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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 month

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Jack Ohman, Sacramento Bee

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 26, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 27, 2024

At about 1:30 this morning, local time, the Dali, a 985-foot (300 m) container ship operating under a Singapore flag, struck the steel Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, that spans the lower Patapsco River and outer Baltimore Harbor. The bridge immediately collapsed.

Eight maintenance workers were on the bridge repairing potholes when the ship hit. Two were rescued from the water, but the other six remain missing. Search and rescue operations were complicated by twisted metal and debris from the collapsed bridge. This evening, the Coast Guard called off its search. Tomorrow morning, divers will begin recovery efforts.

It is possible there were motorists on the bridge, too, but fewer than there might otherwise have been. Crew members issued a “Mayday” call—an internationally recognized word meaning distress—that Maryland police heard. At 1:27, police radio recorded an officer saying a ship had lost control of its steering as it approached the bridge, and to stop traffic and evacuate the area. There were cars submerged in the water, but they may have belonged to the construction workers.

The loss of the bridge will tangle traffic and disrupt supply chains. Named for the Maryland lawyer who in 1814 wrote the poem that became the national anthem, the Francis Scott Key bridge carries I-695, the Baltimore Beltway, and is used by about 30,000 people a day.

The Port of Baltimore is one of the nation’s largest shipping hubs, especially for both imports and exports of cars and light trucks. About 850,000 vehicles go through that port every year. So does more than 20% of the nation’s coal exports. In 2023 the port moved a record-breaking $80 billion worth of foreign cargo. Now the shipping lane is closed and must be cleared of debris.

“There is no question this will be a major and protracted impact on supply chains,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said from Baltimore today.

Perhaps learning from the 2023 East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, when the government response was fast but quiet and thus opened a window for right-wing complaints they weren’t doing enough, the administration was out front today. Buttigieg rushed to the scene from a trip out West, and Maryland governor Wes Moore told reporters Buttigieg had called him at 3:30 am, just two hours after the crash.

By around 6:00 am, the National Transportation Safety Board already had a team of 24 people on the scene to launch an investigation into the cause of the collision.

Speaking today, President Joe Biden said: “I’ve directed my team to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge as soon as…humanly possible. And we’re going to work hand in hand…to support Maryland, whatever they ask for. And we’re going to work with our partners in Congress to make sure the state gets the support it needs. It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect…the Congress to support my effort.”

Former member of President Obama’s 2012 campaign Jason Karsh noted Biden’s speech and said on social media: “[B]ecause Biden got infrastructure spending done for the first time in over a generation, and because [Pennsylvania] was able to rebuild that bridge that collapsed in record time, Dem[ocrat]s have the credibility to say things like this. Competence in government matters.”

It remains far too soon for any solid understanding of what caused the deadly crash.

Despite the impossibility of solid information in the hours immediately after the collision—or perhaps because of it—verified accounts on X (formerly Twitter) began spreading conspiracy theories. They posted that the accident was linked to terrorism, Jewish people, or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. “Did anti-white business practices cause this disaster?” one posted. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones wrote that the collision was “deliberate” and that “WW3 has already started.”

Technology reporter Taylor Lorenz, who studies social media patterns, explained in the Washington Post that many of these accounts are “engagement farming.” This is the practice of posting extremist comments to generate attention, which can then be monetized by, for example, getting a cut of advertising that appears near those comments. Comments with heavy engagement can receive thousands of dollars.

For a long time now, America’s political right has riled people up with wild political rhetoric to get them to buy stuff. Just today, Trump began to hawk Bibles for $59.99, plus shipping and handling, with a video message saying “Religion and Christianity are the biggest things missing from this country, and I truly believe we need to bring them back…. That’s why our country’s going haywire—we’ve lost religion in our country.”

That system appeared to be in play as Trump supporters apparently flocked to today’s public offering of the Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind the Truth Social app, sending the stock upward 16%. That surge would value the company at more than $7 billion, although in the first nine months of last year it had only about $3 million in sales and lost nearly $50 million. Julian Klymochko, founder and CEO of Accelerate Financial Technologies, told NPR’s Rafael Nam that the $7 billion valuation “is completely detached from any sort of fundamentals.”

Buying stock in the company is “more of a political movement or just a speculative meme stock [a stock driven by social media] that’s completely detached or unrelated to the underlying business fundamentals of Truth Social,” Klymochko said.

As well as convincing supporters to buy products, extremist rhetoric can push them toward violence. Yesterday, John Keller, the head of a Department of Justice task force set up to protect election workers, told reporters Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen has put the U.S. in a “new era” in which election workers are “scapegoated, targeted, and attacked.”

