The U.S. Supreme Court’s pathetic code of ethics, Trump’s dangerous antics, and the long arc of history are among the topics of my latest interview on Radio Parallax. You can listen to it here (click on the #2 segment of this program): https://www.radioparallax.com/playshow.php?sid=1145&seg=1
This article first appeared in Evanston Roundtable on November 13, 2023.
Northwestern spread two false narratives framing the most consequential issue in Evanston’s history. The Evanston Land Use Commission exposed and exploded the first. The other endures.
“We Need the Money – Really, We Do”
The first whopper was Northwestern’s claim that it needed $2 million expected from six concerts to make the new Ryan Field financially viable. In the ensuing discussion, the university’s more than $14 billion endowment had nowhere to hide.
Evanston’s Land Use commissioners had a few choice words describing NU’s absurd suggestion: “unconvincing,” “unfortunate,” “not credible.” Even Commission Chair Matt Rodgers, Northwestern’s ally who floated a last-minute proposal aimed at salvaging the university’s zoning change as it went down in flames, found NU’s assertion “laughable.”
“Come on – It’s Only Six Concerts”
But the second narrative has not only survived, but also dominated the media coverage of the new stadium: Northwestern wants “only” six concerts.
That’s incorrect. Northwestern wants 66.
Here’s the pertinent language from its proposed text amendment:
“Outdoor lectures, speakers, non-musical festivals, social events and other community or cultural events, and musical performances in conjunction or associated with the foregoing (which shall require loudspeaker permits from the City for any noise amplification), hosted by the University or City and designed for the University or local community, provided that the capacity for such events is no greater than 7,500, and no more than 60 days of programming occurs annually.” (Emphasis supplied)
To put Northwestern’s request in perspective:
Describing Northwestern’s 60 events as “smaller” ignores the fact that as a stand-alone music venue, it would be one of the largest in the Chicago area. The events are “small” only when compared to Wrigley Field (42,000), the United Center (23,500), and the new Ryan Field. (35,000).
“Ignore the Problem and It Will Go Away”
At the Land Use Commission hearing, the undisputed evidence submitted by an acoustic expert established that noise pollution from musical performances outside the proposed stadium could be worse than the noise generated from concerts inside the stadium.
That’s because large touring acts that would play inside the stadium bring their own sound equipment. They use sophisticated line array loudspeaker systems that better direct sound to audience members. The acts that would likely perform before smaller but still significant crowds of up to 7,500 people outside the new stadium often use cluster loudspeaker systems. Typically, those speakers sit on each side of the stage and blast out music indiscriminately to the fans.
Chicago weather will require all concerts – the six and the 60 – to occur over a 15-week period from late spring to early fall.
That’s four events outside the stadium every week.
Plus a mega-concert inside the stadium every two-and-one-half weeks.
And anyone who believes that Northwestern will stop at six mega-concerts hasn’t followed the saga of Wrigley Field. In 1988, the Cubs started with 18 night games. They now host 43 “night events.”
Six concerts at the new Ryan Field? It’s not just a deflection that hides the real number – 66. It’s a Trojan Horse and a distraction from what is really happening: Northwestern seeks to create a massive, summer-long performance entertainment venue.
“Wow! That’s a Lot of Money”
On October 30, Northwestern launched its newest false narrative – that it’s offering the city of Evanston $100 million in return for the zoning changes it seeks. Fortunately, the media took a closer look at that one – and it collapsed under the weight of a straightforward analysis. Most of the money NU has offered is either not new, illusory, voluntary, remains within NU’s control, or is someone else’s – including Pat Ryan’s and the people who will pay the taxes, fees and surcharges on concert tickets.
But here’s the problem, as an old proverb observes, “A lie will go round the world while truth is still pulling on its boots.” And then the lie sticks.
At the November 13 City Council meeting, we’ll see how firmly it sticks among those whose responsibility as elected officials is to sort fact from fiction and protect the voters who empowered them.
[This op-ed first appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business on October 30, 2023.]
Pity the members of Northwestern University’s Board of Trustees whose last name isn’t Ryan. Those 142 individuals — including 76 “life trustees” — are lashed to the mast of a billionaire’s vanity boat. It will haunt their remaining days.
For his $480 million donation, life trustee and former Northwestern board chairman Patrick G. Ryan is getting a new stadium bearing his name. His fellow trustees are enduring the early days of that dubious legacy:
• More than just a replacement football stadium, Northwestern seeks to transform its athletic facilities site into a performance entertainment venue. The surrounding residential neighborhood includes homes, parks, playgrounds, schools, churches, a fire station and a major hospital with a Level 1 trauma center. NU’s plan has united and mobilized unprecedented opposition.
• Northwestern’s win-at-all-costs tactics have exploited and deepened divisions in the community.
• In promoting the project, Northwestern relied on an economic impact study that would have embarrassed its world-renowned economics department. It relied on a traffic study that the acclaimed Northwestern Transportation Center never would have issued. And it presented a noise pollution assessment that would not have survived even a cursory peer review by Northwestern’s illustrious McCormick School of Engineering.
• By a resounding 7-2 vote, Northwestern lost its effort to persuade the Evanston Land Use Commission that it should recommend commercialization of the site.
• The new Ryan Field will be a shrine to a disgraced football program and a permanent reminder of a time when hazing scandals produced the university’s darkest hours.
• Even as a football stadium, this big bet could become a historic loser. Attendance for the first four Northwestern home games this year has declined to an average of 20,500 fans, rivaling the 1960 low point, which has been described as the “worst in modern history.”
Ryan’s donation does not cover the total cost of the $800 million project. Hundreds of millions of dollars must come from somewhere else.
A year ago, on Oct. 12, 2022, Northwestern President Michael Schill attended his first Faculty Senate meeting. According to the minutes, then-Provost Kathleen Hagerty said that financing for the stadium was as follows: “The University contributes $124 million (which had already been budgeted for deferred maintenance) plus another $100 million in fundraising and everything else will be covered by the gift from the Ryan family and the operating income from the stadium (estimated total cost of building the new stadium is $800 million).”
But on Oct. 16, 2023, President Schill told the Faculty Senate that the university would take on debt to fund the stadium. Over the past year, interest rates have surged. What does the project’s financial pro forma look like now? What’s the status of the $100 million fundraising effort?
Trustees otherwise inclined to turn a blind eye to Ryan’s myopic vision should watch a video of Northwestern representatives’ sworn testimony before the Land Use Commission on Sept. 6, 2023:
Commissioner: “Specifically, where are you with the capital campaign, you know, kind of the overall project cost? I understand, (it) is $800 million. How much is in place and when do you expect to have the funding fully in place?”
Northwestern: “The overall budget . . . is $800 million. . . .That has not been funded by a single taxpayer dollar. That is all through gifts or elsewhere funded by other means.”
Commissioner: “The question was, is that funding in place?”
Northwestern: “The basis of the funding is in place. Correct.”
Commissioner: “For the whole $800 million?”
Northwestern: “For the whole $800 million, yes.”
It turns out that “elsewhere funded by other means” and “basis of the funding” mean loans.
The last time Northwestern got over its financial skis, faculty, staff and students — the key participants in the university’s educational mission — suffered the consequences. In January 2018, then-Provost Jonathan Holloway assured the Faculty Senate that the projected deficit of $50 million to $100 million was an “annoyance,” not a crisis. It was “not going to have a major impact on our academic priorities.”
Then the hammer fell:
• The credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Northwestern from Aaa to Aa1, a decision then-President Morton Schapiro said was due largely to Northwestern’s budget crisis.
• Eighty staff members were laid off because, according to Schapiro, the situation was worse than he or the Board of Trustees expected.
• All academic units — schools, departments and programs — cut their budgets by 5%.
• Student groups funded by schools and departments faced thousands of dollars in cuts to their budgets.
• Administrative units — including the Division of Student Affairs — suffered a 10% cut.
• Northwestern drew down its endowment to cover two years of deficits.
Northwestern’s trustees have a fiduciary duty to the university, not Pat Ryan. Its state-enacted charter requires that they use the property “solely for purposes of education.” The remedy for non-compliance is forfeiture.
Trustees who remain silent now will be forever linked to a regime that relied on specious arguments, divisive rhetoric, non-existent evidence and magical thinking to fulfill a billionaire’s dream. The result: abandonment of Northwestern’s educational mission, exacerbating a city’s divisions, pitting Evanston against neighboring Wilmette, devastating a residential community and creating potentially disastrous risks to the university and its environs.
That’s quite a legacy.
This op-ed first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on August 22, 2023 (Online) and August 25, 2023 (print): https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/8/22/23841796/northwestern-ryan-field-stadium-rebuild-letters-evanston-steven-harper-op-ed
Everyone has a price? What’s yours?
Last Thursday, Northwestern University President Michael Schill sent that message in his desperate quest to save billionaire donor Pat Ryan’s vanity project: an open-air performance venue masquerading as a shrine to a disgraced football program. Amid the firestorm of growing opposition, Schill released two letters.
One went to the “Northwestern community” — where a faculty in revolt has called for a pause in the plan. Another went to the “Evanston community” — where NU has exacerbated schisms in its divide-and-conquer strategy to push the project through the Evanston City Council.
Even in those two letters, Schill couldn’t keep his story straight.
No two ways on finances
Schill addressed a Northwestern community concerned about misguided university priorities resulting in a plan costing $800 million. A big chunk comes from the Ryan family. But NU’s share — hundreds of millions — could be spent pursuing its actual educational mission.
Seeking to assuage that group, he said that, even without concerts in a new performance venue, the existing stadium would require equally costly repairs:
“Northwestern would have to make a similar financial investment to restore the current, crumbling Ryan Field to an adequate level to play seven football games per year as it will to create the new Ryan Field.” (Emphasis supplied)
But when addressing the Evanston community, Schill said that at least six major concerts in the proposed venue were necessary “to realistically operate the venue” and to “ensuring financial viability for the project to move forward.”
He can’t have it both ways.
No listening or learning
Schill told the Evanston community that NU had conducted “meetings and forums” where it had an opportunity to “listen and learn” from its neighbors.
Meetings? Only on NU’s terms. Listening and learning? Nope.
Before Schill’s presidency, NU formed a working group in February 2022. It consisted of NU representatives, residents, and an Evanston City Council member. Residents in the group canvassed the surrounding community extensively and reported its views on a new football stadium.
Then NU ignored them.
On Sept. 28, 2022, NU released its proposed stadium design to the media. Two weeks later, it announced that the venue would host major concerts and sell alcohol. A member of the working group later wrote: “This was another complete surprise to us because we had repeatedly emphasized the neighbors’ request that the use of the stadium not be expanded.” (Emphasis supplied)
Recently, NU proved again that it listens only to what it wants to hear. The university joined the City of Evanston’s motion asking a federal court to quash criticismof the new Ryan Field proposal at “town-gown” committee meetings that have occurred for the past 19 years. The court denied the request.
Schill also told the Evanston community that “[o]ur goal has always been to host community-oriented events such as winter festivals, holiday celebrations, family movie nights, and youth sports events, as well as additional student and community programming to take full advantage of the plazas and new park being built.”
NU could do all of that today without building a United Center (North) — without a roof.
Whose project is it?
Schill is just the messenger. The project is Pat Ryan’s.
To the Evanston community, Schill expressed “thanks to a remarkably generous gift from the Ryan Family…” and announced that they, not NU, had offered another $10 million to create a “workforce technology upskilling program.”
Will Ryan’s additional money buy the love needed to get the plan through the city council?
Schill also tempted Evanston to start down a slippery slope: Allow more concerts and you’ll get more money. And he’s using other people’s money to do it: tax and fee revenue “tied to events at the new stadium” and a “ticket surcharge” that concertgoers would pay, not NU.
Likewise paying homage to NU’s biggest donor, Schill told the Northwestern community: “We have arrived at this pivotal point in the Ryan Field rebuild project thanks to a remarkably generous gift from the Ryan Family.”
Schill’s tone-deafness continued to the final sentence of his missive to the Northwestern community: “I firmly believe this rebuild will help us create an opportunity to build toward a positive and exciting future where we do what we do best at Northwestern — bring people together and positively impact communities.”
Schill, Ryan, and the board of trustees have fractured their relationship with the faculty, exploited divisions among residents, and negatively impacted nearby communities.
It will take years for NU to recover from its athletic team scandals. If NU builds the new performance venue, the resulting wounds will endure for generations.
Steven J. Harper, a Northwestern University and Harvard Law School graduate, is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern Law School, former partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, and author of several books.
