Republican confusion is the hallmark of the "chaos caucus": No message, no reason, no vision and no plan

Amid GOP confusion, U.S. braces for ‘first-ever shutdown about nothing’ What’s the deal with this government shutdown? 

Echo essay published in The Washington Post by Jeff Stein.

In a standoff even Republicans are comparing to ‘Seinfeld,’ because it’s hard to tell.

Message to #GOP: What's it about?  It's about "nothing"!

In 1995, and 1996, the federal government shut down as House Republicans and the Clinton administration clashed over spending cuts. In 2013, the government shut down because of a partisan disagreement over President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

(Meanwhile, since President Barack Obama's "Obamacare" passed, the result has been to provide affordable health care coverage. As of early 2023, the report finds that more than 40 million Americans have coverage under the ACA, the highest total on record.)

In 2018, Democrats bucked President Donald Trump’s demands to fund a U.S.-Mexico border wall, leading to the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

Jerry Seinfeld "It's about nothing!"

“We are truly heading for the first-ever shutdown about nothing,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Strain has started referring to the current GOP House-led impasse as “the ‘Seinfeld’ shutdown,” a reference to the popular sitcom widely known as “a show about nothing.” “The weirdest thing about it is that the Republicans don’t have any demands. What do they want? What is it that they’re going to shut the government down for? We simply don’t know.”

Lawmakers have until 12:01 a.m. Sunday to pass a new law to extend government funding, or a wide range of critical federal services will come to a halt. On Friday, House Republicans voted down their own proposal to approve a short-term spending bill to fund the government, as well as a separate effort that would have cut numerous essential government services by at least 30 percent. The failure left House GOP’s leadership path forward unclear.

Typically, funding showdowns in divided government between Congress and the White House have featured pitched battles over specific policies, such as Trump’s border wall or Obamacare. But budget experts and historians say the current impasse stands out for its lack of a clear policy disagreement.

House Republican leaders had already worked out an agreement with President Biden in May on government spending levels for the next fiscal year, but they’re working on legislation that would spend far less than the agreed amounts. The House has no plans yet for a temporary extension to government funding, which means there haven’t been significant negotiations with the Democratic Senate and White House. As long as House Republicans cannot find consensus on their demands, Democratic policymakers — largely backed in this fight by Senate Republicans — have declined to offer concessions, because they don’t know which ones would suffice.

Asked by reporters what could be done to avoid a shutdown, Biden responded, “If I knew that, I would’ve already done it.”

Compounding the confusion is that it is not clear how or when House Republicans can forge consensus. (Failure❗) Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has for weeks tried to unify his caucus around a set of spending demands, but his efforts have been stymied in part because a handful of far-right insurgents keep changing their own demands. And so, the legislative leaders tasked with funding the government appear to be stuck.

House Republican appropriators have advanced legislation that would dramatically slash the safety net and other domestic programs, including gutting some education subsidies by 80 percent. 

Those bills, however, are not only doomed in the Senate but also have failed to pass the House, leaving the lower chamber’s policy priorities unclear.

“I frankly don’t understand it — I think it’s sort of nuts. There are times people vote yes one day, and then they come back and vote no the next day, and can’t explain why they switched,” ❓😟😞 said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a McCarthy ally.

Gingrich led House Republicans through two different shutdowns nearly 30 years ago, a brief one in late 1995 and a longer one weeks later. “I find it hard to understand what they want, too, because they change constantly — that’s a big part of the problem.”

Asked if he has a hard time tracking the insurgents’ demands of McCarthy, Gingrich said yes, adding, “(and...) 'So do they'.”

Even Grover Norquist, the president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, has tormented generations of GOP officials by organizing House backbenchers against their leaders. But he chastised the current group of House insurgents for failing to coalesce around an intelligible set of demands. The shutdowns in 1995 and 1996 eventually pushed Clinton and the GOP-led Congress to agree on balanced-budget legislation and other federal changes. Now, Norquist said, far-right members throw out so many different demands — an end to Ukraine funding, tougher immigration restrictions, dramatic spending cuts, changes to House procedures — that it is impossible to know what they want.

“You can’t have seven reasons, and a different one each week, (❗) and expect American people to understand what your point was. In prior fights, there was a focus on why you were doing this. 

But right now, what would someone watching this on TV be taking away? It’s about too many things, which makes this about nothing,” Norquist said.

If this weekend truly does bring the “Seinfeld” shutdown, Norquist said, it will in part reflect the lack of clarity about what the holdouts in the House are demanding.

“One of the rules of ‘Seinfeld’ was: ‘No learning takes place,’” he said. “And one of the rules from that show is the case here — there’s no attempt here to learn from previous episodes.”

Republican government shut down causes widespread economic harm

 Echo report published in the MaineBiz news by Renee Cordes

A (preventable❗) looming federal government shutdown has some Maine business leaders worried about the potential economic fallout for the state.

“Federal agencies touch many aspects of our privately funded work, from keeping air travel safe to setting fiscal policy,” Joshua Broder, CEO of Tilson, told MaineBiz. “A shutdown is unnecessary and reckless.”

The Portland-based provider of telecommunications consulting, design and build services has a national footprint.

“While Tilson isn’t dependent on direct federal spending, I’m very concerned about the impact of a shutdown of any length and urge Congress to do its job and not put the economy at risk,” said Broder, who was honored as a Mainebiz Business Leader of the Year in 2018.

