For the last couple of days, the news has been dominated by the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ dinner Saturday night. But I’m going to just note that event without dwelling on it, because I think we all understand it. And since the shooter failed to get off a shot at the President or any other major official, his attack shouldn’t have any lasting consequences.
More significant was the election result in Virginia, where Democrats passed a redistricting map that is expected to net them four House seats in the fall election. This makes the recent gerrymandering tally just about even, or maybe gives Democrats a small advantage. The entire redistricting battle marks a major change in Democratic strategy, which used to revolve around trying to maintain good-government norms even as Republicans changed the rules around them. So this will be the focus of the first featured post, “Where the Gerrymandering Battle Stands After Virginia”, which should be out shortly.
Something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while is the process for refugees to seek asylum in the US, which has been broken for some while. This has given Trump an opening to fix the problem by breaking the rule of law, in a two-wrongs-should-make-a-right manner. Democrats wind up in a complicated position, because the previous status quo is indefensible, but dictatorship is not the right answer.
This week an appeals court rejected Trump’s asylum-limiting executive order. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will have to decide this issue, but the appellate decision gives me a hook to raise the topic. So the second featured post will discuss asylum, starting with the Holocaust-based reasons our asylum laws exist. That should be out between 10 and 11 EDT.
Finally, the weekly summary will note the WHC dinner shooting, summarize the lack of progress in the Iran War, list a few of the other court cases the Trump regime has lost recently, and cover a few other things. I’ll try to get that out by noon, but it may slip.
Having been home long enough to catch my breath, I’m planning to write the article I should have written last week, about MAGA discontent and how Democrats might appeal to some of the former Trump voters, using Peter Magyar’s landslide victory over the authoritarian Orbán regime in Hungary as a model.
I’m basing the piece partly on my own observations, but also leaning heavily on two blog posts you might not have seen: one by a female Hungarian lawyer and another by a guy who got into a MAGA focus group under false pretenses. My conclusion is that it’s a mistake for Democrats to force this topic into their ongoing progressive/centrist debate. Neither framing quite fits the issue or takes advantage of the opportunity.
That post should appear around 10 EDT. The weekly summary will cover the war, Trump vs. the Pope, and a few other things. I’ll try to get that out by noon.
The world generally goes crazy when I take a week or two off. Trump threatened to “end” civilization in a nation of more than 90 million people, then announced a ceasefire to give Iran a chance to surrender, which it predictably did not do. Now Trump is threatening to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, a strategy no one really understands, least of all him. It’s a little like “You can’t burn down the house. I’ll burn down the house.”
Meanwhile, democracy had its best day in years: Sunday, Hungary decisively rejected the proto-Trump autocracy of Viktor Orbán. Orbán had rigged the system in such a way that only a landslide could unseat him — and the landslide came. I wasn’t sure how Orbán would respond to that, but he did the right thing and conceded.
I wish I could claim I had something to do with this. Purely coincidentally, I was on a tour that stopped in Budapest Thursday. So I was too late to see J. D. Vance campaign for Orbán, but too early for the opposition victory celebration. Still, I am getting satisfaction out of watching TV coverage and saying, “I know where they are.”
During my trip, I wandered through Czech, German, and Austrian history museums that gave me a little insight into nationalistic movements, which I’ll try to sum up in coming weeks. But I’m not yet sufficiently recovered from jet lag to do justice to the topic.
So this week the only post will be the weekly summary (unless the Iran note gets unreasonably long). I’ll try to get it out by noon.
I’m going to be taking the next two weeks off, this time for an actual vacation rather than because I’m putting together a talk somewhere. I’m hoping the world can behave itself while I finish moving and cruise the Danube.
Once again this week, the Iran War drowns out other news, though at least this time I’ll be updating the “ongoing stories” part of the weekly summary. Everything we’re finding out supports what the pessimists have been saying all along: Escalation will continue, because there is no other plan. The featured post this week will be a collection of notes on the war and its consequences. It should be out shortly.
The weekly summary will cover the latest news about ICE, the Trump regime’s continuing losses in court, the strange case of conspiracy-theorist-turned-MAGA-defector Joe Kent, the death of Robert Mueller, and a few other things. I’ll try to get it out around noon EDT.
Once again, the war in Iran dominates the news, and yet we know so little about it. Why did we attack? What are our goals? How will the tactics we are using achieve those goals? There’s not enough there for a featured post, but it seems silly to focus on something else.
So instead of being news-focused, the featured post will cover some general sociological and psychological analyses of the administration that have come out recently. Why are they the way they are? I’ll try to get that out between 10 and 11 EDT.
So the actual news will all be in the weekly summary: the war, the ongoing persecution of trans people, the administration’s continuing legal problems, the WaPo’s sudden change into the voice of the billionaire agenda, and a few other things. Expect to see that around noon.
