Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The GQP reckoning continues as the party chooses to go far right

Politico:

Trump’s allies fear the impeachment trial could be a PR nightmare

The ex-president's boosters fear major reputational damage if next week’s hearings focus on the violence of Jan. 6 and not narrow questions about the Constitution.

Allies of former President Donald Trump are imploring his impeachment team to avoid one specific topic when they defend the ex-president at his Senate trial next week: the deadly riot that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol.

Despite Trump’s likely acquittal on charges that he incited an insurrection, some of his most ardent supporters fear the trial could further damage his reputation if his attorneys wade into the events of Jan. 6, when five people were killed — including a Capitol police officer — after pro-Trump demonstrators stormed the halls of Congress.

As if that means it won’t come up. 🤔

The term “Christian nationalism,” is relatively new, and its advocates generally do not use it of themselves, but it accurately describes American nationalists who believe American identity is inextricable from Christianity. https://t.co/aajTI3Mcmc

— Chad Mayes (@ChadMayes) February 3, 2021

Charlie Sykes/Bulwark:

The GOP Rejects The Culture of Consequences

Indulge me for a moment with a bit of ancient history from the Before Time.

Actually, it’s just two years ago.

In January 2019, House Republicans stripped Representative Steve King (R-Bigot) of his committee assignments, tossing him off the Judiciary and Agriculture Committees.

King had a long history of racism, but had stayed in the GOP’s good graces for years, and had even become something of a kingmaker in Iowa politics…

I tell the story of King to highlight (1) the contrast with the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene, (2) the political malpractice of last night’s vote, and (3) how rapidly the GOP is devolving.

To be sure this has been a looooong time coming. The 2019 GOP had already spent years indulging Donald Trump’s penchant for racism and conspiracy theories, and rationalizing his birtherism, his lies, and his cruelty.

But they apparently still had some lingering, residual instinct for political hygiene. Two years later, the GOP’s immune system to crazy has been completely destroyed.

🇩🇪”The coronavirus has become more dangerous,” due to new mutants said the head of Germany’s CDC, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI). “The virus isn't tired yet - on the contrary, it just got a boost.” He added “the situation is far from under control.” 🇩🇪 is currently on lockdown. https://t.co/WF0sw3Sl6t

— Michael Knigge (@kniggem) February 5, 2021

WaPo:

After Capitol riots, desperate families turn to groups that ‘deprogram’ extremists

Her brother couldn’t make it to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, but she worried that he would join a new insurrection — that one day “he would be one of the people on TV.”

The woman in her 30s asked her family to make plans, she said, hoping to keep her brother busy. Then she contacted a nonprofit called Parents for Peace that seeks to pull people back from extremism, hoping to “save” him, after years of dismay at his hatred of Muslims and Mexicans and now alarm at his anger over the presidential election.

Dissecting her brother’s life and their relationship in weekly sessions, she started to wonder whether she was part of the problem.

The woman, who did not want her name or location made public so as not to upset her brother, is part of a surge of desperate families and friends calling organizations that aim to deradicalize and “deprogram” extremists across the ideological spectrum. Such organizations say demand for their free services has never been higher.

great job, non @GOPLeader pic.twitter.com/ThvxpXpSai

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 5, 2021

Emma Green/Atlantic:

The Knives Come Out for Josh Hawley

The elite conservative world saw the Missouri senator as America’s next great statesman. Instead, he’s revealed uncomfortable truths about the movement.

Hawley’s combination of conservative politics, news-anchor gravitas, apparent ambition, and Ivy League success made him a target of liberal hatred from the moment he arrived in the Senate. But lately, all that Hawley specialness has attracted a special kind of rage from his former allies in the conservative world, too. On January 6, a violent mob stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of Electoral College votes. Five people died, including a Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick. When news outlets around the world wrote the story of the riot, many illustrated it with a photo of Hawley, raising his fist to a crowd of then-peaceful protesters.

The Missouri senator became the avatar of the congressional insurrection, the one lawmakers started before the mob showed up. Conservatives and liberals alike blamed Hawley for encouraging the Capitol attackers by questioning the legitimacy of the election. Sure, seven other senators, including Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Kansas’s Roger Marshall, also challenged the results, as did 139 members of the House of Representatives. But Tuberville was schooled by Nick Saban, not John Roberts—the former Auburn coach wasn’t marked for political greatness. It didn’t even matter much that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who has a similarly elite résumé, stuck it out with Hawley and disputed Arizona’s Electoral College results. “Ted is now just that annoying fly in the room—okay, we’ll swat it eventually,” a Republican campaign operative told me. “Josh is seen as so much worse.”

How did Hawley become the most hated man in Washington? Sometimes, ideological allies turn on one another because they don’t want to admit their collective sins, and they need somebody to blame.

Pundits Warn Removing Marjorie Taylor Greene From Committee Assignments Could Leave Her With Free Time https://t.co/aCOYitBg49

— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) February 5, 2021

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

A big step forward on Biden’s agenda poses new challenges to Trump’s GOP

In the early morning hours on Friday, Senate Democrats passed a measure laying the groundwork to move President Biden’s big economic rescue package via the reconciliation process, by a simple majority. Republicans are already thundering with outrage.

The move does indeed pose a serious challenge to Republicans. But it’s one that runs deeper than merely moving toward passing this one package without them. It also suggests a reset in dealing with GOP bad-faith tactics across the board — and even the beginnings of a response to the Donald Trump era and the ideology loosely described as “Trumpism.”

First, the new move suggests a growing recognition that the conventional understanding of how “bipartisanship” works has things exactly backward — and that Republicans have manipulated the public debate on this topic for far too long.

as they say in NH, "Ayuh"https://t.co/CWssi59C6N pic.twitter.com/8rYa8KtooK

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) February 5, 2021

A thread on evangelical home schooling:

Thread: I was a evangelical homeschooler who was raised to view the idea of democracy as fundamentally bad. Here are some clippings from the homeschooling material my parents used.. 
They very much pushed the idea of a shadowy "one world government", and said that democracy is doomed to fail, has always failed.

Peggy Noonan: "McCarthy said in an interview soon after that he didn’t really know what QAnon is. He knows what QAnon is. They all know."https://t.co/PFmYNPwDPc

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) February 5, 2021

Jamelle Bouie/NY Times:

Marjorie Taylor Greene Knows Exactly What She’s Doing

The once-porous border between the right and the far right has dissolved.

What’s distinctive right now isn’t the fact that someone like Greene exists but that no one has emerged to play the role of Buckley. A longtime Republican leader like Mitch McConnell can try — he denounced Greene’s “loony lies and conspiracy theories” as a “cancer” on the party — but after he served four years as an ally to Donald Trump, his words aren’t worth much.

Those once-porous borders, in other words, now appear to be nonexistent, and there’s no one in the Republican Party or its intellectual orbit to police the extreme right. Representative Greene is the first QAnon member of Congress, but she won’t be the last and she may not even ultimately be the worst.

To me one reason she's such a relevant story is she's the first national politician to come up *entirely* through Trump and the MAGA information environment. There are tons of Trumpy politicians, but they all had pre-Trump political identities within the right. https://t.co/z1chDKoPPd

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) February 5, 2021

Nan Aron/USA Today:

Courts are key to all Biden and Democrats want to do. Don't lose focus on them.

We need judges who understand the challenges real people face. What's at stake is nothing less than legal and social progress for future generation

A nearly year-long pandemic has killed over 450,000 Americans and put millions out of work. Last month, the rising tide of white supremacy led to an attempt to take over the very center of our nation in a Capitol attack fomented by then-President Donald Trump himself. Without question, our new president has his hands full — not to mention his commitment to tackle the climate emergency, restore American leadership abroad, and ensure every American access to quality health care.  

But at the heart of addressing any of this — and securing lasting prosperity and justice for Americans for decades to come — are our courts. This is the opportunity for Senate Democrats to appoint forward-thinking, qualified judges who better reflect the people they serv

freedom’s just another word for not caring about governing even a little bit https://t.co/u7ai6AmvxR

— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) February 5, 2021

It fits somewhere into the reply to the lawsuit filed against it

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) February 6, 2021

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The treason and seditionist party back on its heels

Just Security:

Movie at the Ellipse: A Study in Fascist Propaganda

Scholars on the Nazis and anti-Semitism have seen this before

On January 6, Trump supporters gathered at a rally at Washington DC’s Ellipse Park, regaled by various figures from Trump world, including Donald Trump Jr. and Rudy Giuliani. Directly following Giuliani’s speech, the organizers played a video. To a scholar of fascist propaganda, well-versed in the history of the National Socialist’s pioneering use of videos in political propaganda, it was clear, watching it, what dangers it portended. In it, we see themes and tactics that history warns pose a violent threat to liberal democracy. Given the aims of fascist propaganda – to incite and mobilize – the events that followed were predictable.

Before decoding what the video presents, it is important to take a step back and discuss the structure of fascist ideology and how it can mobilize its most strident supporters to take violent actions.

GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy on @CNN: "You're talking about lasers from outer space starting wildfires in California, and putting a little bit of an anti-Semitic twist on it? She discredits the conservative movement. And as far as I'm concerned, she's not in my tent."

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) February 5, 2021

So Marjorie Taylor Greene is off the committees, and Democrats have firm grounds to link the GOP with the seditionists based on the way the Republicans voted. And the 1.9 trillion package budget resolution passes (51-50 with Harris casting the tie breaker) with room to focus and target. This WH and Congress will get stuff done.

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

An ugly truth links Marjorie Taylor Greene to Trump — one the GOP won’t confront

Republicans are facing two big decisions. They must determine whether they will strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of committee assignments in response to her all-around crackpottery. They must also decide whether to convict former president Donald Trump for inciting violent insurrection.

These dilemmas are often interpreted as separate from one another. In this telling, the GOP’s House and Senate leaders — Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — are mostly sticking with Trump, while moving away to varying degrees from Greene.

But these decisions also share a common thread. That common thread concerns political violence.

Heh. The "landslide" point is the <chef's kiss>! https://t.co/EaXYJgdUd6

— Robert A George (@RobGeorge) February 4, 2021

AJC:

Militia alliance in Georgia signals new phase for extremist paramilitaries

The leader of a private paramilitary group that provided security for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said he has formed alliances with other far-right groups to advocate for Georgia’s secession from the union, following the arrests of participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“The way patriots are now being hunted down and arrested by fellow men and women who have taken the same oath has disheartened any faith I had in the redemption or reformation of the USA as one entity,” Justin Thayer, head of the Georgia III% Martyrs, said in a text exchange with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week.

