We begin today with Chris Geidner of the “LawDork” Substack stating that the U.S. Supreme Court must state that Number 45 engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

Over the coming month, a handful of lawyers will be arguing in briefs at the U.S. Supreme Court, and then at oral arguments on Feb. 8, that the justices must reverse the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision holding that Trump “engaged in insurrection,” is disqualified from being president under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and can be barred under Colorado law from appearing on Colorado’s primary ballot.

Some of the arguments being brought forth — like whether the president is an “officer” subject to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment — are weak and ultimately show how much weaker other arguments are. Arguments about whether states have the authority to act as Colorado has done, meanwhile, are arguments about the implementation of the amendment. I don’t think they’re successful either, but they’re (more or less) arguments being made by lawyers engaged in lawyering about issues not previously implemented in this way.

Those lawyers, however, who go so far — as Trump’s lawyers did in their petition for certiorari — as to argue that Trump did not engage in insurrection at all are failing the law, the court, and the nation.

The Supreme Court should affirm the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision, but — given that they granted certiorari in response to Trump’s petition — they should do so in an opinion concluding specifically and explicitly what we all know to be true: Donald Trump engaged in insurrection three years ago today.

Adam Serwer of The Atlantic takes note of the fine line between the political and legal merits of Anderson v. Griswold; the Colorado Supreme Court case that said Trump was disqualified for Colorado primary ballots.

In the history of self-defeating euphemisms, Jonathan Chait’s characterization of Donald Trump’s failed coup as an attempt to “secure an unelected second term in office” belongs in the hall of fame, alongside George W. Bush’s “weapons of mass destruction–related program activities” or Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts.” [...]

When writing that line, Chait, like many other liberal writers, was alarmed by the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision disqualifying Trump from the ballotbased on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars from political office those who have sworn an oath to the Constitution and subsequently engaged in “insurrection or rebellion.” Although Chait curiously insisted that he wouldn’t “comment on the legal merits of the case,” he managed to somehow zero in on one of the main legal points at issue, which is whether Trump’s behavior “constitutes ‘insurrection.’” [...]

There are many compelling political reasons not to disqualify Trump under the Fourteenth Amendment, among them the potential implications of removing the immense decision of who gets to be president from the electorate’s control. But to oppose his removal on legal, not political, grounds is to, in a circuitous way, make the same argument as Trump himself: that he is above the law—that the constraints of the Constitution apply to others but, for some reason, not to him.

David Montgomery and Kathy Frankovic of YouGov look at a YouGov/Economist poll that shows that most Americans think that they should be able to decide for themselves whether an insurrectionist belongs on the presidential ballot.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll from December 31, 2023 - January 2, 2024 asked Americans whether voters, the courts, and Congress should be able to determine if Donald Trump should be able to run for president in 2024. Respondents could select multiple options. 62% of Americans said voters should be able to determine whether Trump runs again, including majorities of Democrats and Independents, and 75% of Republicans.

Fewer Americans — 42% — said the courts should be able to make that determination. That includes 55% of Democrats, but just 28% of Republicans.

Only 20% said Congress should be able to determine Trump's eligibility.

Many Americans who think voters should be able to decide also think the courts or Congress should have a say: 31% of those who think voters should decide also say the courts should be able to decide, and 21% say Congress should also be able to.

So according to this poll, there should be no explicit PROHIBITION of who is allowed to run for president or any other office...if you get my drift on that.

Peter Grier and Sophie Hills of The Christian Science Monitor look at how easy (or difficult) it would be for Trump to become a dictator if he wins the 2024 presidential election.

As the Iowa caucuses and the official beginning of the 2024 election cycle arrive, the question of whether a second Trump term would result in the collapse of American democracy as we know it has gripped much of official Washington and U.S. pundits and political insiders.

Mr. Trump’s own words have fed this narrative. Among other things, he’s dehumanized political opponents as “vermin” who need to be exterminated, proposed that shoplifters be shot, said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and suggested that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley should be executed after a trial for treason.

His critics say those words should be considered against the background of past actions. They point to what the former president actually did in the wake of the 2020 election, when he falsely insisted the election had been stolen despite lack of evidence and numerous court rulings against him. He pushed state officials to overturn their results, tried to shut down the Electoral College vote count in Congress, and considered seizing voting machines with the U.S. military. [...]

Yet in Mr. Trump’s first term, experienced officials such as chief of staff John Kelly blocked many of his most reckless proposals. The Trump team is planning for any second term to be staffed with loyalists who may not act the same way. The former president’s impeachments, indictments, and criminal and civil trials have already written a new chapter in the history of the United States. The book is open. Where will the story go now?

Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press reports on Michigan Republicans in disarray now that they has voted to remove their state party chair, Kristina Karamo.

Mark Forton, chairman of the Macomb County Republican Party, said he has long been a supporter of Karamo and still admires her, but he ultimately concluded she has to be removed because of the people around her. "We have an election in 2024 and up until now the state party hasn't addressed any part of it," Forton said.

But the special meeting of the state party's governing committee had already been declared null and void by Karamo and her supporters. Karamo, who took office 11 months ago, said the meeting at a hall in western Oakland County was not convened in accordance with the party's bylaws. She did not attend Saturday's session and pointed to an authorized special state committee meeting, set for Jan. 13. [...]

So for now, Saturday's action signals further strife and disarray and possibly another in a long list of lawsuits in a party riven by divisions as its power has cratered in Michigan. Just before the 2018 election, the GOP controlled both chambers of the state Legislature plus the offices of governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. After the 2022 election, that full control was held by Michigan Democrats.

Good riddance!

Daniel Soufi of El País in English reports on an alarming movement within Silicon Valley circles called “effective accelerationism.”

Effective accelerationism advocates deregulated technological development. Its supporters believe in the need to allow emerging technologies to progress as quickly as possible, without obstacles that slow down innovation. They give special importance to AI and consider the path to technological singularity — a point where AI will vastly surpass human intelligence — as an inevitable destiny. [...]

To a large extent, effective accelerationism arises in response to effective altruism — a philosophy and social movement that seeks to maximize the effectiveness of charitable actions, by using evidence-based methods and critical reasoning to determine the most efficient ways to help others. Followers of this doctrine research how to earn the most money possible and donate it to causes that save the most lives, or reduce the most suffering for each dollar invested. However, in recent years, many philanthropists have expressed concern about the safety of artificial intelligence, with the idea that powerful AI could destroy humanity if not properly regulated. The confrontation between proponents of effective accelerationism and altruists represents one of the many schisms currently emerging on the AI scene in San Francisco.

Effective accelerationism is directly rooted in the writings of the British philosopher Nick Land, who proposes accelerating technological and social processes to induce radical changes in society and the economy. Land — who was quite influential in the late-1990s — considers capitalism to be an autonomous force that’s reconfiguring society. He suggests intensifying its effects to provoke a collapse that could overcome capitalism itself.

Land is also focused on how technology could lead humanity into a post-human era. A reference for the North American neoreactionary right, Land wrote The Dark Enlightenment in 2022, where he argues that accelerationists should support figures like Donald Trump to blow up the current order as quickly as possible.

Finally today, Graham Readfearn of the Guardian reports about an Australian academic that has designed an app to combat vaccine and climate change misinformation.

The basis for the game is research by Cook and other social science colleagues that tested how best to combat misinformation.

A standard approach to debunking a myth might be to first state the piece of misinformation, such as “climate change is caused by the sun” or “vaccines are dangerous because a child got sick after having a jab”, and then explain the facts.

But Cook and others have developed an approach which – perhaps ironically – is known as the “inoculation technique”, where people are taught common modes of arguing used by “cranky uncles” before they are exposed to the myths they spread.

“We’ve found through a number of studies that inoculation has some powerful benefits, such as it converts immunity across topics,” says Cook.

Try to have the best possible day everyone!

We begin today with the now former president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, writing for The New York Times that it’s the forces which led to her resignation have a much bigger agenda.

As I depart, I must offer a few words of warning. The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types — from public health agencies to news organizations — will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.

Yes, I made mistakes. In my initial response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, I should have stated more forcefully what all people of good conscience know: Hamas is a terrorist organization that seeks to eradicate the Jewish state. And at a congressional hearing last month, I fell into a well-laid trap. I neglected to clearly articulate that calls for the genocide of Jewish people are abhorrent and unacceptable and that I would use every tool at my disposal to protect students from that kind of hate. [...]

Never did I imagine needing to defend decades-old and broadly respected research, but the past several weeks have laid waste to truth. Those who had relentlessly campaigned to oust me since the fall often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned argument. They recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament. They pushed a false narrative of indifference and incompetence.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr of The Boston Globe says that yes, of course, Black women took note of what happened to Claudine Gay and why it happened.

Whatever your views about Claudine Gay, the plagiarism accusations against her, or her handling of antisemitism on campus, the mode of her downfall should ring alarm bells for everyone in academia. The voices of deep-pocketed donors with even deeper animosity for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts drowned out those of the members of Harvard University’s own governing board, which supported Gay until they didn’t. If some folks missed that piece of context in this controversy, Black women surely did not.

As Joy Gaston Gayles, a professor and a former president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, told me, Black women in academia feel disposable.