Today, on his social media network, Trump attacked individuals related to his upcoming election interference case. He lashed out at one of the prosecutors on Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s staff who previously worked for the Justice Department; Judge Juan Merchan, the judge in his upcoming criminal case for election interference; and the judge’s daughter. Of the judge and his daughter, Trump told his angry followers: “These COUNTRY DESTROYING SCOUNDRELS & THUGS HAVE NO CASE AGAINST ME. WITCH HUNT!”

Legal analyst Joyce White Vance of Civil Discourse called out Trump’s “rank effort at intimidating the judge by threatening his family,” which she said “merits a gag order but also serious pushback from [Republican] leadership—which we know won't come.”

Republican leadership indeed stayed quiet, but the judge noted Trump’s pattern of using “threatening, inflammatory, [and] denigrating” statements against individuals in his legal cases and placed a gag order on him. Merchan noted that in the past, Trump’s statements had intimidated the individual targeted and required them to hire protection.

Trump can still talk about Merchan or Bragg, but he cannot comment on any attorney, court staff member, or family member of prosecutors or lawyers. He can’t make statements about any potential or actual juror.

Other news today suggests that Americans outside the MAGA bubble are turning against the poisonous politics that appeals to fear and hatred so its perpetrators can gain money or power.

The outrage over NBC’s hiring of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel was so strong that today the chair of NBC News, Cesar Conde, emailed staff to tell them he had “decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor.” McDaniel had trafficked in lies to support Trump and had worked with him to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

When the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine today, observers thought the justices seemed inclined to back away from the decision of extremist antiabortion judge Matthew Kacsmaryk taking the abortion drug mifepristone off the market. Antiabortion activists have long sought to ban abortion nationwide, but a strong majority of Americans support reproductive rights and have made their wishes known at the ballot box.

Voters’ frustration with the extremists who have captured the Republican Party appeared to be behind the results in today’s special election for a seat in the Alabama legislature. There, voters in a swing district elected a Democrat, who ran on protecting abortion access, to replace a Republican. In 2022 that Democrat, Marilyn Lands, won about 45% of the vote. Today she won almost 65% of it.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#letters from an american #Heather Cox Richardson #infrastructure #the courts #corrupt SCOTUS #Ronna McDaniel #GOP extremism #Baltimore Bridge

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tomorrowusa · 6 months

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Pink will be distributing banned books at Florida concerts. In effect, she is telling Ron DeSantis to go fuck himself with his white boots.

Grammy-winning singer Pink is taking the fight against censorship to where she works. The pop star on Monday announced she was giving away thousands of banned books at concert stops in Florida, where book-banning has thrived under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). In a partnership with PEN America and Florida bookseller Books & Books, Pink will distribute 2,000 copies of “The Family Book” by Todd Parr, “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman, “Beloved” by Toni Morrison and a book from the “Girls Who Code” series at her Tuesday and Wednesday shows in Miami and Sunrise, according to a release. All are on the free-expression advocacy group’s index of books that were banned at some point. “Books have held a special joy for me from the time I was a child, and that’s why I am unwilling to stand by and watch while books are banned by schools,” the “Trustfall” performer said. “It’s especially hateful to see authorities take aim at books about race and racism and against LGBTQ authors and those of color. We have made so many strides toward equality in this country and no one should want to see this progress reversed. This is why I am supporting PEN America in its work and why I agree with them: no more banned books.” Pink’s move comes on the heels of Florida’s Collier County removing hundreds of titles from its public school libraries after the Florida legislature passed a bill earlier this year permitting schools to restrict classroom materials about gender and sexuality.

A reminder that if you are between 13 and 21 you can apply for a virtual library card from the Brooklyn Public Library which will enable you to read ebooks banned by Ron DeSantis and other extremist freedom-hating Republican governors. Details are here in the green box on the upper right.

Florida accounts for more than 40% of book bans amid an overall rise nationally, according to the advocacy group. One historian has said the restrictions are reminiscent of communism.

Republicans are indeed acting like communists. It may be one of the reasons so many of them are fans of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin.

@neil-gaiman

#pink #florida #ron desantis #republicans #gop extremism #freedom-hating extremist gop governors #banned books #censorship #lgbtq+#brooklyn public library #pen america

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thatheathen · 1 year

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via ErinInTheMorn | Erin Reed Substack | House Bill 0009

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bouncinghedgehog · 5 months

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#facism #donald trump #gop #republicans #far right extremism

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shutinthenutouse · 1 month

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sher-ee · 19 days

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Women - WAKE UP!

This will not be the end of their tirade.

They will come for birth control.

They will come for LGBTQ and marriage.

They will come for civil rights.

