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A delusional Marjorie Taylor Greene insisted over the weekend that the GOP "erase from history" Donald Trump's two impeachments that he accrued during his one-term presidency.
"President Trump's political impeachments led by Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and the Democrats were so egregious that they must be erased from history," the Georgia Congressquack shrieked at a Trump rally in South Carolina as her hot, bored MAGA fans looked away and chatted with others in the crowd. — Read the rest
Donald Trump should not be allowed on the ballot.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits anyone who has held public office and taken an oath to protect the Constitution from holding office again if they “have engaged in insurrection” against the United States.
This key provision was enacted after the Civil War to prevent those who rose up against our democracy from ever being allowed to hold office again.
This applies to Donald Trump. He cannot again be entrusted with public office. He led an insurrection!
He refused to concede the results of the 2020 election, claiming it was stolen, even when many in his inner circle, including his own attorney general, told him it was not.
Trump then pushed state officials to change vote counts, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to pressure his vice president into refusing to certify the Electoral College votes, had his allies seek access to voting-machine data, and summoned his supporters to attack the capitol on January 6th to disrupt the formal recognition of the presidential election results.
And then he waited HOURS, reportedly watching the violence on TV, before telling his supporters to go home — despite pleas from his staff, Republican lawmakers, and even Fox News.
If this isn’t the behavior of an insurrectionist, I don’t know what is.
Can there be any doubt that Trump will again try to do whatever it takes to regain power, even if it’s illegal and unconstitutional?
If anything, given all the MAGA election deniers in Congress and in the states, Trump is less constrained than he was in 2020. And more power hungry.
Trump could face criminal charges for inciting an insurrection, but that’s not necessary to bar him from the ballot.
Secretaries of State and other chief election officers across the country have the power to determine whether candidates meet the qualifications for office. They have a constitutional duty to keep Trump off the ballot — based on the clear text of the U.S. Constitution.
Some might argue that voters should be able to decide whether candidates are fit for office, even if they’re dangerous. But the Constitution sets the bar for what disqualifies someone from being president. Candidates must be at least 35 years old and a natural-born U.S. citizen. And they must also not have engaged in insurrection after they previously took an oath of office to defend the Constitution.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has already been used to disqualify an insurrectionist from continuing to hold public office in New Mexico, with the state’s Supreme Court upholding the ruling.
This is not about partisanship. If a Democrat attempts to overthrow the government, they should not be allowed on ballots either.
Election officials must keep Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024.
Democracy cannot survive if insurrectionists hold power in our government.
I for one am very grateful to Treena and Carol Balds for having turned me on to MSNBC, which if you haven't watched in a while, is now terribly important. My old friend Eddie Glaude from Princeton is on Morning Joe! This is a really really important segment that aired just now. We are dealing with incipient fascism here. Get it straight.
Missing from most history books is a key moment leading to the culture wars now ripping through American politics.
In 1970, hundreds of construction workers pummeled around 1,000 student demonstrators in New York City — including two of my friends. The “Hard Hat Riot,” as it came to be known, ushered in an era of cynical fear-mongering aimed at dividing the nation.
The student demonstrators were protesting the Vietnam War and the deadly shooting of four student activists at Kent State University that occurred just days before.
The workers who attacked them carried American flags and chanted, “USA, All the way,” and “America, love it or leave it.” They chased the students through the streets — attacking those who looked like hippies with their hard hats and steel-toed boots.
When my friends in the anti-war movement called to tell me about the riot later that day, I was stunned. Student activists and union workers duking it out in the streets over the war? I mean for goodness’ sake, weren’t we on the same side?
According to reports, the police did little to stop the mayhem. Some even egged on the thuggery. When a group of hardhats moved menacingly toward the action, a patrolman apparently shouted: “Give ’em hell, boys. Give ’em one for me!”
The construction workers then marched toward a barely-protected City Hall. Why? Because the mayor’s staff had lowered the American flag in honor of the Kent State dead. In a scene eerily foreshadowing the January 6th Capitol Riots, they pushed their way towards the building.
Fearing the mob would break in, city officials raised the flag.
The hard hats also ripped down the Red Cross banner that was hanging at nearby Trinity Church. They stormed a Pace University building, smashing lobby windows with their tools and beating students and professors.
Around 100 people were wounded that day, many of whom were college students. Several police officers were also hurt. Six people were reportedly arrested, but only one construction worker.
My friends escaped injury but they were traumatized.
The Hard Hat Riot had immediate political consequences. It was, in my opinion, a seminal moment in America’s culture wars.
