Trump Democrats Generally Lose-- Which Is A VERY Good Thing

A few days ago, defeated conservaDem, Claire McCaskill, was on Chris Hayes' show trying to wish upon a star that she could take back her vote confirming Alex Acosta after the Senate examined his qualifications. There isn't much new information that's come out since McCaskill and 5 other Democrats decided he should be the country's Secretary of Labor. It's just in the public eye now, enough for McCaskill to wish she hadn't been such a Trump kiss ass. Her Trump adhesion score was 45.8%, about double the average Senate Democrat. She voted to confirm Kirstjen Nielsen as Secretary of Homeland Security. Does she wish that had never happened too? She voted to roll-back parts of Dodd-Frank. Do we need an economic collapse before she appears on Hayes' show and commits seppuku? How many Yemeni children have to die before she regrets that she voted against opposing Saudi arm sales? She also voted to confirm Sonny Perdue as Secretary of Agriculture, Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy. Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior, Wilbur Ross as Secretary of Commerce, Linda McMahon as Small Business Administrator, Elaine Chao as Secretary of Transportation, Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, John Kelly as Secretary of Homeland Security... How many of those does she wish she could do over?

When it came to Pompeo, you know who voted NO? Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris-- the presidential contenders. The only contender to vote with McCaskill was Amy Klobuchar, currently sitting at 1.2% national polling average-- and lower than that in all 4 of the newest polls.

Yesterday, Reid Wilson, reporting for The Hill noted that the senators who have been most steadfastly rejecting Trumpanzee's catastrophic nominees are the ones who want to challenge him in 2020.

Trump's picks to fill positions in his administration and the judiciary illustrate an increasingly partisan divide in the Senate between Republicans who vote to confirm almost every nominee and Democrats who reject the vast majority.

The average Democrat has voted to confirm just 38 percent of Trump's nominees... [T]he average GOP senator backed 99 percent of his picks, and the one who went rogue most often-- Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)-- still voted to confirm 93 percent of his nominees.

...Warren and Gillibrand have voted in favor of just 11 percent of Trump's nominees over the last 2 ½ years. The two Democrats have voted to confirm only six of his judicial nominees-- all in the 115th Congress. This year, they have voted to confirm just three of Trump's nominees, including two members of the Export-Import Bank and a member of the Federal Highway Administration.

Sanders has voted to confirm only 12 percent of Trump's nominees, but he has not voted to confirm a single Trump nominee this year. Sanders even opposed the three nominees Warren and Gillibrand voted to confirm.

Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) have voted in favor of 17 percent and 15 percent of Trump's nominees, respectively. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has voted to confirm 38 percent of those nominees, putting her in line with the average Senate Democrat.

But in what may be a sign of just how important opposing Trump is to the Democratic base, Klobuchar's voting record changed noticeably in the run-up to her decision to enter the presidential field. In the 115th Congress, she voted to confirm 84 of Trump's 180 nominees, or about 47 percent. In this Congress, she has voted to confirm fewer than one in 10 nominees.

"For people who seek the nomination, opposing Trump and in particular conservative judges will be a positive for party activists," said Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), another 2020 contender, has voted to confirm half of Trump's nominees, more than all but seven other members of the Democratic caucus.

Those seven members who have voted to confirm more than half of Trump's nominees reflect the centrist flank, whose ranks were thinned in 2018 when former Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Joe Donnelly (D-IN) all lost their reelection bids.

Ironically, red state Democrats like McCaskill, Heitkamp and Donnelly were encouraged to take GOP-lite positions and vote across the aisle as often as possible because the self-loathing elderly Democratic leaders have long ago lost touch with the Democratic and don't understand that crap senators were defeated because they didn't convince any Republicans tp vote for them and instead discouraged Democratic turnout. These are the worst Trump adhesion scores among Democratic senators and former senators:

• Joe Manchin (WV)- 56.4%- REELECTED
• Heidi Heitkamp (ND)- 54.8%- DEFEATED
• Joe Donnelly (IN)- 54.2%- DEFEATED
• Bill Nelson (FL)- 43.4%- DEFEATED
• Claire McCaskill (MO)- 45.8- DEFEATED
• John Tester (MT)- 31.7%- REELECTED

That was some blue wave, huh?

Jimmy Carter Is Saying Out Loud What We All Know: Trump Is An Illegitimate President

Thursday former President Jimmy Carter and former Vice President Walter Mondale, were in Leesburg Virginia for an⁩ event hosted by presidential scholar Jon Meacham on human rights. Carter responded to a question by Meacham by pointing out what politicians are too scared to address, namely that a full investigation “would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016… He was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”

Mondale didn’t go quite that far, simply noting that Trump’s “got something deep in him that is detestable, citing “his rhetoric, his harshness, his divisiveness… Doctors tell me they think they recognize symptoms of psychological problems.”

Carter also said that “every day we send a terrible signal” with border policy, “a disgrace to the United States, and I hope it will soon be ended. Maybe not until the 2020 election.”

Meanwhile Trump is at a G20 meeting in Japan, sniffing Putin’s asshole. They were seated next to each other at dinner when a reporter asked Trump if he would tell "the Russian president to not meddle in the election." Trump, without looking at Putin, responded, "Of course I will. Don't meddle in the election, president. Don't meddle in the election." Ha, ha… big funny! And… the illegitimate "president" lashed out from the summit. "He’s a nice man. He was a terrible president," said Trumpanzee at a press conference. "He’s been trashed within his own party. He’s been trashed… Everybody now understands that I won not because of Russia, not because of anyone but myself. I went out and campaigned better, smarter, harder than Hillary Clinton." The use of the word "everybody" is a typical example of Trumpian gas-lighting, a technique he uses to manipulate his base of 2-digit IQ supporters.

But what if it is indisputably proven that Trump is an illegitimate "president?" Does that mean Bernie gets to fire Gorsuch and Kavanaugh? They’re illegitimate Supreme Court justices if they were appointed by an illegitimate "president," no? And 41 judges to the U.S. Court of Appeals and 80 judges to U.S. District Courts. Let’s take the 9th District, which has jurisdiction over California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho and Montana. How much better off would that Court of Appeals be without right-wing extremists Mark Bennett, Ryan Nelson, Eric Miller, Bridget Bade, Kenneth Lee, Daniel Collins and Daniel Bress (not confirmed yet)? Same goes for the 7th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. Trump packed it with far right whackadoodles: Amy Coney Barrett, Michael Brennan, Michael Scudder and Amy St. Eve. The other big Midwest Circuit— the 6th— is even worse off. The 6th has jurisdiction over Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan. And Trump put half a dozen judicial psychopaths on the bench there so far: Amul Thapar, John Bush, Joan Larsen, John Nalbandian, Chad Readler and Eric Murphy.

