THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 12/22/16

First, a welcome to my new readers. I am so glad you’re joining us, and as always, I will happily accept all feedback, story ideas, and suggestions for links)! Note that, unless something crazy happens, I’ll be taking next week off and will return in 2017.

NORTH CAROLINA -- AUTOCRATIC BLUEPRINT: First up, let’s pick up where we left off last week in North Carolina. The legislature did end up passing, and the GOP lame duck governor did end up signing, the autocracy-creating bills we discussed last week. The bills strip the incoming Democratic governor of his power to appoint a majority of the State Board of Elections and to appoint trustees to the boards of the UNC schools; limits the authority of the soon-to-be-Democratically-controlled Supreme Court to hear appeals; drastically reduces the number of appointees the Democratic governor can make; and requires all of the governor’s appointed agency heads to be approved by the Senate. This is a really, really, REALLY big deal -- mostly because the GOP is going to get away with this, and there seems to be little that anyone can do to stop them. I do not see how the national Republican party will not look to North Carolina as a blueprint going forward. Indeed, the only thing that has ever really stopped one party that has temporary power from shutting out the other party entirely and creating a perpetual autocracy are democratic norms, not laws -- and we know what has happened to norms this year. After all the democracy-threatening crazy, the NC GOP was also set to repeal the anti-gay/anti-trans bill that many credit with leading to Gov. McCrory’s defeat -- but then all hell broke lose yesterday and the legislature refused to repeal the law. Remember that this all started when Charlotte chose to pass its own city-wide non-discrimination ordinance, and Republicans were so outraged about people choosing to prohibit discrimination in their own city that they passed a statewide law forbidding cities from making that choice. So hell broke loose Wednesday because Charlotte was supposed to repeal its local anti-discrimination ordinance in exchange for repeal of the pro-discrimination statewide law, but instead the city repealed only part of the ordinance, leading the totally sane and not at all batshit crazy state GOP to put out this statement: “The HB2 blood is now stain soaked on their hands and theirs alone.” I know it’s Christmastime and I should charitable, but good god, these people are the worst.

COMEY COST HILLARY THE ELECTION -- AND FOR NOTHING: Hey, remember that time the director of the FBI gave an unprecedented news conference lambasting a presidential candidate for behavior that was legal, normal, and not at all nefarious? And then remember how, two weeks before election day, that same FBI director sent a cryptic note suggesting that new illegal emails (as opposed to the old emails that were not illegal or improper) had been found? And remember how that “reopening” of the investigation likely cost Hillary Clinton the election and paved the way for our descent into autocracy and the end of our American way of life as we know it? Yeah, turns out all of that was based on nothing. Literally nothing. (For those who want a really good, super clear [and absolutely enraging] explanation of the REAL STORY behind Hillary’s emails -- something I never fully understood at the time -- please listen to this This American Life piece, and also check out this short Kevin Drum rundown.) Anyway, the FBI’s search warrant for the new round of emails was released yesterday, and it shows that the entire basis for the warrant was simply the facts that (i) Huma Abedin was married to Anthony Weiner and (ii) Huma and Clinton emailed daily. Based on those two facts, the FBI declared that there may be illegal emails on Weiner’s computer (despite the fact that, again, they had found nothing illegal in their earlier exhaustive search). Clinton’s lawyer said that what is “unassailably clear . . . is that as the sole basis for this warrant, the FBI put forward the same evidence the Bureau concluded in July was not sufficient to bring a case — the affidavit offered no additional evidence to support any different conclusion.” So, yeah. That happened.

GREATEST THING EVER: Sweet jesus we need a break from the grim. So I’m just going to quote liberally from this Washington Post story, because it is the most hilarious thing I read all week and we need a good laugh:

Trump’s closest aides have come to accept that he is likely to rule out candidates if they are not attractive or not do not match his image of the type of person who should hold a certain job. “That’s the language he speaks. He’s very aesthetic,” said one person familiar with the transition team’s internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You can come with somebody who is very much qualified for the job, but if they don’t look the part, they’re not going anywhere.” Several of Trump’s associates said they thought that John R. Bolton’s brush-like mustache was one of the factors that handicapped the bombastic former United Nations ambassador in the sweepstakes for secretary of state. “Donald was not going to like that mustache,” said one associate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly. “I can’t think of anyone that’s really close to Donald that has a beard that he likes.”

