newyorker--2020-12-12--The G.O.P. Can No Longer Be Relied On to Protect Democracy

In the summer of 2016 , McCarthy endorsed Trump for President , but only after the interloper from New York had sewn up the nomination .
A year later , it emerged that , in June of 2016 , McCarthy had told some of his fellow-members of the House Republican leadership that he believed— “ swear to God ” —that Trump was in the pay of the Russian President , Vladimir Putin .
When the Washington Post eventually reported about these comments , McCarthy tried to laugh them off as a joke .
The nature of the accommodation that McCarthy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jumped onto the Trump train , can only be speculated upon .
It ’ s perhaps fair to assume that he didn ’ t realize exactly where the tracks would lead , but , given his comments in 2016 , it ’ s also clear that he didn ’ t harbor any illusions about the man he was endorsing .
In any case , after McCarthy took over as House Minority Leader , he followed Trump ’ s wishes so slavishly that the President started to refer to him as “ my Kevin.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ultimate Trump-loyalist move and threw his backing behind the President ’ s outlandish bid to overthrow the 2020 election result .
Along with a hundred and twenty-five other Republican representatives , McCarthy added his name to an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit filed by Ken Paxton , the attorney general of Texas , and backed by seventeen other Republican state attorneys general , that requested the Supreme Court throw out the duly certified election results from Georgia , Michigan , Pennsylvania , and Michigan .
On Friday night , the Court dismissed this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had no standing to challenge election results in other states .
( My colleague Amy Davidson Sorkin has more on the Supreme Court ruling . )
And how did McCarthy respond to this rebuke from the Court ?
On Friday night , he said nothing .
On Saturday morning , he maintained his silence , but tweeted out a video of himself talking to Senator Tim Scott , of South Carolina , the lone Black Republican senator .
“ The Republican Party is the Party of Lincoln , grounded in the values of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” McCarthy said in the tweet .
The gall of McCarthy and his fellow Trump toadies in the Republican Party is only surpassed by their irresponsibility and fecklessness .
In taking their oaths of office as members of Congress , they swore that they would “ support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies , foreign and domestic.
” And , yet , here they were , supporting a Trump venture that the attorney general of Pennsylvania , in a brief opposing the Texas lawsuit , described as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The gambit amounted to a flagrant effort to overturn the most basic liberty enshrined in the Constitution : the right of the people to choose their leaders .
In the unlikely event that the lawsuit had succeeded , the country would have been plunged into chaos , and Trump would have succeeded in his reckless effort to defy the rules of democracy .
The only conceivable defense for the actions of the Republican signatories is that they supported the Texas lawsuit in the sure knowledge that it would fail .
Terrified of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they postured for him , and for the MAGA mob .
But what sort of defense is this for politicians elected to a body that likes to see itself as a model for the world ?
A pitiful one at best , and not one that would stand up in any court of law or any court of history .
One lesson of failed democracies is that when officials or institutions genuflect before would-be authoritarians , in the hope that somebody else will head them off , or control them , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ events of the past few weeks , it is easy to sympathize with the editorial writers of the Orlando Sentinel , who published a column on Friday expressing regret to their readers for the support they afforded one of the Trump minions , Representative Michael Waltz , of Florida ’ s Sixth District , going into November 3rd .
“ We apologize to our readers for endorsing Michael Waltz in the 2020 general election for Congress , ” the editorial said .
“ We had no idea , had no way of knowing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not committed to democracy.
” A fair reading of the G.O.P.
’ s record of gerrymandering and voter suppression over the past couple of decades , and its abject servility toward Trump during the past four years , is that its commitment to democracy has long been subservient to its desire to retain power .
But even for an organization as tarnished as this one , the decision by so many Republican congressmen , and so many state attorneys general , to support the Texas lawsuit marked a new low .
And it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when you put your lot in with a pathological narcissist who has no regard for you , your party , or democracy , beyond the services that they can render to him .
On Saturday morning , Trump tweeted , “ WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT !
!
!
” Later in the day , en route to the Army-Navy football game , the President ’ s Marine One helicopter flew over Freedom Plaza , at Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street , where thousands of alt-right activists were holding a “ Stop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the results of the election be overturned .
On Monday , the Electoral College will meet and officially cast its votes to elect Joe Biden , who won by three hundred and six votes to two hundred and thirty-two .
But Trump isn ’ t quite done .
His eyes are on January 6th , when Congress will hold a joint session to ratify the work of the Electoral College .
In the coming days and weeks , he will , doubtless , demand that Republicans in Congress reject the vote counts from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cause bedlam .
How will McCarthy and his colleagues react to Trump ’ s next entreaties ?
Anyone hoping for a belated display of character and commitment to democracy is likely to be disappointed .
Read More About the Presidential Transition • Donald Trump has survived impeachment , twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations , and thousands of lawsuits .
His luck may well end now that Joe Biden is the next President .
• With litigation unlikely to change the outcome of the election , Republicans are looking to strategies that might remain even after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ court .
• With the Trump Presidency ending , we need to talk about how to prevent the moral injuries of the past four years from happening again .
• If 2020 has demonstrated anything , it is the need to rebalance the economy to benefit the working class .
There are many ways a Biden Administration can start .
• Trump is being forced to give up his attempt to overturn the election .
But his efforts to build an alternative reality around himself will continue .
• Sign up for our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our reporters and columnists .

How low has the Party of Lincoln fallen? In answering this question, it is instructive to look at the example of Kevin McCarthy, a seven-term California congressman who, since 2019, has served as the House Minority Leader. Until Donald Trump appeared on the scene, McCarthy wasn’t regarded as particularly conservative—at least by the standards of today’s Republican Party. When, in 2015, he abandoned a bid to become Speaker of the House, some Tea Party activists celebrated.
In the summer of 2016, McCarthy endorsed Trump for President, but only after the interloper from New York had sewn up the nomination. A year later, it emerged that, in June of 2016, McCarthy had told some of his fellow-members of the House Republican leadership that he believed—“swear to God”—that Trump was in the pay of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. When the Washington Post eventually reported about these comments, McCarthy tried to laugh them off as a joke.
The nature of the accommodation that McCarthy made with his conscience, when he jumped onto the Trump train, can only be speculated upon. It’s perhaps fair to assume that he didn’t realize exactly where the tracks would lead, but, given his comments in 2016, it’s also clear that he didn’t harbor any illusions about the man he was endorsing.
In any case, after McCarthy took over as House Minority Leader, he followed Trump’s wishes so slavishly that the President started to refer to him as “my Kevin.” On Friday, McCarthy took the ultimate Trump-loyalist move and threw his backing behind the President’s outlandish bid to overthrow the 2020 election result. Along with a hundred and twenty-five other Republican representatives, McCarthy added his name to an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit filed by Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, and backed by seventeen other Republican state attorneys general, that requested the Supreme Court throw out the duly certified election results from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
On Friday night, the Court dismissed this scurrilous lawsuit on the grounds that Texas had no standing to challenge election results in other states. (My colleague Amy Davidson Sorkin has more on the Supreme Court ruling.) And how did McCarthy respond to this rebuke from the Court? On Friday night, he said nothing. On Saturday morning, he maintained his silence, but tweeted out a video of himself talking to Senator Tim Scott, of South Carolina, the lone Black Republican senator. “The Republican Party is the Party of Lincoln, grounded in the values of freedom and equality for all people,” McCarthy said in the tweet.
The gall of McCarthy and his fellow Trump toadies in the Republican Party is only surpassed by their irresponsibility and fecklessness. In taking their oaths of office as members of Congress, they swore that they would “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And, yet, here they were, supporting a Trump venture that the attorney general of Pennsylvania, in a brief opposing the Texas lawsuit, described as a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.” The gambit amounted to a flagrant effort to overturn the most basic liberty enshrined in the Constitution: the right of the people to choose their leaders. In the unlikely event that the lawsuit had succeeded, the country would have been plunged into chaos, and Trump would have succeeded in his reckless effort to defy the rules of democracy.
The only conceivable defense for the actions of the Republican signatories is that they supported the Texas lawsuit in the sure knowledge that it would fail. Terrified of incurring the wrath of an enraged Bully-in-Chief, they postured for him, and for the MAGA mob. But what sort of defense is this for politicians elected to a body that likes to see itself as a model for the world? A pitiful one at best, and not one that would stand up in any court of law or any court of history. One lesson of failed democracies is that when officials or institutions genuflect before would-be authoritarians, in the hope that somebody else will head them off, or control them, the results can be disastrous.
After the events of the past few weeks, it is easy to sympathize with the editorial writers of the Orlando Sentinel, who published a column on Friday expressing regret to their readers for the support they afforded one of the Trump minions, Representative Michael Waltz, of Florida’s Sixth District, going into November 3rd. “We apologize to our readers for endorsing Michael Waltz in the 2020 general election for Congress,” the editorial said. “We had no idea, had no way of knowing at the time, that Waltz was not committed to democracy.”
A fair reading of the G.O.P.’s record of gerrymandering and voter suppression over the past couple of decades, and its abject servility toward Trump during the past four years, is that its commitment to democracy has long been subservient to its desire to retain power. But even for an organization as tarnished as this one, the decision by so many Republican congressmen, and so many state attorneys general, to support the Texas lawsuit marked a new low.
And it’s not over yet—it never is when you put your lot in with a pathological narcissist who has no regard for you, your party, or democracy, beyond the services that they can render to him. On Saturday morning, Trump tweeted, “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” Later in the day, en route to the Army-Navy football game, the President’s Marine One helicopter flew over Freedom Plaza, at Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street, where thousands of alt-right activists were holding a Stop the Steal rally, demanding that the results of the election be overturned.
On Monday, the Electoral College will meet and officially cast its votes to elect Joe Biden, who won by three hundred and six votes to two hundred and thirty-two. But Trump isn’t quite done. His eyes are on January 6th, when Congress will hold a joint session to ratify the work of the Electoral College. In the coming days and weeks, he will, doubtless, demand that Republicans in Congress reject the vote counts from a number of states, which could cause bedlam. How will McCarthy and his colleagues react to Trump’s next entreaties? Anyone hoping for a belated display of character and commitment to democracy is likely to be disappointed.
Read More About the Presidential Transition


