For The Atlantic’s January/February 2024 issue, 24 contributors consider what Donald Trump could do if he were to return to the White House.
Just the summary page is a hilarious parade of catastrophizing. First, the editor's note:
• A WARNING, By Jeffrey Goldberg
America survived the first Trump term, though not without sustaining serious damage. A second term, if there is one, will be much worse.
Then the rest:
• THE DANGER AHEAD, By David Frum
If Donald Trump returns to the White House, he’d bring a better understanding of the system’s vulnerabilities, more willing enablers, and a more focused agenda of retaliation against his adversaries.
• TRUMP WILL ABANDON NATO, By Anne Applebaum
If reelected, he would end our commitment to the European alliance, reshaping the international order and hobbling American influence in the world.
• LOYALISTS, LAPDOGS, AND CRONIES, By McKay Coppins
In a second Trump term, there would be no adults in the room.
• THE SPECTER OF FAMILY SEPARATION, By Caitlin Dickerson
Donald Trump and his allies have promised to restore their draconian zero-tolerance immigration policy.
• HOW TRUMP GETS AWAY WITH IT, By Barton Gellman
If reelected, he could use the powers of the presidency to evade justice and punish his enemies.
• FOUR MORE YEARS OF UNCHECKED MISOGYNY, By Sophie Gilbert
In a second Trump term, women would once again be targets.
• THE CLIMATE CAN’T AFFORD ANOTHER TRUMP PRESIDENCY, By Zoë Schlanger
His approach to the environment: ignore it.
• IS JOURNALISM READY?, By George Packer
[Which rule is it that says that if a headline is a question, the answer is probably "no"?]
The press has repeatedly fallen into Donald Trump’s traps. A second term could render it irrelevant.
• TRUMP’S POLARIZATION OF SCIENCE IS BAD FOR EVERYONE, By Sarah Zhang
A reelected Donald Trump would continue to attack studies that stand in the way of his agenda—and to make support for scientific inquiry a tribal belief.
• CORRUPTION UNBOUND, By Franklin Foer
Donald Trump and his cronies left his first administration with a playbook for self-enrichment in a second term.
• WHY XI WANTS TRUMP TO WIN, By Michael Schuman
A second Trump term would allow China to cement its grip on the developing world.
• A MAGA JUDICIARY, By Adam Serwer
In a second term, Donald Trump would appoint more judges who don’t care about the law.
• THE PROUD BOYS LOVE A WINNER, By Juliette Kayyem
A second Trump term would validate the violent ideologies of far-right extremists—and allow them to escape legal jeopardy.
• A PLAN TO OUTLAW ABORTION EVERYWHERE, By Elaine Godfrey
Activists hope a Trump Justice Department would criminalize the procedure, with or without a federal ban.
• THE TRUTH WON’T MATTER, By Megan Garber
If reelected, Donald Trump will once again churn out absurdity and outrage with factory efficiency.
• DONALD TRUMP VS. AMERICAN HISTORY, By Clint Smith
He has promised to impose his harmful, erroneous claims on school curricula in a second term.
• A WAR ON BLUE AMERICA, By Ronald Brownstein
In a second term, Trump would punish the cities and states that don’t support him.
• TRUMP ISN’T BLUFFING, By David A. Graham
We’ve become inured to his rhetoric, but his message has grown darker.
• CIVIL RIGHTS UNDONE, By Vann R. Newkirk II
How Trump could unwind generations of progress
• TRUMP’S PLAN TO POLICE GENDER, By Spencer Kornhaber
His campaign is promising a more repressive and dangerous America.
• A MILITARY LOYAL TO TRUMP, By Tom Nichols
In 2020, the armed forces were a bulwark against Donald Trump’s antidemocratic designs. Changing that would be a high priority in a second term.
• THE LEFT CAN’T AFFORD TO GO MAD, By Helen Lewis
[This one looks like the closest to an even-handed approach, and stands out in comparison to the rest]
A second Trump term would require an opposition that focuses on his abuses of power—and seeks converts rather than hunting heretics.
• WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE AMERICAN PSYCHE IF TRUMP IS REELECTED?, By Jennifer Senior
Our bodies are not designed to handle chronic stress.
• TRUMP VOTERS ARE AMERICA TOO, By Mark Leibovich
(Note: even this one is totally negative)
If he wins a second term, perhaps we’ll finally dispense with the myth that “this is not who we are.”
