newrepublic--2020-08-27--Mike Pence Is a Parody of a Politician

Mike Pence Is a Parody of a Politician

In 2011 , at the height of his Comedy Central period , Stephen Colbert launched a parody Super PAC called “ Americans for a Better Tomorrow , Tomorrow.
” Wednesday night , the gravely serious Mike Pence ended his workmanlike speech at Fort McHenry with a similar frenzy of repetition : “ With President Donald Trump in the White House for four more years and with God ’ s help , we will make America great again , again.
” As presidential campaign slogans go , it isn ’ t “ Tippecanoe and Tyler Too , ” which helped elect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s oratory is revealing since he is a disciplined politician who obediently follows the script and scrupulously avoids crazed Trumpian improvisations .
In short , every line in a Pence speech is there because White House political strategists thought it represented shrewd politics—even Pence rhetorically sticking another scarlet “ A ” for “ Again ” on every MAGA hat .
What the vice president is saying is that , despite Trump ’ s supposed Mount Rushmore greatness , America needs saving yet again .
In Pence ’ s telling , the nation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the silent movies who keeps getting tied to the railroad tracks .
Donald Trump , of course , has no responsibility for anything .
Not the pandemic , not the economy , not White House incompetence , not a white vigilante killing protesters in Kenosha , and not Hurricane Laura devastating the Gulf Coast .
Trump is simply the unluckiest president since William Henry Harrison died in office just a month after he was inaugurated in 1841 .

The fact-checking of just those two sentences would qualify as a Labor of Hercules. Hyping baseless cures, muzzling government scientists, leaving governors in both parties to fend for themselves, and discouraging coronavirus testing is just a small part of the Trump-Pence legacy of ineptitude and willful denial.
Pence was saying to voters, in effect, “Are you going to believe me or your own eyes?”
What the White House fails to realize is that you can’t spin a pandemic. In his speech, Pence offered the familiar GOP charge that Trump “inherited a military hollowed out by devastating budget cuts.” Americans, unless they are working in procurement at the Defense Department, lack the knowledge to understand that the military budget had declined under Obama primarily because of the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But with six million recorded cases of Covid-19 and 180,000 deaths, voters have their own firsthand understanding of the pandemic. And all the political speeches and all the wild boasting from Trump and Pence cannot erase the sad-eyed arithmetic of death and disease.


newrepublic--2020-08-27--The Real, Paranoid Housewives of the Republican Convention

As Donald Trump imagines them and as the Republican National Convention presented them , the suburbs are a woman , pointing a gun .
Specifically , they are Patricia McCloskey , the Missouri woman who was photographed wielding a pistol on the lawn of her villa-esque home in St. Louis in June as Black Lives Matter protesters walked too near the property ’ s perimeter for her comfort .
Though the Trump-iteration of the Republican Party thrills at the prospect of triggering its opponents , it would be a mistake to read her invitation to the convention as simple trolling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was as a clean white blazer tossed carelessly over age-old racist panic .
“ What you saw happen to us , ” she intoned , referring to the viral reaction to her and her husband threatening protesters with weapons , “ could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country.
” She then warned that “ Marxist activists ” want to “ abolish the suburbs altogether , ” bringing “ crime ” and “ lawlessness ” and “ low-quality apartments.
” Setting aside the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually live in the suburbs , her point was still remarkably clear : “ They ” are Black people , and the “ quiet neighborhoods ” are white enclaves that have prospered through generations of racist housing and zoning policies .
Without Donald Trump , she warned or promised , “ your families will not be safe.
” This was part of Trump ’ s ongoing appeal to “ suburban housewives.
” The moms who have answered his call are , like McCloskey , terrifically paranoid , racist , and open to violence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the country , drummed up by a staggering collection of enemies , some wholly imaginary–Marxists , elites , sex traffickers , the Black Lives Matter movement , baby-eaters , Satanists , antifa .
Such women have imagined themselves in peril for much of this country ’ s existence : the slave-owning wives of slave-owning men and the women of the Klan , sure , but also the mothers fighting desegregation in schools and threatening patients outside abortion clinics .
In the Trump era , these women represent the late stage of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the house .
Don ’ t call her a simple housewife ; she carried the power and responsibility to soothe the world of men from the comforts and privileges offered in the private sphere .
These are women who might say they are fighting for the soul of their country—their heritage—while also insisting , like Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel , that they are the real housewives .
What women in this mold are really fighting for , now as then , is their own place within a white power structure still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not Trump ’ s appeal to white , suburban moms “ works ” does not necessarily come down to picking those women up as voters .
Rather , he is appealing to those for whom that fantasy of womanhood appeals—likely a much bigger constituency , one not limited to the “ real ” housewives themselves .
The housewives of the Trump era command a much wider sphere of influence .
Some , of course , have been inside the White House itself .
Kellyanne Conway , Trump ’ s own avenging house angel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaving behind her official role as counselor to the president after serving since 2016 as one of his most ferocious defenders .
But she did so in a way that reaffirms her domestic powers .
In a statement , Conway said that in these times , children require “ a level of attention and vigilance ” from their parents .
“ For now , and for my beloved children , it will be less drama , more mama .
”

Through their audiences on Instagram and Facebook, Trump-supporting women have helped promote and in some cases organize “Save Our Children” rallies in dozens of cities across the United States over the last several weekends as thinly veiled fronts for QAnon. The community assembled around that baseless conspiracy theory, which promulgates anti-semitic messages and whose followers have engaged in violence from kidnappings to shootings they say were motivated by their QAnon beliefs. It might not seem like an attraction for crystal moms and homeschool moms. Yet they are now fanning it, softening its rough edges to make it more appealing for those who say they just want to protect kids, even if it means standing around on a Saturday afternoon with people holding homemade signs warning about children being stolen for “adrenochrome” and international pedophile cabals.
This fantasy womanhood is not easy to deflate with facts, animated as it is by sentiment, woundedness, and inflated grievance. Worse, it’s rewarding, something to get on television with. That’s what the QAnon rallies were for—to appear non-threatening enough to attract cameras. It worked, too. Uncritical coverage lauding QAnon-supportive and adjacent women as anti-sex trafficking activists appeared in Scranton, Grand Rapids, Steubenville, and Peoria, where the woman behind the rally said she was inspired to act after her son was “almost taken,” as the local news put it. That some of the hashtags on signs around these child-protecting women would lead viewers into the maw of “the storm” on Facebook, where QAnon supporters revel in the war Trump is leading on “pedophiles” and “antifa” alike, was left out of the stories.
Sometimes, the angels go too far. One of the women the Trump campaign has taken to calling “angel moms” was booted from her RNC speaking slot at the last minute on Tuesday. Mary Ann Mendoza was to be introduced as a mother whose police officer son was killed in an accident involving an undocumented immigrant. She is also a member of the Trump campaign’s advisory board. Mendoza used Twitter to spread anti-semitic conspiracy theories connected to QAnon on the morning before her scheduled speech, and after The Daily Beast reported this, the RNC canceled Mendoza’s appearance. It’s one thing for the president to call QAnon good people but another for a mother to promote the same conspiracy in more direct language.


newrepublic--2020-08-27--Why the GOP Didn’t Write a New Platform

Why the GOP Didn’t Write a New Platform

One theme unites last week ’ s Democratic National Convention and this week ’ s Republican National Convention : The GOP is Donald Trump ’ s party now .
For Democrats , this was an elegy and an invitation .
Conservatives who were disgusted by Trump ’ s vulgarity and eager for upstanding leadership had a place in Biden ’ s big tent .
The RNC , meanwhile , has been less a political convention than a groveling recognition that the party has no principles or priorities outside of serving Trump .
Nowhere was this clearer than in the decision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Instead , the RNC applauded everything Trump had done and preemptively rubber-stamped everything he will do , passing a resolution that it will recycle 2016 ’ s platform and “ continue to enthusiastically support the president ’ s America-first agenda.
” New York magazine ’ s Jonathan Chait made the case that Trump was taking a page from the playbook of unpopular monarchs , demanding fealty from all who might challenge him .
“ The GOP , ” he wrote , “ has been subsumed into the twisted personality of a single @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party ever has.
” Writing in The American Prospect , Harold Meyerson concurred , arguing that “ Republican policy until 2024 is to support any and all of Trump ’ s impulses—that is , whatever is on Fox & Friends on any given morning .
In 2020 , the Republicans have become less a party than a well-funded cult with a ballot line.
” For the GOP , Trump is nothing short of a godhead .
“ Given the chance to state their political beliefs , ” wrote The Los Angeles Times ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saying that Trump is the one thing they believe in and that he is the party.
” The lack of a platform certainly underscores the defining attribute of the contemporary Republican Party : its slavish relationship to the president .
Nearly everything he says and does , no matter how outlandish or at odds with orthodoxy , is adopted with barely a murmur of dissent .
But that ’ s only part of the story .
Trump gets his way on everything he cares deeply about : immigration , trade , an authoritarian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But everything he doesn ’ t care about , which constitutes a vast swath of domestic and foreign policy , remains firmly in the control of party apparatchiks .