At the second Democratic debate, Bernie said he doesn’t support packing the Supreme Court but brought up the idea of rotating judges off the Supreme Court. I had never heard of that before and wasn’t sure what it meant but it doesn’t sound particularly constitutional to me. I like the idea of just saying, "look, Trump wasn’t elected; he was put in the White House by Russia. He was an illegitimate president so everything he did was illegitimate. Let’s start with Gorsuch and Kavanaugh  and work our way down."

Bettina Hubby

Trump's Wall And Judges-- A Couple Of Petards Of Theirs The GOP Got Hoist On This Week

In his war against humanity, Señor Trumpanzee took some fire yesterday from his own side. On Fox and Fiends a neo-Nazi pundit, Michelle Malkin, who is known on the far right fringes, said "Well, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I’m not going to spin it. I wish I could but I can’t. This is a cave. This was a blink." She was talking about Trump backing down from shutting the government after he was told he isn't getting any money for the wall the American Nazis want to build. "We have to hold the Republicans [accountable], particularly Mitch McConnell, who has been in office since 1984 and has never been able to get this deal done because he is afraid of a shutdown. But now look at what the White House is forced to do: scrounge around for $600 million in the defense budget in order to fund a puny 100 miles? As if border security is an afterthought." Others on the extreme right are saying the same thing, especially Ann Coulter, who was screeching some nonsense about not voting for Trump. Delusional and frothing at the mouth, she also claimed that "most of his supporters" will not vote for him if the wall isn't built, calling his presidency "a joke... They’re about to have a country where no Republican will ever be elected president again." These Nazis get so worked up. Trump unfollowed Coulter on Twitter this morning. Take that!

Ben Shapiro has already beaten them to it Tuesday in the U.S. version of the Völkischer Beobachter. "It’s a pretty gutless move," wrote Shapiro, "for the administration to back down from a fight over the wall after revving up Republicans for precisely that fight... backing off a fight is a mistake. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is about to send $4.8 billion to Mexico in development aid. So much for Mexico paying for the wall. Trump voters should be, at the very least, disquieted by Trump’s willingness to back down once again from his pledge on the border wall. Combined with his reprioritization of criminal justice reform, Trump looks not so much tough on crime as ambivalent about it."

As if that weren't enough for the far right to have to swallow, the other big deal for them-- the rush to get all Trump's extremist and unqualified judges confirmed-- took a hit yesterday too. Under pressure from progressives, Schumer announced he's not agreeing to a customary year-end package of judicial nominees.

Schumer and his Democratic colleagues are in no mood to agree to a year-end deal after a federal judge in Texas struck down the entire Affordable Care Act last week, including protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

The judge, Reed O’Conner, was a George W. Bush appointee confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote in 2007-- when Democrats held the majority.

Schumer brushed off questions about if letting O'Connor clear by a voice vote in 2007 was a "bad deal," telling NBC's Chuck Todd on Sunday that senators couldn't predict how a district judge would rule more than a decade after his nomination was before the Senate.

"There was no deal, I don't think, on this judge. He was a nominee to the district court. No one brought up anything. No one knew how he'd rule in the future. And you know, it's an awful ruling. Let's make no mistake about it," Schumer said on Meet the Press on Sunday.

Senate Democrats are also upset over Republicans not respecting the Senate’s blue-slip tradition, which gives both senators from a judicial nominee’s home state power to hold up his or her nomination.

Senate leaders usually agree to a package of judicial and executive nominees before major holiday recess. Judicial nominees, in particular, have been a top priority of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who views them as the party’s best chance to shape the political leaning of the country for decades.

But progressives skewered Schumer after he agreed to similar packages in August and October in exchange for letting vulnerable incumbents hit the campaign trail. He’s been tight lipped this week about if he would agree to such a deal as Congress looks to wrap up its work for the year.

“Our job right now is to get the government funded without a wall. We have had no discussion about judges. None,” Schumer told reporters during a weekly leadership press conference, where he declined twice talk about a potential agreement.

Schumer has faced heavy pressure from liberal activists not to agree to an end-of-the-year deal.

“Especially in light of the Texas judge’s ruling last week ruling ObamaCare unconstitutional, it would be insane to continue to give a free pass to lower-court judges that are ideologically extreme,” said Brian Fallon, a former aide to Schumer who is now the executive director of Demand Justice, a group opposed to President Trump’s efforts to reshape the federal judiciary.

“The average Trump judge is even more conservative than the judges that George W. Bush nominated,” he said. “The sort of politicized ruling that we saw last week is going to be more the norm with these Trump judges.

“It rings hollow when Democrats vocally complain about a ruling like last week’s but then revert to form and continue to mindlessly approve more of Trump’s judges,” Fallon added.

Schumer has not faced similar pressure publicly from members of his own caucus.

...Josh Nelson, a co-director of CREDO Action, said they were “surprised” and “pleased” that Schumer did “the right thing and block a year-end package of Trump judicial nominees.”

“Schumer appears to have waken from his slumber...As the recent Affordable Care Act decision in Texas made all too clear, the stakes are too high for Democrats to continue rubber-stamping Trump's judicial nominees,” he added.

Fallon, in a statement on Wednesday, called Schumer’s decision a “huge breakthrough.”

...Republicans touted judicial nominees as one of the main reasons they should keep control of the Senate heading into November’s midterm. In addition to confirming two Supreme Court nominees and solidifying its conservative majority, they’ve set a record for the number of appeals judges confirmed during a president’s first two years.

They confirmed Jonathan Kobes, Trump’s 30th circuit court judge, just last week. Vice President Pence broke a tie vote to win Kobes’s confirmation to the Eighth Circuit.

The record for the number of circuit judges approved during a president’s first two years was previously held by President George H.W. Bush, who got 22 appeals court judges confirmed during his administration's first two years.

Republicans have also infuriated Democrats for advancing nominees even when a home-state senator didn’t return a “blue slip,” a sheet of paper that indicates whether or not they support the nominee.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced last year that he would move judicial nominees even though home-state Democratic senators withheld blue slips for those nominees.

Democrats were furious when Grassley held an October hearing for 9th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Eric Miller, even though Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) declined to give him blue-slip approval.

The Senate has confirmed several circuit court nominees even when a Democratic senator didn’t return their blue slip, including David Stras to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit and David Porter to serve on the 3rd Circuit.