newyorker--2020-12-12--The Supreme Court Rejects Texas’s Shameful Lawsuit, But There Has to Be a Reckoning

When the state of Texas asked the Supreme Court , this week , to disenfranchise millions of voters in four other states—Georgia , Michigan , Pennsylvania , and Wisconsin—it said that it was doing so because “ no other remedy or forum ” existed .
The Electoral College casts and counts its votes on Monday , and , Texas claimed , the Supreme Court was the “ only venue ” that could “ protect ” its Electoral College votes from being “ cancelled.
” It was the “ only court that can hear this action quickly enough ” to throw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ force their legislatures to choose new ones .
Presumably , the new electors would be more to Texas ’ s—or , rather , to Donald Trump ’ s—liking .
The President had asked to join the suit , which he called “ the big one.
” Perhaps four years of dealing with a President who rewards inflated tributes to his power had given someone involved with this lawsuit the impression that such an outrageous argument might work .
It didn ’ t ; on Friday evening , the Court , in a brief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawsuit , saying that the state had no standing to even bring it .
With that , the big one is done .
There is no forum or venue , under our Constitution , to do what Texas and Trump wanted , because what they wanted was utterly unconstitutional .
As Pennsylvania ’ s reply , submitted by attorneys for the state , including Attorney General Josh Shapiro , put it , “ Texas invites this Court to overthrow the votes of the American people and choose the next President of the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ seditious abuse of the judicial process.
” It is a relief that the Justices refused to even entertain that invitation .
The only ones who took even the tiniest step in Texas ’ s direction were Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas .
Alito , in a short statement that Thomas joined , said that he did not believe the Court had the “ discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint ” because the case fell within its “ original jurisdiction.
” ( In short , certain disputes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Supreme Court rather than working their way up through lower courts . )
But Alito added that he would have granted Texas no “ other relief ” —the state had asked for an injunction to halt the Electoral College ’ s vote counting , among other things—and that he expressed “ no view on any other issue.
” Even the Court ’ s conservatives , then , seemed to recognize that this was not a constitutional controversy that merited its involvement but a crude power grab .
And yet so many other supposedly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not .
This lawsuit was not some folie à deux in which Trump and Texas—or , more precisely , Texas ’ s attorney general , Ken Paxton , who has his own legal problems—got caught up in their own private madness .
No fewer than seventeen states that Trump won signed on to what ’ s known as an amicus curiae brief urging the Court to take Texas ’ s suit .
Missouri ’ s attorney general , Eric Schmitt , played a leading role in that effort , but all the state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rushed to do something shameful .
So did the members of the House of Representatives who similarly expressed their support .
There are a hundred and twenty-six of them , at last count .
( Two are from New York : Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin . )
Many of them are not marginal figures ; the list includes Kevin McCarthy , the House Minority Leader .
It is enraging and also profoundly sad that these Republicans value our democracy so little .
Why were they so willing to treat a system that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proved sturdy even in the Trump years as a disposable partisan toy ?
How could they , without mortification , back a brief that included the suggestion that the election must be crooked , because the chance that Trump ’ s opponent could have won the four states was less than one in “ a quadrillion ” ?
There is no acceptable justification .
There needs to be a real reckoning ; if prominent Republicans do not now use the Court ’ s decision to renounce Trump ’ s campaign to overturn the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lasting harm to the country .
The early signs are not good .
The head of the Texas G.O.P .
put out a statement suggesting that “ law-abiding states ” might want to form their own “ Union of states , ” while others , as of Saturday morning , were silent .
Trump , of course , is unrepentant .
He tweeted , “ WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT !
!
!
” It was never enough for Republicans who supported the suit to tell themselves that they could be as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Supreme Court wouldn ’ t go for the argument , anyway .
If they didn ’ t know how much Trump ’ s efforts had eroded his supporters ’ faith in the integrity of the electoral system , they should have realized it from reading the briefs that Texas and Trump filed , which , perversely enough , cited those doubts as a rationale for why the Supreme Court should intervene .
“ The nation needs this Court ’ s clarity , ” Texas argued—as if the Court should reward them for creating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s brief made that point even more crassly .
“ The fact that nearly half of the country believes the election was stolen should come as no surprise , ” it said , arguing that , by ruling in Texas ’ s favor , the Court would allow voters to “ find solace ” in an election result that excluded “ illegal votes.
” ( All indications are that , by “ illegal , ” Trump means votes that were not cast for him ; actual , specific allegations that there was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conspicuously absent from the Texas and Trump briefs . )
In short , Trump argued that because he threw mud on the election system ’ s machinery , the Court was obliged to junk it .
There is so much that is wrong with the Texas and Trump filings—not just legally but factually .
The Pennsylvania reply referred to a “ cascading series of compounding defects , ” and a “ surreal alternate reality.
” The fallacies include Trump ’ s assertion that , since no candidate has ever won the states of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and he won both of those states , something must be “ amiss ” with the results .
As numerous commentators have pointed out , that premise is simply not true : Nixon won Florida and Ohio in 1960 , but Kennedy won the election .
Of course , it doesn ’ t even matter—there is no clause in the Constitution saying that , if a candidate wins both those states , balloons instantly fall from the ceiling and the lucky contestant is awarded the Presidency .
The fake Florida-Ohio standard may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s constant lies serve to distract and disorient anyone who tries to keep up with them .
For example , a person might spend a lot of time actually contemplating the election of 1960—perhaps it was stolen from Nixon ?
—without getting to the bigger conceptual fallacy .
Similarly , Texas argued that the power to decide how electors are appointed , which the Constitution gives to state legislatures , had , instead , been seized by others : state-government officials , and shadowy actors .
They had , Texas claimed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make the elections less secure , in some cases for partisan advantage .
Each of the four states replied that Texas was factually wrong about what the actual practices in their states were .
Texas ’ s “ basic arguments about how Wisconsin state law works are flat out wrong , ” Wisconsin wrote in its reply .
Pennsylvania put it even more bluntly when addressing Texas ’ s list of the supposedly murky practices there : “ untrue , ” “ false , ” “ utterly false , ” “ nonsense.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any changes were , in fact , in keeping with the existing laws of those states .
“ Texas ’ s suggestion of a wide-ranging conspiracy is a fantasy , ” Pennsylvania ’ s brief said .
More than that , Texas was constitutionally wrong in thinking that it could , as Pennsylvania put it , “ dictate the manner in which four sister States run their elections.
” Georgia referred to the dispute as “ Texas ’ s attack on Georgia ’ s sovereignty . ''
The Supreme Court didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stopped at the first major flaw it came to in the case : standing .
This is the principle that a party bringing a lawsuit must have been injured in a way that is judicially “ cognizable , ” which , in effect , means that it has suffered a real—not a speculative or a theoretical—injury of a sort that the law can recognize and redress .
Texas made a convoluted argument about how it would be harmed if Kamala Harris , as Vice-President , ever had to break a tie vote in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even track logically .
Texas also claimed that it had standing to sue the states because their actions “ debased the votes of citizens in Plaintiff State and other States that remained loyal to the Constitution.
” The very framing of that argument—the imputation of disloyalty to the Constitution on the part of Georgia , Michigan , Pennsylvania , and Wisconsin—is an act of bad faith .
It is also a dangerous provocation .
“ Texas suffered no harm because it dislikes the results in those elections , ” Pennsylvania replied .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the will of Wisconsin ’ s voters , ” that state said .
“ There is no allegation that Georgia targeted Texas , ” Georgia ’ s reply said , adding that , while there was no evidence that Texas would be harmed , Georgia certainly would be if its election results—which , as the reply noted , have been counted three times now—were ignored .
Michigan , too , said that Texas was attempting to “ disenfranchise millions of Michigan voters in favor of the preferences of a handful of people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ results.
” Disappointment is not a legally cognizable injury .
The Court agreed , saying that Texas had no judicially cognizable interest in how “ another State conducts its elections.
” Courts obviously have a role in protecting election integrity and insuring that individual voting rights are not violated .
But Texas is not , say , a voter who has wrongly been subjected to a poll tax .
And , as each of the four sued states noted , Trump and his allies have brought dozens of suits in courts across the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heard , and some of which have reached the Supreme Court .
He just keeps losing them .
The Supreme Court was the “ only ” place the President and his allies could go—because they ’ d already gone everywhere else .
Most important , Trump went to the voters on Election Day .
And they chose Joe Biden .
Read More About the Presidential Transition • Donald Trump has survived impeachment , twenty-six sexual-misconduct accusations , and thousands of lawsuits .
His luck may well end now that Joe Biden is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to change the outcome of the election , Republicans are looking to strategies that might remain even after rebuffs both at the polls and in court .
• With the Trump Presidency ending , we need to talk about how to prevent the moral injuries of the past four years from happening again .
• If 2020 has demonstrated anything , it is the need to rebalance the economy to benefit the working class .
There are many ways a Biden Administration can start .
• Trump is being forced to give up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But his efforts to build an alternative reality around himself will continue .
• Sign up for our daily newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

