In Steve Bannon vs. Pope Francis?, E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post points out that Bannon is hot for a religious Crusade, yes, with a capital “C,” and perhaps doesn’t think Pope Francis is up to the job:
Stephen K. Bannon disrupted American politics and helped elect Donald Trump as president. Will he disrupt the Roman Catholic Church by joining forces with right-wing Catholics who oppose Pope Francis?
Bannon’s dark vision contrasts sharply with the sunny disposition of a pope who has chided “sourpusses” and “querulous and disillusioned pessimists.”
Bannon believes that “the Judeo-Christian West is in a crisis.” He calls for a return of “the church militant” who will “fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity,” which threatens to “completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.”
Where Francis has insisted on dialogue with Muslims, Bannon points to “the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam” and reaches as far back as the eighth century to praise “forefathers” who defeated Islam on the battlefield and “kept it out of the world, whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places.”
Of course, the eighth century is where Bannon and some of the other right-wing detritus the Pr*sident Trump has scooped up to run his regime would like to take us in so many ways.
Jessica Valenti at The Guardian writes—Elizabeth Warren won't be silenced – and neither will American women:
Senate Republicans seem to be under the mistaken impression that having elected a notorious misogynist as president means that they can stifle women’s voices without anyone noticing or caring.
That’s the only explanation I can muster for why they thought that it was acceptable – or strategically sound – to silence Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday night during a debate over Jeff Sessions’ nomination as attorney general. Republicans really must have thought it was in their best interest. They really must not be paying attention. [...]
After being silenced, Warren took to Facebook Live to read the letter instead; at last check it’s been watched more than 6m times. The censure by Republicans only served to shine a spotlight on Warren, and Scott King’s, message. It was a reminder that no matter what Trump does, no matter what measures Republicans make take – women will persist.
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II at The Nation writes—The Silencing of Coretta Scott King Is an Act of Systemic Racism:
On Tuesday night, during debate about the nomination of Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Republican extremists silenced Senator Elizabeth Warren as she was discussing Sessions’s record. They did not object to the facts she cited. They refused to hear them.
This is what systemic racism looks like in America.
As part of her remarks, Senator Warren read from Coretta Scott King’s 1986 letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing the nomination of Sessions to a federal judgeship. The letter was never entered into the record by then–Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond.
Mrs. King’s words, however, were based on facts she had observed about Sessions’s beliefs and conduct. She knew, for example, that as US Attorney Sessions had tried to prosecute one of her late husband’s pallbearers for helping elderly citizens vote in Alabama. Mrs. King knew that her husband had died for standing up to men like Jeff Sessions. She wasn’t attacking his character or pretending to know what was in his heart. She had witnessed the heart of his policy.
Susan Chira at The New York Times writes—Elizabeth Warren Was Told to Be Quiet. Women Can Relate:
Was there a woman who didn’t recognize herself in the specter of Elizabeth Warren silenced by a roomful of men?
The explosion of indignation, mockery and free publicity that greeted Tuesday night’s move to prevent Senator Warren from reading a letter about Senator Jeff Sessions written by Coretta Scott King resonates with so many women precisely because they have been there, over and over again. At a meeting where you speak up, only to be cut off by a man. Where your ideas are ignored until a man repeats them and then they are pure genius — or, simply, acknowledged.
Being interrupted or ignored, and being one of the few women in the room, can be both inhibiting and enraging. You check your own perception: Was I being too aggressive, or did I really have a point? Is this about being a woman, or something else?
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—Trump’s Leading Rivals Wear Robes:
On Wednesday, while speaking to a gathering of police chiefs, Trump again lashed out at the court and the appeals process, reading a section of law and sniping, “A bad high school student would understand this.”
Trump should know. As a child, he got into so much trouble and became such an embarrassment to his parents that they sent him up the river, quite literally, to a military academy in the Hudson Valley for high school.
This constant, lowbrow attack on the courts is not an insignificant thing and not without consequence. And it is a major break from the way modern presidents have related to and dissented from the opinions of the judicial branch.
Rebecca Leber at Mother Jones writes—Republicans Beg Their Party to Finally Do Something About Global Warming:
You wouldn’t know it by looking at Congress or the White House, but the GOP isn’t in complete lockstep when it comes to climate change denial. The deniers just happen to be the ones who hold all the political power within the party. They drown out the other side—the conservatives who are urging their party to actually do something about global warming.
The contrast was especially clear this week. Just a day after Republicans on the House science committee accused government scientists of fabricating climate research, a group of Republican luminaries who don’t currently hold public office held a press conference calling for climate action. Specifically, they released a report—titled “The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends”—in which they advocated a tax on carbon emissions.
The report, which was published by the Climate Leadership Council, calls for a tax on carbon starting at $40 per ton and rising over time, with revenue returned to taxpayers in the form of quarterly Social Security dividends. [...]
Dana Milbank at The Washington Post writes—What are Republicans going to do about Obamacare? ‘No idea.’
What Republicans don’t seem to have come to terms with is that, as a political matter, they already will be held responsible for whatever happens to health-care markets, even if they don’t introduce a replacement soon. An executive order Trump signed relaxing enforcement of Obamacare, and the constant talk of repeal, have injected a debilitating uncertainty into the health-care market — essentially beginning the unraveling of Obamacare with nothing to replace it.