This op-ed first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on August 7, 2023 (online – https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/8/7/23820166/northwestern-stadium-evanston-tripp-umbach-report-cost-benefit-analysis-steven-harper) and August 8, 2023 (print edition)
The opening pages read as if the billionaire sponsor of the project, Pat Ryan, had written them himself.
***
Northwestern University President Michael Schill outlined the criteria for proceeding with NU’s pop/rock performance arena to replace its current football stadium. Trying to distance the project from burgeoning scandals surrounding the school’s athletic programs, he told The Daily Northwestern:
“Ryan Field needs to be resolved on its own merits and based upon the benefits that it will create for the community versus the costs that will occur.”
If Schill and the board of trustees actually applied that standard, NU’s plan would have reached the dustbin of history long ago.
Schill, a Princeton University and Yale Law School graduate, knows what a real cost-benefit analysis looks like. He also knows that consulting firm Tripp Umbach’s report — the sole basis for the stadium’s claimed economic benefits to the community — isn’t one. The opening pages read as if the billionaire sponsor of the project, Pat Ryan, had written them himself:
“In September 2021, esteemed Northwestern alumni Patrick G. Ryan and Shirley W. Ryan committed the largest philanthropic gift in Northwestern history….”
“Now, catalyzed by the unparalleled generosity of the Ryan family….”
It’s a puff piece, not a rigorous assessment of the proposed stadium’s economic impact on the community.
A Cost-Benefit Analysis Doesn’t Ignore Costs
In addition to numerous methodological pitfalls and plain inaccuracies in its underlying assumptions, Tripp Umbach’s approach considers only the benefits of the proposed stadium and ignores costs. Describing the underlying computer model (IMPLAN) used in the analysis, economist Jon Sanders explained, “[T]his is a model of sums — it is all plus signs. Despite what it says, it doesn’t measure the total economic impact; it measures only benefits…”
The report also ignores externalities — costs that the project will inflict on victims in Evanston and beyond. Examples:
Hypocrisy at the Highest Level
Fifty years ago, sociologist William Bruce Cameron wrote, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Northwestern Board of Trustees Chairman Peter Barris understands that principle. But he ignores it unless the project interferes with the quiet enjoyment of his property.
Barris has a Martha’s Vineyard home worth $24 million. It’s across the water from a century-old landmark hotel where the cast of Jaws stayed in 1975. Railing against an “assault on the very character of the neighborhood,” Barris sought to rein in the hotel’s 2021 expansion.
“Although our residence is a mile away by road, it sits directly across the harbor,” he wrote to his local government. “Sounds are very efficiently carried across the water, particularly when the winds are blowing out of the north.” His request: “Protect us from the unbridled development that puts at risk the very things that brought us here in the first place.”
Asked about the letter In light of Northwestern’s assault on its community, Barris said, “The surfacing of this personal circumstance, which is distinctly dissimilar to Northwestern’s proposal, is an attempt to distract from our goals — to transform a century-old stadium into a community asset that will benefit all of Evanston….”
Benefits? Evanston jobs and tax revenue, Tripp Umbach claims. But it calculates that after construction, the new arena will create at most 323 new Evanston jobs, with no assurance that Evanston residents will fill any of them.
At most, concert events could generate additional annual tax revenue equal to about one-half of 1% of the combined budgets for Evanston and its two school districts.
The only other claimed benefits are intangible, as are those Tripp Umbach ignored on the cost side of the arena’s ledger. Meanwhile, residents will suffer from the externalities.
So in the long run, who really benefits? A billionaire who gets his name on another Northwestern building — and a disgraced athletic program in disarray.
All at another cost that isn’t in the Tripp Umbach report: a legacy of ongoing division inside and outside the university.
Steven J. Harper, a Northwestern University and Harvard Law School graduate, is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern Law School, former partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, and author of several books.
Letter writer Joseph Flanagan urges Northwestern University not to give up on its proposed new Ryan Field. But the venture was misguided from the start, and it hasn’t aged well.
First, it violates fundamental principles that guide the university’s stated mission:
“Northwestern is committed to excellent teaching, innovative research and the personal and intellectual growth of its students in a diverse academic community.”
Northwestern doesn’t want to renovate the existing stadium for students. The nonprofit institution seeks to construct a major performance venue that would compete with the United Center (seating capacity: 23,500) and Allstate Arena (seating capacity: 18,500).
Nor does the university propose a handful of outdoor events. In addition to 10 concerts with seating for 28,500, it wants an unlimited number of additional concerts for 10,000 fans — 50% more than the capacity of the Welsh-Ryan Arena.
Except for a handful of college football games, there’s nothing in this for the students. NU’s consultants have acknowledged that the outdoor concerts would occur during the late spring through early fall, when most students are away.
Second, Patrick Ryan and his family are contributing toward the stadium, but their pledge doesn’t cover its $800 million cost. The remaining balance — hundreds of millions of dollars — will come from Northwestern funds that could actually have been used for purposes that are consistent with its mission statement.
Third, concerts will generate dangerous noise pollution blanketing blocks of a residential area that includes schools, playgrounds, parks, churches, a fire station and a hospital with a Level 1 trauma center. How dangerous and how far away? For weeks, NU has stonewalled requests for its consultants’ data answering those questions.
Fourth, Northwestern has yet to develop a credible, comprehensive transportation management plan for the unprecedented burdens on the community that the concerts would create.
Fifth, Flanagan asserts, “The project is estimated to bring in more than $10 million to Evanston in direct fees the first year alone.” But those are a one-time occurrence for construction permits and fees. His claimed “millions in subsequent years” actually amount to a net increase of about $3.5 million annually — one-half of 1 percent of the combined annual budgets for Evanston and its two school districts. Likewise, when the dust settles and the 3,000 construction jobs disappear, the new stadium would create, at most, about 300 new Evanston jobs.
Instead of creating a “community hub,” Northwestern’s proposal is generating schisms in Evanston and beyond. More than 250 NU professors have signed an open letter to President Michael Schill and other leaders, urging them to halt the project “until (the hazing) crisis is satisfactorily resolved.
Patrick Ryan could stop the madness with a single public statement. Absent that, he is creating a legacy of irreparable division inside and outside a university that he surely loves.
Steven Harper is a former partner at Kirkland & Ellis and Northwestern graduate. He is also an adjunct professor at Northwestern and an author of several books.
This op-ed first appeared in Common Dreams on July 31, 2023: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/northwestern-university
From a professed desire for transparency surrounding a new stadium project, Northwestern has moved all the way to a surreptitious assault on free speech.
The problem began as a vanity project for one of the school’s largest donors. Along with his family, billionaire and Aon founder Patrick G. Ryan pledged $480 million to the university—provided that a big chunk went toward a new $800-million football stadium.
But the site’s main purpose had nothing to do with football. It would be a for-profit, open-air outdoor performance venue competing with the Chicago area’s largest, including the United Center (seating capacity 23,500; home of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks). The arena would seat 28,500 concertgoers and replace the existing stadium in the midst of a residential community with schools, parks, playgrounds, churches, a fire station, and a hospital with a Level 1 trauma center.
In the past, Northwestern University (NU) has tried and failed to get zoning changes and special use permits for large concerts at the current stadium. The city of Evanston would have none of it.
Northwestern wanted this time to be different.
ACT I
First, the university tried to co-opt potential voices of dissent. While developing plans for the stadium, it formed a working group consisting of four NU representatives with key leadership roles in the project, four residents from the neighborhood surrounding the stadium, and the Evanston city council member representing the district where the current stadium is located. A resident member later described Northwestern’s promises to that working group:
At our first meeting, it was agreed that this would be an informal and transparent way for Northwestern to listen and solicit input from the surrounding community regarding the stadium rebuild project.
The university described the group as a “key stakeholder” and “expressed its hopes that this forum would be the beginning of an effort to rebuild trust with community residents.”
From March through June 2022, residents in the working group canvassed neighbors and reported concerns. Among the most important: Neighbors did not want the use of the stadium expanded.
Residents thought Northwestern was listening to them—until the university announced that it had completed a single stadium design concept that contemplated pop/rock concerts. The residents in the working group didn’t see it until September 28, 2022, when Northwestern announced the plan to the world.
ACT II
The working group died, but it had served a useful purpose for the university. The canvassing had revealed residents’ widespread concerns about expanding the stadium, so Northwestern tried to obfuscate them.
In early January 2023, the university hired a consultant to conduct a telephone poll of 500 registered Evanston voters. A slight majority—56%—answered yes to this loaded question:
As you may know, Northwestern has proposed a plan to replace the existing Ryan Field with a new stadium with significantly less seating and that is environmentally sustainable and accessible. Do you support or oppose removing Ryan Field and replacing it with a new stadium in the same location?
Without providing any information about the challenges that rock concerts pose—dangerous sound transmission, traffic congestion, transportation complexities or parking problems—phone interviewers asked the 500 respondents what the “right number of concerts per year” would be. This time, unlike the exhaustive canvassing that the working group had performed, Northwestern got the answer it wanted: numbers greater than zero.
Mission Accomplished. Northwestern now had its disingenuous talking point on the biggest obstacle facing the plan.
But it didn’t stick. Facts about the project and doubts about Northwestern’s false assurances became clearer. Grassroots opposition grew. Voices of dissent got louder.
ACT III
So the next scene in this saga took a bizarre twist. Under a 19-year-old consent decree that settled a case Northwestern had brought against the city, the parties had established a “town-gown” committee to discuss the university’s plans for certain areas of the campus, including one of the Ryan Field parking lots.
But the public committee hearings had now become a forum for residents to register their complaints about the new stadium. More importantly, the media—even Northwestern’s student newspaper—was covering them.
So unbeknownst to residents and Evanston city council members who opposed the plan, the city asked a federal judge to modify the decree to protect Northwestern. Remarkably, it wanted to ban residents from discussing the proposed arena in the town-gown committee hearings.
On June 29, 2023, Northwestern and the city filed a joint brief supporting the ban. Stunning as it seemed, even before the first zoning commission hearing on the university’s unprecedented request to amend the ordinance, Evanston had aligned itself with Northwestern—in secret.
THE RECKONING
The scandal came to light in response to an Evanston resident’s FOIA request. Facing criticism for his failure to notify Evanston’s city council of the action, the city’s corporation counsel later said that his department had determined that he did not need its approval.
So who approved it? All lawyers act at the direction of their clients. The corporation counsel reports to the city manager. Did the city manager authorize the filing? The city manager reports to Evanston’s mayor and city council. What did they know, and when did they know it?
On July 23, the Chicago Tribune broke the story: “Evanston residents angry about legal move by city to bypass public discussion on Northwestern stadium project.” The following morning, it appeared on the front page of the newspaper’s print edition.
On July 25, Northwestern and the city of Evanston lost in court.
“I have crystal clear contractual language, and you all are asking me to read in this limitation,” U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Maldonado saidwhile denying the motion. “No one put this in there, no one limited the discussion of the committee…”
From a professed desire for transparency, Northwestern has moved all the way to a surreptitious assault on free speech. Apparently, it has allies in Evanston’s city government willing to do its bidding.
The scandals at the university—and now Evanston’s city government—aren’t over. Not by a long shot.
[This post first appeared at Common Dreams on July 11, 2023]
The problem of wealth inequality in higher education transcends the favored treatment that many admissions officers give alumni donors. Well-heeled contributors pursuing personal agendas can place the very soul of an institution at risk.
With the Supreme Court’s dismantling of affirmative action, legacy admissions are now the hot topic in higher education. But the impact of wealth inequality transcends the preference that many admissions officers give well-heeled donors. When a university allows benefactors with large fortunes to pursue personal agendas, the educational mission itself becomes a casualty.
My alma mater, Northwestern University (NU), is a poster child for the phenomenon.
To be clear, my wife and I have been dedicated Northwestern alumni for decades. We met there as undergraduates and both obtained advanced degrees. Over the years, we have made substantial contributions that helped to create scholarships, fund a lecture series, and endow a professorship.
My wife and I have also taught there. I was an adjunct professor in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (WCAS) and in the Pritzker School of Law; she was a clinic director and lecturer. I’ve served on several NU committees and was the keynote speaker for the 2010 WCAS Convocation ceremony. My wife and I chaired our respective reunion committees. We bleed NU purple.
But when a good friend of many years goes astray, silence is not an option.
Educational Mission? What’s That?
Like most institutions of higher education, Northwestern has a “Mission Statement”:
“Northwestern is committed to excellent teaching, innovative research and the personal and intellectual growth of its students in a diverse academic community.”