Reminder: GOP desperately seeks to associate itself with a president who in addition to his many crimes and abuses has been a catastrophic political failure--has never won the popular vote, lost the House, lost the Senate, not re-elected, impeached twice, never polled above 50%.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) February 3, 2021

Charlie Warzel/NY Times:

I Talked to the Cassandra of the Internet Age

The internet rewired our brains. He predicted it would.

To describe its scarcity, [Michael Goldhaber] latched onto what was then an obscure term, coined by a psychologist, Herbert A. Simon: “the attention economy.”

These days, the term is a catch-all for the internet and the broader landscape of information and entertainment. Advertising is part of the attention economy. So are journalism and politics and the streaming business and all the social media platforms. But for Mr. Goldhaber, the term was a bit less theoretical: Every single action we take — calling our grandparents, cleaning up the kitchen or, today, scrolling through our phones — is a transaction. We are taking what precious little attention we have and diverting it toward something. This is a zero-sum proposition, he realized. When you pay attention to one thing, you ignore something else.

new Quinnipiac Poll on how Americans view Biden’s $1.9T covid-relief plan: Democrats: 97% support, 3% oppose independents: 68%-25% Republicans: 37%-47% that’s a bi-partisan coalition https://t.co/GnezNEyPZt

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) February 3, 2021

NBC News:

QAnon fight, impeachment fallout expose Republicans' post-Trump rift

After having kept Liz Cheney in leadership, Republicans are faced with questions about Marjorie Taylor Greene's future in the caucus.

It's not just Democrats who say Greene is a problem.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., issued an unusual statement Monday condemning Greene for espousing "loony lies and conspiracy theories" that he said were a "cancer for the Republican Party and our country." At the same time, McConnell praised Cheney, a daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, as a strong leader in the party.

A former Republican leadership aide said McConnell's commentary is "instructive for McCarthy" in terms of taking clear stands.

"Instead, [McCarthy is] letting the House Republicans bleed out right now every day that this continues," the former leadership aide said on condition of anonymity to avoid angering McCarthy.

Hard to put together a plan with more broad, bipartisan support among actual voters than Biden’s: pic.twitter.com/LHuuKAjb4B

— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) February 3, 2021

Norman Eisen and Katherine Reisner/USA Today:

Whatever legal or constitutional test you apply, Trump incited the violent Capitol attack

Free speech is not imperiled in Trump's impeachment trial. What's at stake is a president's freedom to incite a violent attack on his own government.

Presidents are held to a “high crimes and misdemeanors” constitutional standard for wrongdoing, and the First Amendment does not protect speech that constitutes impeachable conduct. Every prior presidential impeachment, including Trump’s first one, was based in part upon words spoken by the president. The First Amendment did not come into play there, and neither is it relevant here.                

Even if the Brandenburg test were applied, Trump would flunk.

First, Trump’s speech encouraged the use of violence or lawless action. Trump’s lawyers have absurdly argued that his Jan. 6 remarks did not have "anything to do with the action at the Capitol.” In fact, there can be no doubt that Trump was exhorting the crowd to engage in acts of lawlessness and violence. He ignited the supporters before him by repeating baseless claims, rejected by dozens of courts since Election Day, that he had “won” the election “in a landslide.” He insisted, “We won’t have a country” if we don’t “fight like hell,” adding that “we will not let them silence your voices. We’re not going to let it happen.”

In our case, bipartisanship is impossible because one party has gone off the rails and become an extremist conspiracy party. Which is bad for democracy.

— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) February 1, 2021

CNBC:

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘abhorrent views present a serious problem for the GOP,’ Republican strategist says

Republican strategist Evan Siegfried told CNBC that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. and “her abhorrent views present a serious problem for the GOP,” as the House of Representatives gears up to vote Thursday on a resolution to strip Greene of her committee assignments.

“Not only do they force the [Republican] party to say whether or not they agree with them, but they are a gift to Biden and the Democrats because they don’t allow Republicans to effectively communicate their message opposing President Biden’s agenda,” said Siegfried, the author of “GOP GPS: How to Find the Millennials and Urban Voters the Republican Party Needs to Survive.”

What if--just hear me out--it was only Republican politicians who were being "hyperpartisan" since majorities of voters agree on Biden's agenda? pic.twitter.com/l23FAo5f9n

— Margie Omero (@ThePollsters) February 4, 2021

Tim Miller/Bulwark:

Understanding the House Republican ClusterFrick

Most of them are either Full Kraken or scared of their own voters.

All of the Fear Caucus members are able to read polls like this one from Axios that shows Marjorie Taylor Greene having a +10 favorability rating with Republicans while Liz Cheney sits at -28. So the overwhelming majority of the Fear Caucus stuck with Greene. (With the exception of the handful who needed fodder for general-election ads because they represent the Miami or Philly or L.A. suburbs.)

These cowards are the ones who are driving the Republicans over the edge. They are trying to figure out which way the political winds are blowing and they are going to follow them, no matter how undemocratic or unmoored from what they once thought were their conservative principles.

They are trying to survive while the tectonic plates of our politics shift underneath them. And they are willing to go along with anything to keep from falling through the cracks.

Kevin McCarthy is the Fear Caucus leader. And his members’ fear has a hold on him.

.@RepTomReed: “I’m a big John Boehner fan. And I miss John Boehner every day.” Via @siobhanehughes

— Ben Siegel (@bensiegel) February 3, 2021

Over 5.5m have seen @AOC's video about her experience of the Capitol attack. MAGA media, both professional & social, have fixated on discrediting it, because they know the power of emotion in politics, and they'd rather sweep this event under the rug. Me:https://t.co/vaBCUZZ4hJ

— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) February 4, 2021

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Biden gets into passing legislation while Christian Nationalism festers

Ron Brownstein/Atlantic:

The Decision That Will Define Democrats for a Decade

Will they get rid of the filibuster if it means passing their voting-rights and election-reform agenda?

That decision carries enormous consequences for the future balance of power between the parties: The number of younger and diverse voters participating in future elections will likely be much greater if these laws pass than if they don’t, especially with state-level Republicans already pushing a new round of laws making it tougher to vote based on Donald Trump’s discredited claims of election fraud in 2020. Given those stakes, the Democrats’ voting-rights agenda is quickly becoming a focal point of the pressure from left-leaning activists to end the filibuster. “Our grass roots will not accept the notion that we had good intentions, but we just failed” to pass these laws, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, a Democrat who is the lead sponsor of the Senate companion to H.R. 1, told me.

It’s actually quite stunning that Republicans show up with an obviously insufficient $600 billion offer. They’ve made it glaringly obvious that Democrats have to use budget reconciliation for a coronavirus bill. It’s like, ‘Thanks for saving us some time!’

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) January 31, 2021

Melinda Fakuade/Vox:

The best face mask is one that fits

Cloth masks are fine for many people — as long as they cover your nose and mouth.

Tons of celebrities have been seen out with their masks underneath their noses. Notably, members of Congress who promote masking up have been seen pulling up their sliding masks in public.

Cloth masks sometimes lend themselves to poor etiquette: Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) slipped his down to sneeze into his hand on C-SPAN, which is, to put it plainly, horrifying. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is known to have masks that match her outfits but was once photographed in a conversation with George Floyd’s brother, mask hanging down below her mouth. And soon after his inauguration, President Joe Biden’s mask slipped down his face in the midst of signing an executive action related to Covid-19. It happens to the best of us. Walk around anywhere in pandemic America, and you’ll surely encounter people fiddling with their masks.

Note which issue is +56 in GA.

👀 new @ajc/@UGA poll in Georgia... NET APPROVAL/FAV/SUPPORT: – Trump: -17 – Kemp: -9 – Raffensperger: +13 – Biden (transition): +25 – Biden (fav): +11 – Abrams: +10 – Ossoff: +10 – Warnock: +17 – Dems: +6 – GOP: -26 – $2000 checks: +56 – impeachment: +6https://t.co/o2M5T3gxu7

— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) January 30, 2021

John Harwood/CNN:

Why Biden has a rare opportunity for early success

Over five decades in Washington, President Joe Biden has watched seven newly-elected presidents get started. Improbably, he has the chance for a stronger opening act than any of them.

Just 12 days into Biden's presidency, the emerging alignment of forces holds the promise of two giant early legislative breakthroughs. The potential for rapid payoffs in public health and economic recovery exceeds anything recent predecessors managed to find.
That's not because Biden swept into office on a landslide. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won larger electoral majorities with wider popular vote margins.
It's not because of superior numerical muscle in Congress. Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump, as well as Clinton and Obama, enjoyed bigger partisan majorities in the House and Senate.
And it's not because Biden's grandfatherly persona bests Reagan's charisma, Clinton's persuasiveness or Obama's star quality. At 78, the oldest president in American history has made understated calm his early signature.
Instead, the size of Biden's opportunity reflects the unique circumstances of early 2021: a deadly pandemic that could subside with an effective vaccination push, a battered economy poised to rebound when it does, the unfinished business of a disgraced predecessor, and the determination of fellow Democrats to overcome obstruction by increasingly-radicalized Republican adversaries.

SCOOP: Trump officials spent the fall actively lobbying Congress not to give states the money health officials insisted they need to vaccine some 300 million Americans. At that time the Trump admin had only provided states $200 million. (Thread) https://t.co/u3ZiUuoqfE

— Nicholas Florko (@NicholasFlorko) January 31, 2021

Jamelle Bouie/NY Times:

I’m Not Actually Interested in Mitch McConnell’s Hypocrisy

To make his case for the filibuster, he has essentially rewritten the history of the Senate.

“When it comes to lawmaking, the framers’ vision and our history are clear. The Senate exists to require deliberation and cooperation,” McConnell declared. “James Madison said the Senate’s job was to provide a ‘complicated check’ against ‘improper acts of legislation.’ We ensure that laws earn enough buy-in to receive the lasting consent of the governed. We stop bad ideas, improve good ideas and keep laws from swinging wildly with every election.”

He went on: “More than any other feature, it is the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to end debate on legislation that achieves this.”

It’s hard to take any of this seriously. None of McConnell’s stated concern for the “lasting consent of the governed” was on display when Senate Republicans, under his leadership, tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act by majority vote. Nor was there any interest in “deliberation and cooperation” when Republicans wanted a new round of corporate and upper-income tax cuts.

EXCLUSIVE INVESTIGATION: How Trump and his team promoted a lie to subvert the election and stoked a deadly attack on the Capitol. A powerhouse NYT team delivers a blockbuster. https://t.co/xX2jMxxHmC

— Matt Purdy (@mattbpurdy) February 1, 2021

Sarah Posner/Reveal:

How the Christian right helped foment insurrection

Christian-right activists inside and outside of government promoted the election fraud lie and claimed God told them to “let the church roar.”