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Elon Musk caused a flurry on social media after the tech CEO posted a meme mocking CNN’s concerns about free speech on Twitter.
Musk posted a picture of CNN’s Don Lemon on Monday, alongside a satirical chyron that read "Elon Musk could threaten free speech on Twitter by allowing people to speak freely."
Some Twitter users were confused about whether the meme was from an actual CNN broadcast. The image is originally from Geniuses Times, a satirical website that describes itself as "the most reliable source of fake news in the planet."
Nevertheless, Musk’s post prompted a wide range of responses, from conservative praise to liberal meltdowns.
ELON MUSK TROLLS CRITICS WITH NEW 'STAY AT WORK' MERCHANDISE, FOLLOWING 'WOKE' DISCOVERY
Ronald Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic, claimed that Musk was simply repackaging hate speech as free speech to empower extremism on the far right.
"Simple equation: Musk repackages hate speech racism anti-semitism homophobia and far-right intimidation as ‘free speech’ & any effort to hold him accountable for injecting it into US society as the ‘woke mob.’ On both ends, same goal: amplifying & empowering far-right extremists," he tweeted.
Meanwhile, The Jewish Voice, a news and opinion site dedicated to promoting classical Judaism, asserted that Don Lemon’s continued presence on CNN would ensure most Americans would click off the channel.
"How ridiculous can it get?" author James Arthur Ray chimed in.
"I’ve always said what I want and always will speak from heart," actor and comedian Tommy Chong tweeted.
MSNBC’S CHRIS HAYES FRETS HIS ‘WORST FEARS' HAVE BEEN REALIZED SINCE MUSK ACQUIRED TWITTER
Morten Øverbye, a tech entrepreneur and former managing editor of CNN Norway, slammed Musk for appearing to float his own rule to label parody.
"Just 17 days ago, Musk made up a new rule saying accounts engaged in parody must include ‘parody’ in their name," he said.
Musk said on November 10 that accounts engaged in parody must include the word "parody" in their actual name, not just their bio.
Musk’s criticism of CNN and Lemon comes days after the network anchor attempted to fact-check the Twitter owner, claiming that context was needed after Musk posted a tweet calling the "Hands up, don’t shoot" myth "made up."
ELON MUSK SWIPES ANOTHER NEWS OUTLET FOR 'MISINFORMATION,' AFTER STRIKING DOWN 'FLAT WRONG' REPORTS YESTERDAY
The phrase originally stemmed from Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, when he was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson. Soon after, it became a rallying cry for racial justice protests, but the Obama administration’s Department of Justice concluded that Brown did not raise his arms to surrender before his death.
Lemon admitted that the DOJ report "cast doubt" on the narrative about Brown’s death, but also noted that "some said" Brown did attempt to surrender.
Musk has previously spoken out against the liberal media network.
Musk sat down last December with The Babylon Bee, a satirical website that recently had its Twitter account reinstated. During a discussion about "pointless" companies that "shouldn’t exist," a co-host joked they did not feel qualified to interview Musk.
"You can be on CNN right now," co-host Kyle Mann quipped.
"I’m not perverted enough, I guess," Musk responded, likely referencing a satirical Bee headline, as well as recent allegations of sexual misconduct at CNN.
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Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian leaders, sees more than tactical political maneuvering in the choice by so many Republicans to again immediately lock arms around Trump despite the powerful evidence detailed in last week’s indictment. Such deference is “completely consistent” with the behavior across the world of “autocratic parties” under the thrall of “a leader cult,” says Ben-Ghiat, author of the 2020 book, “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”
The closest recent parallel she sees to the GOP’s behavior might be how the Forza Italia party remained in lockstep for years behind former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi throughout multiple trials (and even convictions) for corruption and sexual misconduct, amplifying his claims that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy and “witch hunt.” For leaders like Trump or Berlusconi (who died at 86 on Monday) such legal challenges, she says, actually become a “juncture” to strengthen their dominance by demanding that others publicly defend their behavior – no matter how indefensible. In that way, the leader establishes personal loyalty to him as the one true litmus test for belonging to the party. (The Republican decision to replace a party platform in 2020 with a brief statement declaring it would “enthusiastically support” Trump’s agenda, she notes, marked an important milestone in that transition.)