His comments come as a Republican faction in the U.S. House of Representatives pushes for spending cuts that are opposed by many other members of the same party 😖😒❗, raising the specter of the first government shutdown in five years. That limbo lasted a record 35 days, from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019.

Republicans are the "chaos caucus".

Andrew Silsby, president and CEO of Kennebec Savings Bank, expressed frustration over Washington’s repeated political stalemates.

“Over the past few years, Congress keeps finding itself at an impasse on funding the government and that causes great disruption for the economy,” he said. “Shutdowns or even the threat of a shutdown creates unnecessary worry and speculation over which services are considered essential or not or if the people will have access to a service or not.”

Arguing that the government should never shut down, Silsby lamented the fact that funding "has become such a political football in recent years.”

“It’s OK to disagree on policy, but simply continuing to fund existing government services should never be interrupted,” he said. “I am hopeful that we can get to a better place with our political discourse to find a way to consistently fund the people’s business.”

Construction contingencies:  To prepare its construction-industry members on what to know in the event of a shutdown, the Associated General Contractors of Maine issued a four-page brief about what companies should know and do.

The recommendations include establishing a protocol to track and account for all costs incurred in case of a shutdown and how to recover some costs once it ends.

“Our concerns are in the event of a longer shutdown, performance and therefore employment may be affected by non-contracting issues such as access to federal facilities or permitting requiring federal agencies,” said Kelly Flagg, executive director of the Augusta-based trade association.

“Assuming no agreement to fund the government is reached and it the federal government shuts down; AGC will continue to provide updates on construction-specific impacts or considerations concerning a shutdown,” Flagg said.

She also noted that shutdowns are of an undetermined duration, making planning and executing contract commitments extremely difficult for contractors.

“It creates insecurity for employees who don’t know if they’ll receive a paycheck or have work that week and makes commitments from vendors difficult,” she added. “Supply chain disruptions affect projects and ongoing uncertainty means that contractors can’t build their future work programs. All of these impacts have been seen in previous shutdowns and are of concern again today.”

Among large manufacturers, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works (NYSE: GD) in Brunswick does not anticipate any disruptions to its output in case of a shutdown.

The shipyard, ranked Maine's fourth-largest private employer in the 2023, Mainebiz Book of Lists, designs, builds and maintains combat vessels for the U.S. Navy.

“We don’t see any immediate impact on manufacturing,” said BIW spokesman David Hench.

'Direct impact' on federal workers, families

On a wider scale, a shutdown would impact tens of thousands of federal workers in Maine as well as programs and services that are critical to Maine people and businesses.

Data from the U.S. Department of Labor show an average of 16,480 federal government jobs in Maine in 2022, including 6,390 jobs at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, 3,230 jobs at the U.S. Postal Service and 1,550 VA Hospital jobs. Those comprise two-thirds of the total, with public administration jobs in national security, courts and administration of federal programs making up the rest.

“There’s a direct impact on federal workers and their families,” said Kate Knox, a shareholder at Bernstein Shur who co-chairs the Portland-based law firm’s government relations practice group.

“Those workers won’t receive their pay, even if their jobs require them to continue working. And while programs such as Medicare and Social Security aren’t impacted, certain child care programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the WIC Nutrition Program benefits [for women, infants and children] would be affected, meaning some families might not be able to buy the food they need or be able to go to work without child care. Environmental and safety programs and even SBA business loans would be endangered."

On top of those direct impacts, Knox said that the uncertainty around a shutdown and its duration “means that it’s difficult, if not impossible, for the state government and impacted businesses to make mitigation plans.”

She also noted that the state and federal governments are intertwined, “meaning the impacts of a government shutdown go much deeper than what most of us think of as federal programs.”

Gun violence is killing children! What do obstructionist Republicans not "get"?

We must ensure the safety of our children: Protect them from gun violence❗  Republicans block all efforts to create laws to protect the public from the public health danger caused by gun violence, while children are the victims of the GOP inaction!

Echo opinion essay published in the Sante Fe New Mexican newspaper:

This is an essential issue. Obviously, it weighs heavily on the hearts of all families. The tragic incidents of children ages 11 and 5 years old killed due to gun violence, road rage and drive-by shootings, sparked fear and anger among parents. As fathers raising children in New Mexico, we share in the outrage that our children face a constant risk of experiencing gun violence.

In response, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has taken action. She declared a public health crisis and immediately implemented emergency directives. While attention initially focused on the temporary restriction of carrying firearms in public places, the emergency order and subsequent amendment also included over a dozen directives, including preventive measures. Monthly inspections of firearms dealers in the state and 24-hour treatment placement for individuals needing drug and alcohol treatment were included in the emergency order.

Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors, a nonprofit dedicated to family well-being and early childhood development with a focus on Hispanic families, applauds the governor and policymakers for immediately responding to protecting families and children.

The 2022, National Latino Families Report, a survey of 1,300 Hispanic families in collaboration with Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors, BSP Research and UnidosUS revealed that gun violence ranked among top concerns for Hispanic families, including those in New Mexico.

A staggering 71% of Hispanic families in New Mexico expressed deep concern about the possibility of their child becoming a victim of a mass shooting at some point in their life. The survey also showed 79% of families strongly believed schools across the state should have locked doors and cameras to prevent violence on school grounds.

