Shenanigans

"Conservatives" start out bitching about how left-loonie-liberal something is (which it almost never is), then use the ensuing shift in public opinion to cover their shittiness as they take over something that's a good tool to push for, establish, and defend democracy, and turn it into a different kind of propaganda tool that serves their drive towards a global corporate plutocracy.

Federal inquiry details abuses of power by Trump's CEO over Voice of America

On the day after his confirmation as chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media in June 2020, Michael Pack met with a career employee to discuss which senior leaders at the agency and the Voice of America should be forced out due to their perceived political beliefs.

"Hates Republicans," the employee had written about one in a memo. "Openly despises Trump and Republicans," they said of another. A third, the employee wrote, "is not on the Trump team." The list went on. (Firing someone over political affiliation is typically a violation of federal civil service law.)

Within two days, Pack was examining ways to remove suspect staffers, a new federal investigation found. The executives he sidelined were later reinstated and exonerated by the inspector general's office of the U.S. State Department. Pack ultimately turned his attention to agency executives, network chiefs, and journalists themselves.

The report, sent to the White House and Congressional leaders earlier this month, found that the Trump appointee repeatedly abused the powers of his office, broke laws and regulations, and engaged in gross mismanagement.

USAGM oversees the Voice of America and other international broadcasters funded by the federal government, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Television Martí. The networks are charged with providing straight news for societies where independent news coverage is either repressed or financially unfeasible and with modeling the value of pluralistic political debate within that coverage.

"It just takes one's breath away."

"This report is remarkable in its breadth and depth and detail of the wrongdoing that was underway at these agencies in the last six months of the Trump administration," says David Seide, an attorney with the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit public interest law firm which has represented more than 30 whistleblowers at USAGM, VOA and its sister networks since Pack took office. "It just takes one's breath away."

Taken together, they depict Pack's brief tenure as an ideologically driven rampage through a government agency to try to force its newsrooms and workforce to show fealty to the White House.

Pack punished executives who objected to the legality of his plans, interfered in the journalistic independence of the newsrooms under his agency, and personally signed a no-bid contract with a private law firm to investigate those employees he saw as opposed to former President Donald Trump. The law firm's fees reached the seven figures for work typically done by attorneys who are federal employees.

In Trumpian flourish, Pack promised "to drain the swamp"

In a conversation with the conservative news outlet The Federalist, Pack characterized his moves with a Trumpian flourish: "to drain the swamp, to root out corruption and to deal with these issues of bias." Pack did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.

Pack is a conservative documentarian and former official at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. His appointment was held up for two years in the U.S. Senate over concerns about his highly ideological approach and whether he had been candid over the finances of his business. (His production company ultimately agreed to transfer $210,000 back to a nonprofit that he also controls, which was itself subsequently compelled to dissolve under a legal settlement he reached last year with the D.C. Attorney General's office.)

Pack, a slight man with an unassuming manner, had tight ties to major conservative figures. He briefly led the Claremont Institute in California, which is influential in Republican circles; he previously developed two documentaries for public television that Steve Bannon helped to produce. Bannon later became Trump's campaign manager and chief White House political strategist.

In early 2020, his nomination still languishing, Pack released his documentary about U.S. Justice Clarence Thomas, based on extensive interviews with the jurist and his wife, the conservative activist Ginni Thomas. He reportedly became friends with the Thomases, writing a book with the former White House attorney who helped smooth Thomas' path to confirmation in 1991.

Pack's own prospects for confirmation revived in spring 2020 when Trump's White House attacked the Voice of America, in almost unprecedented fashion. The White House publicly alleged the news service uncritically relayed Chinese propaganda about the nation's efforts to combat the outbreak of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

A litany of abuses substantiated by federal investigation

The inquiry was conducted by three outside consultants hired by USAGM and endorsed by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the agency that investigates federal whistleblower complaints. The report concludes that Pack:

• Violated the independence of journalists working for newsrooms at the Voice of America and other international broadcasting networks funded by the government and "exercised oversight in a manner suggestive of political bias."
• Wrongly retaliated against career executives by suspending their security clearances after they filed whistleblower complaints. Their allegations were later substantiated by the State Department's inspector general's office.
• Engaged in "gross mismanagement and gross waste" when he paid a politically-connected Virginia law firm $1.6 million in agency money to investigate his executives in a confidential, no-bid contract. A former Supreme Court clerk for Thomas, John D. Adams, was the senior partner who oversaw the McGuireWoods contract with Pack at USAGM.
• Imperiled the independence of several of the international networks, politicizing them by stacking their boards with a full slate of ideological appointees all at once. He also abused his powers in trying to make their tenures irrevocable except in the case of a felony conviction.
• Broke privacy laws by releasing dossiers compiled by the law firm, McGuireWoods, on those executives he suspended to five right-wing journalists whom he had appointed to various networks funded by the boards. McGuireWoods strongly advised against releasing the dossiers publicly. They were ultimately made public by a sympathetic member of Congress.
• Sought to prevent the Open Technology Fund from receiving federal funds for three years because of his animus toward the outfit, "rather than a desire to protect the public interest." The fund helped to subsidize the development of Tor and Signal, technologies that let people access the Web and communicate securely and privately, even in repressive countries. Bannon was among those with ties to figures promoting rival technologies that sought greater subsidies from the fund.
• "[P]ut numerous internet freedom projects at risk, including in countries that are State Department priorities" by seeking to block federal dollars from flowing to the tech fund.

Violations found of journalistic independence and the civil workforce's professionalism

Not all of the actions under investigation amounted to an abuse of power, a gross waste of federal funds, or a violation of the law. For example, the inquiry found that it was within Pack's authority to remove the heads of the networks, despite objections and protests.

Even in some of those instances, however, Pack was found to have acted improperly, as when he fired the head of Radio Free Asia and directed her replacement to force her out of her subsequent, contractually protected position of executive editor at the network. "CEO Pack's actions were inconsistent with the statutory mandate that he respect the networks' journalistic integrity and independence," the report states.

