It’s Time to Admit America Has Changed; The New York Times, November 6, 2024

Patrick Healy and David French, The New York Times; It’s Time to Admit America Has Changed

"Donald Trump’s enduring hold over the Republican Party will send him back to the White House. On this episode of “The Opinions,” the columnist David French joins the deputy Opinion editor Patrick Healy to discuss the future of the G.O.P. and what a second Trump term might mean for America...

Patrick Healy: I’m Patrick Healy, deputy editor of Opinion, and I’ve covered American politics for decades as a reporter, editor and running our New York Times focus groups.

David French: I’m David French, a columnist for Opinion...

Healy: David, America has never been here before. It looks like a felon is about to take the presidency. Someone who incited an insurrection at the Capitol, who tried to overturn the 2020 election. Whose view and belief in the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power and the Constitution is just a really open question. I know it’s left a lot of Americans with a lot of frankly terrified feelings and they don’t know what the next four years are going to be like or how they’re going to get through it. And I find myself wondering when you look ahead, what’s weighing on your mind as we head into Wednesday and in the next few days?

French: You know, I was speaking at a college a few days ago and someone asked, “What will be your mindset if Donald Trump wins?” And I think of it as having two real components: Protect the vulnerable and speak the truth.

When you think about Trump’s declaration of vengeance, he wants to pursue his political enemies. He wants to pursue deportations at a scale that would be terrifying. So you can already see that there are vulnerable populations that will need protection. That includes political dissidents, political opponents that might be vulnerable to a vengeful Department of Justice. That includes immigrants and others who — you know, think about it this way, you’re talking about people who have said, “Hey, look, if there’s a person who is an illegal immigrant, but they have children who are citizens, well, so what? So what? Just sweep them out.” Right?

So there’s going to be this real need to protect vulnerable populations, protect vulnerable people. And then the other thing is, if there’s one thing that we’ve learned, it is very, very difficult to combat large-scale lying and defamation from people who have an immense amount of power and privilege. That is just very difficult because people who come into politics sort of more casually don’t know much about it — they don’t know if someone says yes and another person says no, if one person says up and another person says down — they don’t know how to adjudicate these disputes. And so I think about it in these two ways: protect the vulnerable, speak the truth, and I think of it in this moment as this is a real clarion call moment. At some point we’re going to have to sort of continue to put aside many of the differences that have divided sort of the different elements of the anti-Trump coalition.

I think it’s totally fine to grieve this. It’s totally fine to lament that this has occurred and to grieve that this is where we are as a country. But that’s got to be short, because if we care about justice in this country, there’s going to be a lot of work to do. I don’t think anyone should feel like the American experiment is over, but we should understand and gain knowledge from history that America can regress.

You know, Martin Luther King Jr. said the arc of history is long, but “it bends toward justice.” I remain relatively optimistic in that direction. But we’ve had long periods of backsliding, and we might be walking into one of those periods right now. And I just think when I look back at American history, you know, who stands out in those periods as having resisted the drift of the times, as having said no when so many other people were saying yes to injustice and hatred, and so that’s why I really think of it in these two frames. Defend the vulnerable, speak the truth."

Trump wages campaign against real-time fact checks; The Washington Post, October 14, 2024

Ashley Parker

 and 

Josh Dawsey

, The Washington Post; Trump wages campaign against real-time fact checks

"Donald Trump and his campaign have waged an aggressive campaign against fact-checking in recent months, pushing TV networks, journalism organizations and others to abandon the practice if they hope to interact with Trump...

The moves are the latest example of Trump’s long-held resistance to being called to account for his falsehoods, which have formed the bedrock of his political message for years. Just in recent weeks, for example, Trump has seized on fabricated tales of migrants eating pets and Venezuelan gangs overtaking cities in pushing his anti-immigration message as he seeks a second term in office.

Lucas Graves, a journalism and mass communications professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that publicly chafing at fact-checking has become a form of tribalism among some Republicans.