Families are calling for action. Stricter gun control laws, improved background checks and enhanced mental health support systems are among the solutions being sought. In fact, 83% of Hispanic families surveyed in New Mexico strongly agree that gun-sale laws in their state should be stricter, while 85% believe in mandatory universal background checks for all firearm sales.

Lujan Grisham’s public health order — even though she modified it and it is facing legal scrutiny — is a step in the right direction. It aligns with the attitudes of Hispanic families surveyed, with 51% disagreeing that the Second Amendment guarantees all people should be able to own firearms without restrictions and 77% strongly supporting a 10-day waiting period for firearm purchases.

As concerned and responsible community members, we must engage in conversations about ending gun violence. Every child deserves a future free from the threat of gun violence. We will find resolve where families and communities come together to demand change❗, because the safety and well-being of our children depend on our actions to end the status quo.

Adrián Pedroza is the executive director of Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors, and Gabriel Sanchez is vice president of research for BSP Research.

Donald Trump filled his Michigan fake autoworkers rally with hypocrisy

Echo opinion published in the Detroit Free Press: 

"Donald Trump is a charlatan*"-  full stop❗

When Donald Trump’s private jet touches down in Michigan tonight, working people know what to expect from the former president. Underneath his multimillionaire-class status and luxurious private estates, his $100,000 plated Bedminster dinners and Mar-a-Lago golden galas, he’ll claim to lend a hand to working people. It’s the same lie he told us in 2016, when he first ran for president.

But there’s a critical difference now: Trump has a record. And that record was nothing short of catastrophic for workers, highlighting an open hostility especially to union families. He never cared about our jobs. Or our wages. Or our pensions and health care. Or even our safety. Trump just cared about making his rich buddies even richer at our expense.

Let’s be very clear: He doesn’t deserve the labor movement's support — or the support of any working-class person across this country — in 2024.

Autoworkers are fighting for their lives, and as a third-generation member of the United Auto Workers myself, now leading the largest labor federation in Michigan, I find it shameful Trump would attempt to use the strike line to score political points when his record goes against everything the labor movement stands for.

Donald Trump says he supports workers. Frankly, Trump's fake track record on labor shows otherwise.  

As Trump shows up in Detroit, let’s remember that "showing up" is the last thing he did for us as president. 

Trump spent the run-up to 2016 talking a big game: about how workers were getting screwed, how we needed to turn the tide on exporting jobs and importing products. It was all true.

What happened next? He spent four years doing the bidding of billionaires and wealthy companies, overhauling the tax code for the benefit of those who claim more than their fair share of our profits and outsource our jobs. He spent four years sitting on his hands when it came to infrastructure — doing nothing to invest in rebuilding our country or create good jobs in Michigan that sustain families and communities.

Biden has driven historic investments in auto industry.

Compare that to what we have seen over the past few years under President Joe Biden. The Biden Administration has driven historic investments in our auto industry, including a $7 billion investment in four new manufacturing sites across the state. President Biden has brought more than $5 billion in federal funding to rebuild our roads, bridges, and roadways, along with restoring our Great Lakes and securing clean water for millions across the state.

He’s made the crucial investment in upgrading the Soo locks — a critical entry point for commerce, agriculture, and military, where 7,000 vessels and 90 percent of our country’s iron ore moves through every single year.

The result is real, tangible results for Michigan workers in just a few short years. We have seen an absolute boom in Michigan job creation, with more than 330,000 jobs added since January 2021. Unemployment has dropped significantly, rebounding from the pandemic and accelerated by investments in working people through policies like the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. We have more resilient homes, businesses, and communities in the face of the climate crisis. Health care costs have gone down for families — as almost 2 million people across the state benefit from the caps on insulin and prescription drug costs. The list goes on and on and on.

Michigan GOP in shambles:Party chair Kristina Karamo's first conference was a poorly attended conspiracy fest.
We need a president who understands worker solidarity

We still have work to do. Even with these federal investments, we need to make sure every job — from the auto workers building electric vehicles to the workers repaving our roads to the engineers restoring our bridges — is a good, safe, family-sustaining, union job. No matter our industry, we need to come together in support of the UAW and all workers as we fight for a good future on the job for all of us.

To do that, we need someone in the White House who understands the importance of worker solidarity. It’s not Donald Trump — who restricted overtime pay, who opposed wage increases, who gutted health and safety protections during COVID, who appointed hundreds of anti-worker judges, and who fought against our very basic freedom to organize and join a union. It’s not Donald Trump — who cannot even say, point blank, that he is on the side of the workers in any fight we have to create a better life for ourselves and our families.

He is a charlatan, plain and simple, who thinks he can use us to enrich himself and his buddies. We’re smarter and stronger than he gives us credit for. Michigan and working people are on the rise — and from now until Election Day, we should let Trump know we deserve a lot better than him.

Ron Bieber is president of the Michigan AFL-CIO.

*"charlatan"- a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud.

Republican Kevin McCarthy is selfish and ambitious. He has no empathy for the American people

It’s Kevin McCarthy’s government shutdown

Echo opinion published by The Boston Globe editorial board:

The Republican speaker must put his own political ambitions aside and work with Democrats, not hard-right obstructionists, to avert a government shutdown.

Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy's ambition is creating political failure

If Republicans and Democrats in Congress don’t agree on a spending deal by Sunday, the federal government will shut down. It’s not some sudden deadline lawmakers didn’t know was coming. Congress has to pass legislation to fund the government every year. Yet now, with less than a week to spare, there’s no indication that talks between lawmakers are getting any more serious. And if a shutdown occurs, it’s crystal clear who will be to blame: Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House, who appears incapable of standing up to the most intransigent members of his party.

Shutdowns have become a fairly common piece of political theater, but they cause real hardships. If one were to happen, the millions of people on federal payrolls will stop getting paid. It doesn’t matter whether they’re considered essential and must continue working or whether they’re furloughed — no one will receive a paycheck as long as Congress stalls funding the government. Eventually, the government’s services will be put on pause: National parks and museums will close, federal loans will no longer be administered, and some social welfare programs will be disrupted. 

If a shutdown lasts long enough, the nation’s economy will take a hit, too.  So what’s keeping McCarthy from putting together a deal that can pass in the House, clear the Senate, and get to President Biden’s desk in time to avert a shutdown? 

It seems the answer is that he’s worried about the threat a reasonable bipartisan deal — even one that the vast majority of his caucus could support — might pose to his speakership.

That’s why he’s been trying to placate the small group of  ultraconservative Republican lawmakers who have obstructed funding proposals because they refuse to back down on a laundry list of spending they demand the House curtail, including things like aid to Ukraine and the Justice Department’s probes into former president Donald Trump. (Trump has called for congressional Republicans to hold the line and shut down the government if they don’t get those concessions.) Those are, by and large, ideas that not even most Republicans support.

But McCarthy has a fragile coalition. With a paper-thin House majority, he can only afford to lose four votes on a budget vote if he doesn’t court any Democrats. And the far-right obstructionists he’s trying to bring on board — who mostly come from deep-red districts — don’t have much to worry about when it comes to the political ramifications of a shutdown because their reelections are all but guaranteed. That’s why they may be willing to retaliate against McCarthy if he cuts a deal with Democrats (they’ve threatened to oust him as speaker).

But given the math, it’s a no-brainer that McCarthy must pivot to the center if he’s actually interested in governing, not to the hard right, where members’ ideal spending bills have no chance of passing the Senate. And with the deadline fast approaching, it’s time for the speaker to stop playing with fire and start negotiating a deal that the majority of his caucus can pass with the help of some Democrats. Moderate Republican lawmakers have been trying to work out such a deal. They shouldn’t be shy about using some hardball tactics of their own and should make clear that they won’t support unrealistic spending legislation spearheaded by the hard-right obstructionists. When only one part of the GOP coalition wields threats to depose the speaker, it’s not much surprise that group so often gets its way.

It’s on McCarthy to embolden the moderates in his party. But so far he’s been more concerned about the members on the fringe. It may well be true that reaching a deal with Democrats could cause a revolt among Republicans who want to end McCarthy’s reign as speaker. But at some point, McCarthy has to figure out what he’s doing all of this for. Just last week, in a moment that highlighted his frustration, he perfectly articulated what’s wrong with the opposition he’s facing from his own party. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down,” he said. “That doesn’t work.”

But it does work — unless and until McCarthy pushes back. Is maintaining his speakership, where he will feebly preside over such an emboldened obstructionist caucus, really worth shutting the government down? That’s the question McCarthy will have to answer by the end of this week.

Maine Writer post script:  Obviously Republicans have lost their moral compass.  Speaker Kevin McCarthy has no empathy for the American people.  He is obsessed with keeping his job rather than raising his leadership to serve a higher purpose.  

Kevin McCarthy finally met his political nemesis - IOW - Hello! The Republican chaos caucus

Echo To the editor: Poor Kevin McCarthy. 😟😟😒😞😢

And he wanted this Speaker job so badly.

His Republican Party is in shambles and the right-wingers apparently want a government shutdown just to see what happens. So, his job as speaker is on the line over this? It will be very interesting and entertaining to see how that plays out.

Republicans have embraced revenge politics, investigating the investigators. Real governance is shut down already. Meanwhile, the American people get to, what, suffer? I don’t know what a government shutdown will look like either. It will surely be interesting, though not likely entertaining.  

From Bob Warnock, in Los Angeles, CA

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy lacks leadership skills but makes excuses about lack of political momentum

Letters to the Editor published in the Los Angeles Times: If the government shuts down, Kevin McCarthy will bear some of the blame!  

To the editor: An open letter to Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (Republican Representative for Bakersfield California):

Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy is required to demonstrate political leadership.

You’ve created a dilemma for yourself on the budget resolution. While you gave extremist radicals everything they asked for, they still refuse to govern responsibly. 

Although you and President Joe Biden made an agreement to avoid U.S. debt default, the extremists wanted you to dishonor the deal with new spending cuts — and you complied! Nevertheless, your party’s ideologues refuse to fund the government. You yielded to their irresponsible calls to waste time and resources for impeachment without credible evidence, yet those radical Republicans still refuse to support serious governing.

There’s a way out of this dilemma caused by your bad choices. Propose a clean, fully funded continuing resolution with no political stunts riding in sidecars. Surely, you can find four reasonable Republicans (plus yourself) to vote with the Democrats and keep our government going.