White evangelicals have been Trump’s most dedicated, unwavering base, standing by him through the cavalcade of abuses, failures and scandals that engulfed his campaigns and his presidency – from the “Access Hollywood” tape to his first impeachment to his efforts to overturn the election and incite the Capitol insurrection. This fervent relationship, which has survived the events of Jan. 6, is based on far more than a transactional handshake over judicial appointments and a crackdown on abortion and LGBTQ rights. Trump’s White evangelical base has come to believe that God anointed him and that Trump’s placement of Christian-right ideologues in critical positions at federal agencies and in federal courts was the fulfillment of a long-sought goal of restoring the United States as a Christian nation. Throughout Trump’s presidency, his political appointees implemented policies that stripped away reproductive and LGBTQ rights and tore down the separation of church and state in the name of protecting unfettered religious freedom for conservative Christians. After Joe Biden won the presidency, Trump administration loyalists launched their own Christian organization to “stop the steal,” in the ultimate act of loyalty to their divine leader.

Over the last year, I covered evangelicals and politics in monthly columns for @Convo_ist. This is last one. At its heart is a warning: if the press falls back into whitewashing the Christian Right, fascism will return to power, more dangerous than everhttps://t.co/QaLp1efJPj

— Chrissy freaks out Xtians w/ this one weird trick! (@C_Stroop) January 29, 2021

Jack Shafer/Politico:

Expelling Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Just Crazy Talk

The most effective solution to incorrigible members of Congress is censure. And then let the voters take it from there.

What treatment does Greene deserve? Congress has avoided the nuclear option of expulsion over the years, preferring instead to coax misbehaving members into resigning or not running again. By avoiding expulsion, Congress seems to have endorsed the idea that feral congresscritters like Greene are not their problem but one that belongs to the voters. It’s up to them, not other legislators, to swing the disciplinary rod by voting them out of office, as they ultimately did Steve King. (The Constitution does not allow for the recall of senators and representatives by voters.) In a case like Greene’s, where she appears to have broken no laws—notice the craft in her statement where she avoided directly saying that somebody should be murdered—and so far has not violated any congressional rules, it seems likely that Congress will bow to tradition and let the voters police her speech. This means we’ll have to wait until 2022 for resolution, when voters get their opportunity to hit the ejection button.

But will Georgia voters can Greene? Probably not.

Breaking News: A New York judge ordered Donald Trump’s company to give investigators documents in a civil inquiry into whether the business misstated its assets.https://t.co/ixV9BeYcby

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 30, 2021

Niall Stanage/The Hill:

Center-right Republicans fear party headed for disaster

“A lot of us miss the old days of battling over ideas,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based GOP consultant. “Now it is something completely different — trying to convince people that these QAnon people are crazy and illegitimate and all the other things.”

“It’s bleak, and it is going to take some leadership, from people who are running for president [in 2024] to people in Congress, to step up and say this,” Steinhauser added.

There is not much sign of that right now, however. McCarthy has said he “plans to have a conversation” with Greene. The perceived weakness of that response has disgruntled some in his own conference.

Lies of a feather flock together: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s nonsense and the “big lie” of a stolen election. https://t.co/ID4QL2ZPEV

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) January 30, 2021

Ian Millhiser/Vox:

Supreme Court considers if churchgoers have a right to sing indoors in a pandemic

Singing is an especially dangerous activity during this pandemic because it is unusually likely to spread Covid-19.

Less than five months ago, the plaintiffs in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom would have had little chance of prevailing. They seek exemptions from a California public health order requiring many institutions — including houses of worship — to gather outside to avoid spreading Covid-19. They also seek an exemption from a statewide ban on singing or chanting indoors.

But a lot has happened in the last five months which suggests that the South Bay plaintiffs are now likely to prevail. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and was replaced by the hardline conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Then, on the night before Thanksgiving, the Supreme Court handed down a revolutionary decision that upended decades of precedent distinguishing between laws that discriminate against people of faith (which are typically not allowed) and laws that apply to religious and secular institutions alike (which were typically permitted).

1. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that if you want to understand the big political stories from January—from faith-infused insurrection to Warnock’s victory to Biden’s inauguration—you really need to understand two things: Christian nationalism and the Religious Left.

— Jack Jenkins (@jackmjenkins) January 30, 2021

AP:

Checked by reality, some QAnon supporters seek a way out

It’s not clear exactly how many people believe some or all of the narrative, but backers of the movement were vocal in their support for Trump and helped fuel the insurrectionists who overran the U.S. Capitol this month. QAnon is also growing in popularity overseas.

Former believers interviewed by The Associated Press liken the process of leaving QAnon to kicking a drug addiction. QAnon, they say, offers simple explanations for a complicated world and creates an online community that provides escape and even friendship.

“I tried for four years to be a 'Never Trumper' in the Republican Party but it's obvious now, everyone is paying homage to this ex-president. No one will stand up to him ... Well, I'm a Texan and I don't lick anyone's boots." https://t.co/D4WwFkuolQ

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) January 30, 2021

Rachel S Mikva/USA Today:

Christian nationalism is a threat, and not just from Capitol attackers invoking Jesus

Christian nationalists inside our government are working quietly to take America for Jesus. They are the more resilient danger to religious pluralism.

It is easy to protest when white Christian nationalism turns violent. Within the chorus of critics, however, are a substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, a leader of the misinformation campaign that led people to believe (falsely) that the presidential election was stolen, is among them.

Speaking in his official capacity as attorney general of Missouri in 2017, he proclaimed at a “Pastors and Pews” meeting that their charge is to “take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations — of our nation… to influence our society, and even more than that, to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Hawley is aware that not everyone will become Christian, but believes we should all live by his interpretation of Christian values. The lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, asserts that elected officials should look to Scripture when making policy, “because every problem we have in America has a solution in the Bible.”  

QAnon Fears That Greene’s Obsession with Jewish Space Lasers Is Distracting Her from Battling Baby-Eating Cannibals https://t.co/fwasvlt1gi via @NewYorker

— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) January 30, 2021

Tom Edsall/NY times:

The Capitol Insurrection Was as Christian Nationalist as It Gets.’

Religious resentment has become a potent recruiting tool for the hard right.

n her recent book, “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” Katherine Stewart, a frequent contributor to these pages, does not mince words:

It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power. It does not seek to add another voice to America’s pluralistic democracy, but to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded on a particular version of Christianity, answering to what some adherents call a ‘biblical worldview’ that also happens to serve the interests of its plutocratic funders and allied political leaders.

This, Stewart writes, “is not a ‘culture war.’ It is a political war over the future of democracy.”

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: COVID is Priority One

First Read:

On Covid relief, Democrats will go alone if Republicans won't come along

The Biden White House and Democratic congressional leaders appear to have made their tactical decision on Covid-19 relief talks — use budget reconciliation that requires just 51 votes for passage.

The question is whether that legislative tactic will work, and whether President Biden will get backlash if he doesn’t get bipartisan support for his $1.9 trillion package…

Translation: They want Republican votes, but they aren’t going to be beholden to it.

But the reconciliation tactic doesn’t come without risks and drawbacks.

A single-shot J&J Janssen COVID19 vaccine phase 3 results summarized in one table. Great news! Imagine being 💯 protected from death 28 days after a single shot, and 💯 protected from severe disease after 49 days - against all variants. https://t.co/gGCcDbMglr pic.twitter.com/gPCDgG8oNJ

— Prof. Akiko Iwasaki (@VirusesImmunity) January 29, 2021

Amazing piece by Eric Cantor, former House leader: "Many of my fellow politicians won’t tell voters the truth. The result was Jan. 6." https://t.co/0AEaubzKct

— Adam B. Kushner (@AdamBKushner) January 29, 2021

Emma Green/Atlantic:

Betraying Your Church—And Your Party

How Representative Adam Kinzinger, an evangelical Republican, decided to vote for impeachment—and start calling out his church

Kinzinger is not a pastor or a theologian. He knows his job as a representative is not to preach the gospel but to represent his constituents and vote on legislation. When he’s dead, however, it won’t matter how many elections he won, or how low America’s tax rates are. The Lord has been speaking to him about his role as a Christian in politics, he said, and how he can reach people who are thinking about their eternal life. He has concluded that his faith and his party have been poisoned by the same conspiracy theories and lies, culminating in the falsehood that the election was stolen. When you look at “the reputation of Christianity today versus five years ago, I feel very comfortable saying it’s a lot worse,” he said. “Boy, I think we have lost a lot of moral authority.”

But people like Kinzinger have not been the ones shaping the reputation of Christianity in America over the past four years. Trump’s supporters have. Even after everything that’s happened—Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, his cheerleading for the attack on the Capitol—some influential evangelical leaders are still defending the president: “Shame, shame,” Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of the famous pastor Billy Graham, wrote about the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment. “It makes you wonder what the 30 pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.” In the metaphor, the Republican dissidents are cast as Judas, who is said to have betrayed Jesus in exchange for 30 coins. Trump plays the role of Christ.

Looking to political personalities rather than Jesus for salvation is the worst kind of mistake a Christian can make, Kinzinger said. “There are many people that have made America their god, that have made the economy their god, that have made Donald Trump their god, and that have made their political identity their god.” The problems that led to the January 6 insurrection are not just political. They’re cultural. Roughly half of Protestant pastors said they regularly hear people promote conspiracy theories in their churches, a recent survey by the Southern Baptist firm LifeWay Research found. “I believe there is a huge burden now on Christian leaders, especially those who entertained the conspiracies, to lead the flock back into the truth,” Kinzinger tweeted on January 12.

🚨 In every of the 23 states that has released demographic data, Black Americans are still being left behind in the vaccine rollout -- even as eligibility expands. White residents are being vaccinated at often double the rate@hannah_recht & me @KHNews https://t.co/L9iiZxgU1M pic.twitter.com/uxb9Jt6M4z

— Lauren Weber (@LaurenWeberHP) January 29, 2021

David Smith/Guardian:

The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy

Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.

Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.

Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.

No, but I remember when you & I served in Congress together and we took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign & domestic. https://t.co/jJRsVPI1Cy

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) January 29, 2021

In other news, Marjorie Taylor Greene is the face of the GOP. She's a nutter, elected by her constituents. Until or unless the Congress chooses Liz Cheney over Greene it is what it is, and perfectly appropriate to see them (Greene and the GOP) as one and the same.