U.S. Agency Targets Its Own Journalists' Independence

Nearly every outfit overseen by the USAGM was affected by his actions — or, at times, his inactions. Pack remained mute when his newly installed VOA leaders demoted a reporter who covered the White House for pressing then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for answers about the January 6th, 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol; he took no action when the acting chief of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting provided a Trump political aide with a link to its content to distribute to a U.S. audience shortly before the 2020 elections, despite laws preventing such dissemination; and he failed to assign a standards editor for Voice of America after reassigning the longtime news executive for four months.

That last maneuver, the report found, constituted gross mismanagement.

NPR has previously reported on many of the matters under investigation, and some others that did not receive official scrutiny.

Based on exchanges among USAGM staffers, NPR previously reported that McGuireWoods intended to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the $1.6 million billed but stopped invoicing the agency late that fall. Pack was about to lose his perch and his patron, as Joe Biden won election in November. Biden would order Pack to resign as one of his first formal acts in office. A spokesperson for McGuireWoods did not return a detailed message seeking comment.

Trump Appointee Unconstitutionally Interfered With VOA, Judge Rules

The inquiry itself was instigated by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. It received the whistleblower complaints and directed USAGM to conduct the investigation.

In one of his final actions in office, Pack wrote that he did not accept the agency's authority to instruct him to initiate the investigation. He called the agency's structure "unconstitutional" and said of those who lodged complaints against him, "They have an axe to grind." That refusal, too, was seen as a breach of Pack's duties.

The Office of Special Counsel appointed a panel of three outside experts, including the former acting chief of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, a former senior executive of the Export-Import Bank, and a former investigative reporter who has worked for the special counsel's office.

NPR spoke to seven current and former staffers at USAGM and outlets and outfits it funds. Each said the report reflected a climate of crisis, fear and reprisal.

In sum, Pack's seven-and-a-half month stint running the agency exemplified Trump's contempt for the press and for the professional federal workforce that prides itself on nonpartisanship. (Pack echoed Trump's designation of that workforce as the "Deep State.")

Defined By Scandal At Voice of America, CEO Resigns At Biden's Request
Yet the people with whom NPR spoke also, independently, noted this account of Pack's tenure may not represent only a past era.

On May 10, Congressman Andy Ogles, a Republican from Tennessee, introduced legislation to prohibit any federal funding for the Open Technology Fund, as Pack had sought to do. Trump announced his support for Ogles' 2024 re-election bid on the next day.

And the conservative Heritage Foundation has drawn up proposals for whom should be hired at federal agencies, should Trump or another Republican win the White House in 2024.

Among the project's leaders is John McEntee, the former personnel chief in the Trump White House who helped set up the cadre of partisans that formed Pack's inner circle at USAGM.

Could Be Something

Ted Cruz's Senate Future Could Be in Peril

Ted Cruz faces "nontrivial" odds of being voted out of office in 2024, according to one U.S. politics expert, speaking after Democratic Representative Colin Allred announced he is bidding for the seat on Monday.

Cruz has served as the junior senator from Texas since 2013 and was re-elected in 2018 when he beat Democrat Beto O'Rourke by nearly six points.

Republicans are hoping to capture the Senate in 2024, after failing to do so in the November 2022 midterm elections. To achieve this they must flip two seats, or just one if they also win the presidential election, which would give the GOP the vice president's tie-breaking vote.

Allred announced he is hoping to challenge Cruz with a video posted on social media, in which he said: "We don't have to be embarrassed by our senator. We can get a new one."

In 2018 Allred flipped Texas's 32nd congressional district, beating Republican incumbent Pete Sessions by almost seven points. He finished 2022 with a war chest of nearly $2 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Thomas Gift, the founding director of the Centre on US Politics at University College London, told Newsweek that Cruz could be in for a tough 2024 contest.

"Based on the 2018 results alone when Cruz just narrowly beat out challenger Beto O'Rouke, it's certainly not a foregone conclusion that Cruz has 2024 in the bag. A victory now may be more precarious given just how much Cruz has aligned himself with Trumpism, making him an even more polarizing figure," Gift said.

"Cruz still has to be considered the favorite, given name recognition, cash, incumbent status, and a major political machine behind him in the RNC (Republican National Committee) that wants to keep one of its most loyal foot soldiers in power. At the same time, his seat is clearly one to watch, with the odds of an upset looking nontrivial."

"No one should kid themselves," he said. "Despite huge recent growth in major population centers like Austin, the Lone Star State is still solidly red, at least for now. But that doesn't mean Democrats can't win at the state level."

In a statement sent to Newsweek Cruz spokesperson Nick Maddux said: "Democrats have once again turned to a far-left radical to run for Senate. Not only does Colin Allred vote with Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time, but his voting record is completely out-of-touch with Texas. Allred wants men to compete in women's sports, isn't serious about addressing the crisis at the border, wants to take away law-abiding Texans' guns, and is soft on punishing murderers.

"Bottom line, Allred is too extreme for Texas. Thankfully, the Lone Star State has a tireless champion in Sen. Ted Cruz. For over a decade, Sen. Cruz has been leading the fight for jobs, freedom, and security in Texas. As Senator for Texas, Sen. Cruz will continue to do everything he can to bring more jobs to Texas, fight out-of-control government spending, and support the oil and gas industry from the attacks of Democrats like Joe Biden and Colin Allred."

Last month, MSNBC broadcast recordings of Cruz discussing how the 2020 presidential election result could be overturned with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News.

The Texas senator suggested setting up a "commission" to look into "credible evidence of fraud that undermines confidence in the electoral results in any given state."

Former President Donald Trump is continuing to insist the 2020 election was stolen from him, though this claim has been repeatedly dismissed in court and by legal experts.

Problem: Texas Gov Greg Abbott is trying to install a handy little emergency brake.

The proposed law says the vote tabulation in any county with more than 2.7 million voters has to pass muster with the Sec'y Of State, who, funnily enough, is appointed by the governor.

Texas lawmakers advanced a bill this week that would allow the secretary of state, who is handpicked by the governor, to overturn the results of an election in the state’s largest county and order a new one.

The bill targets Harris County, the largest in the state and the third-largest in the U.S., which includes Houston and has a population of around 4.7 million. It would allow the secretary of state, currently Republican Jane Nelson, to order a new election in the county if 2 percent or more of the polling locations ran out of ballot paper for more than an hour.

Written to apply to counties with a population over 2.7 million — which only applies to Harris County in the state — the bill follows criticism by Republican lawmakers over polling issues in the county in the 2022 midterm elections. It passed the state Senate on Tuesday, and now must be considered in the House.

And that's how they're working it. They sell it as a safeguard against shenanigans - and of course it's there for the Democrats to use if Texas elects a Democrat as governor - but (also of course) they intend to use it to engage in the very shenanigans they say they're trying to prevent, so a Democrat will never get elected.

These fuckin' guys

There is no honor in the GOP

Let's Get This One Cleared Up

Ron DeSantis is a fucking idiot.

Actually, he's not - he knows his grandstanding on "extradition" is bullshit. But he also knows most of the Republican Primary Voters are deep into fanciful imaginings about how their valiant governor will rise up to save their favorite scamster by refusing to help "the government" and yada yada yada.

US Constitution, Article 4, Section 2:

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

One sure sign that the Republicans have lost their damned minds is evident in how they consistently speak in contradiction of their own bad selves.

DeSantis is the head of Florida's government. He runs the show for the government. He holds the power of the government in his hands. But there he is, bitching about "the government" like he's totally removed from it.

Here in our little Democratic Republic, the people are the government, and they elect individuals from amongst themselves to manage the people's business, according to The Constitution.

In case anybody needs to hear it again - and I can't believe I have to keep saying this - any clown who decides he can just make it up as he goes along - in spite of what the fucking law actually fucking says - should never be allowed anywhere near the levers of power. Ever.

DeSantis, possible Trump rival, says he won’t assist in extradition

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible rival to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said on Twitter that Florida will not work with New York on any extradition requests in case one is necessary for the newly indicted former president.

“Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue” with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his “political agenda,” DeSantis said.

...more...

I Shouldn't, But I Will

I would normally avoid quoting or boosting a Never-Trumper in any way, but sometimes even a pimp like Charley Sykes should get a look-see.

Retribution, Eradication, and the Coming Storm
The words of CPAC

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before his speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Hello darkness, my old friend.

If you want a preview of what’s coming our way, take a look at the vocabulary of CPAC, including the former president’s promise of retribution, obliteration, and war.

Attention, perhaps, should be paid.

“Retribution”

“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice,’” Donald Trump told his acolytes at CPAC. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”

In case anyone missed it, Trump repeated the phrase: “I am your retribution”.

It was probably the strongest line of his speech, and the threat was intentionally unsubtle and unmistakable. He would “totally obliterate the ‘deep state,” and wreak vengeance on the sinister scum who opposed him.

Ronald Reagan proclaimed “It’s Morning in America”; Trump declared, I am Nemesis.

This is not, to put it mildly, normal political rhetoric, at least in the English language. But it gives a taste of the bleak storm to come. The Atlantic’s John Hendrickson writes:

For much of the speech, Trump’s voice took on more of a soft and haggard whisper than the booming, throaty scream that characterized his campaign rallies. His language, by contrast, was bellicose.

Tonight’s address was among the darkest speeches he has given since his “American carnage” inaugural address. Trump warned that the United States is becoming “a nation in decline” and a “crime-ridden, filthy communist nightmare.”

He spoke of an “epic battle” against “sinister forces” on the left.

He repeatedly painted himself as a martyr, a tragic hero still hoping for redemption. “They’re not coming after me; they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in their way,” Trump told the room. He pulled out his best, half-hearted Patton: “We are going to finish what we started. We’re going to complete the mission. We’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory.”

He was heavy on adjectives, devastating with nouns. “We will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all,” he said…

And he is all-in on the Insurrection:

After seven mind-bending, soul-crushing years, it’s easy to get numbed by this sort of thing. But, as former congressman Joe Walsh writes in this morning’s Bulwark, we ought take this sort of language seriously. Tom Nichols agrees, writing yesterday, “We need to stop treating support for Trump as if it’s just another political choice and instead work to isolate his renewed threat to our democracy and our national security.”

“There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages.

“If it is false, then for the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology.”

“Eradicated”

ICYMI, Michael Knowles, a commentator for the Daily Wire and BFF of Ted Cruz, declared at CPAC:

“There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages.

“If it is false, then for the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology.”

Michael Knowles tells CPAC that "there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. ... Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely." https://t.co/57hJF4frgq pic.twitter.com/szvnC1qWrP

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 4, 2023

After Knowles was accused of using genocidal language, he threatened lawsuits and indignantly insisted that he was not talking eradicating transgender people, only transgender-ism. This was enough of a distinction that the Daily Beast changed it’s original headline “to more literally reflect the words Knowles used.” Insisted Knowles:

“Nobody’s calling to exterminate anybody because the other problem with that statement is that transgender people is not a real ontological category,” he added. “It’s not a legitimate category of being.”

But “eradicated,” is a distinctive word with distinctive connotations and associations, and we should pay Knowles the compliment of thinking that he chose it carefully, specifically, and specially for the occasion.

He could have said that we should “challenge,” “confront,” “oppose,” “resist,” or “push-back” against transgenderism.

Instead, he chose to use the word “eradicate.” Oxford Languages offers a few synonyms for his word choice: eliminate, exterminate, destroy, annihilate, extirpate, obliterate, kill, wipe out, liquidate, decimate, abolish, extinguish.

So let’s try an experiment here. Imagine that we had a speaker — at an event that is definitely not meant to be CPAC — who said, “Jew-ishness must be eradicated from public life.” Or how about “Judai-ism must be eradicated.” Or, how about saying “Zion-ism must be eradicated from the Middle East.:

He (or she) might deny that this in any way suggested the eradication, elimination, or extermination of any actual Jews or Zionists. But it seems unlikely that anyone except the most determined denialists and rationalizers would swallow that explanation.

“Knowles may or may not be smart enough to realize that a word like eradicate inherently carries a hint of physical menace,” writes Jonathan Chait.

The most generous account of his argument is that he lacks the intelligence to grasp the implications of his own position. The least generous account is that he is making a winking nod to ugly and hateful forces he has no intention of holding back.

But Michael Knowles is not dumb.

In fact, he is a very smart guy, who understands the language of the right: its nuances, and its various dog whistles. Back in the Before Times (2016) he actually wrote a valuable guide to to the Alt-Right, which included “8 Things You Need To Know.” (It was so good, I included it in a footnote in my book, “How The Right Lost Its Mind,” page 169.)

The first thing Knowles said we should know about the New Right?

• Racism is not a fringe element of the Alt-Right; it’s the movement’s central premise.

And he offered some examples of the language and signals they used:

• Sam Francis, the late syndicated columnist who famously called for a “white racial consciousness”
• Theodore Robert Beale, the white nationalist blogger better known by his pen name Vox Day, who counts as a central tenet of the Alt-Right that “we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children,” which represents one half of the white nationalist, neo-Nazi numerical symbol 1488. (That phrase contains 14 words, while 8 refers to the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, which doubled represents “Heil Hitler.”)
• Paul Ramsey, a white nationalist who produced a video titled “Is it wrong not to feel sad about the Holocaust?” and who seeks to revise historical accounts of the Holocaust, asking, “Do you mean that six million figure? You know that six million figure has been used many times before World War II, did you know that?”

Some other things Knowles said we needed to know about the Alt-Right:

• It’s also explicitly anti-Semitic….
• The Alt-Right loves Christendom but rejects Christianity. The Alt-Right admires Christendom primarily for uniting the continent and forging white European identity.
• The Alt-Right wants to burn American politics to the ground. The Alt-Right most immediately opposes conservatism.
• The Alternative Right asks conservatives to trade God for racial identity, liberty for strongman statism, and the unique American idea that “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” for a cartoon Nazi frog.

The point is that Knowles knows the nomenclature, the memes, and the signals of the movement that now seems to have blended into CPAC/MAGAism. So, while he may not have been advocating actual genocide, or even the harm of any individuals, he knew perfectly well that he was using the sort of eliminationist rhetoric that fires up the fever swamps.

He knew his audience and the words they wanted to hear.

“When I said, like, I don’t know, it’s sort of weird that Pennsylvania managed to elect a vegetable, they criticize me as being ableist. I didn’t know what that was. But there’s always an ‘ist’. It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about. And apparently an ableist is someone who discriminates against those with disabilities.”

“I said: ‘Well, I’m not discriminating against any... ‘ I’d love for John Fetterman to have, like, good gainful employment. Maybe he could be, like, a bag guy at a grocery store. But, like, is it unreasonable for me to expect, as a citizen of the United States of America, to have a United States senator have basic cognitive function?”

Nota bene: A reminder that Trumpism is not merely post-truth and post-shame, but also post-even-a-shred-of-decency.

Today's Pinch-Faced Blue-Nosed Prigs

The Real Reason North Dakota Is Going After Books and Librarians

Last fall, I was the keynote speaker at the North Dakota Library Association’s annual conference. The theme was “Libraries: The Place For Everyone.” There were rainbow flags, paper-link chains and multicolor glitter scattered across tables. It was the safest I have ever felt back home as an out, gay man. When I was a young person, libraries were where I went to find stories that made me feel I could fit in, not only in North Dakota, but in the wider world. But two pieces of legislation that may soon be signed into law in North Dakota would make it possible to restrict libraries and, in some cases, to imprison librarians.

House Bill 1205 would prohibit public libraries from keeping and lending “books that contain explicit sexual material.” The bill’s definition of explicit material could include “pictorial, three-dimensional, or visual” depictions of anything from sex scenes in movies to educational materials meant to teach teenagers about puberty. As the bill states, libraries have until Jan. 1, 2024 to create a procedure “for the development of a book collection that is appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the individuals who may access the materials, and which is suitable for, and consistent with, the purpose of the library.” Currently, the bill contains no explanation of what “the purpose of the library” means or how to determine “appropriate” age and maturity.

The more far-reaching Senate Bill 2360 prohibits organizations open to minors from displaying “objectionable materials,” whether image or text, including visuals or descriptions of “nude or partially denuded human figures posed or presented in a manner to exploit sex, lust or perversion.” The bill defines “nude or partially denuded human figures” as “less than completely and opaquely covered human genitals, pubic regions, female breasts or a female breast, if the breast or breasts are exposed below a point immediately above the top of the areola, or human buttocks; and includes human male genitals in a discernibly turgid state even if completely and opaquely covered.”

note: politicians - especially the wingnuts way out there on the right - are fond of trying to "legislate their values". They're always telling us how they put a lot of themselves into the laws they wanna pass. So I guess the ND legislature includes a bunch of swollen bombastic pricks(?)

By that definition, a photograph or even a written description of the Venus de Milo could — depending on the eye of the beholder — be out of bounds. It’s not just a matter of interpretation, though: Senate Bill 2360 would make it possible to charge offending librarians with a class B misdemeanor, punishable with up to 30 days in jail and a fine of $1,500.

With these bills, North Dakota stands to become a model for other towns, cities and states to censor not only their libraries, but also their citizens.

Growing up in the closet in North Dakota in the late ’90s and early 2000s, I found sanctuary in libraries that I couldn’t find anywhere else. I ate breakfast every morning in Bismarck High School, combing the stacks and reading books by authors like James Baldwin, Truman Capote and Willa Cather. When some of the school’s football players circulated a petition to have the one openly gay boy in my class change in the girls’ locker room, I went deeper into the library shelves, tried to keep quiet and hide who I was.

The summer after graduating from college, when I was outed by my aunt, and my home was no longer a safe space, I searched the stacks of the Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library for stories of gay people disowned by family members to help me find my own way to stable ground. During those evenings, I would settle into a plush armchair with a pile of books and magazines and read. I read authors like Kent Haruf and Amy Tan and Mary Karr. I would listen to classical music CDs to try and calm myself. I was free to roam, peruse, and free to be myself, at least privately.

North Dakota is a part of a growing national trend. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 of last year, the American Library Association recorded 681 attempts to ban or restrict library resources. There were 1,651 book titles targeted, up from 1,597 in 2021. According to PEN America, 41 percent of books banned throughout the 2021-22 school year contained L.G.B.T.Q. themes, protagonists or prominent secondary characters. Bills similar to North Dakota’s have also been introduced or passed into law in states like West Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Montana, Iowa, Wyoming, Missouri and Indiana.

Under Missouri’s new law banning the provision of “explicit sexual material” to students, school districts removed works about Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; comics, such as “Batman” and “X-Men”; visual depictions of Shakespeare’s works; and “Maus,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust.

But let’s be honest: It’s not the Venus de Milo these laws are going to come for first. It’s books with L.G.B.T.Q. stories, or books by L.G.B.T.Q. authors — the kind of books that have provided so many queer young people with a lifeline when they needed it most. I don’t know where I would have ended up if I couldn’t read my way out of despair. My heart breaks to think of all the kids now who won’t have that option.

Libraries should be places where everyone is welcomed, no matter who they are, and where everyone can find themselves reflected in the stories on the shelves. Laws like these make that a lot less likely.

Censorship of this kind is a flat-out straight-up contradiction in a country that's supposed to be all about equality, and free speech, and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge, and progress, and self-actualization.

So the good news comes from that glittering icon of liberal truth, Ayn Rand, who said:

Contradiction exists,

but it can't prevail

because it's self-defeating.

BTW, we've been here before.

And - oh yeah - today marks the last day of Freedom To Read Week.

Feb 19-25

Bannings and Burnings in History

Some of the most controversial books in history are now regarded as classics. The Bible and works by Shakespeare are among those that have been banned over the past two thousand years. Here is a selective timeline of book bannings, burnings, and other censorship activities.

Some highlights:

1983: Members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee called for the rejection of The Diary of Anne Frank because it was “a real downer.” It was also challenged for offensive references to sexuality.

1973: The school board in Drake, North Dakota, ordered the burning of 32 copies of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and 60 copies of James Dickey’s Deliverance for, respectively, the use of profanity and references to homosexuality.

1954: Mickey Mouse comics were banned in East Berlin because Mickey was said to be an “anti-Red rebel.”

1933: A series of massive bonfires in Nazi Germany burned thousands of books written by Jews, communists, and others. Included were the works of John Dos Passos, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Lenin, Jack London, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Erich Maria Remarque, Upton Sinclair, Stalin, and Leon Trotsky.

1885: A year after the publication of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the library of Concord, Massachusetts, decided to exclude the book from its collection. The committee making the decision said the book was “rough, coarse and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” By 1907, it was said that Twain’s novel had been thrown out of some library somewhere every year, mostly because its hero was said to present a bad example for impressionable young readers.

1807: Dr. Thomas Bowdler quietly brought out the first of his revised editions of Shakespeare’s plays. The preface claimed that he had removed from Shakespeare “everything that can raise a blush on the cheek of modesty”—which amounted to about 10 per cent of the playwright’s text. One hundred and fifty years later, it was discovered that the real excision had been done by Dr. Bowdler’s sister, Henrietta Maria. The word “bowdlerize” became part of the English language.

1559: For hundreds of years, the Roman Catholic Church listed books that were prohibited to its members; but in this year, Pope Paul IV established the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. For more than 400 years this was the definitive list of books that Roman Catholics were told not to read. It was one of the most powerful censorship tools in the world.

35: The Roman emperor Caligula opposed the reading of The Odyssey by Homer, written more than 300 years before. He thought the epic poem was dangerous because it expressed Greek ideas of freedom.

Shifting The Blame

Typical. Instead of looking at Russia's invasion of Ukraine and seeing what an asshole Putin is for launching a war of conquest, China says we should look at it and see the big bad American boogey man.

Permanent Standard Disclaimer:

That's not to say the US has nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to fucking with things we have no business fucking with.

But this is not one of those things.

Yes, we have a vested interest in a free and democratic Ukraine, and helping Ukraine in service to that interest is good dual-purpose policy.

The spread of democracy is an all-round good thing in itself. And whenever democracy takes hold anywhere, it works against autocratic dickheads everywhere - like Putin and Xi. And also against plutocratic dickheads like most of the "conservatives" here in USAmerica, Inc.

As always, I maintain a firm belief that forces are at work all over the joint trying to move every country towards a global plutocracy. But that's a slightly different rant.

The focus here is on the way these dickheads try to deflect and shift the blame. They either blame the victim (Putin'a bullshit about "De-Nazification"), or they deflect to something like his secondary rationalization of "NATO is out to get us", which is what Xi is picking up on, with the variation of "everything bad that happens can be blamed on Washington".

Democracy in Ukraine is in fact a "threat to Russian", but it's only a threat to "Putin's Russia", and it's in Xi's best interest to lean in favor of a fellow-autocrat, while trying not to look like he's directly supporting Putin's war. And that's another exercise in selective reasoning because of Xi's ambitions of "taking Taiwan back".

It's been said that Geopolitics is a worldwide poker game where everybody's cheating and everybody knows everybody's cheating. So it should never come as a surprise when some event or series of events reveals what a fucked up mess it really is.

Anyway ...

A year later, China blames U.S. ‘hegemony’ — not Russia — for war in Ukraine

Ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has launched a public diplomacy offensive to wrest control of the narrative about its role in the conflict, trying to clear itself of accusations that it has sided with Russia while accusing the United States of turning the conflict into a “proxy” war.

Few of the positions staked out by Chinese officials in a flurry of speeches and documents this week are new, but they have underscored why Beijing continues to stand by Moscow even as it professes “deep concern” about the conflict: It considers the United States — not Russia — the progenitor of global insecurity, including in Ukraine.

Beijing insists it is neutral in the conflict, but those claims routinely clash with its rhetorical and diplomatic support for Russia.

That was illustrated this week, with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, arriving in Moscow in a show of solidarity with Russia — especially when contrasted with President Biden’s unannounced trip to Kyiv, where he walked the streets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The China-Russia relationship has stood the test of stormy international circumstances and remained “as stable as Mount Tai,” Wang told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, using a Chinese idiom for rock-solid.

“Crisis and chaos appear repeatedly before us, but within crisis there is opportunity,” he said.

By actively responding to the challenges of the times, the two nations can bring about an even deeper comprehensive strategic partnership, and that relationship “will not be overpowered by a third party’s coercion or pressure” because it is built on a strong economic, political and cultural foundation, Wang added.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit Russia some time this year, but the Kremlin declined Wednesday to be drawn on reports that it could be as soon as April.

From the beginning of the war, China has tried to protect its rapidly deepening economic and political ties with Russia at the same time it tried to assure Western audiences that it wants peace and should not be a target for sanctions.

But as China’s role as a lifeline for an isolated Russia grows, it is becoming harder for Beijing to stay on the sidelines.

The Foreign Ministry in Beijing has declined to comment on reports that Xi will deliver a “peace speech” on Friday, exactly one year since Russia launched its invasion, saying only that China will issue a document clarifying its stance on the day.

The problem with China’s story of being an honest broker is that Russia remains a “key ally in the effort to push back against the U.S.-led order,” said Arthur Kroeber, partner at the research firm Gavekal Dragonomics.

“The true purpose of Xi’s speech” — assuming it takes place — “will be to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its European allies, by suggesting that China, not the U.S., is the real advocate of a peaceful resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war,” he wrote in a note on Wednesday.

The latest propaganda blitz also provides a clearer picture of Xi’s foreign policy priorities as he embarks on a third term in power. Bringing about an end to the war is only one item in Xi’s ambitious agenda to reshape the global order so that the United States and its allies cannot slow China’s rise or challenge its territorial claims. And to that end, China remains closely aligned with Russia.

An attempt to justify China’s stance on the war in Ukraine to a conflicted domestic audience, the new wave of propaganda is also a way to rebuff growing concern that Beijing will step up support for Putin’s war effort as it enters its second year.

Beijing has rejected U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s warning that China might be considering providing “lethal” support to Russia as a “wild accusation” and accused the United States of wanting Ukraine to “fight till the last Ukrainian.”

“It’s plain for the world to see who is calling for dialogue and striving for peace and who is adding fuel to the fire, handing out knives and instigating hostility,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday.

Ding Chun, director of the Center for European Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said Blinken’s claim was a “strategic statement” meant to warn China. “It’s not a substantive accusation, but rather a part of U.S. strategy to tell China not to have the intention [to do so],” he said.

But it’s not just the United States that is concerned about China’s intentions. Zelensky told the German daily Die Welt this week that he hoped China would make a “pragmatic assessment” and avoid allying itself with Russia’s war effort, because if it did “there will be a world war.”

In response to fears that the conflict could expand, Wang Wen, a professor at Renmin University, said it was wrong for Zelensky to speculate about Beijing’s actions. Instead, “he should thank China for promoting humanitarian aid to Ukraine. If China really were to support Russia, then Zelensky’s life would get even worse,” he said.

(In the month after the invasion, China gave Ukraine $725,000 of humanitarian aid and $1.5 million in other forms of aid. It hasn’t announced additional support since then.)

Seeing the United States as a source of instability — while giving aggression from Russia and other authoritarian states a pass — is a longtime stance of the Chinese Communist Party. But under Xi, it is a worldview that has become more deeply embedded into China’s foreign policy and echoed by its national security establishment.

Lu Xiang, a researcher at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the true threat to Ukraine’s autonomy is Western support. Having once been part of the Soviet Union means that “if a big country from outside the region uses Ukraine as a chess piece to weaken Russia’s strategic interests, then that means [Ukraine’s] sovereign interests will of necessity be suppressed,” he said.

At the core of Xi’s priorities for promoting China’s security is an effort to counteract the United States’ influence in the international order, often by enlisting countries that share similar grievances.

Chinese complaints about American “abuse of hegemony” in global military, political and economic affairs were listed in a five-page document issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday, which called the Ukraine conflict a case of the United States “repeating its old tactics of waging proxy … wars.”

Separately this week, China issued a “concept paper” that staked out positions on global hot-spot issues, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the Pacific islands.

China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, released the document at an event in Beijing, running through a string of broad commitments to uphold the U.N. charter, reject the use of nuclear weapons and protect territorial integrity, while also taking thinly veiled swipes at the United States for “abusing unilateral sanctions” and building security blocs.

The document, which did not mention Russia, made only passing reference to the “Ukraine crisis” as an issue to be resolved through dialogue. It repeated that “legitimate security concerns of all countries” should be taken seriously — a phrase often used by Beijing in defense of Moscow.

Qin also used the event to call for countries to stop “clamoring about ‘Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.’”

Since the start of the war, China has tried to draw a distinction between Russia’s actions and its own escalating military aggression in the Taiwan Strait. For many in the self-governed island democracy, however, the war has been a wake-up call for the need to be better prepared to repel an attack from China.

Missing from the newly proactive stance China laid out this week is any indication that Beijing is willing to take a leading role in peace negotiations.

“Neither Russia nor Ukraine can defeat each other completely in the short term,” said Fudan University’s Ding. “China has emphasized the need to stop the war and promote peace, but it has not explicitly said that it wants to be a mediator in this war, and it is very difficult to do so in practice. Although China has a better relationship with Russia, it is a question of to what extent Russia will listen to China’s thoughts.”

Press Poodle Lamentations

Karen Tumulty wishes us not to hold her shittiness against her.

Yes, we want plutocracy

we just had the wrong plutocrat

(pay wall)

Opinion
I’m sorry I said nice things about Glenn Youngkin

I’d like to take this opportunity to retract the nice things I said about Glenn Youngkin a few months ago.

In July, I wrote a column when reports began to surface that Virginia’s Republican governor, a fresh and sunny political newcomer with proven bipartisan appeal, was already thinking about running for president.

At the time, I expressed hope that Youngkin — or someone like him — would seek the GOP nomination in 2024. His stunning 2021 victory in blue-ish Virginia showed that there might still be room in the Republican Party for a different model of politician, one who could run as a unifying alternative to Donald Trump’s venomous brand.

Optimist that I am, I still hope that a tribune of sanity will emerge in the Republican Party. But the everydad in the fleece vest probably isn’t that guy. When a situation this week called for expressing a modicum of human decency, Youngkin — who frequently talks about his religious values — showed he could rival the former president at diving for the gutter.

As news was breaking Friday about the horrific attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, by an intruder in their San Francisco home, Youngkin happened to be campaigning in Stafford, Va., for Yesli Vega, the Republican running in a very tight race against Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger.

“Speaker Pelosi’s husband, they had a break-in last night in their house, and he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere,” Youngkin said.

Alas, he didn’t stop there.

“But we’re going to send her back to be with him in California,” the governor said. As the crowd cheered, Youngkin doubled down: “That’s what we’re going to go do. That’s what we’re going to go do.”

Set aside the fact that his joke, if that’s what you can call it, showed a lack of understanding of basic civics and geography. Pelosi is in Washington because she has been elected for the past 35 years by the voters of California. This has nothing to do with anybody in Virginia.

What made Youngkin’s riff not only tasteless but also dangerous is that he was not referring to some random act of “violence anywhere.” The attack on Paul Pelosi was a direct product of the toxic political culture — a culture that the governor was helping to cultivate for what he apparently sees as a political opportunity.

Evidence now indicates that the assailant who beat Pelosi with a hammer, sending the 82-year-old to the hospital with a skull fracture and serious injuries to his arm and hands, had broken into the Pelosi home because he was looking for the speaker herself. Nancy Pelosi has been demonized for years by Republicans, including in countless GOP campaign ads. The attacker’s reported shouts of “Where is Nancy?” were a chilling echo of the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters’ cries as they tried to hunt her down in the corridors of the Capitol.

Being a jerk about Pelosi is not the only Youngkin action of late that betrays who he really is and what he is willing to do in service of his ambition. During his campaign for governor, he managed a tricky balancing act on the election denialism that has gripped his party. He promised to put “election integrity” at the top of his priorities in office — indulging the lie that fraud is rampant — but also acknowledged Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and called the Jan. 6 insurrection “a real blight on our democracy.” And, notably, he kept Trump at a distance.

But more recently, Youngkin is being seen with the worst people in his party. A little over a week ago, he stumped in Arizona for GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, one of the loudest of those 2020 deniers and someone who has refused to say whether she will accept the results of this year’s election. He called her “awesome,” and she declared him a “total rock star.”

Asked on CNN about his plans to campaign with Lake, Youngkin replied: “I think that the Republican Party has to be a party where we are not shunning people and excluding them, because we don’t agree on everything.” In other words, Youngkin thinks it’s fine to undermine democracy in the cause of lower taxes and school choice.

The governor remains popular in Virginia, with a recent poll showing his approval at 55 percent and most of his constituents saying the state is moving in the right direction. But the commonwealth limits its governors to one consecutive term, which means, come 2024, he will be looking for a new job.

Youngkin may still have some room for redemption, though it is shrinking. He could start by apologizing for his crude joke. So far, all we’ve heard is a statement from his office condemning the violence against the speaker’s husband and saying the governor “wishes him a full recovery and is keeping the Pelosi family in his prayers.” Meanwhile, his turn toward full-bore Trumpism is likely to be for naught. There are plenty of others, including the original, who do it better — and at less cost to their own integrity.

Today's Warning

"The elected autocrat" - the strong man who dismantles democracy from within.

He manipulates public opinion thru mis-information and dis-information by way of various media, and a loose network of hucksters who are also looking to syphon off a little of that money-n-power for themselves.

Once in office, he sets about taking down the process that got him elected, and replacing it with a system that will keep him in power for life - all under the oldest bullshit guise ever, which (no matter the phrasing he comes up with) is always:

I had to destroy democracy

in order to save it.

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Opinion
A Washington foreign policy legend issues a dire warning

America’s role as a promoter of freedom, democracy and universal rights is under unprecedented pressure both at home and abroad. All over the world, autocracy is on the march. The United States’ own democratic credibility is at a historic low. Yet legendary Washington foreign policy practitioner Morton Halperin is still optimistic that democracy can eventually prevail — if we fight for it.

Halperin, who served in senior national security posts under presidents from Lyndon B. Johnson to Barack Obama, retired last month, ending a six-decade career in diplomacy and public service. Now 84, he worked in the Nixon administration under then-national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger, who secretly wiretapped him for 21 months. Halperin once held the No. 8 spot on President Richard M. Nixon’s enemies list. A note next to his name read: “A scandal would be helpful here.”

He oversaw the production of the Pentagon Papers, which documented the coverup of U.S. military failures in the Vietnam War. He literally wrote the book on bureaucratic politics and foreign policy. In between stints in government, Halperin worked for several civil society organizations advocating causes ranging from arms control to civil rights to government accountability. He founded an intergovernmental coalition called the Community of Democracies. His last posting was as a senior adviser to the Open Society Foundations.

Halperin is a proud liberal internationalist who dedicated his life to advancing the cause of democracy and human rights while seeking to prove that the United States could be a force for good in the world. Looking back on that career now, he said what has changed the most is that in the 21st century, the greatest threats to democracies come from within.

“We thought the much greater danger was military coups,” he told me in an interview. “The real danger was the elected autocrat.”

In countries such as Hungary, Turkey and Egypt, he said, we see voters choosing strongmen who dismantle the democratic process and minority rights. Here at home, Donald Trump and his many supporters’ efforts to undermine and overturn free and fair elections, combined with their attacks on minorities, are a worrying escalation of the same trend. Trump and his GOP allies are betting that Americans view the defeat of their political enemies as more important than the preservation of democratic norms.

“I think we underestimated the degree to which people prefer to live in a country where the government represents their view of who the society is,” said Halperin. “The tyranny of the majority … that was a much more serious threat than I contemplated.”

As democracies are being tested internally, the world’s aggressive dictatorships are taking advantage, he warned. Since the end of the Cold War, autocrats have learned that they are more likely to survive internal dissent if they turn to violence against their own people. This has resulted in more repression and political persecution in countries like Myanmar, Syria and Iran.

“In a way, we’ve taught the autocrats that murder is the best option for them,” Halperin said. “Passive resistance works unless you have a leader who is willing to shoot people marching in the street.”

These days, Halperin’s neoliberal worldview is often derided as imperialist or overly aggressive. Americans are rightly wary of foreign intervention after failures in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Halperin, who had a front-row seat to the Vietnam War, said that the critics have learned the wrong lessons. The problem with U.S. foreign policy since World War II has not been the extent to which it has promoted values such as freedom, democracy and human rights, he argued. The issue is rather that various U.S. governments have sided with leaders who had no real legitimacy.

“The fundamental lesson is, [we must] help people who are willing to risk their own lives to help themselves and who have the genuine nationalist support of their own people,” he said. “And the tragedy of Vietnam is, we chose the wrong side. Almost the most important thing in the Pentagon Papers is that Truman was told that Ho Chi Minh was the legitimate leader of Vietnam.”

Today, we in the United States face a world in which our international influence is lessened, people in other countries are less willing to work with us, and our internal will to fight for freedom and democracy has diminished. Nevertheless, Halperin said, Americans still have a duty to help those people abroad who are fighting for dignity and self-determination — wherever they emerge.

“There still continue to be democratic insurgencies, and I think we have to be there for them,” he said. “It’s hard to be optimistic, but you have to be. This is where we have to go. It’s going to take longer than we thought.”

Color Me Unsurprised Too

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Opinion
Shocker: Most Republicans oppose plan to avert a 2024 Trump coup

As early as Wednesday, the House will vote on a new bill that would plug holes in the arcane law that Donald Trump exploited in his failed effort to overturn his 2020 loss. GOP leaders are whipping against the bill, meaning Republicans will widely oppose it.

Let’s not allow the meaning of this to get lost in a fog of euphemisms. If House Republicans get their way, it will make it easier for a future GOP-controlled House to conspire with one or more corrupt GOP governors and other state actors to overturn a 2024 presidential election loss.

House Republicans, of course, offer different reasons for opposing the new bill, which would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887. But they don’t withstand scrutiny. And House GOP opposition to this reform matters. It’s another marker of how radicalized and tightly aligned with Trump a GOP House would be.

Beyond the House, GOP opposition matters for another critical reason: It could end up rendering reform weaker, even if it does pass into law.

The House bill would clarify that the vice president’s role in counting presidential electors is purely ceremonial. It would make it harder for Congress to throw out legitimate electors and protect against corruption of certification of electors at the state level. All those would address ECA flaws that Trump attempted to seize on to invalidate President Biden’s electors.

House Republicans offer a range of motives for their opposition. The most absurd is from Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who told Politico the bill is “a political weapon to beat up on Donald Trump and not about preventing a Jan. 6 from ever happening again.”

That will be a widespread argument, so let’s take it on. If these reforms are anti-Trump, it’s only in that they target ECA flaws that Trump actually did try to exploit. And those flaws did help spark the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by letting Trump raise expectations that the outcome might be reversible. Indeed, Trump incited the crowd expressly to complete his scheme of exploiting those holes in the ECA.

So preventing another Jan. 6 must entail a response to what Trump did. Banks can’t admit this: GOP orthodoxy requires treating Trump as mostly or entirely blameless for the violence. Which gets at the real reason most Republicans oppose reform: Supporting it acknowledges what happened.

House GOP leaders are also circulating a memo explaining why Republicans should oppose reform. It insists the bill constitutes a “federal takeover of elections”; allows “Democrat election lawyers” new opportunities to “abuse” the process with lawsuits; and allows Congress and courts to encroach on states’ oversight of elections.

All this is wildly hyperbolic. In one important way, the bill reduces Congress’s control over states by making it harder for members to throw out electors certified by them.

Beyond that, these objections appear targeted at an important but poorly understood element of reform. It’s complicated, which is why Republicans are trying to demagogue it.

The bill requires governors to certify electors in keeping with state laws as they existed before election day to prevent post-election certification of fake electors in defiance of the popular vote. If a governor violates this duty, a federal judicial panel would designate the legitimate slate of electors and require Congress to count them.

This is about guarding against a dire threat: If a corrupt governor certifies fake electors, and a GOP House counts them, under an unreformed ECA they would probably stand, creating chaos or worse. Under the House reform, if a governor refuses to certify the correct electors, the court selects another state official to certify them.

This is meant to ensure that the process unfolds according to the state’s own laws. State legislatures have carried out their constitutional role in determining how electors are appointed by passing laws requiring appointment in keeping with the popular vote. ECA reform safeguards against abuses of those laws by political actors caught up in passions of the moment. That’s why the Cato Institute’s Andy Craig describes these reforms as “conservative.”

Meanwhile, in the Senate, the necessary 10 Republicans appear supportive of another version of ECA reform advancing there. That’s a good bill, but not as good as the House version. And Senate Republicans appear opposed to the House bill — for reasons similar to those offered by House Republicans.

So the end result of all this GOP positioning may be something like the Senate bill. Which is to say, weaker reform.

Right now, many Trump-backed candidates are seeking control over election machinery at the state level, including gubernatorial candidates in swing states. That makes it more likely that state-level corruption of the certification process will be attempted next time. Without ECA reform, a GOP House would likely play along, perhaps eagerly.

In that context, the House Republicans’ treatment of this debate is ominous. If their guiding imperative is the refusal to admit to anything seriously untoward about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, then obviously it’s a small leap to participating in a rerun of that scheme.

Only this time they’ll likely be in the majority and have a better shot. That is, unless ECA reform passes.