The decision to not write a platform is less a gesture of surrender and more an acknowledgment of the tacit arrangement the president has made with the party. The arrangement isn’t totally coherent, but it’s how Trump and the GOP have governed for the past four years.
The first three days of the RNC have underscored this dynamic by largely ignoring policy altogether. There has been little mention of issues that divide Trump and mainstream Republicans, such as trade. Instead, there has been an awkward attempt at sanding down these differences with Trump’s focus on bringing back manufacturing (with tariffs that have largely gone unmentioned), melded to more traditional talking points about cutting red tape and regulations and providing relief for job creators.
So on the one hand, there is President Trump casting himself as the only politician willing to do what it takes to lift up the American worker. On the other, there is White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, looking for all the world like a pitchman for a gold informercial, promising capital gains tax cuts and relief for big banks.


newrepublic--2020-08-27--Democrats Have Failed Urban Black Americans

On the first night of the Republican National Convention on Monday , viewers were treated to a taped speech by Kimberly Klacik , a young , Black candidate for Maryland ’ s 7th House district , which includes a large share of Baltimore .
She won ’ t be among the convention ’ s best-remembered appearances , but she did manage to capsulize much of Trump ’ s message for Black urban voters in just two short minutes .
“ Let me remind you that Democrats have controlled this part of Baltimore City for over 50 years , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this beautiful place right into the ground .
Abandoned buildings , liquor stores on every corner , drug addicts , guns on the street—that ’ s now the norm in many neighborhoods .
You ’ d think Maryland taxpayers would be getting a whole lot since our taxes are out of control .
Instead , we ’ re paying for decades of incompetence and corruption .
Sadly , this same cycle of decay exists in many of America ’ s Democrat-run cities.
” In a viral campaign ad earlier this month retweeted by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a walking tour of derelict blocks in West Baltimore , striding along streets with abandoned homes and businesses as statistics about the city ’ s crime and poverty were offered by voiceover .
“ Look at this , ” she said over a shot of crumbling row houses .
“ How are children supposed to live here and play here ?
Democrats think black people are stupid .
They think they can control us forever.
” This line of argument—which political observers should be accustomed to hearing from the right by now—isn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Baltimore or for most Republican candidates in other heavily Democratic cities .
It ’ s unclear whether it ’ ll succeed in nudging a meaningful sliver of Black voters toward Trump in November .
But the substantive content of the message should be taken seriously : It is simply true that Black communities within Democratic cities like Baltimore have been struggling without much progress for generations and that their Democratic leaders have often been corrupt , inept , and ambivalent about addressing the problems they face .
Baltimore ’ s poverty rate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the national average .
The city hasn ’ t had a Republican mayor since 1967 .
Just this year , Baltimore ’ s last mayor—Democrat Catherine Pugh , a fixture of the city ’ s politics for two decades—was sentenced to three years in prison on tax evasion , fraud , and conspiracy charges related to sales of a children ’ s book she ’ d written that was supposed to be distributed in the city ’ s schools .
It goes without saying that nothing in Klacik ’ s 300-word platform would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any city .
Tax incentives that flow largely to well-off neighborhoods and school choice policies aren ’ t going to undo decades of socioeconomic and structural decay in poor communities .
We know this because Democrats have tried them ; the failures Klacik points to have been efforts to do exactly as she recommends now .
We know too that the dismantling of the federal welfare state and mass incarceration failed to revive poor communities and that the Republican Party remains a central obstacle to federal urban investment .
The question is what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ page .
One of the most significant relevant proposals in Joe Biden ’ s current platform is his plan to make affordable housing vouchers an entitlement , aimed at addressing a housing crisis that the coronavirus pandemic has deepened within a few short months .
As it stands , the reach of vouchers is limited by statute—unlike food stamps , which simply go out to all Americans who might qualify , funding for vouchers is capped at the outset , leaving an estimated 11 million potential recipients , or three-quarters of the eligible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Columbia told Vox ’ s Matt Yglesias that fully funding the program as an entitlement could reduce poverty in America by 22 percent and child poverty by over a third .
This would be real material change for many Black families .
But in a Tuesday piece for the People ’ s Policy Project , a progressive think tank , housing policy analyst Paul Williams argued that while an expansion of housing vouchers would be beneficial on net , the program ’ s existing design incentivizes residential segregation .
“ Currently , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Fair Market Rent ( FMR ) calculations , which are based on large citywide samples—skewing the ‘ Fair Market ’ ceiling much higher than the actual market rent in a disinvested neighborhood , ” he wrote .
“ Landlords in these neighborhoods , then , can make more money keeping voucher-holders in those neighborhoods than they would renting their apartments out to non-voucher holders at the non-subsidized market rent—and they do.
” This , along with discrimination against voucher holders in less disadvantaged areas , is among the factors that can @ @ @ @ @ @ @

On the first night of the Republican National Convention on Monday, viewers were treated to a taped speech by Kimberly Klacik, a young, Black candidate for Maryland’s 7th House district, which includes a large share of Baltimore. She won’t be among the convention’s best-remembered appearances, but she did manage to capsulize much of Trump’s message for Black urban voters in just two short minutes. “Let me remind you that Democrats have controlled this part of Baltimore City for over 50 years,” she said. “And they have run this beautiful place right into the ground. Abandoned buildings, liquor stores on every corner, drug addicts, guns on the street—that’s now the norm in many neighborhoods. You’d think Maryland taxpayers would be getting a whole lot since our taxes are out of control. Instead, we’re paying for decades of incompetence and corruption. Sadly, this same cycle of decay exists in many of America’s Democrat-run cities.”
In a viral campaign ad earlier this month retweeted by Trump himself, Klacik took viewers on a walking tour of derelict blocks in West Baltimore, striding along streets with abandoned homes and businesses as statistics about the city’s crime and poverty were offered by voiceover. “Look at this,” she said over a shot of crumbling row houses. “How are children supposed to live here and play here? Democrats think black people are stupid. They think they can control us forever.” This line of argument—which political observers should be accustomed to hearing from the right by now—isn’t going to work for Klacik in Baltimore or for most Republican candidates in other heavily Democratic cities. It’s unclear whether it’ll succeed in nudging a meaningful sliver of Black voters toward Trump in November. But the substantive content of the message should be taken seriously: It is simply true that Black communities within Democratic cities like Baltimore have been struggling without much progress for generations and that their Democratic leaders have often been corrupt, inept, and ambivalent about addressing the problems they face. Baltimore’s poverty rate, at 23 percent, is about double the national average. The city hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1967. Just this year, Baltimore’s last mayor—Democrat Catherine Pugh, a fixture of the city’s politics for two decades—was sentenced to three years in prison on tax evasion, fraud, and conspiracy charges related to sales of a children’s book she’d written that was supposed to be distributed in the city’s schools.


newrepublic--2020-08-27--The Republican National Convention’s War on Reality

In a Republican convention defined , in many ways , by the sheer number and vast array of Trumps that have been cleared to speak , it was remarkable that the least-regarded of their genetic contingent got to deliver the convention ’ s core message .
“ If you ’ re watching tonight and wrestling with your vote on November 3rd , I implore you : Tune out the distorted news and biased commentary and hear it straight from someone who knows , ” offered Lara Trump , the president ’ s daughter-in-law on the convention ’ s third night @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ride .
The 2020 Republican National Convention has careened so wildly between extremes in tone and theme and even decibels that it ’ s no small challenge to summarize .
Indeed , much of it is a study in contradictions .
On the one hand , viewers have been told , the country has never been stronger , greater , or more prosperous , all thanks to the focused and empathetic leadership of President Trump .
On the other hand , the country is so fragile that it will immediately collapse into full-on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ November .
It ’ s been hard to keep track of whether the Trumpian fundamentals are sturdy or frail from one moment to the next .
But there is one matter that ’ s crystal clear : The media is lying to you about who the president is and what he has accomplished , and to really understand the president , you have to hear from the people who really know him .
Naturally , this is an absurd exercise .
The question of what Donald Trump is has never been a particularly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is nothing but open about himself : He sometimes tweets hundreds of times a day , and the message is always the same .
He is brash and ignorant and self-obsessed .
He is singularly unfocused on matters of national importance , particularly the pandemic that has ravaged the country .
He is , as David Roth once called him , a “ blank , sucking nullity.
” The RNC has mightily endeavored to remix the president you know—the unfiltered Donald Trump that he shows the country multiple times a day—into an entirely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lights and Hatch Act–violating reality television event staged over four brutal nights .
In a typical convention , testimonials of character come from family members , on hand to add a relatable and human touch to the proceedings .
However , it ’ s clear that this event ’ s organizers innately understand that the Trump family is a widely distrusted set of scam artists .
And so the convention organizers have strained to look far afield for testimonials from a wide range of people who might attest to some other quality of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his desperate desire to be praised on television .
( As Doreen St. Felix wrote in The New Yorker , “ The GOP has produced instead a number of convincing ‘ regular ’ women and people of color to exert that soft power , which is to say : the propaganda has grown more sophisticated.
” ) What the message lacks in plausibility , it more than makes up for in consistency .
The president , we learn , is uniquely driven .
“ President Trump gets things done , ” said former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once praised Hitler ’ s leadership skills .
He even gets things done despite historically unique levels of obstruction he ’ s been subjected to by the media and the Democratic Party .
He is a hopeful soul , a happy warrior , the sure-footed carrier of Ronald Reagan ’ s baton .
“ Democrats spent four days attacking America , ” Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday .
“ Joe Biden said we are living through a ‘ season of American darkness.
’ But as President Trump said , ‘ Where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see American greatness.
’ ” It ’ s worth underlining that it was the ongoing global pandemic that prevented Biden from donning rose-colored glasses about the state of the union—not that the coronavirus crisis was seen as much more than an afterthought at the RNC , it ’ s banishment from our lives at Trump ’ s hands already a fait accompli .

