk if we don’t finally move the extremists … out of the mainstream, back to the margins where they belong,” he told me. “I think we don’t realize the peril that we run, the risk that’s upon us, if we don’t get this right.”

[LFC]

How the hell did this not get spread all over the sane media when Bill Barr named scumbag John Durham as special counsel? Did I just miss it? This alone shows him to be unqualified. Bold mine.

The CIA interrogation videotapes destruction occurred on November 9, 2005.[1] The videotapes were made by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during interrogations of Al-Qaeda suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002 at a CIA black site prison in Thailand.[2] Ninety tapes were made of Zubaydah and two of al-Nashiri. Twelve tapes depict interrogations using "enhanced interrogation techniques", a euphemism for torture.[3] The tapes and their destruction became public knowledge in December 2007.[4] A criminal investigation by a Department of Justice special prosecutor, John Durham, decided in 2010 to not file any criminal charges related to destroying the videotapes.[5]

Oh, Obama. You really blew it badly when you swept our war crimes under the rug.

[LFC]

Paul Gosar is all in on throwing out the constitution. This is the clown that Klown McCarthy is promising to put back on House committees. Joking about murder of political opponents wasn't cause enough for KKKevin so calling for an overthrow of the Constitution is barely a blip.

[LFC]

Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texass) goes full metal tepid on Trump's ass. How brave!

[goldenvalley]

Dec 7, 2022 20:01:06 GMT LFC said:

Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texass) goes full metal tepid on Trump's ass. How brave!

Who knew Cornyn had a gift for understatement?

[LFC]

Dec 7, 2022 19:41:20 GMT LFC said:

Paul Gosar is all in on throwing out the constitution.

This is hilarious coming from the mental midget that is Paul Gosar. What a f***ing moron.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) spokesman Anthony Foti claims that bad-faith actors and “low IQ people” were “unable to comprehend” Gosar’s Wednesday tweet — supporting former President Donald Trump’s unhinged call to terminate the Constitution — prompting the Arizona lawmaker to delete his post.

“No one in Congress has fought for Constitutional values more than Congressman Gosar,” Foti told Business Insider. “He is known as a strict constitutionalist for good reason. He has a decade of votes proving that.” 

“President Trump has reissued his statement to clarify what he meant,” he continued. “Those who claim either Trump or Congressman Gosar don’t believe in the Constitution are acting in bad faith or are low IQ people unable to comprehend our language and our actions.”

Foti’s statement comes after Gosar took to Twitter to announce his support for Trump’s Truth Social rant calling for the termination of the Constitution and to “rescind” the 2020 election. “I support and agree with the former President,” Gosar wrote in the Twitter post in question which he deleted shortly after. “Unprecedented fraud requires unprecedented cure.” 

[LFC]

The Fifth Circuit Court is even worse than SCOTUS. They clearly believe that precedents and even laws don't apply to them. They just charge ahead with what they want. That's their "judicial theory", as Amy Barrett called it. Sounds like a farm team for a Thomas or Alito seat.

The Trumpiest Court in America
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is where law goes to die.

Trent Taylor says his cell, in a Texas psychiatric unit operated by the state’s prison system, was covered in human excrement. Feces smeared the window and streaked the ceiling. Someone had painted a shit swastika on the wall, alongside a smiley face. According to Taylor’s allegations in a federal lawsuit, there was such a thick layer of dried human dung on the floor of the cell that it made a crunching sound as he walked naked across the cell.

Taylor alleged that he was kept in this cell for four days, where he neither ate nor drank due to fears that the excrement, which was even packed inside the cell’s water faucet, would contaminate anything he consumed. Then, on the fifth day, he was moved to a bare, frigid cell with no toilet, water fountain, or bed. A clogged drain filled the new cell with choking ammonia films. With nowhere to relieve himself, Taylor held his urine for 24 hours before he could do so no longer. And then he had to sleep alone on the floor while covered in his own waste.