“Within the political establishment on the right, it is now considered quite legitimate — and quite legitimate to say publicly and openly — that you disapprove of fact-checking,” said Lucas, author of “Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism."

Rep. Ken Buck says he will not serve out rest of term, narrowing GOP majority; The Washington Post, March 14, 2024

Amy B Wang

 and 

Patrick Svitek

, The Washington Post; Rep. Ken Buck says he will not serve out rest of term, narrowing GOP majority

"“Our nation is on a collision course with reality, and a steadfast commitment to truth, even uncomfortable truths, is the only way forward,” Buck said then. “Too many Republican leaders are lying to America.”

Buck also cited Republicans’ downplaying the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which a pro-Trump mob sought to stop the certification of Biden’s electoral win, as well as the GOP’s claims that the ensuing prosecutions amounted to a weaponization of the justice system.

“These insidious narratives breed widespread cynicism and erode Americans’ confidence in the rule of law,” Buck said. “It is impossible for the Republican Party to confront our problems and offer a course correction for the future while being obsessively fixated on retribution and vengeance for contrived injustices of the past.”"

G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election; The New York Times, June 19, 2023

 Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel , The New York Times; G.O.P. Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Ahead of 2024 Election

"On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online."

Gutting Congress’ Ethics Office Was a Disaster – and an Opportunity; Just Security, January 19, 2023

Gabe Lezra, Just Security; Gutting Congress’ Ethics Office Was a Disaster – and an Opportunity

"The new House Republican majority, finally seated after days of embarrassing negotiations that resulted in Representative Kevin McCarthy being sworn in as Speaker, made their priorities clear on Jan. 9. With their first official vote, they approved a House rules package that effectively gutted the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), the independent body that helps ensure that members of the House don’t abuse their positions. It was a striking decision that sent a clear message: the new far-right majority will demand that the other branches of government live up to ethical standards and practices that they themselves have no intention of following.

McCarthy’s attack on OCE consisted of two components: first, the resolution forcedthree of the four Democrats who currently sit on the OCE Board to vacate their positions immediately. This move, which was facially based on a decision to implement term limits, undermined the bipartisan nature of OCE’s leadership and left the Board in an extremely difficult and partisan position to hire staff. Second, the new rules require OCE to hire all of its staff within 30 days – and it would likely only be able to do that after it has hired sufficient Board members. This absurd requirement fails to recognize that OCE relies on employees with a detailed and relatively rare legal skillset, making hiring a complex and time-intensive process. On top of the impossibly rushed hiring process, the provision appears written to prevent OCE from hiring any new staff after the 30-day window closes – meaning that the agency wouldn’t be able to replace staff who retire or change jobs for the entirety of the 118th Congress.

This is not the first time Republicans have attempted to destroy OCE. In 2017, Republicans voted behind closed doors to strip OCE of its independence and place it under the control of the House Ethics Committee, a move they only abandoned when former President Donald Trump denounced it on Twitter. House Republicans’ bizarre obsession with OCE ignores the fact that OCE is not a powerful institution. It is, at base, a screen to save Congressional resources. OCE prevents members and their staff from using their limited time and resources to sift through allegations of members’ potential ethics violations, determine if any are credible, and conduct preliminary investigations. OCE is supposed to save Congress time.

Despite the plethora of serious allegations that the Ethics Committee considers, the Committee itself is incredibly weak and generally unwilling to punish members. This failure is not OCE’s fault. OCE does not levy punishments, nor does it recommend them. One of its first chairs, David Skaggs, famously explained that OCE’s function is to “supplement but not supplant” the Ethics Committee. OCE’s subservient relationship to the dysfunctional Ethics Committee means that OCE’s power goes only as far as the members of the Ethics Committee will allow it. Which, in most cases, is not far at all.

This begs the question: Why was gutting OCE the new majority’s first vote in the 118th Congress? The answer is simple. They wanted to dismantle one of the key ways that members of Congress can be held accountable when they abuse their positions of trust – and they succeeded. It could not have come at a worse time."