What seemed to matter most to those in attendance was the insistence that Donald Trump and Republicans were not bigots, racists, and misogynists. Who even knows how concerns to this effect became live issues? Probably no one remembers. On Wednesday, senior adviser Kellyanne Conway—who will be departing the White House in order to spend more time with her family and the public hatred of one another that her commitment to Trump engendered—portrayed Trump as someone with a deep respect for women. “For decades,” she said, “he has elevated women to senior positions in business and in government. He confides in and consults us, respects our opinions and insists that we are on equal footing with the men.” It would be an exceedingly low bar for a normal person to clear: Conway strained to drag the president over it.
Former NFL player Jack Brewer, who was arrested for insider trading earlier this month, said, “I know what racism looks like. I’ve seen it firsthand. In America, it has no resemblance to President Trump—and I’m fed up with the way he’s portrayed in the media.” Rising star Madison Cawthorn, who recently visited one of Hitler’s vacation homes as part of a “bucket list trip” declared that “MLK’s dream is our dream.” The real racists and misogynists were, of course, Joe Biden and the Democrats—who were also out to hand your community over to antifa, end the nuclear family, and turn the United States into a combination of Cuba and Somalia.
It was a narrative that required a total eclipse of reality, but considering the convention had already made its mark by pretending that the coronavirus pandemic was a thing of the past—fully conquered by Trump and his quick thinking—it’s all a matter of “in for a penny, in for a pound.” Trump’s long history of racism and sexism has been dismissed as fake news. The roaring economy Trump inherited was anemic, and the current state of our national fortunes is at a historically successful level. During those moments at the convention when the president shot the breeze with handfuls of normal people, appearing as a bizarro version of himself and nodding empathetically as if he could possess an appreciation for anyone who’s not staring back at him from a mirror, it was as if time was standing still: This is really what’s happening, the convention seemed to insist. Coronavirus is over. The economy is fine. The president is not a huge weirdo but actually a typical guy with normal behavior.


newrepublic--2020-08-26--The Bucks Aren’t Boycotting. They’re Striking.

When the first few games of the NBA bubble started in late July , the league took great care to make sure that all the correct visuals were in place .
The NBA understood that to maintain the careful balance of being a player-driven league—as opposed to the NFL with its devotion to “ the shield ” —and the most “ progressive ” of the four major sports leagues in the United States , it couldn ’ t afford to ignore the protests that erupted after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on George Floyd ’ s neck , ignoring his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cry out for his mother .
Players were allowed to wear custom messages , like “ Say Her Name ” and “ How Many More ?
” on the backs of their jerseys .
All of the courts were branded with the words “ Black Lives Matter.
” Coaches wore pins on their shirts reading “ Coaches for Racial Justice.
” The commentators had prepared segments to explain what viewers were seeing and to briefly discuss what was unfolding outside the bubble .
Things seemed to move seamlessly from there , aided @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sunday night , police in Kenosha , Wisconsin , shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times , paralyzing him from the waist down .
Games on Monday and Tuesday resumed as normal .
The commentators rolled out more packages discussing the shooting .
The bold print on the courts blared the same message .
Then a white 17-year-old in Kenosha shot and killed two protesters and seriously wounded a third just after Kenosha police were filmed giving him water and thanking him for his help .
Something had shifted by Wednesday evening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the league ’ s Eastern Conference and a team whose home city is located just 40 miles out from Kenosha—refused to exit the locker room ahead of their scheduled 4 p.m. tip-off against the Orlando Magic .
Several minutes after the game was supposed to start , the Magic players and coaching staff left the court .
Cautious outlets called it a “ boycott , ” a mealymouthed way to avoid naming the player action for what it was : a political strike .
The move caught fire .
Soon after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trailblazers , the Los Angeles Lakers , the Oklahoma City Thunder , and the Houston Rockets—all of whom were scheduled to also play the fifth game in their best-of-seven series—announced they too would refuse to play , in protest of the Kenosha police shooting .
The strike was on .

As Clippers head coach Doc Rivers, a former player, told the media following his team’s game Tuesday night, “It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.” Raptors guard Fred VanVleet, referencing the dissonance he felt between the league’s show of visual solidarity and the necessary action to make change, said, “It’s starting to feel like everything we’re doing is just going through the motions, nothing’s changing.”
It’s unclear what comes next. This is new territory. More often, strikes in sports have been born out of failed contract negotiations and profit-sharing deals. The league’s players will convene Wednesday night for a bubble-wide meeting to determine what their next steps will be. The only sure things are those that we’ve already seen: There will be criticism from the right, who have already used the league’s tepid stances as a dog whistle for its typical racist rhetoric. The league’s owners will try to cobble together a cohesive response to being rendered relatively powerless, putting some kind of a smiling face on seeing their financial and managerial interests blown up so spectacularly and so publicly all at once. There will be more prepared packages from commentators trying to explain to the average white fan why there was no basketball this week. But the empty show from league management is over.
Now it’s the players’ turn—now it’s a strike. These are men who could have otherwise tuned out the world aflame behind them and cashed their checks and played ball. But as VanVleet continued to ask the press rhetorically last night, “What are we willing to give up? Do we actually give a fuck about what’s going on, or is it just cool to wear Black Lives Matter on a backdrop or wear a T-shirt? Like, what does that really mean? Is it really doing anything?”


newrepublic--2020-08-26--The Federal Government Killed a Navajo Man Just to Prove It Could

At 6:29 p.m. on Wednesday evening , the United States executed Diné citizen Lezmond Mitchell , the first Native person since 1902 to face the death penalty at the hands of the federal government .
In 2001 , Mitchell and a then-underage accomplice and fellow Diné citizen , Johnny Orsinger , stabbed and murdered Alyce Slim and her nine-year-old granddaughter , also both Diné , within the borders of the Navajo Nation in Arizona .
The pair were swiftly caught and detained by local authorities after holding up a nearby trading post .
A decision then fell before U.S. federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Federal Bureau of Investigations maintains jurisdiction over Indian Country if the committed crimes fall under those outlined in the 1885 Major Crimes Act .
This includes violent crimes such as rape , murder , and kidnapping .
But in 2001 , then–Attorney General John Ashcroft wasn ’ t content to charge Mitchell with murder .
He wanted the death penalty .
There was a problem , though : Just as states have the authority to outlaw the death penalty , tribal nations have what is known as the “ opt-in ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to approve or deny the federal government ’ s request for crimes covered by the Major Crimes Act .
The Navajo Nation rejects capital punishment .
So when federal prosecutors went to charge Mitchell and Orsinger—who were easily convicted by a jury made up of 11 white jurors to one Native juror—they used a legal loophole that allowed them to circumvent tribal sovereignty .
Mitchell was not killed by federal authorities on Wednesday evening for committing the crime of murder , though he was convicted on that and several other charges .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. decided to attach capital punishment to his charge of carjacking resulting in death .
More to the point , he was killed because both Ashcroft and current Attorney General Bill Barr , who last July restarted federal executions after a two-decade hiatus , dearly wanted to exercise the power to take human life in the misguided name of justice .
That this also undermined the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation either didn ’ t matter or was part of the point to begin with .
The U.S. pursued the death penalty against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Levon Henry .
The U.S. also ignored then–U.S .
attorney for Arizona Paul Charlton , who agreed that the federal government should listen to the Navajo Nation ’ s desires .
Both Ashcroft and Barr knew what they wanted to see happen , so they flexed every available muscle and pursued every possible loophole .
And as it has been so often , the American legal system was twisted against a nonwhite citizen to exact its pound of flesh .

Fast forward more than a century to 1994, when Congress passed two crucial pieces of legislation. The first was the Death Penalty Act, which expanded the criminal charges under which the U.S. could pursue capital punishment, including “carjacking resulting in death.” The second was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which sought, among many things, to update the Major Crimes Act in order to actually grant tribal governments some semblance of power in the federal criminal justice system. The bill established that the federal government could not pursue the death penalty against a tribal citizen without first seeking and securing the approval of the citizen’s government. The idea was to bring tribal nations at least up to the level of state governments, who routinely are allowed to decide whether the death penalty can be attached to federal criminal convictions.
But, as was the case with Mitchell’s execution, America never had any interest in truly hearing out the Navajo Nation. All the way up until Mitchell’s final days, the Navajo government fought the U.S. decision to move forward with the execution. In late July, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez sent a letter addressed to President Trump, asking him to “consider leniency” for Mitchell. Like almost every tribal nation, the Navajo Nation officially opposes the death penalty on the cultural grounds that life is sacred and it is not up to human beings or the government to take it for vengeance. (It is unclear whether Republican Navajo Vice President Myron Lizer, who spoke at this week’s Republican National Convention, similarly pushed Trump to stay the execution.) Dozens of other tribes echoed Nez’s call, fearing what this case could portend for their own sovereignty. But Trump did not step in. Neither did the Supreme Court, which on Tuesday night released a statement from Justice Sonya Sotomayor officially denying Mitchell’s petition for a writ of certiorari.
Slightly complicating matters is the fact that members of the Slim family recently issued a statement supporting the execution of Mitchell—initially, court filings revealed that the daughter of Slim and mother of the child “passionately” argued against the death penalty. But as Navajo Nation Council delegate Carl Slater told the Navajo Times on Friday, the matter at hand is not one of whether the victims’ family’s wishes are being adhered to in terms of the levied justice but that the nation’s sovereignty was purposefully ignored and diminished by the U.S. “The Navajo Nation never opted in to impose the death penalty,” he told the Times. “It is not the decision of one person or one group of family to make the decision.”


newrepublic--2020-08-26--The Republican Solution to Shuttered Rural Hospitals: Zoom Calls

