#the conservative supreme court's right wing agenda

[zvaigzdelasas]

Biden’s plan to Venezuela-ize the US Supreme Court - TheHill

Progressives have been pushing for Supreme Court reforms since, well, since right-leaning justices became the majority. They aren’t calling for a few tweaks to the court. Their demands would amount to a complete restructuring. To put it simply, if Biden and the progressives succeed in imposing their reforms, they would fundamentally change the court — and the country.

Reports claim Biden wants to impose 18-year term limits on the justices and an enforceable code of ethics. Progressives have also been pushing to pack the court — adding at least four new left-wing justices to put the left in the majority. These reforms would mirror that paragon of democracy: Venezuela.

In 2004, strongman President Hugo Chávez succeeded in packing the country’s Supreme Court, known as the Supreme Tribunal of Justice. As Human Rights Watch wrote at the time: “The law passed in May expanded the court from 20 to 32 members. In addition to the justices named to the 12 new seats, five justices were named to fill vacancies that had opened in recent months, and 32 more were named as reserve justices for the court.” [...]

In addition, Biden reportedly wants to impose 18-term limits on the justices. Maybe he’s just mad because the elites in the Democratic Party just imposed term limits on him. Again, that move resembles Venezuela, which appoints justices for 12-year nonrenewable terms. [...]

Their goal is not to put more justices on the court, but left-wing justices who will support their leftist agenda. Imposing term limits will help progressives get any conservatives out sooner so they can put in more leftie justices. And an ethics code is intended to let the executive branch remove any justice who won’t play the leftists’ game.

30 Jul 24

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

I met Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s new choice for vice president, in the summer of 2022. I was covering a conservative conference in Israel, and Vance was the surprise VIP attraction. We chatted for a bit about the connections between right-wing movements across the world, and what American conservatives could learn from foreign peers. He was friendly, thoughtful, and smart — much smarter than the average politician I’ve interviewed. Yet his worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy.

Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have carried out Trump’s scheme for the vice president to overturn the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about Trump. After last week’s assassination attempt on Trump, he attempted to whitewash his radicalism by blaming the shooting on Democrats’ rhetoric about democracy without an iota of evidence. This worldview translates into a very aggressive agenda for a second Trump presidency. In a podcast interview, Vance said that Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” If the courts attempt to stop this, Vance says, Trump should simply ignore the law. “You stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it,” he declares.

The President Jackson quote is likely apocryphal, but the history is real. Vance is referring to an 1832 case, Worcester v. Georgia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US government needed to respect Native legal rights to land ownership. Jackson ignored the ruling, and continued a policy of allowing whites to take what belonged to Natives. The end result was the ethnic cleansing of about 60,000 Natives — an event we now call the Trail of Tears. For most Americans, this history is a deep source of shame: an authoritarian president trampling on the rule of law to commit atrocities. For Vance, it is a well of inspiration. J.D. Vance is a man who believes that the current government is so corrupt that radical, even authoritarian steps, are justified in response. He sees himself as the avatar of America’s virtuous people, whose political enemies are interlopers scarcely worthy of respect. He is a man of the law who believes the president is above it.

[...] The Vance of Hillbilly Elegy was very different politically. Back then, he took a conventional conservative line on poverty, describing the working class as beset by a cultural pathology encouraged by federal handouts and the welfare state. 2016 Vance was also an ardent Trump foe. He wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nation’s Highest Office,” and wrote a text to his law school roommate warning that Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” Eight years later, Vance has metamorphosed into something else entirely. Today, he pitches himself as an economic populist and cosponsors legislation with Sen. Elizabeth Warren curtailing pay for failed bankers. In an even more extreme shift, he has morphed into one of Trump’s leading champions in the Senate — backing the former president to the hilt and even, at times, outpacing him in anti-democratic fervor.

[...] And it is clear that Vance is deeply ensconced in the GOP’s growing “national conservative” faction, which pairs an inconsistent economic populism with an authoritarian commitment to crushing liberals in the culture war. Vance has cited Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley monarchist blogger, as the source of his ideas about firing bureaucrats and defying the Supreme Court. His Senate campaign was funded by Vance’s former employer, Peter Thiel, a billionaire who once wrote that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He’s a big fan of Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor who recently wrote a book calling for “regime change” in America. Vance spoke at an event for Deneen’s book in Washington, describing himself as a member of the “postliberal right” who sees his job in Congress as taking an “explicitly anti-regime” stance.

Vance is also an open admirer of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a right-wing politician who has systematically torn his country’s democracy apart. Vance praised Orbán’s approach to higher education in particular, saying he “made some smart decisions there that we could learn from in the United States.” The policies in question involve using national dollars to impose state controls over universities, turning them into vehicles for disseminating the government line.

Donald Trump's pick of J.D. Vance to be his ticketmate is about doubling down on MAGA authoritarianism and the "postliberal" worldview.

See Also:

The Dean's Report: JD Vance is worse and more dangerous than you know

The Guardian: JD Vance once worried Trump was ‘America’s Hitler’. Now his own authoritarian leanings come into view

[kp777]

By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

July 5, 2024

"Trump is now desperately trying to run from his deep ties to Project 2025... MAGA extremists' radical wish list for a second Trump term," President Joe Biden's campaign said.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday attempted to distance himself from a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right takeover of the federal government, prompting derision from observers who underscored close ties between the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee and the blueprint's authors.

Trump took to his Truth social media platform to claim the knows "nothing about Project 2025," a sweeping initiative spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation to boost the power of the presidency and purge career federal civil servants, who would be replaced with Trump loyalists.

"I have no idea who is behind it," Trump added, a claim that numerous observers quickly countered.

In an email entitled, "Donald Trump & Project 2025: One and the Same," Democratic President Joe Biden's reelection campaign said that "Trump is now desperately trying to run from his deep ties to Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation's 900-page deeply unpopular manifesto drafted by former Trump officials that offers Americans a preview of MAGA extremists' radical wish list for a second Trump term."

"Project 2025 is the extreme policy and personnel playbook for Trump's second term that should scare the hell out of the American people," Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. "Project 2025 staff and leadership routinely tout their connections to Trump's team, and are the same people leading the [Republican National Committee policy platform, Trump's debate prep, campaign, and inner circle."

"Trump's Supreme Court and Project 2025 have designed the playbook for Trump to achieve his dream of being a dictator on day one, with unchecked, imperial power," Moussa added. "Allowing a self-absorbed convicted felon that kind of power would be devastating for our democracy and middle-class families. This November, voters must stop Trump from turning the Oval Office into his throne room."

As CNN detailed Friday:

Paul Dans, the head of Project 2025, was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management during the Trump administration, and the group's roadmap for the next administration includes contributions from others who have worked for the former president, including his former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, former acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, and former deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn. John McEntee, Trump's former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and one of his closest aides while in office, is also a senior adviser for the project.

Mother Jones Washington, D.C. bureau chief David Corn said: "This is B.S. Christian nationalist Russell Vought, who is one of the Trump allies in charge of the GOP platform effort, is a coordinator of Project 2025. Trump is gaslighting once again."

Others noted that Trump's own Make America Great Again, Inc. super PAC is running ads highlighting Project 2025.

Critics have called Project 2025 a "blueprint for autocracy"—an assessment bolstered by last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling bestowing the president with what experts described as king-like powers, which Trump's advisers have reportedly vowed to exploit if he wins November's election.

The Associated Press reported last month that a right-wing group allied with the presumptive GOP nominee was drafting a list of federal employees who are disloyal or insufficiently dutiful to Trump, an undertaking compared with the McCarthyite anti-communist crusade during the second Red Scare in the 1950s.

Kevin Roberts, who heads the Heritage Foundation, raised eyebrows earlier this week after he said that the coming right-wing "revolution" will "remain bloodless if the left allows it to be," which some observers took as a thinly veiled threat of violence.

In his Friday Truth post, Trump said that he disagrees with some of Project 2025's agenda and that "some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."

"Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them," he reiterated.

Journalist Mehdi Hasan responded to Trump's claim in a social media post saying, "What's revealing about Donald Trump loudly disavowing Project 2025 and falsely denying any knowledge of it is that clearly he knows how damaging it can be to his election bid."

"So why on earth did neither Biden nor the CNN moderators bring it up at the debate last week?" he asked.

[batboyblog]

A Tale of Two Judges

In federal court in Florida today a judge struck down a Florida law banning gender affirming care for minors as well as rules from the state's medical authority that set up barriers to trans adults seeking care

At the same time a federal court in Texas blocked guidance from the Biden Administration's Department of Education that Title IX should be understood as protecting trans students

And I think this is a great illustration that elections last LONG after they're finished, one judge blasted Florida's law as unconstitutional and quoted Dr. King in framing trans rights as the same as the struggle for racial equality and called on the courts to support them. The other gleefully sided with Republicans with Texas AG Ken Paxton declaring "“Joe Biden’s unlawful effort to weaponize Title IX for his extremist agenda has been stopped in its tracks"

The Judge in Florida was Senior Judge Robert Hinkle, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, Hinkle took the semi-retirement known as senior status in 2016, but still hears cases as he did here. Hinkle also ruled in 2014 that Florida's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

The Judge in Texas is Judge Reed O'Connor, He was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007. O'Connor is very active in the conservative Federalist Society, Conservative Lawyers and Texas Attorneys General try to file their insane, legally nonsense, show boat cases in his court because if they get him he'll rule for the Republican side and against the Democratic side no matter what. In 2016 he blocked Obama Admin rules that declared Title IX meant trans students should be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice. While the Obama team appealed, once Trump was elected the rule was pulled and the case died.... hm. O'Connor is best known as that crazy man who ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional in 2018, he was reversed, he ruled the Indian Child Welfare Act was unconstitutional, he ruled in 2022 the US Navy couldn't require Navy SEALS get Covid vaccines.

all to say when you get into a voting booth remember one of the things you vote for is Judges, who have a huge amount of power, and you can either get cool progressive minded judges who will still be making ground breaking rulings to protect civil rights 28 years after being nominated, or you can get conservative hacks who rule whatever wing nut thing they see on Fox 18 years after being nominated. During his Presidency Trump got to nominate 234 federal judges (Biden is currently at 201) including 3 Supreme Court Justices (Biden has 1) And those judges will be with us for years not like 10 years, or even 20, or even 30, no no no, Judge Albert Branson Maris was nominated by FDR in 1936 and served till his death at age 95 in 1989, JFK's last nominee, William Joseph Nealon Jr., passed away still hearing cases at the age of 95 in 2018 (the second to last passed away the year before in 2017) LBJ's last judge, Jack B. Weinstein, only passed away in 2021, there are at least 7 Nixon judges still hearing cases, 50 years after Nixon Resigned from office in 1974. We will be dealing with Trump's Judges for 40-50 maybe more years. So keep that in mind when you vote.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

New details have emerged of plans by Trump allies to dismantle democracy under a second Trump administration by packing the Department of Justice with Trump loyalists and shrinking the independent scope of the FBI. The plans, as detailed by Reuters, seek to craft a DOJ to advance conservative agendas, heavily curtail civil liberties, and impede investigations into corruption by Trump and his allies.

The plans laid out by Trump allies to convert the FBI into a politically charged conservative attack dog come from the authoritarian aspirations of Project 2025, a sprawling network led by conservative think tanks that comb through existing law to find loopholes and precedent for Trump—or any conservative president—to enact extreme right-wing policies and consolidate power at a moment’s notice.

Trump allies plan to nuke consent decrees, a sort of contractual oversight agreement between the Department of Justice and local police departments, to curb civil rights abuses. They also want to downgrade the FBI’s access to the attorney general, instead making the FBI head report to two politically installed assistant attorneys general.

Steve Bradbury, who served as transportation secretary under Trump and who spoke with Reuters about these plans, claimed in backward fashion that the DOJ acting independently from the president’s wishes poses a “recipe for abuse of power.”

“Whenever you have power centers ... that have enormous resources, coercive power and investigative tools at their disposal, and they are presumed to be independent of any control down the chain of command from the president, that is a recipe for abuse of power,” Bradbury told Reuters.

Conservatives have long called to dismantle the FBI following investigations into Russian collusion with Trump’s 2016 campaign and indictments by the DOJ of participants in the January 6 Capitol riot. Trump allies want to reduce the scope of the FBI’s investigative authority, leaving the department to focus solely on “large-scale crimes and threats to national security,” from which insurrection and sedition by conservatives are, naturally, excluded. A January report by the National Institute of Justice found far-right extremism has continued to outpace all other forms of domestic terrorism since 1990.

Plans to dramatically alter the DOJ to act as an extension of conservative ambitions rather than an independent agency follow a similar pattern to Trump’s overhaul of the Supreme Court and packing conservative judges throughout the federal circuit as president—changes that led to the overturning of Roe after Trump left office and a continuation of attacks on LGBTQ+ freedoms and civil rights today. If reelected, Trump’s allies would replicate that process at the Department of Justice.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Same anon that's something the supreme Court question. Why do you say it like they are defending it when I have seen multiple people say they don't care about the Constitution either? Like aren't they the ones that overturning roe v wade and there's a possibility they will make same-sex marriages illegal again with all this project 2025 stuff that's going up?

speaking about that, is Biden actually accomplishing those goals? And please make this very clear with facts. This may require you to write up a longer post about this but I think I really want to understand if that is a fear monitoring thing or if this is another "Dems are bad, gop good" shit

First of all, Roe v Wade was always bad law. The idea that the right to privacy means a right to legal abortions never made sense, morally or constitutionally, and it never should have been in place at all, let alone for as long as it was. The Supreme Court overturning unconstitutional laws and reversing unconstitutional decisions is literally why it exists. The Constitution empowers the court for that very reason. If you want other examples of the court protecting the constitution, just look at the Heller decision, or any of the other decisions rolling back unconstitutional gun laws in the past few years. Look also at Matal v Tam, in which the court unanimously ruled that the government can't ban speech just because it's offensive. Which means that there can be no laws against so-called hate speech in the US, and the Orwellian tyranny you see all over Europe under the guise of combating "hate speech" can never legally happen here. Which is a massive win for free speech and the entire reason the 1st Amendment was written.

As for gay marriage getting overturned, it's incredibly unlikely, since there are zero court cases about gay marriage going on right now and the Supreme Court can't just make rulings out of nothing (much to the frustration of more than a few people, I'm sure) it's basically a non-issue. If you're referring to what Clarence Thomas said about gay marriage in his majority opinion overturning Roe, he specifically said that this ruling shouldn't be used as justification to overturn the Obergefell v. Hodges decision on its own, though he did say that those decisions deserve another look. And he's right. Obergefell is another case of an activist court inventing rights out of thin air. There is no such thing as the right to marriage, for gay or straight people. It should be overturned, and the issue of defining legal marriage should be left up to individual states, as the Constitution intended (see the 10th Amendment).

I've been asked about Project 2025 before, and I'll tell you what I told the last anon, as far as I can tell, it's a pile of nothing. It's a group of policy proposals made by a bunch of conservative political commenters I've never heard of, who, as far as I know, have no connection to any Republican political campaign or the RNC. No one on the right is talking about the project. No politicians have come out in support of it. No campaigns have said they're going to implement those policies. Project 2025 is a left-wing boogeyman, and not even one that's getting a lot of traction in left wing circles since the only time I've ever seen anyone talking about it has been in my ask box and a few fringe far left conspiracy sites that came up when I originally tried to figure out what it was. It's the left attempt to have their own Agenda 2030 to be scared and angry about, except there aren't any international organizations trying to get the governments of the world to adopt their policies.

speaking about that, is Biden actually accomplishing those goals?

So, I really don't know what you mean by this. What goals?

