No Longer an Excuse

Cowardice Is No Longer an Excuse

Republicans can survive a fight with Trump and the NRA—if they want to.

JEREMY SCHULMAN

As gun violence ravages communities and the country reels from a string of horrific mass shootings, Americans have been left with an all-too-familiar question: Will our lawmakers finally do something to stop the carnage? We’ve been here before, many times; we’ve watched as Republicans (and some Democrats) bowed to pressure from the National Rifle Association and blocked even the most basic gun control measures.

But as the Trace’s Mike Spies pointed out the day after the Uvalde massacre, there actually has been a seismic shift in the political landscape. The NRA is still a powerful force, but years of scandal and infighting and a failed attempt to declare bankruptcy may have left it substantially weaker than it was in 2013, when pro-gun forces killed a bipartisan background check bill in the wake of the Sandy Hook murders:

1/It is not 2013. The Republican Party is no longer beholden to the NRA. It does not need to “stand up to the gun lobby”. The NRA hasn’t made significant election outlays since 2016, and won’t be able to again for some time. It is still mired in a costly lawsuit with the NY AG…

2/Its longtime PR firm, which served as the voice of the organization and devised Wayne LaPierre’s persona, is long gone. Its most effective spokespeople are long gone. Its most effective leader, Chris Cox, is long gone. Cox’s team is gone. Oliver North is long gone.

The NRA still spends millions on lobbying, but Chris Cox, its legendary chief lobbyist, stepped down in 2019. The group shelled out more than $29 million on the 2020 elections, according to Open Secrets. But that was barely half of what it spent in 2016.

In short, the nation’s most powerful gun-rights lobby simply has less muscle than it once did to bully Republicans who might otherwise support at least modest gun legislation. Fear, cowardice, and deference to a big-spending political organization—these are no longer sufficient explanations for lawmakers who refuse to act. Already, political media is awash in leaks and speculation about bipartisan negotiations and optimism that just maybe this time will be different—just maybe 10 Republicans will actually vote their conscience. There’s plenty of well-earned cynicism and doubt, too. We’ll see. But as Spies puts it, “At this stage, any decision the GOP makes is its own.”

Spies’ observation actually seems quite relevant to another political powerhouse whose ability to enforce obedience from the Republican Party took a big hit this week: Donald Trump.

It was just two months ago—at a campaign rally for David Perdue—that Trump doubled down on his intention to purge Georgia of every Republican official who had committed a “dereliction of duty” by refusing to help him overturn the 2020 election. “Before we can defeat the Democrat Socialists and Communists,” he said, “we first have to defeat the RINOs, sellouts, and the losers in the primaries.”

That night, Trump railed against Gov. Brian Kemp, the “Republican in name only” whom the defeated president seems to blame more than anyone for thwarting his attempts to cling to power. Trump also blasted Brad Raffensperger, the GOP secretary of state who rejected (and then blew the whistle on) Trump’s request to “find 11,780 votes” so he could prevail in Georgia. And he attacked Chris Carr, Georgia’s Republican attorney general, who had sided with Kemp and Raffensperger in the election dispute. Carr was a “disaster,” Trump said.

When Trump first set out to organize primary challenges against these Republicans, his efforts felt ominous. The disgraced chief executive intended to wield the MAGA movement as a weapon to enshrine the Big Lie as official party dogma and punish any public servant—no matter how far right—who dared to stand up for democracy. It seemed impossible that Kemp and his allies could survive the onslaught, and it was only a matter of time before a combination of primary defeats and political fear would lay the groundwork for Team Trump to steal the 2024 election. There would be no more Republican governors or secretaries of state or local canvassing board members willing to certify Democratic victories.

But then something strange happened. Trump failed in Georgia. Spectacularly.

Kemp easily won his primary Tuesday night, crushing Perdue by more than 50 percentage points. Carr beat election denier John Gordon by a similar margin. Raffensperger—the most endangered of the bunch—managed to eke out a clear majority and avoid a runoff against his Trump-anointed MAGA challenger, Jody Hice. Trump had even endorsed a member of his post-election legal team, Patrick Witt, in a bizarre bid to unseat a Kemp ally as the state’s insurance commissioner. Witt received just 17 percent of the vote.

Those weren’t the only embarrassments Trump suffered Tuesday night. Two of his hand-picked congressional candidates in Georgia—Jake Evans and Vernon Jones—limped into runoffs in their respective primaries. In Alabama, Trump had originally endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks for the state’s open Senate seat. Brooks’ campaign quickly fizzled, and Trump apparently tried to save face by un-endorsing the hard-right congressman, arguing—somewhat absurdly—that Brooks had been insufficiently supportive of his election lies. All this was widely assumed to be a death blow for Brooks’ political future, but it wasn’t. On Tuesday, Brooks finished a distant second place, but that was enough to qualify for a runoff.

Trump did have some successes. Republican voters overwhelmingly renominated Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued Texas attorney general behind one of the most outrageous legal efforts to overturn the 2020 contest. Trump’s choice for lieutenant governor in Georgia, Burt Jones, also secured the GOP nomination. Jones—who was one of the fake electors the Trump campaign infamously tried to send to the Electoral College—is seeking to replace Geoff Duncan, one of the party’s most vocal critics of Trump’s Big Lie.

A year ago, it would have been difficult to imagine Duncan winning a Republican primary, and he chose not to run again. One wonders if he’d make the same decision today. He recently told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a lot of Republicans were “vicariously living” through him. “But everyday there’s more and more folks that have the confidence to walk out in front of what used to look like a freight train but now is just a matchbox car,” he said.

The power of the MAGA movement isn’t exactly waning. Kemp, one of America’s most conservative governors, has taken pains to avoid criticizing Trump. “I’m not mad at him,” he told reporters Monday. But Kemp has proven that it’s possible for a Republican to tell Trump no—to refuse his demand to carry out a coup, and to emerge from that fight stronger than ever.

On democracy, as on firearms, Republicans now have a real choice. If they choose to help steal elections, it’s because they want to. If they choose to ignore the gun crisis, it’s because they want to do that, too. Trump can’t force them to do anything. Neither can the NRA. Cowardice is no longer an excuse.

Blood on hands...

He Did Not Act Alone

An incomplete list of the Uvalde shooter’s accomplices.

CLARA JEFFERY

“We don’t know his motive yet, but authorities believe he acted alone”…“it was a lone gunman”…“the shooter acted alone…”

No, he didn’t.

A motive will probably be assigned to him. We have studied every mass shooting since 1982. And the “motives” are usually some combination of the following: He struggled with bullying. Or self-loathing and depression. Maybe he had an ax to grind with an authority figure. Maybe he hated a certain group of people.

But whatever we learn about the Uvalde shooter, or any future ones—because there will be more—don’t say they “acted alone,” which is largely media code for “this doesn’t appear to be Islamic terrorism.” No matter the particulars, these “lone” gunmen all have scores of accomplices. Here is a wholly incomplete list of those who bear direct responsibility in this slaughter of 19 children and two teachers, and the brutality visited on those still in the hospital, all the families, and the community and country at large:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: A relentless cheerleader for gun extremism, last year he gleefully signed seven bills rolling back gun regulations—including abolishing licenses for handguns. In the aftermath of this shooting he blamed mental health issues, a go-to tactic to distract from the gun debate, despite having cut $211 million from the agency that provides state mental health services.

The GOP-controlled Texas statehouse, which had already passed a slew of laws that rolled back any reasonable gun restrictions—many of which they did immediately after mass shootings, including permitless carry. 

Sen. Ted Cruz, a leading recipient of gun lobby money, who now suggests the solution is forcing students and staff to enter and leave through one door. Scholars of military “kill zone” tactics and the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire beg to differ. 

Sen. John Cornyn, ever content to draft in behind his slightly more venal compatriot, who is making bleating noises about possible compromises he will vote against in the end.

Rupert Murdoch, for translating the El Paso, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh shooters’ screeds into prime-time programming.

Every damn person who works for Fox News now, and really since at least 2010. Like gun manufacturers, they sell fear and grievance to a mostly white male audience. They profit off of hate. And cable companies are their accomplices.

Every politician—looking at you, Elise Stefanik—fueling “replacement theory” hate to raise money and get more Fox air time.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who won’t bring HR 8—requiring universal background checks—to an immediate vote because, he says, people know where their senators stand, and he hopes to reach a compromise bill that can get 60 votes. Charlie Brown, Lucy, football. 

