History is going to be made a few hours from now at the Senate Judiciary Committee. The controlling Republicans of that committee are men who have for some time shown themselves deft at laying the foundations for tyranny, though they choose innocuous labels for it. A key element of this is sticking rightwing and ultra-rightwing judges into every nook and cranny of the federal court system.
For that reason, they’d very much like to have avoided the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford about a man they figured just a dozen days ago would already be the 114th justice appointed to the Supreme Court. If her answers to the queries the Republicans’ hired gun asks are as clear and powerful and believable as her prepared statement, sending the full Senate a recommendation that Kavanaugh be confirmed will require them to put the depth of their hypocrisy and ideological corruption on national display. While this happens fairly often, this time it’s just six weeks before the midterm elections that polls and analysts already view as potentially disastrous for the GOP.
All or almost all of these committee Republicans made up their minds well before Brett Kavanaugh testified to the committee. They likely will vote to recommend his confirmation regardless of what Ford says. Sen. Lindsey Graham, for instance, says 1,000 accusations of sexual predation by Kavanaugh will not change his vote.
In a just world, Judge Kavanaugh would have withdrawn his name from nomination days ago, or had it withdrawn for him.
But that’s not the dimension we live in. In a just world, after all, the moderate Merrick Garland would have been the ninth justice on the Court for two years by now. In a just world, a woman who reports a sexual attack would not be treated like the perp. In a just world, the Judiciary Committee would pause while the allegations of Ford and the other two named women who have come forward are investigated.
If any of the 11 white male Republicans on the committee actually had the nation’s best interests at heart, the best interests of women, Kavanaugh’s extremist political philosophy and the roster of his lies under oath would already have stirred them to block his ascension from Circuit judgeship to highest Court in the land. But his extremism is their extremism. It bolsters the policies these marionettes legislate for corporate advantage. They are diligent in their purveyance and maintenance of racial, gender, economic, and environmental injustices. If confirmed, the newest associate justice will align with the rightmost members already on the Court, providing the five votes needed for some wretched rulings. One of those being, of course, Roe v. Wade.
But, in the face of seething anger from millions of women over the way Dr. Ford has been treated and characterized, if at least some Republicans on and off the committee can’t detach themselves from their profound misogyny for five minutes and avoid greeting her testimony with their notorious tin-ear response to the #MeToo movement—and also avoid trying to turn Kavanaugh into the victim—the hearing could very well make the disaster coming for them at the polls in November even worse than the smartest of them already fear.
Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian writes—Trump has given women yet another reason not to report rape:
President Donald Trump knows a thing or two about sexual misconduct. He has, after all, been accused of sexual harassment by at least 19 women. On Friday he decided to summon his expertise in this area and weigh in on the sexual assault accusations Dr Christine Blasey Ford has leveled against the US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents,” Trump tweeted. “I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”
I have no doubt that Trump is morally and intellectually bankrupt but, even so, attacking the credibility of a private citizen on Twitter is low. And tweeting that a 15-year-old girl, as Ford was at the time of the alleged attack, would immediately have gone to the authorities about the crime, is willfully stupid. It ignores mountains of evidence that show most victims of assault don’t report the crime. For example, according to 2016 data by the Bureau of Justice Crime Victimization Survey, analyzed by FiveThirtyEight, less than a quarter of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to the police. These sorts of crimes are the least likely of any to be reported.
If you’re wondering why this is, just look at Twitter. Trump’s statement provoked a viral hashtag #WhyIDidntReportIt, in which sexual assault survivors, including a number of celebrities and politicians, shared their stories.
Nesrine Malik at The Guardian writes—Why I find the Kavanaugh/Ford case so unsettling:
It’s hard to describe how it feels to be a woman living through the #MeToo era. Not at the centre of anything, but reflecting on your personal experiences. In the beginning I remember just a dark rage, followed by a giddiness that something really did seem to be changing. Then a forced rationality, an awareness that things must not swing too far just because emotions were high and, by God, men had it coming.
But lately, it’s just been surprising. For me and many of the women around me, the Brett Kavanaugh case in the US has triggered some unexpectedly profound emotions. There is something of the horror movie about the story of how Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee stands accused of a sexual assault that was allegedly committed more than 30 years ago.