Grassley also advanced Ryan Bounds's 9th Circuit nomination to the floor even though neither home-state senator-- Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Ron Wyden (D-OR)-- returned their blue slips. But Bounds's nomination was ultimately withdrawn when it became clear he did not have the 50 votes needed from Republicans.

I guess this early morning tweet today was Señor T's response to Coulter and Malkin and the others on the extreme right attacking him for caving to the Democrats on funding the government. Was he signaling his base that the wall's not that big a deal after all?

Is There Any Way To Stop Kavanaugh's Confirmation Before The Midterms?

Brett Cavanaugh by Nancy Ohanian

L.A. is packed with state legislators from around the country for conferences this week, including several friends of mine who I don't get to see often. Last night I had dinner with one and, as we were leaving Cafe Gratitude, he asked me how I thought the Kavanaugh thing would end. I think was looking for me to affirm his own optimism. I wish I could have. Do we have a shot? Sure. But it's a really long shot. People are working very hard on this and voters are starting to rally against Kavanaugh. The latest polling I've seen, from YouGov, is... meh. Among registered voters, it's very close:

• Strongly approve- 27%
• Somewhat approve- 10%
• Somewhat disapprove- 9%
• Strongly disapprove- 28%
• Undecided- 25%

No significant difference-- just a battle for the hearts and minds of the people who describe themselves as not knowing enough to decide. Still, Kavanaugh is the least popular Supreme Court nominee in modern history-- including a Quinnipiac poll from last week that shows more people oppose his confirmation than support it.

FiveThirtyEight points out that Kavanaugh's polling numbers look like Robert Bork's and Harriet Miers'. OK, always nice to see a little history. It's not meaningless. But can Chuck Schumer pull it off?

He needs to hold shaky Trump state Democrats up for reelection (+ Doug Jones of Alabama who isn't up for reelection)-- Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly, Bill Nelson and Claire McCaskill-- from committing to support confirmation to give Schumer-- and the grassroots groups in their states-- enough room and enough time to persuade 2 Republicans (yes, technically they only need one, but will just one Republican take on the whole onus alone?) to flip. I don't see that happening, unless there's a dead girl/live boy scenario in those hidden records. Big talkers Corker and Flake could do it since both are retiring, but neither has the inclination-- nor the balls, no matter how much they detest Trump.

Yesterday, writing for the New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin wrote, trying too reassure the kinds of people who read the New Yorker that "At some point in the process, all four of these nominees-- Haynsworth, Carswell, Bork, and Ginsburg-- seemed like shoo-ins for confirmation, much as Kavanaugh does today. And yet they were all defeated. And the Justices who took their places were closer to the judicial and political mainstream. To be sure, the analogies to Kavanaugh’s case can be overdrawn. The most obvious difference is that Democrats controlled the Senate when Nixon and Reagan made their nominations. And Nixon and Reagan were less right-wing than Trump has been, at least when it comes to judicial nominations. Trump and his allies can be expected to fight furiously for Kavanaugh precisely because Blackmun and Kennedy turned out to be more moderate than many anticipated. Still, the current Republican margin in the Senate (owing to John McCain’s absence) is just a single vote, and Kavanaugh’s long paper trail, both as a judge and as a Republican political appointee, gives Democrats a great deal of material to exploit. Most of all, they need to remember that fighting Supreme Court nominees, even against formidable odds, can succeed-- and produce a better Court than anyone might have expected."

One more thing. You know who Trump is? He's the guy who, if Kavanaugh is defeated, will absolutely find someone worse, not someone better. Meanwhile, today... on the floor of the Senate:

Don't Pay Any Mind To Drama Queen Rand Paul-- He's Full Of Crap

Rand Paul isn't the only publicity hog in the Senate. He's just the worst. Every time something controversial comes up, he grabs some quick national headlines by pretending he might do something contrary to what everyone knows he will do (and always does do). So, no, there is exactly no chance-- none whatsoever-- that Rand Paul is wavering on voting to confirm extremist Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh. It's always a nice fantasy that Paul will break away from his rote support for this kind of thing but it's nothing more than a publicity stunt for Paul. And, of course, he got the ink he was looking for from Politico yesterday.

If just one Republican votes NO, the nominee Trump picked because he says he believes presidents are above the law and can't he questioned or indicted, Kavanaugh's rushed nomination fails. Reporter Burgess Everett wrote that "Paul is again inviting fellow senators to play the will-he-or-won’t-he guessing game when it comes to his decision-- expressing grave concerns about Kavanaugh’s approach to personal privacy while insisting his vote could go either way, depending on what the judge says in the coming weeks and months." What a joke! There is no one in Washington playing any kind of will-he-or-won’t-he guessing game over puffed up Rand Paul. If he was an actual civil libertarian, say, Justin Amash-- the real deal-- maybe people would... but Rand Paul? Give me a break. This scam only works so many times before you become a sad joke.

“I am honestly undecided. I am very concerned about his position on privacy and the Fourth Amendment. This is not a small deal for me. This is a big deal,” Paul said in an interview last week. “Kavanaugh’s position is basically that national security trumps privacy. And he said it very strongly and explicitly. And that worries me.”

The calculation, of course, isn’t that straightforward. GOP senators and strategists are skeptical that Paul would be willing to buck President Donald Trump, with whom he’s close, on such a monumental vote. For senators, it doesn’t get much bigger than a vote to confirm or reject a Supreme Court justice in waiting.

With Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) absent from the Senate, Paul could tank Kavanaugh if he joins with all Democrats in opposing him. And Paul has been more publicly critical of Kavanaugh than moderate Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two other pivotal GOP votes.

Brett Kavanaugh by Nancy Ohanian

Paul must also reckon with the possibility that if Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, Republicans could lose the Senate this fall and with it the ability to confirm Trump’s nominees unilaterally.

Yet the civil libertarian community is bashing Kavanaugh. And Paul is still the de facto leader of that wing of his party given his views on privacy, torture and non-interventionism.

The GOP senator has not come out as strongly against Kavanaugh as he did against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for whom he eventually voted, and CIA Director Gina Haspel, who he followed through in opposing. Other like-minded Republicans have been more adamant.

“There are many potential nominees with a conservative record on abortion, guns, and regulations,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), the most outspoken of them, wrote on Twitter. “The only question is will the Senate confirm one who is really bad on the #4thAmendment, when so much is at stake in upcoming digital privacy battles.”

Paul understands this is not a black-and-white call, and that political considerations will come into play. He has pointedly left himself some wiggle room to be convinced that the nominee understands where he’s coming from.

