Philip Bump of The Washington Post responds to a letter that TFG (That Former Guy) wrote and was published in The Wall Street Journal ($$$) with yet more baseless claims about the 2020 election in Pennsylvania.
- The Wall Street Journal should not have published it without assessing the claims and demonstrating where they were wrong, misleading or unimportant.
- The Journal would have been better served had it explained why it chose to run the letter without contextualizing it, since that might have at least offered some clarity on the otherwise inexplicable decision, but it didn’t.
- Even if those who decided to publish the letter lacked the resources to fact-check each of the claims, they might have pushed back on obviously false claims, as when Trump falsely claims that Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spent millions of dollars to “interfere in the Pennsylvania election.”
- They might also have noted that the organization that Trump repeatedly cites as an authority for his claims, the “highly respected” group Audit the Vote PA, has no actual experience in evaluating elections.
Brian Stelter of CNN notes the response of the Journal’s newsroom to the TFG’s letter that their paper published on its editorial page.
Several Journal reporters grumbled about the letter after it came out on Wednesday, but none were surprised it was published, given the Opinion section's right-wing and contrarian bent.
"I think it's very disappointing that our opinion section continues to publish misinformation that our news side works so hard to debunk," one of the reporters said. "They should hold themselves to the same standards we do!"
Similar disputes over differing standards have broken out in the past between the news and opinion camps.
On Wednesday, some Journal newsroom staffers hinted at their dissatisfaction through retweets that were critical of the Trump letter. At least one reporter
retweeted The Daily Beast's Matt Fuller, who wrote, "Newspapers don't exist so that powerful people can publish whatever lies they want. In fact, that may be one of the very opposite reasons newspapers exist."
LZ Granderson of The Los Angeles Times, in castigating former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s suggestion that we “move on” from the Jan. 6 insurrection, casts the Jan. 6 insurrection in the gravest national security and foreign policy terms.
I wasn’t expecting Rice to praise the Biden administration or admonish anyone from her party. Her characterizing critical race theory as designed to make white children feel bad was a bit much, but for the most part Rice was her usual confounding self. Still, I didn’t think she would downplay Jan. 6 to the degree she did. [...]
How does a nation claiming to be democracy’s biggest champion just move on from Jan. 6? That is, without at least finding out what Bannon meant when on Jan. 5 he told his podcast listeners: “It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. OK, it’s going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is, strap in.”
Or maybe the real question is, did Rice actually believe in building democracy or were her pronouncements just the flowery words of someone charged with selling the Bush administration’s war on terror?
Renée Graham of The Boston Globe writes about yet another issue area where government in the state of Texas is going regressive: same-sex marriage.
In a letter sent to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week, James White, a state representative, asked if state statutes have precedence over federal laws. Or, as White put it, “Whether Obergefell v. Hodges . . . requires private citizens to recognize homosexual marriages when the law of Texas continues to define marriage exclusively as the union of one man and one woman.”
Obergefell v. Hodges is the landmark Supreme Court decision that allowed same-sex couples to “exercise the fundamental right to marry.” Since 2015, nearly 300,000 same-sex couples have wed. But Texas being Texas, the state never changed its own narrow definition of marriage to reflect that historic ruling. [...]
Under the malevolent hand of Governor Greg Abbott, the state’s Republican-led Legislature is waging a tireless campaign against American history, voting rights, reproductive rights, and the trans community. On Monday, the governor signed into law a bill that bans trans youth from playing on school teams that correspond with their gender identity. [...]
To be clear, White, the Texas state representative against “homosexual marriages,” is Black. But don’t get it twisted. There have always been Black people who mortgage their souls to enjoy whatever crumbs of privilege and status their service to white supremacy will allow.
Jennifer C. Berkshire, writing for
The Nation, documents some of the GOP mania occurring in school boards across the country.
In recent months, debates over race and equity have roiled school districts across the country. More than
27 states have introduced legislation limiting how teachers can talk about race and racism in the classroom. But the enforcement of these measures will largely rest on parents, who’ve been newly deputized to ensure that teachers aren’t teaching “critical race theory” (CRT), a vague catchall that has rapidly expanded to include almost anything that conservatives don’t like. A growing roster of parent groups—Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn, Parents Defending Ed—encourages parents to blow the whistle on indoctrination in the schools by filing anonymous reports and litigation. Meanwhile,
proposals to train a watchful eye on teachers by placing cameras in the classroom are gaining steam.