When the state of Texas asked the Supreme Court, this week, to disenfranchise millions of voters in four other states—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—it said that it was doing so because “no other remedy or forum” existed. The Electoral College casts and counts its votes on Monday, and, Texas claimed, the Supreme Court was the “only venue” that could “protect” its Electoral College votes from being “cancelled.” It was the “only court that can hear this action quickly enough” to throw out those four states’ electors and force their legislatures to choose new ones. Presumably, the new electors would be more to Texas’s—or, rather, to Donald Trump’s—liking. The President had asked to join the suit, which he called “the big one.” Perhaps four years of dealing with a President who rewards inflated tributes to his power had given someone involved with this lawsuit the impression that such an outrageous argument might work. It didn’t; on Friday evening, the Court, in a brief order, threw out Texas’s lawsuit, saying that the state had no standing to even bring it.
With that, the big one is done. There is no forum or venue, under our Constitution, to do what Texas and Trump wanted, because what they wanted was utterly unconstitutional. As Pennsylvania’s reply, submitted by attorneys for the state, including Attorney General Josh Shapiro, put it, “Texas invites this Court to overthrow the votes of the American people and choose the next President of the United States,” in what would be a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.” It is a relief that the Justices refused to even entertain that invitation. The only ones who took even the tiniest step in Texas’s direction were Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Alito, in a short statement that Thomas joined, said that he did not believe the Court had the “discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint” because the case fell within its “original jurisdiction.” (In short, certain disputes between states are heard directly by the Supreme Court rather than working their way up through lower courts.) But Alito added that he would have granted Texas no “other relief”—the state had asked for an injunction to halt the Electoral College’s vote counting, among other things—and that he expressed “no view on any other issue.”
Even the Court’s conservatives, then, seemed to recognize that this was not a constitutional controversy that merited its involvement but a crude power grab. And yet so many other supposedly serious figures in the Republican Party did not. This lawsuit was not some folie à deux in which Trump and Texas—or, more precisely, Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, who has his own legal problems—got caught up in their own private madness. No fewer than seventeen states that Trump won signed on to what’s known as an amicus curiae brief urging the Court to take Texas’s suit. Missouri’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, played a leading role in that effort, but all the state officials who put their names to it rushed to do something shameful. So did the members of the House of Representatives who similarly expressed their support. There are a hundred and twenty-six of them, at last count. (Two are from New York: Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin.) Many of them are not marginal figures; the list includes Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader. It is enraging and also profoundly sad that these Republicans value our democracy so little. Why were they so willing to treat a system that, for all its flaws, has proved sturdy even in the Trump years as a disposable partisan toy? How could they, without mortification, back a brief that included the suggestion that the election must be crooked, because the chance that Trump’s opponent could have won the four states was less than one in “a quadrillion”?
There is no acceptable justification. There needs to be a real reckoning; if prominent Republicans do not now use the Court’s decision to renounce Trump’s campaign to overturn the election, they will do real and lasting harm to the country. The early signs are not good. The head of the Texas G.O.P. put out a statement suggesting that “law-abiding states” might want to form their own “Union of states,” while others, as of Saturday morning, were silent. Trump, of course, is unrepentant. He tweeted, “WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!”
It was never enough for Republicans who supported the suit to tell themselves that they could be as ridiculous as they liked, because the Supreme Court wouldn’t go for the argument, anyway. If they didn’t know how much Trump’s efforts had eroded his supporters’ faith in the integrity of the electoral system, they should have realized it from reading the briefs that Texas and Trump filed, which, perversely enough, cited those doubts as a rationale for why the Supreme Court should intervene. “The nation needs this Court’s clarity,” Texas argued—as if the Court should reward them for creating confusion by throwing out electors. Trump’s brief made that point even more crassly. “The fact that nearly half of the country believes the election was stolen should come as no surprise,” it said, arguing that, by ruling in Texas’s favor, the Court would allow voters to “find solace” in an election result that excluded “illegal votes.” (All indications are that, by “illegal,” Trump means votes that were not cast for him; actual, specific allegations that there was fraud, backed by evidence, are conspicuously absent from the Texas and Trump briefs.) In short, Trump argued that because he threw mud on the election system’s machinery, the Court was obliged to junk it.
There is so much that is wrong with the Texas and Trump filings—not just legally but factually. The Pennsylvania reply referred to a “cascading series of compounding defects,” and a “surreal alternate reality.” The fallacies include Trump’s assertion that, since no candidate has ever won the states of Florida and Ohio without winning the Presidency, and he won both of those states, something must be “amiss” with the results. As numerous commentators have pointed out, that premise is simply not true: Nixon won Florida and Ohio in 1960, but Kennedy won the election. Of course, it doesn’t even matter—there is no clause in the Constitution saying that, if a candidate wins both those states, balloons instantly fall from the ceiling and the lucky contestant is awarded the Presidency. The fake Florida-Ohio standard may be a final example of how Trump’s constant lies serve to distract and disorient anyone who tries to keep up with them. For example, a person might spend a lot of time actually contemplating the election of 1960—perhaps it was stolen from Nixon?—without getting to the bigger conceptual fallacy.
Similarly, Texas argued that the power to decide how electors are appointed, which the Constitution gives to state legislatures, had, instead, been seized by others: state-government officials, and shadowy actors. They had, Texas claimed, used the pandemic as a justification to make the elections less secure, in some cases for partisan advantage. Each of the four states replied that Texas was factually wrong about what the actual practices in their states were. Texas’s “basic arguments about how Wisconsin state law works are flat out wrong,” Wisconsin wrote in its reply. Pennsylvania put it even more bluntly when addressing Texas’s list of the supposedly murky practices there: “untrue,” “false,” “utterly false,” “nonsense.” And Texas was legally wrong, because any changes were, in fact, in keeping with the existing laws of those states. “Texas’s suggestion of a wide-ranging conspiracy is a fantasy,” Pennsylvania’s brief said. More than that, Texas was constitutionally wrong in thinking that it could, as Pennsylvania put it, “dictate the manner in which four sister States run their elections.” Georgia referred to the dispute as “Texas’s attack on Georgia’s sovereignty."
The Supreme Court didn’t even get to those arguments. It stopped at the first major flaw it came to in the case: standing. This is the principle that a party bringing a lawsuit must have been injured in a way that is judicially “cognizable,” which, in effect, means that it has suffered a real—not a speculative or a theoretical—injury of a sort that the law can recognize and redress. Texas made a convoluted argument about how it would be harmed if Kamala Harris, as Vice-President, ever had to break a tie vote in the Senate, which didn’t even track logically. Texas also claimed that it had standing to sue the states because their actions “debased the votes of citizens in Plaintiff State and other States that remained loyal to the Constitution.” The very framing of that argument—the imputation of disloyalty to the Constitution on the part of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—is an act of bad faith. It is also a dangerous provocation.