“Wouldn’t you rather have Kavanaugh than Ruth Bader Ginsburg? He’s probably good on economic liberty and overzealous regulation and things like that. So I don’t want to have it sort of in a vacuum,” Paul said. “I’ll have to weigh that versus other aspects that he may be a lot better than a Clinton appointee.”

A handful of red-state Democrats might end up backing Kavanaugh and take pressure off of Paul as potentially the deciding vote. But those Democrats are expected to withhold their opinions until all Republican senators have stated their intentions. That means Paul could be headed for a familiar routine during his tenure: fellow Republicans pleading with him to be a team player and resist his impulses to go his own way. Many GOP senators have already come out in support of Kavanaugh before he’s even had his hearing, and some are beginning to gently prod Paul.

Now You Know Why Nobody Gives A Damn About Trump Banging Porn Stars

by Bob Lynch

Well, Monday was certainly a big day for all the straight, white, Christian, men in this country and there is no doubt that Mother allowed Mike Pence an extra ‘Nilla Wafer before his 8:30 bedtime. But for the rest of us it was an existential crisis.

I don’t mean that in the sense of the word that most pseudo intellectuals commonly associate with Sartre or Kierkegaard. I mean it in the literal sense in that it could means a potential end of existence for anyone that doesn’t check the aforementioned boxes.

This is no longer a game or a joke or hyperbole folks. Eventually they are coming for You and the shameless hoax of a Justice, that was only added to a long since cultivated list of judges from the despicable Heritage Foundation and various evangelical groups that have been positioning for this very moment since the day after Roe v Wade was decided, was added and nominated for precisely one reason.

He has been outspoken about the fact that a sitting president cannot be indicted at the obvious point in our country’s history where a sitting president absolutely needs to be indicted. Despite what noted condoner of sexual assault Jim Jordan, outright Nazi/whackjob Steve King, and DUI enthusiast Matt Gaetz will tell you about the Deep State, the real Deep State is every single member in the last 40 years of the GOP who sold their souls to make this moment happen and looked the other way...

To say this is a national disgrace is an actual disgrace to the word disgrace. This is a threat to the very fabric of American Democracy, every level of civil rights, and basic human decency.

We are now faced with a situation where we have a complicit Congress, a rubber stamp Senate and a Supreme Court that has now not only decided that the president can do whatever the fuck he wants under the guise of national security, but he also cannot be held accountable for any criminal liability. Even Erdoğan-- who just appointed his son-in-law finance minister-- had a tougher road to authoritarianism.

This is how democracy dies. Right out in the open. Nobody gives a shit about the Constitution anymore in the GOP. They are just handing out lifetime achievement awards to the corporate and Evangelical donors they have been beholden to ever since Nixon came up with the Southern Strategy.

But this time, they are gonna take us all down with them and not only do they not care, that’s the plan. Women’s rights? Bye. Gay rights? Ciao. Civil rights? Gone. Pre-existing condition? You’re on your own. Hablas Español? Adios. Environmental Regulations? Gutted. Assault Weapons as a fundamental “God Given” right? You betcha.

Look up Kavanaugh’s record and then ask me again why I’m still up at 5:30 in the morning on a Monday night and then editing it Tuesday morning watching Kavanaugh walk up the steps with Mike Pence and I’m about to puke.

There is no longer an outside chance that Trump just declares himself dictator or president for life, Congress goes along, and a Kavanaugh featured court decides it is ok for national security reasons. Who is gonna stop it? John Roberts? Samuel Alito who famously tried to deny that Citizen’s United wasn’t going to lead us to the exact position we’re in? Susan Collins? Chuck Fucking Schumer? Wake up people.

This is not Civil War, this is Infinity War. Half of us might be gone before this thing is over.

So much damage has already been done and the next stage will be exponentially worse. I say that only because I want people to be realistic, not disheartened.

No matter who you are or where you live, someone you know and someone you love will have their life permanently altered by this decision even if you don’t realize it. Democracy is a team sport.

There is only one option to even possibly put a stop to any of this, let alone roll it back. You have to vote Blue in every single race for any nominee for the House. People like Ted Lieu can actually make a difference if given a real chance to get into leadership positions. Meanwhile the GOP is wasting his time still talking about Hillary’s emails. Do not save your strength for the next battle. This is the ONLY battle.

Oh and also, the government of Thailand is rescuing children, that don’t even know how to swim, from underwater caves, and we don’t know where 3,000 kids are???

If we don’t win this one, no one should ever be proud to be an American ever again. Let’s just fold up the tents and go home. Change the name, declare bankruptcy. Wait, isn’t that exactly what Putin wanted in the first place??

I’m going to watch the France World Cup game. At least those people still give a damn.

How to Block the Trump Nomination: Shut Down the Senate

Imagine this room half empty whenever the Senate tried to vote.

by Gaius Publius

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business

– U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 5

[Update: Since publishing this piece, I'm reminded that Alabama Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore in a special election earlier this year. My bad for the oversight. However, this makes the partisan divide even more favorable to the Democrats — 50-49. Fifty senators is not a majority. It would take a truly unusual ruling by the Parliamentarian to allow the Vice President to help constitute a quorum, and even if he did so rule, Democrats would then be in position to tie to their Senate chairs not only all Republican senators, but Vice President Mike Pence as well. In other words, the Democrats' hand is even stronger.]

I'm going to expand on this in a longer piece, but the point is too important not to pass on now. If Democrats are truly serious about blocking any Trump-nominated Supreme Court justice, there is a way. But they have to actually want to block the nomination, not just say they want to.

How To Block the Nomination

This strategy, which I'm convinced will work, comes via Vox writer  Gregory Koger. It goes like this. According to the Constitution, Article 1, Section 5:

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business

This means: Neither house of Congress can do business without a quorum, defined as a simple majority.

What if a majority is not present? Section 5 continues:

a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

This means: If there's no majority present, the minority can compel absent members to attend. But how? Here's there's no answer, and in fact nowhere in our government is there a mechanism but shame for compelling congressional attendance.

This gives Democrats, or Republicans for that matter, all the power they need, assuming the numbers work out right.

Now consider the numbers. If there were 60 Republican senators, Democrats could absent themselves forever and nothing would change. Sixty senators comprise a quorum.

But look at the current Senate. There are 46 Democrats, two independents who caucus as Democrats, and 52 Republicans. Yet one of those Republicans, John McCain, may never attend another Senate session due to his health. That puts the partisan split at 51-48.