Every member of Congress who isn’t right this minute working to get additional bills to the floor to pass national red flag laws, institute waiting periods, limit high-capacity guns and clips, finally digitize ATF records, permit federal research into gun crimes—any of a dozen commonsense laws that have overwhelming bipartisan public support. No meaningful federal laws have been passed since 20 children and six educators were slaughtered at Sandy Hook elementary, in Newtown, Connecticut.

Every member of Congress and every single one of their staffers who is more concerned with getting home for the holiday weekend than doing something to end the carnage. Especially after they just acted with “lightning speed” when people peacefully protested at the houses of Supreme Court justices.

The four Democratic senators (Harry Reid doesn’t count) who joined the Republicans to vote against the 2016 ­­Manchin–Toomey compromise bill on background checks. Especially Heidi Heitkamp, who, when asked about her vote on Thursday, told a reporter, “I no longer have to answer your questions.” Nice.

Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who will not override the filibuster even to prevent the slaughter of school kids, shoppers, or churchgoers—even for HR 8, which is essentially the bill Manchin championed for years.

Extra points for Manchin telling reporters yesterday that this time compromise talk “feels a little different.” Which he said after Parkland. And Newtown.

And for Sinema, who said she doesn’t believe that “DC solutions are realistic here.”

Every member of Congress who voted to give gun manufacturers a liability shield in 2005. (Looking at you, Henry Cuellar!) George W Bush for signing it.

Antonin Scalia, for replacing the actual, arcane, mostly insignificant Second Amendment with an entirely invented new one that overrides seemingly everything else in American life.

The high priests of the Beltway “both sides” oracle.

The “thoughts and prayers” crew.

Gun manufacturers and their handmaidens at the NRA, which agreed to the Manchin–Toomey bill back in 2013, but then walked away once it received concessions. 

Vladimir Putin, who, together with his spies, helped bolster the NRA because he saw it as a way to sow domestic division.

Alex Jones. Seriously, fuck that guy forever. Ditto to his anonymous Bitcoin donor. And Ted Cruz for defending him.

Ted Cruz, again, for this.

Trump. Too many reasons to list. Here’s the latest.

Social media companies and streamers that drag their feet about taking down shooters’ videos and rants, and do not invest nearly enough to keep their platforms from fueling the “Columbine effect.”

Everybody pushing lockdown drills and bulletproof backpacks and arming teachers—and other reactive, largely performative measures. Active school shooter drills are shown to deeply traumatize children, and there’s little evidence that they’ve reduced the overall carnage. They certainly don’t prevent school shootings. We should be investing school and community resources in a far more robust and universal “threat assessment” plan to ID troubled individuals, support them, and dissuade them from violent acts.

Every politician and pundit saying more armed cops on campuses is the answer. Uvalde is an utter refutation of the bogus “good guy with a gun” claim, which was only ever about increasing gun sales.

Every politician who declares they are “pro-life” yet are wantonly indifferent to the carnage of their gun policies and positions. They’ll force you to have a child, and then lead that child to slaughter.

Everybody who is tossing their hands up and declaring that nothing will ever change. Yes, the anti-majoritarian Senate and state legislatures are pushing the ideas of an extreme minority onto the rest of us, on this subject and so many others. Yes, there are millions of guns out there already. That only means we have to fight harder, and for longer. But change can come if we are willing to put in the work.

RCW 86

In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a new star in the Nanmen asterism. That part of the sky is identified with Alpha and Beta Centauri on modern star charts. The new star was visible for months and is thought to be the earliest recorded supernova. This deep image shows emission nebula RCW 86, understood to be the remnant of that stellar explosion. The narrowband data trace gas ionized by the still expanding shock wave. Space-based images indicate an abundance of the element iron and lack of a neutron star or pulsar in the remnant, suggesting that the original supernova was Type Ia. Unlike the core collapse supernova explosion of a massive star, a Type Ia supernova is a thermonuclear detonation on a a white dwarf star that accretes material from a companion in a binary star system. Near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy and larger than a full moon on the sky this supernova remnant is too faint to be seen by eye though. RCW 86 is some 8,000 light-years distant and around 100 light-years across.

Bang Bang...

Now you see it...

Now you don't...

 

Found not guilty

Michael Sussmann found not guilty of lying to FBI in Durham investigation

By Marshall Cohen

Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI, in the first trial of special counsel John Durham's investigation.

The verdict is a major defeat for Durham and his Justice Department prosecutors, who have spent three years looking for wrongdoing in the Trump-Russia probe. He claimed Sussmann lied during a 2016 meeting in which he passed a tip to the FBI about Donald Trump and Russia.

The Washington, DC, federal jury deliberated for six hours over two days before reaching its verdict.

The Sussmann case revolved around his September 2016 meeting with James Baker, a friend who was the FBI's general counsel. Sussmann passed along a tip that led to a four-month FBI inquiry into a possible internet backchannel between the Trump Organization and Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank. Both companies denied the claim, and the FBI didn't find any improper cyber links.

Prosecutors argued that Sussmann intentionally lied to Baker by saying he came only as a concerned citizen, and not on behalf of any clients, saying Sussmann hid his ties to Democrats to "manipulate the FBI" and gin up an "October surprise" to help Clinton win.

In Sussmann's telling, at the peak of Russia's attack on the 2016 election, he went to the FBI with a good-faith tip, which originated from reputable cyber experts that he represented. He separately worked on Clinton's behalf to peddle that unverified tip to the press, generating some coverage. He didn't try to dupe Baker or hide his political ties, which were well-known at the FBI.

Durham said in a statement that he was "disappointed" with the verdict.

"While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury's decision and thank them for their service," Durham said in a statement. "I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case."

Durham investigation takes a hit

So far, Durham's work has only led to one conviction: the guilty plea of a junior FBI lawyer who was involved in a wiretapping warrant for a former Trump 2016 campaign adviser. Durham also charged a Russian expat tied to the infamous Steele dossier, whose trial is slated for October.

The Sussmann case was the first major courtroom test for Durham, and the acquittal may bolster Durham's critics, who believe he's running a politicized probe into flimsy theories.

Trump has treated Durham's probe as a political weapon, stoking excitement in the right-wing ecosystem that Durham will deliver Watergate-caliber indictments against Clinton loyalists and the "deep state" government agents who supposedly conspired against him. He has even suggested that Sussmann's and other Democrats' conduct should be "punishable by death."

Durham's efforts to "investigate the investigators" are ongoing, and have outlasted the Russia probe itself, which was taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller and convicted six Trump associates, including his lawyer, his 2016 campaign chair, and a senior White House official.

Leak investigation

Supreme Court leak investigation heats up as clerks are asked for phone records in unprecedented move

By Joan Biskupic

Supreme Court officials are escalating their search for the source of the leaked draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, taking steps to require law clerks to provide cell phone records and sign affidavits, three sources with knowledge of the efforts have told CNN.

Some clerks are apparently so alarmed over the moves, particularly the sudden requests for private cell data, that they have begun exploring whether to hire outside counsel.

The court's moves are unprecedented and the most striking development to date in the investigation into who might have provided Politico with the draft opinion it published on May 2. The probe has intensified the already high tensions at the Supreme Court, where the conservative majority is poised to roll back a half-century of abortion rights and privacy protections.

Chief Justice John Roberts met with law clerks as a group after the breach, CNN has learned, but it is not known whether any systematic individual interviews have occurred.

Lawyers outside the court who have become aware of the new inquiries related to cell phone details warn of potential intrusiveness on clerks' personal activities, irrespective of any disclosure to the news media, and say they may feel the need to obtain independent counsel.

"That's what similarly situated individuals would do in virtually any other government investigation," said one appellate lawyer with experience in investigations and knowledge of the new demands on law clerks. "It would be hypocritical for the Supreme Court to prevent its own employees from taking advantage of that fundamental legal protection."

Sources familiar with efforts underway say the exact language of the affidavits or the intended scope of that cell phone search -- content or time period covered -- is not yet clear.

The Supreme Court did not respond to a CNN request on Monday for comment related to the phone searches and affidavits.

The young lawyers selected to be law clerks each year are regarded as the elite of the elite. (Each justice typically hires four.) They are overwhelmingly graduates of Ivy League law schools and have had prior clerkships with prominent US appellate court judges.

Their one-year service becomes a golden ticket to prestigious law firms, top government jobs or professorships. Six of the current nine Supreme Court justices are former clerks.

The escalating scrutiny of law clerks reflects Roberts' concerns about the breach in confidentiality and possibly further leaks. It also suggests the court has been so far unsuccessful in determining Politico's source.

Roberts ordered the investigation on May 3, designating the court's marshal, Gail Curley, to lead the probe.