newyorker--2020-12-12--Trump Orders Space Force to Discover Other Planets with Courts

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —In a sign that he is not ready to give up his legal challenge @ @ @ @ @ Donald J. Trump has ordered the United States Space Force to discover other planets that @ @ @ @ @ legal options on this planet dwindling , Trump is placing all of his hopes on @ @ @ @ @ have intergalactic jurisdiction over Earth .
On the heels of his Space Force announcement , @ @ @ @ @ a planet with a functioning legal system could be located before the Electoral College casts @ @ @ @ @ But , in a sentiment shared by many Republicans , Senator Kelly Loeffler , of @ @ @ @ @ “ totally supports ” Trump ’ s decision to seek justice on another planet .
@ @ @ @ @ the process play out , ” she said .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a sign that he is not ready to give up his legal challenge to the 2020 election, Donald J. Trump has ordered the United States Space Force to discover other planets that have courts.
With his legal options on this planet dwindling, Trump is placing all of his hopes on identifying another planet that might have intergalactic jurisdiction over Earth.
On the heels of his Space Force announcement, astronomers expressed deep skepticism that a planet with a functioning legal system could be located before the Electoral College casts its votes on Monday.
But, in a sentiment shared by many Republicans, Senator Kelly Loeffler, of Georgia, said that she “totally supports” Trump’s decision to seek justice on another planet. “Let’s let the process play out,” she said.


newyorker--2020-12-13--The High Stakes of Georgia’s Loeffler-Warnock Senate Race

Last week , when Senator Kelly Loeffler , Republican of Georgia , and the Reverend Raphael Warnock , her Democratic challenger in a special runoff election , to be held on January 5th , met for a debate , expectations for conflict were high .
Loeffler , who was appointed to her seat in January , by Governor Brian Kemp , needs to persuade Republican voters to keep her there .
Warnock , a respected pastor who until recently led the New Georgia Project , an initiative , founded by Stacey Abrams , to increase voter turnout , has wide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ turn that support into a constituency broad enough to deliver him a victory .
Neither candidate has been elected to office before , and , almost certainly , neither expected to be in one of two runoff elections in the state which will determine control of the United States Senate—and , by extension , the degree to which vestiges of Trumpism will remain in place during the early Biden Administration .
( The other race pits the Republican senator David Perdue against the Democrat Jon Ossoff ; if the polls are to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than one point , and Warnock leads Loeffler by nearly three . )
In the debate , Loeffler , who appeared stiff , raised familiar Republican themes , accusing Warnock of wanting to defund the police ( he said that he does not ) , and challenged his position as a pro-choice clergy member .
Warnock , alternately relaxed and subdued , stuck mostly to kitchen-table issues such as pandemic relief and health care .
Yet , if the debate lacked the anticipated drama , it provided some insights into how Republicans are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ ve grown accustomed to winning with ease .
Meanwhile , on the same night , Ossoff debated an empty lectern , since Perdue did not show up to their scheduled event .
( A clip from a previous debate , in which Ossoff called Perdue a “ crook ” who was more interested in his financial affairs than in the well-being of the state , had gone viral . )
But Loeffler , too , debated someone who wasn ’ t in the room .
She addressed an imaginary Warnock , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to thirteen times as a “ radical liberal ” —a seemingly handy oxymoron directed at people not much interested in the significant differences between radicals and liberals .
In fact , Warnock is the senior pastor of Atlanta ’ s Ebenezer Baptist Church , the institution that was home to Martin Luther King , Jr. , and whose congregation , degreed and pedigreed , is known as much for its relative economic comfort as for its historic civil-rights legacy .
( In January , Loeffler attended M.L.K .
Day services there , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Isakson , whose term she was appointed to complete when he retired . )
One of twelve children , Warnock was raised in public housing in Savannah , and went on to graduate from Morehouse College and earn a doctorate from Union Theological Seminary , in New York .
Still , Loeffler called him “ someone that has invited Fidel Castro , a murderous dictator , into his own church , someone that has celebrated anti-American , anti-Semite Jeremiah Wright.
” Actually , Castro spoke in 1995 at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ youth pastor .
Warnock replied that he didn ’ t invite Castro and had never met him .
With the Jeremiah Wright charge , Loeffler was asking voters to reach back a dozen years , to Barack Obama ’ s Presidential primary campaign , and remember a now retired clergyman whose church the Obamas attended and whose incendiary sermons—recall the clip of him shouting “ God damn America !
” —ignited a firestorm but were not enough to deny Obama the nomination .
If elected , Warnock will be Georgia ’ s first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nation ’ s history .
The Republican plan to defeat him is apparently drawn from the playbook used against the nation ’ s fifth Black senator , who went on to become the first Black President .
A Republican strategist told the Times that Ossoff is “ too dull ” to caricature , noting that Warnock offers much more material to work with .
( Translation : Ossoff is white , Warnock is Black , and this is still Georgia . )
Warnock released an ad mocking the lines of attack against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a knife and fork .
Raphael Warnock once stepped on a crack in the sidewalk .
Raphael Warnock even hates puppies.
” The fervor of Loeffler ’ s campaign points to other headwinds she faces .
A former C.E.O .
of the financial-services company Bakkt and a co-owner of the W.N.B.A.
’ s Atlanta Dream , Loeffler has held office for less than a year , and she was reportedly not Trump ’ s first choice to replace Isakson .
Trump lost the state ( the ballots have now been counted three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the result ) , but his claims that he was a victim of voter fraud may lead to some Republicans ’ not bothering to vote this time .
When the chair of the Republican National Committee , Ronna McDaniel , appeared at a gathering of voters in Marietta , a woman asked how the election is supposed to work if it ’ s already been decided .
“ It ’ s not decided !
” McDaniel replied .
Trump , too , visited Georgia recently , for a rally in Valdosta , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and they rigged our Presidential election .
But we will still win !
” There is a contradictory logic to having the person who just lost the Presidential race in the state campaign on behalf of people hoping to win Senate seats there—especially in the case of Perdue , who got more votes statewide in November than Trump did .
The effect could be to further demoralize the Republican electorate .
All this points to a supreme irony confronting Georgia as early voting begins , on December 14th .
Last year , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For the People bill , which includes the most comprehensive election-reform measures in recent history .
Among its provisions are new mechanisms to govern voter-roll purges , oversight of standards for electronic voting machines , and measures to prevent foreign interference in American elections .
Like much other legislation , it has been stalled by a Senate controlled by Republicans under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell .
This means that , for those Georgia Republicans who believe that Trump was the victim of fraud in their state , returning Loeffler and Perdue to office @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their alleged problem .
American elections are vulnerable , just not in the ways that some Republicans in Georgia are claiming .
( The 2018 gubernatorial race that delivered Brian Kemp to office was itself marred by irregularities . )
An argument for electing Warnock and Ossoff is the fact that the biggest obstacle to preventing “ rigged ” elections in the future is the Party complaining about rigging in the one that just happened .
♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
Last week, when Senator Kelly Loeffler, Republican of Georgia, and the Reverend Raphael Warnock, her Democratic challenger in a special runoff election, to be held on January 5th, met for a debate, expectations for conflict were high. Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat in January, by Governor Brian Kemp, needs to persuade Republican voters to keep her there. Warnock, a respected pastor who until recently led the New Georgia Project, an initiative, founded by Stacey Abrams, to increase voter turnout, has wide name recognition among African-Americans but needs to turn that support into a constituency broad enough to deliver him a victory. Neither candidate has been elected to office before, and, almost certainly, neither expected to be in one of two runoff elections in the state which will determine control of the United States Senate—and, by extension, the degree to which vestiges of Trumpism will remain in place during the early Biden Administration. (The other race pits the Republican senator David Perdue against the Democrat Jon Ossoff; if the polls are to be believed, Ossoff leads Perdue by less than one point, and Warnock leads Loeffler by nearly three.)
In the debate, Loeffler, who appeared stiff, raised familiar Republican themes, accusing Warnock of wanting to defund the police (he said that he does not), and challenged his position as a pro-choice clergy member. Warnock, alternately relaxed and subdued, stuck mostly to kitchen-table issues such as pandemic relief and health care. Yet, if the debate lacked the anticipated drama, it provided some insights into how Republicans are approaching close races in a state where they’ve grown accustomed to winning with ease. Meanwhile, on the same night, Ossoff debated an empty lectern, since Perdue did not show up to their scheduled event. (A clip from a previous debate, in which Ossoff called Perdue a “crook” who was more interested in his financial affairs than in the well-being of the state, had gone viral.) But Loeffler, too, debated someone who wasn’t in the room. She addressed an imaginary Warnock, a raging Marxist sympathizer whom she referred to thirteen times as a “radical liberal”—a seemingly handy oxymoron directed at people not much interested in the significant differences between radicals and liberals.
In fact, Warnock is the senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, the institution that was home to Martin Luther King, Jr., and whose congregation, degreed and pedigreed, is known as much for its relative economic comfort as for its historic civil-rights legacy. (In January, Loeffler attended M.L.K. Day services there, in keeping with the tradition of Senator Johnny Isakson, whose term she was appointed to complete when he retired.) One of twelve children, Warnock was raised in public housing in Savannah, and went on to graduate from Morehouse College and earn a doctorate from Union Theological Seminary, in New York.
Still, Loeffler called him “someone that has invited Fidel Castro, a murderous dictator, into his own church, someone that has celebrated anti-American, anti-Semite Jeremiah Wright.” Actually, Castro spoke in 1995 at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where Warnock was a twenty-six-year-old youth pastor. Warnock replied that he didn’t invite Castro and had never met him. With the Jeremiah Wright charge, Loeffler was asking voters to reach back a dozen years, to Barack Obama’s Presidential primary campaign, and remember a now retired clergyman whose church the Obamas attended and whose incendiary sermons—recall the clip of him shouting “God damn America!”—ignited a firestorm but were not enough to deny Obama the nomination.
If elected, Warnock will be Georgia’s first Black senator—and the eleventh Black senator in the nation’s history. The Republican plan to defeat him is apparently drawn from the playbook used against the nation’s fifth Black senator, who went on to become the first Black President. A Republican strategist told the Times that Ossoff is “too dull” to caricature, noting that Warnock offers much more material to work with. (Translation: Ossoff is white, Warnock is Black, and this is still Georgia.) Warnock released an ad mocking the lines of attack against him: “Raphael Warnock eats pizza with a knife and fork. Raphael Warnock once stepped on a crack in the sidewalk. Raphael Warnock even hates puppies.”
The fervor of Loeffler’s campaign points to other headwinds she faces. A former C.E.O. of the financial-services company Bakkt and a co-owner of the W.N.B.A.’s Atlanta Dream, Loeffler has held office for less than a year, and she was reportedly not Trump’s first choice to replace Isakson. Trump lost the state (the ballots have now been counted three times, though Loeffler has not acknowledged the result), but his claims that he was a victim of voter fraud may lead to some Republicans’ not bothering to vote this time. When the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, appeared at a gathering of voters in Marietta, a woman asked how the election is supposed to work if it’s already been decided. “It’s not decided!” McDaniel replied. Trump, too, visited Georgia recently, for a rally in Valdosta, and told the crowd, “They cheated and they rigged our Presidential election. But we will still win!” There is a contradictory logic to having the person who just lost the Presidential race in the state campaign on behalf of people hoping to win Senate seats there—especially in the case of Perdue, who got more votes statewide in November than Trump did. The effect could be to further demoralize the Republican electorate.
All this points to a supreme irony confronting Georgia as early voting begins, on December 14th. Last year, the House of Representatives passed H.R.1, the For the People bill, which includes the most comprehensive election-reform measures in recent history. Among its provisions are new mechanisms to govern voter-roll purges, oversight of standards for electronic voting machines, and measures to prevent foreign interference in American elections.
Like much other legislation, it has been stalled by a Senate controlled by Republicans under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. This means that, for those Georgia Republicans who believe that Trump was the victim of fraud in their state, returning Loeffler and Perdue to office would actually further postpone a remedy to their alleged problem. American elections are vulnerable, just not in the ways that some Republicans in Georgia are claiming. (The 2018 gubernatorial race that delivered Brian Kemp to office was itself marred by irregularities.) An argument for electing Warnock and Ossoff is the fact that the biggest obstacle to preventing “rigged” elections in the future is the Party complaining about rigging in the one that just happened. ♦