As Koger notes, "Other than quitting for the day or calling for others to come to the chamber, the Senate can do nothing without a majority of its members — 51 senators — participating in a vote. No bill can pass, no amendment can be decided on, no nominations can get approved."

In other words, every Republican senator would have to appear for every vote from which Democrats were wholly absent, or no vote could be taken. Every one of them. Democrats could simply challenge the vote for lack of a quorum, then leave during the quorum call.

Shutting Down the Senate

If the plan were for Democrats to be absent en masse just for the vote on Trump's Court nomination, the plan would fail. On the day of the vote, 51 Republican senators would show up to vote yes and the nomination would be confirmed.

But if Democratic senators were absent en masse from day one of the decision to do it — if all 48  Democratic and independent senators refused to enter the chamber for any vote at all — it would paralyze the Senate. Every vote of the Senate, from the most important to the least, would require every Republican to be present to ensure passage.

In the ideal world this isn't a problem, since there are, just barely, a quorums-worth of Republican senators. In the real world, however, there is almost never a day in which every senator is present for a vote. Democrats could even force a quorum call any time they wanted on a simple procedural vote, forcing Republicans to be nearby and available at a moment's notice. When would they fundraise? When would they meet with lobbyists?

It's almost certain Republicans couldn't conduct Senate business under those conditions. This move would put Democrats in a position of unblockable power until a future election changed the numbers. They could force — not ask, but force — the nomination to wait until after the 2018 election.

All they'd have to do, is want to.

GP
 

Superior Solution For The SCOTUS Emergency

Barrett by Chip Proser

by David Leibowitz

Indivisible has recently posted a web page titled “The 2-Step Strategy to Win the Supreme Court Fight” that clearly lays out the available conventional grassroots tools and strategies for dealing with the SCOTUS emergency. The first step is to block the approval of any Supreme Court nominee during the remainder of the current Senate session. The conventional methods now being brought into play in that effort are worth trying and could succeed, but have a high probability of failure. Neither of the two Republican senators whose cooperation we require is up for re-election this year, with their next general elections being more than two and more than four years away. The three Democratic senators whose cooperation we require are standing for re-election this November--but their primaries are over and their re-election this November seems to be essential if the Democrats are to win control of the Senate next year. The next election at which they could pay any price from the Democratic base for voting “yes” on a SCOTUS nomination this year is a whopping six years off. The grassroots anger that will erupt immediately following any “yes” vote by any of the five senators will have been forgotten by virtually all voters by time each senator’s next election contest rolls around with its fresh current issues. Therefore, all five senators whose cooperation we need in this emergency are effectively free to vote “yes” for a Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2018 with political impunity—and they know it. If any one of them responds favorably to petitions, phone calls, emails, demonstrations, newspaper ads and other conventional lobbying efforts, it will be as a matter of conscience, decency and political courage only. In politics, other considerations often override those personal attributes. Yet we need a minimum of four of those five senators to vote “No”. There’s got to be a better way!

There IS a better way: the conditional pledge drive. In a conditional pledge drive, a very large number of individuals who cumulatively hold real power over a targeted incumbent politician sign conditional pledges, that are then bundled together by the drive’s organizers and presented to the politician to induce the politician to behave a certain way. The pledges are not declared effective and their submission to the politician does not commence until a targeted minimum number of them has been collected (based on analyses of the voting population and history in the politician’s district). The pledges can take various forms depending on the political context. In the current context, pledge drives can be designed to influence a politician to vote “No” on any nomination to the Supreme Court either for the remainder of the current session of Congress (step 1 in Indivisible’s classification), the entire duration of the next session of Congress (step 2), or the remainder of the current Presidential term (steps 1 and 2 combined). Below, I will discuss, with examples, conditional pledge drives intended to compel a politician to vote “No” during the remainder of the current session of Congress. First I will discuss conditional voter pledge drives, using Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski as examples. Then I will discuss conditional pledge drives targeting Democratic Senators Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin III. In the course of that discussion I will introduce two additional kinds of conditional pledge drives and make some recommendations concerning the structuring of conditional pledge campaigns.

Conditional Voter Pledge Drives targeting Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski

In the current context, a conditional voter pledge targeting one of the Republican senators might say, for example:

Dear Senator [Collins][Murkowski]: I am a registered voter in your state. The right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy is extremely important to me. Preserving that right is so important to me that I hereby solemnly make the following pledge: If you fail to vote “No” on all of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations that come to a vote before the next Congress is seated in 2019, then I will not vote for your re-election in [2020][2022] and I will vote for one of your opponents in that election if any opponent is acceptable to me, regardless of your performance as my senator in all other respects. I will behave as a single-issue voter in [2020][2022], basing my voting decision solely on your 2018 failure to vote “No” on all of Trump’s Supreme Court nominations, and my goal in that election will be to remove you from office.

The primary purpose of a conditional voter pledge campaign is to convince the targeted politician that to fail to fulfil the stated requirement of the pledgees now will be to commit a political suicide that will take effect at the politician’s next run for office. This is likely to compel the politician to vote the right way.  The secondary purposes are to raise the consciousness of voters who currently may support the politician and to help remove the politician from office in the next election in case the politician votes the wrong way now. Thanks to these secondary effects, funds invested in a conditional voter pledge drive are not wasted even if the pledge drive fails to achieve its primary purpose. A conditional voter pledge drive is purely an issue-focused drive and welcomes and solicits pledges from all registered voters eligible to vote in the next primary or general election, including current supporters of the targeted politician.

Under the existing circumstances, a well-executed conditional voter pledge drive is the only tool in our arsenal that has the power of compulsion. All other available methods depend upon the good will and reasonableness of the targeted politician and can safely be ignored by that politician-- especially since senators Collins and Murkowski will be under tremendous compulsive pressure from the Republican establishment. The compulsive mechanism of the conditional voter pledge drive relies directly on actual vote numbers. It is therefore more powerful than the compulsive power of the Republican Party, which depends on the granting or withholding of financial support and political favors so is at best one step removed from actual vote numbers. If a sufficient number of conditional voter pledges are collected statewide, our side should prevail.