There’s a way out of this dilemma caused by your bad choices. Propose a clean, fully funded continuing resolution with no political stunts riding in sidecars. Surely, you can find four reasonable Republicans (plus yourself) to vote with the Democrats and keep our government going.

That’s what real governing, real leadership, would look like.

From Bruce Joffe, in Piedmont, California

Republican voters are not universally behind former guy Donald Trump: Political polls give Trump too much credit

A New York Times editorial board echo:

After three other criminal indictments were filed against him, Donald Trump was accused on Monday of racketeering. In a new indictment, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., charged him with leading what was effectively a criminal gang to overturn the 2020, presidential election in that state.

Fani Willis Fulton County Georgia District Attorney

In fact, the grand jury indictment says Trump and 18 others violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO law, established by the federal government and more than 30 states and used to crack down on Mafia protection rackets, biker gangs and insider trading schemes. The Georgia indictment alleges that Trump often behaved like a mob boss, pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to decertify the Georgia election and holding a White House meeting to discuss seizing voting equipment.

Mr. Trump and a group of associates that included his then chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and one of his lawyers at the time, the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, were also accused of a series of crimes that go beyond even the sweeping federal indictment filed this month by the special counsel Jack Smith. The former president, for example, was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree forgery, for arranging to have a false set of Georgia electors sent to Washington to replace the legitimate ones for President Joe Biden. That same act also resulted in a charge against Trump of conspiracy to impersonate a public officer and a series of charges relating to filing false statements and trying to get state officials to violate their oath of office.

Taken together, these four indictments — which include more than 90 federal and state criminal charges implicating his official conduct during his term and acts afterward, as well as in his personal and business life — offer a road map of the trauma and drama Trump has put this nation through. They raise serious questions about his fitness for office that go beyond ideology or temperament, focusing instead on his disdain for American democracy.

And yet these questions will ultimately be resolved, not by the courts, but by the electorate. Republican primary voters, in particular, are being presented with an opportunity to pause and consider the costs of his leadership thus far, to the health of the nation and of their party, and the further damage he could do if rewarded with another four years in power.

Put aside, for the moment, everything that happened in the eight years since Trump first announced his candidacy for president. Instead, consider only what is now on reams of legal paper before the American people: evidence of extraordinarily serious crimes, so overwhelming that many other defendants would have already negotiated a plea bargain rather than go to trial. This is what he faces as he asks, once again, for the votes of millions of Americans.

“I’m being indicted for you,” the former president has been telling his supporters. “They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.” But time and again, Trump put his ego and ambition over the interests of the public and of his own supporters. He has aggressively worked to undermine public faith in the democratic process and to warp the foundations of the electoral system. He repeatedly betrayed his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the nation’s laws. His supporters may be just as angered and disappointed by his loss as he is. But his actions, as detailed in these indictments, show that he is concerned with no one’s interests but his own. Among the accusations against him:

He took dozens of highly classified documents, some involving nuclear secrets and attack plans, out of the White House and stored them at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, where guests of all kinds visit each year. Then, despite being asked multiple times, he refused to return many of these documents, instead working with his aides and confidants to move and hide the boxes containing them and to destroy video surveillance records of those acts, even after a subpoena from the Justice Department.

He attempted to overturn the 2020, election by using what he knew to be false claims of voter fraud to pressure numerous state and federal officials, including his own vice president and top officials of the Justice Department, to reverse voting results and declare him the winner.

He sought to disenfranchise millions of American voters by trying to nullify their legally cast ballots in order to keep himself in office. In doing so, he colluded with dozens of campaign staff members and other associates to pressure state officials to throw out certified vote counts and to organize slates of fake electors to cast ballots for him.

In one example of the personal damage he caused, Trump led a scheme to harass and intimidate a Fulton County election worker, Ruby Freeman, falsely accusing her of committing election crimes. The Georgia indictment — accusing him of the crime of false statements and writings in official matters — says he falsely called her a “professional vote scammer” who stuffed a ballot box with fraudulent votes for President Biden.

After having extramarital sex with an adult film actress, he falsified business records to hide $130,000 in hush-money payments to her before the 2016 election.

That list does not include the verdict, by a New York State court in May, that Trump was civilly liable for sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll. Nor does it include the ongoing asset and tax fraud prosecution of the Trump Organization by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.

Time and again, Trump has demanded that Republicans choose him over the party, and he has exposed and exploited some genuine rifts in the G.O.P., refashioning the party to suit his own agenda. The party will have to deal with those fault lines and may have to reconfigure itself and its platform. But if Republicans surrender to his demands, they may find themselves led by a candidate whose second term in office would be even more damaging to America and to the party than his first.

A president facing multiple criminal trials, some prosecuted by his own Justice Department, could not hope to be effective in enforcing the nation’s laws — one of the primary duties of a chief executive. (If (God forbid❗) he is re-elected, the former guy Trump could order the federal prosecutions to be dropped, though that would hardly enhance his credibility.) 

In other words, a man accused of compromising national security would have little credibility in his negotiations with foreign allies or adversaries. No document could be assumed to remain secret, no communication secure. The nation’s image as a beacon of democracy, already badly tarnished by the January 6th attack, may not survive the election of someone formally accused of systematically dismantling his own country’s democratic process through deceit.