[tomorrowusa]

J.D. Vance is even worse than you think.

[H]is worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy. Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have carried out Trump’s scheme for the vice president to overturn the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about Trump. After last week’s assassination attempt on Trump, he attempted to whitewash his radicalism by blaming the shooting on Democrats’ rhetoric about democracy without an iota of evidence.

Being "evidence-free" is fairly normal for Republicans theses days, but let's continue.

This worldview translates into a very aggressive agenda for a second Trump presidency. In a podcast interview, Vance said that Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” If the courts attempt to stop this, Vance says, Trump should simply ignore the law. “You stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it,” he declares. The President Jackson quote is likely apocryphal, but the history is real. Vance is referring to an 1832 case, Worcester v. Georgia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US government needed to respect Native legal rights to land ownership. Jackson ignored the ruling, and continued a policy of allowing whites to take what belonged to Natives. The end result was the ethnic cleansing of about 60,000 Natives — an event we now call the Trail of Tears. For most Americans, this history is a deep source of shame: an authoritarian president trampling on the rule of law to commit atrocities. For Vance, it is a well of inspiration.

Implicitly, Vance favors the persecution of Native Americans. He's a fan of ethnic cleansing.

Vance apparently alters his views simply to further his ambitions.

Ultimately, whether Vance truly believes what he’s saying is secondary to the public persona he’s chosen to adopt. Politicians are not defined by their inner lives, but the decisions that they make in public — the ones that actually affect law and policy. Those choices are deeply shaped by the constituencies they depend on and the allies they court. And it is clear that Vance is deeply ensconced in the GOP’s growing “national conservative” faction, which pairs an inconsistent economic populism with an authoritarian commitment to crushing liberals in the culture war.

A favorite abbreviation of mine for "national conservative" is Nat-C.

Yes, Vance actually follows a monarchist blogger. What would the signers of the Declaration of Independence think?

Vance has cited Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley monarchist blogger, as the source of his ideas about firing bureaucrats and defying the Supreme Court. His Senate campaign was funded by Vance’s former employer, Peter Thiel, a billionaire who once wrote that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He’s a big fan of Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor who recently wrote a book calling for “regime change” in America. Vance spoke at an event for Deneen’s book in Washington, describing himself as a member of the “postliberal right” who sees his job in Congress as taking an “explicitly anti-regime” stance.

Those pushing the odious Project 2025, which we should think of as „Mein Trumpf“, are big fans of J.D..

Top Trump advisor (and current federal inmate) Steve Bannon told Ward that Vance is “at the nerve center of this movement.” Kevin Roberts, the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the driving force behind Project 2025, told Ward that “he is absolutely going to be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement.” He would be a direct conduit from the shadowy world of far-right influencers, where Curtis Yarvin is a respected voice and Viktor Orbán a role model, straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Viktor Orbán is not somebody any American leader should emulate. Orbán is essentially a goulash Putin.

In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean described himself as hailing from “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.” If the GOP under Trump has indeed evolved into an authoritarian party, then Vance hails from its authoritarian wing.

So Vance is from the authoritarian wing of the authoritarian party.

Dictatorships are much easier to prevent than to remove. What are you doing in real life to work for the defeat of the Trump-Vance ticket? If you like democracy, you can't take it for granted.

NOTE: Zack Beauchamp who wrote the highlighted article above at Vox has a related book out this month.

[anexperimentallife]

A few things you should know about shitty US electoral politics (long post)

Neither party gives a fuck about you, and the leadership of BOTH parties support the genocide in Gaza, but you already knew that.

HOWEVER, various prominent GOP figures ALSO supported a right-wing domestic coup attempt, want to ban abortion nationwide (overturning Roe v Wade was a step along the way to that), want draconian restrictions on birth control, to ban same-sex marriage, ban sex education, ban any and all queer-positive literature, want to "phase out" social security and medicare, to completely rewrite US history textbooks nationwide with a nationalist agenda that erases US crimes against non-white peoples (already done in some states), allow US law enforcement to stop anyone darker than mayonnaise and demand to see their papers, start a nuclear war, abolish the minimum wage, outlaw their political rivals, weaponize the justice department, FBI, and other federal agencies against their political rivals, outlaw dissent of any kind, and remove restrictions against using US troops against US citizens (see Tuberville's blocking of top military appointees so that a future GOP president can appoint GOP/Trump loyalists to those positions, the way they blocked judicial/SCOTUS nominees in order to get Roe v Wade overturned).

The GOP openly states that they know the only way they win elections is by keeping non-right-wing voters away from the polls, and they invest heavily in, among other things, online psyops to convince people not to vote. And it works, because right wing voters ALWAYS show up to the polls.

Every time a right wing candidate wins, Dem leadership goes, "Huh, I guess we need to field more conservative candidates if we want to win elections." The idea being that if they can somehow "meet in the middle," they'll get the conservative vote. (Hint: They won't.)

So what convinces the Dems to run more progressive candidates? Overwhelming support at the ballot box for leftist candidates on the local and primary levels--school board elections, senators and representatives at the state and federal level, sheriffs, judges, mayoral and city council races, and various other local and regional elected positions. That's it. The only two things they understand are money and winning.

Whomever wins the presidency and gets enough congressional support gets to appoint federal and supreme court judges, top military officials, and various other decision-makers. THIS IS HOW THE GOP WAS ABLE TO OVERTURN ROE V WADE.

The US can't be fixed in a single election cycle. Every cycle in which the GOP wins, however, pushes the Dems further to the right AND allows the GOP more power to enact their vision.

Yes, we need viable third parties. Unfortunately, barring a miracle, third parties and independents are right now viable only in some local, and possibly a few congressional races.

In order for third parties to be viable for things like presidential elections, we're most likely going to need ranked choice voting--which, again, we may eventually get by pushing progressive candidates at the state and local level--publicly-funded elections, the abolition of the electoral college (both Bush and Trump lost the popular vote, and were only awarded victory because of the electoral college), and the repeal of Citizens United (which essentially legalized large-scale corporate bribery of candidates).

Look, we all hate Biden, and refusing to vote for him (or whatever other shitbag candidate the Dems run) might feel good, but it is also likely to result in a GOP win--which means MORE support for genocide the world over, and the GOP gaining more power to enact their wish list, which I partially enumerated above.

How many people do you think will die under a nationwide abortion ban? How do you think it's going to work out if a far-right president has the authority to unleash US troops on protesters? How many seniors and disabled folks do you think will suffer and die if Social Security and Medicare are abolished? How many will suffer and die if Trump gets his wet dream of a nuclear war?

I mean, the US has already bombed its own people for not toeing the capitalist/white supremacist line, sponsored coups against foreign leaders and replaced them with dictators, and invaded or threatened to invade foreign countries for not bowing to US corporate interests (look up the origins of the term "banana republic," "overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom," and "1953 Iran coup," for just a few examples), experimented on US citizens without their knowledge (look up "tuskegee syphilus study," among many other things) and so on, and so on.

And if the GOP gains control of all three branches of government, it's going to get even worse.

Today's GOP is more rabidly extremist than at any other time in my life. And as I said, I'm OLD, dude. I was born the year Kennedy was assassinated. Among my early memories are watching the first lunar landing, watching Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech, and seeing news footage of the US withdrawal from Vietnam. And I'm telling you, today's GOP makes the GOP of my youth look practically benign in comparison.

I used to roll my eyes at the refrain of, "this is the most important election of your life," and the "blue no matter who" folks, but man... The 2016 election really WAS the most important, but only SO FAR.

Because the GOP--due to the facts that GOP/Trump supporters voted, and many others didn't--will most likely control the Supreme Court for DECADES to come, and currently control the Senate. If they gain the presidency, retain control of the Senate, and take control of the House, all may be lost.

Again, the far right openly states that keeping non-conservatives from voting is how they win, and they invest a lot in gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and online psyops to make that happen. Doing exactly what the fash want "but for leftist/progressive reasons" isn't the own you think it is. Funny--I hear the same folks who mock far right voters for voting against their own best interests say they're "protesting" by refusing to vote--when that's exactly how the far right wins.