“It’s no secret that if you are a Black woman, in order to rise to certain levels of leadership — especially at a place like Harvard — you’ve got to do 10 times more than people who are privileged and who don’t share your identities have to do,” said Gayles, who heads the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at North Carolina State University but clarified that she was expressing her personal views. [...]

Even among Black women who succeed in academia, the toll can be great. The deaths of two Black female college presidents last year —  JoAnne A. Epps of Temple University and Orinthia Montague of Vol State — led some Black academics to speculate if their deaths were hastened by the stress Black women feel on the job. Given the medical data supporting the fact that racism shortens Black people’s lives by weathering our bodies, I can understand the suggestion.

Charles Blow had a few words to say about the resignation of Claudine Gay on TikTok.

You can read Blow’s column in The New York Times (on the same topic) here.

David Roberts of the “Volts” Substack went on a tweetstorm about the ease with which center-left pundits allow themselves to be used to peddle the right-wing framing of news topics.

The center-left pundit approach to these things is simply to accept the frame that the right has established and dutifully make judgments within it. In this case, they focus tightly on the question of whether particular instances qualify as plagiarism as described in the rules. [...]

Why are we talking about this? Is there any reasonable political or journalistic justification for *this* being the center of US discourse for weeks on end? Who has pushed this to the fore, and why, and what are they trying to achieve? [...]

There are a lot of important things going on right now. Why are we talking about this and not any of those?  

We know why: the right is expert at ginning up these artificial controversies and manipulating media. Again, they brag about it publicly! [...]

My one, futile plea to everyone is simply: before you jump in with an opinion on the discourse of the day, ask yourself *why* it is the discourse of the day and whose interests the discourse is serving

First and foremost, the amicus brief demonstrates fidelity to the clear meaning of the Constitution. When its writers argue that the Constitution’s text omits any reference to presidential immunity and that the Framers could have put one in had they intended to shield the office from prosecution (as they did for members of Congress in the speech or debate clause), the writers are deploying honest originalism. Because the text lacks an immunity provision, the courts have no power to invent such a protection. They likewise find no basis in the Constitution for Trump’s argument that prosecution must be preceded by impeachment and conviction. In deploying an originalist analysis, the amicus brief returns to a principle that the current right-wing majority on the Supreme Court has kicked to the curb: judicial restraint.

Second, these true conservatives embrace the concept of limited government. Citing Federalist Paper No. 69, they note that the president should not be regarded as a king but rather as something akin to the governor of New York (hence, subject to prosecution). To back up their argument that the president has never been regarded as beyond the reach of criminal laws, they cite, among other things, the pardon for Richard M. Nixon (unnecessary if he was immune) and Trump’s own arguments in the second impeachment trial.

Trump’s notion that Article II means he can do whatever he wants is a repudiation of our constitutional system that rejected a monarchy. In an era in which the GOP attempts to intrude into every corner of life — from banning abortion and books to micromanaging health care for LGBTQ+ youths — it’s helpful to remember that limited government used to be a fundamental principle for conservatives. Presidents are not kings; government is not all-powerful. Such ideas are now an anathema to Trump’s MAGA party.

Phyllis Cha of the Chicago Sun-Times writes that some abortion rights advocates and LGBTQ+ groups are already gearing up to protest at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Abortion rights advocates want to send delegates a message when they come to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention in August: They’re tired of what they say is “lip service” from the Democratic Party when it comes to reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, and they’re demanding action. [...]

In addition to CFAR, Bodies Outside of Unjust Laws: Coalition for Reproductive Justice and LGBTQ+ Liberation includes members of local abortion rights and LGBTQ+ advocate groups Stop-Trans Genocide, Chicago Abortion Fund, Reproductive Transparency Now and the Gay Liberation Network.

The Chicago Department of Transportation has 10 days to make a decision on the permit and notify the applicant. Permits are reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis, a CDOT spokesperson said, and are reviewed by multiple city departments. Approval of the permit depends on whether the event can be held safely.

CDOT hasn’t received any other applications for the time period when the convention is in town, the spokesperson said, but more applications are expected as convention dates approach.

Patrick Wintour of the Guardian analyzes South Africa’s request before the International Court seeking an Interim measure in order to prevent Israel from carrying out the intent of genocide.

Crack legal teams are being assembled, countries are issuing statements in support of South Africa, and Israel has said it will defend itself in court, reversing a decades-old policy of boycotting the UN’s top court and its 15 elected judges.

The first hearing in The Hague is set for 11 and 12 January. If precedent is any guide, it is possible the ICJ will issue a provisional ruling within weeks, and certainly while the Israeli attacks on Gaza are likely to be still under way.

The wheels of global justice – at least interim justice – do not always grind slowly.