A conditional voter pledge drive is a major undertaking, comparable to (but less expensive than) an election campaign for a political candidate in the same political district. It also has unique challenges arising from the time delay between the action being sought from the politician and the corresponding response from the voters. On account of those characteristics, it is appropriate for only a small subset of political situations. The current Supreme Court emergency is such a situation because:

(1)      The issue [effectively, a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion] is very easy for virtually every voter to understand;
(2)      The issue is of such great importance, and its linkage with the filling of this particular Supreme Court seat is so strong, that a large percentage of the electorate ought to be willing to become conditional single-issue voters in this particular case;
(3)      The action being requested of the politician [don’t vote for any Supreme Court nominee until the next Congress is in session in early 2019] will seem extremely reasonable to most voters;
(4)      The action being requested of the politician is of a simple yes-or-no nature, with no ambiguity about it;
(5)      The issue is of such great importance that a groundswell of grassroots support can be expected-- which would enable the statewide collection of signed pledges in a reasonable period of time at relatively low expense, once such a campaign is initiated and publicized; and
(6)      The terrible cost to society of failing to stop Trump from getting a nominee approved before 2019 justifies the expense of conditional voter pledge drives.  Well-targeted and well-run conditional voter pledge drives are likely to succeed, whereas all other options currently available seem likely to fail.

A conditional voter pledge drive will not have the power of compulsion unless it is structured in such a way that (a) a sufficient number of the pledges will be redeemable two or more years into the future, and (b) the targeted politician will be convinced that a sufficient number of those pledges will be redeemed at her next election contest to end her political career if she defies the pledgees now.Otherwise, the pledges may have no more power than an ordinary petition. I have already figured out the kinds of structures that should meet the two requirements to make the pledges redeemable and compulsive to the politician.

A conditional voter pledge drive in Maine or Alaska can be reinforced by a conditional future voter pledge drive in the same state and a nation-wide conditional contributor pledge drive.

Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin-- the three Democrats currently known to pose the greatest risk of voting to approve a Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2018-- are all up for re-election this year but, are effectively immune from attack by any conditional voter pledge drive that comes due in this year’s general election. They will then remain safe until their next elections in 2024.The six-year delay between deed and any potential punishment poses the greatest challenge to a conditional pledge campaign that can be found in American politics. We need a strategy with sufficient power to compel these three senators to hold the SCOTUS seat open until the next session of Congress.

1.        Conditional Voter Pledges. An example of such a pledge, specialized for this emergency situation, follows. Elements of it that are not self-explanatory are then briefly explained.

Dear Senator _______: I am a registered voter in your state, and I am registered under a classification that qualifies me to vote in Democratic Party primary elections. The right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy is extremely important to me. Preserving that right is so important to me that I hereby solemnly make the following pledge: If you fail to vote “No” for every one of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations that comes to a vote before the next Congress is seated in 2019, and if I still qualify to vote in the respective election(s) in 2024, then: (a) I will vote against you in the 2024 Democratic primary election; (b) if you have more than one challenger in the2024 Democratic primary, I will vote for the one that is endorsed by [NAME OF SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION] to avoid splitting the vote against you; and (c) if you are the Democratic candidate in the 2024 election, and if polling close to the 2024 general election suggests that your defeat in the general election will not compromise Democratic control of the U.S. Senate, I will vote for your Republican opponent in the 2024 general election. I will behave as a single-issue voter in that election, basing my voting decision solely on your 2018 vote in favor of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, and my primary goal in that election will be to remove you from office.

Explanations/Comments:  The “SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION” is the special-purpose entity that is set up to carry out the pledge campaign in 2018.  If the targeted senator votes for a Trump SCOTUS nominee in 2018, that organization will extend its existence for the following six years in order to participate in the 2024 elections. Prior to the 2024 primary election, if the incumbent senator has more than one primary opponent, all the pledgees will be polled to select a single candidate on whom to concentrate their votes. It is essential that there be only one senator-specific pledge organization per senator.

2.        Conditional Future Voter Pledges. An example of such a pledge, specialized for this emergency situation, follows. Elements of it that are not self-explanatory are then briefly explained.

Dear Senator _______:  I am a resident of your state. I meet all of the state’s qualifications to be a registered voter except that I am too young. I will be old enough to vote in one or both of the 2024 Democratic primary election and the 2024 general election.  The right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy is extremely important to me. Preserving that right is so important to me that I hereby solemnly make the following pledge: If you fail to vote “No” for every one of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations that comes to a vote before the next Congress is seated in 2019, and if I am still a resident of your state at the relevant future time: (a) I will register or preregister to vote, under a classification that will qualify me to vote in Democratic primaries, in time to qualify to vote in the 2024 Democratic primary (if I will be old enough to vote by its date) or the 2024 general election (if I will be too young to vote in the 2024 Democratic primary). (b) If I qualify to vote in the 2024 Democratic Primary, I will vote against you in that primary election, and if you have more than one opponent in that election I will vote for whichever candidate is endorsed by [NAME OF SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION] to avoid splitting the vote against you. (c) If you are the Democratic candidate in the 2024 general election, and if polling close to the date of the 2024 general election indicates that your defeat in the general election will not compromise Democratic control of the U.S. Senate, I will vote for your Republican opponent in the 2024 general election. I will behave as a single-issue voter, basing my voting decision solely on your 2018 “yes” vote in favor of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, and my primary goal in that election will be to remove you from office.

Explanations/Comments: The six-year delay until 2024 offers a big opportunity to recruit individuals who are still too young to vote into the current political process.  Since younger voters are the most progressive voters of all, this type of pledge should really scare the politician!

3.        Conditional Contributor Pledges.  An example of such a pledge, specialized for this emergency situation, follows. Elements of it that are not self-explanatory are then briefly explained.

Dear Senator _______:  I am an individual who is legally qualified to make political contributions in the United States. The right of a woman to have a safe and legal abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy is extremely important to me.  Preserving that right is so important to me that I hereby solemnly make the following pledge:  If you fail to vote “No” for every one of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations that comes to a vote before the next Congress is seated in 2019, then I will immediately make a political donation of at least $________ to [NAME OF SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION].  [NAME OF SENATOR-SPECIFIC PLEDGE ORGANIZATION] is a single-purpose entity, the sole purpose of which is to persuade you to vote against all of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations for so long as the current session of Congress continues, and to see to it that in case you vote “yes” for any Trump Supreme Court nominee during the current session of Congress, your political career will be ended in 2024.

Explanations/Comments: Six years is a long time and people forget easily. In case the targeted senator votes “yes” for a 2018 Trump nominee, the pledge organization will need to keep track of as many of its pledgees as possible over that period, and inform them from time to time of the most recent terrible Supreme Court decision that was made possible by the 2018 vote of the targeted senator. In election year 2024, the pledge organization will need to remind all pledgees of their commitment, it may need to recruit a high-quality candidate to oppose the targeted senator in a 2014 primary or to conduct a poll of its voter and future voter pledgees to endorse a challenger in the primary, and then it will need to help support the campaign of the challenger in the primary. For all these things it will need adequate funding. The best time to collect those funds will be during the period of outrage that immediately follows the targeted senator’s “yes” vote, and then immediately following news-making terrible Supreme Court decisions during the following years. Furthermore, each signer of any of the three pledge types should be encouraged to make a small financial contribution at the time of pledging. In addition to supporting the pledge effort, this initial contribution will serve psychologically to commit them more strongly to honor the pledge they make.