Moreover, the charges in the Georgia case are part of the larger plot described in the federal indictment of Mr. Trump this month. 

But, Ms. Willis used tools that weren’t available to Mr. Smith. Georgia’s RICO statute allows for many more predicate crimes than the federal version does, including false statements, which she used to bring the charge against several of the defendants in the fake-elector part of the scheme.

Altogether, the Fulton grand jury cited 161 separate acts in the larger conspiracy, from small statements like false tweets to major violations like trying to get the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to decertify the state’s election by “unlawfully altering” the official vote count, which was in President Biden’s favor. Though some of the individual acts might not be crimes themselves, they added up to what Ms. Fanni Willis, D.A., called a scheme by “a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities,” all for the benefit of the former president of the United States.

Those legal tools are part of a broad American justice ecosystem that is, at its core, a mechanism for seeking the truth. It is not designed to care about politics or partisanship; it is supposed to establish facts. To do so, it tests every claim rigorously, with a set of processes and rules that ensure both sides can be heard on every issue, and then it puts the final decision to convict in the hands of a jury of the defendant’s peers, who will make the weighty decision of guilt or innocence.

And that is what makes this moment different from all the chaos of the past eight years. Mr. Trump is now a criminal defendant four times over. While he is innocent until proven guilty, he will have to answer for his actions.

But almost certainly before then, Trump will have to answer to Republican voters. His grip on the party has proved enduring but not universal; while he is far ahead of the other candidates, a recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed that he is the choice of only 54 percent of likely primary voters. And about half of Republican voters told pollsters for Reuters/Ipsos that they would not vote for him if he was convicted of a felony.

The indictments — two brought by elected prosecutors who are Democrats, all of them arriving before the start of Republican presidential primaries — have been read by many as political, and Republicans have said without evidence they are all organized for the benefit of Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump has amplified that message and used it to drive fund-raising for his campaign. Although the outcome of these indictments may have a political impact, that alone does not make them political. To assume that any prosecution of a political figure is political would, in effect, “immunize all high-ranking powerful political people from ever being held accountable for the wrongful things they do,” said Kristy Parker, a lawyer with the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “And if you do that, you subvert the idea that this is a rule-of-law society where everybody is subject to equal justice.”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly offered Republicans a false choice: Stick by me, or the enemy wins. But a healthy political party does not belong to or depend on one man, particularly one who has repeatedly put himself over his party and his country. A healthy democracy needs at least two functioning parties to challenge each other’s honesty and direction. Republican voters are key to restoring that health and balance.

Teaching American Black History in churches: Acts 8: 26

Echo reporting published in The Washington Post by Brittany Shammas: MIAMI, Florida — They filed into the pews one after the other on a sweltering Wednesday night, clutching Bibles and notepads, ready to learn at church what they no longer trusted would be taught at school.

“BLACK HISTORY MATTERS” proclaimed television screens facing the several dozen men and women settling in at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. An institution in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Liberty City, “The Ship” had borne witness to many of the seminal events of the past century, shepherding its followers during Jim Crow* and the heyday of the (Ku Klux Klan) KKK, through the civil rights movement to the racial justice protests of recent years.

Now, as a new school year started, the Rev. Gaston Smith was standing at the pulpit with a lesson on one of those chapters. 

After months of controversy over new directives governing classroom instruction in Florida — changes that critics said sanitized or even distorted the past — he and other Black pastors across the state agreed their churches had no choice but to respond.


They would teach Black history themselves.

“Whenever there has been any kind of movement, particularly in the African American community, it started in the house of God,” said Smith, 57, a commanding presence with a resonant voice. “We cannot be apathetic, we cannot sit back, we cannot be nonvocal. We have to stand our ground, because the Bible says we have to speak up for those that cannot speak up for themselves.”

Prayer punctuates the evening's worship and learning at Friendship Missionary Baptist. (Bryan Cereijo/For The Washington Post)

Their resolve has drawn a groundswell of support. A nonprofit coalition of religious institutions, Faith in Florida, put together an 11-chapter tool kit to guide the churches and suggest books, articles, documentaries and reports covering the Black experience through what it calls “the lens of truth.” The chapters, featuring content for all ages, cover a lot of ground. “From Africa to America,” one is titled. Another highlights “Race, Racism & Whiteness.”

Some 200 faith leaders quickly signed up to use it, representing African Methodist Episcopal, United Methodist and other denominations. Each committed to weave teachings on Black history into their sermons or Sunday school classes or Bible study sessions. That way, they’d be reaching parents as well as children.

The churches’ involvement harks back to the pivotal role many played in the struggle to end segregation and advance voting rights.

“There’s always been that connection,” said Loren Lyons, a spokesperson for the coalition. “And so, we pretty much said that because of what’s going on in the curriculum and what’s going on in Florida right now, it’s time that we took back that power.”

Inside the brightly lit sanctuary at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, Smith turned to his Bible and began reading. The passage was from Acts 8:26, about an Ethiopian official converting to Christianity after reading scripture about Jesus: “His justice was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth.”

Then Smith said he wanted to show a documentary about an “injustice that has taken place right here in the state of Florida many years ago.” He stepped aside as the video began playing and a woman named LaVon Bracy recounted being beaten when she became one of the first three Black students at Gainesville High School in 1964.