Ronald Brownstein at CNN. How Republicans are stitching their own straitjacket on Trump indictment
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Former President Donald Trump's decision to lead his town hall audience in laughter over E. Jean Carroll's rape allegations was not an accident, wrote Ronald Brownstein for The Atlantic Friday. Rather, it is indicative of how he sees assertive women to be a threat to the MAGA movement.
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As congressional Republicans prepare for a budget showdown later this year with President Biden, they say that they will insist on large cuts to federal spending. So far, though, they have left out some pretty important details: what those cuts might be.
Republicans have been more willing to talk about what they won’t cut. Party leaders have promised not to touch Medicare and Social Security. Republicans generally oppose reductions in military spending and veterans’ benefits. And neither party can do anything about interest payments on the debt that the government has already accumulated. Combined, these categories make up almost two-thirds of federal government spending.
The largest remaining category involves health care spending that benefits lower- and middle-income families, including from Medicaid and Obamacare. Hard-right Republicans, like some in the Freedom Caucus, have signaled they will propose reductions to these programs. Party leaders, for their part, have said they would eye cuts to anti-poverty programs such as food stamps.
But cuts like these would have a big potential downside for Republicans: The partisan shifts of recent years mean that Republican voters now benefit from these redistributive programs even more than Democratic voters do.
As The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein recently wrote, “The escalating confrontation between the parties over the federal budget rests on a fundamental paradox: The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is now more likely than Democrats to represent districts filled with older and lower-income voters who rely on the social programs that the G.O.P. wants to cut.”
Almost 70 percent of House Republicans represent districts where the median income is lower than the national median, according to researchers at the University of Southern California. By contrast, about 60 percent of House Democrats represent districts more affluent than the median.
The politics of class, as Brownstein puts it, have been inverted.
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No matter who is speaker, 'extreme MAGA types' now control the House: analyst - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism
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The Real Reason America Doesn’t Have Gun Control
The basic rules of American democracy provide a veto over national policy to a minority of the states.
By Ronald Brownstein May 25, 2022
After each of the repeated mass shootings that now provide a tragic backbeat to American life, the same doomed dance of legislation quickly begins. As the outraged demands for action are inevitably derailed in Congress, disappointed gun-control advocates, and perplexed ordinary citizens, point their fingers at the influence of the National Rifle Association or the intransigent opposition of congressional Republicans. Those are both legitimate factors, but the stalemate over gun-control legislation since Bill Clinton’s first presidential term ultimately rests on a much deeper problem: the growing crisis of majority rule in American politics.
Polls are clear that while Americans don’t believe gun control would solve all of the problems associated with gun violence, a commanding majority supports the central priorities of gun-control advocates, including universal background checks and an assault-weapons ban. Yet despite this overwhelming consensus, it’s highly unlikely that the massacre of at least 19 schoolchildren and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, yesterday, or President Joe Biden’s emotional plea for action last night, will result in legislative action.
That’s because gun control is one of many issues in which majority opinion in the nation runs into the brick wall of a Senate rule—the filibuster—that provides a veto over national policy to a minority of the states, most of them small, largely rural, preponderantly white, and dominated by Republicans.
The disproportionate influence of small states has come to shape the competition for national power in America. Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party had done since the formation of the modern party system in 1828. Yet Republicans have controlled the White House after three of those elections instead of one, twice winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. The Senate imbalance has been even more striking. According to calculations by Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in the political-reform program at New America, a center-left think tank, Senate Republicans have represented a majority of the U.S. population for only two years since 1980, if you assign half of each state’s population to each of its senators. But largely because of its commanding hold on smaller states, the GOP has controlled the Senate majority for 22 of those 42 years.
The practical implications of these imbalances were dramatized by the last full-scale Senate debate over gun control. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, the Senate in 2013 voted on a measure backed by President Barack Obama to impose background checks on all gun sales. Again assigning half of each state’s population to each of its senators, the 54 senators who supported the bill (plus then–Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who opposed it only for procedural reasons) represented 194 million Americans. The remaining senators who opposed the bill represented 118 million people. But because of the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires the backing of 60 senators to move legislation to a vote, the 118 million prevailed.