On the opening night of the Republican National Convention , a woman named Amy Johnson Ford made the counterintuitive case that President Trump ’ s actions during the coronavirus pandemic had not , in fact , led to the deaths of thousands of Americans but had actually prevented deaths .
“ I can tell you without hesitation Donald Trump ’ s quick action and leadership saved thousands of lives during Covid-19 , ” said Ford , a nurse from West Virginia who had traveled to New York City to help fight the coronavirus at the height of the outbreak there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s main role in the proceedings was to highlight Trump ’ s expansion of telehealth coverage for Medicare recipients early in the pandemic , which he recently ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to make permanent via executive order .
Ironically , Ford ’ s hometown of Williamson , W.V .
neatly demonstrates much of the sickness at the heart of America ’ s health care system , in particular its neglect of rural health care .
Williamson Memorial was the only hospital in Mingo County until it closed its doors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that have closed so far this year and the many more facilities that have struggled with the loss of revenue during the pandemic .
The cancelation of many non-emergency procedures and the reluctance of patients to head to emergency rooms during a pandemic obliterated its finances , which were already in perilous shape : The hospital had filed for bankruptcy in October .
The hospital ’ s closure received high-profile attention from politicians , such as Senator Joe Manchin and Governor Jim Justice .
It was surely a relief to many when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Williamson Health and Wellness Center , for $ 3.68 million .
But the chief executive officer of that company , Christopher Donovan “ Dino ” Beckett , told The Los Angeles Times that he doesn ’ t know if he ’ ll be able to reopen the hospital ’ s emergency room .
“ It just depends on how quickly the United States gets back to normalcy , ” he told the paper .
Williamson Health and Wellness Center is , like many health care facilities , a non-profit .
It is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facilities provide community health care in underserved communities , including rural areas , and offer care regardless of its patients ’ ability to pay .
According to its most recent tax documents , Williamson Health and Wellness Center paid Beckett over $ 700,000 , just under 10 percent of its entire revenue , in 2018 .
It also paid his holding company more than $ 125,000 in rent .
The median income in Mingo County is $ 31,305 , about half the national median .
The model is very different for these non-profit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hospital organizations are often far from charitable providers of care ; they are frequently the most aggressive in suing patients over unpaid bills for amounts they will never be able to pay , and their CEOs are among the best-paid hospital executives in America .
The troubled story of Williamson Memorial encapsulates many of the problems faced by rural hospitals .
In 2018 , the hospital was purchased by Community Health Systems , a major for-profit hospital chain that managed to turn a profit in the first quarter of 2020 despite the impact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many rural hospitals in the last few years as it struggles with debt .
In 2015 , it paid a $ 98 million settlement to the federal government for allegedly admitting patients unnecessarily to increase revenue .
( CHS has been continuing to sue hundreds of its patients for unpaid bills during the pandemic , according to Axios . )
But CHS soon abandoned the purchase of Williamson Memorial , which was instead bought by a group of local investors later in 2018 , including the mayor of the town .
When the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year , it was revealed to owe more than $ 600,000 to CHS .

The cost of care remains a significant barrier, just as it would be for in-person visits. Rural areas have higher rates of uninsured people overall, especially in states that refused Medicaid expansion. In those non-expansion states, completely rural counties had an average uninsured rate of 14.9 percent in 2017, compared to 7.6 percent for mostly urban areas in expansion states. Some mostly or entirely rural counties in Texas, the state with the highest number of uninsured people in the country and some of the cruelest Medicaid requirements, had uninsured rates above 30 percent in 2017. In a poll conducted last year, 26 percent of rural Americans said there had been a time in the past few years where they needed health care and didn’t receive it; 45 percent said it was cost that prevented them from receiving care.
Trump’s executive actions may have expanded telehealth for Medicare, but patients on traditional Medicare plans will still have to meet their $198 deductible and pay 20 percent coinsurance for their visits. The Kaiser Family Foundation noted in a policy brief that some insurance companies will cover telehealth but only for visits done through their own platforms, meaning patients couldn’t see their usual doctor. Other plans will cover telehealth for Covid-19-related visits but not for other reasons; and it’s these “everything but Covid” visits that have dramatically fallen off during the pandemic, ruining the finances of rural facilities. The thousands of different insurance plans in America each have their own rules about what will and won’t be covered. And each state administers its own Medicaid plan with its own rules about how telehealth can be conducted.
One of the questions with telemedicine that is yet to be fully resolved is this: Will these visits be paid at the same level as in-person visits beyond the pandemic? The New York Times reported earlier this month that private insurance plans “see telemedicine as a way to save them money” and are likely to continue trying to pay providers less for these visits unless the government forces them to pay at parity. This is clearly not a recipe for rescuing struggling rural hospitals; if they were already struggling before the pandemic because of their poor, uninsured populations, being paid less for the same work done over the internet won’t patch the cracks. Indeed, a New Yorker piece from earlier this year reported that rural providers are wary of telemedicine and that their “already meagre medical staffing, and the revenues generated from procedures that can be performed on-site, will be further hollowed out by remote medicine.”


newrepublic--2020-08-26--The Surprising Boredom of Trump’s Circus Show

In theory , the Republican convention could have been thrilling television .
An elaborate show of fighting family members and sycophantic aides , all breaking the norms of democracy in primetime , should have conveyed at least a little conflict and drama , as Donald Trump did when he strode across Lafayette Square , the fumes of tear gas still wafting through the air , and brandished an unread Bible in front of a church .
Instead , Tuesday night ’ s session of the Republican Convention was guilty of the greatest sin in Trump ’ s worldview : It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ snore-fest seems likely to continue on Wednesday night when Mike Pence , who has described himself as “ Rush Limbaugh on decaf , ” delivers the headline address .
The underlying problem is that when Trump himself is offstage , the Republicans are unable to find a consistent tone .
The best speakers of the convention thus far—Nikki Haley and Tim Scott , both of whom spoke on Monday night—pretended that they were speaking at a normal Republican Convention rather than at a family-filled telethon of Trump triumphalism .
While Eric Trump was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jr. , his speech on Tuesday was full of lines like “ Radical Democrats ... want to disrespect our flag , burn the stars and stripes that represent patriotism , ” which sounded like a parody of the GOP ’ s voice-of-doom attack ads .
The Republicans tried every gimmick they could concoct to make Trump seem like a commanding leader rather than an ill-equipped termagant unable to cope with the worst pandemic in a century .
And if democratic traditions were shattered in the process , well , anything to uphold Trump @ @ @ @

Then there was Melania Trump’s non-social-distanced speech. She deserved credit for being the first major speaker at the GOP Convention to acknowledge the ravages of the pandemic when she said, “My deepest sympathy goes out to everyone who has lost a loved one, and my prayers are with those who are ill or suffering.” But there was also a deliberate and comic obtuseness to the first lady’s speech. Amid the viciousness of the Trump family attacks on Joe Biden and the Democrats, it was stunning to hear Melania say, “I don’t want to use this precious time attacking the other side because as we saw it last week, that kind of talk only serves to divide the country further.”
She was standing, in an ironic twist, in the White House Rose Garden, which was designed by the American heiress Bunny Mellon. The Mellon family has been playing a surprising role in this convention. When Trump was not exploiting the White House for political purposes, most of the convention events took place at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium in Washington, which was named after Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary—a fitting choice now that America is once again facing unemployment numbers to rival those of the Great Depression. Bunny Mellon was married to Andrew Mellon’s son Paul, and nearly six decades after she designed the Rose Garden as a favor to her best friend, Jackie Kennedy, Melania Trump destroyed the soft, natural look of the garden by ordering the removal of 10 crabapple trees and flowers and other plantings. As Meryl Gordon, the bestselling author of a Bunny Mellon biography, told me during the first lady’s speech, “The Rose Garden looks so corporate—like a Marriott.” (Full and proud disclosure: Meryl Gordon is my wife, and the exclusive interview took place on our living room sofa).
In a sense, the Rose Garden can serve as a metaphor for the Trump presidency. Even as the first family of reality TV seems headed out the door of the White House, they still have time to desecrate everything in their reach.


newrepublic--2020-08-26--The Chaos of Reopening Schools

The Chaos of Reopening Schools

Teachers feel frustrated and afraid .
Parents are overburdened .
Guidance from officials has been scant .
For the schools @ @ @ @ @ next month , nothing about the planning process has been easy .
On Episode 14 @ @ @ @ @ , the writer Keith Gessen joins hosts Alex Pareene and Laura Marsh to talk about @ @ @ @ @ fight to safely return kids to public schools has been so difficult .
Later in @ @ @ @ @ , a staff writer at The New Republic , explains what makes the current downturn @ @ @ @ @ how efforts to alleviate its effects on women must take more than gender into consideration @

Teachers feel frustrated and afraid. Parents are overburdened. Guidance from officials has been scant. For the schools preparing to welcome students back next month, nothing about the planning process has been easy. On Episode 14 of The Politics of Everything, the writer Keith Gessen joins hosts Alex Pareene and Laura Marsh to talk about why the city’s fight to safely return kids to public schools has been so difficult.
Later in the episode, J.C. Pan, a staff writer at The New Republic, explains what makes the current downturn a “shesession” and how efforts to alleviate its effects on women must take more than gender into consideration.


newrepublic--2020-08-26--The NBA Is White Conservatives’ Favorite New Target for Racial Dog-Whistling