South Africa’s request for a provisional ruling is in line with a broader trend at the ICJ for such rulings. Parties have been seeking – and obtaining – provisional measures with increasing frequency: in the last decade the court has indicated provisional measures in 11 cases, compared with 10 in the first 50 years of the court’s existence (1945-1995).

Finally today, Kyle Orland of Ars Technia writes about the 13-year old kid that killed Tetris.

For decades after its 1989 release, each of the hundreds of millions of standard NES Tetris games ended the same way: A block reaches the top of the screen and triggers a "game over" message. That 34-year streak was finally broken on December 21, 2023, when 13-year-old phenom BlueScuti became the first human to reach the game's "kill screen" after a 40-minute, 1,511-line performance, crashing the game by reaching its functional limits.

What makes BlueScuti's achievement even more incredible (as noted in some excellent YouTube summaries of the scene) is that, until just a few years ago, the Tetris community at large assumed it was functionally impossible for a human to get much past 290 lines. The road to the first NES Tetris kill screen highlights the surprisingly robust competitive scene that still surrounds the classic game and just how much that competitive community has been able to collectively improve in a relatively short time.

And yes, I do play Tetris on my smartphone.

Everyone try to have the best possible day.

We begin today with John T. Bennett of Roll Call reporting on the GOP-lead House approving of an impeachment inquiry of President Biden.

The measure was approved 221-212, with every Republican supporting it and every Democrat opposed. One Democrat did not vote.

The impeachment resolution spells out the authorities of three involved committees, and an accompanying measure describes the GOP-run panels’ subpoena powers. GOP leaders, including Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who teed up the resolution, contend the move would place the inquiry on firmer legal ground, should the Biden camp challenge any subpoenas in court. [...]

House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., on Wednesday called the inquiry “political hackery,” adding: “This is not serious work.” And Oversight and Accountability ranking Democrat Jamie Raskin of Maryland said moments earlier that “this stupid, blundering investigation is keeping us from getting any real work done for the people of America.”

President Biden and White House aides have vigorously denied any wrongdoing. Asked last week about House GOP claims that he had interacted with his son’s foreign business associates, Biden told White House reporters, “I did not. And it’s just a bunch of lies.”

Kimberly Atkins Stohr of The Boston Globe says that the U.S. Supreme Court threatens to dismantle the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump by taking up the appeal of a case from a Jan. 6 Capitol rioter.

By taking up an appeal by accused Jan. 6 Capitol rioter Joseph W. Fischer, the court could undo the most serious federal criminal charge Trump is facing for his attempt to subvert democracy.

Fischer’s appeal stems from a charge that he, Trump, and hundreds of others involved in the events of Jan. 6 are facing: corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding. The charge comes under a federal law passed in the wake of the Enron collapse and was aimed at toughening penalties for actions including destroying, altering, or fabricating financial records. The penalties are stiff indeed: Trump and the other defendants face as many as 20 years in prison as well as steep fines if found guilty.

The language of the statute is not limited to shredding documents and the like. It contains the broad catchall that prohibits any action that “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.” And it has been deemed by courts to include interfering with congressional proceedings.

Adam Serwer of The Atlantic writes about the complete absurdity of the “Great Replacement” theory at a time Republicans can field Vivek Ramaswamy for the Republican presidential nomination.

Right-wing apologism for January 6 is no longer shocking, not even from Republican presidential candidates. Trumpists often vacillate between denying it happened, justifying and valorizing those who attempted to overthrow the government to keep Donald Trump in power, or insisting that they were somehow tricked into it by undercover agents provocateurs. But the basic facts remain: January 6 was a farcical but genuine attempt to overthrow the constitutional government, which many Trump supporters think is defensible because only conservatives should be allowed to hold power. [...]

Since Trump’s election, in 2016, the Great Replacement has gone from the far-right fringe to the conservative mainstream. After a white supremacist in Texas targeted Hispanics, killing 23 people in 2019, many conservatives offered condemnations of both the act and the ideology that motivated it. But over the past several years, a concerted campaign by conservative elites in the right-wing media has made the theory more respectable. By 2022, after another white supremacist murdered 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, some prominent voices on the right were willing to claim that there was some validity to the argument that white people are being “replaced.” [...]

