Trump’s racism cements his party’s place among the West’s far right

Washington Post logoPresident Trump tweets with such frenzy and frequency that we have become almost inured to his rhetorical excesses. But there are times when you have to pay attention.

Over the weekend, Trump tweeted out a widely condemned attack on four Democratic congresswomen: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.). All four are freshmen lawmakers, women of color and outspoken, left-wing voices in the Democratic Party; only one, Omar, was born outside of the United States.

Yet Trump urged them to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came” and stated they all “originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe.” The venom behind the tweets was unmistakable: Here was Trump openly questioning four minority women’s place in America. It was in keeping with the president’s lengthy history of white nationalism, from his “birtherist” campaign against America’s first black president, to his slurs at a Mexican American judge, to his preference for migrants from Norway over “shithole countries,” to his blanket attacks on Muslims, to his defense of white supremacist protesters, to his administration’s daily demonization of immigrants and minority communities.

View the complete July 16 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.

‘Huge victory for the Republican Party’: Legal experts weigh in on Supreme Court’s landmark gerrymandering decision

AlterNet logoThe U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on gerrymandering, deciding that federal courts cannot block lawmakers in individual states from partisan gerrymandering in political districts. And legal experts have been weighing in on the decision.

Elie Mystal, editor of Above the Law, has been highly critical of Chief Justice John Roberts in a series of tweets — complaining that the Supreme Court has, in effect, said that there is no legal remedy “if states gerrymander your vote completely away.”

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin sees the 5-4 decision as a major victory for the Republican Party. Thursday on CNN, Toobin asserted, “Two points. One: huge victory for the Republican Party here, because it’s the Republicans who control most of these states — who control Ohio, who control Florida, who will be redistricting following the 2020 census and now this is a green light to jam all the Democrats into a handful of districts and put the Republicans in Congress of all the rest of them.”

View the complete June 27 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Juan Williams: Trump’s incredible shrinking GOP

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

So let’s take a look at the front page of newspapers after Democrats take the stage in Miami next week for two primary debates.

I’m telling you those pictures will bring me tears.

For the first time in my life, the field of presidential candidates for a major political party looks like America — a racially diverse country.

View the complete June 17 commentary by Juan Williams on The Hill website here.

GOP faces new challenge in 2020 abortion fight

Republicans hoping to paint Democrats as extreme on abortion in the lead-up to the 2020 elections are facing a major obstacle in the wake of Alabama’s restrictive new law.

Democratic presidential candidates are seizing on the state’s ban, which has no exemptions for rape and incest, arguing that it shows President Trump and Republicans are the ones who are out of step with average Americans, and that they want to make abortion illegal at all costs.

And while Trump and GOP leaders have distanced themselves from the Alabama law, Democrats say the president’s policies and judicial nominations have essentially encouraged states to pass such bans.

View the complete May 22 article by Jessie Hellmann on The Hill website here.

GOP Paid Fox News Pundits Over $500K For Speeches

A new report from Media Matters for America reveals Trump’s favorite right-wing pundits at Fox News have brought in more than $500,000 from the Republican Party.

The report tracked the flow of funds from Republican state parties to several of the network’s biggest names and found Fox News pundits regularly getting paid for speeches since 2007, calling it an “ethical disaster.”

Traditional journalistic outlets prohibit intermingling between on-air personalities and party politics — MSNBC once disciplined then-host Keith Olbermann for donating to Democratic candidates. But while Fox has sometimes given lip service to opposing party-pundit financial arrangements, the speeches have continued for a decade.

View the complete May 20 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Republicans take $400k from casino mogul accused of sexual assault

In accepting the cash, the party says Steve Wynn has denied wrongdoing and not faced criminal charges.

The national Republican Party has accepted nearly $400,000 in donations from disgraced ex-casino mogul Steve Wynn — a move that comes just over a year after he was accused of sexually harassing or assaulting employees over a decade-long period.

Wynn gave $248,500 to the Republican National Committee and $150,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in April, according to two people familiar with the contributions. The donations are set to be disclosed publicly later this month.

Wynn, a longtime Republican Party donor whose net worth has been pegged at nearly $3 billion, stepped down as chairman of Wynn Resorts in January 2018 following accusations that he engaged in an extensive pattern of sexual misconduct toward female employees at his Las Vegas casino. Wynn, 77, also resigned his post as RNC finance chairman.