Republicans censure Cheney, Kinzinger, call Jan. 6 probe attack on 'legitimate political discourse'; Reuters, February 4, 2022

Doina Chiacu, Reuters; Republicans censure Cheney, Kinzinger, call Jan. 6 probe attack on 'legitimate political discourse'

"The Republican Party on Friday censured U.S. Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for joining Congress' investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat, calling the probe an attack on "legitimate political discourse."...

The resolution censuring Cheney and Kinzinger, approved at a Republican National Committee meeting in Salt Lake City, accused them of "participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol that day, smashing windows, assaulting police officers and sending lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence running for their lives after Trump made a fiery speech repeating his false claims that his election defeat was the result of widespread fraud."

The New Congress Has A Record Number Of Women — But Very Few Republican Women; NPR, January 3, 2019

Danielle Kurztleben, NPR; The New Congress Has A Record Number Of Women — But Very Few Republican Women

"Both parties also have different ideas about how important diversity is. One in 3 Republicans believe there are too few women in political office. In comparison, 8 in 10 Democrats think so, according to the Pew Research Center.

Walsh adds that pitching a candidate's gender as a positive factor is a tough sell in a party where "identity politics" is an insult.

"On the Republican side there is a real shunning of identity politics. In fact, when Paul Ryan became speaker, he thought that the number one reason that there was the kind of partisan gridlock in Washington was because of identity politics," she said. "So that makes it harder it makes it harder when you go out to raise money and make the case for why why do elect more women, if you can't talk about the substantive difference that they make by being there.""

Why Aren’t Democrats Walking Away With the Midterms? Democrats miss Trump’s political gifts and the real threat he represents.; The New York Times, November 2, 2018

Bret Stephens, The New York Times;

Why Aren’t Democrats Walking Away With the Midterms?

Democrats miss Trump’s political gifts and the real threat he represents.

"I have written previously that the real threat of the Trump presidency isn’t economic or political catastrophe. It’s moral and institutional corrosion — the debasement of our discourse and the fracturing of our civic bonds. Democrats should be walking away with the midterms. That they are not is because they have consistently underestimated the president’s political gifts, while missing the deeper threat his presidency represents.

There’s a lesson here worth heeding. Our economic GDP may be booming, but our moral GDP is in recession."

What Flake got right — and wrong; Washington Post, January 17, 2018

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post; What Flake got right — and wrong

"Flake gave an impressive and far-reaching speech indicting Trump’s web of lies and the damage his international pals (e.g., Vladimir Putin) are doing to freedom of the press. He correctly admonished his Senate colleagues that undermining truth strengthens the hand of despots. Give him credit — but only partial credit. Elected Republicans engage in much of the same anti-truth propaganda as the president does. The evening programming of an entire TV cable “news” network is dedicated to conspiracy theories, misleading information about immigrants and terrorists, and refusal to cover facts that contradict the president’s tropes.

Trump did not materialize out of thin air. He masterfully manipulated white grievance and anti-elite conspiracy-mongering. But the ground was plowed by many of Flake’s colleagues and by Republicans’ self-selected news outlets. Getting rid of Trump will help, but unless and until the mind-set that permeates the right is dismantled, the war on the truth will rage on."

GOP Firm Exposed U.S. Voters' Personal Data; The Atlantic, June 20, 2017

Aria Bendix, The Atlantic; GOP Firm Exposed U.S. Voters' Personal Data

"For two weeks in June, the personal information of nearly every U.S. voter was available on a publicly accessible Amazon cloud server after a marketing firm hired by the Republican National Committee (RNC) failed to password protect its data.

The BBC reports that the leak represents the largest breach of electoral data in the U.S. to date, leaving the information of nearly 200 million registered voters exposed. While the leaked files did not include voters’ Social Security or credit card information, they did include personal details, such as their birthdates, home addresses, and telephone numbers. In some cases, voters’ ethnicities, religions, and political views were also made available."

