President Goes to Valley Forge to Warn Americans
President Joe Biden’s first official campaign speech of 2024 in Valley Forge, PA tomorrow will be a full-throated portrayal of Donald Trump’s candidacy as a threat to the democratic process in this country.
Originally scheduled on the third anniversary of the January 6, 2021 MAGA insurrection at the capitol, the speech was moved up a day due to a forecast of major winter storms moving up the east coast.
On Monday, the incumbent president will also take his reelection campaign to Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday, speaking at the Emanuel AME Church, site of a deadly mass shooting. On June 17, 2015, a self-avowed white supremacist shouting racial epithets killed the pastor and eight other worshippers gathered for Bible study.
The increase in domestic political violence dates back to when President Obama was elected, but the steepest increases came as an adjunct to Donald Trump’s reign as president. In 2016, the Capitol Police recorded fewer than 900 threats against members of Congress. That figure more than quadrupled In 2017 and rose every year of the Trump presidency, peaking at 9,700 in 2021. In 2022, the first full year of Biden’s term, the numbers went down to a still-high 7,500.
Uncommon acts have become common, even when they occur without a seeming rationale. Rather than being partisan attacks, they act to throw sand in the gears of governance; reinforcing the notion that democracy is unworthy. Chaos is the aim, adding to the negative feelings held by Americans toward the government in general.
Yesterday, bomb threats were emailed to officials in 23 states. Government affairs in Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi and Montana, were disrupted, but no explosives were found. Federal officials quickly dismissed the threats, thought to have originated overseas, as a hoax. There have also been false reports of shootings at the homes of public officials around the country.
Locally, Congregation Beth Israel in San Diego, Congregation Etz Chaim in Ramona, Temple Adat Shalom in Poway, Temple Emanu-El in San Diego, Temple Etz Rimon in Carlsbad and Temple Solel in Encinitas were among 100 Jewish religious facilities across California receiving bomb threats yesterday. Authorities say an investigation is ongoing.
Threats against politicians aren’t new; but seem to be coming from more than a few deranged individuals. And the dirty little secret about these threats is that they’re often targeted toward Republican officials perceived as deviating from the far-right, cultish orthodoxy that has taken over the party.
Zack Beauchamp at Vox did a deep dive into Republican on Republican threats, noting that they are now recognized within the party as “discipline.”
: Some of the recent increase in American violence (both political and otherwise) might be attributable to the pandemic. But the spike in threats began well before Covid-19. Something else is going on — something that’s raising the temperature of American politics, making people feel more angry, afraid, and feeling like they need to take political matters into their own hands.
That “something” is Donald Trump. No figure in American politics commands Trump’s devoted following; no figure is as capable of heightening the stakes of American politics to the breaking point.
Trump’s hardcore base is motivated by social grievances that are known to give rise to violence. Political scientists have repeatedly found that ethnic violence is particularly likely when a privileged portion of society sees power slipping into the hands of a group that hadn’t previously held it — as has been happening in the United States for years. A backlash to social change is probably the single biggest reason behind both Trump’s political rise and the rash of white supremacist terrorism starting in the late 2010s, like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, the attack on an El Paso Walmart frequented by Latinos in 2019, or the 2022 massacre of supermarket shoppers in a Black area of Buffalo.
The events of January 6, 2021 are now being recast by the right. Republicans who considered voting for Trump’s impeachment following the violence were persuaded by recognition of the fact that voting yes posed a danger to themselves and their families. Now, the roughly 1,240 people arrested in connection with the attack are being cast as victims of a deep state conspiracy.
You can bet there’s a competition this weekend on the right to be the first elected asshat to speak of the people who smeared their shit on the walls of the capital as heroes.
The GOP’s presumptive presidential candidate has gone beyond the usual claims that the violence was led by undercover Antifa shock troops, adding another conspiracy to the piles of lies that make up the revisionist history of that event.
Via The Washington Post:
Now, Trump has seized on House GOP claims that some records are missing from the archives of the House select committee that investigated Jan. 6, including Trump’s actions. The Democratic chair who headed the committee denies anything was lost; instead, he says some sensitive materials were withheld from the House archive to protect witnesses.
But here’s the kicker: The special counsel who is prosecuting Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election — although not for the Capitol insurrection itself — says the withheld materials have already been provided to Trump as part of discovery in the case.