Concluding Comments

The scope of the voter pledge drives (both kinds) would be limited to the senator’s state, while the contribution pledges would be nation-wide in scope, and all would be carried out by a single-purpose entity created for that sole purpose.

Alternatively, an existing political organization might carry out one or more senator-specific pledge drives, but it would need to set up a segregated account for all pledge-campaign-related activities relating to a given senator.) After the purpose has been achieved (either after the senator votes “no” in 2018 as requested, or else after a senator who voted “yes” has been defeated in 2024) all remaining funds would be distributed and the special-purpose entity would be dissolved. The remaining funds would be distributed preferentially to any similar pledge drives (targeting any other senators who voted “Yes” in 2018) that are still active. If no other such pledge drive remains active, the remaining funds would be distributed pro rata to other ongoing political organizations that were specified by the final fund’s original contributors at the time they made their contributions.

By combining all three types of pledge into a single pledge campaign, and by reminding pledgees periodically over the six-year period of the terrible consequences that the “yes”-voter’s 2018 vote is continuing to have, it should be possible to make the pledges (a) objectively redeemable in 2024 and (b) subjectively convincing and compulsive to the politician in 2018. Appropriate details of the pledge campaign’s structure and plan of action would be explained and documented to the politician in 2018 to persuade the politician that a “yes” vote would be a career-ending vote.

Conditional pledge drive campaigns require work, but they are the only tool at our disposal in the current SCOTUS emergency that has the power of compulsion-- in contrast to all the other standard lobbying methods that consist basically of relatively-impotent, expensive begging. There can be no confidence that the standard lobbying methods will work on the five politicians we need to influence. On the other hand, well-conducted conditional pledge drives against them would seem to be very likely to succeed. There is no time for an individual like me working alone or a small group of individuals with sparse resources to organize a conditional pledge drive in time. Already-existing political groups with existing funding, facilities, and media and campaigning expertise MUST step in and make the effort. Established organizations often don’t want to take risks like this, but the current situation requires at least one of them to do so and to move boldly, quickly and decisively.

If you are a decision-maker in a political group with the resources to participate in such campaigns, I would be happy to help your organization design a conditional pledge campaign.

David Leibowitz
DLpolitical@aol.com

Bye-Bye Matthew Peterson-- We Were Just Getting To Know You

-by Noah

As is made clear in the clip, here is a Trump judicial nominee, Matthew Peterson, being grilled, by a southern Republican senator no less, about his fanciful qualifications to be a federal judge. This after another Trump judicial nominee, Brett Talley, an apparent KKK sympathizer, who withdrew his own nomination, after it was revealed that his wife works for Trump at the White House and that he had only been practicing law for 3 years. These guys were so lame even a few Republicans looked at them sideways after all of the rubber-stamping of Trump's deplorable job candidates they've done already.

Appointing people who are uniquely and especially unqualified for their positions is all part of the Señor Trumpanzee style. After all, if Trump himself is the ultimate case of not being qualified for one's job, why would we expect him to appoint people who are ready to take on the responsibilities of the job they are given? This is a measure of Trump's contempt for us all, not to mention America itself.

We've already got a cabinet full of sicko clowns who were chosen for their position because they hate the very idea of the department they've been put in charge of. Hence, Scott Pruitt, who hates the very idea of putting the words 'environment' and 'protection' together, being confirmed by the $enate to be head of the E.P.A., Betsy DeVos, who has an obvious aversion to education, being named Secretary of Education, and so on. Then, there's the example of Trumpanzee's own family wedding planner, Lynne Patton, being named to oversee billions of dollars as Head of New York's Federal Housing Office. What could go wrong there, especially when her boss owns so much real estate in New York?

Clearly, Trump's appointments are all about destruction, mayhem, and money; all the more reason to appoint judges who don't just have zero respect for regulations and laws, but don't even have knowledge of such things. Most of these judicial appointments are for life, too. Think of the damage to our country; anything to make Putin and Xi Jinping happy. If that isn't what Trump is all about, tell me what is.

Matthew Peterson is such a complete farce of a nomination that the Peterson clip went full viral within an hour. I did think, however, that there was one very pertinent question that Peterson was not asked at his Senate hearing. I would have asked him if he had ever attended a law school. Peterson comes off as a 8th grader who's trying to fake his way through a surprise quiz. He demonstrates so much contempt for the law that he didn't even bother to bone up on the terminology. He's a perfect manifestation of Trump.

Truly, Trump knows "the best people."

UPDATE: Yesterday It Was Announced...

...that Matthew Peterson is now officially an un-person. The Regime has disappeared him, allowing him to "withdraw" from the lifetime judgeship they hadn't bothered vetting him for. The exposure of Peterson's and Trump's attempted fraud on the judicial system offers clear evidence that social media can, from time to time, have a positive effect in our society. Peterson faked it all the way to a Senate hearing but at least had enough of a shred of decency to admit his incompetence and lack of qualifications for the job and walk away, unlike the man who nominated him, who, as of this writing, is still occupying the Oval Office.

A Guest Post-- And A Warning-- From Frank Schaeffer On The Coming Theocratic Takeover Of America

You may be aware that author and film-maker Frank Schaeffer is currently traveling around the country filming progressive candidates who are running for Congress next year. He started in Wisconsin with Randy Bryce, drove to North Carolina, then the OC and just finished with Jared Golden in Maine. (Next stop may be Texas.) Meanwhile his latest book, Letter to Lucy, just came out and he's been tweeting up a righteous and worthwhile storm on a daily basis. Yesterday, Frank published a treatise, America Stands On The Brink Of An Evangelical/Catholic-Imposed Theocracy All In The Name Of “Religious Freedom”…And Trump's Judicial Picks Will Be The Sole Arbiters. He agreed to let us publish it as DWT guest post as well.

A GOP theocracy coup against checks and balances is gaining momentum through Trump’s court picks. Trump’s legislative failures are in the news but his far-right theocracy-facilitating judicial appointments are the bigger story.

Trump’s picks will have a lasting outsized impact on American life. Trump has many judicial vacancies to fill because the GOP anti-Obama-obstruction worked.