Look, I'm old. I was planning to live my final years outside the US, eventually immigrating to the Republic of Ireland or Uruguay or somewhere like that, but now that I have a child, I'm being forced to return to the US for at least a few years so I can use my medical benefits to live long enough to see her grow up. If she ever needs an abortion, or birth control, or to fight a discrimination or sexual harassment case, or simply to speak her mind without fear of being arrested or killed for it, or needs social security or Medicare because of a disability, I want her to have those things.

Another argument I've heard is that, "Voting doesn't change anything." Well, when I was a kid, mixed-race marriages were FINALLY legalized across the US, and schools became multiracial. More recently, same-sex marriage was made the law of the land. Conservatives fought all of those things, but voting made them happen.

On the flip side, thanks to the far right takeover of SCOTUS, Roe v Wade was overturned as an end result of the far right winning elections. (And again, this is just part one of their plan for a nationwide abortion ban.)

So don't look at it as voting FOR whatever shitbag the Dems run; look at it as voting AGAINST a full-on right-wing takeover of the US and buying time to make some fundamental changes. Voting doesn't mean you can't ALSO march, etc.

Or I mean, if you want a nationwide abortion ban, a nuclear war, MORE genocide, and all the other stuff of right-wing wet dreams, and want a far right takeover of the US while you tell yourself, "Yeah, but I maintained my moral purity," then by all means withhold your vote. Just don't delude yourself about the outcome.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Mother Jones:

Advertise with Mother Jones

The Chevron refinery in El Segundo, California.Genaro Molina/TNS/Zuma

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Far-right fossil fuel allies have launched a stunning and unprecedented campaign pressuring the Supreme Court to shield fossil fuel companies from litigation that could cost them billions of dollars.

Some of the groups behind the campaign have ties to Leonard Leo, the architect of the right-wing takeover of the Supreme Court who helped select Trump’s Supreme Court nominees. Leo also appears to have ties to Chevron, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“He’s really crafted the Supreme Court,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research and an expert on Leonard Leo’s network.

Honolulu is one of 40 cities and states suing big oil for an alleged decades-long effort to sow doubt about the dangers of burning fossils. If successful, the case could force the defendants to pay for climate damages.

In October, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the suit can go to trial. But oil companies petitioned the US Supreme Court in February to review the state court’s decision; they argued the cases should be thrown out because emissions are a federal issue that shouldn’t be tried in state courts.

Supreme court justices met on Thursday to consider whether or not to take up the fossil fuel companies’ request, and the justices could grant or reject the petition in the coming days.

If granted, the request could catalyze the dismissal of the wave of climate accountability lawsuits against big oil—a major win for the defendants seeking to limit their liability for the climate crisis. But it’s the kind of ask about which the Supreme Court would not normally offer its opinion, advocates and legal experts say.

“The court would probably not think this request is important, unless someone told them it was very important,” said Kert Davies, a director at the Center for Climate Integrity, which supports the litigation against big oil.

Some conservatives have been telling them exactly that. “I have never, ever seen this kind of overt political campaign to influence the court like this,” said Patrick Parenteau, professor and senior climate policy fellow at Vermont Law School.

In recent weeks, conservatives have published opinion pieces in Bloomberg, The Hill, the Wall Street Journal and the National Review calling on the court to grant the petition. “Honolulu is attempting to use the law of one state to dominate the others,” wrote Carrie Severino, president of the conservative dark money group JCN, formerly known as the Judicial Crisis Network, in the rightwing National Review.

JCN is a trade name for the Concord Fund, one of many nonprofits led by Leo, the powerful far-right judicial activist who also co-chairs the rightwing legal advocacy group the Federalist Society. Justice Clarence Thomas once quipped that Leo was the third most powerful person in the world.

Asked about the influence campaign, Severino told the Guardian: “Liberal dark money groups…are freaking out because the Supreme Court is being asked to step in and correct the damage those dark money groups are doing with their massive campaign to subvert the law and the constitution with a radical climate agenda.”

[schraubd]

Why Did The Law Constrain Them Now?

Way back when, I spotted a great parodic bumper sticker during the 2008 presidential campaign. It read: "Bush/Cheney '08: Why Should The Law Stop Us Now?"

Yesterday in Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court defied expectations and, in a 5-4 ruling, preserved some semblance of a Voting Rights Act by striking down Alabama's congressional maps as illegally racially gerrymandered. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh "crossed the aisle", so to speak, and now everyone is trying to figure out why (for Roberts in particular, whose hostility to voting rights long predates his time on the Court).

It is a sign of our cynical era that virtually nobody thinks the answer is "because they felt this was the right legal answer." This is especially striking because, when a justice does vote against their presumed ideological proclivities, that would seemingly spawn a greater inference that they genuinely believed in their position's formal legal correctness. If they faced the happy coincidence of "the law supports the defendant" and "I, personally, support the defendant", why wouldn't they raise a glass to their good fortune and vote accordingly?

But on the constitutional law listserv I'm a member of, everybody seems to think that this is some political legitimacy play. The conservative members cannot fathom that their preferred outcome is not legally correct; they think that Roberts and Kavanaugh voted in some ill-conceived attempt to "store political capital" and stave off allegations that the Court has become a six-member right-wing wrecking ball. Needless to say, they hold such a practice with nothing but contempt; they think Roberts and Kavanaugh are squishes. The liberals in the group, of course, do think the outcome is legally correct, but they too seem to think it's fanciful that something as trifling as "the law compels it" motivated Roberts' and Kavanaugh's votes. After all, they might ask, after years of taking a flamethrower to settled judicial doctrine and longstanding precedents in service of a hard-right agenda, why should the law have constrained them now? They also don't give much, if any, credit to the justices for any "legitimacy" chits they might have thought they earned.

It is hard for me not to credit the cynicism here. But if I were to craft a non-, or at least less-, political explanation for Roberts' and Kavanaugh's votes, it would be to distinguish between the millenarian and Burkena conservative impulses seen on the Court. 

The former is the pull of reactionary revolution -- you see the promised land, and are ready to chop down anything in your path that poses a barrier to reaching it.  In this mode, the Court's conservatives will burn down precedent, torch settled expectations, and tank the Court's political legitimacy in pursuit of a vision of idealized legal conservatism that they insist is right and true. "The heavens may fall that justice be done." Millenarianism is the impulse that yielded Dobbs, Bruen, and Kennedy, the new "major questions" doctrine and the possible overturning of Chevron, the prospective end to affirmative action and the stunning plausibility of adopting the Independent State Legislature doctrine. Radical alterations of law with unknown and unknowable consequences, in deference to abstract right-wing legal theory and/or concrete right-wing political results. Thomas, Alito, Barrett, and Gorsuch all seem to be in thrall with the millenarian vision, albeit with perhaps slightly different visions of what utopia should look like.

The Burkean mode, by contrast, is the mode of caution, prudence, and restraint. It shies from radical change, it is cognizant of the many things it doesn't know. Recognizing the complexity of the legal machine it oversees, the Burkean conservatives are reluctant to fiddle with the dials too readily. They're willing to trim and cut, but look skeptically upon sweeping change. This impulse, at least, is found in Roberts' Dobbs concurrence, the mifepristone stay, and the so-far unwillingness to endorse any of the yearly crackpot attempts to kneecap the Affordable Care Act. It is not about liberal outcomes (as my placing Roberts' Dobbs opinion in the category should make clear); in other times, Burkeanism might operate as a voice of restraint against sweeping progressive legal victories (recall Roberts' Obergefell opinion). But on this Court, the realistic choices are between radical right-wing change and upholding the status quo -- it's hard to think of a single example of a Court ruling since Barrett's ascension that actually represents change (radical or otherwise) in a progressive direction (the liberal "victories" have generally taken the form of "managing to hold the line against a conservative assault").