Then President Richard Nixon exploited the riot for political advantage. His administration had been working on a “blue collar strategy” to shift white working-class voters to the Republican Party.
“Thank God for the hard hats,” Nixon exclaimed when he heard about the riot.
But rather than passing pro-labor policies to court workers, which would go against the values of the pro-business Republican Party, Nixon sought to use cultural issues like patriotism and support for the troops to drive a wedge between factions of the Democratic Party.
Nixon invited union leaders, some of whom were involved in the riot, to the White House. They presented Nixon with a hard hat inscribed with “Commander in Chief”and an American flag pin. Nixon praised the union workers as, “people from Middle America who still have character, and guts, and a bit of patriotism.”
Nixon’s strategy to use the Hard Hat Riot to appeal to blue collar voters paid off. In his 1972 re-election campaign against the anti-war Democrat George McGovern, he secured a victory with ease and gained the majority of votes from organized labor – the only time in modern history a Republican presidential candidate accomplished such a feat.
The Hard Hat Riot revealed a deep fracture in the coalition of workers and progressives that FDR had knitted together in the 1930s, and the later alliance of Black Americans, liberals, and blue-collar whites that led to Lyndon Johnson’s landslide re-election in 1964.
The mostly white construction workers who attacked the demonstrators had felt abandoned — and forgotten – as the Civil Rights movement rightfully took hold. They felt stiffed by the clever college kids with draft deferments, and burdened by an economy no longer guaranteeing upward mobility.
The class and race based tensions that Nixon exploited would worsen over the next half century.
I witnessed this when I was secretary of labor during the Clinton Administration. I spent much of my time in the Midwest and other parts of the country where blue-collar workers felt abandoned in an economy dominated by Wall Street. I saw their anger and resentment. I heard their frustrations.
Many Democrats, whether they will admit it or not, have not done enough to respond as Republicans have destroyed unions, exacerbated economic inequality through trickle-down nonsense, tried to gut just about every social safety net we have – and stood in the way of practically every effort to use the power of government to help working people.
Today, the right is trying to channel that same anger and violence against the Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQ+ community, particularly drag queens and transgender people, and whatever they consider “woke.”
It is the same cynical ploy to instill a fear of “the other” as a means to distract from the oppression and looting being done by the oligarchs who dominate so much of our economy and our politics.
As such, today we face the same questions we faced in 1970:
Will we finally recognize that we have more in common with each other than those who seek to divide us for political and economic gain?
Can we unite in solidarity, and build a future in which prosperity is widely shared by all?
I truly believe that we still can.
Guest post by Alexander Noyes
On May 17, the president of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, dissolved the country’s legislature in the midst of impeachment proceedings against him. Did Ecuador just have a self-coup? Opposition leaders say yes. But the answer is no, at least for now. This matters greatly for the country’s democratic trajectory and for the international community’s response.
After a recent lull, coups and coup attempts are front-page news again, from Sudan to Brazil to the United States. This surge in coup activity prompted Antonio Guterres, the United Nations chief, to decry an “epidemic” of coups. Perhaps more troublingly for democracy worldwide, coups-plotters have evolved. Scholars have traditionally defined coups as: “overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting head of state using unconstitutional means.”
But now, these softer, more subtle self-coups—whereby a sitting chief executive uses sudden and irregular (i.e., illegal or unconstitutional) measures to seize power or dismantle checks and balances—have become the new mode of coup. Self-coups, also known as auto-coups, are much more sophisticated than soldiers in fatigues taking television stations by force in order to announce the overthrow of a country’s leader. Self-coups are rarely bloody, but can be just as harmful to democracy as the more traditional military overthrows.
A raft of countries have experienced successful self-coups or coup attempts of late. There have been nine successful or attempted self-coups over the last decade, according to the Cline Center at the University of Illinois, which collects comprehensive information on all types of coups around the world. Self-coup illegal power grabs have occurred across a range of regions and political systems, including in semi-autocracies, such as Pakistan in 2022, as well as semi-democracies, like Tunisia in 2021. Worryingly, full democracies have not been immune to this trend, with the United States suffering a failed self-coup at the hands of President Trump on January 6th, 2021, which the Cline Center labeled an auto-coup.
Ecuador has been lauded as a strong partner of the United States in a region that has experienced democratic backsliding. Yet the country has recently experienced a host of crises on Lasso’s watch, including rising crime, corruption scandals, government crackdowns on the media, and protests that have often turned violent. The current impasse is the opposition’s second attempt at impeachment.