Curley, a lawyer and former Army colonel, oversees the police officers at the building. She is best known to the public as the person who chants, "Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!" at the beginning of the justices' oral argument sessions. The marshal's office would not normally examine the details of cell phone data or engage in a broad-scale investigation of personnel.

The investigation comes at the busiest time in the court's annual term, when relations among the justices are already taut. Assisted by their law clerks, the justices are pressing toward late June deadlines, trying to resolve differences in the toughest cases, all with new pressures and public scrutiny.

Because of protests and security concerns related to the Mississippi abortion case, the court building is surrounded by an 8-foot non-scalable fence and concrete barriers.

The justices are also resolving a New York dispute that could, based on their remarks during oral arguments in November, expand Second Amendment protection for gun owners. Additionally, the court could further lower the wall of separation between church and state by permitting certain prayer at public schools and requiring public vouchers for religious institutions.

The draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was written by Justice Samuel Alito and appeared to have a five-justice majority to completely reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. That landmark ruling made abortion legal nationwide and buttressed other privacy interests not expressly stated in the Constitution. Some law professors have warned that if Roe is reversed, the Supreme Court's 2015 decision declaring a constitutional right to same-sex marriage could be in jeopardy.

Publication of the Alito draft opinion has already prompted national protests and dueling state legislative efforts -- to further eliminate all options for a woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy or, alternatively, to try to safeguard women's access to abortion where possible.

But it is difficult for anyone outside the building to know whether the Alito draft still commands a majority on a court tightly divided on abortion rights and split over how quickly to reverse precedent.

Scrutiny of a secretive group

As the justices continue their secret negotiations, the scrutiny of the law clerks is heating up.

The clerks have been the subject of much of the outside speculation over who might have disclosed the draft, but they are not the only insiders who had access. Alito's opinion, labeled a first draft and dated February 10, would have been circulated to the nine justices, their clerks, and key staffers within each justice's chambers and select administrative offices.

If tradition was followed, copies were sent electronically and, separately, printed out and hand-delivered to chambers by aides to the marshal.

Other employees connected to the nine chambers would have had some access to the opinion. CNN could not verify that number, but former law clerks say the document could have been sent through regular channels to nearly 75 people. It is not known if court officials are asking employees who are part of the permanent staff, beyond the one-year law clerks, for their phone records.

Cell phones, of course, hold an enormous amount of information, related to personal interactions, involving all manner of content, texts and images, as well as apps used. It is uncertain whether details linked only to calls would be sought or whether a broader retrieval would occur.

There are protocols for handling drafts of court opinions, which circulate electronically on a closed system, separate from the computer system the justices and court employees use to communicate with people outside the court. Yet it is possible for printed copies to leave the building under even innocent circumstances, as work is taken home.

Court officials are secretive even in normal times. No progress reports related to the leak investigation have been made public, and it is not clear whether any report from the probe will ever be released.

Not good...

US President Biden says he won't send rockets to Ukraine that could reach Russia

From CNN's Kevin Liptak

US President Joe Biden said he doesn't plan to ship any rockets to Ukraine that could reach Russian territory.

"I won't send anything that can fire into Russia," Biden said at the White House on Monday when asked whether he was planning to send long-range rockets to Ukraine.

CNN reported last week the Biden administration is preparing to step up the kind of weaponry it is offering Ukraine by sending advanced, long-range rocket systems that are now the top request from Ukrainian officials.

The administration is leaning toward sending the systems as part of a larger package of military and security assistance to Ukraine, which could be announced as soon as next week.

The administration has wavered on whether to send the systems amid concerns raised within the National Security Council that Ukraine could use the new weapons to carry out offensive attacks inside Russia, according to officials.

On Friday, after CNN first reported the news, Russians warned that the United States will “cross a red line” if it supplies the systems to Ukraine.

More background: The rocket systems the Biden administration is preparing to send to Ukraine are capable of firing different kinds of ammunition that reach a range of distances.

While some of the longer-range weapons can fire 300 miles (or about 500 kilometers) or more, the systems can also launch rockets with a range of just a few dozen miles — not considered long-range weapons but still able to reach a greater distance than the howitzers the US has already sent to Ukraine.

Biden's comments Monday leave open the possibility that the US could send the advanced, long-range rocket systems without the longest-range rockets.

Everything Is Fodder

For the Right, Everything Is Fodder for the War on Public School—Even Mass Shootings

The Federalist used the horrific Texas shooting to continue the conservative argument against public education.

EAMON WHALEN

How do we stop this? In the aftermath of Tuesday’s horrific tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman shot and killed 19 children and 2 adults, that question has followed a frustratingly similar script as past mass shootings. Liberals pled, to mostly deaf ears, for gun control laws in the one country where this happens. Conservatives pled for more guns, pearl-clutching about the politicization of a tragedy born of political decisions. Recently, there have been mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Laguna Woods, California. In New York City, a man shot and injured 23 people at a subway station in Sunset Park.

Over the last few months, we have not even had time to finish a cycle of mourning and remembrance before another shooting happens. Each is met with reality–defying talking points from Republicans. Rinse and repeat. More death.

And so to use this as a moment for shitposting would be obviously obscene when many are genuinely desperate for a solution.

Still, it happened.

Because this most recent shooting occurred, like Sandy Hook and Parkland and so many before it, in a school, some conservatives are adding a disgraceful, yet altogether unsurprising, wrinkle to the mix: It’s the schools themselves that are the problem.

Writing in The Federalist on Wednesday, staff writer Jordan Boyd argued that Tuesday’s tragedy made a “somber case for homeschooling.” More specifically, Boyd singles out “government schools” as the culprit. “The same institutions that punish students for ‘misgendering’ people and hide curriculum from parents are simply not equipped to safeguard your children from harm,” wrote Boyd. 

Boyd continues, “You can’t protect your kids from everything. There’s no telling when a crazy gunman might open fire in a movie theater or a grocery store. You can, however, do your best to prevent them from being sitting ducks at frequently targeted locations such as schools by keeping them by your side.”

This is an unserious argument made in bad faith. The gunman at Sandy Hook was homeschooled. Initial reports of good guys with guns on the scene in Uvalde, do not fill one with confidence, either. Videos show police officers more concerned with restraining parents than with rushing in to stop the shooter. But, perhaps most importantly, Boyd is hiding the ball.

The article is using a horrific tragedy to shoehorn in another argument against public schools. These are the same people who have spent the last year leading an assault on public schools through the dueling moral panics of schoolteachers brainwashing children with critical race theory and sexually grooming them. The Federalist has often written about and boosted homeschooling as a bulwark against the idea of big government and has dutifully covered the critical race theory and grooming stories. The goal, with all of this, as the CRT-panic architect Christopher Rufo has repeatedly stated, is to rally parents behind a plan to “lay siege to the institutions,” with public education first on their proverbial hit list. Do they hate public education because it fails to protect children? Because it actually fills kid’s heads with bad ideas about race or gender or sexual identity? Or do they just hate public education because it’s public?

How to go about enacting, let alone passing, effective gun control in a country with a historically unprecedented number of firearms is, to be sure, a thorny and complex issue. Only in a monstrous society would children be so often sent to their death at the place they go to learn and socialize. Fixing the problem and its underlying issues deserves far more than a shoulder-shrug emoji in written form.  

And so to offer a solution that is little more than part of a continuing war on public education? That makes a “somber case” for the nihilism of some on the right that allows them to use anything for their war on public schools—even mass shootings.

Stupid little dance....

The Worst Part of Trump’s Performance at NRA’s Convention Wasn’t When He Read Uvalde Victims’ Names

It was the little dance.

RUSS CHOMA

Former president Donald Trump spoke at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Houston, Texas, Friday night, giving a speech laden with falsehoods about gun control and school shootings. He ended with a strange dance, more fitting for one of his elaborate campaign events than a policy speech in the wake of this week’s horrific attack at an elementary school in Uvalde—250 miles east of the NRA event—that left 19 children and two adults dead. 

While other major GOP politicians decided not to show up or canceled their appearances at this year’s convention in light of the school shooting—including Texas governor Greg Abbott who recorded a speech and Texas senator John Cornyn who stayed in Washington, DC, to negotiate with Senate Democrats about possible new legislation—Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz were both on stage at the George R. Brown Convention Center Friday night.

Trump opened his speech by reading the names of the children slain in Uvalde, accompanied by the sound of a recorded bell tolling. 

The focus of both Trump and Cruz’s speeches was an insistence that the real focus of lawmakers should be “hardening” schools. Cruz called for schools to have just one door that can be secured by armed guards—a tactic that didn’t work at the Sandy Hook elementary school.  Trump said that the federal government should take back unused Covid-relief funds and “use that money to quickly establish impenetrable security at every school all across our land.” Trump also made a bizarre and incorrect claim that president Joe Biden is thinking about “putting U.N. bureaucrats in charge of your Second Amendment rights.”

