Radio waves can carry dangerous propaganda but not germs or viruses!

What happened to American sincerity and truth!

History, Evidence and the Ethics of Belief

An essay echo:

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/179164

Guy Lancaster is author or editor of several books on racial violence in Arkansas, most recently the revised edition of Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Massacre of 1919, co-authored with Grif Stockley and Brian K. Mitchell. His forthcoming book, American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching, is tentatively scheduled for release by the University of Arkansas Press, in the fall of 2021.

In his 1874, paper “The Ethics of Belief,” Cambridge philosopher and mathematician William K. Clifford tells the story of a shipowner who worried about the seaworthiness of a vessel about to carry a group of emigrants to their new lives across the ocean: “He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs.” 

Nevertheless, he was able to dismiss these concerns from his mind and “put his trust in Providence” and watched the departure of the ship “with a light heart.” In the end, “he got his insurance money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.” Clifford concludes that our fictional shipowner should be judged guilty of the deaths of these people: “It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in nowise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.”

While devout believers of missionizing religions do typically consider the personal belief of others a matter of ethical concern (is it ethical to let people go to hell?), most of us on the more pluralistic end of the spectrum tend to be accommodating of the diversity of worldviews out there, even the intolerant ones, given the inherent rights we ascribe to individuals. But many personal beliefs today do endanger us collectively. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, people exhibiting a range of beliefs have (unbelievably) resisted even the slightest public health efforts to control the spread of the disease—or have torn down 5G (radio!) towers they believe to be causing the pandemic. (JSYK- ! HELLO? Radio waves do not carry germs or viruses! On the other hand, radio waves can carry dangerous propaganda!)

Anti-vaxxers believe, without evidence, that vaccines, by their very nature, cause health problems. As a result, the nation has recently undergone several outbreaks of measles, and millions of Americans are likely to refuse any vaccine for COVID-19. 

Moreover, the cry of “religious freedom” now serves to rally those who would deny public accommodations to non-heterosexual people, just as in decades past the cry of “religious freedom” served to rally those who wanted to keep their schools segregated, and in both cases these proponents of “religious freedom” believed without evidence that the nation would experience divine calamity for extending basic rights to gays and non-whites, respectively. 

Veritable reigns of terror, personal and political, have been fashioned from deeply held beliefs unsupported by the slightest whisper of evidence, as the parents of Sandy Hook victims can well attest. And now, Donald Trump and his followers, on a basis of a belief (one not supported by any evidence) that he actually won a landslide election, are willing to tear this nation apart and murder Americans en masse.

Clifford would argue that people, like climate change denialists, and Pizzagate enthusiasts have no right to their beliefs, not simply because these beliefs do not accord with the evidence at hand, but because these beliefs can and do cause harm to other people. It is a radical notion—the idea that a belief which has an impact beyond the individual must withstand the encounter with reality in order to be considered ethical. As Andrew Chignell puts it in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Clifford’s view is not merely that we must be in a certain state at the precise time at which we form a belief. Rather, the obligation always and only to believe on sufficient evidence governs our activities across time as well. With respect to most if not all of the propositions we consider as candidates for belief, says Clifford, we are obliged to go out and gather evidence, remain open to new evidence, and consider the evidence offered by others.”

We in the business of historical analysis discourse a great deal, in our own professional work but also in various popular forums, about the nature of evidence, especially when confronting those who would misconstrue the events of the past. This past year, historians have publicly marshaled the facts about, among other things, the nature of the Confederacy (against those who insist that monuments to traitors Robert E. Lee et al. have nothing to do with slavery) and the longstanding utility of public health measures (against those who claim that mask mandates are a novel form of oppression, even during a pandemic). However, despite an unprecedented level of engagement with the public, and despite it being easier now to share over digital platforms the many primary documents that inform our studies, historians are frequently frustrated by the persistence of beliefs that resist any evidence whatsoever.

But then, the founding mythos of the United States leans heavily into the idea of “freedom of religion,” and so we accord a privileged status to belief. Such belief, as we regard it, need not be grounded upon specific facts or principles—it need only be sincere. For example, after sharing with certain relatives my recent HNN article, “A Modern-Day Lynch Mob Invaded the Capitol on January 6,” an aunt of mine, who has one of John McNaughton’s hagiographical prints of Donald Trump up on her wall, texted me back thusly: “I believe everyone is entitled to their views. I would never try to belittle you for yours and I expect the same from you.” On the surface, this may seem like quite the statement of tolerance, especially from someone so long part of the “Fuck Your Feelings” crowd, but such a view does not simply discount the evidence underlying any assertion—it claims that evidence is not necessary for the formation of a belief and insulates from criticism any belief so developed. She expects—even demands—never to be belittled for any belief she may hold, no matter how ridiculous.

With our nation undergoing a series of crises—with the whole damn world in crisis right now—we must be willing to take the next step in our confrontations with a worldview that insists upon freedom from fact and make not only historical judgments but also ethical ones. Clifford, remember, concluded that his fictional shipowner “had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him.” And so must we take a stand and say the following to those whose worldviews that 1) have no basis in reality as can currently be determined, and 2) actively harm people beyond the individual adherent:

You do not have a right to your belief.

For our nation to survive, we must make this the new measure of citizenship. An engaged citizen must not merely be one who takes an active role in the public discourse. An engaged citizen must be, instead, one whose views and suggested policies are grounded in reality. Sure, we can continue to debate the significance of certain forms of evidence—historians and scientists do that all the time, and new evidence regularly emerges to challenge our previously held worldviews. But we can no longer afford to give a privileged place to beliefs just because they are beliefs. 

Our democracy, our world, will simply not survive it.

Senator Rob Portman knows better!

"If the 'former guy' president crosses a line and takes an action that is a danger to the country, would you step up and do something to stop it?"

Senator Rob Portman’s wrong minded vote to acquit Trumpziism!

What next for Trump and Trumpism?

Kevin S. Aldridge published in the Cincinnati Enquirer

The most shocking thing about Senator Rob Portman's vote to acquit the former president Donald Trump of inciting insurrection was how unsurprising it was. There was a time when Portman knew better.

The House impeachment managers presented indisputable facts about Trump's role in sparking the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The very same attack that had Portman and his fellow senators scrambling for safety and that left five dead – including a Capitol Police officer. Trump deserved to be convicted for the undeniable part he played in those events.