Hahahahahahaha this man is going to be the leader of the free world. Hahahahahaha we’re all going to die.

‘FIRST AMENDMENT’ BULLPUCKY: One of the first bills to get to Trump’s signature may be the Orwellian-named First Amendment Defense Act, a bill written by those stalwart protectors of civil rights, Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. The bill would bar the federal government from taking any action against any entity that refuses to serve LGBTQ people based on the entity’s or employee’s belief that marriage can only be heterosexual, and that “sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.” This would mean that the government could not, for example, refuse to contract with companies that discriminate. This is a national version of the Indiana bill that made Mike Pence famous last year (and which he soon had to revise after widespread protests and boycotts). The bill poses a broad threat: “FADA’s logic could also be used to justify pharmacies refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, businesses not offering health benefits to a same-sex marital partner, adoption agencies discriminating against gay families, and even hospitals turning away LGBT people or their children.” For those looking for a target for activism in the days after January 20, targeting your congressmen and women about this bill will be a necessary (and potentially effective, given the effectiveness of activism on this issue at the state level) outlet for your energy.

Must Read of the Week: Chait (who else) on Trump’s pick to lead the Council on Economic Advisors: “What is remarkable about Kudlow is not just how flamboyantly and demonstrably wrong he has been, but that his influence over the Republican agenda has actually increased.”

Apocalypse Watch: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker asks Trump to allow the state to bar refugees and to drug test welfare recipients.  

Fun Video of the Week: SNL + Love Actually + HRC = genius. (Bonus: SNL’s 90s-rap-inspired tribute to Obama’s last Christmas, or rather to our last Christmas with Obama.)

Bonus Books Recommendations: Entirely separate from politics, many of you have asked me for good book recommendations for the holidays. The best novel I read this year, by far, was Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. Also great was Commonwealth (by Ann Patchett), Homegoing (by Yaa Gyasi), and The Tsar of Love and Techno (also by Marra). Good nonfiction I enjoyed this year was Ghettoside (by Jill Leovy) and Love Warrior (by Glennon Doyle Melton). I also finally read Dreams From My Father, and holy god that book is good. Can’t believe we got to have him as our president for eight years. We did not deserve him.

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 12/14/16

POWER GRAB IN NC: One of the few bright spots on election day this year was the defeat of Republican North Carolina governor Pat McCory, a man who distinguished himself by ushering in some of the most draconian voter suppression statutes in the county, followed shortly by cruel and dehumanizing anti-gay and anti-trans legislation. The voters also elected a liberal-majority state supreme court. This week, the outgoing governor called a special legislative session dedicated to what can only be called a blatant and shocking power grab by Republicans. The gerrymandered Republican super-majority in the legislature is pushing through bills that would:

• change the structure of county election boards to prevent Democrats from controlling them (the way Republicans have controlled them during McCory’s term);
• enlarge the State Election Board and write into the rules that Republicans must control the State board in every election year;
• make state supreme court judge elections partisan; dramatically limit the state supreme court’s authority to hear appeals; and
• In perhaps the most blatant move, reduce the number of state employees who serve at the pleasure of the governor from 1500 to 300, end the governor’s ability to appoint trustees of the University of North Carolina system, and make the governor’s cabinet subject to senate confirmation.

Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern rightly calls this a “legislative coup.” The GOP in North Carolina is utterly shameless, making no bones about their intentions (after the state party literally bragged their bill had suppressed the black vote, a legislator told the Times that these newest measures were to show that the GOP would “continue to be a relevant party in governing the state”). We should not be surprised if the congressional Republicans take note and follow the footsteps of their North Carolina brethren.