So we’re still at war and we still don’t know why. I’ll cover that in the weekly summary, but it’s hard to write at length about all the things I don’t know.
Instead, I want to look at an interesting question raised by James Talerico’s senate candidacy in Texas: After years of Trump’s blatant immorality and policies directly opposed by the Sermon on the Mount, can Democrats start competing for the explicitly Christian vote? And if so, should they? I’m not sure how long that article will take, but I hope to get it posted by 10 EDT.
That leaves the weekly summary to cover the war, last week’s primary elections, Kristi Noem’s departure, and a variety of other things. I’ll try to get that around noon.
Friday night, it seemed like I had a newsy week to cover: the State of the Union address; further developments in the Epstein case, including testimony from the Clintons and questions about why Trump isn’t testifying; still more instances of ICE’s excessive violence; the midterm primary season kicking off in Texas tomorrow with consequential Senate races in both parties; the War Defense Department showdown with a major AI firm about killer robots; and the usual collection of lesser stories.
And then Trump attacked Iran, killing its leader and at least 175 schoolgirls, getting at least three American servicepeople killed in the process.
That move shoved everything else into the background. But the problem it presents to me and other commenters is that we don’t have a lot of facts to pass along. We don’t know what’s happening on the ground in Iran. We don’t have any clear explanation from the Trump regime about why they’re doing this, what the ultimate goal is, or even what the short-term plan is.
But I remember something my high school journalism teacher said: “If you can’t write about the is-ness of something, you can write about the not-ness of it.” (Thanks, Mr. Connelly.) So that’s the focus of this featured post: Why don’t we know?
Usually, when you hear references to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, it’s a cautionary tale: Don’t be like that. But in one sense, George W. Bush did much better then than Trump is doing now. Bush’s people may have pushed all sorts of lies about their prospective invasion, but at least they respected the American people and the Congress enough to spend months trying to convince us. Trump seems not to care.
So the featured post “Why?” should be out shortly. All the other stuff I thought I was going to talk about will be in the weekly summary, which I’ll try to get out by noon EST.
I’m running a bit behind schedule today as I watch the blizzard outside my window. Expect delays.
The big thing that happened this week was the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Trump’s liberation-day tariffs. This is Trump’s biggest legal defeat to date. It’s amply justified by the underlying law, but runs counter to the usual partisanship of this court. The featured post will explain what happened and what I think it means. That should be out sometime between 10 and 11 EST.
It’s kind of amazing what stories that has pushed into the background, like Prince Andrew’s arrest on Epstein file charges, Jesse Jackson’s death, a looming attack on Iran, the ongoing blockade of Cuba, and maybe some other stuff that has slipped my mind. In the pre-Trump years, any of those might have been the biggest thing that happened. But times have changed.
Anyway, expect the weekly summary to get out by 1.
The featured posts this week are two notes that started out in the weekly summary and grew beyond those bounds. The first is a look at the massive layoffs at the Washington Post and what they mean. That should be out a little after 9 EST. The second focuses on a blog a bit more radical than mine, The Reframe, and its strong position on non-cooperation with the Trump regime. That should appear around 10.
The weekly summary collects several views of Trump’s threats against he midterm elections from people more knowledgeable than I am. It also looks at how little has changed in Minneapolis since Trump appeared to announce a new policy, or at least new tactics. I’ll also discuss closing the Kennedy Center and a few other things. I’ll aim to get that out by noon.
Once again, I’m going to be focusing primarily on ICE and the protest movement to get that rogue agency back under the rule of law. Early in the week, you might have imagined that reason was prevailing: Greg Bovino was out, Trump was softening his rhetoric, and Democrats in Congress were digging in their heels. The anti-ICE movement was clearly winning the battle for public opinion, and the regime was retrenching rather than doubling down.
But it remains to be seen what, if anything, is going to change. For a while, it seems, DHS rhetoric will tone down. But will ICE begin obeying the laws and constitution of the United States?
On the positive side, protests continued this weekend without ICE murdering anyone else. But that’s a pretty low bar. More than two weeks passed between the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but that didn’t mean that the regime’s agents had learned their lesson. On the negative side, video from Portland, Oregon looks like it was filmed in Baghdad or Kandahar. Canisters emitting various colors of smoke rain down on protesters as a formation of heavily armed troops retreats into the shelter of a federal building. What exactly they are retreating from is totally unclear.
So this week’s featured post asks “Did We Win?”, and concludes “not yet”. I’ll try to get it out by 10 EST. The weekly summary will look deeper into what Congress is doing with DHS funding, the arrest of Don Lemon, why the FBI seized Georgia’s 2020 election ballots, and a few other things. It should be out a little after noon.
The Weekly Sift 