Since Portman isn't seeking reelection, it would have been gratifying to see the Terrace Park Republican exercise his newfound freedom by choosing country over party. This was his chance to clearly state his values as he did when he pulled his endorsement of Trump in 2016 following the Republican nominee's lewd comments about kissing and groping women without consent. But sadly, that's not what Portman did, or who he is. At least not during the past four years, anyway.

Throughout his career, Portman has been known as a loyal soldier, a hard-working, principled, no-drama politician Republicans can count on to get the job done. Considered one of the few moderate Republicans left in Congress, he voted in line with Trump almost 90% of the time. He remained largely silent in the face of the former president's abhorrent behavior and reckless language, choosing to focus on passing legislation instead of judgment on Trump. It took him far too long to reject Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and finally declare Joe Biden as the true winner.

When our nation needed a loyal soldier to "fight like hell" against Trump's abuse of power, Portman instead chose to fall in line with his 42 GOP Senate cohorts, including Kentucky Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul. His decision to stand on the wrong side of history by ignoring damning evidence and acquitting Trump is beyond disappointing; it's shameful.

Sure, there are unscrupulous politicians more deserving of harsh criticism than Portman, one of the few nice guys left in Washington. Perhaps that's why his let-down is so stinging. I had expected more from him; hoped he might have joined the seven other Republican senators who prioritized facts over politics and found Trump guilty.

Indeed, it's difficult to reconcile how Portman, who, in 1998, voted to impeach Democratic President Bill Clinton for his conduct during a sex scandal, could refuse to hold Trump accountable for his unpatriotic actions. Surely, if Clinton deserved to be impeached for having sexual relations with a White House intern and lying under oath about it, then Trump should be held accountable for lying about mass voter fraud, unleashing an angry mob on the Capitol and doing little to nothing to stop it. If that isn't impeachable, then what is?
The power to remove a president, or any federal officer, from office or bar them from holding office again in the future shouldn't be taken lightly. But Portman even had to admit that Trump's speech on Jan. 6, was "inexcusable," and that he "encouraged the mob" that stormed the Capitol. McConnell echoed those sentiments.

"I have also criticized his slow response as the mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, putting at risk the safety of Vice President Pence, law enforcement officers, and others who work in the Capitol," Portman said in a statement following the impeachment vote. "Even after the attack, some of the language in his tweets and in a video showed sympathy for the violent mob."

Yet, instead of voting to convict, Portman elected to cling to the argument that a former president can't be impeached! 

This is an argument that many constitutional scholars – both conservative and liberal – have disputed. And remember, the House of Representatives did impeach Trump while he was still in office. It was then-Senate Majority Leader McConnell who would not consent to bring the Senate back into session before Biden's inauguration to conduct the trial.

Portman might actually believe he was keeping his oath to the Constitution by casting his no-vote. But what he and other Republican senators really did was set a dangerous precedent for future presidents with autocratic proclivities to avoid punishment for their abuses of power. Portman said his vote "in no way condones the former president's conduct." Maybe, Senator. But an acquittal certainly doesn't condemn it.

Portman has a long, distinguished career as a U.S. senator and a former White House aide, budget director, congressman, trade representative and even once was considered a viable candidate for Vice President of the United States. His drive to make a difference has resulted in many significant pieces of legislation that have improved the lives of his constituents in Greater Cincinnati and across the country. The Trump years won't define Portman's legacy, but they will almost certainly be a stain on it.

In February 2018, Portman visited with the Enquirer's editorial board prior to a speech the former president Trump would give later that day at Sheffer Corp. in Blue Ash, to sell his tax cut proposal. The former guy president, as he was prone to do, had just made a series of controversial and divisive statements, and the board was concerned about the state of the nation's political discourse and direction. So I looked to Portman, one of the good guys in Washington with a reputation for reaching across party lines to get things done, and I asked him this question: If the president crosses a line and takes an action that is a danger to the country, would you step up and do something to stop it?

He assured the board he would. At the time, I believed him.

Since then, I’ve watched Trump defile his office in a multitude of ways, behavior that earned him two impeachments and justifiable scorn for inciting the worst violence against the seat of our democracy in 200 years. 

And through it all, I’ve wondered what line must the president cross for Portman to make good on that promise he made back in 2018.

I still don’t know.

Opinion Editor Kevin S. Aldridge 

QAnon propaganda has leaped out of the Nazi playbook.

Nazi Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)

An echo essay published in The Press of Atlantic City, New Jersey, by Faye Flam, writing for Bloomberg News.

"A  new abnormal" - Faye Flam

QAnon is such a weird theory that it’s tempting to think humanity is getting dumber. But it’s better seen as a highly sophisticated way of manipulating people. QAnon may one day be considered a masterpiece of propaganda.

This cult-like belief revolves around a conspiracy theory in which prominent Democrats and Hollywood celebrities are systematically victimizing children in order to extract something called adrenochrome from their blood. They consume this substance, so the story goes, as both a youth elixir and a recreational drug.

People may believe the theory, or parts of it, are true, even if they don’t know that it’s called QAnon. 

As a matter of fact, in a December 2020 NPR/Ipsos poll, 17% of Americans said that they thought it was true that “a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media,” and another 37% said they weren’t sure.

Why would anyone believe this, let alone so many people?

One reason is that believers discover the details of this conspiracy theory for themselves by solving puzzles and finding clues called “drops.” Game designer Reed Berkowitz says he quickly recognized QAnon as a kind of a game known as an alternate reality game. These are fictional stories that send people out into the real world to gather clues. On the way, players encounter others who are engaged in the same hunt.

Berkowitz doesn’t just think QAnon is like a game — he thinks it is a game, though he says it was intended to fool people into thinking it’s real. When people get or find drops, they are meant to look like valuable, high-level leaks.

The drops are designed to make people feel a sense of discovery, something believers find highly rewarding. In a piece he wrote for Medium, Berkowitz argues that when people think they’ve found an idea themselves, they become attached to it. And they get pleasure from it.

When I talked to him by phone, he said alternate reality games use something called rabbit holes to send people in search of clues. The games can lead to phone calls and real meetings between players. Reality and fantasy blend, but the players recognize they are taking part in a game.