How Should Democrats Resist? Last time, we checked in on the intraparty fight over “identity politics.” (One more good one on that here.) Now the party has moved on to a fighting how to fight Trump, and who should lead the charge. This week, Dahlia Lithwick and David Cohen published an op-ed in the Times urging Democrats to fight like Republicans, starting with urging the electors to refuse to vote for Trump.  They lament the party’s unwillingness to, well, fight dirty, to equal the Republicans’ obstructionism and shattering of norms. I admit that this argument both appeals to me and simultaneously makes me squeamish; I (and most Dems, I presume) am an “institutionalist,” who believes in the importance of institutions and political norms. To destroy them is dangerous. Then again, I agree that we need to face the reality of the disaster that we live in now, and not pretend it is politics as normal. Jonathan Chait argues that we need to fight Trump not with supra-institutional means but through Congress and elective politics itself. I don’t think they’re really oppositional to each other; the bottom line is that we need to be AWAKE and fighting. All the time. To that end, a few ex-Congressional aides put together this incredible guide to organizing effective pressure points on officials hell bent on destroying the safety net and reversing three decades of gains made by women, minorities, gays, etc. They break down political organizing into management steps, and helpfully emphasize that we must focus on DEFENSE at this moment, rather than pushing our own affirmative agenda.

How Should Democrats Resist, Part 2: The other aspect of this dispute is who should lead the Democratic party forward. The first candidate for the post of DNC Chair is Keith Ellison, a liberal representative from Minnesota who was a vocal Bernie supporter. He has been attacked by the usual anti-Mulsim forces, and has been smeared with the anti-semitism label for questioning Israel policy and once, years ago, supporting Louis Farrakhan. Now Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez has thrown his hat into the ring. Both men seem to be smart, progressive men with good ideas, and I can’t claim to have strong feelings about this. But to the extent that this is becoming a fight over the soul of the party, I agree with New York Magazine’s Ed Kilgore, who writes that the DNC chair should focus on building the party apparatus and infrastructure, rather than cementing the party’s ideology.

Tech Titans Woo Trump: Yesterday, figures from the tech world all kissed the ring at Trump Tower, sitting for a roundtable discussion with Trump and his three adult children. (Please note the irony that today was supposed to be the day of Trump’s press conference at which he would detail his separation from his businesses. Instead, he canceled the conference, tweeted that his children would run the business, and then had his children sit in on a policy meeting with the leaders of some of the biggest companies in the country. AAAAAHHHHH this and this!!!!!) Josh Barro points out that fully 20% of the attendees of this meeting were Trump family members -- all in keeping with our new era of kleptocracy. Also, what the hell was Sheryl Sandberg doing there?? A woman who has identified herself (and made millions doing so) with feminism sat at the side of the most openly misogynistic president perhaps ever, or at least of the modern era -- and neither confronted him on these issues to his face nor made any statement about it before or after the meeting. Indeed, she was seated next to Pence, likely intentionally to ensure that the photos of Trump at this meeting would capture her (one of the few women in attendance) as well. Why is she letting herself be used as a Trump stooge?

Apocalypse Watch: “The story can be seen as one data point in a growing list of recent examples in which explicit racism appears to be getting a pass, a platform, or even a reward in contexts where it once seemed safe to assume that this would be out of the question.”

Must Read of the Week: Chait, How Any Rand’s Theories Destroyed ‘Never Trump’ Conservatism.

Cuteness Comfort of the Week: Piglet.

THIS WEEK IN POLITICAL NEWS -- 11/25/16

THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN EDITION

Well friends, when last we met the Supreme Court had upheld the Affordable Care Act and struck down Arizona’s “papers, please” anti-immigrant law. That was a few years -- and a lifetime -- ago, it turns out. We now face a . . .  different reality, and my typing fingers have been a-itchin’ to get back to TWIPN, as the saying goes (the saying I just coined). So I’m back, though I can’t guarantee the same regularity as before, given that I have, you know, a real job these days. But with your forbearance, we’ll sort through the cascade of shit coming at us together, with our usual vim and vigor, and with perhaps a dash more gallows humor than before. So breathe deep, and let’s dive in!