The Supreme Court eventually ruled 7–1 that Taylor’s lawsuit against the corrections officers who forced him to live in these conditions could move forward, and that lawsuit settled last February. But the Supreme Court had to intervene after an even more conservative court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, attempted to shut down these claims against the prison guards.

A unanimous panel of three Fifth Circuit judges held that it was unclear whether the Constitution prevents prisoners from being forced to remain in “extremely dirty cells for only six days” — although, in what counts as an act of mercy in the Fifth Circuit, the panel did concede that “prisoners couldn’t be housed in cells teeming with human waste for months on end.”

This decision, in Taylor v. Stevens, is hardly aberrant behavior by the Fifth Circuit, which oversees federal litigation arising out of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The Fifth Circuit’s Taylor decision stands out for its casual cruelty, but its disregard for law, precedent, logic, and basic human decency is ordinary behavior in this court.

Dominated by partisans and ideologues — a dozen of the court’s 17 active judgeships are held by Republican appointees, half of whom are Trump judges — the Fifth Circuit is where law goes to die. And, because the Fifth Circuit oversees federal litigation arising out of Texas, whose federal trial courts have become a pipeline for far-right legal decisions, the Fifth Circuit’s judges frequently create havoc with national consequences.

The Fifth Circuit has, in recent months, declared an entire federal agency unconstitutional and stripped another of its authority to enforce federal laws protecting investors from fraud. It permitted Texas Republicans to effectively seize control of content moderation at social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Less than a year ago, the Fifth Circuit forced the Navy to deploy sailors who defied an order to take the Covid vaccine, despite the Navy’s warning that a sick service member could sideline an entire vessel or force the military to conduct a dangerous mission to extract a Navy SEAL with Covid.

As Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote when the Supreme Court restored the military’s command over its own personnel, the Fifth Circuit’s approach wrongly inserted the courts “into the Navy’s chain of command, overriding military commanders’ professional military judgments.”

And this is just a small sample of the decisions the Fifth Circuit has handed down in 2022. Go back just a little further, and you’ll find things like a decision endangering the First Amendment right to protest, or another that seized control over much of the United States’ diplomatic relations with the nation of Mexico. In 2019, seven Fifth Circuit judges joined an opinion that, had it been embraced by the Supreme Court, could have triggered a global economic depression unlike any since the 1930s.

It goes on and on and on...

[LFC]

Michigan's AG is showing her patriotism by investigating the state GOP's involvement in the fake elector scheme.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Friday her office is reopening its investigation into the 16 Republican electors who signed a certificate falsely claiming that Donald Trump had won the state's 2020 election.

Nessel, a Democrat, previously referred the matter to federal prosecutors. But she cited new documents released by a U.S. House committee and said there was "clear evidence to support charges" against the group of 16 Michigan Republicans who signed a document that was submitted to the National Archives and was intended to help Trump supporters challenge his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

"I think that type of activity can't go without any consequences," Nessel said.

LOCK THEM UP! LOCK THEM UP!

[LFC]

Baby level fascism or just basic Republican corruption? We report, you... Oh, wait. We don't report anymore.

A West Virginia journalist lost her job last month after she reported about alleged abuse of people with disabilities within the state agency that runs West Virginia’s foster care and psychiatric facilities.

Amelia Ferrell Knisely, a reporter at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, said she was told to stop reporting on the Department of Health and Human Resources after leaders of the embattled agency “threatened to discredit” the publicly funded television and radio network. She later learned her part-time position was being eliminated.

In a statement, Knisely said her news director told her the order came from WVPB Executive Director Butch Antolini, former communications director for Republican Gov. Jim Justice. Antolini has served as executive director since 2021, when his predecessor was ousted after Justice overhauled the agency’s governing board.

Justice has tried unsuccessfully to eliminate state funding for WVPB in the past and was accused of appointing partisan operatives to the board. WVPB receives around $4 million a year in state funding.