The executive order Trump signed directed federal agencies to do what they could to “minimize” the burdens of the act by exercising their authority “to waive, defer, grant exemptions from or delay” parts of the law. Insurers have warned that the uncertainty is deterring them from participating in Obamacare. The head of Anthem told Wall Street analysts that he would be deciding about “extracting” his company from health-care exchanges if it doesn’t see stability.
This means that Republicans, while waiting for their alternative to “congeal,” have already set in motion the disintegration of the current health-insurance market.
Gary Younge at The Guardian writes—Trump fears terrorists, but more Americans are shot dead by toddlers:
Shortly before leaving America for Britain, after 12 years as a correspondent, the relative of one of my son’s friends politely declined my invitation to visit us in London.
“I don’t think I could go to Europe,” she said. “It doesn’t seem safe.”
Try as I might I could not suppress a laugh. My wife and children are African American. I am British. We were living in Chicago.
“The odds of you being shot dead here are far greater than of you being killed in a terrorist attack over there.” [...]
The reality is that an American is at least twice as likely to be shot dead by a toddlerthan killed by a terrorist. In 2014 88 Americans were shot dead, on average, every day: 58 killed themselves while 30 were murdered. In that same year 18 Americans were killed by terrorist attacks in the US. Put more starkly: more Americans were killed by firearms roughly every five hours than were killed by terrorists in an entire year.
Lucia Graves at The Guardian writes—Betsy DeVos's confirmation is a blow. But there is an important silver lining:
On Tuesday afternoon, DeVos was confirmed as education secretary in the closest vote yet for one of Donald Trump’s nominees. But to set the bar for victory at denying nominees confirmation is to set the bar too high. Only one such rejection has taken place in recent history and even that case study was only as recent as the 1980s. [...]
Whatever voters’ motivations were, the Capitol switchboard was flooded with calls from around the country from concerned constituents. It was one of the most impressive displays of civic involvement in the workings of the Senate in recent memory.
A staffer for Bob Casey said the senator had received 80,000 letters from constituents, a 900% increase in correspondence over the previous year; Mark Warner said his office had received 41,000 calls specifically in opposition to DeVos; Tim Kaine’s office put the number of letters and calls in opposition to her at 25,000. And on Thursday, Senator Brian Schatz tweeted that the last three days had been the busiest in congressional switchboard history.
This is the same kind of impressive organization we saw in the lead-up to the Women’s March on Washington.
Zoë Carpenter at The Nation writes—Betsy DeVos Has Been Confirmed. Now the Fight Really Begins:
Several years ago, billionaire Republican donor Betsy DeVos wrote that she’d “decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence.” Instead, she and her family would concede the point: “We expect a return on our investment.”
DeVos, whose family has given as much as $200 million to the Republican Party, collected her return on Tuesday, when the Senate voted—barely—to confirm her as secretary of education. With two Republican senators splitting with their party, the Senate deadlocked at 50-50, and Vice President Mike Pence had to cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of DeVos. Of the 50 senators who voted to confirm her, nearly half have received money from her or her family. (And eight, by the way, are up for reelection in 2018.) [...]
Though the wave of opposition to DeVos couldn’t block her confirmation, it did prove that there is a fierce, widespread constituency of support for public education, even in red and purple states. DeVos—her inexperience, her hard-line positions, her transparent embrace of pay-to-play politics—crystallized the debate about privatized education, a debate muddied in recent years by the fact that the Obama administration itself peddled a softer version. The question now is whether the anti-DeVos constituency can be mobilized in future education-policy debates, particularly at the state and local level where most K-12 policy is set. “No nominee has united Republicans and Democrats the way DeVos has,” Lily Eskelsen García, the president of the National Education Association, said in a statement after Tuesday’s vote. Thanks to the surge of activism against DeVos, the union was able to build up its roster of advocates to call on in the future. “We are going to watch what Betsy DeVos does. And we are going to hold her accountable for the actions and decisions she makes on behalf of the more than 50 million students in our nation’s public schools,” García said.
Steven J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff at The New Republic write—Trump’s Fictional Crises and the Real Threats to American Democracy:
In his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump has actively worked to dismantle the institutional safeguards built into the modern presidency. He has restructured the National Security Council to sideline knowledgeable participants in policy debates who might challenge his impulses and those of his inner circle. He has ignored the interagency process in writing executive orders, leading to political firestorm and bureaucratic chaos. He has attacked the administrative independence of civil servants.
He has done all of this in the name of addressing a supposed condition of “American carnage” of rampant crime, illegal immigration, terrorism, and unemployment. As many have noted, these crises are almost entirely fabricated. [...]
How disturbing it is, then, to see Trump, within a week of his inauguration, using the very institutional mechanisms that were designed to preserve democracy in actual crises to undermine constitutional order in response to fictional crises. We should be alert to the strategic fabrication of more such crises by this administration. As Evan McMullin has warned, the president will likely endeavor to create a threat as “broad, pervasive, nebulous, and yet urgent as possible.” And unlike the reformers of the mid-twentieth century, Trump’s goal will be to thwart constitutional protections rather than to sustain them.