But NU is allowing a donor with deep pockets to subvert that mission. Catering to the whims of a single alumnus with big bucks, the university is now seeking to build an $800 million outdoor performance venue in the midst of a quiet suburban Chicago residential community. The project makes a mockery of NU’s Mission Statement.
NU’s project seeks to attract top pop/rock concerts that would perform from late spring through early fall. Its proposal acknowledges that most students would be away when the concerts occurred. Only incidentally would the proposed stadium also host a handful of college football games. [Full disclosure: We live a few blocks away from the current football stadium, which the proposed venue would replace.]
How does the project square with Northwestern’s “Mission Statement”? It doesn’t.
Why is it happening? Because a single wealthy donor wants it: Patrick Ryan (B.A, ’59), who played football at Northwestern, founded AON Corp., and – along with Justice Clarence Thomas – is a member of the recently newsworthy and elite Horatio Alger Association. Ryan and his family have donated $480 million dollars to help cover the cost of the new state-of-the-art open-air stadium.
You might ask, “What’s the big deal? NU gets a new stadium.”
But Ryan’s contribution won’t come close to covering the total cost of the project. The remaining balance – hundreds of millions of dollars – will come from Northwestern University funds that could actually have been used for purposes that are consistent with its Mission Statement.
Therein lies the insidious subversion of the university’s stated mission.
University “Values”? What Are Those?
Northwestern also has a “Statement of Values”:
How is the proposed entertainment venue consistent with those espoused values? About as well as it serves NU’s stated mission.
Students won’t even be on campus for the summer pop/rock concerts. A concert venue does not contribute to faculty excellence. Apart from NU’s unenforceable promise to “work with minority- and women-owned business enterprises as part of the construction,” it does nothing to promote diversity or inclusion. It is, instead, a donor’s vanity project and a proposed profit center for a non-profit university.
What’s Next?
The City of Evanston has not yet approved NU’s proposal. The plan has encountered serious opposition from the community because the adverse impact on the neighborhood – which has no buffer zone separating it from the stadium – would be profound:
Sustainability? Climate concerns? The list of open questions about what NU economists would call externalities goes on and on, but Northwestern is urging a fast track toward approval.
As the battle continues, Northwestern has all the weapons of wealth: a massive endowment ($14-15 billion); a big law firm pushing the project forward (DLA Piper); the ability to dangle potential revenue dollars that tempt a city needing them; and a cynical willingness to divide the community along racial and socioeconomic lines.
Will grass-roots objections from residents who have the most at stake prevail over such a mighty adversary?
As summer turns to fall and NU tries to rush its project through the approval process, we’ll all find out.
Is he more deadly to democracy than Trump?
In my latest interview on Background Briefing with Ian Masters, we discuss Ron DeSantis.
Here’s the link: https://www.backgroundbriefing.org/2023/05/28/background-briefing-may-28-2023/
This post first appeared on Common Dreams on May 25, 2023.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) wants to be the 47th president of the United States. He’s running on his record as governor, which an overwhelming majority of Americans should find alarming. Armed with a Republican legislature that rubber stamps his every whim, DeSantis’s most celebrated accomplishments defied the will of most Americans:
And most recently, a vivid illustration of his dangerous view of the First Amendment emerged – once again defying the wishes of most Americans.
DeSantis: Leading the Way to Illiteracy
On March 25, 2022, DeSantis signed the “K-12” bill – one of three state laws aimed, at least in part, at reading or instructional materials in schools. It’s an integral element of his ongoing attack on public education.
The law bans the use of any instructional materials in classrooms, in school libraries, or on school reading lists that are “not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented, or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used.”
A key provision allows any parent or resident to lodge a complaint for anything that violates the law’s amorphous standard. So far, among the books removed from circulation in one of Florida’s school districts are Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Now another victim is focusing attention on DeSantis’s unpopular crusade.
DeSantis: Pandering to the Lowest Common Denominator
At President Joseph Biden’s inauguration, Amanda Gorman delivered The Hill We Climb – a 700-word poem – to great acclaim. Then she published it as a book, but a parental complaint under DeSantis’s new K-12 law led a Miami-Dade county school committee to limit student access to it.
The parent was Daily Salinas, who has attended Proud Boys rallies and posted anti-Semitic tropes on social media (deleted after the Miami Herald revealed her identity on May 22 and the group Miami Against Fascism highlighted them in an expose’ on Twitter the next day).
Salinas completed the complaint form in her own hand, and the form itself merits scrutiny as a marvel of ignorance and illiteracy:
TITLE OF THE MATERIAL IN QUESTION: “The Hill We Climb”
AUTHOR-PUBLISHER: “Oprah Winfrey”
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO ABOUT THIS MEDIA: Box checked: Remove the challenged material from the total environment
That’s the sum total of what it took to start the DeSantis process that culminated in removing Gorman’s acclaimed book from a public elementary school library. To summarize:
“We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
And the norms and notions of what ‘just is’
Isn’t always justice.
“And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow, we do it.
Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed
A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”
Salinas also complained about four other books. Only one – Countries in the News: Cuba – remained available for all students in the school. The others, including The Hill We Climb and The ABC’s of Black History (which was written for ages five and up), are now kept in the middle school section of the media center where elementary school students won’t see them.
Salinas, along with one of the many school committees that now live in fear of a governor known for political retaliation, accomplished all of that destruction in just a week.
How did she miss Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech?
Gorman said that she wrote the poem “so that all young people could see themselves in a historical moment. Ever since, I’ve received countless letters and videos from children inspired by The Hill We Climb to write their own poems.” She added, “A school book ban is any action taken against a book that leaves access to a book restricted or diminished.”
DeSantis: Conning the Public
DeSantis asserts that criticisms of his assault on the First Amendment are a “book ban’ hoax. “Hoax” has a familiar ring. I wonder where he heard it.
“Exposing the ‘book ban’ hoax is important because it reveals that some are attempting to use our schools for indoctrination,” he said, claiming that “inappropriate materials have been snuck into our classrooms and libraries….”
Snuck?
As a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, DeSantis knows that he’s running a con. He’s exploiting and amplifying culture war issues to win Trump’s MAGA crowd. To borrow Amanda Gorman’s phrase, DeSantis has put Florida in another “historical moment.” Now he wants the entire country to join him there.
But Gorman’s poem is a message of hope, as its concluding lines demonstrate:
“The new dawn blooms as we free it,
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it,
If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
Watch the video of Gorman delivering her message on Inauguration Day. Then imagine a country where just one person of marginal literacy can fill out a form that will prevent your child from reading it.
That’s only one scene in Ron DeSantis’s vision for America.
Chaos surrounds the U.S. debt ceiling; scandals surround the Thomases, and big questions surround the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming decisions.
Click here for my May 17, 2023 interview on Radio Parallax.
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This post first appeared at Common Dreams on May 19, 2023.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) wants special counsel John Durham to testify in his “weaponization” hearings. Created as part of a dark deal that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made with far-right Republican extremists to secure his speakership, Jordan’s new subcommittee claims to be investigating “the politicization of the FBI and the Department of Justice” against Republicans.
So far, Jordan’s subcommittee has found nothing. Durham didn’t find anything either, but he spun his report with useful GOP soundbites that are sufficient to achieve Republican objectives:
Muddy the scene. Arouse the mob. And accuse adversaries of your own nefarious deeds. Then exploit the resulting confusion and chaos.
In fact, John Durham is now a case study in the GOP’s weaponization of the Justice Department.
Trump Mastered “Weaponization”
Any genuine “weaponization” probe would have started with former President Donald Trump and his attorney general, William Barr.
Trump had found his Roy Cohn.
“Weaponization” Rises to a New Level
In March 2019, Barr had been on the job for only two months when Mueller gave him – but not the public – his 448-page report. It proved that:
Mueller secured convictions against Trump’s top campaign advisers, and he expressly refused to exonerate Trump personally. But notwithstanding powerful evidence proving Trump’s obstruction, Mueller believed that he could not indict a sitting president.
Immediately, Barr issued a deceptive “summary” of Mueller’s report that kneecapped the actual findings. Relying on Barr’s summary, Trump then tweeted one of the more than 30,000 lies spewed during his presidency:
“No Collusion. No Obstruction. Complete and Total EXONERATION!”
Barr’s summary drew an immediate, albeit private, rebuke from Mueller himself because it created “public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.” Barr wasn’t confused. He knew exactly what he was doing. And no one could challenge Trump’s or Barr’s lies because Barr didn’t release Mueller’s report to the public for another three weeks.
A year later, a federal judge blasted Barr’s pre-release “distortions” and “lack of candor.” The court questioned “whether Attorney General Barr’s intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller Report — a narrative that is clearly in some respects substantively at odds” with it. Barr made “a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings… to the contrary.”
After-the-fact judicial condemnation didn’t matter to Barr. He had weaponized Trump’s false mantra that the FBI’s Russia investigation had been a “hoax” and that Mueller had “exonerated” him.
Durham Became Barr’s Henchman
Barr didn’t stop at confusing the public about Mueller’s damning conclusions. He appointed federal prosecutor John Durham to search for evidence supporting Trump’s key talking point: The FBI was out to get him and had no basis for starting the Russia investigation.
Barr took a personal interest in the assignment. In the fall of 2019, he and Durham traveled to Italy and asked officials for evidence that might discredit the Justice Department’s Trump-Russia investigation. Italian officials had nothing to help them, but they did offer a tip: Trump was engaged in suspicious financial activity.
Uh-oh. The Italian tip required a criminal investigation. But rather than assign the matter to another prosecutor, Barr added it to Durham’s plate. Notably, Durham’s final report doesn’t mention the tip or what became of it.
Meanwhile, Durham’s search for FBI abuses or institutional animus toward Trump reached a dead end. So he changed course and tried to blame the Clinton campaign for promoting the suspicious Russia links surrounding Trump.
Durham’s revised mission failed too. His final report acknowledges that, after Wikileaks published hacked Democratic emails, the FBI opened its investigation based on information from an Australian diplomat. The diplomat said that a Trump campaign aide told him that Russia had damaging material on Clinton. At that point, even Durham admits, there was “no question that the FBI had an affirmative obligation to closely examine” the Trump-Russia connection.
But Durham believes that the FBI should have started with a “preliminary investigation” before moving to a “full investigation.” That’s not exactly the blockbuster that Trump and his allies had wanted him to find.
Durham Leaves a Legacy of Professional Disgrace
Durham’s final report is an effort to justify the time (four years) and money (more than $6.5 million) wasted on his probe.
Durham charged no high-level FBI or intelligence official with a crime. He has only three prosecutions to show for his pursuit of the Trump/Barr agenda.
Several attorneys on Durham’s team tried unsuccessfully to protect him from his misguided deference to Trump and Barr. His deputy, as well as a prosecutor, resigned in protest.
But as Durham lost trials and the respect of colleagues, he won a new friend:
“While attorneys general overseeing politically sensitive inquiries tend to keep their distance from the investigators, Mr. Durham visited Mr. Barr in his office for at times weekly updates and consultations about his day-to-day work,” the Times wrote. “They also sometimes dined and sipped Scotch together….”
Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who drafted the special counsel regulations that should have governed Barr’s and Durham’s conduct, observed:
“The special counsel is supposed to be someone who cannot be reasonably accused of laundering an attorney general’s dirty work… Indeed, no one involved in developing these regulations thought that a prosecutor who has regular Scotch-sipping sessions with the attorney general would ever be remotely fit for the job.”
Durham’s report doesn’t undermine any of Mueller’s conclusions. Nor does it conflict with DOJ Inspector General Horowitz’s conclusion that Trump was not the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy against him.
Rehashing criticisms of certain investigative procedures that the Justice Department and FBI Director Christopher Wray corrected years ago, the report “does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the [Justice] Department and the FBI now have in place to ensure proper conduct and accountability in how counterintelligence activities are carried out.” The report’s only substantive recommendation is that the FBI create a new position to help ensure the integrity of politically sensitive investigations.
But none of these facts will prevent Durham’s report from becoming a worthy addition to Trump’s rhetorical library of lies. And when Durham appears before Jordan’s subcommittee, watch Republicans lift phrases from the report, ignore context, and weaponize it.
On second thought, don’t watch any of it.
This post first appeared at Common Dreams on May 12, 2023.