Both men also complained about violent crime as a reason that gun control can’t work, with Cruz referring to Chicago as a “murder hellhole.” Trump said that if elected president again, he would be much more heavy-handed in fighting crime: “I would crack down on violent crime like never before.”

Despite the attempts to create a somber tone, Trump eventually turned the speech into an opportunity to stump for a presumed second term in the White House, sniping that he was willing to show up to the event while others, like Abbott, did not. At the end of the speech, basking in the applause, Trump even broke out into a weird dance.

Oil is a slippery slope...

Weaning Ourselves off Fossil Fuels Is Going to Hurt

Investors will take a hit, a new study shows—but that’s no excuse for climate inaction.

DAMIAN CARRINGTON

Individuals in rich countries face huge financial losses if climate action slashes the value of fossil fuel assets, a study shows, despite many oil and gas fields being in other countries.

The researchers estimated that existing oil and gas projects worth $1.4 trillion would lose their value if the world moved decisively to cut carbon emissions and limit global heating to 2C. By tracking many thousands of projects through 1.8 million companies to their ultimate owners, the team found most of the losses would be borne by individual people through their pensions, investment funds, and shareholdings.

The analysis also found that financial institutions have $681 billion worth of these potentially worthless assets on their balance sheets, more than the estimated $250-500 billion of mispriced subprime housing assets that triggered the 2007-08 financial crisis.

The researchers did not predict if or when these fossil fuel “stranded assets” would cause a financial crash, but said the size of the number was worrying. The US and UK are by far the countries with the biggest potential stranded assets in their financial sectors.

Overall, the study calculated that individuals own 54 percent of the $1.4 trillion in oil and gas assets at risk—$756 billion. Three-quarters of these people are in the 38 developed countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) group. Governments and corporate creditors carry the balance.

But the proportion is much higher in the US and UK, where individuals own 86 percent and 75 percent of the potentially stranded assets respectively. In contrast, 80 percent of those assets in China are owned by the government.

“It is pretty obvious now that the fossil fuel companies are doing things that are not compatible with mitigating climate change,” said Dr Gregor Semieniuk, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, US, who led the research. The Guardian recently revealed that oil and gas companies are planning scores of vast “carbon bomb” projects that would shatter internationally agreed climate targets.

“I did not imagine that individual people would ultimately end up with so much of the risk,” said Semieniuk. “This is particularly relevant for countries like the US and UK, which show up as very major losers. That is where I think the losses really get spread around society.”

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, said the rate of change needed to tackle the climate crisis was “so large that the rapid collapse of fossil fuel industries presents major transition risks.” The researchers compared a scenario in which little was done to limit global heating and temperatures rise by 3.5C with a scenario in which substantial action was taken and the global temperature rise was limited to 2C.

In the second scenario, oil and gas projects valued today at $1.4 trillion cannot continue production and lose their value. The team traced this loss from 43,439 oil and gas production assets through a network of 1.8m companies to their ultimate owners. They concluded: “Most of the market risk falls on private investors, overwhelmingly in OECD countries, including substantial exposure through pension funds and financial markets.”

The countries hit hardest by losses in the financial sector would be the US, with $283 billion at risk, and the UK ($98 billion), both far above the third-placed nation, the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands ($28 billion). Canada and Australia are in the top six. About 90 percent of the risk in the UK is due to ownership of oil and gas assets in other parts of the world.

Companies in the Middle East do not have such high losses in the 2C scenario because some oil and gas will continue to be used and they are the cheapest suppliers.

Semieniuk said the $681 billion of potentially worthless oil and gas assets on the balance sheets of financial institutions was large compared with the sub-prime housing assets that led to the 2007-08 financial crash.

“One can compare these numbers in the sense that there’s a bunch of mispriced assets floating around, if we believe in climate change mitigation,” he said. “This number is quite worrying. If the transition [to a net zero world] isn’t prudently managed, it raises the risk of financial instability.”

Mike Coffin, at the financial think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative, said the new analysis was complementary to CTI’s own research, which recently found oil companies were at risk of wasting $500 billion on future projects.

Coffin said the study focused on future losses from existing assets. “What is critical is that investors recognize the risk of committing huge amounts of capital in new assets that run the risk of becoming stranded as long-term fossil demand weakens.” The Guardian recently worked with CTI to show the 12 biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103 million a day to 2030 on projects that would mean attempts to keep global heating well below 2C would fail.

The study also focused on exploration and production. But including other parts of the oil and gas industry, such as refineries and equipment suppliers, would increase potential losses, Coffin said. “The overall magnitude of the stranded asset risk within the oil and gas industry is likely to be significantly larger than that quantified in the study.”

They must fuck their guns to protect them this much..

At the NRA Convention, People Blame Mass Shootings on Everything but Guns

Attendees mentioned “evil,” “woke mobs,” and the conspiracy that this was just a way to take away their firearms.

TOM PHILPOTT

The nation has been plunged into despair and mourning. A little more than a week after the slaughter of 10 people by a white supremacist in Buffalo, a gunman killed 19 children and 2 adults in Uvalde, Texas, as police stood by in what seems a glacial and incompetent response. The tragedies renewed calls for gun control. In a national address, President Joe Biden called for a coordinated response to take on the gun lobby. Democratic legislatures have moved to pass gun control legislation at the state level.

And in Houston, the National Rifle Association still threw a party. Despite the tragedies, the NRA’s annual national convention went ahead this weekend. It was, as my colleague Inae Oh wrote, déjà-vu. After the Columbine shooting in 1999, the NRA decided to still hold its convention in Colorado.

Two messages emerged from the assembled throngs and the doting politicians in attendance, just 300 miles from Uvalde: 1) People must continue to enjoy the right to acquire any damn firearm they choose, without meddling from the state; and 2) the massacre had absolutely nothing—not a thing!—to do with the untrammeled commerce in guns. And may in fact have been a staged conspiracy meant to trigger crackdown on this inalienable (and yet recently invented) right . 

A couple of NRA-worshipping politicians (Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. John Cornyn) found the prospect of whipping up fervor for gun acquisition just three days after bullets killed 19 children and two teachers just a bit much, and backed out of scheduled appearances. Former president Donald Trump would not be so deterred. In a rambling hour-long performance that “devolved into a stump speech,” Politico reported, the former president took a poke at his peers who had proven too delicate to appear under the circumstances. “Unlike some, I didn’t disappoint you by not showing up,” Trump told the the cheering crowd. 

He went on to analyze the Uvalde shooter’s act as one of “evil”—and cite it as a reason for Americans to buy and carry more arms. He conjured a future of schools as war zones, teeming with gun-packing teachers (who should be “able to handle” active shooters) and armed-to-the-teeth cops. “Congress should vote immediately to take back every penny of unused Covid relief money … take it back from the states and use that money to quickly establish impenetrable security at every school all across our land,” he declared. And he vowed—suggesting a restoration of his presidency in 2024— to “crack down on violent crime like never before.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—a staunch Trump ally but a potential rival in 2024—denounced the “elites who dominate our culture, [who] tell us that firearms lie at the root of the problem,” The Washington Post reported. The “real goal” of many politicians on the left “is disarming America.” He added: “It’s far easier to slander one’s political adversaries and to demand that responsible citizens forfeit their constitutional rights than it is to examine the cultural sickness, giving birth to unspeakable acts of evil.” In short, guns don’t kill people; something called “evil” kills people. And the only antidote to it is more guns. 

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem—also a Trump acolyte and possible rival to the GOP throne—delivered perhaps the most unhinged rant of all. She insisted that that the “woke mob” is using the Uvalde atrocity as an excuse to end gun rights. Bizarrely, she suggested that the US founders might have been moved to construct the Second Amendment as a response to the French Revolution, according to an account in Newsweek. “In Paris, which was the center of European learning and culture for a thousand years, mobs tore down statues and crosses,” the governor recounted. “Does that sound familiar?”

In her tortured logic, the French monarchy had fallen to a “woke mob,” and could have maintained power … if only more citizens had been packing guns, which presumably they would have used to shoot the revolutionaries. She continued:

We have seen the same type of radical mob mentality taking place on the streets of American cities that swept Paris in the 1790s.

Woke mobs are tearing down statues, and it doesn’t matter who they are of. Our founding fathers, Catholic missionaries. They even wanted to come after Mt. Rushmore. Well not on my watch.