THE CONFLICT OF INTEREST THING IS A BIG DEAL: Donald Trump plans to enrich himself and his family through the presidency. There can be no doubt about that. He has patently refused to shut down his businesses or transfer his holdings to a blind trust; the greatest assurance of a separation between governing and profit is his promise to focus on the country while his kids run the business -- so a pretty meaningless separation, given that he has involved his children intimately in the whole running of the country thing. (And why not? After all, as Giuliani says, he can’t be expected to “basically put them out of work,” can he?) The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza has an excellent run-down of the various conflicts Trump presents (scroll down in the article). This isn’t just a formality; it’s not just another norm Trump has smashed on his way to the White House. Chait tells us to expect the worst: “Given Trump’s business ethics, which run from refusing to pay contractors and daring them to sue to establishing a fake university to swindle his fans to using his 'foundation' to illegally donate to a politician who subsequently did not investigate said university, it would be surprising if he did not eventually accept outright bribery.” But guys, it’s fine; Donald Trump totally understands the issue and is taking it seriously: “The law is totally on my side, meaning the President can’t have a conflict of interest.” Oh.

UPDATE ON APPOINTMENTS: Trump continues to achieve great success in assembling a Team of Racists (sort of like a Team of Rivals, but more sinister). We know Steve Bannon has shown himself to be anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynist, and that he ran a website that promoted a white nationalist author who published articles like “Bill Kristol: Renegade Jew” and “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.” That was last week’s news. Now we have Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as our new Attorney General, a man whose self-admitted racist statements (like calling a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race”) disqualified him from a federal judgeship in the 1980s but renders him a perfect fit for Trump’s team 30 years later. Next up is the Education Secretary. Granted, we dodged a bullet in that Trump did not name creationist religious reactionary Jerry Falwell Jr. to the post, as was rumored. Instead, he chose a woman whose major point of experience has been to give massive sums to the Koch brothers in a successful effort to tilt the nation right-ward. But Trump’s draining the swamp! Now comes word that Ben Carson as HUD Secretary. People act as though HUD is a nothingburger, but it is very much a burger. Under Obama, the Department has begun to successfully force cities to prove that they are affirmatively furthering fair and integrated housing. Last year, Dr. Carson wrote an op-ed decrying those measures as “mandated social-engineering schemes” and “downright dangerous.”  And to think that less than two weeks ago, Carson suggested he was unfit to run a federal agency because of his utter lack of knowledge and experience. (And here’s a fun reminder that HUD presents unique opportunities for corruption!) Finally, there appears to be an internal schism about whether to appoint Mitt Romney as Secretary of State or whether to fill the post with someone more “loyal” to Trump. Romney, recall, was pointedly critical of Trump: “Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. . . . He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.” But apparently Romney’s willing to serve in Trump’s administration because hahahahahahaha nothing means anything anymore.

RAGE OVER “IDENTITY POLITICS”: Since Hillary Clinton won 2 million more votes than Donald Trump, the Democratic Party is in the middle of an internecine war about how desperately we must change absolutely everything about the party. By now you’ve likely seen the scurfuffle around Mark Lilla’s Sunday New York Times piece, urging the party to prioritize the desires of white male working class and rural voters (those mainstays of the Democratic coalition). There have been many thoughtful rejoinders to this piece; my favorites are from NY Magazine’s Rebecca Traister, Vox’s Matt Yglesias, and Slate’s Michelle Goldberg, who reminds us of the true peril that the people of color that make up the Democratic base face in the Trump era. As she put it, “The focus of left-of-center politics in the dark years to come must be on protecting the groups of people who are targets precisely because of their identities. To sideline their interests is to accede to a backlash that has just begun and will only get worse.” At my office, we had a long email debate about Lilla’s piece; I have included at the end of this week’s newsletter my take on the article and the question of “identity politics”. Here’s hoping we can move past this debate soon and start focusing on building the Democratic Party’s next generation of leaders at the local and state levels, areas we have neglected to our peril for far too long.