"A number of [GOP] members of Congress have links to organizations and movements that played a role in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol." think on thathttps://t.co/cmU3pKN5k1

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) January 29, 2021

 Madeleine Aggeler/New York:

The Vileness of Marjorie Taylor Greene

The video — along with new CNN reports about Greene’s troubling social-media activity prior to her election — has prompted many Democrats and a few Republicans to call for Greene’s resignation, though GOP leadership has yet to act in any meaningful way. Greene, for her part, did not apologize or walk back her claims, saying that at the time of the video she was “going from office to office in the Senate to oppose the radical gun control agenda that David Hogg was pushing.”

The video is just the latest example of the loathsome conduct of a woman now tasked with helping shape education and labor policy in the U.S. Below, examples of some of Greene’s most troubling behavior.

Trump's presidency was marked by low, stable approval ratings. Polls on Biden's first days in office show him starting off with a higher ceiling and potentially broader base of support.https://t.co/BPRhVRTFye

— Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) January 29, 2021

Chris Stirewalt/LA Times:

I called Arizona for Biden on Fox News. Here’s what I learned

In my career as a political analyst and, until my firing last week, an election forecaster on the decision desk at Fox News, I have always been with [Erastus] Brooks. I wanted to steam downriver as fast as I could to be first with the news to beat the competition and serve my audience.

Having worked in cable news for more than a decade after a wonderfully misspent youth in newspapers, I can tell you the result: a nation of news consumers both overfed and malnourished. Americans gorge themselves daily on empty informational calories, indulging their sugar fixes of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies.

Can anyone really be surprised that the problem has gotten worse in the last few years?

Well, now it's official. @MerriamWebster just added "Second Gentleman" to the dictionary. I might be the first, but I won't be the last. https://t.co/1PFsrYslgM

— Douglas Emhoff (@SecondGentleman) January 28, 2021

Vox:

Fox News’s post-Trump slump, explained

For the first time in nearly 20 years, Fox News isn’t the top-rated cable news network.

As Baragona explained in an interview with Vox, it’s not a coincidence that Fox News’s ratings decline coincided with the disappearance of Trump’s Twitter account, which the former president used relentlessly to promote his favorite Fox opinion hosts and denigrate their competition. And now, without the backing of one of its most influential fans, the network has been left to chart its way through an uncertain future.

“We don’t know how much right-wing grievances will work, how much basically stoking outrage will work,” Baragona said. “It worked during the Obama years, and that’s the formula they’re trying to replicate right now. But we just got through with a Trump era, and now the guy who helped trumpet [and] amplify them on Twitter, he’s gone now. His Twitter account’s gone. And many of his fans are not coming back, so it just remains to be seen.”

NO SEVERE disease reported 49 days after vaccination. This is POTENTIALLY HUGE. 85% effective overall for severe disease, but antibodies BUILD over time. 2/

— (((Howard Forman))) (@thehowie) January 29, 2021

CNN:

Tokyo Olympics: Can vaccines save the Games?

"I think a lot of people had this vested belief that once the vaccine started to roll out, that would really spell the end of Covid and what we would see is that transmission rates would start to plummet, things would get more controlled and we would have some ability to go back to a more normal lifestyle," Jason Kindrachuk, an infectious disease expert at the University of Manitoba in Canada, tells CNN Sport.
"The fact is that even with good vaccine rollouts in a number of regions of the world, we're having trouble getting a hold on transmission."

Nothing is stopping the Republican caucus from stripping Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. Nothing is stopping the Republican caucus from expelling her from their caucus. Nothing is stopping them from voting to censure her. They are actively accepting her.

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) January 29, 2021

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

The GOP’s whining about Biden is absurd. Good thing Democrats are ignoring it.

Until we know that 10 GOP senators are willing to support something remotely close to what Biden and Democrats want, there simply isn’t anything to talk about. What’s the Republican plan? There isn’t one. With whom are Democrats supposed to negotiate? Over what, exactly?

Let’s go out on a limb and suggest that Republicans would like to keep it this way for as long as possible. They want the public debate to unfold in a place where they get to refrain from saying what they’re for — that is, refrain from saying what they’re prepared to concede to Democrats — while simultaneously attacking Democrats for not being willing to concede enough to them.

The GOP is trapped in a loon loop.https://t.co/8J86CZQU55

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) January 29, 2021

The JNJ vaccine results indicate we miraculously have at least 3 safe, highly effective vaccines. Headlines focus on the 66% overall efficacy. But the big deal is that the single-dose vax was 100% effective against severe disease after day 49, and 85% effective by day 28.

— Atul Gawande (@Atul_Gawande) January 29, 2021

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: A semi-normal week feels like a victory lap

NY Times:

An impasse ends in the Senate as Democrats win a filibuster battle.

But as in past fights over the filibuster, the outcome is likely to be only a temporary solution. As they press forward on Mr. Biden’s agenda, Democrats will come under mounting pressure from activists to jettison the rule, which effectively requires 60 votes to advance any measure, should Republicans use it regularly to stall or stop the administration’s priorities.

NEW: McConnell warns of ‘scorched-earth Senate’ if Democrats kill filibuster, from @mikedebonis and @ericawerner https://t.co/Px6sQF7YA1

— Matea Gold (@mateagold) January 26, 2021

Merrick Garland could not be reached for comment.

https://t.co/XwrVvAfTLn

— Greg Dworkin (@DemFromCT) January 27, 2021

Asawin Suebsaeng/Daily Beast:

Trump Fumes in His First Weekend Out of Office as Fauci Clowns on Him

In recent days, former President Donald Trump has watched from afar as one of his most popular rivals for public attention has been unleashed by the Biden administration to, in part, disparage Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. And the ex-president hasn’t even been able to tweet about it.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, once a prominent figure on Trump’s coronavirus task force who’s now a top COVID-19 adviser to President Joe Biden, began his multi-day blitz to different news outlets that included openly expressing his relief that the old crew was gone and that he could now serve in the Biden administration.

Economic anxiety https://t.co/zjxJ4FVGps

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 25, 2021

Drew Altman/Kaiser Family Foundation at Axios:

The U.S. needs to ramp up vaccinations to reach herd immunity

The U.S. would need to significantly ramp up coronavirus vaccinations if we’re going to reach herd immunity any time soon.

Why it matters: At minimum, herd immunity requires vaccinating 70% of the population. And reaching that benchmark is especially difficult — because children aren’t eligible for the vaccines yet, the U.S. would need to inoculate the vast majority of adults.

By the numbers: The U.S. would need to administer 2.4 million doses per day in order to vaccinate 70% of the population by July 4.

  • To get there by Labor Day would require 1.9 million doses per day.
  • To reach herd immunity by Jan. 1, 2022, we’d need 1.2 million doses per day.

Where it stands: The Centers for Disease Control reported 1.6 million vaccinations last Friday, and yesterday the Biden administration upped its goal — it's now aiming for 1.5 million shots per day, instead of 1 million.

GOP operatives saying they believe Republican US Sen. @senrobportman's decision to not seek re-election in 2020 signals that he doesn’t think the party is coming back anytime soon into a working majority.

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 25, 2021

Liz Szabo/CNN:

Anti-vaccine activists peddle theories that Covid-19 shots are deadly, undermining vaccination

Anti-vaccine groups have falsely claimed for decades that childhood vaccines cause autism, weaving fantastic conspiracy theories involving government, Big Business and the media.

Now, the same groups are blaming patients' coincidental medical problems on covid shots, even when it's clear that age or underlying health conditions are to blame, Hotez said. "They will sensationalize anything that happens after someone gets a vaccine and attribute it to the vaccine," [Dr Peter] Hotez said.

Gosh John, I could’ve sworn you were in the Senate when I chaired the committee that took evidence in a judicial impeachment which we then brought to the entire Senate, with a Senator presiding, which then voted to convict ...including your vote. @JohnCornyn https://t.co/dOG1SLDWJD

— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) January 26, 2021

Kevin Robillard/HuffPost:

The Game-Changing Biden Order You Haven’t Heard About

A directive about the regulatory process could lead to progressive movement on climate change, public health and worker safety.

Tucked into all of those high-profile moves, though, was a memo with a title seemingly designed to be ignored: “Modernizing Regulatory Review.” Sent to the press at 9:43 p.m. on Wednesday in the middle of the Tom Hanks-led inaugural celebration, the White House was not expecting the dry document to drive headlines or set American hearts aflutter.

But the memo could unleash a wave of stronger regulations to reduce income inequality, fight climate change and protect public health. Among left-leaning experts on regulation, it’s a signal that Biden could break with 40 years of conservative policy.

“I realize what I’m about to say to you sounds absurd,” James Goodwin, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform, told HuffPost. “It has the potential to be the most significant action Biden took on day one.”

Am waiting on the "If Biden wants unity, he should switch parties" thinkpiece.

— Drew Savicki 🦖🦕🦖 (@SenhorRaposa) January 26, 2021

If Biden wants unity, he should switch off with Trump as president every other year.

Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:

Ignore Republican Arguments Against a Trial of Trump

Claiming that the Constitution bars impeachment convictions of ex-presidents is an easy way to dodge what’s really at stake.

Republicans are converging on an appeal to process, claiming that a post-presidential impeachment is improper. I suppose that’s better than actively supporting Trump’s attempts to undermine U.S. democracy by promoting his baseless stolen-election fantasy and provoking the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, but they’re not fooling anyone. At least I hope not.  I hate to pick on Missouri Senator Josh Hawley when he’s already getting well-deserved grief elsewhere, but c’mon. Really? Hawley: “I think that this impeachment effort is, I mean, I think it's blatantly unconstitutional. It's a really, really, really dangerous precedent.”

What could that possibly mean? Dangerous? …

By what standard is it so dangerous to bar from further office a defeated one-term president who has created a legitimate case for impeachment, one so serious that Congress wants to move ahead despite the obstacles and disincentives and is somehow able to muster at least 67 votes in the Senate? Suppose it is a mistake in that situation to prevent the electorate from changing their minds and electing this unpopular, disgraced president to a second term after all. Is it really a significant danger only avoided by closing the impeachment window as soon as the next president takes office? Or is it, more realistically, a circumstance so unusual that it’s unlikely to happen again, and wouldn’t matter a whole lot if it did?

Morning Consult Poll: Joe Biden begins his presidency with an approval rating of 56-34, which is a higher job approval than Donald Trump held during his entire term. Biden starts with a positive net approval across all genders, ages, and race. Only "rural" voters are negative.