In the political paradigm created by the coronavirus pandemic , Donald Trump and the Republican Party are having a harder time than usual executing some of the standard fare from their electoral playbook—and not just because the rising death count and unemployment rates create some inconvenient storylines .
As the party swings into the heart of the election season , Republicans would typically rely on their ability to pump out a steady stream of culture war red meat simply by reacting sanctimoniously to the outspoken liberalism of celebrities and pop culture mainstays .
This has long proven itself an efficient @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cable news industry while giving their base reliable grist with which to rally ’ round the GOP banner .
But Republicans , like the rest of us , are living in a cultural desert as nonessential celebrity appearances , press events , award shows , and the like are all on pause and no longer churning out reliable sound bites .
With so much of the entertainment industry on hold , there just aren ’ t as many easy marks at which to take aim , and the vacuum is being filled by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cast the consequences of their disastrous handling of the pandemic into stark relief .
However , one organization from the wide world of sports has recently found itself in the crosshairs of the right as a suddenly convenient , catch-all target : the National Basketball Association .
Trump has complained of “ a nastiness about the NBA , ” warning that the league is in “ bigger trouble than they understand.
” Right-wing Twitter celebrities have followed his lead : Turning Point USA ’ s Charlie Kirk called for the NBA to kick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they “ take a knee to try and tell us black people can ’ t succeed in America.
” Conservative media outlets as varied as National Review and Breitbart News have joined the pile-on , spewing high-brow and low-brow versions of the same argument : that the outspoken liberalism of NBA athletes , coaches , and executives is the real source of the league ’ s woes , proving that “ wokeness ” is a turn-off to ordinary Americans .
In this way , the NBA has become a convenient stand-in for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ growing narrative that America is plagued by systemic racism .
Conservatives have caught the NBA at a vulnerable moment .
The venerable basketball league ’ s television deal is its primary source of profit , and the pandemic has already jeopardized it in a way that ’ s going to have huge long-term consequences ; the president of the NBA players ’ union , Michele Roberts , has already told players that she believes their current collective bargaining agreement is soon to be all but void .
So in an attempt to salvage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a shortened season played within a “ bubble ” on the Disneyworld campus in Orlando , Florida .
This strange arrangement , which created a regular season that felt almost perfunctory , has now entered the postseason playoffs .
In mid-August , this is about five months later than normal .
It ’ s even more convenient that , after negotiations between players and owners about the bubble broadcast infrastructure , the league has instituted a series of decidedly liberal messaging gestures for this one-off pandemic season .
The resulting rhetoric is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In fact , it ’ s all rather mushy and hollow : “ Black Lives Matter ” is perhaps the most radical of the slogans that the NBA has permitted players to wear on their jerseys , along with some of the more popular protest chants— “ Say Her Name , ” “ How Many More ” —on the approved list of in-game political rallying cries .
Beyond these feints , there is little else to represent the well-polling concrete policy goals of the movement the league is gesturing toward .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exactly leading a teach-in on ending qualified immunity for police or law enforcement accountability ; the disarmament , defunding , and abolition of police forces have also been deemed too spicy .
Most of the jersey messages are so bland and unspecific that it seems wrong to even call them political : “ Equality , ” “ Vote , ” “ Peace , ” and “ Education Reform.
” But this is all political enough for the right .

There’s no saying what sort of “big trouble” Trump was alluding to during his diatribe. It’s more likely that he was simply puffing his chest out in the NBA’s general direction. He is not the only Republican politician to indulge in this. Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, infamous for her controversial stock divestments ahead of the pandemic-induced crash of the market, is a part-owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream; she’s recently characterized the league’s activism as “out of control cancel culture” because many of the players on the Dream’s roster, after Loeffler bashed their support for Black Lives Matter, have publicly supported her upcoming electoral opponent. Also getting in on the act is Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who stuck his stake in this territory last October with a letter to NBA commissioner Adam Silver criticizing the league’s relationship with China and is now urging him to add “Support Troops” and “Back The Blue” to the glossary of approved jersey messages.
Knives are out for the NBA in conservative social media circles as well. Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro has weighed in on the messaging of the NBA’s bubble season, characterizing the players’ support for “Black Lives Matter” as “semantic overload” and implying that the phrase is a kind of rhetorical mouse trap that doesn’t mean what it purports but rather exists to promote the belief in a systemic racism in America that is, in Shapiro’s view, nonexistent. And then there was the broadside, leveled on the bubble season’s first night, from Kirk of Turning Points USA: “Hilarious to see Black NBA players who make millions a year take a knee to try and tell us black people can’t succeed in America. Kick them out of the league. Done watching the NBA.” Kirk knows full well that players aren’t saying that Black people can never succeed in America, but it’s much easier to misrepresent a social justice movement by attacking “millionaire” athletes rather than, say, people who’ve been murdered by the police.
Taken as a whole, the rhetorical fusillade that’s been aimed at the NBA runs the gamut, from the unsubtle dog-whistles of the Breitbart set—and the president himself—to the pseudo-intellectualism of National Review’s roster of thinkfluencers. But with hardly any new cultural content on the wing that might provide fresh election-year fodder and even Republican electeds like Hawley and Loeffler getting in on the act, we can probably expect repeated and increasingly refined use of the sport as a metonym for racial justice movements, the Chinese government’s assaults on human rights, and whatever other issues conservatives can make stick to it for as long as the NBA playoffs last. It’s not exactly Meryl Streep grandstanding at the Golden Globes, but right now there aren’t many other pop cultural targets for right-wing insecurities and grievances to glom onto, and there is a real need among conservatives to misdirect voters from their colossal, demonstrated failures. For the time being, the NBA will likely bear the brunt of these harangues, serving as a central character in the long-running conservative morality tale about American values being under attack.


newrepublic--2020-08-26--The Corporate Chaos Behind Republicans’ Silence on Climate Change

Republicans didn ’ t mention rising temperatures in their first two nights of convention programming .
They didn ’ t even call it a hoax .
Climate change doesn ’ t appear in Trump ’ s bullet-pointed second-term agenda , released in lieu of an updated 2020 platform as wildfires burn in fifteen states .
In a sense , it ’ s not that surprising : The coronavirus has also been sidelined at the Republican convention , mentioned mainly as a means to praise Trump ’ s handling of it—not discussing how to prevent further death and economic depression .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ or economic woes at GOP podiums , there ’ s at least corporate bluster .
Why do CEOs seem to be missing in action ?
The modern Republican Party is the party of big business—specifically , a practical alliance between big business and racists .
Groups like the National Association of Manufacturers backed Barry Goldwater ’ s 1964 presidential campaign , intended to tear down the New Deal order by stoking racial resentment and destroying unions .
Ronald Reagan—who ginned up public ire against so-called “ welfare queens ” —was groomed to run @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Koch Brothers used the fortune from their fossil fuel empire to direct racist anger at a Black president against the cap-and-trade bill in 2009 , helping to catalyze the Republican Party ’ s shift toward Trumpism with a series of successful and uncompromising Tea Party primary challenges .
The 2016 RNC featured speeches from fracking magnate Harold Hamm , who warned that “ Every time we can ’ t drill a well in America , terrorism is being funded !
” This year ’ s confab looks a little different , though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ themes .
Trump ’ s first-night speech included his usual tributes to so-called energy independence ( “ we ’ re now number one in the world , by far ” ) and fossil fuels , taking a few jabs at solar , which , he argued incorrectly , is “ very , very heavily expensive.
” ( That ’ s now a more accurate way to describe coal . )
Speakers throughout the night cited regulatory rollbacks among Trump ’ s accomplishments in the White House and complained that Joe Biden was going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which by all accounts he would not .
The rest of the week will probably feature more of the same .
Just as the Republican Party under Trump has grown increasingly unhinged from reality , it may also now offer a less straightforward value proposition for America ’ s biggest companies , who lack a unified approach to climate change now that denial is increasingly untenable .
While the Chamber of Commerce proclaimed its commitment to the Paris Agreement last fall after years spent battling climate policy in Washington , it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right to pollute .
Corporate donations continue to flow to Republican candidates up and down the ballot .
Last year , the American Action Network—one of the secretive dark money groups that serve as black box funnels for corporate funds and a favorite tool of fossil fuel interests—gave more than $ 9 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund , which is dedicated to electing Republicans to the House .
The Republican Senate Leadership fund collected $ 7.6 million from another dark money group , One Nation , over the same period .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Industries alone after David ’ s death last year—hasn ’ t thrown his empire ’ s weight behind Trump , though his flagship super political action committee Americans for Prosperity is now doing door-to-door canvassing in support of Republican congressional candidates and taking out a seven-figure ad buy .
Although Koch has expressed ambivalence about the Trump administration , he probably hasn ’ t been unhappy to see it push through his longtime goals , from environmental rollbacks to defunding the U.S .
Postal Service .

Against the backdrop of climate chaos and turmoil in the fossil fuel sector, both parties’ conventions have felt oddly disconnected from reality. Big oil companies are now more likely to talk about the importance of addressing climate than are their Republican allies, who are still delivering wins for them in Washington, touting the unlimited potential of companies currently crashing on the rocks. During the DNC, Democrats—who take far fewer coal, oil, and gas industry donations—declared boldly that “climate change is real” during a climate-themed interlude on Day 3. Biden’s keynote speech mentioned the climate crisis as one of the core challenges facing the nation and brought it up four times throughout his address. Most of the time, though, you wouldn’t have known that the party is running on the most ambitious climate platform in its history—a platform, nevertheless, that still treats the world’s biggest carbon emitters with kid gloves, leaving the door wide open for expanded oil exports. Like other Democratic climate plans, his mostly sidesteps the problem of how to scale down polluting industries, seeing the energy transition as a problem primarily of adding clean energy rather than subtracting incumbent fuels.
Whether avoiding the issue will actually pay off is unclear. While Democrats have been reticent to give Republicans any ammo to attack them on climate, Republicans have shown they don’t need any grounds at all to accuse Joe Biden—who enthusiastically backed the Iraq War, NAFTA, the lifting of the crude export ban, and the infamous 1994 Crime Bill—of being a pawn of radical Marxists promising to ban all fossil fuels. Meanwhile, some Republicans worry the party is “ceding” ground to their opposition by not offering any meaningful solutions on the issue, although the RNC’s hellish Monday night vision of hardened borders and militarized cops protecting white Americans from non-white invaders clearly qualifies as a sort of dystopian plan to handle rising tides and temperatures.
Where the various arms of big business fit into that bleak picture remains to be seen. No one should underestimate corporations’ ability to profit off whatever floods, fights, and fires the next few decades have in store. If they never again take the stage at the RNC, it will only be because they’ve figured out how to manage discreetly from the wings: Eco-fascism, after all, isn’t great branding.