#donald trump #gop #republicans #extremists #right wing extremism #women #history repeats itself #vote biden #vote blue #save yourselves #abortion #pro choice #lgbtqia #civil rights

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nando161mando · 8 months

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antidrumpfs · 2 months

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youtube

North Carolina’s GOP governor nominee wants to go back to an America where women can’t vote

Rachel Maddow, host of “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, joins Nicolle Wallace to discuss newly resurfaced video from the GOP nominee for governor in North Carolina, Mark Robinson, where he states he wants women to not be able to vote, which is just another example of the extreme rhetoric coming from Robinson, and how he has become an acceptable gubernatorial candidate in a swing state for today’s Republican party.

#right wing extremism #republicons #rethuglicans #fuck the gop #Youtube

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queerism1969 · 5 months

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#conservative #queer #lgbtq #lgbtq community #lesbian #nonbinary #sapphic #lgbtqia #lgbt pride #nonbinary lesbian #conservatives #conservatism #gop #republican #government #right wing extremism #gay girls #transphobes #pronouns

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miss-envy · 8 months

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@ coyoteannie

#fuck the gop #facism #project 2025 #conservatives #leftist #far right #lgbtqia #election 2024 #vote blue #homophobia #lgbtqplus #trump is a threat to democracy #biden administration #gop #liberals #right wing terrorism #right wing extremism #transphobes #transphobia

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 25 days

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 3, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 04, 2024

The election of 2000 was back in the news this week, when Nate Cohn of the New York Times reminded readers of his newsletter, using a map by data strategist and consultant Matthew C. Isbell, that the unusual butterfly ballot design in Palm Beach County that year siphoned off at least 2,000 votes intended for Democratic candidate Al Gore to far-right candidate Pat Buchanan.

Those 2,000 votes were enough to decide the election, “all things being equal,” Cohn wrote. But of course, they weren’t equal: in 1998 a purge of the Florida voter rolls had disproportionately disenfranchised Black voters, making them ten times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected.

That ballot and that purge gave Republican candidate George W. Bush the electoral votes from Florida, putting him into the White House although he had lost the popular vote by more than half a million votes.

Revisiting the 2000 election reminds us that manipulating the vote through voter suppression or the mechanics of an election in even small ways can undermine the will of the people.

A poll out today from the Associated Press/NORC showed that the vast majority of Americans agree about the importance of the fundamental principles of our democracy. Ninety-eight percent of Americans think the right to vote is extremely important, very important, or somewhat important. Only 2% think it is “not too important.” The split was similar with regard to “the right of everyone to equal protection under the law”: 98% of those polled thought it was extremely, very, or somewhat important, while only 2% thought it was not too important.

Recent election results suggest that voters don’t support the extremism of the current Republican Party. In local elections in the St. Louis, Missouri, area on Tuesday, voters rejected all 13 right-wing candidates for school boards, and in Enid, Oklahoma, voters recalled a city council member who participated in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and had ties to white supremacist groups.

Seemingly aware of the growing backlash to their policies, MAGA Republicans are backing away from them, at least in public. Earlier this year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis called for making it harder to ban books after a few activists systematically challenged dozens of books in districts where they had no children in the schools—although he blamed teachers, administrators, and “the news media” for creating a “hoax.”

Today, lawyers for the state of Texas told a federal appeals court that state legislators might have gone “too far” with their immigration law that made it a state crime to enter Texas illegally and allowed state judges to order immigrants to be deported. (Mexico had flatly refused to accept deported immigrants from other countries under this new law.) Nonetheless, Arizona legislators have passed a similar bill—that Democratic governor Katie Hobbs refuses to sign into law—and are considering another measure that would allow landowners to threaten or shoot people who cross their property to get into the U.S.

Indeed, the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party seem less inclined to moderate their stances than either to pollute popular opinion or to prevent their opponents from voting.

While Trump is hedging about his stance on abortion—after bragging repeatedly that he was the person responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade—MAGA Republicans have made their unpopular abortion stance even stronger.

Emily Cochrane of the New York Times reported today that the hospital at the center of the decision by the Alabama state supreme court that embryos used for in vitro fertilization have the same rights and protections as children has ended its IVF services. And on Monday, Florida’s supreme court, which Florida governor Ron DeSantis packed with extremists, upheld a ban on abortion after 15 weeks and allowed a new six-week abortion ban—before most women know they’re pregnant—to go into effect in 30 days.

In the past, people seeking abortions had gravitated to Florida because its constitution upheld the right to privacy, which protected abortion. But now the Florida Supreme Court has decided the constitution does not protect the right to abortion. Caroline Kitchener explained in the Washington Post that in the past, more than 80,000 women a year accessed abortion services in Florida. This ban will make it nearly impossible to get an abortion in the American South.

Anya Cook, who in 2022 nearly died after she was denied an abortion under Florida’s 15-week ban, gave Kitchener a message for Florida women experiencing pregnancy complications: “Run,” she said. “Run, because you have no help here.”