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) January 26, 2021

John Ganz:

My fascism problem and yours

After weeks (years, really) of debate on the subject I realized I’d never really committed to writing my argument about why I think it’s appropriate to talk about fascism in regards to Trump and Trumpism. I do not think it’s so straightforward that Trump or the preponderance of his followers are self-conscious fascists. I think critics of the fascism position have correctly pointed out that the number of hardcore, self-avowed fascists in the United States is quite small and not organized into a formidable force, but nevertheless I would say that Trump represents an incipient or inchoate fascism, as others have argued, and moreover that Trumpism has a fascist structure.

What do I mean by this? Trump’s politics contains an inspired, charismatic leader (“I alone can fix it”) on a mission to restore a diseased national body (“Make America Great Again,” Crippled America, etc.), standing in the way of this are corrupt elites and various unclean ethnic minorities, the use of street and paramilitary violence is part of the solution to this corruption, removing obstacles to the leader’s will. Further, no possible abrogation of the providential leader’s power can be legitimate: it is always ipso facto fraudulent, part of the web of deceit spun by the corrupt elites. Often these elites are imagined to be in vast international conspiracies against the good people of the true nation.

NEW: Marjorie Taylor Greene indicated support for executing prominent Democrats in Facebook comments, videos, and likes in 2018 and 2019https://t.co/SPhtAHF2bn

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) January 26, 2021

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The face of the GOP is the face of intolerance (aka QAnon)

Alex Burns/NY Times:

How Democrats Planned for Doomsday

A huge coalition of activist groups had been working together since the spring to make sure that Joe Biden won and that the “election stayed won” amid Donald Trump’s subterfuge.

They convened to craft a plan for answering the onslaught on American democracy, and they soon reached a few key decisions. They would stay off the streets for the moment and hold back from mass demonstrations that could be exposed to an armed mob goaded on by President Donald J. Trump.

They would use careful language. In a presentation, Anat Shenker-Osorio, a liberal messaging guru, urged against calling the attack a “coup,” warning that the word could make Mr. Trump sound far stronger than he was — or even imply that a pro-Trump militia had seized power.

In the past day multiple state Republican parties have taken to Twitter to embrace QAnon, in case you were wondering how their party rebuilding efforts are going.

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 24, 2021

What is interesting about this moment is that we used to get mad at media (NY Times,especially, but all of it across the board) for refusing to call out Donald Trump, normalizing him, refusing to use the word “lies” etc.

But now, media and reporting are clear. It’s the conservative part of the public that won’t accept the truth. They’ll have to sooner or later (see COVID), but a lot of harm will occur along the way.

Conservatives love to complain about the media. But there's an inside baseball media that reveals how destructive the conservative media criticism environment can be to the conservative movement. Enter, Fox News: https://t.co/wdSBz9F2Ng

— Lyman Stone 石來民 (@lymanstoneky) January 22, 2021

George Conway/WaPo:

Former president, private citizen and, perhaps, criminal defendant:
Donald Trump’s new reality
The question came out of the blue and has haunted me ever since. It was Jan. 17, 2017, three days before Donald Trump’s swearing-in, and my wife and I sat with him in the near-empty main cabin aboard the Trump Organization’s Boeing 757 en route to Washington for a pre-inaugural gala.

So, asked the president-elect: Should he retain or fire Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York? I gave what I thought was an obvious, anodyne answer: All other things being equal, it’s better to have your own people in place. Within two months, Bharara was gone.

To the charge of naivete that night, I plead guilty: I didn’t consider then that Trump might have had his personal legal interests in mind. But it is impossible to escape the self-interested intent behind his question. From the earliest days of his administration, it became painfully apparent that in all matters — including affairs of state — Trump’s personal well-being took top priority. Four years and two impeachments later, he has managed to avoid the full consequences of his conduct.

But now that run of legal good fortune may end. Trump departed the White House a possible — many would say probable, provable — criminal, one who has left a sordid trail of potential and actual misconduct that remains to be fully investigated.

Since Vietnam, America's militarism has radicalized too many returning troops toward right-wing extremism, to "bring the war home" 20% arrested for the Jan. insurrection are veterans Biden can do something. He can end the 'forever war.' My new column https://t.co/9YAQoqZ0lX

— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) January 24, 2021

David Rothkopf/USA Today:

Let's get real. Joe Biden, Democrats and America need results much more than unity.

It's time to give Biden's 81 million voters a chance to be heard and Biden a chance to carry out the plans he ran on, even if he has to play hardball.

When Biden spoke of unity, however, he was clear. He explicitly did not mean he expected we would all agree on every initiative. Rather, his intent as laid out in the speech, was to remind Americans that we are all in this together. He has said his goal is to de-toxify American politics, to end the zero sum, us vs. them mentality that dominated during the Trump years. He wants to make sure people understood that under his administration, no state or city or individual will be penalized for their legitimate political beliefs.

The Texas Supreme Court has denied Alex Jones all forms of relief: Sandy Hook families and others can now sue Jones and InfoWars into the ground. https://t.co/aNTYRYIakb

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 23, 2021

Colin P Clarke/NY Times:

A New Era of Far-Right Violence

The imagery of the Capitol siege will have enduring resonance.

Large segments of the mob that stormed the Capitol were unaffiliated — individuals and small groups, family members, neighbors. These could well be the new foot soldiers of the far right. Some, and perhaps many, of these new recruits will have military experience or law enforcement training. What’s more, the infusion of younger members into the ranks of the far right is likely to breathe new life into the movement, ensuring its longevity.

I will look at this picture next time I’m tempted to complain about anything. https://t.co/I2QL2U1glb

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) January 23, 2021

David Masciotra/Salon:

Longtime GOP insider Mike Lofgren on his former party: "Going easy on these people will not work"

Lofgren spent 28 years on Capitol Hill. Now he says Republican zealots should be crushed, banished and ostracized

I recently discussed the insurrection at the Capitol, how best to combat right-wing extremism and the future of the Republican Party with Lofgren in a phone conversation, lightly edited here for length and clarity.

We'll start with the obvious. What was your gut reaction as you watched the act of domestic terrorism — the siege of the Capitol — live on television? Now that you've had time to process it, what is your interpretation of the event both in terms of what happened and how the United States should proceed?

I worked for three decades in Congress. Regardless of how peeved I might have been over some policy or another, I was proud of my public service. To see the place trashed like that, and I mean really desecrated — there were people shitting on the floor, and smearing it on the walls. The insane violence of a mob beating a cop with a fire extinguisher and shoving him down the marble stairs was horrifying. At the same time, once the mob was dispersed, they went throughout the D.C. metro area randomly beating up people whom they could victimize. Later that afternoon, my daughter, who does not live in D.C. but in Arlington, across the river, was out walking her dog, and saw these thugs spewing out of the Metro station like toxic waste. She had to do a 180. Arlington was placed under curfew that night. All these occurrences, including having to worry about my own family's safety, left some pretty vivid impressions, to say the least.  

If Senate R’s aren’t willing to convict Trump, that means that inciting a deadly attack on the Capitol, installing stooges at DOJ to overturn an election, and strong-arming a SOS to find 11,780 votes, is not only 👍, but that the guy who did it should continue to run their party.

— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) January 23, 2021

Jane Meyer/New Yorker:

Why McConnell Dumped Trump

After the Capitol assault—and after losing his perch as Majority Leader—the senator finally denounced the outgoing President. Was it a moral reckoning or yet another act of political self-interest?

Several Republican advisers argued to me that McConnell had no reasonable choice. If he had confronted Trump before the Georgia runoff, they said, Trump would have launched a civil war within the Party, possibly even commanding his supporters not to vote. “It could have been worse,” the former Trump official said. “Trump could have attacked” the two Republican Senate candidates, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, or the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee. As one of the advisers put it, “McConnell was trying to keep the wheels on the train for a few more hours.”

The price of Trump’s coöperation, however, grew ever higher. According to a well-informed Republican insider, Trump made unconscionable demands behind the scenes. He threatened to withhold his support for Loeffler and Perdue, and refused to campaign for them unless they joined his attacks on Georgia’s election officials and repeated his false claims of widespread election fraud. Days before the runoff, the insider said, the President forced Perdue to leave the campaign trail for a secret meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida. There, Trump coerced Perdue not just into taking his side on election fraud but also into supporting an increase in the size of pandemic-relief checks to two thousand dollars—a figure that McConnell and Senate Republicans opposed. If Perdue refused, Trump made clear, he might withdraw his support. At the time, a spokesman for Perdue’s campaign denied that Trump had pressured Perdue. But, soon after the Mar-a-Lago meeting, both Perdue and Loeffler began echoing Trump’s call for larger relief checks, placing themselves and McConnell in an embarrassing political bind. Trump, meanwhile, went on Twitter and attacked McConnell’s opposition to the bigger relief checks, calling it a “death wish.” The President’s behavior toward the candidates led the insider to a simple conclusion: “Trump is a thug.”

This is going to be an unpopular opinion ... but one of the important takeaways from this piece is that Trump’s efforts to steal the election failed miserably because the overwhelming number of GOP officials put fealty to democracy ahead of fealty to Trump https://t.co/6SO2V6tU6O

— Michael Cohen (@speechboy71) January 23, 2021

Here’s the problem for Republicans: office holders like Brad Raffensperger and Mitch McConnell would rather the white supremacy stay genteel and quiet to keep the majority.

QAnon and the Republican base, increasingly the same as in Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert, want it said out loud. They’d rather be loud and in the minority than suffer the embarrassment of compromise (let alone admission of guilt, error, or defeat).

It’s going to be a rough few years. Republicans will simply refuse to acknowledge losses so long as there is no price to be paid for it.

Biden says he wants unity, but he refuses to let Trump still be president

— Paul Musgrave (@profmusgrave) January 23, 2021

KC Star:

‘Bamboozled.’ Hawley mentors stunned by conduct, but early warning signs were there

Since the Capitol rampage, Hawley’s mentors have disavowed him. Donors have demanded refunds. Colleagues have called for his resignation or expulsion. And those who helped guide his career are asking themselves if they missed something essential about their former mentee.

“I am more than a little bamboozled by it, certainly distressed by it,” said David Kennedy, the Stanford professor emeritus of history who served as Hawley’s academic adviser and wrote the foreword to his 2008 book on Teddy Roosevelt.

But the Lexington columns suggest that Hawley’s ideology took root long before he entered public life, and that his passage from Roosevelt scholar to Trump’s ideological heir was not entirely unforeseen.

🚨 "We're eating sh*t for breakfast, lunch and dinner right now," a McCarthy aide told @axios https://t.co/sZaNpYGDng

— Jim VandeHei (@JimVandeHei) January 24, 2021

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The media discovers there are Biden voters.

