We start today with Renée Graham of The Boston Globe reiterating that the Jan. 6 committee hearings—which begin Thursday night at 8 PM EST—is must-see television.
Spurred by white supremacy and the unconstitutional machinations of a bitter loser and his coconspirators, a violent mob attempted to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. On Thursday, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection will make its prime-time television debut. According to Axios, the committee reportedly enlisted James Goldston, a former ABC News president, to bring some polish to at least a half-dozen congressional TV hearings that will attempt to lay out for viewers what its members have learned about who was involved with the planning and execution of the deadly breaching of the US Capitol in 2021. [...]
Moving on from the insurrection is tantamount to moving on from democracy. That’s what the Jan. 6 committee is up against, and that’s why these hearings are being televised. [...}
In a nation so deft at normalizing terrible actions, especially when committed by powerful white men, the case will be made on TV that seditious plots not only reached this nation’s highest office when occupied by Trump but were conceived there. And it will amplify that just because the Jan. 6 instigators and perpetrators did not achieve their goal of keeping Trump in the White House, it doesn’t mean that the coup ended or that our democracy is no longer in peril.
Jacqueline Alemany of The Washington Post gives us a preview of Thursday night’s presentation.
Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) will lead the evening’s presentation, which will feature live testimony from Caroline Edwards, a U.S. Capitol Police officer who was seriously injured as pro-Trump rioters and members of far-right extremist groups forced their way into the building.
Nick Quested, a British filmmaker who embedded with and documented the activities of one of those extremist groups, the Proud Boys, will also testify.
“We will remind people what happened on that day and we will bring the American people back to the reality of that violence,” a committee aide told reporters on Wednesday.
The riot unfolded on the day that Congress officially counted the electoral votes that made Joe Biden’s presidential win official. The assault disrupted that work for hours.
The committee’s first televised hearing, beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, will focus in part on the coordination between extremist groups who conspired to obstruct Congress by fomenting and spearheading a riot, according to committee aides.
Grant Tudor of The Atlantic hopes that coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings does not repeat a mistake made by the media coverage of Watergate.
The assault on Congress that afternoon represented a desperate and violent attempt to prevent the transfer of power after a months-long campaign to do so had failed. As with Watergate, the campaign was bracing in its scope: using government resources to promote the president’s reelection; soliciting state and local officials to commit election fraud; pressuring the vice president to delay or block the counting of electoral votes; enlisting the Justice Department to sanction the overturning of election results; refusing to officially green-light the operational transition of administrations; devising plans to employ the military to seize ballots and voting machines; strategizing with members of Congress to assemble fake slates of electors; and then inciting a lethal riot at the eleventh hour. After pushing to place a conspiracy theorist at the helm of the Justice Department and advocating for the fake-electors scheme, House Republican Scott Perry texted the White House chief of staff in late December: “Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 11 days to 1/6.”
It will be the task of the select committee to pull together the threads of grave misconduct it has exhaustively investigated into a coherent story with an already evident truth at its heart: Despite having lost the election, the former president and his associates embarked on a massive and galling expedition to maintain the presidency at any cost.
The committee’s storytelling task is unenviable. On the one hand, the campaign to overturn the election—still ongoing—risks being remembered as no more than a spate of sudden violence on January 6. This was Watergate’s fate: an incomplete story that minimized the scope and gravity of what happened. On the other hand, meandering through the depths and messiness of the campaign—one that reaches across nearly every branch and level of government—risks drowning the public in incomprehensible (and perhaps unfathomable) details. This was in some ways the Mueller report’s fate. The troves of evidence gathered by the select committee will matter, but only in constant service of the story’s single and heavy truth.
Zack Beauchamp of Vox says that because of political polarization, not enough people may care about all that was done in an attempt to overthrow a national election.
But one of the defining features of Donald Trump’s political career has been his ability escape accountability. (His narrow defeat in 2020 is a glaring exception.) Trump always seemed to get away with it — from his sexual assault comments caught on the Access Hollywood tape; to his remarks on the “very fine people on both sides” after white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia; to his suggestion that Americans should inject themselves with bleach to fight the coronavirus. [...]