QAnon, he says, looks like something created with a purpose in mind. “I absolutely think that somebody is designing it and promoting it,” he says. The purpose is propaganda. The game leads people to distrust mainstream media, politicians and medicine, including COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. It also leads them to antisemitic and racist beliefs. Players may or may not believe the literal truth of the blood-draining story, but they tend to be bonded by ideology and feelings of distrust.

The community reinforces those ties, says Berkowitz. “If you’re suddenly involved in this community of people who supports you and believes that you’re valuable ... this keeps you coming back.” The game is designed to reward people with social credit when they figure out the “correct” answer, which is the answer the QAnon designer or designers had planned all along.

And of course, we’re more isolated than we’ve been in recent history — missing the diversity of social interactions that in normal life keeps us from falling into ideological rabbit holes.

Simon DeDeo, a social scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, says people too easily dismiss believers in conspiracy theories as stupid. And that makes it hard to understand why these explanations draw people in.

In a paper published in Trends in Cognitive Science, he and a colleague explore the different factors that make explanations valuable. One that applies particularly well to conspiracy theories such as QAnon is called co-explanation, an ability to link seemingly disparate phenomena with a single explanation. The world’s great scientific theories do it, too — from Darwin’s evolution to the theory of quantum mechanics tying together matter and light.

Conspiracy theories also tie up lots of little loose threads this way, just like a satisfying whodunit. “What something like QAnon does is hijack that source of joy we get from solving a murder mystery,” DeDeo says. But conspiracy believers tend to put too much weight on co-explanation. “Fundamentally, they have the right values … These values are virtues mostly, except when the value is overemphasized,” he says.

Facebook, Reddit, YouTube and Twitter are the perfect soil for this sort of thing to bloom, bringing together users seduced by the lure of discovery. If people are engaged in QAnon, social media gives them more, until people are storming the U.S. Capitol.

Now that social media is becoming many people’s only social outlet, we can expect more conspiracy theories to spread.

There is no new normal without real-world social interactions. There’s only a new abnormal.

Faye Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.

January 6th Trumpzi attacks threatened Vice President Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi

An echo opinion letter published in the Indiana Star Press:

nsurrection and the subsequent #GQP attack!

Still, the Republicans that voted with Trumpzi was alarming!

Donald Trump is a dangerous fraud!

Our democracy is shaking on its foundation. Our U.S. Capitol, where the legislative branch of our government works, was invaded by a large mob of angered Trumpzi  #GQO (QAanon) loyalists who were incited by his persistent claim the presidential election was a rigged. Trump continued his fraudulent claims even after 60-plus lawsuits failed and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against his claim. 

State election officials, including numerous Republicans, again and again had found no impropriety in the results.

When the attack occurred, both legislative branches were in session. Their sole purpose in meeting that day was to certify each state’s Electoral College votes — something routinely following a presidential election. That day, however, the legislators barely escaped the rioters who threatened to assassinate Vice President Pence and Nancy Pelosi.

The insurrection was scary, but more upsetting to me was that only hours after they had narrowly escaped the insurgents, over 100 legislators voted against certifying the election. This signified these legislators chose Mr. Trump’s unproven claims over the Constitution.

While I was pleased Senator Mike Braun R-Indiana, withdrew his objection to certifying electoral votes, he did so only after the insurrection, which means the rioters believed they had his support. Senator Braun, you are a smart man, so why did you not use your intelligence to recognize and admit Trump’s illegal claim about the election was totally unsubstantiated. It took an insurrection to convince you. Why?  

Beckie Adams, Yorktown, Indiana

Republicans failed their own fundamental political principles

An echo opinion published in the Indiana Star Press newspaper:

Republican party must return to its principles! Restore dignity.

GOP, you should be ashamed of yourselves! Your corrosive agendas and constant villainizing of the “other side” have led us to this horrible chapter in our nation’s history. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, as shocking as they were, pale in comparison to the damage Trump has inflicted on our democracy during his four years.

On Jan. 6, anarchists, encouraged by their fallen idol, invaded and desecrated our U.S. Capitol. Their mission was to intimidate Congress and assassinate Mike Pence and Nancy Peloski.

The House has impeached Trump for a second time. The number should be five. Trump’s first impeachment dealt with his blackmailing of the Ukraine and, of course, Senate Republicans acquitted him, disallowing witnesses or evidence.

Contrary to William Barr’s interpretation, the Mueller report called for further investigation by Congress, a request that the GOP refused. Trump’s efforts to strong arm Georgia officials into committing election fraud should be considered an impeachment offense. The fifth instance is his selfish mishandling of COVID-19, resulting in over 400,000 (update, now 500,000!) deaths and trillions of lost dollars.

GOP politicians have stubbornly enabled this spoiled child for fear of being “primaried” in their next elections. It's past time for the Republican Party to return to their principles and part ways with this would-be dictator. You may lose the radical elements who blindly worship the Trumpian charlatan, but that’s a small price to pay for preserving our democracy and restoring your dignity.

Bill Grobey,  Muncie Indiana

Trump conspiracies are bunk!

Our democracy is consumed by misinformation

An echo opinion letter published in the Star Press, a Muncie, Indiana newspaper. 

https://www.thestarpress.com/story/opinion/readers/2021/01/23/muncie-letters-editor-jan-24/4238815001/

As a young boy back in the '70s, I remember standing in line at the grocery store with mom and noticing The National Enquirer, The Globe and other scandalous magazines. No words were exchanged but I remember Mom rolling her eyes as we both snickered. It’s surreal in today’s world where the internet and social media has become a dirt rag.

It amazes me otherwise intelligent people in every aspect of their lives believing misinformation that is obvious bunk. Maybe it’s just where we are in our evolutionary journey that our brains tend to gravitate toward stories rather than cold hard facts. 

We know that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West or that gravity is real and the Earth is not flat. There are no alternative facts to those conclusions.

Companies now exist to perpetuate false information for profit and manipulate public policy. The statement that former president Trump was an excellent businessman prior to the 2016, election after six bankruptcies (soon to be seven) is an example. Or that Bill and Hilary Clinton were running a pizza parlor pedophilia ring or that a doctor's report from Britain claiming Immunizations cause autism. 

It seems to me that our democracy is being consumed by misinformation and social media and how it all washes out is to be seen.