NY Times:

Prosecute Trump? Biden Is Wary, but His Voters Are Eager

Urging unity, the president-elect has tried to focus on his policy plans. But many of those who elected him are still fixated on his predecessor: “He’s a crook and he needs to pay.”

Interviews with two dozen Biden voters across the country found near unanimity that it was important for the Senate, the Justice Department and state prosecutors to aggressively pursue Mr. Trump, his family members and top aides — holding them accountable well beyond the impeachment charge against the president for inciting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. The consensus cut across differences of ideology, income, race and sex.

“He’s a crook and he needs to pay for the crimes he’s done,” said Teresa Steele, a Republican in Denton County, Texas, who voted for Mr. Biden.

The word ‘diner’ does not appear in the report. Keep working it, media.

“Yes, we lost the White House and Congress, and yes, we fought to undo Biden’s electoral victory and, yes, we even encouraged a deadly mob to storm the Capitol, but why oh why hasn’t mean old’ Biden unified the nation yet?”

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) January 22, 2021

What will actually happen with impeachment? I expect Republican senators to keep moving the goalposts until they are left with “We can’t vote to impeach a president of our own party, and that’s the bedrock principle we live by. It doesn’t matter what he did.”

A serious party, for example, does not number in its ranks someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene. She is, not to put too fine a point on it: a nut, a fabulist, and a conspiracy theorist of the most wretched water. https://t.co/uXObpNnDIn

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) January 22, 2021

Megan K Stack/New Yorker:

The Week the Trump Supporters Disappeared

In Washington, D.C., our leaders sealed themselves off from a rebel force that didn’t arrive.

As the new President took the oath of office on Wednesday, there were neither parties nor protests in the streets of Washington. Instead, there was mostly quiet, punctuated by the sirens of convoys careening around, the churn of helicopters overhead, and newscasters narrating the unseen news for viewers around the planet. Deep within the rings of checkpoints and soldiers, Joe Biden became President. People outside the security watched on their phones or not at all; most of them were reporters, soldiers, or police. There were rumors that a pro-Trump gathering would be held on the plaza at Union Station, but no such spectacle appeared: a few preachers droned about Hell and feminists while passersby heckled them and pigeons swooped low over their heads. At Judiciary Square, a lone middle-aged man made his way along the sidewalk, wearing a plain winter hat rolled low over his forehead and a disposable blue medical mask. He was an unremarkable figure except for the sign he carried: “THIS LOOKS LIKE PYONGYANG / THERE ARE ONLY POLICE AND MILITARY / NO CIVILIANS.”

The man didn’t want to speak, he explained to reporters. His signs contained everything he wished to express. He pulled a second placard from behind the first and propped it against a nearby tree: “BIG TECH CENSORSHIP KILLED DEMOCRACY.”

This NYTimes story is legit terrifying. How close Trump got to getting DOJ to falsely claim it had opened an election fraud investigation, and how close we came to the DOJ telling state officials to overturn their own elections.

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) January 23, 2021

At Voice of America, a sweeping ouster of Trump officials on Biden’s first full day

President Biden moved swiftly to oust top managers loyal to former president Donald Trump who had been blamed for recent turmoil at the federal government’s array of international news organizations, including the biggest and most influential one, the Voice of America.

Only hours after he was inaugurated, Biden forced out Michael Pack, the controversial head of the agency that oversees VOA and four other networks that broadcast news to millions of people abroad. This was followed, domino-like, on Thursday by the removal of VOA’s director and deputy director after only a few weeks on the job.

In doing so, Biden appears to be putting the brakes on what critics said was an effort by the Trump administration to turn the news agencies into mouthpieces for Trump’s views and policies.

The House article of impeachment against Trump will be delivered to the Senate on Monday, Schumer says https://t.co/OjRCXoHE8T

— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) January 22, 2021

Christopher Mathias/HuffPost:

Meet Your Local Republican Insurrectionist

A new HuffPost tally finds over 20 GOP state and local lawmakers or officials were at the D.C. rally that turned into a violent insurrection. Here are their names.

At least 21 state and local Republican officials attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that turned into a violent riot, according to a new HuffPost tally, many of whom are now under pressure to resign.

They traveled from 16 different states, arriving for the “Stop the Steal” demonstration on the White House Ellipse, where they watched President Donald Trump tell incendiary lies about having been robbed of reelection. He then told the crowd of thousands to march on the Capitol.

In the crowd that day were 13 members of state Houses or Assemblies; three state senators; a county commissioner; a city council member; a GOP congressional district chair; a district director; and a co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party. The group also includes a QAnon conspiracy theorist; a self-described member of a fascist militia; and a man who once declared that “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”

Classic! pic.twitter.com/NfXz2jlhwh

— Brexit Bin 🇪🇺 #BrexitReality (@BrexitBin) January 21, 2021

Daniel Schlozman/N+1:

Can Democrats Fix the Senate? Zoom out from the courtier’s well-crafted call for reform

Adam Jentleson. Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. Liveright, 2021.

Behind Reid as deputy chief of staff was Adam Jentleson, who has now written a lively and effective evisceration of his boss’s great procedural antagonist. Kill Switch is well-sourced for a non-academic text, and enlivened with war stories while avoiding solipsism. The topic is the filibuster, which means that there will be no movie rights, but Jentleson is a good explainer as he unravels unanimous consent agreements, “filling the tree” (a tactic of agenda control over floor amendments), and so on. But Jentleson is not aiming for the general reader. For all the importance of process issues, Americans—beyond a small core of activists and experts—do not like to see the legislative sausage being made.1 They like agreement and dislike knowing too much about the squabbling behind the scenes. So in the long tradition of the courtier writing for the prince, Jentleson writes for those in power. He tells them what they want to hear so they will do what he wants them to do. His audience is the small set of people close to the top of the political pyramid—donors with a substantive agenda, aides eager to get things done, fixers wanting to game things out—with the direct ear of Democratic senators. If Jentleson flatters the Senate and inflates the possibilities for change in a post-filibuster world, those are not straightforwardly flaws but rather all of a piece with his purposes. At times, the sense of writing in and for a bubble can feel intense for a reader outside it. The storming of the Capitol a week before Kill Switch’s publication makes the book feel almost out of time, a guide to a world less crazy than our own, one in which institutional reform, however necessary, can feel mighty insufficient.

The United States now has it's first Black Defense Secretary.

— Idrees Ali (@idreesali114) January 22, 2021

Bloomberg:

Organizers of Trump Rally Had Been on Campaign’s Payroll

Eight paid Trump campaign officials were named on the permit issued on by the National Park Service for the rally, including Maggie Mulvaney, the niece of Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s former chief of staff who resigned his position as special envoy to Northern Ireland after the riot. Maggie Mulvaney was paid $138,000 by the campaign through Nov. 23.

After the rally, in which the president encouraged them to march on the Capitol, Trump supporters stormed the building, disrupting the count of Electoral College votes in an event that ultimately killed five people. Lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over what is normally a ceremonial event, were forced to flee.

The Associated Press first reported the payments.

You can’t have unity without accountability. Republicans are hoping that they can substitute unity for accountability. They can’t.

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) January 22, 2021

Matt Lewis/Daily Beast:

This Week Shows How Neutered Trump Is Without Twitter

The calmness that has permeated these last couple of weeks has shown us that social media platforms have enormous power to strengthen democracy or help destroy it.

Trump’s absence has been conspicuous. Take, for example, Wednesday’s inaugural. It was calm and peaceful and refreshing. Now imagine the inaugural with Trump live-tweeting his running narration. It would have cast a pall on what turned out to be a pretty special day. We have one president at a time (“TOTAL LOSER Sleepy Joe got sworn-in twelve minutes early!?!”), but the outgoing president’s split-screen commentary could have easily been reality.

And that’s just one day. Imagine how good it will feel to string together a few months with no chaotic tweets. Twitter removed Trump from the platform to prevent him from using it to incite violence. But his absence has calmed things down to the point where it’s pretty obvious that this should have been done long ago, and for other valuable reasons.

"Chuck Schumer is the majority leader and he should be treated like majority leader. We can get shit done around here and we ought to be focused on getting stuff done," said Sen. Jon Tester. "If we don't, the inmates are going to be running this ship." https://t.co/KKjY4yxBmX

— rosierifka (@rosierifka) January 22, 2021

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Today is the day. Let the new Administration begin.

Peter Beinert/NY Times:

Why Are There So Few Courageous Senators?

Here’s what we need to do if we want more Mitt Romneys and fewer Josh Hawleys.

Now that Donald Trump has been defanged, leading Republicans are rushing to denounce him. It’s a little late. The circumstances were different then, but a year ago, only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney, backed impeachment. In a party that has been largely servile, Mr. Romney’s courage stands out.

Why, in the face of immense pressure, did Mr. Romney defend the rule of law? And what would it take to produce more senators like him? These questions are crucial if America’s constitutional system, which has been exposed as shockingly fragile, is to survive. The answer may be surprising: To get more courageous senators, Americans should elect more who are near the end of their political careers.

This doesn’t just mean old politicians — today’s average senator is, after all, over 60. It means senators with the stature to stand alone.

new Quinnipiac Poll on whether white supremacy played a major role in the Jan 6 insurrection at the US Capitol: Republicans 17% yes everyone not a Republican 62% yes

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) January 18, 2021

WKRG:

Actions by GOP attorneys general could damage credibility

By supporting efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election, most of the nation’s Republican state attorneys general may have undermined their offices’ long-held special status in federal courts.

In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed legal papers attempting to overturn the results of the presidential election based on unfounded claims of election fraud in four states that voted for President-elect Joe Biden. The Republican attorneys general for 17 other states made legal filings supporting his effort, which was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

.@mckaycoppins - your thesis pre-supposes that there isn’t a countervailing force to this. Republicans make no mistake: We will not let neither you nor the American people forget what you did, what you stood silently for, or your cowardice. @ProjectLincoln @SteveSchmidtSES https://t.co/2Ph3yriMiP

— Reed Galen (@reedgalen) January 18, 2021

Daily Beast:

Fox News Launches ‘Purge’ to ‘Get Rid of Real Journalists’

Fox News on Tuesday fired the political editor who was tasked with defending the network’s election night decisions that especially angered President Donald Trump and his allies.

Politics editor Chris Stirewalt’s exit from the network coincided with the sacking of at least 16 digital editorial staffers, including senior editors. People familiar with the situation said the layoffs—a “blood bath,” as multiple Fox News insiders described it—were perpetrated by Porter Berry, the Sean Hannity crony now in charge of remaking Fox’s digital properties in the image of its right-wing opinion programming.