[andydp]

Jan 9, 2023 17:33:38 GMT LFC said:

Michigan's AG is showing her patriotism by investigating the state GOP's involvement in the fake elector scheme.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Friday her office is reopening its investigation into the 16 Republican electors who signed a certificate falsely claiming that Donald Trump had won the state's 2020 election.

Nessel, a Democrat, previously referred the matter to federal prosecutors. But she cited new documents released by a U.S. House committee and said there was "clear evidence to support charges" against the group of 16 Michigan Republicans who signed a document that was submitted to the National Archives and was intended to help Trump supporters challenge his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

"I think that type of activity can't go without any consequences," Nessel said.

LOCK THEM UP! LOCK THEM UP!

I call your attention to the fact submitting, swearing and certifying its validity and submitting the fake elector list, is called filing a "false instrument" and is a criminal offence.  Any one of us would have been arrested, and probably tried by June.

[LFC]

Jonathan Chait has a good piece on Ron DeFascist's goose stepping all over freedom of speech in Florida. Trump was dangerous because he was an unpredictable, narcissistic maniac. DeFascist is danger because he's a predictable, narcissistic maniac.

he threat of right-wing authoritarianism in the United States has lodged itself in the public mind in the model of January 6: A candidate for office refuses to accept defeat and then gins up phony legal complaints escalating into violence. But the more durable and successful model is the pattern used by strongmen like Viktor Orban, which does not require a violent assault on the state but instead employs a combination of legal methods: stacking legislative districts, using state power to bully corporations into support for the ruling party, marginalizing independent media and exploiting state-controlled pseudo-journalistic alternatives, and seizing control of the education system.

Ron DeSantis has used all these tools at various times. Over the last week, the last piece — his determination to control the ideological tenor of schools — has been on bright display. Orban identified schools and universities as a source of dissent, and set out to seize ideological control by placing his allies in control. DeSantis is doing the exact same thing.

(1) DeSantis, who has stacked the boards controlling state universities with allies while consolidating power in their hands, has appointed a half-dozen cronies to the board of the New College of Florida. What’s notable about the cast is its personal loyalty and its will to power. Christopher Rufo, the most famous, has used charges of grooming against various DeSantis political opponents and appeared with DeSantis at his events; Charles Kesler writes for the Claremont Review of Books, a bastion of authoritarian thought, and has praised DeSantis as the future of the party; Mark Bauerlein is an editor at the right-wing journal First Things and a former member of “Scholars for Trump” who has showered DeSantis with compliments; Matthew Spalding is associated with Claremont and right-wing Hillsdale College, and has attacked Republican critics of Donald Trump.

The undisguised purpose of this move is to put a right-wing stamp on the school’s curriculum. “Alongside two others not up for appointment who support DeSantis’s strategy and another who is expected to be replaced soon, the new BOT appointees can, with their majority power, theoretically target progressive programming at the school,” gushes the National Review.

It is important to understand that there is a critique of the academic left rooted in free-speech norms that posits that many schools have had an atmosphere of ideological pressure that discourages or punishes professors who violate left-wing taboos. This is not the belief system animating DeSantis’s academic mission. He is not seeking to protect or restore free speech, but to impose controls of his own liking.

His maneuvers to control education are ideological, consistent with his uses of state power: They follow a post-liberal vision eschewing any pretense of neutrality. Conservatives would wax hysterical if a Democrat tried anything similar. (Imagine the response from the right if, say, Gavin Newsom stripped tax benefits from a company because it criticized one of his positions.) The only justification is raw power. DeSantis’s supporters reason that their enemies are illiberal fanatics, and so they have permission to use illiberal methods of their own.

And the scary summation...

At the National Conservatism Conference, spokespeople for DeSantis and Orban cited one another as models. DeSantis’s version of Orbanism may pose a less acute danger than Trump’s, with its threat of acute violence and imminent constitutional collapse. But the reason DeSantis has consolidated support within the party’s right wing is precisely because he is not abandoning its fervent post-liberalism. He is, instead, offering a way to succeed where Trump failed.