Arab American voters, both Christian and Muslim, are withdrawing support from Joe Biden over his thus-far unconditional support for Israel’s conduct in its war with Hamas. This shift, along with a drift to the right that had already begun among more conservative segments of the Muslim community over LGBTQ rights—is an obvious example of how religious and ethnic minority groups can realign politically in unanticipated ways. Muslim voters were a largely pro-Bush constituency in 2000, prior to the GOP embrace of anti-Muslim bigotry after 9/11. So  were Hispanic voters in 2000 and 2004, and Trump showed similar strength with such voters in 2020, as well as making gains with Black voters. Many immigrants who fled left-wing or Communist regimes in Asia and Latin America—Vietnamese, Venezuelans, Cubans—lean right, much as the influx of Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union in the 1990s did. Immigrants from West Africa are often highly religious and socially conservative. And even within particular groups, there are tremendous regional, cultural, class, and educational differences—Puerto Rican voters in Chicago will not necessarily have the same priorities and values as Tejano voters living in Laredo. The far right and its admirers are too busy railing against diversity to understand that diversity is precisely why “the Great Replacement” is nonsense.

Charles Blow of The New York Times looks at some of the reasons that too many Americans are thirsty for authoritarianism.

Confidence in many of our major institutions — including schools, big business, the news media — is at or near its lowest point in the past half-century, in part because of the Donald Trump-led right-wing project to depress it. Indeed, according to a July Gallup report, Republicans’ confidence in 10 of the 16 institutions measured was lower than Democrats’. Three institutions in which Republicans’ confidence exceeded Democrats’ were the Supreme Court, organized religion and the police.

And as people lose faith in these institutions — many being central to maintaining the social contract that democracies offer — they can lose faith in democracy itself. People then lose their fear of a candidate like Trump — who tried to overturn the previous presidential election and recently said that if he’s elected next time, he won’t be a dictator, “except for Day 1” — when they believe democracy is already broken.

In fact, some welcome the prospect of breaking it completely and starting anew with something different, possibly a version of our political system from a time when it was less democratic — before we expanded the pool of participants.[...]

And while these authoritarian inklings may be more visible on the political right, they can also sneak in on the left.

I advocate for free expression and the right to demonstrate, but I am deeply troubled by the hurtful rhetoric sometimes used at demonstrations.

I despair at the ability of social media to mislead, distort, and amplify such rhetoric.

But there are limits to what universities can do to address such matters. Physical safety concerns must come first, so at Penn, we dramatically stepped up our police presence — that campus has never been more closely watched. And if you walked across campus as I did numerous times this semester, most often you would have been struck by how normal life seemed. [...]

Penn has repeatedly condemned hateful speech and appropriately investigated all acts of antisemitism, pursuing every remedy within its power. In particular, it has acted aggressively in response to any vandalism, theft, violence, or threats of violence on the campus.

The challenge all universities face — and always have faced — is how to balance the desire to allow free speech with the desire to maintain order and allow all students to flourish free from bias or harassment. Chaos and violence are bad, but so are McCarthyism and martial law.

Despite efforts to dampen their success in admissions, women have, since the nineteen-eighties, been a majority of undergraduate student bodies. Today, they constitute nearly sixty per cent of students enrolled in college nationwide, at private and public institutions. The freshman classes of nearly all Ivy League schools are majority female. Female applicants consistently have higher high-school grades than male applicants, have completed more credits and more challenging courses, and have done more extracurricular activities. Male applicants reportedly have more trouble getting their application materials submitted (which has led Baylor to launch a “males and moms communication campaign” to help keep male applicants on track). Women also perform better than men in college, being more likely to graduate and to do so with honors. Women outnumber men in college applications by more than a third, and there are more qualified women than men in the applicant pool. [...]

At oral arguments in the S.F.F.A. [Students for Fair Admission] case, more than a year ago, Justice Elena Kagan stated aloud the open secret that, if selective colleges were to admit applicants without considering gender, the student bodies would be majority female. Justice Kagan asked the lawyer for S.F.F.A., who argued against using race in admissions, whether he thought it was lawful for schools to use gender in admissions and “put a thumb on the scales” for men in order to serve the health of university life and of society. He replied that the use of gender in admissions may be lawful even though the use of race is unlawful, because the Court does not subject gender to the same level of scrutiny that it subjects race to. Kagan observed that it “would be peculiar” if “white men get the thumb on the scale, but people who have been kicked in the teeth by our society for centuries do not.”

In equal-protection analyses under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court has indeed allowed more leeway for using gender, but, in order to be constitutional, the use of gender must be substantially related to an important interest. The question, then, would be whether colleges’ interest in having a gender-balanced student body is so important that it justifies holding women to higher admissions standards than men. If a plaintiff brought an equal-protection challenge to the use of sex in admissions, colleges would surely have to do better than to invoke students’ desire to be on a gender-balanced campus, which may reflect their assessment of dating or marriage prospects. (Susan Dominus reported this fall in the Times that at Tulane, where last year’s freshman class was nearly two-thirds women, female students felt that “the gender ratio left them with fewer options, in sheer numbers and in the kinds of relationships available to them.”) Alexandra Brodsky, a civil-rights lawyer at Public Justice and the author of “Sexual Justice,” told me, “I’d be curious, in an equal-protection suit, what reasons a school would give for wanting a sex-balanced class. Relying on the desires of customers is not usually a justification for discrimination.” It’s also doubtful that the Court, which doesn’t consider racial diversity a compelling interest for schools to pursue, would conclude that gender diversity is an important one.