Our founders could never envision such threatening things to our republic; and if they could, I’m almost sure their mouths would be hanging open, in a state of (disappointing) bewilderment.

Rich Stahl  Muncie, Indiana

Why did Republican Senators become victims of Trumpziism?

Cynicism and Political Blunder: A Postscript to “The January 6th Assault on Congress and the Fate of the GOP’s Faustian Bargain"

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/179253

Echo opinion published in the History News Network

Former president 

Jeffrey Herf, Distinguished University Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park. His essay “The January 6th Assault on Congress and the Fate of the GOP’s Faustian Bargain with Trump: Notes from German History,” was published in History News Network on January 31, 2021. His book Israel’s Moment: International Support and Opposition for Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

On February 12, when 43 Republican Senators voted to acquit former president Trump of the charge of incitement to insurrection, they reaffirmed the Faustian bargain they had made with him in 2016. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell was the central figure in the GOP’s bargain: in exchange for tax cuts and conservative judicial nominations, he and the Republican senators enabled, supported, tolerated, and lent mainstream conservative legitimacy to Trump. For a month after the 2020 election which Trump had obviously lost, McConnell remained silent while Trump repeated the “stab in the back” lie about the “stolen election.” So, it was not surprising that on February 12, 2021, faced with overwhelming evidence of Trump’s guilt, that McConnell voted with 42 other Republican Senators to acquit him. He was at the center of that nullification. We do not know if McConnell could have found an additional ten votes to convict Trump, but there have been no reports that he tried to do so or that he was willing to join a minority short of the needed 67 votes on the basis of the law, the constitution, the facts and the evidence.

For Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson and Lindsay Graham, and no doubt others, the vote was also an expression of ideological agreement with Trump and Trumpism. For them the bargain with Trump had moved beyond McConnell’s marriage of convenience to an alliance of shared ideological conviction or of a cynicism so deep that they repeated his lies in public. Their problem was that the House Managers were led by former law professor Jamie Raskin, with a remarkable team composed of Diana DeGette, David Cicilline, Joachim Castro, Eric Swalwell, Ted Lieu, Stacey Plaskett, Joe Neguse and Madeline Dean. That team offered a blend of argument and evidence, from their pretrial brief to Raskin’s opening statement, and those of others that set a formidable standard of clarity and causal reasoning that historians would applaud in their own work. The vote to acquit by the 43 Republican Senators was a clear case of jury nullification, that is, of rendering a verdict that ignored the weight of fact, evidence, and argument.

If the Republicans did not want to admit that a team of Democrats made the case based on the Constitution, the law and the facts, they could have sought shelter in the warm embrace of Charles Cooper, the lawyer with close ties to the Republican legal establishment, who several days before the trial argued in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that impeaching a former President was indeed within the constitutional powers of the Senate. Or, they could point to the 144 constitutional experts, include leading conservatives, who issued a public statement that the First Amendment protection of free speech did not defend the right of the President of the United States to incite a mob to attack the Capitol. Or, being the lawyers many of them are, they could admit that Raskin, and the team of House Managers shredded Trump’s lawyers efforts to use those arguments. Conservative legal scholars and practitioners, as well as the House Managers gave McConnell the arguments, he needed to attempt to rally his Republicans majority to convict Trump. He could have done so with paeans to constitutional originalism, and of the prerogatives of the Senate.

In the course of the trial, Plaskett and Dean documented Trumps’ months long campaign repeating the lie of the stolen election and the need to come to Washington on January 6th. Trumps’ lawyers offered no rebuttal to Raskin’s rejection of the “January exception” to Presidential misconduct in the last weeks in power, nor did they refute the factual record about Trump’s campaign of lies and its consequences. They did not refute the House Managers’ accounts of Trump’s tactical use and approval of political violence. The Senators themselves knew that Trump refused to order his mob to stop when the entire Congress, its staff, and others working in the Capitol were in imminent physical danger. They also knew that when House Manager and Congressman Joaquin Castro said Trump had “left everyone in this Capitol for dead,” he, Castro, was telling them a truth they knew as well as anyone.

Yet, after all that, McConnell voted to acquit Trump, hoping that he could assuage the enraged Trump base. Yet, McConnell, firmly planted in the reality of this world rather than that of Trump’s “alternate facts,” then unleashed the anger he had kept under wraps for the past four years. As McConnell’s denunciation of Trump may be lost in the mass of words about the trial, it bears quoting at length. Bear in mind, that these are the words spoken by McConnell, not Raskin.

Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President. And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.

The issue is not only the former president’s intemperate language on January 6th. It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged ‘trial by combat.’ It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President.

I defended the former president’s right to bring any complaints to our legal system. The legal system spoke. The Electoral College spoke. As I stood up and said clearly at the time, the election was settled. But that reality just opened a new chapter of even wilder and more unfounded claims. The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things. Sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally.

This was different. This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.

The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence began. Whatever our former ex-president claims he thought might happen that day… whatever reaction he says he meant to produce… by that afternoon, he was watching the same live television as the rest of the world. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.

It was obvious that only former president Trump could end this. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the Administration. But the President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and order restored. Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election!

Vice President Mike Pence was singled out in QAnon chants

Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in danger… even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters… the President sent a further tweet attacking his Vice President. Predictably and foreseeably under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as further inspiration to lawlessness and violence. Later, even when the former president did halfheartedly begin calling for peace, he did not call right away for the riot to end. He did not tell the mob to depart until even later. And even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.

In recent weeks, our former ex-president’s associates have tried to use the 74 million Americans who voted to re-elect him as a kind of human shield against criticism. Anyone who decries his awful behavior is accused of insulting millions of voters. That is an absurd deflection. 74 million Americans did not invade the Capitol. Several hundred rioters did. And 74 million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it. One person did.

The new Majority Leader, Senator Charles Schumer, gave an address of ten minutes which, had it not been for McConnell’s statement, would be regarded as one of the most remarkable delivered in the Senate in decades. It too is a very important historical document and should be part of the record on History News Network. Yet, McConnell, despite knowing that the House Managers had made their case, joined the jury nullification of the ideologists and cynics in his caucus. He resorted to the constitutional argument about not impeaching a former President, an argument that defies common sense and was rejected by most constitutional scholars and voted to acquit the man he knew was guilty.