I see we are now quoting people who helped carry out child separation on the subject of *other Republicans* trying to launder their reputations https://t.co/k5hOxXvpww

— Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) January 18, 2021

Lou Zickar/USA Today:

Centrist Republicans, speak up! We must take a stand against the insurrectionists

If you are a principled centrist or principled conservative, now is not the time to remain silent.

For as the tragic events on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol made clear, the divide in the Republican Party is no longer between the center and the right wing. The divide in today’s GOP is between the insurrectionist wing and everyone else.

Our latest survey shows net support from voters on a range of potential Biden Administration energy & climate policy options comfortably above water, though from Republicans just one policy held net positive support. More: https://t.co/qdfpgRntxp pic.twitter.com/XFg2fny6Ti

— Morning Consult (@MorningConsult) January 19, 2021

David Leonhardt/NY times:

Underselling the Vaccine

And what else you need to know today.

Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don’t seem to trust the public to hear the full truth.

This issue is important and complex enough that I’m going to make today’s newsletter a bit longer than usual. If you still have questions, don’t hesitate to email me at themorning@nytimes.com.

Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They’re not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn’t change their behavior once they get their shots.

These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it’s true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week.

“It’s driving me a little bit crazy,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health, told me.

“We’re underselling the vaccine,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

“It’s going to save your life — that’s where the emphasis has to be right now,” Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are “essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease,” Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said. “It’s ridiculously encouraging.”

But still, don’t change your behavior immediately. Iit’s a short term thing but keep your guard up until community spread drops.

Our democracy didn’t fail in part because of the consciences of a handful of state and local GOP officials. The party is already trying to replace them https://t.co/DjYUC1nAm2 pic.twitter.com/zmO7omOAYM

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) January 18, 2021

Ronald Brownstein/CNN:

Trump leaves America at its most divided since the Civil War

The January 6 assault on the US Capitol capped four years in which Trump relentlessly stoked the nation's divisions and simultaneously provided oxygen for the growth of White nationalist extremism through his open embrace of racist language and conspiracy theories.
In the process, Trump has not only shattered the barriers between the Republican Party and far-right extremists but also enormously intensified a trend that predated him: a growing willingness inside the GOP's mainstream to employ anti-small-d-democratic means to maintain power in a country demographically evolving away from the party.
The result has been to raise the stakes in the ideological polarization of the parties that has been reshaping American politics for decades.

What a stunning sight: Overnight the Biden Inaugural covered the National Mall with hundreds of thousands of flags to represent Americans who can’t attend in person. A remarkably poignant commemoration. pic.twitter.com/9SQgMM7Rga

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 19, 2021

McKay Coppins/Atlantic:

The Coming Republican Amnesia

How will the GOP recover from the Trump era? Pretend it never happened.

As Donald Trump lurches through the disastrous final days of his presidency, Republicans are just beginning to survey the wreckage of his reign. Their party has been gutted, their leader is reviled, and after four years of excusing every presidential affront to “conservative values,” their credibility is shot. How will the GOP recover from the complicity and corruption of the Trump era? To many Republicans, the answer is simple: Pretend it never happened.

A quick add: The QAnon internet this week is just assuming the entire National Guard is secretly on Trump's side and they'll reveal themselves like Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania. They're not, it's a story they're telling themselves, but they all believe it.https://t.co/OMYcWq6AM9

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) January 19, 2021

Monmouth University Poll:

Authoritarianism Among Trump Voters

Among panelists who reported voting for Trump in the 2020 election, just over 4 in 10 score in the highest quartile of the Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale when the original survey weights from the 2019 survey are applied. This leaves just over half of Trump supporters who are not classified as having high authoritarian inclinations. [It should also be noted that only a handful of President-elect Joe Biden’s voters in the panel have a high RWA score – too few to break out in this analysis.]

Memorials matter. There has been no center of grief during this pandemic. The virus has kept us apart, meaning so much of our unimaginable loss has taken place behind closed doors. We haven’t been able share our grief. pic.twitter.com/Ed8GalJc94

— Dr. Sanjay Gupta (@drsanjaygupta) January 19, 2021

Dave A Hopkins/Honest Graft:

In the End, the Trump Presidency Was a Failure on Its Own Terms

Trump succeeded in preventing Hillary Clinton from leading the country, but he wound up empowering Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer instead. He railed against liberal elites who predominate within social institutions like universities, media organizations, and technology companies, but his time in office only saw a continued progression of leftward cultural change in American society and a parallel departure of highly-educated voters from the Republican Party. The conservative intellectual project has not suffered as much damage in many decades as it did over the past four years; conservative thinkers and writers were internally divided into pro- and anti-Trump factions, were exposed as holding a limited ability to speak for the conservative mass public, and were deprived by Trump's behavior of a precious claim to moral superiority over the left. And the fact that the Trump administration is leaving office complaining of being "silenced" and "canceled" by a multi-platform social media ban imposed on its leader is evidence enough of its lack of success in gaining influence over the tech sector.

A final, inadvertantly-acknowledged testimony to the failure of the Trump administration was its prevailing communication style. Both the outgoing president and his succession of spokespeople stood out for two distinctive traits: a lack of commitment to factual accuracy and a perpetually grouchy demeanor. The typical public statement from this White House was a misleading claim delivered with a sarcastic sneer. Of course, no member of the administration would admit on the record that the Trump presidency was anything less than a parade of unparalleled triumphs. But it doesn't make sense to lie so much unless the truth isn't on your side, and there's no good reason to act so aggrieved all the time if you're really succeeding as much as you claim.

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: In 48 hours, he’s finally out

Axios with a must-read:

Beginning on election night 2020 and continuing through his final days in office, Donald Trump unraveled and dragged America with him, to the point that his followers sacked the U.S. Capitol with two weeks left in his term. This Axios series takes you inside the collapse of a president.

Episode 1:  A premeditated lie lit the fire

Trump’s refusal to believe the election results was premeditated. He had heard about the “red mirage” — the likelihood that early vote counts would tip more Republican than the final tallies — and he decided to exploit it.

Episode 2: Barbarians at the Oval

Episode 2: Trump stops buying what his professional staff are telling him, and increasingly turns to radical voices telling him what he wants to hear.

Episode 3: Descent into madness ... Trump: "Sometimes you need a little crazy"

Episode 3: The conspiracy goes too far. Trump's outside lawyers plot to seize voting machines and spin theories about communists, spies and computer software.

🚨📉📉 After Twitter banned Trump, a 73% plunge in election misinformation spread on the Internet in just one week. Fascinating analysis on how swiftly the president and his allies were able to amplify falsehoods ... via @lizzadwoskin @craigtimberg https://t.co/7qNqP423k8

— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) January 16, 2021

Inquirer Editorial Board:

This MLK Day, Congress should remember Dr. King’s economic agenda

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made this warning in his famous ”Beyond Vietnam” speech, exactly one year before his assassination on April 4, 1968.

In 2020, we’ve seen the “giant triplets” in full force. Militarized police forces crack down on racial justice protesters nationwide. The racially driven inequities in America’s provision of health care, as well as inequities in the social determinants of health such as housing and poverty, has made an allegedly “color blind” coronavirus much deadlier for Black people and people of color. And while renters faced eviction, business owners went bankrupt, and people rushed to food pantries, billionaires got richer. Each one of these economic hardships loomed larger and disproportionately impacted the lives of Black, brown, and Indigenous people.

A pastor I know in small-town Nebraska has had her column in the local paper canceled for submitting the following, which the editor refused to publish. It's her scriptural take on what happened at the Capitol and I think it's very much worth reading. https://t.co/GXOgTI4rJn

— Chris Polansky (@ChrisKPolansky) January 15, 2021

Here is that new CRS piece:

The Impeachment and Trial of a Former President

January 15, 2021

For the second time in just over a year, the House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump. The House previously voted to impeach President Trump on December 18, 2019, and the Senate voted to acquit the President on February 5, 2020. Because the timing of this second impeachment vote is so close to the end of the Trump Administration, it is possible that any resulting Senate trial may not occur until after President Trump leaves office on January 20, 2021. This possibility has prompted the question of whether the Senate can try a former President for conduct that occurred while he was in office...

The Constitution does not directly address whether Congress may impeach and try a former President for actions taken while in office. Though the text is open to debate, it appears that most scholars who have closely examined the question have concluded that Congress has authority to extend the impeachment process to officials who are no longer in office. 

We urgently need journalism that not only digs out the truth but presents it in ways that will be widely accepted, even among skeptical (reasonable) people. Here are 3 ways the media can vanquish the Big Lie that will linger after Trump goes. My column https://t.co/pJkO06KVDy

— Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) January 17, 2021

Anand Ghiridharadas:

We are falling on our face because we are jumping high

A dash of perspective in a dark hour

It’s scary out there right now. It’s going to be scary for some time to come. What has been unleashed, what has been revealed, is ugly. It is what makes democracies die.

In the despair, it is easy to lose perspective. I certainly do all the time. But from time to time, I step back and try to remember where we are as a country on the arc of things.

And I see then that this is both a very dark time and, potentially, a very bright time. It's important to hold these truths together.

When I look down at the ground of the present right now, I feel depressed. If I lift my head to the horizon, I see a different picture.

This is not the chaos of the beginning of something. This is the chaos of the end of something.

In their own words: How Americans reacted to the rioting at the U.S. Capitol https://t.co/7fokieevhE pic.twitter.com/oqROq5FxMe

— Pew Research Fact Tank (@FactTank) January 16, 2021

Skeptics call this strategy "JAQ-ing off," and it's important to understand what liars are doing with this. They are pretending to be reasonable, but functionally equating lies with truths. https://t.co/jrT7DBzkrC

— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) January 17, 2021

Daniel Dale/CNN:

The 15 most notable lies of Donald Trump's presidency

Trying to pick the most notable lies from Donald Trump's presidency is like trying to pick the most notable pieces of junk from the town dump.

There's just so much ugly garbage to sift through before you can make a decision.

But I'm qualified for the dirty job. I fact checked every word uttered by this President from his inauguration day in January 2017 until September 2020 -- when the daily number of lies got so unmanageably high that I had to start taking a pass on some of his remarks to preserve my health.

