The Weekly Sift

We’re in this bizarre period where the Mueller Report exists, but we can’t see it. So the advantage goes to whoever can most shamelessly make claims about something they haven’t seen. In other words, this situation is perfectly tailored for the talents of our president.

I, on the other hand, do not feel well suited to this moment. My inclination is to wait until I know something before I comment, and Attorney General Barr’s just-a-little-bit-longer tactic sets exactly the kind of trap I’m prone to walk into. All through the investigation, I’ve tried to resist speculating about what Mueller was up to, or reading between the lines of his indictments. Eventually there will be real knowledge, I’ve kept saying, and then all this speculation will evaporate.

But now here we are, still waiting for knowledge, while Trump and his minions claim to be vindicated and are already starting to demand revenge on the people who dared to challenge them. (The crowd at Trump’s Grand Rapids rally chanted “Lock them up!” about Democratic politicians like Adam Schiff.) So we have to go out and meet this moment, no matter how much we wish we could wait a couple weeks (or maybe longer, if Barr or Trump decide to change the rules) until we could really know what we’re talking about.

That’s what I’ll try to do in this week’s featured post “Mueller By Gaslight”, which should be out around 10:30 or so, EDT.

The weekly summary covers a collection of oddities that is unusual even by Trump Era standards. Betsy DeVos explained to Congress why she was defunding the “awesome” Special Olympics, and then purported to be happy when Trump overruled her. Trump promised his Michigan crowd full funding for the Great Lakes Restoration project, whose only real enemy these last two years has been him. (Still no word on whether the 90% cut is still in his budget proposal.) Trump is threatening to shut down the Mexican border this week, even though nobody who would have to carry that order out seems to know anything about it. The original Brexit deadline passed on Friday, with the British Parliament still having no plan. (The new deadline is April 12.) Oh, and the Trump administration wants the courts to throw out ObamaCare, despite having no healthcare plan of its own.

That post should be out around noon or so.

When terrorists publish manifestos, I don’t usually read them. They tend to be long, and the people who do read them tell they are rambling and incoherent. But I did read the manifesto of the white nationalist who killed all those Muslims in Christchurch, and I think it’s worth your attention. What struck me is that it actually is coherent: a fairly small number of bad beliefs lead logically to a whole bunch of bad results. What’s more, that ideology links a large number of pathological views that liberals like me often address in whack-a-mole fashion. I think we need to consider white nationalist ideology as an underground stream that unites much of the Trumpist agenda.

With that in mind, in today’s featured post I’ll attempt a deep reading of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto. There’s still a lot of work to do on that yet, including picking a title, so it may not be out until around 11 EDT. The weekly summary also has a lot to cover — the college admissions scandal, Congress’ rejection of Trump’s emergency, and a few other things — so it may not be out before 1.

It has been an eventful two weeks: Michael Cohen’s testimony, Congress moving towards denouncing Trump’s national emergency declaration, the Trump/Kim summit blowing up, more Democratic 2020 candidates, and a bunch of other stuff.

I’ve been resisting making detailed comments about the Democratic presidential candidates until the campaign gets more seriously underway. (The first debate is in June.) When there are 20 or so candidates, who differ more in emphasis than in goals, I think it’s a mistake to identify yourself with one too soon. (Unless, of course, you’re a professional who needs to sign on with a campaign.)

The main goal, in my mind, is to get Trump out. If we do that, I’ll be happy, whether the 46th president comes billed as a socialist or a moderate. I would encourage everybody to avoid painting themselves into an “If the nominee isn’t my candidate, I don’t care whether Trump wins” corner. If Democrats picked their candidate by tossing the names of all their elected officials into a hat and drawing one at random, I would care deeply about that candidate winning.

With that in mind, this week’s featured post, “Before We Even Think about Candidates for 2020”, looks at how Trump plans to win, and how that should influence Democrats’ counter-strategy. That should be out by, say, 10 EST. I’m targeting the weekly summary for around noon.

This week had a number of stories that need a few paragraphs of explanation, but which didn’t inspire me to write a longer piece. So my current plan is not to have a featured post this week. Instead, the weekly summary will be extra long. It’s possible some note from the summary will grow in the telling, so that I’ll pull it out into its own article, but so far that’s not happening.

Anyway, I project the summary coming out about 11 EST.

After looking like it would never end, the government shutdown suddenly ended. I’m planning two featured posts about that. The first is newsy. It collects how the shutdown ended, and what’s likely to happen next. (I will be amazed if the government shuts down again in three weeks. If it does, I expect Trump’s support in the Senate to crumble very quickly.) That’s nearly done and should be out before 9 EST.

The second is more of an opinion piece about how these extortionist tactics need to end. The Founders pictured Congress working as their own Constitutional Convention had worked: by compromise, where you assemble majority support by giving a lot of people part of what they want. For the last ten years, though, Republicans have recognized extortion as a legitimate tactic: If they don’t get what they want, they’ll do something nobody wants, like shut down the government or let it hit the debt limit. The point of those tactics has been to try to push through something that doesn’t have majority support, like repealing ObamaCare or building a wall.

I don’t think there’s any way to make such tactics illegal, though ideas for preventing future shutdowns are floating around. But we need to restore the idea that they’re illegitimate; the public needs to understand that anybody who proposes such a thing is fundamentally opposed to American democracy.

I hope to get that post out by 11. The weekly summary also has Roger Stone’s indictment to talk about, as well as the peace framework for Afghanistan, the UK’s continuing Brexit crisis, proposals for new taxes on the rich, and a few other things. Let’s imagine getting that posted between noon and 1.