If you vote for a Republican, you’re selecting someone who – once elected – is unlikely to support your views on the issues that matter to you most. Instead, here’s what you’re choosing:
Guns
The vast majority of Americans favor simple and effective gun control measures. They want:
But elected Republicans oppose all of those measures.
Women’s Rights
The vast majority of Americans want to preserve a woman’s right to control her own body.
But elected Republicans unite to enact legislation that outlaws abortion altogether – even for rape, incest, or the health of the mother – or that moves the period of any permissible abortion ever closer to the date of conception and before a woman even knows she’s pregnant.
The Debt Ceiling
Americans want a functional government that doesn’t face a financial crisis every time Republicans decide to hold the nation hostage to their unpopular demands. When Donald Trump was president, neither party in Congress created a debt-limit crisis.
But with President Joe Biden in the White House, elected Republicans have:
Cult of Trump
Most Americans want honest, courageous, and hard-working leaders with personal integrity.
But elected Republicans refuse to condemn their leading candidate for the 2024 presidential nomination, notwithstanding:
Democracy
Most Americans want the United States to remain a democracy. Our forebears fought and died in wars to secure and defend it. In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, congressional Republicans blamed Trump for the January 6 riot. They described it as a heinous and unprecedented attack on the U.S. government.
But now elected Republicans pretend that it never happened, calling the insurrectionists “tourists” engaged in “peaceful protest.”
Voting Rights
Most Americans want to make voting easier. After all, it is the bedrock of any democracy.
But elected Republicans pursue voter suppression with a vengeance – literally. Committed to the opposite of democracy, they enact legislation that makes casting a ballot more difficult for those who are likely to vote against them.
Government Priorities
Most Americans support higher taxes on the rich.
But elected Republicans oppose taxes on the wealthiest Americans, while urging reductions in government spending that target, among other vulnerable groups, veterans, Social Security recipients, Medicare beneficiaries, poor mothers, and infants.
Climate
Most Americans want the government to take seriously the existential threat of climate change.
But elected Republicans ignore or ridicule it, while promoting activities that contribute to the destruction of the planet.
Culture Wars
Most Americans despise the polarization that has infected the body politic.
But elected Republicans use culture wars – including the rejection of science – to promote illiteracy and ignorance across a range of issues, deepening the schisms among us. In addition to the topics listed above, here are two more examples:
Your Vote Should Matter
Stated simply, if you vote for a Republican, you’re probably voting against your personal preferences for the nation.
You’re voting against democracy, which is supposed to honor voters’ desires.
You’re voting for those who claim to care what you think, but use such rhetoric to seduce you.
You’re voting for people whose sole agenda is the acquisition and retention of power. Other than Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) desire to retain his slim, four-person GOP majority in the House of Representatives, there’s no reason for him or any true party leader to tolerate the continuing presence of Rep. George Santos (R-NY), who was a disgrace long before his recent federal indictment for fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and false statements.
Eventually, the actions of elected Republicans betray them – and most of their supporters. But until it’s personal and GOP voters actually feel the impact, they won’t care.
Because in America today, that’s what it means to be a Republican voter.
On July 30, 1975, the Teamsters’ former president, Jimmy Hoffa, disappeared. He remains one of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century.
In 1960, my father stumbled unwittingly into a power struggle with Hoffa. My dad escaped with his life, his wife and his kids, but little else.
He was one of the lucky ones.
My first book, Crossing Hoffa – A Teamster’s Story. was a Chicago Tribune “Best Book of the Year” in 2007, and it continues to attract attention. You can listen to my latest interview about the story here.
This post first appeared at Common Dreams on April 26, 2023.
Both parties to the litigation won.
Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private-equity firm, is in the business of maximizing the return on its clients’ investments. In 2018, it bought a 76 percent interest in Dominion Voting Systems for $38.3 million. Five years later, Fox’s $787.5 million payout represented a staggering gain.
Fox News makes money by telling its audience what it wants to hear, even if Fox knows they’re lies. The settlement preserves its lucrative business model.
Democracy lost.
Panic at the Top
In the runup to the election, Fox enjoyed historic ratings and revenues. But a momentous Election Night decision put everything at risk. A small sample of Fox’s internal communications tells the story – and the public probably hasn’t seen the most damning ones.
Nov. 3, 2020, 11:20 p.m.: Fox became the first network to announce that Joe Biden had won Arizona – a disastrous development for Donald Trump’s re-election prospects. The Trump campaign was livid. On behalf of Bill Sammon’s Decision Desk team, Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt went on live television, defending the call to skeptical on-air hosts Tucker Carlson and Bret Baier.
Fox soon began hemorrhaging viewers in the far-right audience it had cultivated for decades.
Nov. 11: Raj Shah, Fox Corp.’s senior vice president and Trump’s former White House deputy press secretary, warned company leaders that “bold, clear and decisive action is needed for us to begin to regain the trust that we’re losing with our core audience.” Two days later, he wrote to Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan, that “Fox News is facing a brand crisis” and “open revolt… precipitous decline in Fox’s favorability among our core audience… poses lasting damage to the Fox News brand unless effectively addressed soon.”
In another email, Shah told colleagues that the network’s brand was “under heavy fire from our customer base.” In yet another, he wrote, “We are not concerned with losing market share to CNN or MSNBC right now. Our concern is Newsmax and One America News Network ….”
Lying as a Corporate Strategy
Nov. 12: Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a Trump tweet that referred to Fox’s broadcasts. She said that there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion voting machines. In a text chain with Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson wrote, “Please get her fired. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
Nov. 13: The “Brain Room” – Fox’s fact-checking and research division – concluded that claims about Dominion voting machines were “100% false. Dominion systems continue to reliably and accurately count ballots, and state and local election authorities, as well [as] fact-checkers, have publicly confirmed the integrity of the process.”
Fox on-air hosts ignored it.
Nov. 16: In a Zoom meeting, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said, “Listen, it’s one of the sad realities: If we hadn’t called Arizona those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger. The mystery would have been still hanging out there.”
Fox could not afford a similar misstep in the upcoming Georgia runoff for control of the U.S. Senate. Scott decided to push out Sammon and Stirewalt.
Elevating Lies and Eliminating Truth-Tellers
Nov. 18: In an email exchange with Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson complained about Trump attorney Sidney Powell, whose on-air election lies had pervaded Fox programs since November 8:
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way,” Carlson wrote. “I caught her. It’s insane.”
“Sidney is a complete nut,” Ingraham answered. “No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
“Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” Carlson said, making clear that he did not.
But Fox hosts did continue working with Powell and Rudy, promoting repeatedly what the judge in the Dominion case later ruled were “CRYSTAL clear” lies.
November 19: Giuliani held his infamous “dripping hair dye” press conference. Internally, Rupert Murdoch called it “Really crazy stuff. And damaging.” And he told Suzanne Scott, “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear. Probably hurting us too.” Likewise, Shah texted that Giuliani sounded “SO F*CKING CRAZY.”
But when Fox News White House correspondent, Kristin Fisher, fact-checked Giuliani on-air immediately following the conference, her boss complained:
“He expressed his great unhappiness with my live shot. He emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it. And he told me that I needed to do a better job of respect — this is a quote — ‘respecting our audience.’” Fisher thought she had respected the audience by telling it the truth.
Likewise, Shah recoiled at Fisher’s fact-checking: “This is the kinda shit that will kill us. We cover it wall to wall and then we burn that down with all the skepticism.”
Nov. 20: Rupert Murdoch emailed Suzanne Scott, “Maybe best to let Bill [Sammon] go right away and make acting appointment. Also the other guy… be a big message with Trump people.”
“We were going to do Stirewalt next,” Scott responded.
Early December: “This has to stop now,” Scott wrote in an email to a network vice-president, referring to anchor Eric Shawn’s fact-checking of Trump’s bogus voter-fraud claim. “This is bad business and there clearly is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows. The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”
Dec. 2: Bill Sammon wrote to Chris Stirewalt: “More than 20 minutes into our flagship evening news broadcast and we’re still focused solely on supposed election fraud — a month after the election. It’s remarkable how weak ratings makes good journalists do bad things. In my 22 years affiliated with Fox, this is the closest thing I’ve seen to an existential crisis — at least journalistically.”
Stirewalt responded: “What I see us doing is losing the silent majority of viewers as we chase the nuts off a cliff.”
January 2021: Sammon announced his retirement. Fox laid off Stirewalt in what it called a “post-election restructuring.”
Protecting Rupert Murdoch
Less than two weeks before trial, the judge in the case ruled that Dominion could force Rupert Murdoch to testify at trial. Dominion planned to call him as its second witness. His internal communications about Giuliani, as well as Sammon and Stirewalt, were devastating.
But there were more:
Jan. 12, 2021: In an email exchange with Fox board member and former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), Murdoch said that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a “[w]ake up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers!”
Jan. 20: Murdoch mused about the impact of Trump’s lying: “The more I think about McConnell’s remarks or complaint, the more I agree. Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25 percent of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitable it blew up Jan. 6th.”
Jan. 21: Murdoch sent a message to Suzanne Scott: “Is it ‘unarguable that high profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th an important chance to have the result overturned’? Maybe Sean [Hannity] and Laura [Ingraham] went too far… All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump … but what did he tell his viewers?”
Fox executives responded with 50 examples of the “high profile Fox voices” that had fed Trump’s Big Lie.
Fox’s Predicament Worsened
A week after Murdoch was ordered to testify at trial, Fox had a new problem. Its attorneys had repeatedly misrepresented his status. They had told the court that he was not an officer of Fox News when, in fact, he was its executive chairman. The judge said that he would sanction Fox News and launch an investigation into what other material it had failed to disclose.
Now Fox’s lawyers had skin in the game too.
What had Fox withheld? We’ll never know. But during Dominion’s opening statement to the jury, it planned to present additional internal Fox communications publicly for the first time.
Dominion’s Won Too
As discovery in Dominion’s defamation case against Fox proceeded, its claims became surprisingly strong, but significant obstacles to any recovery remained. Juries can produce unexpected results; damages are always a question mark; appeals can drag on for years. Declining a certain $787.5 million would have been like trading a winning Powerball ticket worth the sixth largest jackpot in history for a future one that might be worthless.
Democracy Lost
Dominion’s attorney suggested that the settlement benefited the public: “Trust matters. Lies have consequences… Today’s settlement of $787.5 million represents vindication and accountability.”
Then Fox issued a public statement that proved him wrong. It sounded like doublespeak from George Orwell’s 1984: “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
The only lesson Fox learned is that when it knowingly pushes lies, their employees shouldn’t create an electronic trail proving it. The settlement is just another cost of doing business – less than 20 percent of Fox Corp.’s cash on hand and less than half of its net income for 2022. And it’s tax-deductible! Fox plans a massive increase in cable and satellite provider fees that will more than offset the payment.
In 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government.”
Fox’s business model is antithetical to Jefferson’s vision. It makes billions by challenging the nation with an existential question:
Can democracy die from too many lies?
This post first appeared on Common Dreams on April 10, 2023.
On March 27, the Covenant School killer in Nashville used two semi-automatic weapons and a handgun to end the lives of three nine-year-old students, the head of school, a substitute teacher, and a maintenance worker.
Republicans shrugged. They said there was no role for the federal government in protecting the nation’s children from gun violence. Then, walking hand in hand with the National Rifle Association, they resumed their successful efforts to loosen state gun restrictions across the country, including Tennessee.
Ten days later, a GOP supermajority in the Tennessee House of Representatives punished dissent, undermined democracy, and became a case study in institutional racism. But they transformed a petty grievance about legislative “decorum” into a major national news story. They energized gun control and civil rights advocates in the way that the Supreme Court’s poorly reasoned abortion decision galvanized the pro-choice movement.
Guns and Money
Since 1998, the NRA and its affiliates have spent more than $200 million on political activities, nearly all of it to support Republicans.
In Texas alone, the NRA has spent $5 million over the past five years as that state’s legislature expanded gun rights. At the June 2021 signing ceremony for the law that eliminated training and licensing requirements for carrying a handgun in public, NRA leader Wayne LaPierre sat alongside Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) as the only non-elected official at the table.
“Thank God, Texas is leading the way for the country,” LaPierre said.
Leading where? Every year since 2020, gun violence has been the leading cause of childhood deaths in America. Recent episodes of mass school shootings include:
The list goes on and on. In 2023, there have already been 16 school shootings in grades K through 12.
But the carnage isn’t limited to kids or schools. Every year since 2020, there have been more than 600 mass shootings in the United States. In 2023, there have been more than 130 – so far.