“I stayed home about a week,” she said. “And then I got up, and I told Dad to take me back to school. I said, ‘You know what, they’re just going to have to kill me, because I cannot let them win.’”

In the crowd, churchgoers young and old watched quietly, hanging on to every word.

In fact, for many Black churches, discussing Black history isn’t new. But formalizing it through a teaching pledge, tool kit and dedicated lessons is.

This educational idea came from the coalition’s executive director, the Rev. Rhonda Thomas. She had been dismayed by passage of the 2022 “Stop Woke Act” — legislation, championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a 2024, Republican presidential candidate, that limits classroom discussion of race. This spring, as the state set about revising Black history education standards to conform to the law, Thomas decided to take action: She would mobilize as many faith leaders as possible to teach “raw and real” African American history from their pulpits.

Her resolve was only strengthened when the new standards were released this summer, with a line mandating middle-schoolers be taught “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Faith in Florida’s website now greets visitors with a pop-up message imploring them to sign the pledge.

“Because Black History is American History!” it declares.

In a sitting room at the gabled, wood-paneled church in Opa-locka that she and her husband have led for nearly three decades, New Generation Missionary Baptist Church, Thomas said she took particular issue with one of the provisions in last year’s legislation: That instruction should be tailored so no student would feel guilt or “psychological distress” over past actions by members of the same race.

“If you want to look at who feels bad, I was born into this world as if it was designed for me to live feeling bad,” she said with an exasperated laugh. “I don’t think any lesson should be taught to make anyone feel angry, but if it’s history, it’s history, right?”

A Miami native, the 63-year-old Thomas could remember going to only one beach as a little girl — Virginia Key — because it was the only one where Black people were allowed. Her high school class was the first to get to eat in the cafeteria. Her mother-in-law still has the card she had to show to be permitted onto Miami Beach to clean houses.

Thomas sighed.

“We look at history as, ‘Oh, that happened way back then,’” she said. “No, no, no, no. It’s not that far.”

She had long been preaching when a conversation with a voting rights activist changed her life. He said the Black church had once been the heartbeat of the community — “to the point that we became a threat, and that’s why we were bombed.”

Then he asked, “When have we last been a threat?”

The pastor thought about it and decided: “I want to be a threat.” She had forgotten, she said, the power of the Black church. Not any longer.

While creating the tool kit, the members of a special task force had a few goals in mind. They wanted to cover a timespan from before slavery to modern times, including the Middle Passage, white supremacy and race riots, the Black Panther Party and what they called the “criminal injustice system.”

“We don’t want to whitewash anything,” said task force member Marlowe Jones, a Faith in Florida organizer in Pasco County. “We want to tell the truth.”

The response since July has been overwhelming. As of this month, more than 260 religious institutions have filled out a pledge to teach Black history. And it isn’t just Black congregations responding: There also are synagogues, Catholic churches and mosques. Nor is it only in-state houses of worship.

Faith in Florida is now getting requests to build out an entire curriculum — something Thomas hopes to tackle in time for the second half of the school year. “I had no idea it was going to go this far,” she said.

Her church was among the first to get started. Its initial foray was an early-morning session, taught by Thomas and her son on a Saturday in August. Her husband, the Rev. Ranzer Thomas, amplified it during a Sunday service later that month. In a sermon centered on leaning on faith in times of struggle, he wove in the year-long bus boycott in the mid-1950s in Montgomery, Ala., Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., a decade later and the March on Washington in 1963.

Such historic moments, he told congregants, must now be taught by “people like you and I.”

“Yes, there is a fight of wanting to remove history from the school, but who was the first teacher that you ever met?” he asked. “You will be reminded that the first teacher is at home.”

Seventh-grader Terrence Williams listened from the pew where he sat with his older sister and uncle. After the service, he said he liked getting to know “my history and what my ancestors did to help us gain freedom.” Even if some of it made him feel sad.

“They didn’t do anything wrong,” Terrence said, “and they had to fight for us.”

As the video came to an end at Friendship Missionary Baptist, with Bracy returning to her high school decades after graduation to register students to vote, Pastor Smith stepped back up to the pulpit.

“That documentary is not there so that you would get angry,” he said. “But that documentary is there to remind the world, the nation, this state, that we will not go back where we’ve been.”

Raucous applause rang out in the high-ceilinged sanctuary. Smith turned again to scripture, telling those gathered that “Christ can connect with those that have dealt with injustice” and that he is “a God of inclusion.”

Near the front sat Mark Riley, a local high school history teacher and leader of the church’s youth ministry. He was frustrated by the limitations that Florida education officials had imposed and by the lack of a public pushback from his own superintendent.

“It’s American history,” Riley said. “These kids have to know these things, and we can’t pick and choose what we teach.”

He was heartened to see the church taking a stand. And as he listened to his pastor’s message, he was already thinking of how he would teach Black history during the youth Bible study he leads.

The tone of the Wednesday evening session was mostly triumphant, packed with call-and-response exchanges and upbeat music. That was intentional, Smith explained afterward.

His congregants were feeling battered by all that was happening in the state, and he hoped to remind them of their importance. “Not only to God,” he told them, “but we are important to this nation, important to this state.”