newyorker--2020-12-13--The Cryptic Crossword: No. 89

The Cryptic Crossword: No. 89

Some clues have been edited for clarity .
Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle ’ s answers in @ @ @

Some clues have been edited for clarity. Subscribers can find explanations of the original puzzle’s answers in our archive.


newyorker--2020-12-13--Sunday Reading: Winter Stories

Sunday Reading: Winter Stories

Winter is here in full force , and we hardly need to go on about its perils .
That is the stuff of headlines and all-too-harsh reality .
To provide some respite , we ’ re bringing you a selection of winter stories .
In “ Birnam Wood , ” T. Coraghessan Boyle conjures a tale about a couple who spend an intriguing few months house-sitting in upstate New York during the nineteen-seventies .
In “ The Buck Stops Here , ” the director Ethan Coen reflects on a tale about a man who met his end while driving along @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In “ Turn Signals , ” Louise Erdrich writes about the winter births of three of her four daughters .
( “ My youngest daughter was born during one of those January thaws when the snow packs low to the earth , exuding a heavy mist that turns a golden peach color under halogen street lamps , and everything is muted in a fog of sunset.
” ) Finally , in “ Ava ’ s Apartment , ” Jonathan Lethem imagines a holiday in an alternate New York where whole apartment buildings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use of dogs .
All of these stories remind us of the charms—and contradictions—of the season .
We hope that you enjoy them .
“ Outside , the snow made a noise , a kind of hiss , as if the night had come alive.
” When I heard the story of Uncle Andy , I couldn ’ t help tracing past its punch line .
“ It turned out that it was possible to wish to become a dog only exactly up to that point where it became completely impossible .
”

Winter is here in full force, and we hardly need to go on about its perils. That is the stuff of headlines and all-too-harsh reality. To provide some respite, we’re bringing you a selection of winter stories.
More from the Archive Sign up for Classics, a twice-weekly newsletter featuring notable pieces from the past.
In “Birnam Wood,” T. Coraghessan Boyle conjures a tale about a couple who spend an intriguing few months house-sitting in upstate New York during the nineteen-seventies. In “The Buck Stops Here,” the director Ethan Coen reflects on a tale about a man who met his end while driving along a rural road on a wintry night. In “Turn Signals,” Louise Erdrich writes about the winter births of three of her four daughters. (“My youngest daughter was born during one of those January thaws when the snow packs low to the earth, exuding a heavy mist that turns a golden peach color under halogen street lamps, and everything is muted in a fog of sunset.”) Finally, in “Ava’s Apartment,” Jonathan Lethem imagines a holiday in an alternate New York where whole apartment buildings have been set aside for the exclusive use of dogs. All of these stories remind us of the charms—and contradictions—of the season. We hope that you enjoy them.
—David Remnick
“Outside, the snow made a noise, a kind of hiss, as if the night had come alive.”
Detail from “June Moon,” 1963, Allan D’Arcangelo / VAGA, NYC
When I heard the story of Uncle Andy, I couldn’t help tracing past its punch line.
My winter babies.
Photograph by Edouard Boubat / Rapho / Eyedea
“It turned out that it was possible to wish to become a dog only exactly up to that point where it became completely impossible.”


newyorker--2020-12-13--Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya Is Overcoming Her Fears