Democracy Thwarted
Mass shootings garner the most attention, but they are the tip of a deadly iceberg. America has five percent of the world’s population and 46 percent of the world’s civilian-owned firearms. We have 120 guns for every 100 people – more per capita than any other nation. Compare that to Canada (34.7), Australia (30), and Norway (28.8).
So it’s not surprising that among developed nations, the U.S. also ranks first in gun homicides per capita (4.12 for every 100,000 people). Compare that to Canada (0.5), Australia (0.18), and Norway (0.07). So far in 2023 alone, guns have been involved in more than 400 children’s deaths and more than 1,100 kids’ injuries.
An overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans wants solutions that would not compromise anyone’s Second Amendment rights:
Assault weapons are especially deadly. During a span of only 14 minutes, the Covenant School shooter fired 152 rounds – a bullet every five-and-a half seconds. Two semi-automatic weapons held 30 rounds of ammunition each.
From 1994 to 2004, America had a federal ban on assault weapons, and it helped – a lot, according to some studies. A 2021 analysis found “overwhelming” evidence that the law reduced mass shootings and deaths. Experts agree that the key was banning sales of high-capacity magazines that could hold more than 10 rounds.
But the federal ban expired in 2014. Republicans and the NRA have led the fight against reinstating it.
The Republican “Three-step”
Only a handful of states have enacted significant gun restrictions, but even they remain at the mercy of neighboring states that often have very few. The problem cries out for a national response.
During a three-minute interview on the U.S. Capitol steps immediately following the Nashville shooting, Tennessee’s own Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) summarized the GOP’s three-step defending federal paralysis on the issue.
Step 1: Nothing works, so don’t try.
“We’re not gonna fix it,” he said.
Asked whether Congress could do anything about the problem, he continued, “Criminals are going to be criminals.”
When pressed on what Congress can do to protect the nation’s kids, Burchett replied: “I don’t see any real role that we can do other than mess things up.”
Step 2: More religion
“We need to change people’s hearts,” Burchett said. “As a Christian, if we talk about the church, and I’ve said this many times, I really think we really need a revival in this country.”
Step 3: I have mine; go get your own
Asked whether other steps might safeguard children like his own daughter, Burchett said, “Well, we homeschool her.”
That’s his most telling comment. Fend for yourself. Don’t expect a Republican-controlled government to do anything for you or your kids, unless you’re wealthy and want a tax cut.
“The Tennessee Three”
Days after the Covenant School tragedy, thousands of peaceful protesters, including school-age kids and their parents, gathered at the state capitol in Nashville. Exercising their First Amendment rights to speak, assemble, and petition their government, they urged gun restrictions.
Three Democratic state representatives – two young Black men and a white woman – joined them symbolically by walking to the well of the House floor and voicing support for their cause. But Tennessee’s Republican Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton (R) hadn’t given them permission to do so.
Sexton compared them to the January 6th rioters: “What they did… was equivalent, at least equivalent, maybe worse, depending on how you look at it, of doing an insurrection in the Capitol.”
Then he sought the ultimate legislative punishment: expulsion. Not a reprimand. Not censure. Not stripping them of committee assignments. Expulsion – a rare penalty that the House had imposed on only three prior occasions in the last 150 years.
In 1866, it expelled six members after they tried to block the state’s ratification of the 14th Amendment granting citizenship to former slaves. In 1980, it voted 92-1 to oust a member after his bribery conviction. And in 2016 after months of investigation, it voted 70-2 to expel a lawmaker accused of repeated sexual misconduct.
On April 6, 2023, the expulsion proceedings against the “Tennessee Three” became vivid illustrations of authoritarianism and institutional racism.
State Rep. Andrew Farmer (R) sponsored the expulsion resolution against Justin Pearson (D). It asserted that Pearson’s behavior “reflects adversely upon the integrity and dignity of the House….” But during the hearing on his resolution, Farmer himself did far greater damage to that legislative body.
“Just because you don’t get your way, you can’t come to the well, bring your friends and throw a temper tantrum with an adolescent bullhorn,” Farmer scolded as Pearson stood in the well of the House floor defending himself.
“Now you all heard that,” Pearson responded. “How many of you would want to be spoken to that way?”
Receiving no response, Pearson repeated his question. Again, silence followed.
The Republican supermajority then expelled Pearson, as it had the other Black representative, Justin Jones (D). It deprived 130,000 residents of the state’s largest cities – Nashville and Memphis – of representation. Only one Republican joined Democrats in opposing all three expulsions.
Gloria Johnson (D) retained her seat by a single vote because six additional Republicans supported her. Asked why she was the only survivor, Johnson, who is white, said, “It might have to do with the color of our skin.”
Republicans cherish the right to life, but only until the moment of birth. They value democracy, but only when it suits them. They defend dissent, but only when they are the dissenters.
And they give lip service to the quest for racial justice and equality. But their actions betray their words.
Trump’s worst nightmare has begun. And it won’t end any time soon. Here’s my recent interview about the development on Radio Parallax.
This post first appeared at Common Dreams on March 16, 2023.
Today’s assignment:
You write for the most influential newspaper in America. Your recent column about COVID relied on dubious sourcing, specifically, Person A, who agreed with your personal views on the issue.
Your opening “hook” for readers was Person A’s inaccurate and misleading statements. He characterized a medical review in which he participated (along with 11 others) as supporting your position, although the review itself stated that it didn’t.
Your column went viral. The medical community condemned Person A’s false characterization of the review and highlighted the review’s methodological limitations and failings that your column ignored.
Two weeks later, you doubled down on your position.
Shortly thereafter, the review’s editor-in-chief issued a statement that Person A and many commentators had misrepresented the review’s conclusions.
What do you do now?
What if you’re the newspaper’s editor?
Bret Stephens’ February 21 column on mask mandates created this scandal at the New York Times.
How It Began
When the next airborne pandemic strikes, the disinformation currently surrounding COVID will paralyze policymakers and the public. Both-sidesing critical mitigation measures such as masks – even when one side lacks serious factual support – has undermined science and created mass confusion.
Over the past three weeks, Stephens and the New York Times have added to that confusion.
The fact is that masks and mask mandates limited the spread of COVID. But Stephens claimed to have “unambiguous” proof from a recent Cochrane Library review that mandates didn’t work at all. A cursory reading of the Cochrane review abstract and authors’ summary revealed that it expressly – and repeatedly – declined to support Stephens’ position:
Likewise before Stephens published his column, the medical community had warned that anti-maskers were misusing the Cochrane review to support their broader agenda.
Throwing caution – and facts – to the wind, Stephens turned to Tom Jefferson, one of the review’s 12 authors. Jefferson is a senior associate tutor in the department of continuing education at the University of Oxford. He has a history of being wrong about COVID.
As more than 50,000 Americans were dying during the month of April 2020 alone, Jefferson questioned whether the outbreak was really a pandemic or just a prolonged respiratory flu season. He continues to claim that there is no basis for saying that COVID spreads through airborne transmission, despite the fact that major public health agencies have long said otherwise. The “Declarations of interest” relating to the Cochrane mask review noted that Jefferson had voiced “an opinion on the topic of the review in articles for popular media…[and] was not involved in the editorial process for this review.”
Ignoring the red flags, Stephens opened his column by quoting Jefferson’s inaccurate and misleading statements, starting with: “‘There is just no evidence that they’ — masks — “‘make any difference. Full stop.’”
Then Stephens blasted CDC Director Rochelle Walensky for acknowledging the limitations in Cochrane’s review, accused her of turning the CDC into an “accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science,” and called for her resignation. He closed by saying that the review had vindicated those who fought mandates.
The Stephens/Jefferson misleading characterization of the Cochrane review provoked widespread condemnation from the medical community and others. Two days after Stephens’ column appeared, former CDC Director Tom Frieden wrote on Twitter:
“Community-wide masking is associated with 10-80% reductions in infections and deaths, with higher numbers associated with higher levels of mask wearing in high-risk areas.”
How It Proliferated
As anti-maskers weaponized Stephens’ column and it went viral, the New York Times failed to correct it:
The Times March 6 episode of “The Conversation” finally raised the issue. Reaffirming his incorrect position, Stephens ignored the medical community’s criticism of the Cochrane review and his column, denied relying solely on the review (even though his column cited nothing else), and dragged his fellow Times mask-mandate critic, David Leonhardt, into the fray.
How It Unraveled
Four days later, on March 10, Times opinion columnist Zenyep Tufekci, a journalism professor at Columbia University, published yet another detailed critique of the Cochrane review: “Here’s Why the Science Is Clear That Masks Work.” She didn’t name Stephens, but she detailed facts and evidence that demolished Jefferson’s misleading claims in his column.
Some of that evidence came from Cochrane Library’s editor-in-chief, Karla Soares-Weiser. She told Tufekci that Jefferson had seriously misinterpreted its finding on masks when he said that it proved that “there is just no evidence that they make any difference.”
“[T]hat statement is not an accurate representation of what the review found,” Soares-Weiser said.
Hours later, Soares-Weiser issued Cochrane’s statement repeating the cautionary caveats in the review itself, which “has been widely misinterpreted… Given the limitations in the primary evidence, the review is not able to address the question of whether mask-wearing itself reduces people’s risk of contracting or spreading respiratory viruses.” (Italics in original)
Cochrane’s statement also called out the purveyors of disinformation: “Many commentators have claimed that a recently-updated Cochrane Review shows that ‘masks don’t work’, which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation.” (Italics in original)
How the Times Made It Worse
The Tufekci article suggested that the Times had come down on the side of fact-based science demonstrating that masks and mandates had been effective. But on Sunday, March 12, its online edition presented mask mandates as a debatable proposition: Should we use them in the next pandemic?
Using a “Yes” or “No” format, the Times relied on Dr. Anders Tegnell, former state epidemiologist for Sweden, to defend the “No Mask Mandate” position. Given the parameters of the hypothetical pandemic that the Times posed (only five cases of a deadly respiratory virus in a single jurisdiction and 10 cases nationwide), Tegnell said that masks should be used in health and elder care settings. He said that it was too soon for a mandate, but the decision would depend on how the situation unfolded.
So even the “No” wasn’t really a no. The Times failed to mention that Tegnell had presided over his country’s disastrous “do-nothing” response during the first year of COVID-19, when Sweden’s COVID death rate far exceeded neighboring Nordic countries.
How It Will Haunt Us
Stephens moved on without remorse, but the incalculable damage left in his wake endures. Mask mandates are disappearing and won’t return any time soon, but not because they were ineffective when needed. The catastrophic consequences of Stephens’ disinformation will arrive when the next airborne virus (or COVID variant) strikes, pandemic victims overwhelm hospitals, policymakers and the public disregard science, and a proven mitigation tool remains on the shelf.
The Times is complicit. After failing to issue a correction to Stephens’ column, it then regressed to both-sidesism. Presenting both sides of an issue as if they stand on equal, fact-based footing when they don’t is not journalism. It’s an insidious form of disinformation.
When it involves public health, it can be deadly.
This post first appeared at Common Dreams on March 8, 2023
Worse than a bust, it’s a boomerang.
As part of the deal to become Speaker of the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) promised far-right extremists a new committee to investigate the “weaponization” of the federal government. Its first chairperson, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), claims that “dozens” of “whistleblowers” have come forward with evidence that the Department of Justice – including the FBI – has been targeting conservatives.
So far, Jordan has surfaced with only three disgruntled former FBI employees who have little first-hand knowledge and a lot of baggage.
But behind two of them lies the real story.
The Roster and the Real Story
Jordan’s first “star witness” is George Hill, a former FBI analyst in Boston’s field office. On Twitter, Hill claimed that the Jan. 6 attack was a “set up” and that there was “a larger #Democrat plan using their enforcement arm, the #FBI.” He also described the FBI as “the Brown Shirt enforcers of the @DNC” – a reference to Hitler’s Nazi storm troopers.
The other two are Stephen Friend and Garrett O’Boyle. Friend resigned as a special agent in the FBI’s Daytona Beach office after refusing to take part in a S.W.A.T. raid of a suspect in the January 6 insurrection. The suspect was an alleged member of the right-wing Three Percenter militia who posted a video of himself carrying an AR-15-style rifle outside the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Garrett O’Boyle is an FBI special agent from the Wichita office. The FBI suspended him, but he refuses to say why.
But the real story is that Friend and O’Boyle have a common benefactor – Kash Patel, who has provided them with financial support. Patel sent Friend $5,000 almost immediately after they connected in November 2022 and has helped to promote Friend’s forthcoming book. Patel also got Friend his new job at the Center for Renewing America (CRA), a far-right organization where Patel is a fellow.
