In MAGA Mike Johnson (what Trump calls him), Republicans have found the perfect embodiment of their deplorable basket of hatreds. The only “loves” they have are rightwing billionaires and the fossil fuel industry. And, of course, Trump’s good buddy Vladimir Putin.
Leonard Leo was instrumental in packing the US Supreme Court with the conservative supermajority. But he has also been busily at work packing state supreme courts as well.
Though voter fraud has not been a problem, getting in the way of people voting isn’t a new phenomenon in Alabama. Neither is using election security to justify it.
The huge question here is why billionaires like Reed Hastings and John Arnold, as well as the DeVos family are throwing money at a school board election campaign.
A behind-the-scenes pressure campaign to shore up support for Jim Jordan as Speaker, which included anonymous threats to at least one member of Congress, appears to have backfired.
The right wing faces crises with incompetence or cynical exploitation: Bush and Hurricane Katrina; Netanyahu and Gaza; Trump and Covid, or tossing paper towels at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.
Russia is close to having the upper hand Ukraine because of Putin’s ability to get American Republican politicians to mouth his talking points and propaganda.
Jim Jordan does not even qualify for Congress, much less Speaker. He was all in on the subversive plot to seize an unearned second term for the defeated president by invalidating millions of legitimate American votes.
DeSantis is using the horror of the Israel-Hamas war as a campaign stunt, to protect Florida from non-existence violence and calling himself the “most pro-Israel governor” in the country.
Trump and the rest of the anti-democracy right are creating an atmosphere of harassment and danger with the hope that judicial norms will dissolve and strong-arm threats will prevail.
If the six Republican SCOTUS justices rule the way the oligarchs who support their extravagant lifestyles want, America could be a very, very different place in just a few years.
Sunlight and accountability are still the best disinfectants and America needs to close this ugly chapter in our history with a sense of both finality and justice.