Not surprisingly, the conference’s attendees proffered dark conspiracies about the Uvalde shootings. One man found the timing suspiciously convenient, Politico reports:

“Why did it happen three days ago?” asked Jim Hollis, a lifetime NRA benefactor from St. Louis. “I’m not sure that there are not forces someplace that somehow find troubled people and nurture and develop them and push them for their own agendas.”

Thus, rather than spark a national reckoning on the recent explosion in gun sales, including the assault rifles preferred by mass shooters, the carnage of children in Uvalde instantly became enmeshed in the forever culture war. And the gun nuts who assembled in Houston are winning. Despite their shrieks of grievance, Congress shows no sign of acting to regulate gun access. And the gun-loving Republican Party looks set to clean up in the November midterm elections. 

Burned papers

Meadows burned papers after meeting with Scott Perry, Jan. 6 panel told

The unusual move came after a meeting between then-President Donald Trump's then-chief of staff and the Pennsylvania Republican, according to recent testimony.

By BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN and KYLE CHENEY

Then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows burned papers in his office after meeting with a House Republican who was working to challenge the 2020 election, according to testimony the Jan. 6 select committee has heard from one of his former aides.

Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked under Meadows when he was former President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, told the panel investigating the Capitol attack that she saw Meadows incinerate documents after a meeting in his office with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). A person familiar with the testimony described it on condition of anonymity.

The Meadows-Perry meeting came in the weeks after Election Day 2020, as Trump and his allies searched for ways to reverse the election results.

It’s unclear whether Hutchinson told the committee which specific papers were burnt, and if federal records laws required the materials’ preservation. Meadows’ destruction of papers is a key focus for the select committee, and the person familiar with the testimony said investigators pressed Hutchinson for details about the issue for more than 90 minutes during a recent deposition.

POLITICO could not independently confirm that Meadows burned papers after a meeting with Perry.

A lawyer for Meadows declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee. A lawyer for Hutchinson did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did a spokesperson for Perry.

Before the 2020 election, Perry — who represents the Harrisburg, Pa. region — had a relatively low national profile. But testimony and documents obtained by congressional investigators show he was the first person to connect Trump with Jeffrey Clark, a top Justice Department official who sympathized with the then-president’s efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden.

Senior Trump DOJ officials have testified that the former president came close to appointing Clark as acting attorney general in order to use the department’s extraordinary powers to sow doubt about the election results and urge state legislatures to consider overriding Biden’s victory.

Perry, now chair of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, spent weeks pressing Meadows to implement the plan.

“Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down,” Perry texted Meadows on Dec. 26, 2020, according to messages released by the select panel. “11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!”

But the effort didn’t come to fruition. Instead, in an Oval Office meeting, the rest of DOJ leadership threatened to quit if Trump made Clark attorney general.

The select committee has also revealed that Meadows and Perry took steps to conceal some of their communications after the election. For example, in a Dec. 2020 text message exchange the committee included in an April court filing, Perry told Meadows he had “just sent you something on Signal,” referring to the encrypted messaging app popular with journalists and government officials.

An investigation by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee last year delved further into Perry’s involvement in the attempt to overturn the election and urged the Jan. 6 select panel to look into the Pennsylvanian further.

Earlier this month, the select panel also subpoenaed Perry and four other Republican lawmakers. Perry’s compliance deadline is today, and he hasn’t signaled whether or not he will cooperate. The select committee also subpoenaed Clark and later voted in favor of holding him in contempt of Congress, although the full House has not taken any such vote.

Since his involvement with the former president’s efforts, Perry has gained political clout. In November, he was elected head of the Freedom Caucus, which wields significant influence in the House Republican conference.

The New York Times first reported that the committee heard testimony indicating Meadows burned White House papers. The Trump White House’s unorthodox approach to document management has drawn significant media scrutiny in recent weeks — and has also caught the attention of DOJ.

During his presidency, Trump was known to tear up papers and throw them in the trash. Aides would scurry to reassemble those papers for archiving, as federal record-keeping laws require.

After leaving the White House, Trump had 15 boxes of documents shipped to Mar-a-Lago. Some of those boxes were marked as classified, according to The Washington Post, and the Justice Department is now investigating the matter. Mishandling classified material is illegal.

He is so stupid, it not only hurts my mind but it hurts to world as a whole....

‘He doesn't speak in beautiful syntax’: GOP bets the Senate that Walker is ready for prime time

Herschel Walker’s post-primary victory lap was a fresh reminder of his promise and peril as GOP nominee in Georgia.

By BRITTANY GIBSON

It’s a standard political ploy, straight out of a challenger’s playbook: demand a series of debates the moment the primaries are over. Only in Georgia, it was incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock who issued the call Thursday for three televised debates, as soon as his fall Senate election match-up with Herschel Walker was set.

Warnock’s move made sense in light of a head-scratching moment the day before. In response to a question about gun control legislation, Walker offered a rambling answer so nonsensical that it underscored longstanding concerns about whether he is ready for the rigors of a punishing, high-stakes Senate campaign.

If his runaway primary victory offered a glimpse at his promise as a Senate candidate, then Walker’s answer on guns was a fresh reminder of his risks as GOP nominee in one of the Senate’s most pivotal races.

“They [the Warnock campaign] are signaling what they think is their pathway to victory. They are telegraphing their strategy: to try to get Herschel Walker into unscripted moments where he’s got to act on his feet,” said Brian Robinson, a Republican consultant in Georgia. “I think what stands out to me is the timing of it and telegraphing the strategy of what they think their strengths are, and what they think Herschel Walker’s weakness is.”

Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner accustomed to the breezy fame of an athlete-celebrity, has never run for public office before. But his personal and business history has been the subject of unflattering media coverage, leading to harsh Democratic criticism and private concerns among Republicans about his ability to withstand scrutiny in the crucible of one of the most competitive races in the country.

In the primary, Walker sat for interviews with conservative press outlets and sports podcasters. But political journalists who staked out his campaign events — there were more than 100 across the state — rarely got the opportunity to question him.

When Walker did respond to spontaneous questions, he had a tendency to stumble.

In January, when asked how he would have voted on the bipartisan infrastructure bill — a standard question for a candidate running for Senate — he said the question was “totally unfair” because he didn’t know the facts of the bill. At a church event in March, Walker questioned evolution, asking if humans evolved from apes, then “why are there still apes? Think about it.”

None of it, however, seemed quite as awkward as his post-election victory lap. The primary took place on the same day as the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and after his victory speech, Walker was asked if he supported new gun laws in the wake of the tragedy. “What I like to do is see it and everything and stuff,” he told CNN.

The following day, he sat for a cable news hit with Fox News that prompted Warnock’s calls for debate. Walker again tripped on his own words when asked for his policy views on gun restrictions.

“Well, you know, it’s always been an issue, because as I said earlier on, they wanna score political points ... People see that it’s a person wielding that weapon, you know, Cain killed Abel,” Walker said. “And that’s the problem that we have. And I said, what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things.

“You talk about doing a disinformation,” he continued, “what about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women, that’s looking at their social media? What about doing that, looking into things like that, and we can stop that that way?”

His meandering answers breathed new life into criticism he faced from his Republican primary opponents, who accused him of hiding from them and being afraid to debate. As the clear front-runner in that contest, Walker refused to attend debates, dismissing his opponents for not working hard enough and trailing in the polls.

At one debate, attended by his five Republican rivals, one of his foes called him out for his debate-dodging.

“I think a simple question for Herschel Walker is, what do you think the United States Senate does?” said former Navy SEAL officer Latham Saddler. “It’s the deliberative body of Congress. It’s what you do as a United States senator, you get up there and you debate ideas…. And Herschel Walker can’t get up here.”

Democrats are eager to see Walker on a stage with Warnock, a minister and polished speaker with two debates under his belt after his successful 2020 campaign against GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler.

“Every report and every scandal that emerges about Herschel Walker reinforces why he has absolutely no place in the U.S, Senate. And for voters, the conclusion will be really simple. Walker is not who he says he is. He’s not for the job. And he shouldn’t be representing Georgians in the Senate. Just plain and simple,” said Dan Gottlieb, spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Georgia. “So in that regard, we think this guy’s wrong for Georgia, [and] we would like to have that discussion.”

Walker’s weaknesses as a candidate aren’t a secret. And as a first-timer in a marquee race that could decide control of the Senate, he has received a crash course in campaigns, politics and government from top party leaders.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who talked with Walker for three hours at his campaign HQ, told POLITICO they talked about “everything from being a candidate to being a senator to thinking about debating Warnock and how to handle debates.”