As the clock ticked toward 9 p.m., Smith led one more song. The band played the believers out, and as they readied to go back into the night, everyone was singing about gratitude.

Brittany ShammasBrittany Shammas is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post.

*The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, "Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. Such laws remained in force until 1965.

Florida's DeSantis evil political stunt by relocating innocent Venezuelan migrants has backfired!

The migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard, most originally from Venezuela, say they were tricked into boarding planes in Texas under a false promise of expedited work papers and housing. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has since taken credit for what he’s called a “voluntary” relocation. Many of the migrants, Luzardo among them, have painted a very different picture.

Venezuelan flag and migrants

This is the America I love: Humanity wins! An echo opinion letter published in the Las Vegas Sun by Fabiola Santiago:

This is the admirable America I know exists — the humane one many of us love with all our hearts.

A year after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis plucked two groups of migrants from Texas and — using Florida taxpayers’ money — flew them to Martha’s Vineyard, under false pretenses, his evil scheme to dump them on liberals without any aid has been, once again, met with extraordinary kindness.

Score another win for the forces of good, which would not leave penniless women, two children and young men lost and bewildered.

The volunteers on the island who fed, sheltered and helped resettle the 49 migrants — most of them Venezuelan — brought them back to Martha’s Vineyard last weekend, this time, to celebrate.

Venezuelan migrants

They invited every single one of the migrants, now scattered around the country and starting lives anew, to return to St. Andrew’s Church for a joyful first-year reunion.

It was a gesture, motivated by the desire to do more good, to make them again feel welcome against the backdrop of a national epidemic of anti-immigrant hate. Not all could come, but the 36 who did step away from jobs and obligations showed joy and gratitude to their hosts and benefactors.

How beautiful is that?

A year ago, 49 migrants arrived unexpectedly on Martha’s Vineyard, a wealthy island community off the Massachusetts coast. Immigration advocates called it a cruel political stunt, but it has surprisingly created a legal advantage that some of the migrants might be able to use to remain in the United States.

Among them was Carlos Luzardo, who worked seven years as a barber after moving to Colombia from his native Venezuela. After living through a political crisis and then economic upheaval, he sold his business and decided to migrate to the U.S.

“It was a difficult decision,” he said earlier this month, speaking through an interpreter.

In the last year, the stocky, gregarious 25-year-old has been slowly building a new client base in the kitchen of his apartment in a Boston suburb. To earn more money, he works in a salon washing hair, waxing eyebrows, and simply talking with people. “I spend an hour with them, fixing them up. And just like that, they find me endearing. I’m not sure why,” he added with a smile. The generous Vineyard community raised money to host the asylum seekers, with cases still pending, inviting them to bring guests, and they paid their way, their stay and activities, including group gatherings and trips to the beach.

The black-and-white pictures and story in The Vineyard Gazette show quite an emotional bash.

The refugees’ smiles, hugs and thumbs-up are an antidote to the anti-immigrant rhetoric poisoning Americans: The spirit of Lady Liberty redeemed. The humane character Americans were known for.

The Vineyard volunteers didn’t have to do any of this. They had already made a huge difference in these people’s lives when they initially arrived.

DeSantis pulled this publicity stunt to position himself as the most
immigrant-loathing of them all in the GOP race for the White House — putting at risk immigration hearings and location check-ins. They could have missed appointments and court dates and ended up in legal trouble from where there’s no coming back.

But the Vineyard souls — plus, the national outrage generated by Democrats over DeSantis’ cruelty — facilitated immigration lawyers, and another story began to be written. Charity toward fellow humans replaced Republicans’ vilification of people fleeing circumstances so dire most Americans cannot imagine them.

What DeSantis, bragging father of three, did — leaving confused kids and their parents without food or shelter on a street corner for political thrills — was inhumane. He, it’s to be hoped, never becomes president, as he has shown how low he’s willing to stoop for personal ambition.

The Vineyard residents’ generosity of spirit leaves the governor with a fresh dose of egg on his face — a bonus to the happy news of the reunion.

They kept their plans private, allowing only one local reporter and a photographer to chronicle the moments of friendship, joy and fraternity. And, as the hosts requested, the Gazette agreed to hold off publishing the story until after the immigrants had a chance to return home.

“We wanted this to be a sacred time,” organizer Lisa Belcastro told the Gazette.

Belcastro, a homeless shelter coordinator, whom the right-wing media took out of context to show liberals don’t want immigrants either, is exceptional.

A year ago, she cried when she told the media gathered around her about the “trauma” the migrants had endured. “Some of them have gone through really horrific things,” she said, breaking down for a moment, then picking up their defense.

“It’s step by step, folks,” she said.

And here she is, offering another step up — and still protecting them.

I only found out about the celebration because a watchful reader, Helena Poleo, sent me the link to the story.

“This is what happens when a community comes together,” Caracas-born Poleo wrote to me. She’s a Miami political consultant and media professional, a former journalist and an immigrant-rights advocate.

Her words took me back to pre-Trump times when America was the kind of country that, indeed, came together for immigrants.

Martha’s Vineyard reminds us: It is inconceivable that too many Americans fail to condemn DeSantis for his cruelty to the Venezuelan migrants he used and abused.

All of us should be throwing the Venezuelan refugees a party.

Fabiola Santiago is a columnist for the Miami Herald.