Another CRA fellow is former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, who pushed Trump to overturn the 2020 election. Appearing before the House’s January 6 committee, Clark asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times.
But the person to watch is 43-year-old Kash Patel, formerly a top Jordan aide. In his meteoric rise to the upper echelon of Trump advisers, he has been the Forrest Gump of Trump’s biggest scandals.
Trump-Russia
In the spring of 2017, Patel joined Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) staff on the House Intelligence Committee and became an active participant in the effort to undermine the Trump-Russia investigation. As senior committee counsel, Patel became a key contributor to the Nunes memo attacking the FBI and the Justice Department.
In early 2019, Patel became senior counsel to Jim Jordan on the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
Trump’s First Impeachment
By the time Trump tried to shake down Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, 2019, Patel had moved to the president’s National Security Council. Ukraine was outside Patel’s portfolio of official responsibilities, but Trump referred to him as one of his top Ukraine policy specialists. The NSC specialists actually in charge of Ukraine policy feared that Patel was a backchannel to Trump – fueling the false narrative that Ukraine had interfered on behalf of Democrats in the 2016 election.
The Election, the Insurrection, and Trump’s Second Impeachment
In February 2020, Trump named Patel as principal deputy to Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, another fierce Trump loyalist. A month later, Patel met with intelligence officials and imposed limits on what they could tell congressional leaders during closed-door sessions about Russia’s efforts to influence the 2020 presidential election.
Patel got another promotion on November 10, shortly after every news outlet had confirmed that Trump had lost the election. Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and appointed Patel – who had no military background – as chief of staff for Esper’s replacement, Christopher Miller.
A month later, Trump planned to name Patel deputy director of the CIA, but fierce resistance at the 11th hour from CIA Director Gina Haspel, Vice President Mike Pence, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone caused Trump to reverse course.
After the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Patel was among the top Defense Department officials whose phones were “wiped” – deleting all text messages before, during, and after the insurrection.
The Mar-a-Lago Documents
By early 2022, the controversy between Trump and the National Archives over Trump’s refusal to return presidential records, including classified material, was intensifying. In April, Trump named Patel to the board of his social media company. In May, Patel began claiming publicly and without evidence that Trump had declassified the documents. By then, the Archives had already referred the matter to the Justice Department. Shortly thereafter, a grand jury issued a subpoena to recover the material.
During Patel’s October 13, 2022 appearance before the federal grand jury investigating Trump’s handling of the Mar-a-Lago documents, he asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Three weeks later, Patel testified under a Justice Department grant of immunity from prosecution.
The Next Chapter
In July 2022, Axios reported that Trump and his allies were preparing a plan for Trump’s second term that would empower him to fire 50,000 federal workers throughout the bureaucracy and replace them with sycophants. At the top of his would-be administration, Trump wants people with “courage,” such as Jeffrey Clark – a potential Trump attorney general – and Kash Patel.
Citing sources close to Trump, the Axios article concluded, “If Patel could survive Senate confirmation, there is a good chance Trump would make him CIA or FBI director. If not, Patel would likely serve in a senior role in the White House.”
When it comes to “weaponizing” the federal government for partisan gain, Trump still has no equal – and no shortage of loyalists like Jim Jordan’s former aide, Kash Patel, waiting to pull the trigger.
This post first appeared at Common Dreams on February 25, 2023.
Labeling a newspaper column an “opinion” doesn’t create a license to play fast and loose with facts.
All of my op-eds for the New York Times have gone through rigorous fact-checking with a conscientious Times editor. Apparently, columnist Bret Stephens is exempt from any such requirement. The Times should alert its readers to his special status so they can protect themselves.
Masks Work
For years, the science of masking to minimize the spread of airborne viruses, including COVID, has been settled. But Stephens’ February 21 column mischaracterized a recent review of other researchers’ studies to push his anti-masking views. In the process, he made the Times a megaphone for broadcasting incomplete, misleading, and dangerous assertions as if they were facts.
Stephens began his column by describing the Cochrane Library’s January 30, 2023 review as the “most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19.” Then he wrote that one of the study’s 11 authors, Tom Jefferson, said its conclusions “were unambiguous.”
We’ll return to that one.
Quoting Jefferson, Stephens continued, “‘There’s just no evidence that they’ – masks – ‘make any difference.’”
How about high-quality N-95 masks?
Again, quoting Jefferson, Stephens wrote, “‘Makes no difference – none of it.’”
Stephens then quoted Jefferson on the futility of using masks in conjunction with many other accepted medical precautions – hand hygiene, physical distancing, or air filtration: “‘There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.’”
Stunning statements – and flat-out wrong. Even Cochrane’s review undermined Jefferson’s draconian certainty. The “plain language summary” accompanying the published review began with this “Key message” about its findings: “We are uncertain whether wearing masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses based on the studies we assessed.”
“Uncertain” is a far cry from “unambiguous.”
Then again, Jefferson has been wrong before. In March 2020, he said of COVID, “[T]here does not seem to be anything special about this particular epidemic of influenza-like illness.” In July 2020, he asserted that COVID may have been lying dormant around the world, rather than originating in China. And for years, he has been hostile toward masking.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Stephens used Jefferson’s comments to introduce his larger argument: “Mask mandates were a bust.” As he attacked the CDC’s “mindless adherence to its masking guidance,” Stephens failed to mention the growing body of medical and scientific literature lambasting those misusing Cochrane’s review to undermine masking generally.
First, Cochrane’s was not a new scientific study. It retrieved and combined data from separate trials that varied greatly in “quality, design, populations, and outcomes” in what scientists call a “meta-analysis.” But combining such apples, oranges, grapes, peaches, and pears can create problems.
That’s why the 11 Cochrane authors themselves warned: “The variable quality of the studies hampers drawing any firm conclusions.”
Second, most of the actual trials in Cochrane’s review tested only mask effectiveness at preventing infection in the wearer. They ignored the potential benefits of face masks in preventing the spread of infection to others. In fact, buried in Stephens’ op-ed is his telling admission:
“[T]he analysis does not prove that proper masks, properly worn, had no benefit on an individual level.”
Third, Cochrane’s authors acknowledged that in their assessment of community-wide masking effectiveness, “Relatively low numbers of people followed the guidance about wearing masks or about hand hygiene, which may have affected the results of the studies.”
How can anyone conclude from clinical trials that masks don’t work when most people in the trials didn’t wear them, much less wear them correctly?
Likewise, some of the studies in Cochrane’s review relied on participants to self-report their mask usage. That’s a big problem. In a study of masking in Kenya, 76% of participants self-reported masking in public, but the actual observed masking rate was only 5%.
The Cochrane Review Itself Repeatedly Acknowledged Its Limitations
As a group, Cochrane’s authors themselves listed the many limitations of their review that accounted for “the observed lack of effect of mask-wearing”: poor study design, lower adherence to mask-wearing (especially among children), the quality of the masks used, and more.
Commenting on Cochrane’s review, one medical fact-checker observed, “Each of these factors increases the risk of bias, reducing the reliability of [Cochrane’s] conclusions. In addition, while some studies confirmed the type of [COVID] infection by a laboratory test, many others relied on self-reporting to assess both mask-wearing and infection, further increasing the risk of bias.”
All of which explains why Cochrane’s authors collectively expressly discounted their own conclusions about the effectiveness of population-level masking: “The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions.”
Again, the authors’ “plain language summary” accompanying the review noted: “Our confidence in these results is generally low to moderate for the subjective outcomes related to respiratory illness….”
In less technical terms: “garbage in, garbage out.”
Tragedy Ahead
The New York Times’ failure to fact-check Stephens on this critical public health issue has real-world consequences. It prolongs needless controversy over whether wearing masks protects individuals from COVID when the proven fact is that they do. As a result of Stephens’ rant, some people will decide not to wear a mask, even in high-risk settings. Some people will become ill. Some people will be hospitalized. Some people will die.
For me and the millions of immunocompromised households in America, this is especially personal. To a great degree, our health depends upon others wearing masks to protect us, as well as them, in high-risk settings. We’re on the front lines of a war that Americans can win. But Bret Stephens and the New York Times have erected another misinformation obstacle to victory over the pandemic.
Waiting for Stephens’ Next Epiphany
Maybe someday Stephens will change his mind, as he did with climate change. For more than a decade, he was a leading climate-change denier. While still at the Wall Street Journal, he wrote in 2008 that global warming was “a mass hysteria phenomenon.” A year later, he said that the intellectual methods of “global warming true believers” were “instructively similar” to Stalin’s.
But in August 2022, Stephens’ trip to Greenland’s melting glaciers resulted in “fresh thinking” that produced a lengthy op-ed for the Times. He opened his eyes and changed his mind:
“I always said to myself, that I should never be afraid to change my mind in public, even on subjects where I’ve taken, you know, I’ve really put a stake in the ground. So that was, that was how that long 6,000-word giant piece came to life….”
Using the thin reed of the latest Cochrane Library review, Stephens has put another bad stake in the ground. Someday he might change his mind. But the country can’t afford to wait the years that it took for his epiphany on global warming.
Visiting COVID patients in an ICU might accelerate his awakening. Perhaps Stephens could bring along another New York Times columnist without public health qualifications who has downplayed COVID repeatedly – David Leonhardt.
If they believe what Stephens led his readers to conclude on February 21, they won’t wear masks. And they’ll encourage the doctors and nurses in attendance to remove theirs.
If you’re confused about the debt ceiling debate, then Republicans in Congress have you right where they want you.
My latest interview on the subject appears at Radio Parallax.
Here’s the link: https://www.radioparallax.com/playshow.php?sid=1071&seg=1
This post first appeared at Common Dreams on February 8, 2023.
The immediate task is simple: Raise the nation’s debt limit and thereby avert a U.S. recession and worldwide economic disaster.
Five is a magic number. A mere five Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives must step up—and soon.
They must join all House Democrats to prevent a massive, self-inflicted national wound. They must place their country above a nihilistic, anti-democratic—with a small “d”—GOP that obfuscates and excuses the January 6 insurrection as a “peaceful protest.” They must weather the wrath of a MAGA-dominated Republican party.
And so far, they are missing in action.
The immediate task is simple: Raise the nation’s debt limit and thereby avert a U.S. recession and worldwide economic disaster.
Lies and Hypocrisy Meet a Constitutional Mandate
Incorrectly characterizing America’s debt ceiling, congressional Republicans suggest that it’s analogous to an individual’s credit card: “You hit the limit and can’t spend anymore.”
But the nation’s debt limit has nothing to do with future spending. Raising the ceiling merely allows the federal government to pay debts it has already incurred for expenditures that Congress previously approved.
The U.S. Constitution has already spoken on this issue: “The validity of the public debt of the United States… shall not be questioned.”
Even so, if Republican extremists who control House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) prevail, sometime this summer the U.S. Treasury will exhaust the extraordinary measures now underway to avert defaulting on that debt. The nation and the world could nosedive into an economic recession or worse.
In Part, It’s About 2024
Democrats and Republicans raised the ceiling three times under President Donald Trump as he increased the national debt by $7 trillion. So what new urgency prompts the current GOP trek toward economic apocalypse?
A partial answer is that President Joe Biden is a Democrat. The best case for any Democratic victory in 2024 is the economy. It has come roaring back on his watch: More jobs created in the first two years than any president in history, bipartisan support for historic infrastructure investment and climate action, easing inflation, falling gas prices, and more. The best way to defeat any Democrat in 2024 is to kill the economy. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling might do the trick.
America has been down this road. Before the midterm elections in 2010 ushered in the first GOP Tea Party candidates, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declared that making President Barack Obama a one-term president was “the single most important thing we want to achieve.” Republicans then won control of the House.
A year later, McConnell played the debt-ceiling card. Only 72 hours before a U.S. default in 2011, McConnell agreed to raise the limit in return for cuts in future government spending. Along the way, he also killed Obama’s proposal for tax increases on the wealthy as an alternative method of balancing future budgets.
But in the weeks leading up to that 11th hour resolution, uncertainty surrounding the negotiations roiled financial markets. Stocks plummeted and didn’t recover for months. Volatility spiked; interest rates increased; S&P downgraded the nation’s debt rating; and the country’s borrowing costs went up by $1.3 billion.
President Obama still won a second term. And this time around, even McConnell sees the folly of threatening a U.S. government default.