Everyone who follows American politics, at this point, is aware of this pattern and the reasons behind it. American politics is dominated by the logic of extreme partisanship, in which partisans of both sides see the other as a fundamental (maybe even existential) threat. In such an environment, Republican partisans have proven themselves willing to excuse almost anything that Trump does — no matter how undemocratic — if it helps their side win.
This theory is supported by an impressive body of political science research documenting the powerful warping effect partisanship has on the American population’s judgment. One of the best of these papers, from George Washington University’s Matthew Graham and Yale’s Milan Svolik, polled Americans on whether they would vote against candidates from their party if they engaged in certain anti-democratic behaviors (e.g., “ignores unfavorable court rulings from [opposite party] judges”). Even in such a hypothetical case only a small minority would be willing to do so; their research suggests the numbers would likely be substantially lower in a real-world election.
Paul Finkelman of Washington Monthly explains that policies like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Law are rooted in the suppression of free speech advocating for Blacks in the South.
The controversy in Florida over teaching about, or even mentioning, sexual orientation and gender identity is just the latest chapter in a long history of southern suppression of freedom of speech. What’s come to be known as Governor Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law is right in line with South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun and a bevy of 20th-century southern segregationists trying to curtail free speech.[...]
The U.S. Constitution and our national commitment to open debate mean that DeSantis is free to believe whatever he wants about gender rights. He has a First Amendment right to spout off. But as a government actor, he is not free to impose his beliefs on others. Nor is he allowed to tell a corporation what language it can use to describe the rights of others. (DeSantis led an assault on tax benefits and regulations that favor the Walt Disney Company after the California-based corporation criticized the ”Don’t Say Gay” law.) In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Thus, Disney is free to express its views on public issues.
DeSantis’s bill to deprive Disney of its ability to run Walt Disney World smoothly is political retaliation that smacks of government censorship. He is changing economic and tax policies to harm Disney for its speech. Hopefully, the courts will explain the meaning of the Constitution to the good governor.
This controversy is hardly new and reflects a long southern tradition of suppressing speech that rocks the political or cultural boat.
Tim Wise pens an essay for POLITICO with suggestions about what teachers can do as a preventative measure against shootings like the one in Buffalo.
First, schools should teach online content literacy from an early age. The Buffalo shooter says he was radicalized by racist memes and online posts, but neither of these constitutes evidence.
Schools should teach how to find accurate information and what makes a source trustworthy. In an age where everyone “does their own research,” they should know how to do it properly. Just as we teach kids to avoid online predators and how they can know when someone is communicating with them for sexual reasons, we should also teach them how to resist online propaganda.
Additionally, schools must push back against the assault on anti-racist education despite right-wing pressure tactics. Naturally, this means discussing how white supremacy has injured persons of color, but it also means teaching about those who have challenged it, including white anti-racist allies throughout history.
White supremacists target young people the same way traditional gangs recruit members — by appealing to their sense of isolation and a desire for belonging. They tell young white men that if Black people can stand up for their race, then white people should stand up for ours. That logic can be intoxicating to a young person, especially if they lack the necessary historical and sociological context to evaluate such a position. But suppose those young people knew of white folks who carved out an anti-racist identity? Learning about white anti-racist allies can provide young white people with different role models, helping them avoid the trap of radicalization.
Eleanor Klibanoff of the Texas Tribune reports:
A new lawsuit filed Wednesday is challenging Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care to their transgender children. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal on behalf of three families, including the Briggle family, who have long been advocates for trans rights, including hosting Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton for dinner with their transgender son.
The lawsuit also seeks to block the state from investigating any families that belong to PFLAG, an advocacy group for parents and family members of LGBTQ+ people.
The state is currently blocked from investigating one family that brought a prior legal challenge. This lawsuit seeks to widen the number of people who cannot be investigated under the directive; according to the filing, PFLAG’s 17 chapters in Texas have over 600 members combined.
At least nine families are currently under investigation for potential child abuse by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services for providing gender-affirming care to their transgender children.
Rachel Swan and Mallory Moench of the San Francisco Chronicle covers a lot of ground in this piece on the recall of San Francisco D.A. Chesa Boudin, including the question of whether San Francisco is a “progressive” city.
“You talk to anyone who is a blue Dem in this town, and they want to prove to you that they are progressive,” said Janice Li, a BART board director and member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee. “You’ll get, ‘I’m not racist but —’; ‘I’m not ‘this,’ but —.’ It might be qualified, but no one in this town wants to be told they’re not progressive.”