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Here’s the deal about Biden’s opening campaign speeches: they acknowledge that November’s election and the fragility of American democracy are intertwined. Reminding yourself and your neighbors of this reality should be foremost in your thinking about 2024.
Activists with Indivisible are running a campaign urging people to write letters or emails to local newspapers, online forums, and community boards reminding them of the events of January 6 and the ongoing threats to democracy.
As Biden campaign manager Julia Chavez Rodriguez said to reporters previewing the Valley Force speech:
“the choice for voters (this) year will not simply be between competing philosophies of government. The choice for the American people in November 2024 will be about protecting our democracy and every American’s fundamental freedoms.”
These upcoming speeches are intended as a warning and a red alert. Here’s Margaret Sullivan at the Guardian:
The date was chosen for good reason – to make the point that more mayhem and more flagrant disregard for the rule of law and fair elections, are just around the corner if Donald Trump is re-elected.
Can the political media in America get that reality across? Or will their addiction to “horserace” coverage prevail?
As Sullivan and other media critics suggest, honest coverage of the larger picture drawn in this campaign speech is not likely.
Political journalists who operate as if the Overton window on domestic politics hasn’t shifted are like the orchestra that continues to play as the Titanic starts to sink. They will bury the intended thrust of sustaining the First Amendment and other democratic principles through performative neutrality; equalizing the unequal rather than presenting an assessment that is truly fair.
Promising acts having the effect of overthrowing democracy and the rule of law is not a side; it’s an abomination and deserves to be covered as such.
The Biden campaign has released a new 60-second spot highlighting "the existential threat our country’s democracy faces from the MAGA extremism that now defines the Republican Party." It draws heavily from a prominent speech Biden made in Arizona last fall, when he said that the MAGA movement "does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy" and that it posed a threat to democratic institutions.
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News Links for a Chilly Thursday
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Harvard president's resignation highlights U.S. conservatives' bid to remake higher education Via the Associated Press
Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort, celebrated Gay's departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education. On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote "SCALPED," invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans.
"Tomorrow, we get back to the fight," Rufo said on X, describing a "playbook" against institutions deemed too liberal by conservatives. His latest target: efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in education and business.
"We must not stop until we have abolished DEI ideology from every institution in America," he said. In another post, he announced a new "plagiarism hunting fund," vowing to "expose the rot in the Ivy League and restore truth, rather than racialist ideology, as the highest principle in academic life."
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Why Trump wants you to compare him to Hitler Via @ LOLGOP at Framelab
A few weeks after Trump’s “victory” in 2016, George Lakoff laid out his advice for taking on Trump. “There are certain things that strict fathers cannot be: A Loser, Corrupt, and especially not a Betrayer of Trust,” he wrote.
What is the factual news about Trump today? Dozens of criminal indictments and multiple civil trials that all revolve around the questions of him being a corrupt sore loser and fraud who betrayed American national security and public trust in the most egregious ways.
When you’re calling Trump a dictator, think about what you’re not calling him.
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#CloseTheLoophole: Help California fix the foreign money mess Citizens United made Via Daily Kos
So why isn’t the AB 83 current whip count (we estimate it’s at 50 and it needs 54 of 80 to pass out of the Assembly) cruising over the 2/3 majority required to amend California’s Political Reform Act of 1974, especially when Democrats hold super majorities in both chambers of the California Legislature?
You already know the answer: it’s the money. Next month it will have been 14 years since Citizens United eviscerated campaign finance law. Around that time California imposed 12 year terms limits on legislators, so none of the members of the California Legislature have run a campaign in a pre- Citizens United climate. In fact, only two California Legislators take no corporate money at all. Unsurprisingly, they are the author and co-author of AB 83, Alex Lee and Ash Kalra.
It's understandable that legislators are concerned about how they will fund their campaigns if foreign influenced US corporations can’t continue to contribute to their re-elections efforts. Some of them have told us exactly that!
To allay their fears, their constituents need to light up their phones now and for the next three and a half weeks. As one California Democratic DNC member advised me “they need to get so many phones calls that finally they say, ‘Let me just vote for this damned thing and stop hearing about it!”
If you live in California, call your Assembly Member TODAY and every day until they tell you they are an “aye” on AB 83. (If you’re not sure who your Assembly Member is click here.)