It was here that the master tactictian McConnell made a blunder of probable long-term significance. In so doing, he passed up a fleeting and superb opportunity to convict Trump, then disqualify him from running for federal office, and thus take the offensive in a political fight to retake the GOP from Trump’s inflamed base. 

Instead, McConnell’s denunciation of Trump enraged that Trump base, and confounded what is left of a diminishing number of moderate Republicans. Most importantly it left Trump able to brandish his acquittal and denounce the trial as part of “the witch hunt.” Wounded but not politically dead, Trump remained a danger to the remnants of the GOP that had any claim at all to respect the rule of law.

McConnell thus sustained the Faustian bargain made since 2016. In so doing, he failed to learn the meaning of the mob’s chant "hang Mike Pence," the barbaric calls to find House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or Trump’s mocking reference to “Mitch.” Trump and his followers will turn on McConnell and the GOP establishment which voted to acquit but shared McConnell's hatred of Trump. Trump and his base will turn on Republican politicians in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona who refused to submit to Trump’s threats to overturn the results of a free and fair election. The split in the GOP was going to happen anyway, but now the cynics in touch with reality will enter that battle with the Trumpists unable to say they had used their considerable powers to inflict on him the defeat he deserved.

Such historical moments when forces are aligned as they were on February 12, 2021 do not come often. Though McConnell made all the arguments needed to convict Trump, he blinked at the crucial moment. In so doing, he seized defeat from the jaws of possible victory. Trump’s conviction would not have meant the end of Trumpism, but it would have been a severe blow against the past four years of lies and conspiracies. McConnell’s failure to act on what he knew was true and to rally what troops he had in the Senate emboldened Trumpists, and the right-wing extremist practitioners of violence with whom they are now in a relationship of mutual benefit. Before February 12, Republican mantras about law and order and respect for the Constitution had become threadbare. After the acquittal, there is no reason to believe anything McConnell and the 42 other Republican Senators for acquittal say about the rule of law now. Their pleas for bipartisanship are a bitter joke.

In Nazi Germany, the Faustian bargain launched by Franz von Papen and Otto von Hindenburg with Hitler ended in Germany’s destruction. The clever cynics who thought they could outsmart Hitler, if still alive in 1945, stumbled through the ruins of their country. In numerous works of historical scholarship, our profession has demonstrated that the German conservatives of the 1930s were nowhere near as clever as they thought they were. They too passed up moments when they could have brought the dictator down. After 1933, that tiny number of German conservatives who dared opposed Hitler paid with their lives.

Mitch McConnell and the Republican senators did not live in fear of the Gestapo. On January 6th, Trump endangered their lives but on February 12 their only fear was of possibly losing an election. Yet, on February 12, with really nothing of lasting significance to fear, McConnell refused to use the power of the Constitution and of the United States Senate to convict Trump. He and his fellow partisans combined cowardice and cynicism with what could turn out to be a major strategic blunder. The Faustian bargain had created habits of self-abasement, cynicism and raw self-interest that proved too difficult to shatter.

Maine Writer post script- In other words, the Republican Senators that were cowards, are the victims of a Trumpzi cult. It's impossible to understand their hypnotic obedience to the political creature they created. They are victims of evil Trumpziism.

"We didn't know what was happening!": January 6th experience.

 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/as-told-to-the-pelosi-staffer-keith-stern-on-the-breach-of-the-capitol

Published in The New Yorker: On Capitol Hill

As Told To: The Pelosi Staffer Keith Stern, on the Breach of the Capitol: “Ma’am, we’ve got to go” By Zach Helfand

A diary:  

Organizers of Trump Rally on January 6th, had been on campaign’s payroll: Donald Trump’s campaign paid more than $2.7 million over two years to individuals and firms that organized the Jan. 6, rally that led to rioters storming the U.S. Capitol- with five people dead!

When one of the sergeant-at-arms staffers on the floor of the Capitol's House of Representatives said that people were starting to move toward the Capitol, we didn’t think much of it. We’ve had plenty of protests. But then you started seeing more worry. You could feel the energy. It wasn’t the tone, it was the face. Next they said, “They’ve breached a wall, but everything’s fine.” Then there was another breach over here, a breach over there. It just kept cascading. 

That was when we started hearing, “Do we have to bring the Speaker down from the rostrum?”

I’m the floor director for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. My job is to make sure that the House floor runs properly. Any legislative procedure that comes into the chamber falls under my staff’s purview. I came to D.C. after college, in the nineties, and started waiting tables at California Pizza Kitchen while I figured out how to get a job. I remember, when I first started working on the Hill, someone said, “You’ll know when it’s time to leave when you don’t have that tingle when you see the Capitol.” Now I live a mile away, and when I walk to work the sun is behind me, shining on the Capitol, and when I walk out, if I turn around, I see the sun setting over the Capitol. It’s special.

Originally, we’d been planning on spending more than twenty-four hours in the chamber. When the Arizona challenge happened, the Senate paraded out. They took the certified ballots with them in these big, fancy brown boxes that have been used for years.

As the notices came in, I found my old boss, Congressman Jim McGovern, from Massachusetts. I said, “Hey, we might need you up in the chair, just hold tight.” He’s the chairman of the Rules Committee. He knows that sometimes the Speaker just needs a break.

All of a sudden, it hit. They say, “We need to bring the Speaker down.” I asked to not do this so fast that it’s chaotic. Let’s make it look normal. She was not expecting to come down. I said, “Ma’am, we’ve got to go.” We put Mr. McGovern up, she went out the doors, and she was out of my sight. The Majority Leader, the Majority Whip, and the Minority Whip, they were pulled out, too. That was when it really hit people.

It was a weird vibe. Some were calm, some getting agitated, and then you had a machismo from some people. The noise in the chamber picked up. People were really loud, really not listening. I went into the center of the chamber and just yelled, “Everyone sit down, stay calm, let’s get some information!”

Capitol police said, “They’re coming. They’re inside the building.” They told us to pull out escape hoods—the gas masks. They started pointing: “Lock that door, lock that door!” We helped the police move a couple of old, credenza-type bookshelves into place in front of the doors. We become a hermetically sealed room. You’re not supposed to be able to get in. Well, at some point you start hearing: Bang! A couple of members were there. They were going to protect our colleagues, protect our friends, and protect the chamber.