Progressivism started gaining traction in San Francisco when an energized, organized faction of the left coalesced after the first dot-com bubble and former President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, ascending in outlets like the Daily Kos blog, where writers and activists began self-identifying as progressive, said Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University.[...]
“San Francisco likes to flatter itself,” said Edward Wright, president of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, noting how much pride the city takes in generating the Summer of Love, electing Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and developing a compassionate model of care for AIDS patients, among other civil rights gains.
“If you’re going to level with that, you also have to level with the reality that this is a tale of two cities,” Wright said, pointing to what he saw as a disturbing wealth gap.
Yeah, I had to get in that mention of this site.
Tanya Lewis writes for Scientific American that achieving better indoor air quality is important and not just to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
As the U.S. and many other countries drop mask mandates and other short-term measures to help reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2, improving indoor air quality is becoming even more crucial. “As we start to shift away from these broad government mandates and regulations, we need strategies ... that are passive, that are operating in the background,” Allen says. “Clean air shouldn’t be partisan.”
Cleaner indoor air has other benefits besides reducing COVID risk. Influenza and other respiratory viruses also spread through the air and cause a huge amount of illness and lost productivity. Plus, studies have shown that poor ventilation has all kinds of other health effects, from “sick building syndrome” to cognitive impacts.
Perhaps society could take a lesson from the way it regards water treatment. Extensive measures are taken to ensure water quality in public systems. Why not do the same for air?
Eddy Wax of POLITICO Europe writes about Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s outrageous lies and propaganda (POLITICO calls it something else!) in Ankara yesterday.
In the latest episode of propaganda-driven theatrics, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Ankara on Wednesday for talks on opening shipping corridors, but the Ukrainians pointedly observed that they — the actual owners of the ports — were not invited, so there could not be any deal in Turkey without them.
Lavrov used the trip to Ankara to make the false claim: “The Russian Federation is not creating any obstacle for the passage of ships or vessels ... We are not preventing anything.”
This is now becoming a hallmark of Moscow's international messaging. In Russia's version, Ukraine is responsible for the blockade because it has mined the port of Odesa and — equally incorrectly — Western sanctions are stopping grain flows. The fact that the whole crisis is due to a Russian invasion and naval blockade is conveniently ignored.
Politically, the Kremlin has identified this as a prime moment to try to undermine the basis for sanctions, saying it is willing to help the flow of grains out of the Ukrainian port of Odesa again, as long as the sanctions against Moscow are dropped.
Abel Mestre of Le Monde in English writes that new polling shows that the outcome of the French legislative elections remains uncertain.
There seems to be no solution: With just four days to go before the first round, the legislative elections are not capturing the French people's imagination. The situation is reminiscent of the recent presidential campaign, in which no message seemed to stick, and the choice of voters became structured at a late stage around the three practical options represented by Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and Marine Le Pen, resulting in an even three-way split of the political landscape.
Voting intentions for candidates of the left-wing coalition New Popular, Environmentalist and Social Union (NUPES) are 27.5% (with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.1 points, up 0.5 points compared to mid-May). The candidates of the president's majority at the Assemblée Nationale (the alliance known as Ensemble! and bringing together La République en Marche – which will become Renaissance after the elections–, MoDem, and Horizons), for their part, gather 28% of voting intentions (a stable figure with the same margin of error). Finally, adding the estimated scores of the far-right candidates ֪– Rassemblement National (20%, margin of error plus or minus 1 point, down one point from the previous poll) and Reconquête! (5.5%, margin of error plus or minus 0.6 points, down 0.5 points compared to mid-May) – yield 25.5% for the far right. The three families therefore account for more than 80% of voting intentions.
These are the main takeaways from the 12th poll in our electoral survey series, conducted from June 3 to 6 by Ipsos-Sopra Steria, in partnership with the Political Research Center of the Paris Political Studies Institute (CEVIPOF) and the Jean Jaurès Foundation for Le Monde. The strength of our panel lied in its size, since the sample used was 10,826 people. Voting intentions were calculated from respondents "certain to vote and having expressed a voting intention," i.e. 6,080 people. As a result, the margin of error is very small, between 0.2 and 1.1 points.
Finally today ...
Everyone have a good day!