newrepublic--2020-08-26--How Tesla Punctures the Myth of the Tech Genius

The key scene in Michael Almereyda ’ s biopic Tesla finds Nikola Tesla ( Ethan Hawke ) humbling himself in the dimly lit chamber of robber baron J.P. Morgan ( Donnie Keshawarz ) .
The inventor has come , cap in hand , seeking funds for his wireless transmission experiments , which he believes can unlock the ability to zap telegrams , phone calls , and even early fax messages anywhere on the planet , radically remodeling the world in the process .
Morgan , for his part , seems to recognize only the prospective business applications : the ability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ steamships or receive stock quotes from anywhere in the world .
He cuts Tesla a fat check for $ 100,000 , all the while cutting him down for his boastfulness and proven inability to return on investments .
Tesla cowers , gulping heavily , visibly swallowing his pride .
Almereyda stages this face-off with great restraint .
Whereas much of Tesla playfully deploys old-timey rear-projections and deliberately theatrical stagings , this showdown unfolds in Morgan ’ s lavish Wall Street offices , a bracing bit of realism among the film ’ s bric-a-brac @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in real life by a bulbous , disfigured nose described by E.L. Doctorow in Ragtime as “ a strawberry of the award-winning giant type ” —is no glowering gargoyle .
He is forthright and curt , exuding the confidence of the first man to ever amass a billion dollars .
In a final insult , Morgan looks into Tesla ’ s eyes , meeting him on his own terms .
“ You and I have much in common , ” he intones , matter-of-factly .
“ I believe in higher reality .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Tesla , who believes the virtue of his rare intellect separates him from crass moneymen like Morgan , seems mortified .
It ’ s not enough for Morgan to essentially install Tesla in his pocket .
He has the gall to rob him of his ideals , too .
There is no private passion , nothing sacred , that can not be accumulated by a man with deep enough coffers .
Like Hawke ’ s Tesla , the viewer is left disquieted , stripped of the belief that the fiercely independent creative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perspective that the moneyman can not fathom .
The twist here is that it ’ s Tesla who lacks what his patron possesses in abundance .
Nikola Tesla occupies a curious place in America ’ s imaginary .
A prodigious inventor halfway between modest tinkerer and mad scientist , Tesla ’ s name , story , and image have been lent to everything from pulp fiction to hair metal bands to , perhaps most notably , billionaire Elon Musk ’ s electrified luxury cars .
Born in Smiljan in modern-day Croatia , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s companies ( first in Paris and later in New York ) , struggled to secure patents and funding for his increasingly far-out ideas—including the wireless electric transmission technology , a motor powered by high-energy extraterrestrial protons and a “ death ray ” conceived as a deterrent against Hitler—and died penniless in a New York City hotel following a nervous breakdown .
Tesla ’ s is a rags-to-riches-to-rags-again fable .
He is , almost as a matter of course , spoken of in hyperbole that borders on the comical .
“ On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dreams , and his achievements , ” writes biographer James O ’ Neill in 1944 ’ s Prodigal Genius : The Life of Nikola Tesla , “ he rated the status of the Olympian gods , and the Greeks would have so enshrined him.
” In Christopher Nolan ’ s The Prestige , David Bowie played Tesla as a master of the physical universe enslaved to his obsessions , an inspired bit of casting that drew a straight line between the actor ’ s well-known eccentricity and his character .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tesla ’ s imagination was somehow incorruptible , so he could only be undone by that genius , impervious as it was to forces operating outside of it .
Tesla looms above the pettier , terrestrial concerns of financing and royalties .
A man who can conjure electricity from thin air isn ’ t particularly worried about keeping the lights on .

This new film offers a corrective to those notions. Narrated by Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson), daughter of J.P. and confidant to Tesla, it frequently interrupts and comments on itself. When an argument between Tesla and Edison (the lantern-jawed Kyle MacLachlan) explodes and two men begin jabbing each other with ice cream cones, Anne interrupts to make clear that that’s probably not what actually happened. She produces a modern-day laptop to pull up images of Edison and Tesla as a way of speaking to their respective legacies. Online images of Edison abound, while Tesla’s likeness is limited to a seemingly infinite reworking of the same four photos. “Beyond that,” Anne notes, “things get murkier and more imaginative.”
Tesla is very much a product of this murk and of Almereyda’s imagination. As in his 2000 take on Hamlet, which recasts Shakespeare’s dithering hero (Ethan Hawke, incidentally) as an experimental filmmaker contemplating suicide in the Action aisle of a Blockbuster Video, Almereyda’s aim is not to aggrandize his source material but to diminish it. Truly unpredictable in both its construction and its conjuration of indelible images—a dream sequence late in the film sees Hawke, in character, meekly crooning ’80s pop standard “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” into a karaoke microphone—Tesla feels like it’s being invented, and reinvented, as it goes along.
Unlike Bowie’s Tesla, Hawke’s character is impoverished, quixotic, and woefully out-of-step with the financial realities of the age. His wild dreams, as a colleague puts it, “lack funding.” His seeming contempt for money is contrasted with the attitudes of his rival, Edison, whose intellect is more amenable to investors and more attuned to the emerging realities of financial capitalism. While Edison grabs newspaper headlines with widely publicized demonstrations of his electrical system (including electrocutions of horses, elephants, and the first death row inmate legally offed by electric chair), Tesla is reduced to demonstrating his technology in private drawing rooms full of bourgeois old ladies, like a traveling entertainer. In one sequence, he tears up a royalty deal with entrepreneur George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan), cozy in the belief that the widespread adoption of his polyphase alternating current system will prove more rewarding for his reputation than any dividends produced by its implementation. He is, in a word, incorrect.


newrepublic--2020-08-26--The Sad Spectacle of Talking About Native Rights at Trump’s Racist Circus

On the second night of the Republican National Convention , Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer made his appearance as the sole Native citizen scheduled to speak at the four-day event .
Lizer , a conservative Republican and Baptist preacher , put forth his best effort as he tried to spin Democratic legislative achievements and hollow gestures from President Donald Trump as great strides for Indian Country .
He did all of this with a straight face , which was honestly kind of impressive .
“ Our Creator placed us here and knew for such a time as this , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appeal to Heaven—you see , our people have never been invited into the American dream , ” Lizer said in a recorded address from Shiprock on the Navajo Reservation ( Dinétah ) .
He continued that tribes have long been forced to fight congressional battles in a system that has ignored Native communities .
“ That is , ” Lizer said , “ until President Trump took office.
” There ’ s a lot of shame to go around when it comes to both parties ’ failures and bad faith in Indian Country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before , tribal issues rarely hew to a partisan line ; they ’ re more often a matter of whether a given elected official respects and acts on the treaty and trust responsibilities of the United States .
But there is a certain strangeness , or maybe sadness , in watching one of the leaders of a major tribal nation try to convince Native communities that Trump—a man who has taken to routinely use “ Pocahontas ” as an insult , honored Navajo Code Talkers in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and does not look Native in Congress—is anything close to being on the side of Indian Country .
The remainder of the speech was a hodgepodge of logical leaps and misdirected credit , all in service of the Republican presidential nominee .
Lizer first praised Trump for delivering “ the largest financial funding package ever to Indian Country , ” citing the $ 8 billion in Cares Act funding that was appropriated in the spring following the outbreak of the coronavirus .
He failed to mention that the Trump administration first low-balled Indian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , one of two Democratic Native members of Congress , told The New Republic in late March , she and the Native American Caucus , co-chaired by herself and Republican Tom Cole , initially requested $ 20 billion in stimulus funding .
The White House ’ s counter was just $ 3 billion .
It required further negotiations with the Senate to get the number up to $ 8 billion ; and even then , the distribution of the funds was among the many well-documented disasters that defined the federal response to the @ @

Lizer continued to cite the executive order signed by Trump that recognized the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s (MMIW) crisis—a crisis exacerbated by the extractive oil and gas developments that Trump’s Department of the Interior has green-lighted from the beginning of his term in office. Lizer also doted on the Trump administration’s MMIW task force, which was recently shunned by Minnesota tribal leaders as a political ploy and protested by Native citizens who have been actively working on the issue for years.
Next, Lizer reasoned that “President Trump also strengthened the Supreme Court by nominating strong conservative justices like Neil Gorsuch, who supports Native American rights.” In July, Gorsuch delivered the swing vote and authored the opinion on McGirt v. Oklahoma in which Gorsuch and the high court’s four liberal justices held that, because Congress never expressly disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation through legislative action, the tribal nation still maintained limited jurisdiction over crimes committed within the reservation boundaries. Again, Lizer overlooked the fact that Trump’s other Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, opposed Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation, along with every other conservative justice on the bench.
This is about what you’d expect from a Trump-supporting tribal leader or really anyone making a convention speech. Lizer’s remarks did not stray from the expected. He praised Trump throughout, distorted the truth to fit a preordained narrative, and even invited the president to visit Navajo Nation as he concluded his speech. Fifty minutes later, after a slew of similarly milquetoast speeches, the convention cameras turned to Nick Sandmann, who explained in laborious detail how he learned firsthand what “being canceled” was. Start to finish, day two of the convention was a good show of bad faith all the way around.


newrepublic--2020-08-25--The Whitney Museum’s Careless Attempt to Curate a Summer of Black Uprising

This is not a case of plagiarism but rather of a clash between art professionals and the Black artists whose relevance to the moment we ’ re living in seems to somehow lessen the value of their work in the eyes of the museum .
Because digital files may be free or cheap to access online during the organizing phases of popular protest movements , the Whitney seems to have taken it as a signal to treat the actual artworks with extreme carelessness .
The Whitney curator went on the internet and met its visual culture on its own terms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ credit card he was using .
The Whitney is not a commercial gallery but an institution invested in collecting and defining American art as a totemic category .
They deal in the currencies of prestige and significance ; Wahbeh ’ s initial email announcing the show seemed to imply that the artists should be delighted to be included at all .
As critic Zoé Samudzi put it , the Whitney seemed to be trying to profit off the “ moment ” Black art is experiencing in the media while acquiring that work in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ building relationships and providing resources .
This event is one more link in the chain of connection , in other words , between the history of exclusion and whitewashing in museum spaces and the exploitative and precarious conditions Black artists and artists of color face in this time of belt-tightening and cut corners .
When confronted with the carelessness of its effort by the very artists it had just collected , the Whitney summarily pulled the plug rather than rectify its relationship with the artists or come to a shared agreement about how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collection while still valuing the work , the artists , and the context in which it emerged .
In the email I got from the Whitney , Wahbeh wrote , “ I understand how projects in the past several months have a special resonance and I sincerely want to extend my apologies for any pain that the exhibition has caused.
” He made no mention of the price point the works were acquired at , only that “ going forward , we will study and consider further how we can better collect and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made and distributed through these channels.
” The pieces , while now no longer part of a show , will remain part of the museum ’ s special collection .
If institutions want to skim off some of the glory of this year ’ s historic protest movement—which , after all , has such a long and textured relationship to the American history the Whitney wants to be a part of—they can ’ t perpetuate the idea that they are somehow exempt from it or simply cancel the whole thing when it goes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promises about study and consideration .
The museum seemed to regard itself as outside of the scope of this summer ’ s reckoning over the racist violence of American institutions or as some kind of neutral place in which the moment could be housed .
The artists disagreed .