View the complete May 17 article by Alex Isenstadt on the Politico website here.

How the Republicans went all in on white nationalism and voter suppression — and even worse may be yet to come

Every time I go back and read my December 2015 piece on Donald Trump and the missing white voters of the 2012 election, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. I had identified exactly how the Republicans could win the 2016 election, but I just couldn’t bring myself to believe they would pull it off. In truth, that piece should be bracketed by two other pieces of analysis I did on this subject. The earliest came in July 2013 when I wrote about the Republicans’ decision to drop “the idea that they need to do better with Latinos and adopt the idea that they need to do even better with white voters.” The latter one was written a few days after Donald Trump was elected president. I called it “Avoiding the Southification of the North.”

All three articles talk about the future of the Republican Party in the context of their demographic challenges. As the country becomes more ethnically, racially, and religiously diverse, the GOP loses market share. The same happens as young people replace old people in the electorate. The Republicans could respond by abandoning some conservative principles. But they would rather try every other option first. One strategy is to use their power to shift the electorate in their favor. By making it harder for young people to vote and by using every available tool to discourage minority voting, they hope to win a few more elections before they have to actually appeal to these voters. Another strategy is to get white people to think as white people. Here is how I described this in my 2013 piece:

Accusing the Democrats of socialism, which is a race-neutral way of accusing the party of being beholden to the racial underclasses, has been proven insufficient. The only hope for a racial-polarization strategy is to get the races to segregate their votes much more thoroughly, and that requires that more and more whites come to conclude that the Democratic Party is the party for blacks, Asians, and Latinos.

View the complete May 17 article by Martin Longman from the Washington Monthly on the AlterNet website here.

Protecting Trump’s family has become a core principle of the Republican Party ideology

Republicans are up in arms about the actions of one of their own. What did he do to elicit such wrath? He dared to issue a subpoena to Donald Trump Jr.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC) sent the subpoena as part of the panel’s continuing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This should hardly be surprising — Trump Jr. makes multiple appearances at key points in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation. On at least two occasions, it appears that Mueller weighed charging Trump Jr. with crimes, but decided against it. And Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congres appears to have been misleading, if not outright perjury, especially in light of Michael Cohen’s revelations about his own lies to lawmakers regarding the negotiations in 2016 by the Trump Organization to build a tower in Moscow.

But Burr’s decision to send the subpoena has caused an uproar among Republicans. They’ve been doing their best to sweep the Mueller report — including its damning revelations about the president — under the rug. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech declaring “case closed” on the matter.

View the complete May 10 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

James Comey on why he isn’t Republican anymore: ‘You cannot have a president who is a chronic liar’

Former FBI director James Comey was on CNN Thursday night, doing a town hall event moderated by Anderson Cooper. Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of Comey’s firing by Donald Trump. Comey talked about a few topics that could be boiled down to one specific thing: Donald Trump is every bit the scumbag you think he is and should probably be charged with obstruction of justice. But one particularly poignant moment stood out. Asked by an audience member why he thought Trump’s personal flaws should be considered by voters in this upcoming 2020 election, Comey had this to say.

Comey: I wouldn’t frame it that way. I think we should start the way I always thought Republicans said we should start—with the nature and character of the leader, and his respect for or attacks on our values, truth and the rule of law among them. That’s the most important level of American politics. Then the level down from that is important policy questions. To my mind, this question at the top level is so obviously answered.

You cannot have a president who is a chronic liar. I don’t care what your passions about tax cuts, or regulations, or immigration—I respect difference there. But the President of the United States cannot be someone who lies constantly. I thought the Republicans agreed with that. It’s one of the reasons I am no longer a Republican.

View May 10 article by Walter Einenkel from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

Republicans have a post-Trump identity crisis on the horizon

What will it mean to be a Republican once the president leaves office?

Republicans are enjoying their ride in the White House and basking in the glow of a divided Democratic presidential field, but a monumental identity crisis is looming for the GOP.

Whether you think President Donald Trump won’t be president in two months, two years or six years, Republicans are going to have a difficult time moving on to the next chapter.

At this stage, the Republican Party is primarily a collection of Trump followers. While a majority of GOP primary voters didn’t support candidate Trump early in the 2016 race — some Republicans were skeptical of his conservative bona fides, and others outright opposed him — the party has since largely coalesced behind the president.

View the complete April 24 article by Nathan L Gonzalez on The Roll Call website here.