Gingrich, now a Fox News commentator, said Walker will immediately become a national figure in the Republican Party and will help the GOP appeal to Black voters. He added that the GOP needs “aggressive competitors who like to win” and that Walker personifies it.

“I think [people] are going to be surprised by how calmly confident he is, and how impossible it is for Warnock or anyone else to intimidate him,” Gingrich said.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) flew to Mar-A-Lago to talk shop with Walker. Walker has also met with Republican Sens. Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), and had regular conversations with Trump.

In addition, Walker has a standing weekly check-in with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

“I mean I’ve had more experience with this sort of thing than he has and it’s not all that different from other campaigns that we’ve [helped],” said McConnell in an interview with POLITICO. “He’s a quick study and very good at bridging the divisions down there that have been on full display for the last couple of years, which I think is really important going into the general.”

Walker has previously said on the campaign trail that he plans to debate Warnock in the fall. His campaign reiterated that position after the primary, but declined to address Warnock’s three-debate proposal.

“Herschel very much looks forward to debating Raphael Warnock and his lock step support for Joe Biden’s disastrous policies this fall,” Walker spokesperson Mallory Blount said in a written statement.

The early sparring over debates is already providing insights into each campaign’s approach to the general election, and a key hurdle for Walker to overcome if he is to oust Warnock.

“He doesn’t speak in beautiful syntax, by any means,” said Robinson, the GOP consultant. “But, you know, I think his voters will say what they said about Trump quite often, ‘Well, I know what he was trying to say.’”

Mental illness is right, but who has it???

'It's straight out of a playbook': At NRA convention, conspiracy theories abound

To many attendees, the mass shooting in Uvalde was about mental illness and dark forces pushing their own agendas.

By DAVID SIDERS

The protesters who raised their middle fingers and shouted “shame” outside the National Rifle Association’s big gathering here on Friday had assumed — like much of official Washington — that the timing of a school shooting three days earlier might somehow be problematic for the NRA.

For gun enthusiasts and the Republican politicians courting them, it was only more reason to come.

Here, amid acres of guns and tactical gear inside a cavernous convention hall, the proximate cause of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was not a rifle, but mental illness, shadowy forces of evil or, as one man in a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt put it, the “destruction of our children” by the teachings of the left.

In Uvalde, a makeshift memorial of white wooden crosses had gone up for the 19 children and two adults slain. But at the NRA meeting in Houston, less than 300 miles away, the shooting had been reduced to a sling stone in the broader culture wars. The slaughter, it was universally agreed, was a tragedy. But gun owners saw themselves as set upon, too.

The Second Amendment, former President Donald Trump said, was “totally under siege.” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said the “real goal” of many politicians on the left “is disarming America.” Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota who, like Cruz, may run for president in 2024, warned, “Now is not the time to cave to the woke culture.”

“It’s not a gun control problem. It’s a demon control problem,” said Joe Chambers, who had traveled to the conference from Porter, Texas.

His wife, Ana, gestured to the TV cameras and demonstrators outside: “This is all propaganda,” she said. “They’ll use anything to make us look bad.”

On Friday, as the NRA opened its Memorial Day weekend conference, Trump said that if he runs for president again in 2024 and wins, he will adopt a more militaristic approach to public safety, pledging to “crack down on violent crime like never before.”

But beyond that, the reaction by Republicans and the gun lobby to Uvalde followed traditional lines. They called for more spending on school security measures and mental health, while pointing to gun violence in heavily populated, liberal cities. In interview after interview, conference-goers volunteered the federal government’s $40 billion aid package to Ukraine as evidence that the government could afford to spend money hardening schools.

Some, including at least one gun seller, said they could support enacting additional, though limited, gun restrictions. But they were no more prevalent than the conference attendees who were entertaining conspiracy theories, uncertain whether the left was setting them up.

“Why did it happen three days ago?” asked Jim Hollis, a lifetime NRA benefactor from St. Louis. “I’m not sure that there are not forces someplace that somehow find troubled people and nurture and develop them and push them for their own agendas.”

Hollis, who asserted the shooter in Uvalde “could have walked in there with a baseball bat and possibly killed as many kids,” feared the “the attack on gun rights” was “strengthening” after Uvalde.

“There are people who thought they could use this Uvalde situation to dampen this [meeting],” he said.

Said another man, who declined to give his name, at the conference: “It’s straight out of a playbook.”

The NRA meeting was not unaffected by the shooting. Several musicians who had planned to perform at the event — and whose audiences are broader than a GOP primary electorate — did cancel on the NRA. Larry Gatlin, of the Gatlin Brothers, told CNN he “didn’t think it was a good time to go down to Houston and have a party.”

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who had been scheduled to speak at the conference, elected to return to Uvalde instead, though he recorded a video message for the NRA. Daniel Defense, the company that made the gun used in Uvalde — and which posted an image on social media of a small child holding a gun prior to the mass shooting — pulled out.

But there’s a reason that Trump, Cruz and Noem, among others, were all on hand.

“If you’re a politician with a long-term vision, these are opportunities to stand up for the Second Amendment when it’s not easy to do, which could prove useful for a politician, perhaps not in today’s news cycle, but down the road,” said John Thomas, a Republican strategist works on House campaigns across the country.

He said he could envision cutting an ad featuring a Republican’s remarks at the conference: “When times were tough, and the weaker RINOs and liberals wanted to take your guns, you know, such and such stood up for your right to protect yourself and your family.”

It’s that political incentive that explains why, for many Republicans, attendance at the NRA convention was not problematic at all — and also why passage of gun restrictions remains so unlikely. Nationally — and even in heavily Republican Texas — public polling reflects broad support for stricter gun measures. But in recent years, Texas lawmakers have loosened gun laws, not made them more restrictive.

“You can look at the public opinion data and see, yes, there are Republicans who will support things like background checks and ‘red flag laws,’” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, which has polled regularly on the issue. “But the political debate appeals to other impulses that are also evident in public opinion that suggest it is very easy to present Republican voters with slippery slope-type arguments that hinge on negative partisanship and switch the frame of the debate.”

Henson said, “So the debate isn’t about are there reasonable compromises here that might reduce the possibility of events like this,” but rather the GOP’s capitalization on a politically salient message that “Democrats want to take away your guns and are fundamentally against the Constitution and are enemies of Second Amendment rights and therefore rights in general.”

That’s precisely the case that Trump made on Friday, when he derided calls for stricter gun measures as a first step to “total gun confiscation.”

After he finished speaking, as conference-goers left the hall, they were met on the sidewalk by demonstrators who demanded to know if there were any additional gun restrictions they could agree to.

For the most part, the answer was “No.”

“These people, year after year, tragedy after tragedy, it’s the same damn thing over and over again,” said Roland Gutierrez, a Democratic state senator whose district includes Uvalde. “I sometimes think these guys just double down on their madness … rallying up their base of constituents that believe that even mentioning guns is infringing on their Second Amendment rights.”

“It’s mental health and the devil,” he said, in reference to the explanations of gun rights supporters. “And it’s unacceptable … It’s unconscionable.”

Climate action.

Climate burns the right

Australia’s Liberals are the latest major party to pay the price for slow climate action.

BY KARL MATHIESEN

Climate change is heating up elections — and the right is getting torched.

Voters in Australia dumped Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National government from power on Saturday in what has been dubbed the country's "climate election." High-profile Liberals were driven from the party’s inner-city heartlands losing six seats to pro-climate independents and at least one to the Greens. 

New Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flew to Japan Monday to meet leaders from the Quad — a grouping including Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. — bearing a message: “There’s a new government in Australia, and it’s a government that represents a change in terms of the way that we deal with the world on issues like climate change.”

The role climate plays in Australia's politics is extreme, but not unique. Climate change is emerging as an electoral issue and other governments also risk being hurt or outflanked on the left by voters who want further-reaching climate action.

In Germany, the center right was sideswiped by a Green wave. Britain's governing Tories are being pressured by climate rebels on the party's right wing. In France, it's a problem for the center. In the U.S., Joe Biden looks set to suffer.

That's why Australia's election is a warning to “center-right parties worldwide,” said John Flesher, the international spokesperson for the U.K. Conservative Environment Network, a pressure group that aims to promote environmentalism within the Tory party. “Voters of all stripes want politicians to act decisively to tackle climate change.”

Down Under, Morrison’s undoing is being parsed more bluntly. 

“They tried to bullshit their climate policies and they got punished,” said Richie Merzian, a former Australian diplomat who is now director of the climate and energy program at the Australia Institute.

It’s the most dramatic example in a series of recent elections in which climate has played a role.