[Bact PhD]

Annnd…He’s only just begun…
After all, why not go after an institution widely regarded as a “safe space” for the quirky kids, right??? (From the Sarasota Herald-Tribune & reprinted in my local rag; very heavily excerpted due to paywall)

Gov. Ron DeSantis began the process Friday of transforming Sarasota's New College of Florida into a more conservative institution, appointing six new board members, including conservative activist Christopher Rufo, a dean at conservative Hillsdale College and a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank.

"It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida's classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the south," Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said in a statement.

BARF!!!

The shakeup of the 13-member board is certain to create major tensions at New College, an institution that started as a progressive private school before becoming the state's liberal arts honors college. The small school's student body and faculty have a reputation for leaning left politically.

Turning New College into a Florida version of Hillsdale would amount to flipping it upside down, a wholesale reinvention akin to a hostile takeover, and one that many current students and faculty are likely to resist.

DeSantis aides blasted the school Friday and said an overhaul is needed.

(Usual “anti-woke” blather by Supreme Emperor official)

Rufo is known for his activism on transgender and racial issues, making him a leader in the new wave of conservative culture wars. He joined DeSantis when the governor signed HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act, which is derided by critics as the "Don't Say Gay" bill.

Rufo said in a series of Twitter posts Friday that public universities have "been corrupted by woke nihilism" and he is "ready to transform higher education from within." He said he plans to recruit new faculty to New College to "create an institution where academics can thrive, without self-censorship."

“My ambition is to help the new board majority transform New College into a classical liberal arts institution. We are recapturing higher education.” Rufo said.

Rufo recently applauded DeSantis on Twitter for requesting information on diversity, equity and inclusion and critical race theory at all Florida colleges and universities

"Gov. DeSantis is going to lay siege to university 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' programs," Rufo wrote.

Among Rufo's goals for New College that he laid out in a tweet: Restructuring the administration, developing "a new core curriculum," eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion policies and restructuring academic departments.

Yup, MAGAt’s wet dreams coming true…

(Mild rebuttal from Gender Studies faculty member)

But wait, there’s more!

Joining Rufo on the New College board is Matthew Spalding, a professor of constitutional government at Hillsdale College and the dean of the college's graduate school of government in Washington, D.C. Spalding previously was vice president of American studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Hillsdale is a small Christian college in Michigan that has been active in conservative education politics. DeSantis spoke at Hillsdale's National Leadership Seminar last year and has tapped the school to help reshape Florida's education system.

Charles Kesler, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute, also is joining the New College board. Among the books written by Kesler: “I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism.”

[snip]

Appointing prominent conservatives and individuals associated with high-profile right-wing institutions to New College is an effort by DeSantis to completely reorient the school.

[snip]

DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin highlighted the governor's comments in a statement that declared: "Starting today, the ship is turning around. New College of Florida, under the governor's new appointees, will be refocused on its founding mission of providing a world-class quality education with an exceptional focus on the classics."

The other new board members are Mark Bauerlein, who teaches at Emory University, Debra Jenks, a New College alum and attorney, and Jason "Eddie" Speir, the co-founder, chairman and superintendent of Inspiration Academy, a Christian school in Bradenton.

The governor gets six appointments to each university board, while the state Board of Governors - which oversees the university system - gets five. The faculty chair and student body president also serve on the board. The Board of Governors, which is loaded with DeSantis allies, is poised to appoint a New College board member for a seat vacant on Jan. 7, meaning a majority of the board soon will consist of new appointees who can control the direction of the school.

[snip]

New College routinely ranks well on higher education "best of" lists, having been singled out as a good value and among the best public liberal arts colleges. It is known for attracting accomplished students to an intimate setting that blends academic rigor and quirky experimentalism.