Finally today, Fred Kaplan of Slate reports on the possible consequences of Republicans holding Ukraine aid hostage.

The Ukrainian president had flown 5,000 miles to patch up his fraying relationship with Washington legislators. On his previous two trips, they’d practically hoisted him on their shoulders, cheering him as democracy’s great brave hope. But this time, in a series of meetings on Tuesday, the Republican lawmakers brushed him off, shrugged that the romance was over, then tacked on that hoariest of evasions: It’s not you, it’s us.

It was among the most shameful episodes of a sordid political season—and it could have dangerous consequences worldwide.

Taken by itself, the cause of Ukrainian independence—which requires arming Ukrainian troops to fight off Russia’s invading army—enjoys broad, bipartisan support. But the cause has hit a dire moment. The troops are running out of ammunition. President Biden has asked Congress for $60 billion in emergency supplemental funding to keep them going. But Senate Republicans are telling him: We won’t give you the money—we’ll block the 60-vote majority needed to pass the supplemental funding—unless you let us pass a radical immigration bill that all but locks down America’s southern border and makes it nearly impossible for migrants to apply for asylum.

Biden says he’s willing to meet the Republican demand for border tightening halfway. But the Republicans want no compromise; they demand a Senate version of a bill that the House passed earlier this year—a bill so extreme that it garnered not a single Democratic vote. And they are willing to do this even if it means the collapse of Ukraine’s defenses against Russia.

I didn’t even need to read that story, just the look on Zelensky’s face in the photo…

Everyone try to have the best possible day!

We begin today with David Wallace-Wells of The New York Times citing a rather obvious underlying reason for continuing American economic pessimism: the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But in fishing for causes, an obvious contributor is often overlooked: the pandemic itself. It not only killed more than a million Americans but also threw much of daily life and economic activity and public confidence into profound disarray for several years, scarring a lot of people and their perceptions of the country, its capacities and its future.

When Americans are asked whether the country is on the right track, or whether they themselves are optimistic or pessimistic, they don’t treat the query like a trivia quiz about the last quarter’s G.D.P. growth or the Black unemployment rate or even the size of their own paychecks or stock portfolios. They are effectively responding to the therapist’s query: How are things? They answered that question according to one set of patterns, stretching back decades. And the pattern did not begin to shift only when inflation peaked in late spring 2022, or when pandemic relief was relaxed in fall 2021, or when supply-chain issues first arose earlier that year. They began answering differently in 2020, as the scale and duration of the pandemic came into view.

For decades, surveys about the economy were an accurate gauge of economic fundamentals that, practically speaking, there was little need to distinguish between the two.

That all changed in early 2020, when a significant gap opened between economic conditions and public perception...

Solomon Jones of The Philadelphia Inquirer sees the legacy of the worst of COVID-19 pandemic in the lingering violence of a stabbing of a security guard at a Macy’s in Philadelphia.

The armed rage that led to the fatal stabbing of a Macy’s security guard on Monday is an indication that the COVID-19 pandemic has given birth to yet another contagion. This time, the disease is violence. [...]

The trend seems to have begun in 2020, when cities around the world shut down in an effort to protect the public from a virus that killed at least three million people worldwide in a single year, according to World Health Organizationestimates. That year, as schools and offices closed, interpersonal guardrails like after-school programs and social services were removed. An economic downturn and a historic uptick in gun purchases occurred. The killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor spurred worldwide protests, and amid all of those factors, the divisive politics of a presidential election also boiled over.

Daniel Webster, the director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins, told ABC News that 2020 was the “perfect storm,” adding that “everything bad happened at the same time — you had the COVID outbreak, huge economic disruption, people were scared.”

The editorial board of The Los Angeles Times says that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is only a victim of his own machinations.

It’s not surprising that dozens of members of the U.S. House of Representatives are choosing to leave the dysfunctional chamber rather than seek another term. The politics are toxic. The rhetoric is ugly. And it seems that members aren’t interested in doing much besides fighting the culture wars — and one another.

But we don’t believe for a minute that’s the reason former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy decided to step down at the end of the month after 17 years in Congress. After all, he helped create the hostile conditions in Congress by toadying to the hard-right Republicans in his conference by, among things, voting to challenge some of the results of the 2020 election and authorizing a baseless inquiry into impeaching President Biden.

