Brownstein, a 2-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, is a senior editor @ The Atlantic, a senior CNN political analyst & author of NYT best-seller Rock Me on the Water
#RockMeOnTheWater
: how
@JacksonBrowne
, Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles; Beatty, Nicholson,
@Janefonda
, Spielberg, Altman;
@TheNormanLear
Carroll O'Connor, James L. Brooks, Mary Tyler Moore, Jerry Brown & more transformed music, movies, TV & politics in 1974 LA
If 20 high school students chanted this at a classmate how many would be expelled? If 20 employees yelled this at a colleague how many would be fired? If 20 Army soldiers aimed this at a platoon mate how many would be discharged? How much of US will accept this as a new standard?
Trump fans eventually break out in "send her back!" chants directed toward Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee who serves in Congress who Trump viciously smeared.
One bloodstained toddler found orphaned; another thrust into a garbage bin for safety by his father. By now it's clear those opposing assault weapon & large magazine bans are explicitly choosing to accept such horrors on a regular basis so that gun ownership won't be restricted
It's reasonable to ask how does
#Kavanaugh
continue serving as a federal judge, much less on
#SCOTUS
after delivering such an openly partisan attack and identifying so unequivocally as an opponent of the Dem Party? He has validated those who see him as a GOP operative in a robe
Clear words to me from former Trump DHS official Elizabeth Neumann on growing white nationalist threat: "The biggest thing that could help...is for the bulk of Republicans to come out & say the election was not stolen, Donald Trump lied, I was complicit in that lie & I apologize"
Denying a vote on Merrick Garland for almost a full year while rushing in a nominee closer to a presidential election than ever before in American history would qualify as what if not "court packing"?
Dr. Birx seconds Trump's insistence that hospital supplies are adequate & Americans can be confident they'll get a bed or ventilator: "As she spoke, medical staff in New York continued to say colleagues and patients are dying because they lack equipment in overtaxed hospitals."
The fact that so many GOP big state governors-in TX, FL & GA-all tightened statewide restrictions immediately after Trump finally let his advisers frame the full risk from the WH podium underscores how much his earlier minimizing contributed to the critical delays in those states
“Dad was a Republican. He watched Fox News, and he had voted for Ducey and Trump. When they told him not to live in fear, that very few people would catch the disease, that its effects weren’t serious, he believed them.”
Succinct director of Harvard Global Health institute: “People who are dying of this virus are not dying to protect the American way of life. They’re dying because their government has had a completely ineffective response to this infectious disease."
These images everywhere, unprecedented for a presidential call in my experience, look like what you'd see in a country that has overthrown a dictator or won a war, which in blue America may be exactly what it feels like, given that Trump has treated it as a foreign adversary.
In TN “After a Republican lawmaker was accused of sexually assaulting 15- and 16-year-old girls he had taught and coached, he was made chairman of the House education committee.”
More stunning: Dems will have all eight Senate seats from AZ/CO/NV/NM for 1st time since 1941. And if Biden holds NV/AZ, as seems likely now, they will hold all 8 Senate seats & win all 4 for president for 1st time since 1936.
Harris County clerk: “To force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities to use a single drop-off location in a county that stretches nearly 2,000 square miles is prejudicial and dangerous.”
Whatever one thinks of
#Kavanaugh
and allegations he's facing, surely "the total collapse of the traditional confirmation process" occurred when
@SenateMajLdr
refused to even consider Obama's nomination for a vacant
#scotus
seat
@realDonaldTrump
What we are witnessing is the total collapse of the traditional confirmation process for a Supreme Court nominee.
It is being replaced by a game of delay, deception, and wholesale character assassination.
Fourth poll: CNN, CBS, PBS/NPR/Marist & NBC/WSJ showing the Barr strategy, while allowing Trump Admin to control initial dialogue, has utterly failed in lifting the cloud for any voters beyond his base. Maybe that's all Trump cares about, but got to think Barr wanted more impact
New NBC poll:
Only 29% say Trump has been cleared of wrongdoing:
New WaPo poll:
Only 32% say Trump has been exonerated on obstruction (but public is evenly split on whether Trump committed wrongdoing re Russian interference):
Not sure why it took 20 graphs or so to reach but there's this: "a longtime anti-money laundering specialist in Deutsche Bank’s Jacksonville office...reviewed the transactions and found that money had moved from Kushner Companies to Russian individuals."
A Democrat won the WI State Supreme Court race in a landslide this spring. Now the state legislative GOP threatens her with impeachment if she rules against the gerrymandered maps that have created their majorities.
Trump openly endorsing and encouraging vigilante intimidation to prevent his opponent’s campaign from reaching voters.
@JohnCornyn
ok with this?
@GregAbbott_TX
ok with this? This is their vision for how political debate should unfold in America?
"this is not an a la carte menu. If you plan to vote for Trump because of his tax cuts, for example, or his uncritical support of Israel, you’re also voting for his racism."
The idea that the huge death toll on Puerto Rico is "really no one's fault" rather than an urgent question for Congress to investigate through oversight is the perfect encapsulation of
@SpeakerRyan
utter abandonment of oversight role & any effort to hold Trump accountable
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Pres. Trump disputing a report on the Puerto Rico death toll: "There is no reason to dispute these numbers and it's a function of this was a devastating storm that hit an isolated island and that's really no one's fault"
The entire nation is horrified by today's senseless violence in El Paso. Elaine's and my prayers go out to the victims of this terrible violence, their families and friends, and the brave first responders who charged into harm’s way.
"Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare."
-Chief Justice John Roberts’ declaration that racism is over as his rationale for gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013.
Turn on the Sunday shows and this is what you get—
ABC: The election was stolen
NBC: The election was stolen
CBS: The election was stolen
Fox: The election was stolen
May not be decisive in November, but Republicans wondering about Trump's long-term impact on party might consider this stunning finding in new Battleground (Lake/Goeas) Poll: among possible 2020 voters who have turned 18 since 2016, Biden leads 94-6.
@MoElleithee
Wow. In a stunning measure of suburban rejection of Trump's GOP, per
@jmartNYT
Biden is +9 in Maricopa, the largest US county Trump won in 16. No D prez nominee has carried Maricopa since Truman in 1948 & even FDR never came close to +9 there. Historic.
FL/GA/TX/AZ, the four mega states where GOP governors most conspicuously followed Trump's cues to open early & widely, & who emphatically blocked D mayors from restricting or regulating that reopening even as caseloads grew, today reported 24,829 new cases. The Sunbelt is burning
In fact, no one has done more to produce this moment than
@SpeakerRyan
&
@SenateMajLdr
who have empowered Trump's most chaotic instincts by excusing, ignoring or abetting them. Trump has learned the lesson Hill Rs will sweep up the glass every time he breaks another window.
Did I miss the part of the last 24 hours where the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill said no they do not in fact want Russia to rejoin the G7 they led the way in kicking them out of? Or hostile relations with Canada?
"According to seven-day rolling averages, as of Sunday, the five states with the highest per capita covid death rates are all governed by Republicans, as are 12 of the top 13"
Just as it took too long to recognize how great a threat Trump poses to US democracy, it is very possible the world is underestimating the extent to which Musk is not just erratic but is actively committed to empowering & amplifying extremist forces & undermining democratic norms
After Trump supporters menaced a Biden bus in TX
@marcorubio
said this:”I saw yesterday a video of these people in Texas. Did you see it? All the cars on the road, we love what they did.” Now to prevent consequences for Trump after inciting the insurrection he’s touting “unity”
Biden has a historic opportunity to unify America behind the sentiment that our political divisions have gone too far
But instead he decided to promote the left’s efforts to use this terrible national tragedy to try and crush conservatives or anyone not anti-Trump enough
When the Senate voted on universal background checks after Sandy Hook, as I calculated at the time, the Senators voting for the bill represented 194 million people, while the opponents represented only 118 million. Pretty decisive. But the filibuster allowed the 118m to prevail.
How is Trump's behavior different from a commander abandoning his troops under fire? And why is not a single Republican raising an alarm as cases rise to levels previously unimaginable & health care workers buckle under strain in communities around the country?
Trump is AWOL at a moment of escalating national crisis & not a single R has raised an alarm: "Since Election Day & for weeks prior, Trump has all but ceased to actively manage the deadly pandemic, which so far has killed at least 244k Americans, infected at least 10.9 million.."
TX D legislator: “Breaking quorum is about the equivalent of crawling on our knees begging the president and the United States Congress to give us the For the People Act and give us the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.”
Struck by how clearly and unambiguously Liz Cheney argues that actions on multiple fronts by Trump (and others) in his 7-stage conspiracy to overturn election were not just wrong, but illegal - the committee is both paving a path for, and pointing a finger at, Merrick Garland.
Trump’s WH ntl security adviser: “When I got home that night, I confided to my wife Katie, “After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump.”
Important to remember that this line leads right to John Roberts' door: "GA is one of a slew of Southern states that have closed a significant number of polling sites since the Supreme Court invalidated protections against discrimination under the Voting Rights Act."
Took
@MsLaToshaBrown
3hrs to vote today in GA. Then Brown drove over to predominantly white polling site in Atl suburbs
“I come over to this side of town, and white folks are strolling in. On my side of town, we brought stadium chairs.”
W/
@ZachMontellaro
Part 1: The bookend to the coming decision on Roe: GOP SCOTUS majority restricts ability of blue states to regulate guns & will likely expand the ability of red states to restrict abortion. Issue isn't states' rights: it's imposing conservative priorities across red & blue states
The Supreme Court STRIKES DOWN a New York gun-control law that required people to show "proper cause" to get a license to carry a concealed handgun outside the home. The vote is 6-3.
Again: just as many were too slow to see magnitude of Trump’s threat to democracy, it looks like a dangerous mistake to view Musk as erratic rather than a systemic force to empower far right extremism, widen division & undermine democratic norms/structures.
John Roberts in Shelby County decision striking down a central pillar of Voting Rights Act: "There is no denying, however, that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions." How's that working out for you?
This drone footage shows a long line of voters waiting to cast ballots in Atlanta on Tuesday. Georgia election officials, poll workers and voters have reported major trouble with voting in Atlanta and elsewhere.
Read the latest.
Gallup has 52% of Americans supporting Trump's impeachment/removal from office.
For Clinton, that never got higher than 35% before the GOP-led House voted to impeach him.
For Nixon, it got to 58% by Aug 1974
He is becoming a verb: to loudly complain, piously moralize and then always, inevitably, to obediently fall in line with what party leaders demand of him...to Flake.
So just to be clear, Congressional Rs are ok with the president unilaterally changing the tax laws? Trump says he'll stop collecting payroll tax, plans changes in income & capital gains taxes. And they are ok w/him doing that on his own? Might be a relevant precedent some day.
Undecided OH female voter in
@CNN
group: "the last 3 1/2 years" were "so divisive" "it scares me, it embarrasses me" as an American "I think we deserve better" "while i'm not 100% confident Biden put his message out there...iIm ready to take the chance & i will stand behind him"
Worth noting that
@marcorubio
, ostensibly a juror, publicly cheered the same attack on the Biden bus in TX impeachment managers are correctly criticizing Trump for also cheering. A reminder of how many Republicans supported the behavior that anticipated the 1/6 violence.
The fact that Trump failed to get
#SCOTUS
to try to overturn the election shouldn't obscure how many other Republicans, in Congress & the states, enlisted in his effort to do so. A chilling moment w/grim implications for the next decade. 1st impact: more voter suppression laws.
I apologize to everyone who misses the socializing but 2nite kind of settled the issue: Barack Obama addressing the nation alone from an empty room was, to me, vastly more powerful + coherent than him speaking over a raucous, cheering & interrupting crowd.
#DemocraticConvention
FL GOP Gov & leg have passed "don't say gay" bill; censored how schools & employers discuss race; made it easier for critics to ban books from school libraries; increased penalties for public protest; & punished Disney 4 opposing "don't say gay." Any of that a threat to rights?
#SCOTUS
has clearly enabled Trump’s delay strategy but it was Biden who appointed Garland over Yates or Doug Jones. Garland then dithered fortwo years & might never have acted unless pressured by the J6 committee revelations. Failure to meet magnitude of the moment on all fronts
Friend of suspected bomber tells Washington Post: "[He] had no interest in politics...And along came the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who welcomed all extremists, all outsiders, all outliers, and he felt that somebody was finally talking to him.”
Why is it so hard to accept that a clearly deranged man carried out deranged acts? The “false flag” conspiracy theories on one side & the “it’s Trump’s fault” on the other shows how unhinged politics has become. This isn’t incivility. It’s a society that has lost common sense.
"In the days before the attack that appalled the world and resulted in five deaths,
@marcorubio
made no public effort to counter what he now calls a lie pushed by politicians he didn’t name."
It wasn't that long ago when
@LindseyGrahamSC
helped craft two immigration reform plans that coupled more $ for border security w/ a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented & passed the Senate w/60+ bipartisan votes. If he really wants a wall he might excavate that history
The American Bar Association calls for an FBI background check before Senate votes to confirm Judge Kavanaugh: "Each appointment to our nation’s Highest Court (as with all others) is simply too important to rush to a vote."
As clearly as she can, from not wearing a mask at her announcement event,to participating in this, she is sending a signal to Republicans that she is a soldier in the cause
Can’t land more directly on open unadulterated racism than this. Would even George Wallace have appealed to racist and xenophobic feelings this directly with no pretense, euphemism or nuance?
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly......
In every way possible, from his signal he’ll fire Fauci, to attacks on govs, to how he holds his rallies without masks or social distancing, Trump is telling Americans that he has given up on protecting them from the virus. And that that’s what they can expect in a second term
New
@QuinnipiacPoll
captures the squeeze on GOP. Vast majority of its voters (75%) want big future role for Trump. But 21% don't want a big role for him; 24-28% of Rs blame him for the riot. If even a minority of those uneasy Rs drift away from a Trump-led GOP, it's catastrophic
This is what Trump not only unleashes but promotes. Wondering how many suburban professionals look at this and say: yes, what I need to make me safer is a president who encourages his supporters to bring vigilante violence to the streets of major cities?
Every House Republican has now voted against COVID relief,
#HR
1, police reform (after the 1 yes said he made a mistake) & all but 3 voted vs.
#EqualityAct
. Biden predicted GOP "epiphany" but this is a pretty clear signal of what he can expect in both chambers.
No matter what they actually say on stage, the loudest message that Trump and Pence broadcast, every day in every possible way, is that no matter how long they stay in office, or how many people die, they will never take the
#coronavirus
seriously. That's their closing message.
At a Mike Pence rally in The Villages, Florida. I’d say about a quarter of people here are wearing masks. People have pushed their socially distanced chairs together. The Villages is America’s largest retirement village, aka the most vulnerable to Covid-19
It's one thing to disagree w/proposals-lots of Dems consider Medicare-for-All the wrong direction-but calling policy ideas "not American" and "un-American" echoes conservative arguments against progressives' loyalty to US. Its language one would expect from Trump not a "centrist"
Only thing I'd add to this sharp, focused assessment is that Trump didn't get here in a day. His serial assault on the rule of law has unfolded only b/c Congressional Rs have abetted and enabled each earlier step. He never could have reached this point w/out their complicity.
Trump's pardon of Mike Flynn is a final act of venal, malevolent, retributive warfare waged on the country that humiliatingly rejected him -- and on the rule of law itself, which he could not subvert to quite the degree he'd hoped.
@paulwaldman1
and me:
"Americans could be excused for turning off the television in disgust, not only at Trump but the failure of the Commission on Presidential Debates to prevent the president from hijacking the forum. The commission has given Biden ample reason to refuse to participate in anymore"
All abortion in Texas, including in cases of rape & incest, will now be illegal by the end of July, 30 days from today. "Doctors could face life in prison and fines up to $100,000 if they perform abortions in violation of the law," per
@TexasTribune
Incredible statement about a sitting president: In harshest possible phrasing to test, new
@QuinnipiacPoll
finds a 49% plurality of US thinks Trump "is racist" including 79% blacks, 58% Hispanics, 56% 18-34, 50% col + whites, 50% of indies, but only 36% of non-college whites
The biggest lesson of past week maybe that no House Republican was ever gettable, that there was no level of evidence that would cause them to challenge a president of their own party who is expressing the priorities & resentment of their base. It is a stark & ominous moment
"Anxiety is growing among a broad range of civil-rights, democracy-reform & liberal groups over whether Democrats are responding w/enough urgency to the accelerating GOP efforts to both suppress voting & potentially overturn future D election victories."
Really has Sasse done anything to stand up to Trump tribalism, racial signaling and divisiveness that would show he cares enough about these sentiments to take any risks for them? One thing the past 2 years have shown: Public hand wringing without action is just moral preening.
“There is a deep and corrosive tribal impulse to act as if ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
“But sometimes the enemy of your enemy is just a jackass.”
—
@BenSasse
, THEM: Why We Hate Each Other — And How to Heal
In 2018, Democrats won a higher share of the total popular vote in House elections than Republicans have won in any election since 1946. From Trump to Ryan on down, the increasing reaction of Rs isn't to ask why they are alienating voters-it's to question legitimacy of the result
The spread of this kind of talk is alarming. It's completely normal to continue to count ballots after an election is over. It just usually doesn't get a lot of attention because the margins are clear enough on election night to make a projection.
After an election in which GOP was swept in the suburbs, new
@CNN
poll shows 63% of college+ whites oppose
#borderwwall
, 63% mostly blame Trump for shutdown & 64% disapprove of his job performance. A reminder that Trump's base-first politics, abetted by GOP, carries real costs
So therefore I provided a decisive vote to seat
#kavanaugh
who has given every indication he will vote on
#scotus
to block any federal effort to combat it, along with any other environmental initiatives....at what point do anguished
@JeffFlake
musings become self-parody?
The testing delay is a failure of historic proportions with consequences that even now may only be dimly understood. Will there be, at the appropriate point, Congressional oversight to understand the breakdown?
Due to a shortage of tests, Ohio’s
@GovMikeDeWine
says coronavirus testing will be limited to healthcare workers and those ALREADY HOSPITALIZED.
Lack of tests around the country remains a huge story. We are flying blind, still.
“Nielsen should not be permitted to launder her reputation through a fellowship at Harvard, like Corey Lewandowski or Spicer did. She should not get to follow H.R. McMaster to Stanford. There are plenty of places that will hire a disgraced child-torturer”
In a virtual rally with Stacey Abrams, Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro, TX D Senate candidate
@mjhegar
defines her race vs
@JohnCornyn
as a contest between an "ass-kicker and a boot-licker."
Every day in this presidency unprecedented things happen but just let this sink in: none of those wounded in a mass shooting would meet w/the President. That comes just after a poll showing majority of US considers him racist. Beyond his base he's approaching maximum illegitimacy
4/ The source confirms the WaPo report that not one of the patients still being treated at University Medical Center wanted to meet with the President so administrators brought back two patients who had already been discharged who expressed a willingness to meet with him.
Just wondering how Congressional Rs and Fox News would respond if a Democratic president tweeted messages directly at the target of a federal investigation openly discouraging him from cooperating with prosecutors. How long until they accused that president of witness tampering?
Is there any elected R who will challenge Trump promoting violence against his opponents? Or condemn the TX lawsuit to discard thousands of validly cast votes in Houston? Party is tattooing itself not just w/Trump's racism but his disdain for democracy. May be hard to scrape off
In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong. Instead, the FBI & Justice should be investigating the terrorists, anarchists, and agitators of ANTIFA, who run around burning down our Democrat run cities and hurting our people!
Musk has left no doubt that empowering and amplifying the most divisive far-right purveyors of disinformation & hate speech is a principal goal for him on the site. Claiming to champion democracy, he's systematically deploying Twitter to benefit authoritarianism.
Between Sinema killing federal voting rights legislation & SCOTUS GOP Majority blocking vaccine mandate, a powerful reminder of how the red state legislature/GOP Justice/Senate supermajority requirement axis drives national policy even a Dems putatively hold a governing trifecta
Trump operates as a wartime president for red America-with blue America, more than any foreign adversary, as the target. Convincing his base that blue America is a threat to “their” America & that he “alone” can protect them is central to his political vision.
This tweet from yesterday still nagging at me. Don't remember a president talking publicly about hating anyone since Nixon warned about such thoughts in his farewell speech
Trump's America. Five years ago, did anyone imagine that threats of violence against public officials would become routine? Or taken beyond talk, as in MI? Or effectively encouraged by a president? Easy to lose sight of how radically our situation has changed & how fast.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs released this statement in response to ongoing and escalating threats of violence directed at her family and her office.
“A president who speaks of shooting people in the street — who elevates those who threaten to shoot people in the street — cannot be separated from the individual who does, eventually, shoot people in the street.”
Just wondering how many GOP professionals not on his reelection campaign payroll listen to this speech & say: yes, that's it, unbridled culture war (before an all-white audience that disdains masks & social distancing), that's how we win back the suburbs w/50k cases per day!
If my math is right, TX AZ & FL, each with GOP governors who have followed Trump's cue in reopening early & widely & have refused to reconsider their course as the virus has accelerated thru their states, added over 9,000
#coronavirus
cases today alone.
A retired four-star general who led the US Central Command & later served as Trump’s Homeland Security Sec & WH chief of staff publicly says that based on his extensive personal interaction w/Trump he believes the former president is a fascist. An unprecedented moment for US
“While Joe Manchin is demanding both parties agree on any further federal voting-rights legislation, a new study quantifies how completely Republicans have excluded Dems from the passage of the restrictive voting laws proliferating in red states” Exclusive
This tax bill is the coalition of restoration taking aim at the coalition of transformation: in different ways it targets urban residents, blue-states, college & grad students, Millennials-all groups central to the D coalition. It's an enemies list as much as a revenue bill
Just think about how much more damage will be inflicted in three more years. It is almost like purposeful destruction of every asset in the knowledge economy ...
Trump told NRA Friday his mass deportation program would begin "within moments" of taking office. To do at scale would likely require 150-200k law enforcement officers, including a private army of red state ntl guard he'd deploy into blue states More here.
True, but same question applies as on every other Trump outrage and excess: why does it fall only to Democrats to defend standards, morals, laws? Are Republicans now completely exempt from any responsibility to push back when Trump violates norms?
Trump's July 4 extravaganza: Wasting taxpayers' money, canceling commuter flights and risking the infrastructure of DC for partisan purposes...
if Ds can't translate that into a winning political message...
She’s right and
@marcorubio
, in between bible quotes, publicly praised and celebrated those who harassed the Biden bus. Has he reassessed those remarks?
Wendy Davis says Trump supporters harassing a Biden bus in Texas should have served as a warning before U.S. Capitol riot: "This is a symptom of a broader problem that is not going away."
On national TV, Trump has now repeatedly said states should be pushed to the back of the line for life-saving material aid if their governors don’t play ball w/his political needs. How does that differ from what he did to Ukraine? Genuine question for GOP Sens who voted to acquit
It wasn’t a secret that Trump extorted Ukraine for his political benefit, yet 52 Senators voted that that was okay. So it should be no surprise that he is doing it again — this time with blue state governors who have the temerity to speak the truth to the petty bully in the WH.