How Congress dismantled federal Internet privacy rules; Washington Post, May 30, 2017

Kimberly Kindy, Washington Post; How Congress dismantled federal Internet privacy rules

"When Senate Republicans passed the bill the following day on a narrow party-line vote, the issue finally exploded across the Internet and in mainstream, liberal and conservative media.

An ethical double standard for Trump — and the GOP?; Washington Post, 11/27/16

E.J. Dionne, Washington Post; An ethical double standard for Trump — and the GOP? :

"Republicans did an extraordinary job raising doubts about Clinton — helped, we learned courtesy of The Post, by a Russian disinformation campaign. Does the GOP want to cast itself as a band of hypocrites who cared not at all about ethics and were simply trying to win an election?...

If Trump wasn’t ready to put his business life behind him, he should not have run for president. And if Republicans — after all of their ethical sermons about Clinton — do not now demand that the incoming president unequivocally cut all of his and his family’s ties to his companies, they will be fully implicated in any Trump scandal that results from a shameful and partisan double standard."

A generation of GOP stars stands diminished: ‘Everything Trump touches dies’; Washington Post, 10/9/16

Philip Rucker, Washington Post; A generation of GOP stars stands diminished: ‘Everything Trump touches dies’ :

"“There is nobody who holds any position of responsibility who in private conversations views Donald Trump as equipped mentally, morally and intellectually to be the president of the United States,” said Steve Schmidt, a veteran GOP strategist. “But scores of Republican leaders have failed a fundamental test of moral courage and political leadership in not speaking truth to the American people about what is so obvious.”"

The G.O.P.’s Cynical Gay Ploy; New York Times, 6/20/16

Charles M. Blow, New York Times; The G.O.P.’s Cynical Gay Ploy:

"Maybe Republicans want us to forget that, as ThinkProgress reported in December:

“Six of the Republican candidates vying for the presidency have signed a pledge promising to support legislation during their first 100 days in the White House that would use the guise of “religious liberty” to give individuals and businesses the right to openly discriminate against L.G.B.T. people.”

They want us to forget that although people of all political stripes have evolved on the issue of gay equality — including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton —Republicans are the trailing edge of that evolution.

No amount of the exploitation of fear and the revising of history is going to change what we know about the Republican Party and their continued abysmal record on gay rights.

In the wake of tragedy, you can’t conveniently hang the L.G.B.T. community on the tree of life as a glistening ornament."

The GOP is learning the hard way that character matters; Washington Post, 6/16/16

Michael Gerson, Washington Post; The GOP is learning the hard way that character matters:

"Republicans are beginning to see that the main problem with their presumptive nominee is not his lack of basic knowledge or his inability to stay on the script of sanity for 10 minutes at a time. The problem is Donald Trump’s public character, which no amount of last-minute coaching can change.

Trump’s instincts were on full display in his reaction to the Orlando terrorist attack. There was a pronounced lack of empathy for victims. There was a resort to insanely partisan conspiracy theories — including insinuations that President Obama is the Manchurian Muslim. There was an almost gleeful credit grab in asserting that his accusations about the violent nature of Islam were vindicated...

The presumptive Republican nominee has already proposed the largest police operation (by far) in American history — the rounding up of more than 11 million people and forcing them across the border. What limiting principle would prevent a roundup of all Muslims? Trump has already proposed the murder of terrorists’ families. What is the limiting principle that would prevent his use of nuclear weapons against the Islamic State capital of Raqqa? Trump has already raised the possibility that Obama is a Kenyan and a jihadist and that Hillary Clinton was involved in Vince Foster’s murder. What limiting principle would prevent President Trump from targeting congressional opponents with innuendo that they are traitors or murderers, or any other accusation that Alex Jones puts on the Web? Trump has already proposed changing libel laws in order to restrict media criticism against him. What limiting principle would prevent him from, well, changing libel laws to restrict media criticism against him?...

Either way, Republicans are learning the hard way that character counts."