In the end, however, McCarthy couldn’t manage the unruly conference and was deposed in October after a mere nine months in charge. His crime, according to the GOP hard-liners who orchestrated his downfall? Taking the kind of sensible action that Americans expect of their leaders. He’s no a tragic hero, though. Just a victim of the MAGA flames he fanned.

Clint Smith of The Atlantic details the radical plans that a potential second Trump Administration would have for educational policy.

Although educational policy is formed most directly at the state level, the Department of Education has $79 billion of discretionary funding that it can use as both carrot and stick, to encourage states and school districts to teach—or stop them from teaching—certain topics in certain ways. Trump’s 2024 education-policy plan promises to cut federal funding to any school or program that includes “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content” in its curriculum. Already, in Texas, Florida, and other Republican-controlled states, educators are being ostracized for attempting to teach parts of American history that don’t cast straight, white, Christian Americans as the primary protagonists. Teachers are being punished for engaging with the history of policies that segregated, violated the rights of, or oppressed those whose identities fell outside that group. Trump would encourage such sanctions on a national scale.

What Trump and the MAGA movement want is a country where children are falsely taught that the United States has always been a beacon of righteousness. Despite our nation’s many virtues, the truth of its past is harrowing and complicated. Slavery, Jim Crow, Indigenous displacement and slaughter, anti-immigrant laws, the suppression of women’s rights, and the history of violence against the LGBTQ community—these things sully the MAGA version of the American story. [...]

A central part of Trump’s project is to depict the presentation of empirical evidence as an attempt at ideological indoctrination. The claim that this country has prevented millions from achieving upward mobility should not be a controversial one; it reflects actual policies such as convict leasing, school segregation, and housing covenants. To Trump and his allies, however, anyone making such a claim has fallen prey to a “radical movement” that sees America as an inherently and irredeemably evil country. A professor stating that the Confederacy seceded from the Union because of slavery and racism is a member of the “woke mob,” never mind the fact that the seceding states said this directly in their declarations of secession. (Mississippi in 1861: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest in the world.”) An elementary-school teacher highlighting the importance of LGBTQ figures in the history of American activism is reprimanded for being part of an effort to force sexuality onto students, never mind the fact that Bayard Rustin, Harvey Milk, and Marsha P. Johnson played an indisputable role in shaping political life.

Jim Saksa of Roll Call reports on the very different political stances that religious House Democrats have from Speaker Mike Johnson.

When he was mayor of Kansas City, Mo., Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II faced a choice. As pastor of one of the city’s largest congregations, he had helped lead opposition to the legalization of riverboat gambling. It passed anyway, and some expected Cleaver would use his new office to protect the downtown waterfront from the kind of sinful business that any good Christian would find repugnant.

They were wrong. Cleaver refused to get involved. “I was not elected as the Methodist mayor. I was elected as the mayor of our largest city, and I’m not going to try to convert people to Methodism,” the Democrat explained.

Before Mike Johnson was speaker of the House, he faced a similar moral dilemma. In his hometown of Shreveport, La., a strip club was set to open, the kind of sinful business that any good Christian would find repugnant. A coalition of neighbors thought Johnson, then a young attorney just a few years out of law school, might help them fight it. [...]

Confronted with forks on the path of righteousness, these two deeply devout Christians went opposite ways. And today they follow those paths in Congress.

During an appearance last month on “The Back Room with Andy Ostroy” podcast, the actress best known for “The Good Wife” questioned the level of support for Jews in Black and LGBTQ communities since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas stormed into Israel, massacred at least 1,200 people, and took more than 200 others hostage.

After mentioning Jewish support of the 1960s civil rights movement, Margulies said, “The fact that the entire Black community isn’t standing with us, to me, says either they just don’t know or they’ve been brainwashed to hate Jews.” She also castigated LGBTQ people, especially those who identify as gender nonconforming who, she said, “will be the first people beheaded and their heads played like a soccer ball on the field” in places run by extremist groups like Hamas. [...]

Every headline about Margulies claimed she apologized for her comments. She didn’t. Her podcast appearance aired Nov. 21. Only more than a week later when her remarks started getting negative traction on social media did she even say anything about them. And when she did, she shifted away from what she said to how she has worked “tirelessly to combat hate of all kind, end antisemitism, speak out against terrorist groups like Hamas, and forge a united front against discrimination.” She added that she “did not intend for my words to sow further division, for which I am sincerely apologetic.”

Her intentions are irrelevant. Her words sowed further division. But Margulies did not retract her statement that Black people “have been brainwashed to hate Jews,” as if antisemitism is as innate to us as the texture of our hair or the melanin in our skin. She reduced Black people to a monolith guided by one mind and a binding set of hateful beliefs.