“In the end, I think the important thing to remember is that America must never default on its debt. It never has, and it never will,” McConnell said last month. “We’ll end up in some kind of negotiation with the administration over what the circumstances or conditions under which the debt ceiling [will] be raised.”
McConnell assumes that reasonable minds will prevail. But today’s House Republicans make that a dangerous assumption.
Thelma and Louise Go To Washington
The fact that President Biden is a Democrat is not the only reason for Republican obstruction. After all, following the 2011 debacle, Republicans approved additional debt limit increases during the Obama administration with far less drama. But this time really is different.
The embarrassing spectacle of McCarthy’s election as speaker makes clear that a few far-right extremists now control him and the GOP’s House majority. Economic ruin doesn’t scare them. At their core, they are nihilists. Destruction is in their DNA.
Negotiate, McConnell says. How can anyone negotiate with hostage takers who refuse to say what they want? Beyond unspecified cuts to future spending, the GOP won’t even list its demands. But a few “emerging GOP ideas” have appeared.
During his State of the Union speech, President Biden noted correctly that some Republicans in Congress had proposed “sunsetting” Social Security and Medicare. He was referring to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) infamous 11-point plan to “rescue America,” which would require congressional re-enactment of all federal legislation – including Social Security and Medicare – after five years.
From the audience, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) yelled, “Liar.” When other Republicans joined her heckling, Biden embraced their new collective promise not to cut those programs:
“So, folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now. Right? All right. We’ve got unanimity!”
Republicans applauded the line. Time will tell if the GOP promise sticks.
Other Republican “ideas” would actually increase spending, such as additional border wall funding. Likewise, House Republicans have already voted to approve another GOP “idea”: reduce $80 billion in previously authorized IRS funding slated to hire 87,000 more employees and modernize antiquated systems. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Republican plan would actually increase the deficit because it would reduce federal revenue by $186 billion.
The most candid of the congressional far-right extremists would refuse to increase the debt limit at all and allow the economy to go off a cliff – like the title characters in Thelma and Louise speeding into the Grand Canyon.
Prominent financial players, including Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, hope that default doesn’t happen. But as Moynihan observed on February 6, “Hope is not a strategy.” He is preparing his institution for a possible U.S. default, and he’s not alone.
Five rational Republicans in the House can stop the madness, provided the Democratic candidate wins Virginia’s February 21 special election for a currently open seat.
Otherwise, it will take six.
The “red wave” became a ripple, but the battle to save democracy isn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
Here’s the link to my latest interview on Radio Parallax: https://www.radioparallax.com/playshow.php?sid=1059
This post first appeared at Common Dreams on October 24, 2022.
“Lie: To make an untrue statement with intent to deceive.”
“Liar: A person who tells lies.”
Thomas Jefferson warned that an informed citizenry would be crucial to the survival of democracy. In pursuit of that mission today, words matter and the media bear a special responsibility to get them right. When they don’t, democracy itself can become the ultimate victim. That’s happening now.
Universally, the media have settled on the term election “denier” to describe election liars. The difference goes far beyond semantics.
Election “denier” is tailor-made for today’s “bothsidesism” press. It implies the existence of two defensible but competing positions on President Joseph Biden’s unambiguous victory. It allows the media to straddle both sides of a polarized electorate without the risk of alienating those offended by the plain truth. Clarity yields to the chase for subscribers, viewers, and online clicks.
But by definition, those spreading the Big Lie that Trump won the election are liars. Asserting otherwise ignores Biden’s resounding popular vote and Electoral College wins, followed by Trump’s 60+ unsuccessful court challenges seeking to reverse those results. It disregards schemes that are the subject of federal and state criminal investigations to subvert the election. It perpetuates the danger that culminated in the January 6 insurrection.
And it undermines what matters most to American democracy: public confidence in free, fair, and secure elections.
The widespread use of election “denier” is the culmination of the press’s struggle to cover Donald Trump appropriately. Until 2015, the country had never seen a presidential candidate like him. Rarely calling him a persistent liar – which he is – news organizations accused him of more benign acts: “dishonesty, spreading falsehoods, misrepresenting facts, distorting news, passing on inaccuracies, and being loose with the truth.”
The Washington Post didn’t use the word “lie” about a false Trump assertion until August 22, 2018. By then, its fact checker had documented his more than 4,200 “false or misleading claims” but had never used the “L” word. Rationalizing his prior reluctance, the fact checker wrote, “[I]t is difficult to document whether the president knows he is not telling the truth.”
Actually, it’s not. In a court of law, juries can and do infer intent from surrounding facts and circumstances, including prior bad acts. By the time Trump left office, the fact checker had found more than 30,000 “false or misleading” Trump claims, but rarely had the paper called them lies.
Likewise, Associated Press standards editor John Daniszewski explained, “[W]e feel it’s better to say what the facts are, say what the person said and let the audience make the decision whether or not it’s an intentional lie.”
Such disingenuous sophistry abdicates the press’ fundamental responsibility in a democracy. Trump has overwhelmed the public with lies, and his allies have amplified them. Americans need the help of respected news organizations to separate fact from fiction. Identifying lies – and avoiding euphemisms in describing them – should be part of every real journalist’s (and headline editor’s) job.
In 2018, Dean Baquet, then-executive editor of the New York Times, offered this excuse:
“The word ‘lie’ is very powerful. For one thing, it assumes that someone knew the statement was false. Another reason to use the word judiciously is that our readers could end up focusing more on our use of the word than on what was said. And using ‘lie’ repeatedly could feed the mistaken notion that we’re taking political sides. That’s not our role.”
Previous press malfeasance does not justify its current failures. Take Baquet’s points in order and apply them anew to election liars: First, the power of the word “lie” is all the more reason to use it when democracy’s survival hangs in the balance. Second, election liars know that Biden won because – almost two years later – they can cite no credible evidence to the contrary. Third, audiences should focus on the fact that Trump and his allies are lying to them about Biden’s right to the presidency.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, labeling election liars accurately is not “taking political sides.” It’s the responsibility of a free press in the fight to save democracy.
The descent down the slippery slope of equivocation is swift. On October 13, 2022, the front-page headline of the Times’ online edition read: “Over 370 Republican Candidates Have Cast Doubt on the 2020 Election.”
“Cast Doubt” – that’s not so bad, right? Two days later, the article’s headline in my home-delivery print edition was worse: “2020 Election Skeptics Crowd the Republican Ticket Nationwide.”
“Skeptics” – that’s a good trait, isn’t it? To ancient Greek philosophers, skeptics were merely critical thinkers about debatable propositions. The current dictionary definitions of skepticism include “an attitude of doubt… either in general or toward a particular object” and “the doctrine that… knowledge in a particular area is uncertain.”
But there is no longer any doubt or uncertainty about President Joseph Biden’s election victory. Asserting the contrary view is lying. Period.
The election liars’ only intent is to deceive, and their battle cry is simple: “If we don’t win the next election, it must have been rigged – just as the last one was.”
To observe the impact of failing to call election liars what they are, look at videos depicting the death and destruction that occurred on January 6.
Look at how, since January 6, Trump’s Big Lie has metastasized throughout the GOP and the American body politic.
Look at gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R-AZ). In a CNN appearance on October 16, 2022, she refused to commit to accepting defeat.
Look at how the stage is set for violence and chaos that could erupt in key states and congressional districts where Republicans lose in November.
But some of the election liars will win in November 2022.
Now imagine November 2024.
The bad guys haven’t won – yet.
Now playing: My interview on Radio Parallax. Here’s the link.
This post originally appeared at Common Dreams on August 17, 2022.
Day after day in the unfolding Mar-a-Lago scandal, Trump’s own words have added evidence of criminal wrongdoing that could cost him a lot more than money.
***
Former president Donald Trump is unleashing a barrage of contradictory lies about the FBI’s search of a possible crime scene – Mar-a-Lago. As each lie collapses under the weight of incontrovertible facts, he moves on to a new one. In 2018, Trump adviser Steve Bannon described the strategy to author Michael Lewis:
“The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”
Except this time Trump’s very real opposition is the U.S. Department of Justice, and federal prosecutors are not so easily distracted. With every lie that Trump tells and then abandons, he creates new evidence of what prosecutors call “consciousness of guilt” – a defendant’s post-crime conduct indicating an awareness that he or she committed the offense.
Ironically, as Trump spun his Mar-a-Lago lies, he sat for a deposition in the New York attorney general’s civil suit that threatens his wealth. Trump refused to answer every question, except his name. He asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 440 times.
Yet day after day in the unfolding Mar-a-Lago scandal, Trump’s own words have added evidence of criminal wrongdoing that could cost him a lot more than money.
Timeline Leading to the Search
January 2022: After months of wrangling with the National Archives, Trump returned 15 boxes of presidential documents that he had no right to possess. Under the Presidential Records Act, they were and are the property of the American people. When he left office, they should have gone to the Archives, regardless of whether they were classified.
February 2022: While in office, Trump had torn up documents and flushed them down the White House residence toilet. As Archives officials reviewed the 15 boxes of material recovered in January 2022, they discovered previously torn documents that White House records management personnel had taped back together. They found other documents that remained in tatters.
Archives officials realized that some boxes contained classified material and suspected that some records were missing altogether. They referred the matter to the Justice Department.
April-May 2022: Federal agents quietly interviewed Trump aides at Mar-a-Lago about the handling of presidential records.
June 3, 2022: Four Justice Department investigators met with Trump’s lawyers at Mar-a-Lago and visited a basement room housing the documents. During the meeting, the investigators served a grand jury subpoena for some of the sensitive national security documents and took those documents with them.
Around this time, one of Trump’s lawyers certified that Trump had now returned all classified material in the storage room boxes.
June 8, 2022: Trump’s attorneys received a letter from federal investigators asking them to increase security for the document storage room in the basement at Mar-a-Lago. Trump aides added a padlock.
June 22, 2022: Federal investigators subpoenaed the Trump Organization for surveillance tape of the Mar-a-Lago document storage area. The tape allowed investigators to determine who had accessed that area.
Aug. 5, 2022: Based on an evidentiary showing of probable cause that the search would lead to evidence of a crime, a federal magistrate judge approved the warrant to search specific areas of Mar-a-Lago.
Timeline of Trump’s Lies
Lie #1: Persecution
Aug. 8, 2022: The FBI conducted the search and gave Trump’s representatives a copy of the warrant. When they finished, they also provided Trump with an inventory listing everything that the FBI had found and seized.
The warrant revealed that the FBI was seeking evidence of serious crimes involving destruction of government records, obstruction of justice, and the Espionage Act.
The inventory revealed that the FBI had found 20 boxes of material that included 11 sets of classified documents. Some documents were marked “Secret,” “Top Secret,” or “Top Secret/Secured Compartmented Information” – one of the highest levels of classification.
That evening, Trump complained publicly about the search, calling it political persecution. He had a copy of the warrant and inventory that proved otherwise, but the public didn’t.
Lie #2: The FBI is corrupt
August 10, 2022: Trump suggested falsely that the FBI may have planted evidence during the search.
August 11, 2022: Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he would seek public disclosure of the search warrant and the inventory of items that the FBI had collected during the search. Those documents would reveal the criminal statutes involved and the results of the search, thereby exposing Trump’s lies about “persecution” and supposedly “FBI-planted” material.
Lie #3: Obama did it too
August 11, 2022: On his social network platform, Trump pivoted to a new lie that also introduced a red herring. He claimed falsely that former President Barack Obama took millions of classified documents with him. In fact, the National Archives retained custody of President Obama’s records when he left office, including those sent to an Archives facility in the Chicago area. Moreover, the criminal statutes cited in the Mar-a-Lago search warrant apply to classified and unclassified documents.
August 12, 2022: The National Archives publicly refuted Trump’s lie.
Lie #4: Trump declassified everything
August 12: Trump announced that he would not oppose the release of the search warrant and inventory, and the federal magistrate judge unsealed them. With public disclosure of the serious potential crimes identified in the warrant, coupled with the classified material listed in the inventory, Trump resorted to a new lie that highlighted his red-herring issue. Without any supporting documentation, he claimed that he had issued a “standing order” declassifying everything that went to Mar-a-Lago.
But that contradicted what one of Trump’s lawyers had certified to the Justice Department in June, namely, that all classified material at Mar-a-Lago had been returned.
Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton said that Trump’s claim to have issued a standing order was “almost certainly a lie.” Bolton knew of no such order, adding, “When somebody begins to concoct lies like this, it shows a real level of desperation.”
Glenn Gerstell, Trump’s former top lawyer for the National Security Agency from 2015 to 2020, called Trump’s claim of a standing order “preposterous.”