The day after the election , Tsikhanouskaya entered the building of the central election commission in Minsk ; the following day , she posted a video in which she said that she had been forced to leave the country .
Since then , she has been based in Vilnius , the capital of Lithuania .
( The two women who aided her are in exile and jail .
Veronika Tsepkalo left Belarus just before the election .
Kalesnikava was arrested after she refused to leave the country . )
The United States and the European Union have not recognized Lukashenka @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election , and Tsikhanouskaya has become her country ’ s representative to the world .
She and I talked over Zoom during the last week of November .
Our conversation has been translated from Russian and slightly condensed .
Yes , we congratulated him as soon as the results were announced .
My team sent a letter .
We have a lot of hope for the Biden Presidency .
He took a strong stand on Belarus , even before the election , and we are confident that he will be true to his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letters ?
I write “ leader of democratic Belarus.
” I ’ ve decided not to identify myself as the President-elect , because I feel that I don ’ t have the moral authority to do so .
All the documentation of the election has been destroyed , so I can no longer obtain proof .
A lot of people have asked me , and some demanded , that I call myself the President-elect , but I ’ m a stickler for rules , maybe too much of one .
I might be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ call me the leader of the opposition , but that ’ s inaccurate , because we are the majority .
I think “ leader of democratic Belarus ” is the best description , because it reflects what we are trying to build together .
The prime ministers , foreign ministers , and diplomats that I meet with know that I represent the people of Belarus .
My role is no more and no less important than that of any Belarusian today—it ’ s just that the Belarusian people have given me the right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stage and to make certain decisions .
We keep in constant touch with people in Belarus—students , teachers , factory workers , doctors and nurses—to insure that we know what they are feeling and what they want .
What do you hear most often ?
Most often I hear , “ Do something !
” People are feeling desperate .
Our principled stand on nonviolence restrains us quite a bit .
A lot of people are ready to take more decisive action , to storm and occupy buildings .
But I say , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” I know that people are suffering behind bars , but at least they are alive .
We are doing all we can to keep the world ’ s attention on us .
But many are feeling very disappointed and frustrated .
When I was just a regular person , I used to think that Europe was so close and so big , and its leaders so powerful that they would surely do something ; they couldn ’ t stand idly by .
Now I see that although they have been expressing their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do .
We ’ ve been working on instituting economic sanctions for months now , and it ’ s all so slow and complicated .
European leaders are treading carefully , always looking over their shoulders at Russia .
For us , this is painful .
Every time I meet with heads of state , I try to convey this pain .
We try to tell them about the innocent people who have been locked up and about the humiliation they are being subjected to .
We try to appeal to their conscience @ @ @ @ @ @ @ primacy of human rights , and look what ’ s happening in the country next door , while all you do is express concern .
How is that possible ?
” I grew up in a family that taught us to always be grateful .
So that may be my mistake .
I am gradually coming to realize that I shouldn ’ t be grateful for mere statements of concern—that we need to demand concrete action .
I ’ m learning , very slowly .
I ’ ve been banned from saying that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politician , a leader , that I ’ m just a weak woman—I used to say that a lot , because that ’ s how I felt .
I ’ ve had to become tougher , and that ’ s difficult .
I was taught to always try to understand why others do what they do , and now I must overcome that , because I ’ m acting on behalf of millions of people .
There ’ s a constant state of tension between what I feel I can do and what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is overcoming their fears right now , and I have to do that , too .
Two months ago , I couldn ’ t bring myself to say words like “ dictator ” or “ usurper ” about Lukashenka .
The more he cracks down , the easier it gets for me , of course .
Who forbade you to say that you are “ just a weak woman ” ?
World leaders .
Several people have told me , “ Stop saying that you are weak—you ’ ve already shown that you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that I wasn ’ t a politician .
Maybe it ’ s because of my country ’ s dictatorship that my conception of a politician was flawed .
I used to think that as long as you can feel the pain of individual people , as long as every arrest affects you personally , you are not a politician , because politics is the work of making decisions without thinking about the human cost .
I ’ m afraid of becoming like that , but that ’ s what I used to think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dalia Grybauskaitė , the former Lithuanian President .
[ Grybauskaitė , the first woman to hold her nation ’ s highest office , served from 2009 until 2019 . ]
She said , “ Even if you feel weak , don ’ t say it .
You have to sit down at the table with leaders with the confidence that you are a leader , that you know what you are talking about .
Don ’ t downplay the skills you ’ ve acquired in this time.
” Dalia schooled me .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about your people , you shouldn ’ t put yourself in a position to be condescended to.
” When you talk about the crackdown in Belarus , what do you say ?
At first , when we started speaking publicly—especially before big audiences , like national parliaments—I would bring large photographs .
It ’ s one thing to hear “ thirty thousand people detained ” —numbers don ’ t move anyone .
It ’ s another to see pictures : of a person who is blue all over after being beaten in detention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demonstrators carrying flowers .
I always try to talk about specific people .
For example , a teacher , a mother of three , who refused to falsify election results—and now she is serving a thirty-day sentence in inhumane conditions .
There is no water in the cells , no soap .
In jails , some of the guards say , “ We won ’ t let you leave here without COVID.
” They will intentionally place infected inmates in cells with protesters .
It ’ s filthy .
Medical care is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recently learned of another shocking incident : a number of women were taken to a jail , forced to squat , and made to duckwalk the length of the hallway to their cells .
Some of those women were in their sixties .
It ’ s just humiliation .
It ’ s done in order to crush your spirit , so that you wouldn ’ t even dream of continuing to protest after you are released .
Some people—I wouldn ’ t say that they are broken , but some people do stop @ @ @ @ @ @ @ others come out and ask , “ Well , when ’ s the next protest ?
” None of us knows how we ’ d behave in this situation .
So we try to get parliament members and diplomats to visualize all these horrors , to feel them .
We want them to know that when we say “ violence , ” we are not talking about someone being hit with a nightstick once .
That nightstick is used to rape people , women and men .
And we are talking about forty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they can ’ t even sit down .
How do people react when you describe this ?
With outward calm , you know .
I hope that I ’ ve shocked them to their core .
But on the outside , they just go on talking about what can be done .
What do you think should be done now ?
There should be a very broad list of people who face individual sanctions .
For now , sanctions apply only to highly placed officials who ’ ve faced sanctions before and have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prepared .
But people lower down—the principals of the schools where election results were falsified , the Interior Ministry troops whom we ’ ve been able to identify , heads of jails , hospital directors who fire doctors for speaking out—they ’ ve never faced sanctions before .
They may be doing all this out of fear that the state will pressure them or their families .
But the risk that they would land on this sanction list and , say , get barred from taking a shopping trip to Poland or Lithuania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ next time , the hospital director might turn a blind eye to the doctor ’ s political views .
So would sanctioning these people that no one ’ s heard of mean banning them from entering the E.U.
?
Yes .
And we also need the E.U .
to impose economic sanctions against major industrial enterprises , such as [ the oil giant ] Naftan , and [ the fertilizer manufacturers ] Belaruskali and Grodno Azot .
We are asking for loans to these companies , purchases from them , and supplies of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ temporarily suspended .
Our working group has calculated that even if everything stops , the regime will have the resources to keep going for another couple of months .
Remember how , after August 9th , thousands of workers went on strike ?
They were intimidated , forced back to work , literally with nightsticks in some cases .
But now , gradually , strike committees are starting to form and people are making a considered decision to join them , not an impulsive one like when they first went out into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ formed .
I ’ ll be honest with you , though : these committees are growing , but at the rate of something like five members a day , and that ’ s not enough .