Capitol police decided we’re evacuating. They opened one of the doors into the Speaker’s lobby and started pushing people out. But up in the gallery there’s no easy way out. It’s literally like an obstacle course. I’m pointing and yelling, “Go, go, go! That way! Get through!” The banging on the front door is intensifying. It sounded violent. All of a sudden you hear a crack. It sounded like a gunshot. The police had their guns out. And I just sprinted out of the chamber.

We ran down some stairs, underground into these old, old spaces. Some older folks can’t move all that quickly. It took us a while, but we finally got to, essentially, a holding area.

We looked around the room. We didn’t know what was happening, but we knew the Capitol had been overrun. Someone would say, “We’re missing someone!” The Capitol police would try to find them. And then you have this din, the mechanical filter of a hundred and fifty gas masks—this high-pitched whirring. It sounded like a hundred and fifty kazoos.

It was a weird mix. Remember, this was everyone who’d been on the floor. In one corner, you had all the Republicans who think we stole the election. You can see people looking, thinking, The people outside are here because of what you’re doing. We were also concerned about the fact that many of them don’t wear masks. 

Some of them were saying they were glad the “protesters” were there. Everybody else, including many Republicans, was figuring out what’s happening, what’s going on with our institution, with our society, with our democracy. And how do we get back? 

We knew we had to finish that night. It was never a question of if—it was how. That’s part of my job. I can’t really get into this, but we have alternatives to the House chamber, if we need them.

Someone said, “Where are the boxes? Do we still have them?” One of the parliamentarians came over to me and said, “The ballot boxes are safe.” If they’d been stolen or destroyed, to be honest, I don’t know what happens.

We started to go back around seven. There was this powder everywhere, a film everywhere. Broken glass. The same doors that the President comes through for the State of the Union—when they say, “Madam Speaker, the President of the United States!”—you could see the holes where they’d broken through.

The workers did the best they could to clean up. Who knows where they went, and how they came back? They’re scared, too. They brought in one of those industrial cleaners you see at the mall at, like, five in the morning. One congressman, Andy Kim, a real nice, soft-spoken man from New Jersey, was helping.

The fact that the Capitol was invaded did not defuse tensions. When the Vice-President announced that Joe Biden is now the President-elect, people cheered. There was relief that we got this done. But it wasn’t joyousness. There was a profound sadness afterward, and exhaustion, on the faces of my co-workers. All the trauma hit. This is the people’s building. Every time a security threat makes it harder for someone to get in and see how our democracy works is just sad. But the fact that they’d attack democracy—physically and literally attack it? I never thought it would happen.

When I headed home, it was about four. The sun was still down. 

Published in the print edition of the January 18, 2021, issue, with the headline “Ma’am, We’ve Got to Go”.”
Zach Helfand is a member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff.

Republicans are unhinged from reality!

U.S. Constitution 14th Amendment:  "Section 3. No person shall be a senator, or representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House remove such disability."

Echo opinion letter to the editor, published in the Idaho State Journal newspaper.

On January 6, 2021, the siege of the U.S. Capitol was an egregious attack on our American democratic government and its elected officials, plain and simple. 

Moreover, I think if you viewed the impeachment hearing with an open mind, it would be very difficult to not come to this conclusion. Realizing that both Pence and Romney narrowly escaped lynching is among the numerous disturbing events of the day. How unhinged is Trump to direct an attack of this magnitude on his own party? Reports of Trump being “giddy” as he watched the siege of the Capitol points to his warped mindset and unhinged, erratic behavior. (Why didn’t then -the former- Vice President, Mike Pence. use the 14th amendment to remove Trump from office?)

I believe the 43 Senate Republicans who voted for acquittal entered the proceedings with closed, corrupted minds. Blind allegiance produced a significant number of “zombie” legislators, devoid of conscience, emotion and reason. Unhinged from reality and shame, they took a course to defend a man of sullied mind and character, and acquit him in the face of video substantiated evidence of sedition and insurrection.

I can only hope and pray that refusal to impose accountability does not lead to unhinging of our nation from its precious democracy.

From Greg Hegman, in Twin Falls, Idaho

Truth, Democracy and The Big Lie

This editorial board opinion was published in the Nevada newspaper, the Reno Gazette Journal: 

By any measure, the presidential election of 2020 was a resounding success. More Americans voted than ever — a full two-thirds of the electorate, the largest percentage turnout since 1900.

Georgia elections board member calls for probe into Trump’s call seeking to pressure Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Despite the burden posed by those numbers, Homeland Security committees tasked with safeguarding the election called it "the most secure in American history." And reviews, at the time, by the then-(former) President Donald Trump's attorney general and Republican and Democratic election officials from every state but Texas (which declined to respond to a survey) found no evidence that fraud or irregularities played any part in the election of Joe Biden.

And all of this success unfolded amid the worst pandemic in 100 years.

Inciting insurrection at U.S. Capitol

Sounds a lot like a democracy that ain't broke. So why have legislators across 28 states offered to fix our voting system with more than a hundred bills this year that would restrict access to the ballot box?

Three words: the Big Lie.

Trump used his baseless claim that the presidential election was stolen to gather his supporters at a rally outside the White House Jan. 6, where he urged them to march on the Capitol, and the result was his impeachment trial for incitement of an insurrection.

Republican legislators for years have used so-called secure voting laws to suppress balloting by minorities, the poor, the elderly and college students who may not typically choose GOP candidates. The Big Lie opened legislative floodgates.

Because Trump repeated it like a mantra for months after the election, the confidence of Republican voters in the nation's election system was shaken to its core — fertile ground for laws to crack down on ballot access.
Mail and early voting

The result? A groundswell of legislative proposals to curtail mail voting, widely expanded during the pandemic; limit ways for people to register to vote; allow voter-roll purges that strip out legitimate voters; tighten voter ID requirements; and ban drop boxes for absentee ballots.

In Georgia, for example, where a record number of absentee ballots were cast in a state Biden narrowly won, proposed legislation would reverse the practice of allowing voting by mail without a specified excuse. Among those favoring this is Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who resisted pressure from Trump to alter voting results and defended the integrity of the state's voting process.

"Georgia had a wildly successful and smooth election," Raffensperger wrote for USA TODAY, in November.
Republican gains in Election 2020

The moves by Republican legislators to restrict voter access come as the GOP — against nearly all objections — picked up a dozen seats in the House of Representatives and gained control of two state legislatures and a governorship. And for his part, Trump received more votes than any Republican presidential nominee in history, incumbent or otherwise.

It's just that Biden received 7 million more votes.

And yet Trump so pervasively insinuated his Big Lie on social media, at rallies and on television that by January, 76% of Republicans were convinced he had been cheated of victory.

How to instill voter confidence

The good news is that the participatory successes of November have created momentum for making it even easier for citizens to vote. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 400 new or carried-over bills in 35 states would, among other things, expand mail and early in-person voting; ensure drop boxes for absentee ballots; allow automatic voter registration in circumstances such as when people interact with a state Department of Motor Vehicles; and reform ways for voters to correct technical mistakes on mail ballots.

And more could be done to instill even greater confidence in the process. The universal implementation of paper balloting would guard against computer error. Comprehensive post-election audits could be more broadly implemented, along with greater opportunities for citizens to observe ballot counting in person or through livestreaming. Reforms to the way mail-in ballots are counted could provide more accurate election night results.

Most important, truth needs to prevail over the Big Lie. The lesson of Nov. 3, is that the world's oldest democracy has the potential for an even brighter future.

Maine Writer- Unfortunately, I must disagree with this editorial board conclusion.  Although democracy survived the 2020 US election, the Big Lie continues because the perpetrator continues to stoke fear by refusing to concede the obvious.  Where is the fear?  Donald Trump has fueled fear about people of color. His dog whistle is this:  "Had 'they' not voted, I would have won".  In my opinion, the Big Lie lives in the minds of the Trumpzanistas. 

Truth will save democracy.  Here is the truth:

President Joe Biden:

• Received a majority - 306 electoral votes
• States won by President Joe Biden that had voted for the former guy in 2016: Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
• No states were won by Donald Trump that Hillary Clinton won in 2016

Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Josh Hawley must be removed from the Senate

Opinions published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

Regarding “Confederates and miscreants: Hawley, Cruz would join infamous list if expelled” (Jan. 29):  

WASHINGTON — Only 15 people have been expelled from the U.S. Senate in its 232-year history, 14 of them senators who backed the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Just nine members have been censured — formally reprimanded — an ignoble list that includes the red-baiting demagogue, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz are facing calls that they receive some form of this historically rare discipline.

To the editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch - While I'm presently living in Texas, I’m a native son of St. Louis. It’s sad to see my home state represented by a senator, Josh Hawley, who behaves like a toddler at church. No, wait, most toddlers are actually more respectful.

Hawley is part of the clique that includes Texas’ own Sen. Ted Cruz, who perpetuates lies and endorses anarchy and insurrection. Hawley and Cruz have ignored their sworn oaths to protect the Constitution and citizens of the United States. I hope my fellow Missourians see to it Hawley is removed from office as soon as possible.

Tim McCreary • Plano, Texas

Dump and done - Trump for prison

Opinion echo by Maureen Dowd:

Published in the Nevada news The Las Vegas Sun

Bloodthirsty former president Donald Trump should not escape consequences for his irresponsibly seditious actions!

Every scene in “Lawrence of Arabia” is perfect, but there’s one I find especially haunting.

Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence returns to Cairo after successfully leading the Arabs in battle against the Ottoman Empire and tells a military superior that he does not want to go back. Slumping in his Bedouin robes, looking pained, he recalls that he executed an Arab with his pistol.

There was something about it he didn’t like, he says.

The irritated general tries to brush it off, assuming the erudite Lawrence is upset at killing a man.

“No, something else,” Lawrence explains. “I enjoyed it.”

I first realized that Donald Trump took pleasure in violence back in March 2016. I had asked him about the brutish rhetoric and violence at his rallies and the way he goaded supporters to hate on journalists and rough up protesters.

I told Trump I had not seen this side of him before and that he was going down a very dark path. With his denigrating mockery of rivals and critics, he had already taken politics to a vulgar place, and now it was getting more dangerous.

Shouldn’t parents be able to bring children to rallies without worrying about obscenities, sucker punches, brawls and bullying?

He brushed off the questions and blithely assessed the savage mood at his rallies: “Frankly, it adds a little excitement.”

A couple of weeks later, I pressed him again on his belligerence and divisiveness, and, with utter candor, he explained why he was turning up the heat.

“I guess because of the fact that I immediately went to No. 1 and I said, why don’t I just keep the same thing going?” he said. “I’ve come this far in life. I’ve had great success. I’ve done it my way.” He added, “You know, there are a lot of people who say, ‘Don’t change.’ ”

Dear reader, Donald Trump didn’t change.

And everything bloodcurdling that happened Jan. 6, at the Capitol flowed from his bloodthirsty behavior. He had always been cruel and selfish, blowing things up and reveling in the chaos. But it was only during his campaign that he realized he had a nasty mob at his disposal. He had moved into a world that allowed him to exercise his malice in an extraordinary way, and he loved it.

He embraced the worst part of his party, the most racist, violent cohort.

The faux-macho air of menace he cultivated as a real estate dealer, the Clint Eastwood squint, just seemed like performance art; mostly he was around New York, acting genial at parties and courting the press.

But once Trump got into politics, he realized, with growing intoxication, that the more incendiary he was, the more his fans would cheer. He found that he could play with the emotions of the crowd, and that turned him on. Now he had the chance to command a mob, so his words could be linked to their actions.

Trump never cared about law and order or the cops. He was thrilled that he could unleash his mob on the Capitol and its guardians, with rioters smearing blood and feces and yelling Trump’s words and going after his targets.

It was Manson family-chilling to watch the House impeachment managers’ video with a rioter hunting for the House speaker, calling out: “Where are you, Nancy? We’re looking for you, Na-a-ncy. Oh, Na-a-ncy.”

It was like watching his vicious Twitter feed come alive. Others were chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” even as a gallows was erected on the lawn. Watching those videos, it hit home how Pence and Nancy Pelosi could have been killed and the melee could have turned into a bloodbath.

Trump not caring about the fate of his vice president was the inevitable sick end of the pairing of the Sociopath and the Sycophant.