It reminds many of us how there are men waiting to resurface from the depths of our memories; perhaps it is the guy who “playfully” sexually bullied you in secondary school now showing up on social media, all cheerful, happily established with a picture-perfect family and a completely different recollection of your interaction.
He will ask genuinely why the two of you never stayed in touch. Or maybe someone who ruined your reputation in university by making up stories (with just enough truth in them to rob you of complete deniability) popping up in the public eye, perhaps not as a nominee to the highest court in the land, but a lauded expert, an actor, a journalist or political activist, and suddenly you’re 17 and burning with shame again. Despite all your steel and resolution, all the vulnerabilities that were there when that early sexual undermining occurred are still in there, frozen in time, stacked inside you like babushka dolls.
Melanie McFarland writes—Brett Kavanaugh on Fox News Channel’s “The Story”: “I’m the one telling the truth”:
… ever since Donald Trump’s ascendance to the presidency, Fox News’ role as a mouthpiece for the Republican party has been further cemented to serve very specific and narrow right-wing agenda. This is why the appearance of Brett Kavanaugh, a nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States, is being called out not only as being unprecedented but alarming, and rightly so.
On Monday Kavanaugh sat for an interview with Martha MacCallum, host of “The Story with Martha MacCallum ,” with his wife Ashley Estes Kavanaugh sitting beside him. Prior to the interview’s airing Fox released strategically selected excerpts dutifully picked up by various media outlets, including what the Washington Post framed as his “deeply personal” admission that he was sexually inexperienced during the time periods in which his accusers say he assaulted them. [...]
Also, “America is about fairness and hearing from both sides,” which he followed with, at one point, this declaration: “I’m the one telling the truth.”
Kavanaugh also insisted of Deborah Ramirez’s claim, which emerged Sunday in The New Yorker, that if it had happened, “it would have been the talk of campus.” The problem with that assertion is, it was. A person would just have to be willing to read the story from whence Ramirez’s claim originates to see that. Jane Mayer, who co-authored article with Ronan Farrow, informed NBC news that emails about the incident circulated between Yale alumni who were classmates of Kavanaugh and Ramirez, which is how the media and congressional officials caught wind of Ramirez's account.
But The New Yorker is part of the liberal mainstream media. By appearing on Fox, Kavanaugh's one-sided version of events therefore becomes the truth, because he says it is.
E. J. Dionne at The Washington Post writes—The Kavanaugh vote is bigger than politics:
To this point, Republican leaders have been trying to railroad Kavanaugh through. They’ve resisted any new investigations before Thursday’s scheduled public hearing where both he and Christine Blasey Ford, who alleged that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her, will testify.
Yet the defeat of Kavanaugh might be the best electoral outcome for Republicans, especially in pro-Trump states where Democratic incumbents are defending Senate seats.
The religious right is trying to keep Republican senators in line by arguing that failing to get Kavanaugh on the court would dispirit the GOP base. But the opposite may be true because these same leaders would surely mobilize their supporters to take revenge on Democrats were Kavanaugh defeated.
Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine writes—Julie Swetnick’s Allegations Likely to Finish Off Brett Kavanaugh:
On what possible grounds now can Republicans maintain their current stance, which denies the need for either a renewed FBI background check into the charges or the testimony of alleged accomplice Mark Judge? All three accusers have now asked to testify before the Senate. Do Republicans deny some of them? Or do they let their planned he-said-she-said show devolve into he said-she said-she said-she said?
As the heady brew of threatened male prerogative — the principle that withdrawing Kavanaugh would expose any man to such charges — and partisan tribalism wears off, cold calculation will soon set in. The odds that many people are conspiring to lie about Kavanaugh are growing ever more slender. And the odds are growing that Kavanaugh committed to a lie, and sunk ever deeper into it, knowing that he would either have a lifetime appointment to the most prestigious legal job in America or be disgraced, and that is why he has refused to concede even an inch. That, too, is why he dodged a question from Fox News about letting his friend, Mark Judge, testify under oath. And Republicans will realize that there are always more Federalist Society–groomed conservative lawyers without his long trail of allegations.