Extremist Republicans have managed to put their policies into place not by winning a majority and passing laws through Congress, but by creating cases that they then take to sympathetic judges. This system, known as “judge shopping,” has so perverted lawmaking that on March 12 the Judicial Conference, the body that makes policy for federal courts, announced a new rule that any lawsuit seeking to overturn statewide or national policies would be randomly assigned among a larger pool of judges.

On March 29, the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas, where many such cases are filed, told Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that he would not adhere to the new rules.

Rather than moderating their stances, extremist Republicans are doubling down on their attempt to create dirt on the president. With their impeachment effort against President Joe Biden in embarrassing ruins, House Republicans are casting around for another issue to hurt the Democrats before the 2024 election.

Jennifer Haberkorn of Politico reported today that in the last month, House Republican Committee chairs have sent almost 50 oversight requests to a variety of departments and agencies. Haberkorn noted that there is “significant political pressure on the party to produce results after months of promising it would uncover evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors involving Biden.”

But it is Trump, not Biden, who is in the news for questionable behavior. In The Guardian today, Hugo Lowell reported that Trump’s social media company was kept afloat in 2022 “by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.”

There is more trouble for the social media company in the news today, as two of its investors pleaded guilty to being part of an insider-trading scheme involving the company’s stock. They admitted they had secret, inside information about the merger between Trump Media and Digital World Acquisition Corporation and had used that insider information to make profitable trades.

Meanwhile, Trump is suing Truth Social’s founders to force them out of leadership and make them give up their shares in the company. His is a countersuit to their lawsuit accusing him of trying to dilute the company’s stock.

Of more immediate concern for Trump, Judge Juan Merchan denied yet another attempt by Trump—his eighth, according to prosecutors—to delay his election interference trial. The trial is scheduled to begin April 15.

Finally, in an illustration of extremists aiming not to moderate their stances but to impose the will of the minority on the majority, Republicans are putting in place rules to make it easier for individuals to challenge voters, removing them from the voter rolls before the 2024 election.

Marc Elias of Democracy Docket noted today that states and local governments have regular programs to keep voter registration accurate, while right-wing activists are operating on a different agenda. In one 70,000-person town in Michigan, a single activist challenged more than a thousand voters, Elias reported, and in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, right-wing activists have already challenged 16,000 voters and intend to challenge another 10,000.

One group boasted that their system “can and will change elections in America forever.”

Rather like the election of 2000.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters from An American #Heather Cox Richardson #political #history #Democracy Docket #voting #voter suppression #abortion ban #GOP extremism #election 2024 #purging voter rolls #Election 2000

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tomorrowusa · 1 year

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A poor timing doubleheader for Republicans this weekend.

The NRA is holding its convention in Indianapolis from Friday the 14th through Sunday the 16th. Republican speakers will be trying to outdo each other in showing their support for assault weapons. Donald Trump, Jim “Gym” Jordan, Kristi Noem, and Mike Pence are among scheduled speakers. I wonder if Trump will be carrying a noose and chasing Pence around at the convention site. Because of recent shootings, the high GOP high profile will be getting more attention than usual.

Meanwhile in Nashville, that’s NASHVILLE – ground zero for disenfranchisement, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is hosting a retreat for wealthy donors. Donald Trump and other GOP luminaries will be making pitches for big donations.

Republicans are openly distressed about the prospect of losing younger voters over their stances on abortion, firearms and democracy.

By week’s end, their challenges on those three fronts could grow worse.

Days after a mass shooting in Louisville, Ky., many declared and undeclared 2024 candidates will be brandishing their Second Amendment bona fides at the National Rifle Association’s annual leadership forum in Indianapolis. From there, a number of the candidates will travel south on I-65, where they will make their cases to Republican National Committee grandees for a gathering in Nashville — the site not only of another mass shooting, but also the state GOP-led ejection of two Black Democratic lawmakers last week.

So on a three-day weekend the GOP will be drawing lots of attention to two of the pillars which prop up the Republican Party these days: billionaire oligarchs and assault weapons fanatics.

The cattle calls in Indiana and Tennessee, on the books for months and aimed at reaffirming core principles for the party, come at a moment when there are growing questions from within about its direction.

These are the current core principles of the GOP: TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP. There's been sporadic talk about reform or a change in tone for the GOP ever since the Bush administration. Remember the “autopsy” after the 2012 election? It went nowhere. The party is in the grip of extremists who just won’t let go.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old presidential candidate and wealthy biotech entrepreneur, warned that the party would not succeed “by compromising on its core principles.”

“We should be at once unapologetic on principles, and also live up to the principle instead of just uttering the slogan,” he said in an interview this week.

See!

If you urge the slightest deviation from GOP extremism you are branded a RINO and get challenged by a MAGA zombie at the next primary.

Here’s a list of “special guests” expected at the GOP billionaire jamboree in Nashville. Via @jdawsey1.