In Germany in September, the Christian Democrats (CDU) lost their 16-year grip on power to a coalition of Social Democrats, Free Democrats and Greens. Although ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel had adopted one of the most ambitious net zero policies in the world, the party's commitment lost credibility when CDU leader Armin Laschet was videoed laughing during a visit to a town hit by devastating floods last summer and he refused to shift policy amid calls for a stronger response. The Greens surged into third place and were handed ministries with a mandate to clean up Germany’s economy.

The CDU's defeat was not only due to climate change, but "our weak performance" was a factor, said Peter Liese, a member of the European Parliament for the CDU. The "recipe for success," he said, includes stronger climate policy.

Now some CDU figures are pushing for the party to realign and hit the Greens as they struggle to turn their ambitions into policy. “Each party should critically examine its own climate policy goals ... This is not only true for the CDU, but also for the Greens,” said Wiebke Winter, a CDU board member and part of its youth wing. 

In France last month, incumbent President Emmanuel Macron scrambled to draw up a fresh green agenda in the final two weeks of the presidential election campaign after a surprisingly strong challenge from far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who pledged stronger climate action.

Duly reelected, Macron adopted Mélenchon’s policy of centralized, long-term environmental planning and this week swore in a team of ministers charged with that mission. But Mélenchon still has him under pressure, pulling together a coalition of green and left parties with the explicit aim of denying Macron's coalition a majority in June's legislative election.

In the U.S., the Democrats have dismayed left-wing activists by their failure to convince one of their own — Senator Joe Manchin — to pass major climate legislation in the Senate. That risks compounding the party's problems in November's midterm election, said Evergreen Action Executive Director Jamal Raad. Biden won the support of young, climate-concerned voters in 2020, but now “the fear is that they don't vote,” said Raad.

Outflanked

The danger often comes from within.

In Australia, Morrison's Liberal-National Coalition is split between a moderate wing and a right-wing faction that has fought even rudimentary attempts to advance policies to cut emissions. The U.K.’s Conservatives and Germany's CDU also feature anti-climate pressure groups that aim to stoke voters concerns over increasing the cost-of-living with green policy.

That leaves them vulnerable to being outflanked. In the U.K., the Tory party has been advised by pollsters that climate is a “permission-to-play” issue in terms of its credibility with voters, leading Prime Minister Boris Johnson to revise his past climate skepticism and present himself as an evangelist for green issues. 

The Conservative Party has a vocal climate-skeptic wing, which so far hasn't shifted government policy on the issue. But if Johnson bows to their pressure, Flesher said the Australian losses in inner Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney could easily be repeated in Surrey, Canterbury or Wimbledon.

“This could happen in the U.K.'s so-called ‘blue wall’ if the Conservatives diluted the bold environmental platform that helped secure a landslide for the party in 2019,” he said, referring to southern constituencies that could be vulnerable to Labour or Liberal Democrat candidates. Polling by green groups has backed that up, indicating that climate concern runs stronger in Tory strongholds than the rest of the country.

In Australia, the lessons the Liberal-National Coalition draws from its defeat may determine its electoral future. 

The politics of climate have been toxic for more than a decade. Morrison is the fifth prime minister to lose the job in the so-called “climate wars” — but the only one to lose it because his efforts were not considered ambitious enough.

In the days since the election, the divide within the Coalition over climate has been stark: Moderate Liberals have urged the party to return to the center, while the leader of the Nationals Barnaby Joyce said the party might drop its net-zero commitment altogether.

That could play into the hands of the "teal" — Liberal-blue mixed with a splash of green — independents, who burned through the Liberal holdfasts in this election.

“I'm not convinced that drifting any further to the right will help [the Coalition] in an electorate like mine,” said Zoe Daniel, the newly elected independent MP for the inner Melbourne electorate of Goldstein, where she said climate was "the top issue for most people."

A former journalist, Daniel said she was just the kind of “socially progressive, economically conservative” swing voter the Liberals had lost through their failure to act on climate.

Fear factor

As it did last year in Germany, climate change intervened directly in Australian politics.

Morrison’s first full term as prime minister was “bookended by unprecedented bushfires and unprecedented floods, both supercharged by climate change,” said Merzian. Morrison had his Laschet moment when he flew to Hawaii during the fires, saying in an interview: "'I don't hold a hose, mate."

In Brisbane, where floods have repeatedly submerged the city and surrounding country in recent months, the Greens won two seats and are challenging for a third, at least tripling their representation in the lower house of the national parliament.

Seeing climate change in stark reality “has really scared people,” said Daniel. There was a sense among voters that “time is compressing. That you can't just keep thinking, ‘Oh, well, that's something that's going to happen down the track.’”

But the teals have tapped into another fear altogether, one that resonates along the well-to-do bayside of Melbourne and the millionaire rows of Sydney: the fear of a missed opportunity. 

“The corporate world is way ahead of government on climate policy action,” she said. “I think the penny has dropped for a lot of people that it is an economic issue and that we really have to move on this. Otherwise, our prosperity will be threatened.”

Military investment fund

5 things to know about Germany’s historic military investment fund

After weeks of negotiations, German politicians finally reached a deal on a massive €100B military modernization fund.

BY HANS VON DER BURCHARD

Germany has spent months touting its epochal shift toward a more muscular military policy. Now the country finally has a spending plan to make it happen.

Three months after Chancellor Olaf Scholz first announced Germany’s so-called Zeitenwende, or historic turning point, political leaders late on Sunday approved the main pillar of the new policy — a massive €100 billion military modernization fund.

The monetary injection — which falls outside Germany’s normal budget — is intended to give the chronically underfinanced German military a swift equipment upgrade, helping chart a course for Berlin to play a more prominent role within the NATO military alliance and EU military missions.

“Germany will now provide a significantly higher contribution to the security in Europe … that also corresponds to its size,” Scholz said Monday, arriving at an EU leaders’ summit in Brussels.

Germany, the EU’s largest economy and most populous country, has faced withering criticism since Russia invaded Ukraine for dragging its feet on sending certain weapons to help Kyiv. Berlin has countered that its armed forces, the Bundeswehr, lack critical military equipment and cannot spare more heavy weaponry such as tanks or howitzers, of which it plans to send a few to Ukraine.

While the latest plan will help address those shortcomings, it is designed to work over the course of several years and can’t change the situation immediately. And some hawkish voices within Germany argue the country must go even further.

Here are five things to know about Germany’s freshly agreed military investment fund, the so-called Sondervermögen.

1. Germany will now (mostly) meet NATO’s spending targets

The €100 billion injection will raise Germany’s annual military spending from roughly €50 billion to an average of €70 billion over the course of five years. That would put Germany in line with the NATO goal to spend 2 percent of economic output on defense — a commitment Berlin has so far blatantly violated.

However, the deal reached on Sunday night falls short of enshrining the 2 percent target in the German constitution. Instead, it says the benchmark should be reached “on a multi-year average,” meaning Germany might spend more than 2 percent in some years due to major military investments, but less in others.

Critics like Rüdiger Wolf, a former state secretary in the German defense ministry, say that’s not enough.

During a German parliament hearing last month, Wolf argued the €100 billion fund should be used solely to tackle modernization needs and equipment gaps — and that Germany should hit its 2 percent goal through an additional increase of the regular annual defense budget from €50 billion to €70 billion.

This approach, he argued, is the only way “to provide the permanently needed financial resources” for the Bundeswehr to fulfill its tasks within NATO “in width and depth.”

2. Some budget fudges were required

But boosting the country’s regular defense budget is a sensitive subject in Germany, which has long adhered to strict debt rules.

In Germany’s current governing coalition, Finance Minister Christian Lindner — a member of the fiscally conservative Free Democrats (FDP) — wants the country to reinstitute its “debt brake,” constitutionally enshrined fiscal restraint rules that have been suspended for two years due to the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s the main reason the €100 billion was set up as a special fund — it avoids having the mega investments count as part of the country’s regular budget and exempts it from the debt brake.

In order to do that, the special fund has to be enshrined in the German constitution, a move that requires a two-thirds majority in the German parliament. That meant Scholz’s governing coalition had to reach an agreement on the money with the center-right opposition, which took weeks of negotiations.

Since the special fund runs out after five years, the idea is that by then the regular defense budget will have to be increased to at least €70 billion so that Germany continues to meet the 2 percent NATO spending goal even without the special monetary injection. However, it’s still unclear how such budget increases can be arranged with Lindner’s disciplined fiscal plans and the debt brake.

Yet considering that Germany will hold another general election in a bit more than three years, it might well be that by the time the special fund runs out there will be a new government that would have to worry about such questions — and, ultimately, it could always decide to set up yet another special military fund.