The Whitney is not a commercial gallery but an institution invested in collecting and defining American art as a totemic category. They deal in the currencies of prestige and significance; Wahbeh’s initial email announcing the show seemed to imply that the artists should be delighted to be included at all. As critic Zoé Samudzi put it, the Whitney seemed to be trying to profit off the “moment” Black art is experiencing in the media while acquiring that work in a predatory and opportunistic fashion instead of building relationships and providing resources. This event is one more link in the chain of connection, in other words, between the history of exclusion and whitewashing in museum spaces and the exploitative and precarious conditions Black artists and artists of color face in this time of belt-tightening and cut corners.
When confronted with the carelessness of its effort by the very artists it had just collected, the Whitney summarily pulled the plug rather than rectify its relationship with the artists or come to a shared agreement about how this work could be part of the collection while still valuing the work, the artists, and the context in which it emerged. In the email I got from the Whitney, Wahbeh wrote, “I understand how projects in the past several months have a special resonance and I sincerely want to extend my apologies for any pain that the exhibition has caused.” He made no mention of the price point the works were acquired at, only that “going forward, we will study and consider further how we can better collect and exhibit artworks and related material that are made and distributed through these channels.” The pieces, while now no longer part of a show, will remain part of the museum’s special collection.
If institutions want to skim off some of the glory of this year’s historic protest movement—which, after all, has such a long and textured relationship to the American history the Whitney wants to be a part of—they can’t perpetuate the idea that they are somehow exempt from it or simply cancel the whole thing when it goes wrong, replacing a show with vague promises about study and consideration. The museum seemed to regard itself as outside of the scope of this summer’s reckoning over the racist violence of American institutions or as some kind of neutral place in which the moment could be housed. The artists disagreed.


newrepublic--2020-08-25--Scientists Really Wish Trump Hadn’t Made That Covid Plasma Announcement

In 1901 , Italian doctor Francesco Cenci discovered that blood infusions from recovered measles patients could keep other people from getting the illness .
A few years later , he discovered that the same treatment helped a critically ill child to recover faster .
Similar cases were reported with diptheria , and the treatment was then used in the 1918-19 flu pandemic .
Scientists would eventually discover that plasma , the yellowish , watery part of the blood in which red blood cells are suspended , contains antibodies to fight off infection .
On Sunday afternoon , hailing so-called convalescent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ President Trump announced an emergency use authorization , or EUA , of the technology for Covid-19 .
The EUA , which allows a treatment to be used despite not going through the typical tests , will “ dramatically expand access to this treatment , ” Trump said , calling it a “ truly historic announcement.
” Setting aside the fact that it ’ s awfully hard to call a technology that predates penicillin a “ breakthrough , ” the announcement raised a number of questions .
How well does convalescent plasma work against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dose , how soon does it need to be given in the course of illness , and which types of convalescent plasma work best ?
No one really knows , and the prospects for sorting it out now seem dimmer than ever .
Although everyone wants to prevent more coronavirus deaths , experts worry that the announcement of plasma ’ s expanded use will upend important research on plasma and antibodies—knowledge about immunology that might have led to a cure or vaccine .
They also fear the announcement will set a precedent , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for bringing treatments to market before they ’ ve been fully tested .
A recent study of 35,000 patients conducted by the Mayo Clinic and sponsored by the National Institutes of Health , or NIH , found that giving patients convalescent plasma early in their illness seemed to reduce their chances of dying .
Some patients were given plasma within three days of diagnosis , while others were given the plasma after four days .
Those who received it early had an 8.7 percent mortality rate in the next week , while those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent mortality rate .
But the preprint study , which has not yet been published in a journal or peer-reviewed by other experts , didn ’ t have a control group of patients who received a placebo—making it difficult to judge definitively whether it was the convalescent plasma or some other factor that reduced mortality .
Just because plasma transfusions seem to work against measles or the flu doesn ’ t mean they work well against Covid-19 .
When the Mayo Clinic announced two weeks ago that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emergency use authorization , the NIH , which sponsored the Mayo study , intervened , saying more rigorous studies need to be done—such as a randomized controlled trial , or RCT , the gold standard in research .
The Trump administration pushed ahead anyway .

According to the research that has been conducted so far, Moore said, convalescent plasma seems to have an effect only under certain circumstances: if the plasma has plenty of neutralizing antibodies and if the patient receives an infusion early in the illness. “If you use weak plasmas or if you delay it too long, there’s very little chance of seeing anything beneficial.”
Much of the plasma now being used outside of clinical trials is not well monitored for how many antibodies, and what type, it contains. “Unless you’ve actually gone and measured what’s in it, you don’t know what’s in it, and then you’re kind of keeping your fingers crossed,” Moore said. “Hard data would have been really useful, but now it will become harder and harder to get hard data.”
When it comes to antibodies, Meghan May, a professor of microbiology and infectious disease at the University of New England, told me, “they’re not all created equal.” Some antibodies may be more effective than others at responding to the virus, but scientists don’t know which ones are best yet. “We don’t understand immunity and protection against this virus because we haven’t had enough literal time in history to study it and study recovered patients.” Researchers are able to measure the level of antibodies in a recovered patient’s plasma, she said. “But we don’t know how effective or what proportion of those antibodies are going to be able to neutralize the virus.” That’s what studies were trying to show. “Now that this authorization exists, it becomes impossible to properly do the study.”


newrepublic--2020-08-25--How Boys State Explains Trump’s Appeal

How Boys State Explains Trump’s Appeal

A teenage boy fidgets on a couch , his eyes darting around behind curtains of Ashton Kutcher hair .
One of the 1,000 young subjects of the documentary Boys State , this boy , Robert , has just given a halting speech to an audience of teenagers in Austin , Texas , about something he doesn ’ t believe in .
He personally supports abortion rights , he explains to the interviewer , but thinks his view isn ’ t the norm .
“ So I changed my view , ” he says .
“ That ’ s politics .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ politics is what Boys State , a week-long camp for kids interested in government , is all about .
Over the course of a week , the kids must construct a state administration from the ground up .
Anybody can run for “ governor , ” the highest “ office ” available to campers , provided they earn 30 signatures from among their peers .
Their ideas can be as mainstream or extreme as they wish ; the previous year , for example , the Texan Boys State campers voted to secede from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there ’ s a Girls State equivalent , too ) was founded by the American Legion in 1935 as a red-blooded , capitalist alternative to the Young Pioneer Camps and functions like a gigantic yet parochial version of the Model United Nations .
The Boys/Girls State organization has itself become a political institution , boasting famous alumni like Dick Cheney , Rush Limbaugh , Cory Booker , and more .
The documentary , executive produced by Democratic mega-donor Laurene Powell Jobs , is one of a raft of political documentaries to flood the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Obamas ’ Netflix titles Becoming and Crip Camp .
Spreading electoral messages through popular entertainment seems to be a new liberal frontier in America ’ s ongoing culture wars .
When we watch these boys come together to found society anew , we ’ re not so much witnessing a straightforward microcosm of democracy in action but a bunch of kids trying to get their heads around the bizarre tangle of controversies that passes for the political conversation these days .
This week is an especially intense time to watch Boys State @ @ @ @ @ @ @ podium of the Republican National Convention .
So many of the campers bear the influence of his campaign style .
The majority of the young Texans in attendance begin the movie delivering polarizing speeches about their God-given rights to carry guns and oppose abortion .
However , when the campers are split into two parties , the Federalists versus the Nationalists , some surprisingly liberal voices rise to the top .

During a debate, Feinstein instructs Eddy to break a minor procedural rule. Otero, who had been assigned to moderate the event, takes the bait and protests the infraction. Feinstein then spends the rest of the election telling everybody he meets that Otero is biased and exploits his power to unfairly bring down Eddy. It works. Eddy wins. Fin.
The parallels with President Trump’s campaign strategy in 2016 and in the upcoming election barely need pointing out. On Monday, for example, Trump said at the Republican National Convention that the Democrats were “using Covid to steal the election,” while continuing to attack the integrity of the mail-in voting system. Ultimately, Feinstein proves Trump’s point that people will flock to a leader who convinces them they’re being conspired against by the opposition. He sacrifices the good name of the Boys State democratic system, in other words, to win power for his side. How can you blame a kid for wanting to be like the most powerful man on earth, even if he’s a liar?
Boys State reaches its climax with Garza sobbing down the telephone to his mother, explaining that he’s not crying because he lost but because everybody keeps hugging him; it turns out that the real gubernatorial race was the friends we made along the way. Coupled with the depressing inevitability of Feinstein’s dirty tactics, which seem to go unchallenged by any adults present, Boys State captures the liberal approach to 2020’s culture wars with damning precision. Garza “wins” the moral contest staged by the film by becoming its martyred hero, but like some kind of adolescent Hillary Clinton impersonator, he loses the actual struggle for power.