Is Lasso’s dissolution of Ecuador’s National Assembly the latest example of a self-coup? Leonidas Iza Salazar, the head of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, which has led a series of protests against the president over the last several years, says yes. On May 17, Iza Salazar accused Lasso of launching “a cowardly self-coup with the help of the police and the armed forces, without citizen support.” Viviana Veloz, the opposition lawmaker leading the impeachment, said: “The only way out is the impeachment and exit of the president of the republic, Guillermo Lasso.”
Lasso defended his decision as a chance at a fresh start and a way to resolve recent political turmoil. Lasso proclaimed that the dissolution was “the best decision to find a constitutional way out of the political crisis… and give the people of Ecuador the chance to decide their future at the next elections.” Lasso’s decree calls on the country’s electoral authorities to set a date for fresh elections, now set for August 20, and allows him to govern with limited powers and without the National Assembly until these new elections. The measure is referred to as a “mutual-death” clause, since it leads to new elections for both the sitting president as well as the legislature. Lasso has promised that he will not seek reelection in the coming polls.
There is little question that dissolving the legislature during his embezzlement impeachment trial and slumping political support is an opportunistic move by Lasso. Yet while Lasso’s action was indeed extraordinary—it is the first time this constitutional provision has been used since it was adopted in 2008—it is legal, at least so far. On May 18, the country’s constitutional court upheld the decision, dismissing six cases aimed at blocking the legislature’s dissolution. This means that Lasso’s maneuver does not yet fit the “irregular” provision that must be fulfilled to meet the definition of a coup, including a self-coup.
This “coup or not a coup” distinction matters greatly for Ecuador’s democratic future, and should guide how the international community responds. If Lasso’s action did indeed fit the worrying rise of self-coups globally, it would be dire for Ecuador’s prospects for democracy, and likely plunge it towards autocracy. International actors would need to condemn the coup, push for regional and global sanctions, and apply strong pressure to reverse Lasso’s illegal power grab.
Since Lasso’s decree is unusual but legal, Ecuador’s shaky democracy—which democracy watchers rate as falling short of a full democracy—is on precarious, but at least constitutional footing, for now.
At this precarious moment, the United States and other like-minded, pro-democracy countries should not sit idly by. While fully recognizing the country’s own struggles with incumbent power grabs, the United States should urge Lasso to strictly keep to the letter and spirit of the law, reign in the security forces—ensuring their political impartiality—and ramp up support to help Ecuador arrange free and fair elections in the coming months.
The role of the military along with unified international pressure has proved crucial to stopping or reversing past self-coups around the world. The current situation in Ecuador fortunately does not yet fit that definition. But the international community would be wise to actively keep it that way, first by strongly and consistently reminding Lasso—and other key regional partners—that the world is watching, and by also increasing democracy support to Ecuador ahead of the coming polls.
Alexander Noyes, PhD, is a political scientist at the non-profit, non-partisan RAND Corporation and former senior advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy.
Should someone else’s vote count more than yours?
For 80% of Americans, that’s exactly what’s happening. Their vote for president isn’t nearly as valuable as the vote of someone in a so-called “swing state.” Why?
Most of us live in states that have become so predictably Democratic or Republican that we’re taken for granted by candidates. Presidential elections now turn on the dwindling number of swing states that could go either way, which gives voters in those states huge leverage.
The 2020 election came down to just over 40,000 votes spread across just three swing states.
2016 came down to fewer than 80,000 votes also across three states.
In those elections, the national popular vote wasn’t that close. In fact, in the last five elections, the winners of the popular vote beat their opponents by an average of 5 million votes.
The current state-by-state, electoral college system of electing presidents is creating ever-closer contests in an ever-smaller number of closely divided states for elections that aren’t really that close.
Not only that, but these razor-thin swing state margins can invite post-election recounts, audits, and lawsuits — even attempted coups. A losing candidate might be able to overturn 40,000 votes with these techniques. Overturning 5 million votes would be nearly impossible.
The current system presents a growing threat to the peaceful transition of power.
It also strips us of our individual power. If you’re a New York Republican or an Alabama Democrat, presidential candidates have little incentive to try and win your vote under the current system. They don’t need broad popular support as much as a mobilized base in a handful of swing states. Campaigning to a smaller and more radical base is also leading to uglier, more divisive campaigns.
And it’s become more and more likely that candidates are elected president without winning the most votes nationwide. It’s already happened twice this century.
Now, fixing the Electoral College should be the ultimate goal. But this requires a constitutional amendment — which is almost impossible to pull off because it would need a two-thirds vote by Congress plus approval by three-quarters of all state legislatures.