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has spent more than half of her short political career in exile. Six months ago, the former English teacher was a stay-at-home mom. Her husband, the businessman Siarhei Tsikhanouski, often used his popular YouTube channel to criticize the regime of the dictator Alexander Lukashenka, who has ruled Belarus for twenty-six years. In May, as Belarus prepared for the quinquennial ritual that Lukashenka calls a Presidential election, Tsikhanouski, who had planned to run, was arrested. So was another opposition candidate, Viktar Babaryka. A third, Valery Tsepkalo, was not allowed on the ballot. Three women—Tsepkalo’s wife, Veronika; Babaryka’s campaign director, Maria Kalesnikava; and Tsikhanouskaya—joined forces and put Tsikhanouskaya forward as the opposition candidate for President. She was allowed on the ballot, apparently because Lukashenka didn’t take her seriously. On Election Day, August 9th, she appeared to get a majority of the vote. Lukashenka claimed victory, however. Hundreds of thousands of Belarusians took to the streets in protest and have continued protesting since. Every weekend for the last eighteen weeks, people have marched in the streets of Minsk, the Belarusian capital, and other cities and towns. Lukashenka’s forces have cracked down brutally, jailing upward of a thousand protesters some weekends, but the demonstrations continue.
The day after the election, Tsikhanouskaya entered the building of the central election commission in Minsk; the following day, she posted a video in which she said that she had been forced to leave the country. Since then, she has been based in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. (The two women who aided her are in exile and jail. Veronika Tsepkalo left Belarus just before the election. Kalesnikava was arrested after she refused to leave the country.) The United States and the European Union have not recognized Lukashenka’s claim to have won the election, and Tsikhanouskaya has become her country’s representative to the world. She and I talked over Zoom during the last week of November. Our conversation has been translated from Russian and slightly condensed.
Have you congratulated President-elect Joe Biden?
Yes, we congratulated him as soon as the results were announced. My team sent a letter. We have a lot of hope for the Biden Presidency. He took a strong stand on Belarus, even before the election, and we are confident that he will be true to his word.
How do you sign your letters?
I write “leader of democratic Belarus.” I’ve decided not to identify myself as the President-elect, because I feel that I don’t have the moral authority to do so. All the documentation of the election has been destroyed, so I can no longer obtain proof. A lot of people have asked me, and some demanded, that I call myself the President-elect, but I’m a stickler for rules, maybe too much of one. I might be wrong to say no. Some people call me the leader of the opposition, but that’s inaccurate, because we are the majority. I think “leader of democratic Belarus” is the best description, because it reflects what we are trying to build together.
The prime ministers, foreign ministers, and diplomats that I meet with know that I represent the people of Belarus. My role is no more and no less important than that of any Belarusian today—it’s just that the Belarusian people have given me the right to speak for them on the world stage and to make certain decisions. We keep in constant touch with people in Belarus—students, teachers, factory workers, doctors and nurses—to insure that we know what they are feeling and what they want.
What do you hear most often?
Most often I hear, “Do something!” People are feeling desperate. Our principled stand on nonviolence restrains us quite a bit. A lot of people are ready to take more decisive action, to storm and occupy buildings. But I say, “Can you imagine the bloodshed?” I know that people are suffering behind bars, but at least they are alive. We are doing all we can to keep the world’s attention on us. But many are feeling very disappointed and frustrated. When I was just a regular person, I used to think that Europe was so close and so big, and its leaders so powerful that they would surely do something; they couldn’t stand idly by. Now I see that although they have been expressing their concern—their solidarity—there is nothing they can really do.
We’ve been working on instituting economic sanctions for months now, and it’s all so slow and complicated. European leaders are treading carefully, always looking over their shoulders at Russia. For us, this is painful. Every time I meet with heads of state, I try to convey this pain. We try to tell them about the innocent people who have been locked up and about the humiliation they are being subjected to. We try to appeal to their conscience, saying, “You proclaim the primacy of human rights, and look what’s happening in the country next door, while all you do is express concern. How is that possible?”
I grew up in a family that taught us to always be grateful. So that may be my mistake. I am gradually coming to realize that I shouldn’t be grateful for mere statements of concern—that we need to demand concrete action. I’m learning, very slowly. I’ve been banned from saying that I don’t feel like a politician, a leader, that I’m just a weak woman—I used to say that a lot, because that’s how I felt. I’ve had to become tougher, and that’s difficult. I was taught to always try to understand why others do what they do, and now I must overcome that, because I’m acting on behalf of millions of people. There’s a constant state of tension between what I feel I can do and what I have to do. Every Belarusian is overcoming their fears right now, and I have to do that, too. Two months ago, I couldn’t bring myself to say words like “dictator” or “usurper” about Lukashenka. The more he cracks down, the easier it gets for me, of course.
Who forbade you to say that you are “just a weak woman”?
World leaders. Several people have told me, “Stop saying that you are weak—you’ve already shown that you are strong.” I used to say that I wasn’t a politician. Maybe it’s because of my country’s dictatorship that my conception of a politician was flawed. I used to think that as long as you can feel the pain of individual people, as long as every arrest affects you personally, you are not a politician, because politics is the work of making decisions without thinking about the human cost. I’m afraid of becoming like that, but that’s what I used to think a politician was. I met with Dalia Grybauskaitė, the former Lithuanian President. [Grybauskaitė, the first woman to hold her nation’s highest office, served from 2009 until 2019.] She said, “Even if you feel weak, don’t say it. You have to sit down at the table with leaders with the confidence that you are a leader, that you know what you are talking about. Don’t downplay the skills you’ve acquired in this time.” Dalia schooled me. She said, “You come to talk about your people, you shouldn’t put yourself in a position to be condescended to.”
When you talk about the crackdown in Belarus, what do you say?
At first, when we started speaking publicly—especially before big audiences, like national parliaments—I would bring large photographs. It’s one thing to hear “thirty thousand people detained”—numbers don’t move anyone. It’s another to see pictures: of a person who is blue all over after being beaten in detention, juxtaposed with our peaceful protests, demonstrators carrying flowers. I always try to talk about specific people. For example, a teacher, a mother of three, who refused to falsify election results—and now she is serving a thirty-day sentence in inhumane conditions. There is no water in the cells, no soap.
In jails, some of the guards say, “We won’t let you leave here without COVID.” They will intentionally place infected inmates in cells with protesters. It’s filthy. Medical care is not available. People get infected.
We recently learned of another shocking incident: a number of women were taken to a jail, forced to squat, and made to duckwalk the length of the hallway to their cells. Some of those women were in their sixties. It’s just humiliation. It’s done in order to crush your spirit, so that you wouldn’t even dream of continuing to protest after you are released. Some people—I wouldn’t say that they are broken, but some people do stop after being treated like that. But others come out and ask, “Well, when’s the next protest?” None of us knows how we’d behave in this situation. So we try to get parliament members and diplomats to visualize all these horrors, to feel them. We want them to know that when we say “violence,” we are not talking about someone being hit with a nightstick once. That nightstick is used to rape people, women and men. And we are talking about forty people in a five-person cell, where they can’t even sit down.


newyorker--2020-12-13--A Photographer and an Inmate Exchange Ways of Seeing

Happy May to you my friend !
I hope you are surrounded by love & creative verve .
One of the pictures you sent got denied because of “ gang signs ” ?
I appealed the decision , although I ’ m not confident in any oversight .
They ’ ve denied babies holding their hands at odd angles as gang signs .
Even if it is a “ gang sign ” , who cares !
?
How is that a threat to security ?
My initial response to these found snapshots was to breeze through and disregard them as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t noble , like out of respect for their privacy .
Rather like an absence of desire to see anyone outside of my own sphere .
What ’ s the value of personal photos unless you know the people within them ?
—I thought initially .
My aunt Kathy was just telling me about how she was sifting through her cardboard box of old photos and found some of me as a child .
This prompted a few memories , but without seeing the specific photos I felt a bit dissociated to this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet to sort .
If I were to pick up a handful of photos from my family ’ s box , each one would be electrified by bias , saturated in complicated emotion .
It made me think about what you said about your aversion to taking personal pictures and the value of the distance between you and your subjects .
Thinking about that , I went through the snapshots you sent again and felt myself pulled closer .
Maybe the relative distance allowed me to confront my story a little less tainted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overwhelmed with attention or an essay is too fresh with emotion .
Our relationship with the past is too personal , so we put it in a box and ask time to intervene .
It ’ s interesting to enter the past by the backdoor of other people ’ s photos .
Is the emotional connection to innocence lost forever at a certain point ?
Is this what nostalgia means ?
When we look at these types of photos is it possible to truly occupy dual points on our timeline and reclaim some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to reject cynicism , but can we choose to block some of the bitterness that ’ s calcified our spirit to regain some of the carelessness of childhood ?
I see it in this snapshot , a suspension of disbelief that makes our approach to life like watching a magic trick : you must buy into the illusion in order to be swept up in the wonderment .
Surrounded by family , she ’ s blindfolded and playing some sort of absurd game , buying into the fun .
Anonymously outside the frame @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of perspectives seen through their posture : the kid at the top left corner leans on elbows anxiously at the edge ready to do something , the older lady next to her , barefoot and about to strike up a cigarette , seems to be managing the issues of the younger one who is seemingly exhausted in her own drama , while the girl in red sits fully in the chair , her body making contact at every point , on the precipice of her adulthood , and the lady on the couch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from a seasoned age .
How long has it been since I was willing to play the fool and abandon my seriousness ?
To shed my petty misgivings , put the blindfold on and get on my hands and knees in a position to be laughed at by people who ’ ve known me all my life ?
The time will arrive for her soon where she will discover things about her family she never knew , things that will change the way she may think about them .
She ’ ll start @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sacrifice degrees of her innocence and complicate the relationships that ripple around her .
When was the last time I bought into the magic of life ?
Without looking for the strings , calling out flaws and faults or filling the air with my cynicism ?
What ’ s the big deal with putting on that blindfold and playing the fool ?
I ’ m so afraid of being taken for a fool .
I ’ ve forgotten how good it feels to let go .
I contemplated enlisting after high school .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ as my big cousin talked me out of it .
“ You ’ d be pimpin ’ yourself out to the government , ” he said , “ they don ’ t give a fuck about us.
” Although I was selling him crack at the time , I felt he made a good point .
Since my uncles were tax-evading construction workers , my cousins used and sold drugs , my mom smoked weed and used to hang around Cubans who personified Tony Montana from Scarface , I never considered the system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mind .
To become a cop or join the military would ’ ve been an intentional deviation and be considered a betrayal .
We saw ourselves as untrained soldiers in the streets fighting for our American Dream of money , power and respect .
It ’ s all part of buying into that same illusion of a childhood magic trick .
Despite the details of allegiance , culture or environment , the base mold of a person capable of using violence against another for whatever reason is similar .
Every soldier has their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their violence is sanctioned and they operate with immunity , even when they kill unarmed people .
The military goes into foreign countries with a license to kill because politicians gave them permission .
I grew up believing I had a right to defend myself and didn ’ t ask for permission because I wasn ’ t the only one with a gun on the streets .
The question becomes how we view the righteousness of the purpose .
I ’ m not trying to justify violence or discredit law or military enforcement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ solidarity with this soldier .