newrepublic--2020-08-25--The Republicans’ Love Letter to Rich Culture Warriors

The opening night of the Republican National Convention was a miserable pageant that tried in vain to insist that working people ’ s interests were at home in the party of big business and minoritarian rule .
Around 25 million unemployed workers and their families are facing extreme hardship during a still-active pandemic and a catastrophic recession that economists now project will last for many more years , but the only nod to the crisis came when Trump convened a handful of frontline workers—a nurse , a trucker , a cop , a postal worker—to praise his response to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We ’ re taking good care of our postal workers !
” he cheerfully told one USPS employee . )
After that , workers were quickly dispensed , and the rest of the convention was handed over to right-wing politicians , the rich St. Louis couple now famous for brandishing both a large and a small gun at passing marchers—and presently obsessed with “ Marxist activists ” —and Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend , former Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle .
Despite a smattering of references to the working and middle classes by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dying gasp of the party ’ s incredibly feeble crack at twenty-first-century right-wing populism started by Trump in 2016 .
One irony is that the ongoing economic distress , nationwide racial unrest , and wane of American power abroad make this moment terrifyingly ripe for a resurgence of Steve Bannon-style ethnonationalism ; yet last night , Trump and the Republicans failed to offer much of anything other than hollow rhetoric and denunciations of the Democrats ’ supposed slide toward Marxism .
But just last week , Bannon , himself a millionaire many times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yacht owned by a Chinese billionaire and is now accused of pillaging money from a Gofundme established to raise funds for building a border wall to purchase a golf cart and plastic surgery , among other items .
Much like Bannon himself , though , last night ’ s convention extended a handful of superficial , cynical overtures to working people while at heart it was a love letter to a different part of the Republican base : affluent culture warriors , business interests looking for more tax cuts , and law enforcement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Republicans have had a strange run when it comes to styling themselves as champions of the working class .
As journalist Christian Parenti has written in 2016 , Trump ’ s particular manner of speaking contained just enough pro-worker flourishes that some listeners disillusioned with Washington elbow-rubbing and a declining standard of living could plausibly backfill a populist agenda into his speeches .
Back then , Trump had pledged to safeguard Social Security and Medicare , end costly wars , lower drug prices , and reinvigorate American manufacturing , all measures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Democratic elite had neglected for years .
“ Trump took the Bernie-style populism , emptied it of real class politics , reduced it to a jumble of affective associations , and used it to beat-up the smug liberals of the professional managerial class , ” Parenti wrote .
“ It worked .
”

With some help, of course, from the (decidedly non-populist) electoral college, it worked well enough to win an election. But four years later, with the country in deeper economic straits than it was even after the Great Recession, the Republican Party’s pitch to workers is thinner than ever. During his first term, Trump passed massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy while assembling a fiercely anti-worker National Labor Relations Board and working to slash the social safety net. More recently, he’s advocated a new payroll tax-deferral plan that would undermine the same Social Security program he once pledged to protect. The Republicans’ bizarre convention lineup—wealthy politicians, mansion-owners, and Trump family members—only further evince the fact that American right-wing populism is completely devoid of any actual legislation that might help workers.
Yesterday, Trump also made a surprise midday appearance right after the state delegate roll-call in which he unleashed his signature rambling that again demonstrated the incoherence of his vision for the working class. In one breath he praised Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, a former pharmaceutical titan, then in the next decried the high price of prescription drugs in order to congratulate himself on completing a deal to lower prices. “The socialist countries have the lowest price, so I wanted to get the lowest price,” he said, but then, appearing to realize he was veering toward praising nationalized health care, shouted, “Other than that, our country will never be a socialist country!”
During that midday speech, you could also hear the familiar cries of “Drain the swamp!” from the audience (along with what sounded very much like a racist slur at one point when Obama’s name was invoked). But the Trump administration has perhaps been more waterlogged with lobbyists and private-sector interests than any before it. The conditions that gave rise to both the left and right-wing variants of populism in 2016 certainly haven’t vanished; they’ve only been exacerbated under Trump’s tenure. When the Democrats opened their arms (and pockets) to Wall Street and Silicon Valley with the consolidation of the Biden-Harris ticket, the Republicans had a brief, cynical chance to rush into the void with their own nightmarish version of populism. But the kickoff to their convention suggests that they, too, have mostly abandoned the pretense of working for the people.


newrepublic--2020-08-25--Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Filthy, Predatory Finances

The overnight fall of Jerry Falwell Jr. from high evangelical grace feels in many ways like a Trump-era gloss on the fabled preacher sex scandals that have dogged our self-appointed Protestant moralists throughout the modern era .
Instead of absconding with a church secretary like Jim Bakker or patronizing sex workers like Jimmy Swaggart , Falwell Jr. allegedly upped the scandal ante by arranging a threesome with his wife , Becki , and a pool boy .
And instead of adjourning directly into the fleshpots of temptation , Falwell Jr. elected , reportedly , to watch ; in a conservative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the one true faith as virtual cucks , Falwell Jr. decided to go for the real thing .
When photo evidence of the junior Falwell ’ s predilections surfaced , his perch atop the billion-dollar Liberty University empire he inherited from his dad was swiftly threatened .
For connoisseurs of American religious scandal , there was a weird karmic symmetry to it all , since Jerry Falwell Sr. had helped broker a key institutional alliance between his Southern Baptist denomination and the rival Pentecostalist faith when he assumed control of the beleaguered ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bakker , disgraced by his own dalliances with Jessica Hahn back in the 1980s .
But as is usually the case with our name-brand Protestant preaching franchises , the salaciousness is largely a sideshow—and by now , a rather depressingly familiar one .
It ’ s not really any more surprising to see Falwell fils hoisted by his own tumescent petard than it was to learn circa 2016 that his chief political ally , Donald Trump , was a serial sexual assaulter .
No , the real scandal associated with the Falwell clan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best-known institutional legacy : the sprawling campus of Liberty University in Lynchburg , Virginia , which , regardless of the ultimate disposition of Falwell Jr. ’ s fate there , will continue paying a handsome pension to the institution ’ s newly minted cuck emeritus for the balance of his earthly pilgrimage .
Liberty is the last surviving stronghold of the senior Falwell ’ s once forbidding network of influence , from the Old Time Gospel Hour TV show ( and later network ) that catapulted him into national renown to the great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which was present at the creation of the Reagan Revolution and sought to consolidate many of its founding culture-war gains .
But the elder Falwell fell abruptly on hard times by the early 1990s ; he disbanded the Moral Majority in 1989 , and spiraling debt—much of it left over from an ill-advised Bakker takeover deal—forced him to shutter his gospel TV network in all but a handful of local Virginia markets .
That left Liberty as the family ’ s safe harbor by default .
But the university , too , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , thanks to the paterfamilias ’ s loose hold on the institution ’ s finances .
A thorough review of the books sparked some desperate efforts to save the institution .
As documented in Dirk Smillie ’ s illuminating and detailed book , Falwell , Inc. , one such rescue operation was the founding of a nonprofit shell operation to wipe out $ 29 million in the school ’ s debts for pennies on the dollar .
A key Liberty benefactor—a Texas-based church bond kingpin and former fundamentalist preacher named Willard May—orchestrated a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fund expansion plans at the Liberty Campus and kicked in $ 1.5 million to help pay for a new football stadium , which Falwell Sr. named in his honor .
In short order , though , the Texas insurance commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission caught up with May on various financial improprieties ; the federal government seized his trust company , which turned out to include the deed to Falwell Sr. ’ s home congregation , the Thomas Road Baptist Church , his TV network headquarters , and around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ real estate holdings .
In other words , the great name-brand preacher of the anti-government Reagan gospel was now all but owned outright by the federal government .

Things got worse. Liberty had been banking, quite literally, on a pending interest-free $60 million bond issue already approved by the city of Lynchburg. But church-state separationists challenged the pending outlay in court and won. Unable to meet a $6 million loan obligation that had come due, the elder Falwell had to foreclose on Liberty’s North Campus, where the central administration had centralized its dominion. He was thus forced to cart his own belongings across campus to a more remote spot near the now accursed football field, which had by then been quietly stripped of the Willard May name.
The school’s plans for self-rescue having largely proved a bust, Liberty fell back on the largesse of big-name donors. The $29 million marked for retirement by the nonprofit shell company appears to have been wiped out by none other than the maximum leader of the Unification Church, Reverend Sun Myung-moon, an ideologically and financially convenient ally but a highly embarrassing theological bedfellow for the fundamentalist Baptist college. And as if to compound the humiliation of it all, the legal enforcer that orchestrated the elder Falwell’s humiliating eviction from his office was the Arkansas-based Rose Law Firm, where Hillary Rodham Clinton was a longtime partner. The sting of that moment of reckoning likely played no small part in Falwell senior’s decision to help bankroll and distribute the incendiary and high-conspiratorial 1994 video The Clinton Chronicles, which accused the sitting president of all manner of shady dealings, up to and including murder. Even though Falwell was still $60 million in debt at the time, he managed to put together a $40,000 direct-mail appeal to help ensure the video got produced and widely distributed in the fever swamps of the Clinton hating right. (All of these edifying details come courtesy of Smillie’s aforementioned 2008 chronicle.)
Eventually, another financial angel engineered the retirement of Liberty’s debt—and the school’s financial operations fell largely into the hands of Falwell Jr., then recently graduated from University of Virginia Law School. (Like our age’s other great name-brand scion of an evangelical empire, Joel Osteen, the younger Falwell has very little formal theological training.) Sizing up the school’s still dim prospects when he succeeded to Liberty’s presidency in 2007, Jerry junior elected to go big into online learning—a strategy that soon yielded enormous returns. In 2018, Pro Publica reporter Alec MacGillis charted the full reach of Liberty’s online empire; while the college boasts an in-person enrollment of 15,500, it enrolls as many as 95,000 remote students in a given year. It’s the nation’s second-largest online college after the for-profit behemoth University of Phoenix. However, since Liberty is still chartered as a nonprofit university, it uses a laxer regime of regulatory oversight to load up on government-funded subventions; while the feds no longer own the campus and its collateral outright, this great manufactory of spiritually inflected right-wing dogma still thrives on the public dime, as MacGillis explains: