At the Jan. 6 hearings, race isn't discussed much. Still, it's a central issue
In the opening moments of the Jan. 6 Committee hearings, Chairman Bennie Thompson drew a line across history, connecting the Lost Cause to the Big Lie.
"I'm from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching," Thompson began.
"I'm reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021."
The Idea That Letting Trump Walk Will Heal America Is Ridiculous
And these 2020 deniers aren’t sitting still, either; as these election results show, they are actively working to undermine democracy for the next time Trump is on the ballot.
This fact, alone, makes a mockery of the idea that the ultimate remedy for Trump is to beat him at the ballot box a second time, as if the same supporters who rejected the last election will change course in the face of another defeat. It also makes clear the other weight-bearing problem with the argument against holding Trump accountable, which is that it treats inaction as an apolitical and stability-enhancing move — something that preserves the status quo as opposed to action, which upends it.
But that’s not true. Inaction is as much a political choice as action is, and far from preserving the status quo — or securing some level of social peace — it sets in stone a new world of total impunity for any sufficiently popular politician or member of the political elite.
Matt Lewis/Daily Beast:
Trump’s Legacy Is Convincing Idiots That They Should Run for Office
I get the appeal of having “outsiders” come in and “shake up the system.” But MAGA candidates are proving the folly of the know-nothing candidate.
Donald Trump has left his mark on the American body politic in myriad ways. But one of the lesser-discussed aspects of the way the 45th president forever changed this country is how he’s endowed unqualified idiots with the grandiose confidence to believe they, too, should run for high political office.
Look no further than the November midterms. Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged that it was more likely the House would flip to Republicans than the Senate, blaming “candidate quality.”
The critique was interpreted as a veiled shot at Trump (who boosted some of the weakest Senate candidates, such as Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and former NFL star Herschel Walker in Georgia). The truth, though, is that most people don’t realize that Trump has done even more damage to Republicans’ chances of taking back the Senate.
NY Times:
Democrats Designed the Climate Law to Be a Game Changer. Here’s How.
In a first, the measure legally defines greenhouse gases as pollution. That’ll make new regulations much tougher to challenge in court.
When the Supreme Court restricted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to fight climate change this year, the reason it gave was that Congress had never granted the agency the broad authority to shift America away from burning fossil fuels.
Now it has.
Throughout the landmark climate law, passed this month, is language written specifically to address the Supreme Court’s justification for reining in the E.P.A., a ruling that was one of the court’s most consequential of the term. The new law amends the Clean Air Act, the country’s bedrock air-quality legislation, to define the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels as an “air pollutant.”
That language, according to legal experts as well as the Democrats who worked it into the legislation, explicitly gives the E.P.A. the authority to regulate greenhouse gases and to use its power to push the adoption of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.
WSJ:
After Six Months of War in Ukraine, Momentum Tilts Against Russia
Moscow retains firepower advantage, but Kyiv is starting to take the initiative, while Western support for Ukraine is holding firm despite economic pain
A drone strike on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Crimea on Saturday was one of many recent signs that Russia’s rear areas are increasingly vulnerable to Ukrainian attack.
Political and popular backing for Ukraine in the U.S. and most of Europe remains robust, despite fears that a drawn-out war and rising energy and food prices could undermine Western unity.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Trump’s next Mar-a-Lago move will escalate his supporters’ rage
Now, we should retain healthy skepticism toward the Justice Department and its redactions. Indeed, The Post and other news organizations are urging release of the affidavit on the grounds that the public needs to know the rationale for a search of such historic importance. If a heavily redacted affidavit is what’s made public, we won’t know for some time whether the redactions are defensible.
But, to be clear, healthy skepticism is not the position Trump and his supporters are taking. They’re casting the search as already existing conclusive proof of totalitarian oppression, resorting to all manner of lurid comparisons to fascist regimes and developing nation dictatorships.
Here’s the point: When the starting position is that any and all law enforcement activity related to Trump is inherently illegitimate — that this activity by definition cannot have been justified by reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing — then everything works backward from there.
NY Times:
A Former Fox News Insider Spills the Beans
Chris Stirewalt was part of a pivotal decision to declare Joe Biden the winner of Arizona in 2020. Now he’s speaking out about a network he says incites “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred.”
After a decade at Fox News, Chris Stirewalt was suddenly shown the door in January 2021, becoming a casualty of restructuring — or, at least, that was how Fox described his and other layoffs that swept out longtime journalists who were part of the network’s news division.
Stirewalt, who was part of the team at Fox News that projects election results and who testified before the House Jan. 6 committee this summer, suspects there was a bigger reason behind his firing, which he explains in his new book, “Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back,” to be released next week.
“I got canned after very vocal and very online viewers — including the then-president of the United States — became furious when our Decision Desk was the first to project that Joe Biden would win the former G.O.P. stronghold of Arizona in 2020,” Stirewalt writes.