Sonali Kolhatkar at TruthDig writes—Women Roar in the Face of Men Like Trump, Kavanaugh, Cosby:
It is a telling fact that the least surprising news item this week has been President Trump making himself the laughingstock of the world at the United Nations General Assembly. But aside from that predictable outcome of Trump’s presidency, several other enormously critical political clashes are expected to take place this week alone that were hard to imagine just a few years ago.
We will, first and foremost, see a fight over how seriously we take violence against women at Thursday’s Senate Judiciary hearing, at which Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the woman accusing him of attempted rape will testify. But at the same hearing, we will find out just how deep Republicans and Trump will sink into a pit of ugliness of their own creation in order to cement the position of a deeply unpopular nominee to the Supreme Court—a man who could jeopardize so many rights we take for granted.
The breathtaking pace of destruction wrought over the past two years ought to be viewed as the desperate last gasp of a defunct conservative ideology that is utterly shameless in its designs and boundless in its scope. No issues are sacrosanct when it comes to today’s Trump-supporting, card-carrying Republican Party—from every woman’s right to safety and security; to workers’ rights to living wages, decent jobs, health care and Social Security; to immigrants’ rights to safety and family; to children’s rights to breathe clean air and drink clean water; to the right of our species to be safe from a changing climate; and to so many more. No issues, that is, save for the U.S. military and white supremacist Christian fundamentalism.
Against this barrage of violent assaults, our primary weapons—and I speak as a woman—are our voices and our bodies.
Jeremi Suri at The New Republic writes—Globalism Helped Make America Great:
President Trump’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday rejected more than 70 years of American historical experience. Although the speech repeated the phrase “national interest,” it extolled a swaggering, primal ethno-racial assertiveness that echoed the hyper-nationalist militarism of two world wars: “We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable global bureaucracy. America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism.” Still more chilling for those recalling twentieth-century conflicts, the president also boasted that “our military will soon be more powerful than it has ever been before. In other words, the United States is stronger, safer, and a richer country than it was when I assumed office less than two years ago. We are standing up for America and the American people.”
The implication here is that globalism—and the United Nations itself—run counter to U.S. interests. In fact, most of the history of the past century suggests otherwise. Far from hemming in U.S. capabilities, globalism and international institutions have worked incredibly well in furthering American international objectives. And that’s probably why previous American presidents worked so hard to establish them.
Robert Reich writes—Donald Trump Has Betrayed the Working Class:
Start with his new tax law–one of the very few laws he actually got through the Republican Congress. Trump said it would likely give every American worker a wage increase of $4,000, but the typical worker’s wages have gone nowhere, which is one reason Republicans have stopped campaigning on the tax law.
Now, Trump wants to use executive action to cut taxes on the rich by an additional $100 billion.
If that weren’t enough, Trump has cut the pay of average workers. His Labor Department repealed overtime protections, at an estimated cost to workers of $1.2 billion in lost wages each year. [...]
Trump has betrayed the working class – but he still claims he’s on their side. That’s one of his biggest lies of all.
Linda Greenhouse at The New York Times writes—Don’t Forget Kavanaugh’s First Hearing : We shouldn’t allow the questions raised about the nominee in his first hearing to be submerged by the onrushing tide of scandal:
I’ve observed that many people who followed the Thomas nomination closely, even including those who retain strong feelings about the dramatic second hearing, have forgotten what happened in the first round — the real hearing, as I have persisted in calling it for the past 27 years. I don’t mean to dismiss or diminish the significance of Ms. Hill’s allegations or of the outrageous way the men of the Judiciary Committee treated her. But I do think it’s unfortunate that the cynicism and racial politics that infused the nomination of the underqualified 43-year-old Judge Thomas to a lifetime position in the seat once held by Thurgood Marshall has been erased from public memory.
It matters that the man President Bush called “the best man for the job on the merits” was unwilling or unable under the senators’ questioning to deviate an inch from his prepared talking points; that although he was a sitting federal appeals court judge (albeit for only 18 months) his knowledge of recent Supreme Court decisions was shaky at best; or that he made the implausible claim that he had never expressed a view, even in conversation, about Roe v. Wade, a precedent that he then voted, in dissent, to repudiate when the opportunity arose during his first year on the Supreme Court bench.