On the current Court, Roberts and Kavanaugh have been most susceptible amongst the conservatives to the Burkean impulse, albeit typically in no more than halting fashion. But it's more than just naked political appeasement or trying to impress the libs (neither justice, I think it is fair to say, has shown either much interest or much success in garnering even begrudging liberal admiration). Burkeanism is a branch of conservatism too, and it shouldn't surprise that within the conservative coalition there would be those who find it comparatively more appealing. Some conservatives look at the messianic fervor that has gripped their compatriots and get antsy. They certainly feel the temptation. But ultimately, they are not quite so keen to smash the machine; they are not quite so confident they understand the fallout. And so, periodically, they step back from the abyss, and restrain themselves. Perhaps that's what happened here.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2dey7Kq

[nodynasty4us]

Conservative justices now join the Supreme Court with both a rigid ideology and an agenda toward which they are disinclined to compromise. We all saw this phenomenon play out with the rushed reversal of Roe v. Wade. The impact, though, goes much deeper: It leads to a court that acts much more like a legislative body, picking and choosing which legislation to prioritize, than an impartial judiciary resolving genuine conflicts that come before them. The downstream effects are ugly—but then, why shouldn’t right-wing lawyers engineer phony cases when sympathetic justices are begging for any excuse to rip up precedent, no matter how flimsy the pretext?

Mark Joseph Stern, The Supreme Court plans a June so awful it will be impossible to keep up, in Slate

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Knefel at MMFA:

Project 2025, a sprawling right-wing plan to provide policy and staffing to a future Republican president, proposes an extreme anti-worker agenda that would severely curtail unions’ ability to collectively bargain on behalf of their members and reverse gains organized labor has made in recent years. It would also weaken overtime regulations, give corporations wider latitude in misclassifying workers as independent contractors, and dismantle safety regulations that prohibit young people from working dangerous jobs.

The initiative’s policy book, Mandate for Leadership, is an attempt to roll back New Deal-era, working class victories by allowing state-level exemptions from the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act, and by creating nonunion “employee involvement organizations” to undermine unions’ negotiating power. It additionally calls for sharp reductions in the budgets of the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor and a freeze on new hires. Project 2025 is organized by The Heritage Foundation and includes more than 100 conservative groups on its advisory board, which have collectively received more than $55 million from groups tied to conservative megadonors Leonard Leo and Charles Koch. Leo has been pushing the Supreme Court to further erode the power of organized labor, and the Koch family has waged a war on unions for more than 60 years.

[...]

Project 2025: Eviscerate overtime and dismantle pro-worker regulations

One central proposal in Mandate that illuminates Project 2025’s extreme anti-work posture is the suggestion that employers should be allowed to eviscerate overtime regulations and potentially withhold pay. The attacks on overtime take several forms, including a proposal to allow workers to accrue vacation instead of time-and-a-half compensation — but at least 40 percent of lower- and middle-income workers already don’t use their allotted paid time off. Under this policy employers could coerce workers into “voluntarily” selecting vacation that they’re either formally or informally prohibited from taking, thereby denying them overtime compensation. Project 2025 further recommends that workers and bosses agree to extend the overtime threshold to a period of two weeks or one month. The policy would empower management to overload busy weeks with extra-long shifts and take advantage of slow periods through under-scheduling — effectively eliminating overtime altogether. 

[...]

A return to company unionism

Project 2025 seeks to roll back New Deal-era labor victories by proposing that Congress “pass legislation allowing waivers from federal labor laws” — like the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act — “under certain conditions.” Allowing state-level exemptions to the NLRA and FLSA would almost certainly trigger a race-to-the-bottom dynamic, where firms relocate to states with the weakest (or nonexistent) labor protections at the expense of workers. That’s what happened in states that passed so-called “right-to-work” laws — which starve unions of resources by preventing them from collecting fees from all employees they represent, thereby creating a free-rider problem — where employers were able to depress wages and union membership.    Unions have made significant gains under the Biden administration’s National Labor Relations Board, which enforces labor law and investigates anti-union practices. That progress is largely thanks to NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who has taken an aggressive, pro-worker enforcement posture. Project 2025 promises to fire her on “Day One.” It also calls for reductions in the budgets of the NLRB and the Department of Labor to the “low end of the historical average,” as well as implementing a “hiring freeze for career officials.” 

[...] Project 2025 would further undermine unions by eliminating “card check” — where a majority of workers who have signed union authorization forms can ask their employer for voluntary recognition — and mandating “the secret ballot exclusively.” Although the idea of a secret ballot has the veneer of democracy, in practice it’s a power grab for management. By forcing organizers to go through the byzantine NLRB election process, an employer can buy itself time to wage an anti-union campaign and bog down the process, often through illegal means. A 2019 study found that employers violated labor laws in 41.5% of NLRB-supervised union elections in 2016 and 2017 and intimidated or coerced workers in nearly a third of all elections. 

The radical right-wing Project 2025 spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation in association with over 100 organizations has an agenda attacking labor and unions.

[kp777]

By Edward Carver

Common Dreams

June 10, 2024

A monumental case against Big Oil could go to a jury trial. But the industry has undertaken a "stunning and unprecedented campaign" to have the case dismissed, according to the The Guardian.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday asked the Biden administration for its position on a climate lawsuit against Big Oil following a pressure campaign the industry has mounted to have the court dismiss it.

The case, brought by the city and county of Honolulu, is one of dozens of state and local lawsuits seeking to hold Big Oil to account for the climate impact that its products have had and for the deception and disinformation used to sell them. The industry could be found liable for many billions of dollars if such cases reach jury trials, and so a group of companies has filed a petition, supported by legal briefs and a public advertising campaign, to the Supreme Court to hear their case for dismissal.

The Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) wrote Monday that the solicitor general, the administration lawyer who will handle the request, should advise the Supreme Court that states and municipalities can file these cases in state courts—to ignore Big Oil's petition, effectively.

"Big Oil companies are fighting desperately to avoid trial in lawsuits like Honolulu's, which would expose the evidence of the fossil fuel industry's climate lies for the entire world to see," Richard Wiles, the group's president, said in a statement. "Communities everywhere are paying dearly for the massive damages caused by Big Oil's decades long climate deception. The people of Honolulu and other communities across the country deserve their day in court to hold these companies accountable."

In November, the Hawaii Supreme Court rejected a previous Big Oil effort to stop the case, which set the table for a potentially momentous jury trial—none of the climate lawsuits have yet reached that stage, and City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco et al. could be the first. The industry had tried to argue that the lawsuit sought to regulate interstate and international carbon emissions, which states don't have the right to do, and thus the case couldn't be brought in state court. The court ruled the case wasn't about the regulation of carbon emissions.

Big Oil then filed its Supreme Court petition, backed by a major campaign: right-wing groups have not only filed amicus briefs with the court but also mounted an unusually public campaign calling for the court to dismiss Honolulu and other such cases.

"This looks to be the most aggressive campaign yet to influence the court on behalf of Big Oil," Kert Davies, CCI's director of special investigations, toldE&E News. "The fossil fuel industry and its allies are clearly threatened by these legal efforts to hold them accountable, and they're going to unprecedented lengths to send out distress signals in the hope they'll be rescued from standing trial."

"Far-right fossil fuel allies have launched a stunning and unprecedented campaign pressuring the Supreme Court to shield fossil fuel companies from litigation that could cost them billions of dollars," according toThe Guardian, which tied the campaign to Leonard Leo, the so-called architect of the Supreme Court, thanks to his influence in conservative legal circles and over Donald Trump, who appointed three of the current justices as president.

An ad produced by the Alliance for Consumers, a nonprofit that has ties to Leo, posits the Supreme Court as the "solution" to the overreach of "left-wing officials" who are pushing a political agenda through the courts by misusing public nuisance lawsuits.