Must Read of the Week: Yes, we dodged the bullet on Rudy Giuliani being appointed as AG. But he is still in the running for many other cabinet posts. Even if you think you remember why Giuiani is a truly terrible, frightening politician, you really, really don’t. Read Radley Balko’s piece reminding us all why the idea of this man coming within 10 miles of power is terrifying.

And introducing our two new weekly features:

Apocalypse Watch of the Week: Matt Yglesias: We have 100 days to stop Trump from (permanently?) systemically corrupting the American political system.

Cuteness Comfort of the Week: Kid sees lobsters; excitement ensues.

My take on the Lilla article:

I really, really disagree with this article. I think it gets a remarkable amount wrong. It defines "identity politics" as that representing minorities and oppressed people, and seems to argue that we should just get back to the old fashioned default identity of white male interests, which somehow doesn't count as an "identity." Most absurdly, it asks the Democratic party to turn away from the policies and the people that form the raison d'être of the party--income inequality; civil rights and liberties for minorities; legal protections for the weak; a government bulwark against oppression by majority -- and become, what? A party that looks for support among disaffected and uneducated unemployed coal miners? This is not the path forward.

The article's thesis was shaky from the start, but truly lost me when it bemoaned the focus on non-white-male Great Men in high school history classes. Really? Our problem is the half-day lesson spent talking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton? We don't talk about the Founding Fathers enough? That's really his argument?

And how is it "ridiculous" for college students to be concerned about oppression, big and small, of their friends and peers whom this society has routinely overlooked? It may be a theoretical fight about "damn bathrooms" to straight white men like this author, but it is a fight about personhood and dignity for thousands of young trans people and their allies all over this country. If Anthony Kennedy can understand how one's dignity is tied up in issues of sexuality, then surely the Democratic party can.

And since when it is it a terrible idea to celebrate "the first X to do Y"? Aren't those the stories that uplift us, inspire us, repeatedly show us over and over how America is the greatest nation in the world (as the conservative-forced incantation reminds us)?

The author insists that we need to move to a set of policies that "affect a vast majority" of Americans. Of course, that is what the Democratic Party already stands for: health care for all; tax policies that benefit the vast majority rather than the richest few; environmental regulations that ensure the continuation of this planet as we know it; health and safety regulations to protect us and our surroundings; labor rules that ensure that workers are treated fairly and paid adequately. It is the GOP that strives to protect the interests of the few over the majority -- but because it wraps itself in the language of the white Christian male identity, it is seen as protecting the "default" and purportedly "majority" population (though of course white Christian men are NOT the majority any longer). But the Democratic Party also, crucially, stands for protections and benefits explicitly for the minority, against the majority: for the rights of Muslims against a reactionary and fearful majority; the rights of criminal defendants against a powerful state; the rights of gays, lesbians, trans people against an ignorant mob that sees them as less than human; the rights of women who have been shut out of this country's civic society for hundreds of years; the rights of the disabled; the rights of African Americans who have been systematically oppressed, slaughtered, scorned, beaten, driven away from the very moment of conception of this country up to the present day. These fights are not sideshows; they are not distractions from the cause. They are the reason we have politics. These are the highest and most noble purpose of the State, the reason our Constitution exists and is exulted. To shove these fights to the side -- to engage in them "quietly" -- is a betrayal not only of those groups (that maligned term) but of the principals that supposedly animate this country and that have always inspired the forces of progressivism. A "proper sense of scale"? These are people's lives.

I'll end just by saying that the predictability of those ready to throw overboard the interests of minorities for temporary political gain among white people makes it no less depressing or enraging. We must -- we must -- fight against this instinct.

(Also, are we really going to credit an author who makes mention of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as models for effective politics and stays silent on Barack Obama?)