Other EU countries, which have less favorable borrowing conditions on the financial markets and more debt than Germany, can only dream of such luxury. Many countries want the EU to exempt military upgrades from the EU’s own strict fiscal rules — a demand the German government, and Lindner in particular, reject.

3. New jets, ships and tanks are on the way

Although Germany’s official list of military investments is secret, there is one huge project the government has made public: The purchase of U.S. F-35 stealth fighter jets, which are supposed to replace decades-old Tornado fighter jets. Notably, these high-tech jets should, if worst comes to worst, be able to carry U.S. nuclear weapons, a renewed worry as Vladimir Putin saber-rattles about Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

The German government also said it wants to improve the general equipment of its troops, which have long suffered from a laundry list of shortcomings — missing night goggles or rifles, insufficient protective vests, defective training facilities.

“I have to tell you that there are appalling deficiencies in the area of equipment and combat readiness,” said Eva Högl, who serves as both an ombudsman and military personnel advocate as the German armed forces parliamentary commissioner.

Högl, speaking during a discussion in April, cited one example: The German navy’s elite diving force in Eckernförde has “not had a functioning swimming hall for over 10 years.”

Sunday’s deal specifies that the new money must be used for Bundeswehr investments, raising hopes among German defense companies like Rheinmetall that they will get fresh orders for new tanks and ammunition. Meanwhile, northern German shipyards are hoping to build five new corvettes, more frigates and several combat boats, as public broadcaster NDR reported. Some 60 percent of German army helicopters currently can’t fly, meaning that there’s an urgent need for investment there as well.

One challenge, however, will be ensuring the investments are done in a timely manner. Germany’s military procurement office has a reputation for being slow and bureaucratic. Högl warned that these problems were “getting more and more, and not less.”

4. Ukraine won’t immediately benefit, though

Given that the €100 billion will be spent over five years, Germany is unlikely to soon have more tanks and artillery to donate to Ukraine.

However, the two tanks Ukraine has requested for months from Germany — the Leopard main battle tank and the Marder infantry fighting vehicle — wouldn’t come from the country’s army stocks but from its defense companies. These firms say they have decommissioned models of those tanks to sell.

Scholz has so far refused to grant the companies an export authorization for these tanks, citing concerns the move could escalate the war and potentially make Germany a target.

5. Germany’s critics will still want to see action

Scholz’s government has been hammered internationally in recent months for being too hesitant to provide Ukraine with military support. While Scholz’s pledges to make Germany a more prominent European military power are being welcomed in many EU capitals, especially in the east, many nations are waiting to see if those words are followed by deeds.

On that front, Scholz’s track record so far is quite thin.

The chancellor will have another opportunity to lay out his plans for the special fund, and military support for Ukraine more broadly, during a speech in Parliament on Wednesday morning. The special fund is set to be adopted by Parliament as early as this Friday.

Russian oil embargo

EU leaders agree on Russian oil embargo

Package includes exemptions to placate Hungary and other countries worried about domestic impact.

BY JACOPO BARIGAZZI AND BARBARA MOENS

EU leaders agreed late Monday night on a political deal to impose sanctions on Russian oil imports.

“Agreement to ban export of Russian oil to the EU,” European Council President Charles Michel tweeted from a leaders’ summit in Brussels. “This immediately covers more than 2/3 of oil imports from Russia, cutting a huge source of financing for its war machine.”

The Council of the EU must still formally agree on the sanctions.

The compromise will allow Russia’s pipeline oil exports to the EU to continue temporarily, while seaborne shipments are blocked by the end of the year, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced earlier this month.

Von der Leyen tweeted that the leaders’ agreement “will effectively cut around 90% of oil imports from Russia to the EU by the end of the year.”

Germany and Poland, which could benefit from the pipeline exemption, have committed themselves to a de facto shutdown of the northern Druzhba pipeline, several EU diplomats said.

There is also an agreement to “complete the [closure of the] southern branch as soon as possible,” an Elysée official said. The southern leg of the pipeline delivers oil to Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

An EU official said the Czech Republic got an 18-month exemption from the ban to cover the resale of oil products.

Hungary has also ensured an there is an emergency provision to ensure the security of supply if their pipeline deliveries are cut off, EU diplomats said.

Slapping an embargo on Russian oil would be one of Europe’s most significant steps in restricting the revenue available to President Vladimir Putin to wage war in Ukraine. But the proposed move was held up for several weeks by Hungary, which argued its economy would be hammered by a blanket ban.

Effectively decriminalize

Austin pushing to effectively decriminalize abortion ahead of ruling on Roe

The state’s so-called trigger law, which would take effect 30 days after a Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe, includes the nation’s harshest criminal penalties on abortion.

By MEGAN MESSERLY

The city of Austin is attempting to shield its residents from prosecution under a Texas law that would criminalize almost all abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned — the first push by a major city in a red state to try to circumvent state abortion policy.

Councilmember Chito Vela is proposing a resolution that would direct the city’s police department to make criminal enforcement, arrest and investigation of abortions its lowest priority and restrict city funds and city staff from being used to investigate, catalogue or report suspected abortions.

“This is not an academic conversation. This is a very real conversation where people’s lives could be destroyed by these criminal prosecutions,” said Vela, who shared the details of the resolution first with POLITICO. “In Texas, you’re an adult at 17. We are looking at the prospect of a 17-year-old girl who has an unplanned pregnancy and is seeking an abortion [being] subjected to first-degree felony charges — up to 99 years in jail — and that’s just absolutely unacceptable.”

The state’s so-called trigger law, which would take effect 30 days after a Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe, includes the nation’s harshest criminal penalties on abortion and language vague enough that abortion-rights proponents believe it will not only be used to go after abortion providers but also criminalize people who end their own pregnancies with abortion pills. Last month, 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera was arrested and charged with murder in Rio Grande City, Texas after allegedly self-inducing an abortion, even though abortion is not currently a criminal offense in Texas.

The trigger law will make performing, inducing or attempting an abortion where “an unborn child dies as a result of the offense” a first-degree felony, punishable by up to life in prison and up to a $10,000 fine. It contains an exception only to save the life of the pregnant person.

The new resolution doesn’t explicitly decriminalize abortion but rather directs police to make it their lowest enforcement priority in an effort to skirt conflict with state law, Vela said. But it highlights the tension between red state and the blue cities, where a new front in the battle over abortion rights is opening as the Supreme Court prepares to issue a decision on Roe in the coming weeks.

A city of Austin spokesperson said in a statement that “the city is prepared to take the steps necessary to implement this resolution upon passage by City Council.” The council passed a similar measure in 2020 that effectively decriminalized marijuana by ending arrests and fines for low-level possession, which the police department has followed.

Vela said he is having “ongoing conversations” with Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon about the proposal and hopes the department will comply with the directive. A department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

“The police do not want to be in the middle of this controversy. The police right now in Austin are struggling with staffing,” Vela said. “I don’t think the police want to dedicate resources to these types of, what I would call, ‘political crimes.’”

A spokesperson for state Attorney General Ken Paxton did not respond to a request for comment. Paxton, a Republican, has been at the vanguard of restricting abortion access in Texas, which has been in the spotlight since the state’s six-week abortion ban, enforced through a private right of action, took effect in September 2021.

Austin’s proposal, which aims to protect both patients and providers, comes as an extension of the city’s efforts to preserve abortion access despite the state’s restrictions. The city has, for instance, provided logistical support for abortion access, including transportation, lodging and child care, since 2019 — a model St. Louis is now looking to replicate.

More cities in Texas could be next. Julie Oliver, executive director of Ground Game Texas, a group that pushes for progressive, local ballot measures, said they are looking at pushing similar measures in San Antonio, Houston and Dallas. If that isn’t successful, the group plans to turn to the local ballot initiative process.

“Home rule charter cities have a tremendous amount of leeway and self-governance, and part of that is deciding which laws you’re going to prioritize,” Oliver said. “And so, because you have a finite number of resources in a finite budget, cities are constantly deciding which laws they’re going to enforce and which ones they are not.”

Local officials who support abortion rights in states where access is in jeopardy may also have an important role to play, said Greer Donley, a professor specializing in reproductive health care at the University of Pittsburgh Law School.

For instance, Radnor Township in Pennsylvania, where abortion is likely to remain legal because Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has promised to veto any Republican-passed bans, recently approved an ordinance protecting abortion rights.

“We live in a state where abortion is going to remain legal in the short term, at least after Roe goes down. But that’s because our legislature’s totally divided. We currently have a Democratic governor, but our legislature’s red, so they wouldn’t be able to pass anything,” Donley said. “When you’re in a purple state, cities might have an interesting role to play.”