The outcome likely would not differ today. Last year, the House passed legislation to expand and strengthen background checks. But it, too, has been blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
That impassable opposition reflects the GOP’s reliance on the places and voters most deeply devoted to gun culture. Polling last year by the Pew Research Center found that the share of Republicans who live in a household with a gun (54 percent) far exceeds the share of Democrats who do (31 percent). (In all, Pew found that four in 10 adults live in a house with a gun and only three in 10 own one.) A 2020 Rand Corporation study found that the 20 states with the highest rates of gun ownership had elected almost two-thirds of the Senate’s Republican lawmakers (32 of 50) and comprised about two-thirds of the states that President Donald Trump carried in the 2020 election (17 of 25). In an almost mirror image, the 20 states with the lowest rates of gun ownership had elected almost two-thirds of the Senate’s Democratic lawmakers (also 32 of 50) and comprised about two-thirds of the states Biden won (16 of 25). The 20 states with the lowest rates of gun ownership have more than two and half times as many residents (about 192 million) as the states with the highest gun-ownership rates (about 69 million). But in the Senate, these two sets of states carry equal weight.
Keep Reading:
. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/senate-state-bias-filibuster-blocking-gun-control-legislation/638425/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
David Frum: America’s hands are full of blood
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No Wonder Millennials Hate Capitalism
On a Friday night last month, I moderated a debate in Manhattan about whether we should scrap capitalism. It was organized by the socialist magazine Jacobin; defending capitalism were editors from the libertarian publication Reason. Tickets for all available 450 seats sold out in a day. So Jacobin moved it to a venue that holds around twice as many. The extra tickets sold out in eight hours.
When I arrived, people were lined up for blocks; walking to the door, I felt like I was on the guest list at an underground nightclub. Most attendees appeared to be in their 20s and 30s, part of a generation that is uniquely suspicious of capitalism, a system most of their elders take for granted.
The anti-Communist Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was alarmed to find in a recent survey that 44 percent of millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country, compared with 42 percent who want to live under capitalism. For older Americans, the collapse of Communism made it seem as though there was no possible alternative to capitalism. But given the increasingly oligarchic nature of our economy, it’s not surprising that for many young people, capitalism looks like the god that failed.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the wretched tax bill passed by the Senate in the early hours of Saturday morning, which would make the rich richer and the poor poorer. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the bill directs the largest tax cuts as a share of income to the top 5 percent of taxpayers. By 2027, taxes on the lowest earners would go up.
Millennials, a generation maligned as entitled whiners, would be particularly hard hit. As
Ronald Brownstein argued in The Atlantic, the rich people who would benefit from the measures passed by the House and the Senate tend to be older (and whiter) than the population at large. Younger people would foot the bill, either through higher taxes, diminished public services or both. They stand to inherit an even more stratified society than the one they were born into.
Here’s one example. The Senate bill offers a tax break for parents whose children attend private school. But it cuts deductions for state and local taxes, which could
make it harder to fund the public schools where the vast majority of millennials will send their kids.
There is no coherent economic rationale for what Republicans are doing. Academic economists are
basically unanimous that the Republican tax plan would increase America’s deficit, which Republicans used to pretend to care about. With unemployment low, many experts say the economy doesn’t need a stimulus. The tax cuts are likely to increase the trade deficit, which President Trump purportedly wants to reduce. Republicans often say they want to simplify the tax code, but as the accountant Tony Nitti argues in Forbes, the tax bill would make much of it more complex.
How to explain this smash-and-grab legislative looting, which violates all principles of economic prudence? Part of it is simple greed, but there’s also an ideology at work, one that sees the rich as more productive and deserving than others. Louise Linton, the wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, spelled it out on her Instagram feed in August, responding to an Oregon mother who had the audacity to criticize Linton’s use of a government plane: “Lololol. Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country?”
Lest you think that’s just the sputtering of a modern Marie-Antoinette with poor grammar, consider what Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, told The Des Moines Register about the need to repeal the estate tax, which falls only on heirs of multimillionaires and billionaires. “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies,” he said. By this logic, Linton, or Trump’s children, are more socially useful than anyone irresponsible enough to live paycheck to paycheck.
Not to be outdone, the next day, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, argued that Congress still hasn’t reauthorized the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which he helped create and still claims to support, because “we don’t have money anymore.” He went on to rant against the poor: “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves — won’t lift a finger — and expect the federal government to do everything.” It was unclear whether he was talking about the nearly nine million children covered through CHIP or their parents.