Toward the end of January, when this heinous year was still on the starting block, the Minneapolis-based photographer Alec Soth received a note out of the blue. “Please forgive the audacity of this letter,” its author, a fellow-Minneapolitan named Christopher Fausto Cabrera, began. The missive was indeed audacious: not just a fan letter, of the kind that a world-renowned photographer like Soth might receive, but one that also sought to strike up an epistolary exchange. Then again, Cabrera didn’t have much to lose. He was reaching out to Soth from the confines of the nearby Minnesota Correctional Facility-Rush City, where he is serving a twenty-six-year sentence for killing one person and injuring three others in a drive-by shooting. Soth wrote back to Cabrera, and, through a correspondence in the months that followed, the two developed an unusual, touching friendship, shaped by the upheavals of this year.
In their letters, which they have compiled in a new collection, “The Parameters of Our Cage,” we see the photographer, who has been a chief chronicler of American sadness and alienation since his landmark book, “Sleeping by the Mississippi,” from 2004, assume the role of intimate confidant. Starting with prompts asking Cabrera to describe, for instance, eight photographs he would take to a desert island, Soth eventually ends up offering a detailed confession of a life-altering experience of his own, and openly wrestles with his own position of privilege in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Soth, the son of a successful lawyer, grew up in a “stable home, financially and otherwise,” near Prince’s pre-Paisley Park residence. Cabrera, for his part, grew up in the suburbs with his aunt and uncle after the death of his mother, when he was twelve. He describes his upbringing as a “tale of two cities straddling the fence with one foot on the green grass of the suburbs and one foot on the cracked concrete of Minneapolis,” adding, “I had plenty of opportunities to follow some good paths, and I almost did.” In his writings, despite the seemingly dire conditions in prison (at one point, he describes the brutal toll a stint of kitchen duty has taken on his body), he is sensitive, thoughtful, erudite. Incarcerated at twenty-two, Cabrera, now forty years old, is poignantly aware of the “insurmountable debt” that he owes the world because of his actions, and vows to pay it forward. (“Getting out isn’t the end of my prison sentence; it’s the beginning of my true redemption. My supposed debt to society in a cage doesn’t account for my debt to humanity,” he writes.) But he has also managed to tap into a well of deep compassion, both for his former self and, remarkably, for others who also might seem undeserving, including Derek Chauvin, the policeman who killed Floyd.
It’s clear that some of this hard-won tenderness has come from the time that Cabrera has spent reading during his incarceration, and the authors he quotes in his letters—Rainer Maria Rilke, Marilynne Robinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson—betray a romantic bent that textures his messages to Soth. His prose can turn lyrical at times, as in the passage that gives rise to the book’s title, which he wrote in response to the news of coronavirus lockdowns. “We all confront the parameters of our cage eventually,” he writes. “What we do when we reach those bars helps define us.” But Cabrera is not wholly filled with penitence and contemplation; he makes space for righteous anger as well. Often, this is directed at the penal system itself, which he sees as wholly inadequate to provide either justice or its stated goal of prisoner “correction.” “I’ve been in here for 17 years,” he writes, “and have had to fight to define redemption for myself. I know that none of this is justice. This system creates more problems and solves nothing.”
At the heart of Soth and Cabrera’s connection is art: art as a container of meaning, a honing steel for the sensibilities, a lodestar for living. Both Cabrera and Soth write movingly about its singular importance in their lives, and Cabrera, in particular, relishes every opportunity to dig deep, even in response to Soth’s exercises. In the excerpt below, he writes about a pair of photos that Soth has sent him, with a prompt: “Think of the photograph as a diving board and then jump into a pool of thoughts.”


newyorker--2020-12-14--Inside the Workshop of a Classic-Toy Inventor, in “Eddy’s World”

At the 1949 American Toy Fair , at the Hotel McAlpin , in New York , a twentysomething Navy vet from Chicago named Adolph ( Eddy ) Goldfarb débuted three of his plastic inventions .
One was a drinking-cup-and-straw combo with three animals on its top that would spin as a child sipped—the Merry-Go-Sip .
Another was Busy Biddy , an egg-laying chicken that was described , in a subsequent patent filing , as a “ toy which is actuated to simulate the actions of a fowl.
” ( The marketing copy was flashier : “ She ’ s cute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a winner !
” ) Both turned into hits for Goldfarb and Marvin Glass , the toy entrepreneur he had partnered with on the products , but it was their third item on display that year which would achieve immortality : a set of chattering plastic teeth , powered by a windup metal motor , sold under the brand name Yakity-Yak .
In time , the patent expired and the original name fell away , but the gag teeth remained , showing up on late-night talk shows , in movies , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of the little plastic wonders of capitalism that forever seem to find their way into kids ’ hands , no matter the decade , delivering their minor thrill : in this case , the anticipatory clicking of the windup mechanism , and the giddy jolt as you quickly try to get the snapping things out of your hands , like a hot potato .
In the short documentary “ Eddy ’ s World ” —directed by Lyn Goldfarb , Eddy ’ s daughter—we meet the toy inventor more than seventy years later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still tinkering with machines and materials , inventing new gags at his home in a retirement community in California .
A child of immigrants from Poland and Romania , Goldfarb served as a radar technician on the U.S.S .
Batfish submarine in the Second World War , where he began sketching ideas for toys .
He began inventing shortly after the war , amid the plastic boom , with financial support from his wife , Anita .
The idea for the chattering teeth , Eddy explains , came from another bit of whimsy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ false-teeth container that was described as a “ tooth garage , ” conjuring a whole imagined existence for a set of dentures .
The original box proclaimed , “ They walk !
They talk !
They ’ re alive !
” Goldfarb went on to invent more than eight hundred toys , including the popular games Battling Tops , KerPlunk , and Shark Attack !
The documentary demonstrates the lingering joy that Goldfarb takes in the small , precise work of inventing—work which , in the course of his long life , came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shared patents with Anita , who died in 2013 , and created Shark Attack !
and other toys with his son , Martin .
“ The toy industry is a noble industry , ” he says .
“ Say you sold a million games for that year—that meant a million families were playing that game with their kids .
”

At the 1949 American Toy Fair, at the Hotel McAlpin, in New York, a twentysomething Navy vet from Chicago named Adolph (Eddy) Goldfarb débuted three of his plastic inventions. One was a drinking-cup-and-straw combo with three animals on its top that would spin as a child sipped—the Merry-Go-Sip. Another was Busy Biddy, an egg-laying chicken that was described, in a subsequent patent filing, as a “toy which is actuated to simulate the actions of a fowl.” (The marketing copy was flashier: “She’s cute. She’s adorable. She’s a winner!”) Both turned into hits for Goldfarb and Marvin Glass, the toy entrepreneur he had partnered with on the products, but it was their third item on display that year which would achieve immortality: a set of chattering plastic teeth, powered by a windup metal motor, sold under the brand name Yakity-Yak.
In time, the patent expired and the original name fell away, but the gag teeth remained, showing up on late-night talk shows, in movies, at dentists’ offices. They are one of the little plastic wonders of capitalism that forever seem to find their way into kids’ hands, no matter the decade, delivering their minor thrill: in this case, the anticipatory clicking of the windup mechanism, and the giddy jolt as you quickly try to get the snapping things out of your hands, like a hot potato.
In the short documentary “Eddy’s World”—directed by Lyn Goldfarb, Eddy’s daughter—we meet the toy inventor more than seventy years later, at the age of ninety-eight, still tinkering with machines and materials, inventing new gags at his home in a retirement community in California. A child of immigrants from Poland and Romania, Goldfarb served as a radar technician on the U.S.S. Batfish submarine in the Second World War, where he began sketching ideas for toys. He began inventing shortly after the war, amid the plastic boom, with financial support from his wife, Anita. The idea for the chattering teeth, Eddy explains, came from another bit of whimsy, a printed advertisement for a nightstand false-teeth container that was described as a “tooth garage,” conjuring a whole imagined existence for a set of dentures. The original box proclaimed, “They walk! They talk! They’re alive!”
Goldfarb went on to invent more than eight hundred toys, including the popular games Battling Tops, KerPlunk, and Shark Attack! The documentary demonstrates the lingering joy that Goldfarb takes in the small, precise work of inventing—work which, in the course of his long life, came to include his family members. He shared patents with Anita, who died in 2013, and created Shark Attack! and other toys with his son, Martin. “The toy industry is a noble industry,” he says. “Say you sold a million games for that year—that meant a million families were playing that game with their kids.”