But, in the meantime, there’s an alternative — and it starts with getting our states to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Don’t let that mouthful put you off. It could save our democracy.
This compact would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes nationwide WITHOUT a constitutional amendment.
How does it work?
The Constitution assigns each state a number of electors equal to its number of representatives and senators. As of now, the total number of electors is 538. So anyone who gets 270 or more of those Electoral College votes becomes president.
Article 2 of the Constitution allows state legislatures to award their electors any way they want.
So all that’s needed is for states with a total of at least 270 electoral votes to agree to award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.
The movement to do this is already underway. 15 states and the District of Columbia have joined the compact, agreeing that once enough states join, all their electoral votes will go to the popular vote winner.
Together, states in the compact have 195 electoral votes. So we just need a few more states with at least 75 electors to join the compact and it’s done.
Popular vote laws have recently been introduced in Michigan [15 electors] and Minnesota [10 electors], which if passed, would bring the total to 220.
Naturally, this plan will face legal challenges. There are a lot of powerful interests who stand to benefit by maintaining the current system.
But if we keep up the fight and get enough states on board, America will never again elect a president who loses the national popular vote. No longer would 80 percent of us be effectively disenfranchised from presidential campaigns. And a handful of votes in swing states would no longer determine the winner — inviting recounts, audits, litigation, and attempted coups that threaten our democracy.
If you want to know more or get involved, click this link to read about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
If your state is not already a member, I urge you to contact your state’s senators and reps to get your state on board.
We need to make the House of Representatives bigger!
Now I know what some might be thinking: “Make the government bigger?” Well, technically yes. But that’s missing the point. We need to expand the House to make the government work better, and be more responsive to our needs.
Put simply: The House of Representatives does not have enough members to adequately represent all 334 million of us.
Now, the House hasn’t always had 435 members and it was never intended to stay the same size forever. For the first 140 years of America’s existence, a growing House of Reps was actually the norm.
It wasn’t until 1929 that Congress arbitrarily decided to cap the size of the House at 435 members. Back then, each House member represented roughly 200,000 people.
But since then, the population of the United States has more than tripled, bringing the average number of constituents up to roughly 760,000.
Compared to other democracies, we are one of the worst in terms of how many constituents a single legislator is supposed to represent. Only in India does the average representative have more constituents.
And as America continues to grow it’s only going to get worse.
Think your representative doesn’t listen to you now? Just wait.
Not surprisingly, research shows that representatives from more populous House districts tend to be less accessible to their constituents, and less popular.
Thankfully, the solution is simple: allow the House to grow.
Increasing the number of representatives should be a no brainer for at least four reasons:
First, logically, more representatives would mean fewer people in each congressional district — improving the quality of representation.
Second, a larger House would be more diverse. Despite recent progress, today’s House is still overwhelmingly male, white, and middle-aged. More representatives means more opportunities for young people, people of color, and women to run for office — and win.
Third, this reduces the power of Big Money. Running an election in a smaller district would be less expensive, increasing the likelihood that people elect representatives that respond to their interests rather than big corporations and the wealthy.
Fourth, this would help reduce the Electoral College’s bias toward small states in presidential elections. As more heavily populated states gain more representatives in Congress — they also gain more electoral votes.
Now, some might say that a larger House of Representatives would be unwieldy and unmanageable.
Well, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK — countries with smaller populations than us — all have larger legislatures — and they manage just fine.
Others might say that it would be too difficult — or expensive — to accommodate more representatives in the Capitol. “Are there even enough chairs???”
Seriously?
Look, we’ve done it before. The current Capitol has been expanded to accommodate more members several times — and it can be again. A building should not be an obstacle to a more representative democracy.
Increasing the size of the House is an achievable goal.
We don’t even need a constitutional amendment. Congress only needs to pass a law to expand the number of representatives, which it’s done numerous times.
And as it happens, there is a bill — two in fact!
Each would add more than 130 seats to the House and lower the number of constituents a typical representative serves from 761,000 to a little over 570,000. Plus, there is a mechanism for adding new members down the line.
These bills are our best chance to restore the tradition of a House that grows in representation as America grows.
It’s time for us to think big — and make the People’s House live up to its name.
EJ Montini of USA Today suggests that Biden should channel his inner Gerald Ford and pardon Trump for the good of the nation. In his mind, pardoning someone who was impeached twice and has a number of criminal investigations dogging him is the epitome of national unity. — Read the rest
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