Trump doesn’t care about the religious right’s agenda but since he has ceded the selection of judges to the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, ultra-right groups that do care, the religious right is literally being put in power in ways most Americans don’t seem to understand. I do understand because in the 1970s and 80s I helped craft this plan.

We’re well on the way to making Evangelical Sharia Law permanent. Trump’s Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation judges will roll back the expansion of civil rights and civil liberties that have developed over the past seven decades. Women, gays, blacks-- beware. America is headed for Saudi-style repression and religious theocracy in the name of “religious liberty.”

What’s been astounding in filling the open seats left because of GOP- Obama obstruction is the rapid pace of committee hearings and confirmations for Trump’s Federalist Society-Heritage Foundation far-right religious extremist judicial nominees. The breakneck pace is unprecedented. This is not a coincidence. It fulfills a dream hatched by my late father Francis Schaeffer and me. We crafted this in Dad’s book A Christian Manifesto (1983). It sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The media paid no attention.

The ideological evangelical/conservative Catholic extremism of Trump’s Federalist Society-Heritage Foundation appointments should alarm anyone not willing to live in what will amount to an American version of Iran. The nominees are deeply conservative and often unqualified. No one on the right cares about their lack of qualifications because they will reverse abortion rights, gay rights, voting rights and affirmative action.

One of Trump’s judicial nominees has supported “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ youth and supported legislation that would allow employers to discriminate against gay employees under the guise of religious liberty.

Another Trump judicial nominee called Justice Anthony Kennedy a “judicial prostitute” for supporting gay rights.

Another Trump nominee stated that being Muslim is synonymous with being a terrorist and called transgender children “part of Satan’s plan.”

Theocracy looms. Put it this way: Mike Pence’s Francis Schaeffer inspired ideology looms!

A memorandum made public last week proposed a court-packing plan that will give Trump hundreds of new appointments to the federal judiciary. These partisan religious right picks will make the federal judiciary a theocracy stronghold that won’t shift for decades.

Remember that facts don’t matter here anymore than judicial pick’s qualifications. Trump doesn’t deceive his followers rather he creates an environment in which whether something is true or not becomes irrelevant. All that matters is if it feels good for a moment. And Trump’s white evangelical supporters crave winning the culture wars I helped start-- even while Trump’s GOP shafts them by raising their taxes to make rich GOP donors richer.

And nothing distracts (middle-class voters from the fact their Medicare is about to be cut) better than sharply focused hate. “Those most powerful in society have always been able to wield religious freedom arguments for their own interests,” says Tisa Wenger, associate professor of American religious history at Yale.

The Christian right’s religious freedom talk is designed to be a distraction as used by Trump. But there is an underlying reality: Religious conservatives are set to impose their cultural mores on broader society.

Trump’s borrowed theocracy policy began gradually in the late 1970s and ’80s, following Roe v. Wade. My dad Francis Schaeffer and I led the way on this with C Everett Koop who then became Ronal Reagan’s surgeon general. Forty years later the white evangelicals gave us Trump out of frustration because their agenda wasn’t winning. Now it is! And I found myself writing these words in my new book, LETTER TO LUCY-- A manifesto of creative redemption in the age of Trump, fascism and lies:

“I ask myself these questions silently and inwardly: How may I atone for helping to poison America with certainty addiction? How do I defend my grandchildren against the religious right juggernaut I helped create? How do I reject what my parents stood for (fundamentalist fanaticism) and yet honor the love they gave me? How can I help my grandchildren stumble upon the goodness of life before they’re sold towering mounds of brain-damaging garbage? How do I help save the world? (And what kind of deluded messianic fool am I to believe that this is even possible?)”

Evangelicals and conservative Catholics settled on a highly effective framing of “religious freedom” painting any participation in (or association with) gay rights or abortion as an infringement on their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” As I describe in Letter to Lucy, Dad and I began this strategy in reference to taking away women’s abortion rights as a matter of Christian “conscience.”

Evangelicals and conservative Catholics have successfully taken what we did and 40 years later are framing their opposition to gays and abortion rights in a compelling way making freedom of conscience their claim but ALSO forcing their religious fundamentalism on millions of Americans-- in fact on the majority-- who have no connection to extremist religious beliefs. This is tyranny.

“Religious freedom” litigation in the 21st Century has increasingly attempted to expand the definition of what may be considered a religious practice. A ruling in favor of Masterpiece Cakeshop against gays would expand this sphere to the very gates of theocracy. And this is just a foretaste of what Trump’s deluge of court-packing appointments will do.

With legal recognition for LGBT people Trump’s evangelicals are recycling the “religious freedom” argument to oppose gay and women’s rights. The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) a “Christian” legal nonprofit is leading the way imposing theocracy as “religious freedom.” It models its strategy on the Christian legal groups Dad inspired in the 1980s like the Rutherford Institute.

Just as evangelicals today use the arguments Dad and I forged against legal abortion rights to bash gays, so too using the “religious freedom” evangelical argument white supremacists will soon also be using religious exemption non-discrimination laws. Their plan will be to facilitate the resurgence of Nazis and white supremacist activities as above the law, exempted from restraint because bigotry too will be a religious right. Trump’s far-right white judges will rule in their favor.

Given the highly effective Evangelical/Catholic legal framing of “religious freedom” Dad helped invent, look for Nazis and white supremacist (Trump’s “good people” carrying torches) working on rulings in favor the right to a faith-based Nazi hate bubble. Anti-Semitism is also a Christian tradition!

Bedrock American religious liberty ideals have been used to justify imperialism, racism, slavery, misogyny, and (recently) anti-LGBT animus. Trump’s far-right religious zealot judicial picks will soon be deciding cases in favor of overt discrimination as a bedrock all-American “religious freedom.”

Despite the long history of Supreme Court adjudication of religious freedom claims, the precise nature of what the Court considers to be a legitimate faith-based issue used to vary widely. It’s now tilting to the far theocratic right.

I want to add one thing to what Frank has to say. Trump will continue nominating reprehensible and dangerous judges for as long as he's in the White House and the Senate will continue rubber-stamping confirmations for as long as the Republicans control the Senate. It's absolutely crucial to defeat every Republican senator up for reelection in 2018. Every one of them has rubber stamped every single Trump nomination, regardless of their lack of competence. The Democrats you'll find by tapping on the ActBlue 2018 senatorial thermometer on the right are vetted progressives who can be counted on to fight against the spread of theocracy. Replacing Ted Cruz with Beto O'Rourke in Texas is especially important-- as is going to the wall to reelect incumbents Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. The health of what's left of our democracy depends on it.