However, the school has struggled in recent years with low enrollment, low scores on a state system for ranking universities, concerns raised by state lawmakers about whether the college is an efficient use of public money because of the high cost of each degree and questions about the stability of its funding.

Hey, a publicly-funded “Hillsdale of the South”— what could possibly go wrong??

[LFC]

A little nauseating background on Hillsdale College for those who don't know. Sounds like DeSatanist's kinda' school.

[LFC]

This article lays out that DeSatanist really is basing much of his political persona on being against the First Amendment, but only for those people of course.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t exactly hiding what he’s up to.

Earlier this month, the Republican appointed Chris Rufo, the architect of the 2021 moral panic over “critical race theory,” to the board of a public liberal arts school in Florida. As Rufo told New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, his goal — and the goal of several other DeSantis appointees to the New College of Florida’s board — is to transform New College, a liberal bastion in the South, into something more like Hillsdale College, a conservative school in Michigan with close ties to former President Donald Trump.

The one positive thing that can be said about this appointment is that it is, at least, legal — something that cannot be said about many of the governor’s attempts to sic the government on institutions he deems too liberal. DeSantis isn’t just determined to use his public office to suppress dissenting voices and promote his own reactionary views; he’s also quite willing to thumb his nose at the Constitution in order to do so.

Indeed, DeSantis often seems to revel in his contempt for the First Amendment, even fundraising off of it. Shortly before DeSantis signed unconstitutional legislation punishing the Walt Disney Company for criticizing one of his policies, the governor sent a fundraising email to supporters touting the fact that he was doing so. The company, DeSantis said, was being punished after it “tried to attack me to advance their woke agenda.”

DeSantis signed legislation imposing speech codes on university professors, as well as legislation attempting to seize control of content moderation at sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. He attacks classroom teachers with vague, unconstitutional laws stigmatizing LGBTQ people. His administration threatens drag performers with criminal charges.

In his victory speech shortly after winning reelection in his increasingly conservative state, DeSantis pledged to “fight the woke in the legislature,” “fight the woke in the schools,” and to “fight the woke in the corporations.”

One of his lawyers later clarified that the word “woke” means “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

As a constitutional matter, a governor is allowed to give speeches arguing that the United States is somehow miraculously immune from systemic injustice. He may sign legislation repealing programs intended to cure these injustices. He may appoint officials to public school boards that share his belief that the US is immune to these injustices. And he may even enact policies that help perpetuate these injustices, assuming that those policies violate neither the state nor federal constitution.

But DeSantis goes much further. He wields the government’s sovereign powers to sanction speech he does not like, and to punish institutions that criticize him. DeSantis, in other words, does not seem content to simply enact policies that hew to a right-wing economic or social vision. He wishes to use the sovereign powers of government to shape public discourse itself — punishing some ideas, rewarding others, and conscripting public schools and universities into his culture war.

To be fair, DeSantis is hardly unique among Republican state governors in this regard — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), for example, signed legislation targeting social media companies that is even more aggressive than Florida’s. But DeSantis is also widely viewed as a leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, so he is uniquely positioned to take his speech war national if elected president.

Much, though admittedly not all, of DeSantis’s agenda clearly violates the First Amendment. The government may not punish its critics for their speech. It may not, as a federal appeals court explained in a decision blocking a Florida social media law, seize control of content moderation at Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. And, while Florida does have some control over what state-employed teachers and professors say in their classrooms, the government cannot terrorize those instructors with vague laws that do not communicate what sort of classroom instruction is permitted and what is forbidden.

But even if the courts enforce the First Amendment with vigor — a prospect that will grow increasingly uncertain if DeSantis starts appointing federal judges or justices — at least some of DeSantis’s action are lawful, even if they are ill-advised. Nothing in the Constitution, for example, prevents DeSantis from doling out government jobs to bad-faith actors like Rufo.

[indy]

With a couple of obvious exceptions.