As The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey tweeted, recapping his reporting with Ashley Parker: “Pence’s team does not agree with the Trump lawyer’s assessment that Trump was concerned about Pence’s safety. Trump didn’t call him that day — or for five days after that. No one else on Trump’s team called as Pence was evacuated to one room & another, with screaming mob nearby.”

Trump’s whole defense in the impeachment trial was like a low-budget movie trailer. It was just another Trump flimflam reality TV show, meant to prove how he was wronged, not how he wronged the country.

Trump’s lawyers showed a video of myriad Democrats using the word “fight,” as if that was the equivalent of what Trump did.

It's impossible to understand what Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) doesn't "get"?

If he’d had better lawyers and a real strategy in the effort to purloin the election, or if a few brave Republicans like Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, had not stood up to him, he might have succeeded.

Certainly, opportunism has always run rampant in Congress. But most Republicans, who continue to tremble before Trump even though he devoured and destroyed their party, are plumbing new cowardly depths. They are mini-Trumps, making decisions solely on self-interest.

CNN reported that Kevin McCarthy called Trump during the riot, telling him the mob was breaking his windows to get in. The then-president told him: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” The conversation ended in a shouting match. Yet McCarthy still voted against impeaching the president.

Mitch McConnell and the other craven Republicans realize, now, that they should not have played along with Trump as long as they did, while he undermined the election. But they still refuse to hold him accountable because he controls their voters.

The Democrats put on an excellent case, (!)... and they were right to impeach Trump. But since the Republicans wouldn’t convict him, then bring on the criminal charges. Republicans say that’s how it should be done when someone is out of office, so let’s hope someone follows through on their suggestion.

Prosecutors in Georgia have opened an investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election there. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance could drag Trump into court on tax and fraud charges. Karl Racine, the attorney general for Washington, D.C., has said Trump could be charged for his role in inciting the riot.

Maybe a man who gloated as his crowds screamed “Lock her up!” will find that jurors reach a similar conclusion about him.

Maureen Dowd is a columnist for The New York Times.

President Joe Biden executive order resets White House Office of Faith Based Partnerships

The nuns who taught the future president based their religious instruction on the Gospel of Matthew: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Published in Utah, The Salt Lake Tribune- Jack Jenkins and Adelle M. Banks

Washington • President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Sunday (Feb. 14) reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, undoing former President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape an agency that went largely unstaffed for most of his tenure.

In a statement accompanying the announcement of the executive order, Biden echoed his recent remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast, bemoaning widespread physical and economic suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic, racism and climate change. He added that those struggling “are fellow Americans” and are deserving of aid.

“This is not a nation that can, or will, simply stand by and watch the suffering around us. That is not who we are. That is not what faith calls us to be,” he said. “That is why I’m reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to work with leaders of different faiths and backgrounds who are the front lines of their communities in crisis and who can help us heal, unite and rebuild.”

He added: “We still have many difficult nights to endure. But we will get through them together and with faith guiding us through the darkness and into the light.”

The White House announced the appointment of Melissa Rogers, a First Amendment lawyer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, to oversee the office, as she did in former President Barack Obama’s second term. Rogers will also serve as senior director for faith and public policy in the White House Domestic Policy Council.

“It’s configured very differently than it was in the Trump years, a little bit differently than it was during the Obama-Biden administration,” Rogers told Religion News Service in an interview Monday.

Among the new aspects of what the Biden White House is calling the “Partnerships Office,” Rogers said, are her seat on the policy council and the creation of a deputy director.

The office’s deputy director will be Josh Dickson, who ran faith outreach for the Biden-Harris campaign. Trey Baker, who worked as the national director of African American Engagement on Biden’s campaign, will serve as the White House office’s liaison to Black communities, a role that includes Black religious groups.

Dickson, who, along with Rogers, officially started his job Sunday, said in the same interview that he and Rogers are seeking to enhance existing collaborations between government and faith organizations to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re currently developing materials that we’re working on getting out far and wide that just share information and facts about the vaccine and that help provide great resources for COVID education,” he said.

Besides fighting the pandemic, the office will focus its efforts on helping disadvantaged communities, advancing global humanitarian work, strengthening pluralism and protecting “cherished guarantees of church-state separation and freedom for people of all faiths and none.”

Rogers said the office would also work with religious and secular partners to address inequities in economic and educational opportunities.

“We’ll be engaged in that particular effort, as well as others, in breaking down silos and communicating across agencies to try to find out what we can do with our partners to ensure that we really attack these disparities, which are part of the scourge of systemic racism,” she said.

The announcement noted that the office will work with Centers for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships that are embedded in 11 agencies across the federal government. “These issues are ones that every agency, I think, can play a role,” Rogers said.

The faith-based office has been called by different names since President George W. Bush established it, and different presidents have granted religious and secular organizations varying degrees of access.

Biden will return the office to the name it had during the Obama administration, when Rogers led it from 2013 to 2017.
Under President Trump, the office went largely unstaffed until 2019, when he tapped Pentecostal preacher and longtime Trump adviser Paula White to oversee what he called the Faith and Opportunity Initiative. Until then, much of Trump’s religious outreach involved informal meetings with mostly Christian faith leaders — especially a core group who became known as his unofficial evangelical advisers.
The two previous administrations made concerted efforts to connect with a wide array of faith groups, with bipartisan and interreligious access through the faith-based office, related cabinet-level offices and task forces.

Rogers has been critical of what she saw as Trump’s disproportionate engagement with evangelicals, saying in 2017 that “the continuance of this Evangelical Executive Advisory Board, even unofficially, and the apparent failure to have any comparable entity that is open to non-evangelicals, sends a troubling message that the administration prefers evangelicals over other people of faith.”

Rogers also opposed Trump administration plans to remove the requirement that faith-based social service providers offer a secular alternative to people seeking their assistance.

“You can’t benefit from protections you don’t know you have,” she tweeted in January 2020. “The religious liberty of social service beneficiaries is as important as the religious liberty of faith-based providers.”

Rogers came to Biden’s defense in August when she said Trump made “wild assertions” about the former vice president during the 2020 campaign. She said the claims by Trump that Biden would have a “no religion, no anything” approach to faith if he became president “could not be more wrong.”

By Jack Jenkins and Adelle M. Banks | Religion News Service