“It’s very Orwellian and scary,” says Chris Larson, a state senator in Wisconsin, where GOP lawmakers recently proposed installing a camera in every classroom. While cameras didn’t make it into the GOP’s bill banning the teaching of CRT in schools, lawsuits did. The bill includes a measure that would allow parents to sue K-12 schools that teach a lengthy list of prohibited concepts, including “equity,” “diversity,” and “systemic racism.” Districts found to be in violation could lose up to 10 percent of their funding. Similar measures have been enacted in Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and New Hampshire—all of which now encourage parents to report “woke” teachers and topics, and then punish entire schools and districts in response.
Vanessa Barbara writes for The New York Times about Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s now documented “Catastrophic stewardship” of the COVID-19 pandemic and what comes next.
It was about time someone documented Mr. Bolsonaro’s catastrophic stewardship of the country through the pandemic, and the 1,288-page report does just that. (I read it and I’m still burning with rage.) Painstakingly assembled, it details how Mr. Bolsonaro actively helped to spread the virus, no matter the cost to human life. And it recommends that he be charged with nine crimes, including irregular use of public funds, violation of social rights and, most damningly, crimes against humanity.
A product of six months of work by a special Senate committee, the document is a welcome effort to provide Brazilians with the beginnings of accountability. But, probably, no more: It’s unlikely Mr. Bolsonaro, protected by a friendly prosecutor-general, will ever face the charges leveled against him. It now falls to international bodies, like the International Criminal Court, to hold him to account. For true justice and restitution, Brazilians will have to keep waiting.
Joshua Huminski writes for The Hill that the Biden administration should not be too fast in refocusing its foreign policy on China when there’s still Russia to deal with.
The administration is pivoting its policy energy toward strategic competition with China and refocusing on the Indo-Pacific. Yet, the White House cannot simply ignore Russia in favor of an all-China strategy. Doing so is as dangerous as getting its Russia policy wrong in the first place. Moscow will retain the ability to be a disruptive actor in Europe and further abroad, particularly if it feels doing so will be to its strategic advantage. The interim national security strategy notes as much: “Russia remains determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage.”
The White House needs to first recognize that Russia believes that the West is at war with Moscow. This is not idle speculation but is fundamentally informing Moscow’s actions. The “Color Revolutions” of the 2010s, the West’s support of democratic movements within Russia and its backing of Ukraine are seen by Moscow as part of a Western hybrid warfare strategy. The end goal of this strategy, in Moscow’s view, is the destabilization of the Putin regime and the defeat of Russia.
Finally today, Jeffrey Barg, The Grammarian writes for The Philadelphia Inquirer that we should return the apostrophe to Hallowe’en.
You wouldn’t know it from the ubiquitous fly-by-night Spirit Halloween stores that pop up as the grim reaper of big retail for a few weeks every year — so fleeting that their official website lists nearly every location as the site of a “former [AC Moore/Modell’s/Ulta/Office Depot/something else]” — but Halloween used to be spelled Hallowe’en. Although this column usually believes when it comes to punctuation, less is more, there are a lot of excellent reasons why we should restore the apostrophe to Hallowe’en.
Consider yourself spooked.
It teaches etymology. Halloween comes from Hallowe’en, which comes from All Hallows’ Even or All Hallows’ Eve, which marks the day before All Hallows’ Day— Nov. 1. There’s a lot of ancient history about churches and feasts and saints and things that have nothing to do with stuffing candy in pillowcases, but that’s where the marketing gets brilliant: Fun-sized treats draw kids in, but what if they were to then learn that the word Hallowe’en is the fun-sized version of something older, bigger, and potentially better? The precocious ones are going to seek out what All Hallows’ Eve and All Hallows’ Day are, if only because maybe those holidays carry the promise of king-sized candy bars.
For some denominations, All Hallows’ Day is the Feast of All Saints, so they’re not far off.
Everyone have a great day!