The last paragraph of @AlecMacGillis is such a punch to the gut. It is soul crushing. https://t.co/Y2tWmNlB32 pic.twitter.com/7GUuRuDbxA

— Charles Ornstein (@charlesornstein) January 17, 2021

Forbes:

Fox News Viewership Plummets: First Time Behind CNN And MSNBC In Two Decades

"The unified wall of support for Trump has splintered after last week's assault on the Capitol," said Mark Lukasiewicz, a former TV executive and who now serves as Dean of Hofstra's School of Communication. "Tristan Harris famously said that social networks are about 'affirmation, not information' — and the same can be said about cable news, especially in primetime."

Trump advertised the date and place to meet. Aides set up event. He tweeted "be there, will be wild" and "fight." He picked target. He tweeted incitement during raid. He invented the big lie. He said "stop" (how exactly?) the steal. He failed to protect during it. Need more? https://t.co/MM7T4Q8Ocn

— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) January 18, 2021

Alexandra Petri:

Now is not the time to point fingers, Julius Caesar. Now is the time for healing.

Julius Caesar, these Ides have been stressful for everyone, and I think the last thing the Roman people need right now is for you to be pointing fingers — at Brutus, at me, or at anyone, as you clutch at yourself and sink onto the Senate steps.

Now is not the time to cast blame and call out names. Now is the time for healing. Please stop bleeding on my toga; that is a sad reminder of a hurtful time I hope we can put behind us. The last thing we need is to be thinking about the past, when I have already dropped my dagger, forgotten every threatening or negative thing I ever said, and am, frankly, ready to move on. Now is the time to come together, for the good of Rome.

For someone who always made a big point of how he was uniting Rome, and who historically was so fond of Brutus, you certainly seem bent on dividing us and making Brutus look bad with your remarks now! “You too, Brutus?” Seriously?

We must focus on the future, Julius, and get back to the people’s business. The Roman people didn’t elect us (technically, the sentence could stop there!) to stand around engaging in pointless recriminations about who stabbed whom with what dagger concealed under whose toga. Ultimately, aren’t both sides at fault here? We can certainly agree that if you had not come to the Senate today, no one would have been stabbed. I’m just saying this to show we all bear some responsibility.

Manchin: Removing Hawley, Cruz with 14th Amendment 'should be a consideration' https://t.co/lnRU5e3F7B

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) January 16, 2021

And your final piece:

... Trump will be in desperate shape. His business is floundering, his partners are fleeing, his loans are delinquent, prosecutors will be coming after him, and the legal impunity he enjoyed through his office will be gone. ..https://t.co/rhNFYEXb9c

— rosierifka (@rosierifka) January 17, 2021

That’s too bad. 

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Sorting through a week of chaos

Greg Sargent/WaPo:

A leaked intelligence memo suggests Trump’s lies could incite more violence

Not long after President Trump earned the crowning distinction of becoming the first U.S. president to get impeached twice, he released a video in which he went further than ever in calling for an end to post-election violence. But here’s what Trump did not say:

First, that Joe Biden is the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. Second, that Trump’s own big lie to the contrary was the singular cause of the deadly mob assault on the Capitol — and is perhaps the fundamental reason we face the threat of more right-wing insurgent violence to come.

A new federal intelligence bulletin that I’ve obtained underscores the stakes of this omission: It flatly warns that the lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent could be a key inspiration of domestic extremist violence going forward.

The Jan. 13 memo doesn’t cite Trump or his role in spreading this lie, but, of course, Trump has relentlessly promulgated it for months.

Post-ABC poll finds overwhelming opposition to Capitol attacks, majority support for preventing Trump from serving again https://t.co/vZCveWaRTT

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 15, 2021

NEW on Biden $1.9T plan: -- $2K checks (adds $1,400 to $600). Adult dependents IN -- $400/week UI thru Sept, will push 4 "triggers." Not retroactive -- CTC to $3,000/yr per kid, fully refundable -- $15/hr min. wage -- Eviction moratorium thru 9/21https://t.co/mww4nQ470F

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) January 14, 2021

WaPo:

Biden unveiling $1.9 trillion economic and health care relief package

Proposal is aimed at addressing the nation’s immediate needs; larger recovery package to follow

Poised to inherit a health-care disaster and a deteriorating economy, President-elect Joe Biden is laying out a $1.9 trillion emergency relief plan Thursday night that will serve as an early test of his ability to steer the nation out of the pandemic disasters and make good on his promises to unite a divided Congress.

The wide-ranging package is designed to take aim at the twin crises Biden will confront upon taking office Jan. 20, with a series of provisions delivering direct aid to American families, businesses, and communities, and a major focus on coronavirus testing and vaccine production and delivery as the pandemic surge continues.

How have the politics of deficits changed in this pandemic? The @USChamber is out with strong praise for Biden's $1.9T rescue plan. pic.twitter.com/vfYG2OD9Or

— Jim Tankersley (@jimtankersley) January 15, 2021

Christian Vanderbrouk/Bulwark:

Make. Them. Testify.

Call the Trump officials who resigned in protest to testify at the impeachment trial.

The people closest to Donald Trump knew the risks.

For years, Trump and his most ardent supporters threatened their opponents with violence, insurrection, secession, and even civil war.

Some of his closest aides and establishment enablers gambled that such outcomes might be avoided, that they might escape the Trump administration with their reputations and career prospects enhanced. Or at least intact.

“There’s safety in numbers,” they may have told themselves. “I made the best of a bad situation and advanced causes I believe in.” “My hands are cleaner than others. I wasn’t part of the corruption, the child separation policies, the plot against democracy.”

But this was delusional because this was never a gamble. It was a Faustian bargain. And now some of them are trying to get out of it.

This reminds me. I realize that team Biden has lots on its plate but I sure hope they move quickly to make sure you don’t get a wh press pass https://t.co/wIrLztZCBB

— jim manley (@jamespmanley) January 13, 2021

AJC:

Election deniers in state Senate stripped of chairmanships

It’s payback time. The Republican rift in the state Senate came to a head Tuesday when Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan demoted three Republican senators who have backed attempts to overturn the presidential vote in Georgia over baseless allegations of irregularities.

When the bloodletting was over, state Sens. Brandon Beach of Alpharetta, Matt Brass of Newnan and Burt Jones of Jackson were sapped of their political influence on the second day of the winter session.

As our AJC colleague Maya T. Prabhu reports, Duncan stripped Beach of his chairmanship of the Transportation Committee, while Jones will no longer lead the Insurance and Labor Committee. Neither will serve as even a rank-and-file member on the two panels they once led.

A longtime GOP member of Congress bids his party goodbye. https://t.co/4wL95rwb7y

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) January 14, 2021

Isaac Chotiner/New Yorker:

Learning from the Failure of Reconstruction

To better understand the lessons of Reconstruction for our times, I recently spoke by phone with Eric Foner, an emeritus professor of history at Columbia, and one of the country’s leading experts on Reconstruction. During the conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed the use of Confederate imagery by those who stormed the Capitol, balancing unity and punishment in the wake of terror, and the historical significance of the two Georgia Senate runoffs.

The most common historical parallel over the past four years has been to European fascism, for a variety of reasons. But there have also been references to American history going back to Jim Crow and the Civil War. How does what we’ve seen in the past week, and specifically what we saw on Wednesday, fit into the larger American story and make those American comparisons especially vivid or interesting in your mind?

Well, I guess the sight of people storming the Capitol and carrying Confederate flags with them makes it impossible not to think about American history. That was an unprecedented display. But in a larger sense, yes, the events we saw reminded me very much of the Reconstruction era and the overthrow of Reconstruction, which was often accompanied, or accomplished, I should say, by violent assaults on elected officials. There were incidents then where elected, biracial governments were overthrown by mobs, by coup d’états, by various forms of violent terrorism.

SCOOP: Trump has repeatedly spoken by phone with Steve Bannon in recent weeks to seek advice on his campaign to overturn his re-election defeat, reconciling with his once-estranged ex White House strategist, sources tell me. Story out soon.

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) January 14, 2021

NPR:

These Are The 10 Republicans Who Voted To Impeach Trump

Ten Republicans crossed President Trump on Wednesday and voted to impeach him for "incitement of insurrection."

It was a historic vote and one that came exactly a week after a pro-Trump mob laid siege to the U.S. Capitol after attending a Trump rally on the Ellipse outside the White House. The Capitol was ransacked and occupied for hours, and, in the end, five Americans died and many others were injured as a result.

The 10 House members who voted to impeach Trump don't cut a singular profile. They come from a range of districts, from coast to coast, some representing places Trump won handily in 2020, while others are in more moderate seats.

Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump (twice). Front pages for history: pic.twitter.com/CWrXkrFWWi

— Brent D. Griffiths (@BrentGriffiths) January 14, 2021

Tom Nichols/USA Today:

Trump impeachment: No unity until his morally bankrupt defenders get over him and repent

The people who have supported Trump need to come to terms with what they’ve done and with what they’ve allowed to happen — or it will happen again.

This is moral charlatanism and I say to hell with it.

It is almost impossible to comprehend the sheer moral poverty of the people calling now for unity. Elected Republicans now admit they fear for their physical safety from their own constituents, but instead of thunderous defenses of the Constitution, we have soft mewling from people like Sen. Marco Rubio and his Bible-Verse-A-Day tweets, or the head-spinning duplicity of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who within days of saying “count me out” of any further sedition was jollying it up with the president on Air Force One.

Remember when Q-Pac came out with 33% approval, and it looked nuts. Morning Consult has had a bunch of 35-36%. Ipsos just rolled in with a 35%. Trump dropping into the 30s to finish it out.

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) January 14, 2021

Yascha Mounk/CFR:

After Trump, Is American Democracy Doomed by Populism?

President Donald J. Trump is an authoritarian populist. And one of the key characteristics of populism lies in a leader’s belief that they, and they alone, truly represent the people.

That explains why Trump has kept clashing with democratic institutions over the course of his presidency. Whenever he ran up against the limits of his constitutional authority, he balked at the idea that somebody else—a judge, a bureaucrat, or a member of Congress—could tell him what to do. In his mind, only he had the right to speak for the country.
This helps to make sense of the storming of the Capitol. On one hand, it was a terrible surprise. Before January 6, nobody had expected that a mob of insurrectionists could so easily enter “the People’s House.” But on the other hand, it was a fitting end point for Trump’s presidency: the mob was incited by the populist president of the United States—and that president incited it to action because somebody who believes that he, and only he, represents the people could not possibly accept the legitimacy of an election he lost.

Trump administration staffers are getting snubbed while hunting for jobs. One recruiter tried to place six of them and couldn't land any interviews. https://t.co/cAjqGoQ5cD via @businessinsider

— John Haltiwanger (@jchaltiwanger) January 14, 2021