Sarah DeWeerdt of Anthropocene reports about a study showing that attempts to combat climate disinformation have only very limited success.

Spampatti and his colleagues have developed six psychological interventions to combat climate disinformation. Past research has suggested that pre-emptively providing warnings about disinformation and counterarguments against it could serve as a psychological ‘vaccine,’ inoculating people to better resist denialists’ messages.

The new interventions, which Spampatti and his colleagues describe in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, are based on current research about how people develop and update their understanding of scientific information. The researchers devised messages emphasizing:

1. The strong scientific consensus about the reality of human-caused climate change;
2. The trustworthiness of scientists who prepare international climate reports and suggest strategies to fight climate change;
3. Transparency about the pros and cons of climate actions;
4. The strong moral case for climate action;
5. The importance of carefully judging the accuracy of online information; and
6. The positive emotions that come from climate action.

[...]

“We expected the psychological inoculation we tested to protect people from climate disinformation, because they had been identified as a promising strategy to fight disinformation,” Spampatti says.

“Unfortunately, we noted that these inoculations protect only against one piece of disinformation, but not more.” A more sustained effect would be necessary to protect against disinformation in the real world, where climate denial is plentiful.

Florantonia Singer of El País in English reports about the annexation of Essequibo, a disputed territory between Venezuela and Guyana, by Venezuela.

Two days after the referendum on Essequibo, a territory disputed between Venezuela and Guyana, the government of Nicolás Maduro is moving forward to try to enforce what was approved Sunday in a vote that registered almost no participation in the streets but which Chavismo hailed as a victory with 10.4 million voters, reawakening a crisis of credibility in the country’s electoral authorities. In a television appearance Tuesday, Maduro presented a new official map of Venezuela with Essequibo incorporated, without the disputed delimitation, during a Council of State in which he announced a series of measures and upcoming legislation to cement Caracas’ possession of the territory and its resources. Earlier, Maduro had sent a military contingent to Puerto Barima on the Venezuelan Atlantic border, close to the limits of the area under claim.

The war of narratives has begun. A few weeks ago, Guyana raised a flag on a small hill in Essequibo. On the day of the referendum, the Venezuelan Ministry of Communication released a video in which Indigenous people lowered the Guyanese flag and raised the Venezuelan flag. Maduro is now counterattacking with everything at his disposal. Via a special law announced Tuesday, he will create a new province or state in the territory, having already appointed a single provisional authority: Major-General Alexis Rodríguez Cabello, a deputy for the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), who will operate from the mining community of Tumeremo in Bolívar state, barely 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the town of San Martín de Turumbang in the disputed area. [...]

Brazil, which shares a border with both Venezuela and Guyana, has also expressed concern over the escalation of the territorial dispute. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spoke with both Maduro and Ali and reinforced the military deployment on the border. The Ministry of Defense increased the contingent of the Boa Vista detachment in the state of Roraima from 70 to 130 uniformed personnel. Its mission is to “guard and protect the national territory,” according to a statement from the ministry. After the Venezuelan referendum, Lula also decided to send around 20 armored vehicles to the triple border.

Finally today, we return to The Philadelphia Inquirer and Elizabeth Wellington’s celebration of the complex legacy of Norman Lear, who died yesterday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 101.

At five, I was banned from watching “Sanford & Son” after I slapped a toy out of my cousin’s hands, rolled my eyes, called him a fish-eyed fool and a heathen in my best Aunt Esther imitation.

That was the power of Norman Lear’s situation comedies on my little pop-culture psyche back in the 1970s and 1980s, when Lear’s shows dominated the primetime landscape. With shows like “Maude” and “All in The Family,” Lear introduced taboo topics like rape, incest, and abortion to America’s living rooms in a way that educated us and made us laugh. Lear died Wednesday morning at his Los Angeles home. He was 101.

Lear’s impact on the Black situation comedy was groundbreaking. From “The Jeffersons” to “Good Times,” Lear introduced modern Black life to television, when before we just had “Soul Train.” Little Black children saw ourselves in Arnold, Willis, Tootie and Michael. Songs in these shows’ opening credits were schoolyard chants. Lear proved that Black shows starring Black people had a place on primetime television, paving the way for a slew of 1990s comedies from “Martin” to “Moesha.”

It wasn’t all good in the hood. Lear’s shows were full of stereotypes. Sherman Hemsley’s George Jefferson moved on up to the East Side, but when he got there he was rude, loud, obnoxious and racist. The Evans family on “Good Times” were always struggling and broke, so much so my mother didn’t allow my sister and I to watch it because she didn’t want us to internalize that Black people never could have anything. She was also disgusted at how much of a buffoon JJ Evans (Jimmie Walker) was.

Try to have the best possible day everyone!