Lies #5 and #6 in the works?
Aug. 14, 2022: On CNN, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said that he hadn’t seen the Mar-a-Lago documents. Nevertheless, he still raised doubts about whether the documents really had risen “to the highest level of classified material.” (Never mind those pesky “Secret,” “Top Secret,” and “Top Secret/SCI” designations. And never mind that Trump’s entire “classified v. declassified” argument is a red-herring anyway.)
Turner, by the way, is the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Aug. 16, 2022: Former Trump White House aides began blaming former chief of staff Mark Meadows for failing to return presidential documents before Trump left office.
You might think that Trump’s Republican defenders would have grown weary of his contradictory lies, pause before pushing each new one, or notice that Trump throws even his staunchest loyalists under the bus.
You’d be wrong. They’ve already coalesced around several conflicting whoppers.
And it’s only been a week.
This post originally appeared at Common Dreams on August 2, 2022.
As Trump railed against the “Deep State,” he was creating one of his own.
***
Behind the story of missing text messages from the U.S. Secret Service and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, is a bigger scandal: Former President Donald Trump placed his loyalists in key executive branch positions for a reason. Many are still there.
Trump’s Loyalists
The most benign explanation for the widespread disappearance of the Secret Service’s text messages surrounding the January 6 insurrection is the stunning incompetence of the agency’s leadership. The actual explanation may be more nefarious.
April 2019: Trump removed Secret Service Director Randolph Alles. He had been former Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly’s selection for the post. But by the end of December 2018, Trump had ousted Kelly as White House chief of staff and began to purge the DHS of Kelly’s leadership team there.
To replace Alles, Trump wanted Tony Ornato, who had led Trump’s personal security detail until Trump made him White House deputy chief of staff—an unprecedented move for supposedly apolitical Secret Service agents. Ornato told Trump to pick James Murray to head the Service instead. After a 10-minute interview with Murray, Trump did.
July 2019: Trump appointed Joseph Cuffari to replace the DHS inspector general (DHS OIG). During the six prior years, Cuffari had been an advisor to Arizona’s Republican governors, Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey. As DHS’s IG, he was supposed to be the independent, non-partisan watchdog overseeing the department.
But that was never how Trump saw any IG. During a six-week period in April and May 2020, Trump fired five IGs, including Michael Atkinson—his own appointee. Atkinson had determined that Congress should see the “credible” and “urgent” whistleblower complaint that led eventually to Trump’s first impeachment. Then he alerted the Congress that Trump’s director of national intelligence had withheld that complaint from lawmakers.
June 2020: Following the police murder of George Floyd, the Secret Service helped to clear Black Lives Matter protesters from Lafayette Square for Trump’s photo op—where he held up a Bible. Ten days later, career staffers in Cuffari’s office proposed an investigation into whether the Service had violated its use-of-force policies. Cuffari blocked the probe.
August 2020: While protecting Trump and Vice President Mike Pence during campaign rallies and appearances, dozens of Secret Service agents contracted COVID-19. Cuffari sought to limit—and then ultimately shelved—an investigation into whether the Service ignored federal protocols to detect and reduce the spread of the pandemic within its workforce.
The Missing Texts Timeline—So Far
In addition to protecting the nation’s leaders, the Secret Service possesses the world’s leading cybersecurity expertise. But now it claims to have botched a standard technological exercise.
Fall 2020: According to the Secret Service, it began planning to migrate all electronic devices to a new system. The process would erase all employees’ text messages from their phones.
Dec. 9, 2020: The Secret Service Office of Strategic Planning sent an email to agency employees reminding them of their responsibility to preserve records and including instructions on how to do so. The agency’s chief information officer sent a similar email in January 2021.
Jan. 16, 2021: As Trump’s second impeachment investigation proceeded, multiple House committees directed DHS—which includes the Secret Service—to produce all materials relating to January 6. Additional congressional requests came on March 25, August 11, and August 25, 2021.
Jan. 20, 2021: Inauguration Day
Jan. 25, 2021: The Secret Service told its personnel to back up their phones’ data, leaving individual agents to decide what they should preserve. IT experts later described that approach as “ludicrous” and “crazy.”
Jan. 27, 2021: The systemwide migration began, deleting anything that individual agents had not backed up.
Feb. 4, 2021: All Secret Service employees received an email instructing them to preserve all communications specific to Jan. 6.
Feb. 26, 2021: Cuffari’s office first requested electronic documents from the Secret Service, “after the migration was well under way,” according to the Service.
Apr. 1, 2021: The systemwide migration was completed.
May 2021: The Secret Service notified Cuffari’s office that its agents’ text messages had been deleted, but Cuffari did not inform Congress.
June 11, 2021: Cuffari’s office requested records and texts from 24 Secret Service employees, including the heads of Trump’s and Pence’s security details, relating to January 6, 2021.
July 27, 2021: Cuffari’s Deputy IG Thomas Kait, a Trump appointee who had been involved in revising an unpublished December 2020 report to downplay domestic violence and sexual misconduct by DHS law enforcement agency officers, told DHS that the IG’s office was no longer seeking text messages from the Secret Service.
Dec. 3, 2021: Cuffari’s office reopened its inquiry into the missing text messages and submitted a new request for text messages from DHS.
Feb. 18, 2022: Late in the evening, one of Cuffari’s deputies emailedinvestigators, telling them to halt efforts to recover lost texts and other data.
Feb. 4, 2022: Deputy IG Kait removed language in a draft memo criticizing DHS for failing to provide previously requested documents, including text messages. The final version of the memo, dated Feb. 10, said the opposite, praising DHS’s response to the IG’s request.
Late February 2022: DHS notified Cuffari’s office that the text messages of Trump’s most senior DHS officials—acting Secretary Chad Wolf and acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli—had been lost in a “reset” of their phones when they left office in January 2021. But Cuffari did not inform Congress or investigate.
June 28, 2022: Cassidy Hutchinson testified publicly that on January 6, 2021, she met with Tony Ornato and Bobby Engel, the head of Trump’s Secret Service detail. After Trump’s speech to the mob at the Ellipse, Ornato invited Hutchinson into his White House office where Engel was sitting in a chair “looking somewhat discombobulated and a little lost.” Ornato then explained why.
After the speech, Engel had refused Trump’s demand that the limo take him to the U.S. Capitol. A furious Trump lunged toward the driver. When Engel grabbed Trump’s arm to remove his hand from the steering wheel, Trump used his free arm to lunge toward Engel’s “clavicles.”
Through intermediaries, Ornato and Engel initially denied Hutchinson’s account. But when DHS officials invited them to dispute her story under oath, they hired lawyers and went silent.
The spotlight turned to possible text messages involving Engel and other agents—not only on January 6, but also during the days leading up to the insurrection. (Divergent stories still circulate about the reason Vice President Mike Pence refused to comply with the Secret Service’s request that he get into an armored limousine during the attack.)
July 7, 2022: Director Murray announced his resignation, effective July 30.
July 13, 2022: Cuffari wrote to the House and Senate committees charged with DHS oversight that the agency’s text messages for January 5 and 6, 2021, “were erased as part of a device replacement program… after [Cuffari’s office] requested” them. (Emphasis in original)
But then on July 14, 2022: The Secret Service issued a statement saying that Cuffari’s office “requested electronic communications for the first time on Feb. 26, 2021, after the migration was well under way. The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data, but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts it was seeking had been lost in the migration.” (Emphasis supplied)
July 19, 2022: The Secret Service produced only one text message, “namely, a text message conversation from former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to former Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan requesting assistance on January 6, 2021,” and said it did not have any further records responsive to the IG’s request for text messages.
July 20, 2022: The House’s January 6 Select Committee issued a statement saying that the Service’s failure to preserve the texts “may represent a possible violation of the Federal Records Act.”
Late on July 20, 2022: Cuffari’s office notified the Secret Service that it should halt its internal search for the missing texts so that it did not interfere with the IG’s “ongoing criminal investigation” into the matter.
July 28, 2022: Secret Service Director Murray announced that he will delay his resignation for a “brief period.”
The story is far from over. Two whistleblowers have come forward, and the National Archives wants to know what happened.
The Enemy Within
Like U.S. Postmaster Louis DeJoy, Cuffari is among the dozens of Trump holdovers still occupying key positions in the federal government.
As Trump railed against the “Deep State,” he was creating one of his own.
For more on my latest post, here’s my interview on Radio Parallax.
This post originally appeared at Common Dreams on July 23, 2022.
Their prolonged silence forced the nation to live through the catastrophic consequences of their earlier cowardice.
***
Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone thinks that Mike Pence should receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom for refusing Trump’s demand to commit a felony and subvert a presidential election. That’s how low the bar for heroism among Trump administration alumni has sunk.
When they entered the legal profession, the attorneys advising Trump swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. Those who took government jobs in his administration swore it again. But many of them facilitated Trump’s relentless efforts to undermine the rule of law.
The most notorious members of what former Attorney General William Barr now calls Trump’s post-election “clown show” may have been Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, and Jeffrey Clark. But Barr, Cipollone, and others with law degrees – including Pence – helped to create the dangerous creature that roamed the White House on January 6, 2021. Their silence during Trump’s second impeachment and the months that followed has allowed that creature to continue haunting the country today.
Belatedly, three key Trump advisers with law degrees have now come forward to reveal the ugly truth about the man they had enabled for years.
Heroes or hypocrites?
Barr, one of Trump’s most outspoken defenders in his administration, politicized the Justice Department to serve Trump’s personal agenda. For example:
Barr now says that before he resigned, he told Trump repeatedly that the claims and conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud were “nonsense” and “bullshit.” But prior to the insurrection and for months thereafter, he did not reveal that to the public.
Criticizing Trump publicly has been unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory for Pat Cipollone. American taxpayers had paid him to represent the office of the president, not Trump personally. Apparently, he forgot.
But it took a public shaming by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and the riveting testimony of a young staffer, Cassidy Hutchinson, to flush Cipollone out and into the witness chair. Finally – 18 months late – he revealed what he knew about Trump’s traitorous misconduct.
Engel was with Trump from the beginning of his administration. As assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), he flew under the public radar, but his dubious legal opinions provided cover for Trump’s flagrant abuses of power.
At the Oval Office meeting on January 3, 2021, acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, told Trump that if he appointed the manifestly unqualified Clark to replace Rosen, they would resign. Engel warned Trump that mass Justice Department resignations – including his own – would follow, and Clark would be “left leading a graveyard.”
But for more than a year, Engel said nothing publicly about that meeting.
While the January 3 Oval Office meeting was underway, the Washington Post broke the story of Trump’s tape-recorded call pressuring Georgia election officials the previous day.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
At that point, Cipollone, Engel, Rosen, and everyone else attending the Sunday night session knew that Trump was proceeding simultaneously on multiple fronts to overturn the election.
But as January 6 approached, they remained silent.
As the House impeached Trump for his role in the insurrection, they remained silent.
As GOP-dominated state legislatures and their Republican governors relied on Trump’s Big Lie to adopt draconian voter suppression laws and propose legislation seeking to thwart future popular presidential vote outcomes, they remained silent.
As Trump and his allies rewrote the story of the insurrection so that the armed mob became “peaceful protesters” and the attackers became “tourists,” they remained silent.
And as Republican leaders flip-flopped, they remained silent.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) condemned Trump. Now he says he’d vote for him again.
Likewise, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said that Trump bore responsibility for the attack. Now he has returned to his familiar role as Trump’s lackey.
On January 7, 2021, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “Count me out… The president needs to understand that his actions were the problem, not the solution. … It breaks my heart that my friend, a president of consequence, would allow [Jan. 6] to happen, and it will be a major part of his presidency. It was a self-inflicted wound.” In September 2021, Graham said that he hoped Trump runs again in 2024.
If Barr had broken his silence before January 6, would the violent attack on the Capitol even have occurred?
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, if Cipollone, Engel, Rosen, and others had revealed what they knew, would Trump have remained the face of the GOP?
If collective fear hadn’t kept all of them quiet for so long, would Trump today be the “clear and present danger to democracy” that former Judge J. Michael Luttig warned?
Late is better than never for Republicans who resisted Trump’s attempted coup and have now come forward. But they are not profiles in courage. Their prolonged silence forced the nation to live through the catastrophic consequences of their earlier cowardice.
And those consequences endure.
Here’s my latest interview on Radio Parallax: https://www.radioparallax.com/playshow.php?sid=1040&seg=1
The Belly of the Beast 