Conservatives have also published opinion pieces in favor of the Big Oil petition in outlets such as Bloomberg Law, The Hill, National Review, and The Wall Street Journal, which titled its piece "Honolulu Tries to Mug Energy Companies."

"I have never, ever seen this kind of overt political campaign to influence the court like this," Patrick Parenteau, a professor at Vermont Law School, toldThe Guardian.

The fact that the Supreme Court asked the solicitor general for the administration's position indicates that some justices are interested in the case—the court throws out thousands of petitions a year without asking for such input.

CCI, like the Hawaii Supreme Court, finds no merit in the industry's legal argument that Honolulu is an attempt to regulate emissions.

"Lawsuits like Honolulu's are not seeking to solve climate change or regulate emissions—these plaintiffs simply want Big Oil to stop lying and pay their fair share of the damages they knowingly caused," Alyssa Johl, the group's vice president of legal and general counsel. "The solicitor general should make clear that federal laws don't preempt the ability of communities to hold companies accountable for their deceptive claims under state law."

In a similar case last year, Biden's solicitor general sided with Colorado municipalities that had filed suit and rejected the arguments in a Big Oil petition, urging the Supreme Court not to take up Big Oil's petition. The court followed the administration's advice on that and a few related cases. Roughly 40 states and municipalities have filed such suits since 2017.

There remains the possibility that the federal government itself could bring a case against Big Oil for propagating disinformation and blocking a green transition. Last month, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the industry for those alleged crimes, following a three-year probe that their congressional committees had conducted.

Monday's Supreme Court request of the solicitor general notes that Justice Samuel Alito didn't take part in the considerations of the case—"probably because he owned stock in ConocoPhillips, a defendant in the case," according to The Guardian.

[bopinion]

2024 / 31

Aperçu of the week

"The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb."

(Patrick Jake "P. J." O'Rourke, US satirist, writer and co-founder of Gonzo journalism. These days mark the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan)

Bad News of the Week

In Southport, England, not far from Liverpool, a 17-year-old drives to a dance school in the afternoon, pulls out a knife and kills three people. They were little girls aged 6, 7 and 9 who were taking part in a vacation course to dance to Taylor Swift songs. And suddenly a nightmare began, which eyewitnesses describe as a horror movie in which a dozen bleeding, injured children try to save themselves from a monster. Three children didn't make it, eight others and two adults are in hospital.

This is a shocking act. And it hurts. But the reaction of some of the British people hurts just as much. Because while upstanding citizens sympathize and help - a good example is the free cab rides to the hospital for relatives of injured children - the scum from the right-wing fringe of society are using this event to spin their own agenda. And that is (of course) xenophobia. Reminder: it was the UK whose then Conservative government wanted to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda in a dubious deal that was even ychallenged by its own Supreme Court.

It all started with fake news doing the rounds on social media that it was an immigrant who had just arrived on the island. "Influencer" Andrew Tate called he came "straight off the boat". And was even cited by "politician" Nigel Farage. Add to that an allegedly Arabic name and the fuse was lit. Just one day after the deadly attack, a mob raged in the small town. A mosque was attacked, stones thrown, cars set on fire and 22 police officers injured. "No surrender!" and "English till I die!" was shouted.

It didn't help that officials made it clear that the perpetrator was not an asylum seeker, but was born in Cardiff, Wales. And that he had neither Arab origins nor an Arabic name. As I said, the fuse was lit. And in the days that followed, it began to burn everywhere. As if the Ku Klux Klan were riding through the country and setting fires everywhere. In London alone, 100 rioters were arrested. I find it shocking that these racist assholes are dancing on the grave of dead children to the sound of their cheap prejudices. Shame on you.

Good News of the Week

Tough times for pacifists. As a teenager in Europe in the 1980s, I know the Cold War all too well. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the continent, which had been marked by wars for centuries, seemed to have a rosy future ahead of it: Peace. The eastward expansion of the EU seemed to be proof of this. NATO's eastward expansion, on the other hand, proved to be a double-edged sword. It was perceived by Russia, or rather by the despot Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for 25 years, as an encroachment. In the mind of the former KGB officer, who sees the collapse of the Soviet Union as the most tragic moment in history, Ukraine's turn to the West ultimately had to be seen as crossing a red line. Don't poke the bear.

Russia's attack on Ukraine almost two and a half years ago shattered the last illusion of fragile geostrategic stability. The word of the hour became "turning point". And we Germans in particular, who in fact owe our reunification to Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev and had therefore clung almost desperately and half-blindly to the hope of Russia, were abruptly torn from our dreams of a better world. As long as there is talking, there is no shooting - this rule no longer applies. And a hard wedge needs a hard block.

In addition to the military and political issues with which we are now confronted (special funds for upgrading our military, increasing operational readiness, integrating new NATO partners, relocating troop units to the eastern borders, permanently stabilizing defence spending at 2% of gross domestic product, etc.), it is above all the emotional aspects that are making us swallow. Fear is back. It is therefore all the more pleasing that pretty much all democrats (yes, that excludes the AfD / Alternative for Germany) are slowly coming to an understanding that there is a new reality that cannot be ignored. Two examples from the last few days:

The USA wants to station long-range weapons in Germany. For an old-school deterrent. And the Greens, who were founded as explicit pacifists and took to the streets against Ronald Reagan's Pershing missiles in the 1980s, accept this as a simple necessity. As Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock writes in a guest article in the Bild newspaper (of all places): "The principle of hope will not protect us from Putin's Russia. (...) What protects us now is that we invest in our own security and strength - in the EU, in NATO and in Germany." This also includes the decision to station extensive American weapons systems in Germany from 2026, as she sees no hope of an early peace solution through negotiations, as Putin responds to every peace initiative with escalation.

Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, on the other hand, is from Die Linke (The Left), traditionally the most Russia-friendly party. In principle, he calls for a non-aggression pact between Europe and Russia, saying that Europe must finally be thought of as a whole, and Russia is part of that. However, he conceded that such a step is not currently conceivable. "Of course, this is not possible with a dictatorship, an oppressive apparatus, and Putin is also not a representative of freedom and peace." And assured that he was not against NATO, but for a reorganization of European defence under its umbrella. So democrats stand together. And show strength when necessary.

Personal happy moment of the week

My wife is a big fan of Italy. And she has always wanted to go to Lago di Garda. At the weekend, she had the chance to spend two days with a friend who was visiting her husband and son there on a camping vacation. And she enjoyed it. In every respect. Bella Italia. Her great joy was my greatest joy.

I couldn't care less...

...about "Hindus only". This is the motto under which Palestinians - for a long time an important workforce for many rather low-ranking and low-paid jobs - are no longer employed in Israel. The dirty work is now to be done by guest workers from India. Because no one with an Arabic-sounding name can be trusted anymore. I could puke.

It's fine with me...

...that the elephantine regular in the china store is once again demonstrating diplomatic sensitivity: Donald Trump has congratulated Vladimir Putin on the latest prisoner swap with the West: "I want to congratulate Vladimir Putin for once again making a great deal". Nice of him to show so honestly whose side he is on.

As I write this...

...I'm still unsure what to make of the current Earth overshoot day balance sheet. On the one hand, it's always a problem when this point is reached before new years eve. On the other hand, it's good that experts are seeing a positive trend. Or - to be honest - a slightly less negative one.

Post Scriptum

Jimmy Carter, the 39th US President from 1977 to 1981, will hopefully celebrate his 100th birthday about a month before the presidential elections. The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been receiving palliative care for some time, has now said, according to a newspaper report: "I'm trying to hang on to vote for Kamala Harris". This is fitting, as few have campaigned as emphatically for human rights, peace and democracy as Carter. Almost the antithesis of Putin's bosom buddy mentioned above.

[jacobsvoice]

Brothers at War, Again?

Jerold S. Auerbach

February 5, 2023 / JNS) The current political turmoil in Israel, which seems to intensify daily, is not new to Jewish history in the Promised Land. An Israeli friend reminded me of a previous example of “brothers at war” that erupted one month after the birth of the State of Israel in 1948.