It matters that the man who is now the court’s senior associate justice, and who would turn the constitutional clock back to the 18th century if he ever found four colleagues to agree with him, distanced himself during his confirmation hearing from the extreme conservative views he had spent years espousing in speeches. Those were, he claimed, nothing more than the musings of a “part-time political theorist.” Pressed to explain his position that there was a “natural law” higher than the Constitution, he uttered perhaps the most candid line of the entire proceeding: “I certainly never thought I’d be having this discussion.”
David Sarasohn at The New Republic writes—The Rise of West Coast Democrats How a different type of American liberalism could lead the party to victory:
In July, Jeff Merkley, the junior senator from Oregon, traveled to Iowa. The trip was his third in twelve months—a sign, political commentators said, that he was preparing to launch a presidential bid.
Nobody from the West Coast has ever won the Democratic presidential nomination. But two years from now, at least six will likely be competing for it: a mayor, a governor, at least two senators, even a few business executives. Tom Steyer, a venture capitalist from San Francisco, has already spent $40 million on a national ad campaign calling for President Trump’s impeachment and has held town halls in Iowa and New Hampshire. Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington, headed to Iowa in June, where he gave the keynote speech at a Democratic Party function outside Des Moines. Eric Garcetti, the photogenic mayor of Los Angeles, was there just two months before. On a swing through the Northeast in May, Garcetti also stopped by New Hampshire. (Senator Kamala Harris of California and Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, are widely seen as presidential contenders as well, though so far they have refrained from visiting the early primary states.) The flurry of trips is instructive. With Donald Trump in the White House, a group of gifted politicians and public figures from the Pacific Coast believe that they are the best positioned to challenge him.
They may be right. A special brand of American liberalism, at once independent-minded and dedicated to the common good, has flourished in the West. And it could well be this tradition—with its commitment to immigrants, to equality, to free trade, and to environmentalism—that provides the best path forward for Democrats looking to unite their fractured base.
Americans tend to think of the West Coast as a liberal fortress. But not so long ago, Washington, Oregon, and California supported Republicans. (Much of the rural parts of all three states still does.)
Sophie Kasakove at The New Republic writes—How Red States Stifle Blue Cities:
In 2014, years before he became the Democratic nominee for governor of Florida, Andrew Gillum was targeted by two gun-rights organizations, Florida Carry and the Second Amendment Foundation, which threatened to remove him from his post as Tallahassee city commissioner over a pair of local regulations prohibiting residents from shooting firearms in public parks. Despite the fact that these regulations, which were passed in 1957 and 1988, were no longer being enforced, the lobbyists argued that they violated a 2011 state law barring local governments from passing their own gun regulation ordinances. With the full weight of the National Rifle Association behind them, the gun groups sued the city of Tallahassee.
Facing personal fines of $5,000 and damages of up to $100,000 in addition to the threats to remove him from office—all for not officially removing the defunct laws from the books—Gillum defended his city in court. He did so without even the support of Tallahassee’s legal team, which was prevented by the same 2011 state law from supporting local legislators in such cases. In the midst of the lawsuit, he defined the stakes of the legal battle as a bid by red state governments to overturn the democratic will of blue cities: “It’s … about how these special interests and corporations, after getting their way with state government, are trying to intimidate and bully local communities by filing damaging lawsuits against officials like me.”
Gun control is just one of many areas where Gillum confronted intimidation tactics, first as city commissioner and then as mayor of Tallahassee.
Erik Forman at In These Times writes—How Unions Can Solve the Housing Crisis:
Most activists can reel off a list of demands to address the housing crisis: rent control, community land trusts, affordable housing development. But one of the most effective strategies has been forgotten. A century ago, the labor movement in New York City planned and executed a bluntly practical solution to the problem of housing: Build it.
Today, more than 100,000 New Yorkers live in apartments built by the labor movement between 1926 and 1974, mostly through an organization called the United Housing Foundation. Roughly 40,000 still-affordable cooperative housing units—Amalgamated Houses, Concourse Village and Co-op City in the Bronx; Penn South in the heart of Manhattan; 1199 Plaza in East Harlem; Rochdale Village and Electchester in Queens; Amalgamated Warbasse in Brooklyn—stand as monuments to what an organized working class can achieve. This housing provides a bulwark against gentrification and a blueprint for ending the housing crisis. Let’s look at how it all got started, how it came to an end and what it would take for labor to build again.