Hunter Walker/The Uprising:
Canada’s Trucker Protests And Eerie Echoes of January 6
Anti-vaccine demonstrations in Ottawa have been encouraged and promoted by some of the same right wing figures who loudly backed former President Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss.
On Friday evening, American conservative activist Amy Kremer sent out two tweets in support of truckers who are protesting COVID vaccine regulations in Canada. The messages, which came one minute apart, included hashtags promoting the so-called “Freedom Convoy” and a video showing some of the crowds who have shut down streets in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, and a key message.
“Hold the line,” Kremer wrote in both posts.
It’s the exact same phrase Kremer, one of the key figures behind the protests against Trump’s election loss in 2020, used in the leadup to January 6, 2021. Kremer, who is the chairwoman of Women For America First, the group that planned the main January 6 rally on the White House Ellipse, used the “#HoldTheLine” hashtag to promote that event.
There is no line. There never was a line.
David Lauter/LA Times:
Many Republicans think the NFL does too much for Black players and are losing interest in the league, poll shows
The nation’s relentless culture wars appear to have taken a toll even on the NFL, with a large number of Republicans saying they have soured on the league and expressing disapproval of its efforts to improve the treatment of Black players, a new Los Angeles Times/SurveyMonkey poll shows.
Professional football remains extremely popular. The poll found just more than half of American adults say they regard themselves as fans and an additional 15% say they’re not fans but plan to watch the Super Bowl, which will be played Sunday at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium between the Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals.
But the league’s popularity has eroded somewhat in recent years, the poll found.
About one-third of those surveyed nationwide said they are less of a fan now than they were five years ago, compared with about 1 in 8 who said they are bigger fans now.
The poll can’t conclusively say why that decline has occurred, but two questions about the NFL’s handling of issues involving race provide some strong hints:
People who say they are less of a fan now than they were five years ago are more than twice as likely as everyone else to say the NFL is doing “too much to show respect for its Black players.”
Matt Gurney/The Line:
Matt Gurney: Ottawa will have to wait. Windsor is the crisis, now
Our problem has become America's problem, and America can't tolerate a neighbour that can't keep its problems on their side of the border.
Before the 2010 G20 summit in my hometown, I'd have thought that a kettle was what you used to make tea or contain problematic quantities of fish. After the G20, Canadians came to appreciate a new meaning of the term. Kettling, as a police tactic, is when a large group of officers, typically in riot gear, entirely surround a crowd. The crowd becomes completely penned in by police or security forces. This was infamously done in Toronto for long hours, in an operation that trapped numerous random passersby and local residents in a police cordon, along with a group of protesters. The cordon was enforced completely inflexibly, with no accommodation at all given to those who just happened to be caught up there. It became a warranted flashpoint of criticism, one of the most heavily attacked and embarrassing moments of that black mark on Toronto’s reputation.
And weirdly, it wasn’t even how kettling is supposed to work.
WaPo editorial:
Science, not politics, should dictate school mask mandates
Several Democratic and Republican governors have embraced moves to repeal such mandates in recent days — despite the standing recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s top health-protection agency.
One of them is Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, who last year said he would leave it to localities to determine mask policies in their own school districts. That was sensible, given varying local infection rates, school conditions and ventilation systems. But upon taking office last month, Mr. Youngkin abandoned his own proposal, and good sense, and ordered a mask-optional policy statewide. Now, state lawmakers, including some Democrats, are pushing through legislation that would give the governor authority to enforce his order.
At least 70 of Virginia’s 131 school districts, representing a large majority of the state’s students, have rejected the governor’s attempt to abolish school mask mandates. For good reason: Most are in counties or cities where the recent average of new covid-19 infections per 100,000 residents is 50 or more cases daily, a threshold indicating what the CDC calls “substantial transmission.” In fact, most Virginia localities have rates far higher — in some cases well above 100 new cases daily per 100,000 people.
Those who oppose school mask mandates point out that most school-age children are unlikely to get very sick if they contract the virus, and even less likely to be hospitalized or die. They conveniently airbrush the fact that those same children might transmit the disease to their immunocompromised classmates, who are at far greater risk, as well as to vulnerable adults who work in schools. They include teachers, office staff, cafeteria workers, janitors and resource officers, some of whom are elderly, obese or in other ways at risk for a sickness whose lethality is proven.
Politician’s shouldn’t ever just tune out the experts, but politicians were elected to balance competing interests. That’s their job.
NY Times:
Inside McConnell’s Campaign to Take Back the Senate and Thwart Trump
Senator Mitch McConnell is working furiously to bring allies to Washington who will buck Donald J. Trump. It’s not going according to plan.
As Mr. Trump works to retain his hold on the Republican Party, elevating a slate of friendly candidates in midterm elections, Mr. McConnell and his allies are quietly, desperately maneuvering to try to thwart him. The loose alliance, which was once thought of as the G.O.P. establishment, for months has been engaged in a high-stakes candidate recruitment campaign, full of phone calls, meetings, polling memos and promises of millions of dollars. It’s all aimed at recapturing the Senate majority, but the election also represents what could be Republicans’ last chance to reverse the spread of Trumpism before it fully consumes their party.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
A Republican base focused on the 2020 election turns on Assembly Speaker Robin Vos
Robin Vos is facing calls to step off the tight rope he has been on for more than a year navigating a Republican base that wants much more scrutiny from him of the 2020 election and the reality of President Donald Trump's loss.
A growing number of Republicans outside of the Wisconsin State Capitol are furious with the Assembly Speaker and are demanding that he resign from his leadership position after he punished Rep. Timothy Ramthun over false claims about the 2020 election — a move that helped catapult the Fond du Lac County lawmaker to a campaign for governor.
The discipline of Ramthun has enraged elements of the party faithful who already believed the powerful Republican in the state Capitol is refusing to do everything he can to litigate the last presidential election and see his actions thus far as inadequate at best and purposefully stifling at worst.
David French/French Press:
The Seeds of Political Violence Are Being Sown in Church
The new insurrection is being organized, in a sanctuary near you.
During the meeting, a man named Shawn Smith accused Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold of election misconduct. “You know, if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang,” he said. “Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.”
“I was accused of endorsing violence,” he went on. “I’m not endorsing violence, I’m saying once you put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned.” As soon as he said, “you deserve to hang,” an audience member shouted “Yeah!” and applause filled the room. You can watch the moment here.
The moment, almost entirely ignored by the national media, is worth noting on its own terms, but perhaps the most ominous aspect of the evening was its location—a church called The Rock.
If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event.