The arrival of the Altalena, a ship dispatched from France by the right-wing Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, was filled with desperately needed weapons and munitions. On board were more than 900 fighters prepared to defend the newborn Jewish state with their lives if necessary.

But its arrival triggered a violent internecine conflict. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, claiming that the Altalena posed a menacing challenge to the legitimacy of the Israeli government—and to his authority—ordered the newborn IDF to destroy it.

The ensuing battle on the beaches of Kfar Vitkin and Tel Aviv brought Israel to the brink of civil war. Sixteen Irgun fighters and three IDF soldiers died during the fighting and the ship, with its desperately needed weapons, was destroyed. Ben-Gurion and his defenders insisted that force was justified to save the fragile new nation from self-destruction.

The Altalena tragedy was long ago and its memory has faded. But Israel now confronts an ominously deepening conflict between its newly elected right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political opponents on the left. According to an Associated Press report, his right-wing governing coalition has “prompted an unprecedented uproar from Israeli society.”

And not only among Israelis. New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Patrick Kingsley described the newly elected government as riding “a wave of far-right agenda items that would weaken the judiciary, entrench Israeli control of the West Bank … and bifurcate the military chain of command to give some far-right ministers greater control over matters related to the occupation.” For the Times, the “occupation” invariably refers to the return of Jews to biblical Judea and Samaria following the Six-Day War.

Kingsley cited the “centerpiece” of Netanyahu’s program as “a detailed plan for a sweeping judicial overhaul that includes reducing the Supreme Court’s influence over parliament and strengthening the government’s role in the appointment of judges.” Netanyahu’s agenda “threatens Israel’s democratic institutions” and “sounds the death rattle for long-ailing hopes for a Palestinian state.”

There will also be “a more combative stance toward the Palestinians” by reducing funding to the Palestinian Authority. And Itamar Ben-Gvir, the new national security minister “has angered Palestinians and many Arab countries by touring a sensitive religious site,” referring to the Temple Mount. Its name, of course, refers to the location of the most sacred ancient Jewish—not Palestinian—holy site, but Kingsley is oblivious to history.

According to the AP, the Netanyahu government’s commitment to annex the West Bank would “add fuel to calls that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ state.” Indeed, Israel’s “most right-wing and religiously conservative administration ever,” supported by “settlers and ultra-Orthodox parties that have vowed to reshape Israeli society,” threatens Israel’s “liberal democracy.”

Isabel Kershner, a New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem, contributed her own dire analysis. Not only is the new minister of national security an “ultranationalist” who has expanded authority over the police. The new “hard-right” finance minister claims more authority over settlements in the “occupied” West Bank. And “ultra-Orthodox lawmakers” want more autonomy and funding for religious schools. Worse still, the new coalition wants to empower the Knesset to overrule Supreme Court rulings.

The looming question is whether Israelis on the left can tolerate a right-wing government unlike any that has preceded it. Or whether, in the name of “democracy,” their fury over a lost election will erupt in violent protest that could tear their country apart.

To locate it within a historical framework: Can the Israeli left reject Ben-Gurion’s appalling resort to violence against Jews and accept the result of a democratic election? Can it accept Netanyahu’s reminder, “to lose in elections is not the end of democracy, this is the essence of democracy”?

Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of 12 books, including Brothers at War: Israel and the Tragedy of the Altalena (2011).

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

By Thomas B. Edsall

In the world of political fund-raising, there is hard money, soft money, dark money — and Leonard Leo money.

Political advocacy and charitable groups controlled by Leo now have far more assets than the combined total cash on hand of the Republican and Democratic National, Congressional and Senatorial committees: $440.9 million.

Leo is a 58-year-old graduate of Cornell Law School, a Catholic with ties to Opus Dei — the most conservative “personal prelature” in the church hierarchy — chief strategist of the Federalist Society for more than a quarter century and a crucial force behind the confirmations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. He has emerged over the past five years as the dominant fund-raiser on the right.

As Leo has risen to this pinnacle of influence, he has become rich, profiting from the organizations he has created and from the consulting fees paid by the conservative advocacy and lobbying groups he funds.

Leo has an overarching agenda. In a 2022 speech he made upon receiving the John Paul II New Evangelization Award at the Catholic Information Center, he warned fellow Catholics: “Catholic evangelization faces extraordinary threats and hurdles. Our culture is more hateful and intolerant of Catholicism than at any other point in our lives. It despises who we are, what we profess and how we act.”

Leo describes the adversaries of Catholicism as “these barbarians, secularists and bigots” who “have been growing more numerous over the past few years. They control and use many levers of power.” He is determined to wrest the levers of power from “the grasp of liberals” and place them, permanently if possible, with those he sees as their rightful owner: social and economic conservatives.

Leo has most famously used his network and personal influence not only to establish a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court but also to secure appointment of deeply conservative justices throughout the federal and state court systems.

At the same time, Leo has provided essential support to the full gamut of right-wing advocacy and lobbying organizations, including the Federalist Society, Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America and the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

The millions of dollars Leo has raised through his tax-exempt nonprofits have, in turn, flowed to profit-making consulting companies owned, in part or wholly, by him. In 2016, he created the BH Group, a for-profit consulting firm that is now defunct, whichreceived at least $6.9 million from tax- exempt donor nonprofits run by him.

Four years later, Leo formed CRC Advisors, also a profit-making consulting firm. Since then, two of his tax-exempt donor organizations, the 85 Fund and the Concord Fund, have paid CRC Advisors more than $77 million, according to reports filed with the I.R.S.

Leo is a prodigious fund-raiser whose organizations take in and hand out hundreds of millions annually. For example, the 85 Fund, according to the I.R.S., raised $317.9 million from 2020 to 2022 and gave out grants totaling $147.4 million. During that same period, the 85 Fund paid CRC Advisors — of which Leo is chairman — fees totaling $55.2 million, according to I.R.S. filings and research by Accountable.us and ProPublica.

Similarly, the Concord Fund raised $150.7 million from 2020 to 2023 and awarded grants totaling $96.8 million, according to the I.R.S., and the Concord Fund paid CRC Advisors a total of $21.9 million.

In effect, Leo has created for himself and his for-profit partners at CRC Advisors a lucrative business model.

In 2021, Leo was the recipient of what is believed to be the single largest contribution to a politically oriented advocacy group: $1.6 billion from Barre Seid, an obscure but very wealthy Chicago electronics manufacturer. Leo used the money to create the Marble Freedom Trust, which had assets of more than $1 billion in April 2023, according to its most recent I.R.S. filing. That report shows that it gave $153.8 million to Schwab Charitable, $55.5 million to Leo’s Concord Fund and $7.6 million to the Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund.

The vast sums under Leo’s command have elevated him to the highest echelons of conservative influence and power.

Tracking payments to CRC Advisors from groups supported by Leo’s three major charities is particularly difficult because of his deliberate secretiveness. For a majority of grants, Leo uses specific “donor-advised funds,” or pass-throughs — vehicles designed to prevent the public from knowing who the beneficiaries of his largess are. Over the three years covered in the most recent I.R.S. reports, Leo’s charities channeled a total of $325.5 million through Schwab Charitable and $216.7 million through Donors Trust.

Leo or his designated representative can direct Schwab or Donors Trust to make contributions to specific groups, but those groups remain largely out of public view.

Here is how Donors Trust describes its services:

In today’s polarized climate, many conservative and libertarian donors worry about being able to manage their charitable giving in a way that aligns with their values. We help donors like you to have a positive, principled impact with your giving in a private, tax-friendly way. We are a charitable partner that not only understands your commitment to liberty but shares it, too.

The Donor Trust lists the grants it makes without identifying the source of the money. A quick scan of the groups receiving money from the Donor Trust in 2021 and 2022 includes many entities that Leo has publicly supported, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, $1.3 million; the Constitutional Defense Fund, $7.4 million; the Foundation for Government Accountability, $2.5 million; the State Policy Network, $17.4 million; the Federalist Society, $3.7 million; and Teneo Network, $6 million.

A second factor contributing to the opacity of financial transactions involving Leo’s donor organizations and the groups they fund is that they are not required to file timely reports. Instead, many tax-exempt groups file reports with the I.R.S. in November for the previous year. So the most recent filings for many of these organizations is November 2023 for information on activities in 2022, now nearly two years out of date.

By email, I asked Leo a series of questions about his financial transactions, including:

Can you explain what CRC Advisors did for the $6,058,832 in 2023, the $3,757,454 paid in 2022, the $7,679,331 in 2021 by the Concord Fund? What did CRC Advisors do for the 85 Fund after receiving payments of $21,360,985 in 2022, $21,715,382 in 2021, and $12,117,335 in 2020? Do these payments from 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) charities, which are controlled by you, to CRC Advisors — a for-profit consulting firm that you chair — amount to self-dealing, in violation of tax law? If not, what justifies these payments? I know you have dismissed these concerns as baseless, but could you explain how they are baseless? In addition to the payments to CRC Advisors from the Leo-Leonard-run donor groups, many of the groups that have received payments from the 85 Fund, the Concord Fund and the Marble Trust have hired CRC Advisors. What services do you provide these groups? Do you assist them in making grant applications to your donor groups?

In his emailed reply, Leo argued that all payments were legitimate and based on the quality of the product clients received:

CRC Advisors is a firm that employs over 100 best-in-class professionals who provide an unsurpassed level of value and impact through an all-encompassing suite of services, including program and events management, content creation, research, and all aspects of public affairs. Our fees and services are based on a rigorous compliance system that is established and managed by leading legal counsel, accountants, and management and compensation consultants. We are paid less for more than our progressive rivals, and the nonprofit clients we work with are governed by independent boards. We are happy to have these standards judged against the progressives’ Arabellaand Tides networks, or any other enterprise that is similar to us.

In May 2019, Leo told The Washington Post: “I don’t waste my time on stories that involve money and politics because what I care about is ideas.”

Despite the disclosure limitations surrounding the money flowing through the donor-advised funds, Leo’s charities do list some of their grantees, and some of those grantees, in turn, disclose payments to CRC Advisors on their reports to the I.R.S.

The tax filings from 2020 to 2023 show, for example, that Leo’s donor groups gave Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America at least $12 million. In its most recent tax filing, the Anthony group reported that it paid CRC Advisors $543,821 for “public relations consulting.”

Leo’s charities have given the Foundation for Government Accountability at least $2 million. From 2020 to 2022, the accountability foundation told the I.R.S. that it paid CRC Advisors $640,000 for “public relations.”

Or take the Federalist Society, the conservative legal think tank. Leo was formerly the vice president and is now a co-chairman of its board. His donor nonprofits have given it at least $15.5 million during the 2020s, according to tax records. In its most recent filingswith the I.R.S., the Federalist Society reported paying CRC Advisors $4.78 million from 2020 to 2022.

Last week, Hans Nichols, a reporter at Axios, published a letterLeo wrote to the recipients of grants from the 85 Fund. It said in part:

“Conservative philanthropy is too heavily weighted in the direction of ‘ideation’ — the development of and education about conservative ideas and policies. In contrast, vastly insufficient funds are going toward operationalizing and weaponizing those ideas and policies to crush liberal dominance at the choke points of influence and power in our society.”

To counter this misallocation of right-wing money, Leo told the grantees, “If others are not going to devote funding to operationalize or weaponize the conservative vision, then the 85 Fund needs to weight its support much more heavily in that direction and much less in the direction of research, policy and general education.”

The 85 Fund, Leo continued, “intends to gap-fill by placing much, much greater emphasis on projects and leaders that operationalize or weaponize ideas and policies.”

For beneficiaries of Leo’s grant-making organization struggling to figure out how to “operationalize or weaponize” ideas and policies, what better place is there than CRC Advisors to get guidance?

Leo’s financial activities have been subject to repeated investigations by such liberal groups as True North Research, which has released several studies; Accountable.us, which has also put Leo under the magnifying glass; and the Campaign for Accountability.

In April 2023, the Campaign for Accountability filed a complaintwith the I.R.S. seeking an investigation into seven Leo-affiliated organizations in order to determine

whether the Leo-affiliated nonprofits have diverted substantial portions of their income and assets, directly or indirectly, to the personal benefit of Leonard Leo. Most of these entities have either made substantial independent contractor payments to one or more of his for-profit business entities or made major contributions to other Leo-affiliated nonprofits that made such payments. Such payments were generally listed as made in exchange for alleged consulting, research, public relations, or similar services; however, CFA has reasonable questions about whether those alleged services were actually rendered at all or, if services were rendered, whether the payments made were substantially in excess of the fair market value of those services.

The Campaign for Accountability, in its complaint, cited investigative reporting by Heidi Przybyla of Politico about Leo’s growing affluence: “Beginning in 2016, coinciding with the multimillion-dollar payments paid to BH Group, Leonard Leo began living more lavishly. In 2017, Leonard Leo pledged to donate $1 million to Vatican initiatives worldwide.”

I asked Philip Hackney, a former I.R.S. expert in the law governing tax-exempt groups who is now a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, about Leo’s involvement with tax-exempt and for-profit groups.

In a phone interview, Hackney said the crucial issue when examining situations like Leo’s is whether the fees paid to his for-profit firms are “a fair amount for the services he is rendering.” The $77 million paid to CRC Advisors by Leo’s charitable funds “seems like a lot,” Hackney said.

Hackney noted, however, that when the I.R.S. seeks remedies in such cases, “it’s a hard battle to win” because the judgment of a fair price is subject to so many different interpretations, many of them subjective.

Marcus Owens, a former director of the I.R.S. Exempt Organizations Division — who is now a co-chair for nonprofits and tax-exempt organizations at the Washington law firm Loeb & Loeb — wrote by email:

There are, indeed, federal tax rules that govern related party transactions, particularly when the transactions involve a “disqualified person,” the phrase Congress used when it enacted section 4958 of the Internal Revenue Code back in 1986 to refer to an insider with the ability to wield influence over an organization that is exempt from federal income tax under either section 501(c)(3) or section 501(c)(4). For example, the Marble Trust and the Concord Fund are exempt under section 501(c)(4), while the 85 Fund is exempt under section 501(c)(3). Insider transactions that result in the insider receiving an excessive return, i.e., one that is greater than what fair market terms and conditions would provide, can lead to loss of tax-exempt status or the imposition of a penalty excise tax on the insider of 25 percent of the excessive amount, or both. Fair market terms and conditions are defined as what similar organizations would pay for similar goods or services under similar circumstances, a standard that encourages creative expression by attorneys and accountants.

While Leo has reached a pinnacle of power, he still has a lot riding on the outcome not only of the presidential election but also of the battle for control of the Senate.

Capturing the presidency is important to Leo not only for policy and ideological reasons, but also because, if Donald Trump is elected, he will appoint the next I.R.S. commissioner. It would be very unlikely that such an appointee would pursue an investigation into Leo’s finances.

Control of the Senate is also crucial because the Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee last year subpoenaed Leo to talk about whether he was involved in gifts to members of the Supreme Court by prominent Republican donors.

In April, Leo declared that he was refusing to comply with the subpoena. “I am not capitulating,” he told reporters, to “Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and the left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition.”

Since then, the Senate Democratic leadership has been reluctant to try to enforce the subpoena — a virtually impossible task since it would require overcoming a filibuster. If Democrats retain control after the coming elections, they will be under considerable pressure to change the filibuster rules, raising the possibility that Leo could be forced to testify under oath about his activities.

The chances of that happening are, however, slim at best. The most likely outcome of the controversies surrounding Leo is that he will continue, unabated, in his drive to make America great again by devoting vast sums, relentless pressure and every kind of imaginable financial ingenuity to alter the balance of power and push America ever further to the right.