After the fall of Communism, capitalism came to seem like the modern world’s natural state, like the absence of ideology rather than an ideology itself. The Trump era is radicalizing because it makes the rotten morality behind our inequalities so manifest. It’s not just the occult magic of the market that’s enriching Ivanka Trump’s children while health insurance premiums soar and public school budgets wither. It’s the raw exercise of power by a tiny unaccountable minority that believes in its own superiority. You don’t have to want to abolish capitalism to understand why the prospect is tempting to a generation that’s being robbed.
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Analyst on why <b>Trump</b> and Biden are neck and neck in polls | CNN Politics
New Post has been published on https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/09/02/ronald-brownstein-trump-biden-polling-2024-sot-intv-smerconish-vpx.cnn&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjUzM2UwMTY5ZmFhZTIwMGQ6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AOvVaw3Zd1cF5MM16FNz3ce2d_k_
Analyst on why Trump and Biden are neck and neck in polls | CNN Politics
CNN senior political analyst Ronald Brownstein breaks down why recent polling has put Trump and Biden neck and neck ahead of the 2024 presidential …
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FROWNLAND
Ronald Brownstein (2007) guy lives alone, stutters intensely, everyone is shitty, low budget ,intimate close-ups, awkward long-takes, like it a lot, saw it on release in cleveland cinematheque
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Currently reading: Rock Me On the Water by Ronald Brownstein
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America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good
America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good
Aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, American Civil War, 1863
A reader alerted me to Ronald Brownstein’s recent article in The Atlantic, “America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good.” The short essay summarizes the conclusions (more…)
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Will California recall its most progressive prosecutors?
Will California recall its most progressive prosecutors?
Rookie prosecutors in Los Angeles and San Francisco find themselves facing recall elections. Ronald Brownstein says, “they have appeared to many voters [as] more worried about reducing incarceration and confronting the genuine structural inequities in the system than ensuring that everyone in the community feels as safe as possible.”
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Rock Me On The Water ( 1974 ) April 2021 - Harper Books 448 pages
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Republicans who enable Trump’s narcissistic anti-democratic inclinations are similar to the Republicans who enabled the witch-hunting red-baiting Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. Both groups seek political gain and don’t care about the consequences for the country as a whole.
In McCarthy's era, most of the GOP's leaders found excuses to avoid challenging conspiracy theories that they knew to be implausible, even as evidence of their costs to the nation steadily mounted. For years, despite their private doubts about his charges and methods alike, the top GOP leadership -- particularly Senate Republican leader Robert A. Taft, the Mitch McConnell of his day -- either passively abetted or actively supported McCarthy's scattershot claims of treason and Communist infiltration.
[ ... ]
Walter Lippmann, the most influential newspaper columnist of his time, wrote that the senator's goal was to establish himself as the GOP's "supreme boss."
Wrote Lippmann, "This is the totalitarianism of the man: his cold, calculated, sustained and ruthless effort to make himself feared. That is why he has been staging a series of demonstrations, each designed to show that he respects nobody, no office, and no institution in the land, and that everyone at whom he growls will run away."
Each of those words could apply as well to Trump and the GOP today.
[ ... ]
Some Republicans may fear Trump; others may find his fraud accusations a useful tool for weakening Biden or justifying a new wave of voter suppression measures. But whatever their motivation for enabling Trump's baseless and corrosive claims, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and the vast majority of other Republican legislators are likely consigning themselves to the same withering verdict that history has applied to the party predecessors who found their own reasons not to object as Joe McCarthy tore for years at the nation's deepest values.
In that excellent article, Ronald Brownstein compares Mitch McConnell to Robert Taft who led Senate Republicans in the McCarthy era.
Though Moscow Mitch reminds me more of the pro-nullification Senator John C. Calhoun -- a proud slaveholder. Calhoun’s advocacy on behalf of nullification and slavery provided the ideological basis which put the South on the path to the Civil War.
Calhoun felt in a twisted way that slavery was necessary to protect freedom in the South. McConnell feels that efforts to thwart majority rule in the US (gerrymandering, court packing, the Electoral College, etc.) are necessary to preserve white male dominance in the US.
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Rock Me on the Water: 1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics by Ronald Brownstein
https://amzn.to/3g4jSRc
https://bookshop.org/a/17891/9780062899217
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