Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The air we breathe
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet. We begin today with Charles Homans of The New York Times Magazine look at the prevalence of political violence in the American imagination. America is a country where college students occupy campus lawns in kaffiyehs but only until summer internships start, where suburban militia members outfit themselves with body armor and military-style AR-15s borrowed from wars they never served in. We are a comfortable and sheltered people who talk a big game that is usually just talk. Until someone throws a Molotov cocktail through a storefront, or storms the Capitol, or tries to kill a former president. [...] If the acceptance of political violence in America has been with us since the beginning, its contours have changed, in important and alarming ways. Since the 1990s, as Americans have sorted themselves into sharply diverging ideological and cultural camps along partisan lines, citizens on opposite sides of this divide have come to think of each other in decreasingly human terms. In 2017, [Nathan P.] Kalmoe and [Lilliana] Mason found that 60 percent of Republicans and Democrats believed that the other party was a “threat”; 40 percent believed it was “evil”; 20 percent believed its members were “not human.” All three figures rose over Trump’s presidency — more for Republicans than Democrats, but not by much. The result is a climate of what Kalmoe and Mason call “moral disengagement.” It is not violence, but an essential precursor, and it has reshaped the language of political violence in this country — and its targets. Rhetoric that two or three decades ago might have been directed at the federal government is now directed at other partisans, too. The “contours” may have altered since the 1990’s but is this atmosphere all that different from the right-wing extremism prevalent in Dallas in the days before the JFK assassination in 1963? Felipe De La Hoz of Slate points out that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States granting a U.S. President immunity form official acts has made the implementation of Trump’s mass deportation plans much easier. At his RNC speech on Thursday, Trump repeated his bizarre and farcical claim that migrants are “coming from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and terrorists at levels never seen before,” before once again pledging “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country—even larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower many years ago.” This latter bit is an explicit reference to Operation Wetback (yes, that was its real name), a 1954 initiative to round up and deport hundreds of thousands of presumed Mexican immigrants that not only violated their civil and human rights but, historians agree, also targeted U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. That was a military-style operation using an armed Border Patrol, but Trump seems enthusiastic to go whole hog and just use the military. This shockingly fascistic design hasn’t really come into the public consciousness for a number of reasons, including its sheer breadth, but also because it’s easy to wave away as patently illegal. Troops are prohibited from conducting any domestic law enforcement under the longtime principle known as Posse Comitatus, and so this plan is dead before it can start, right? Sort of. That picture has now been complicated by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States, in which the justices decided that presidents are fully immune from prosecution for any conduct that involves a “core constitutional power.” In fact, such official actions can’t even be used as evidence in other investigations. David Litt of The Atlantic says that President Biden’s proposals for U.S. Supreme Court reform might be a “proper blueprint” for the necessary reforms. As the Court has become more politicized, its conservative judges have insisted that checks and balances ought not apply to the judicial branch. Chief Justice Roberts declined an invitation to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, citing separation of powers. Alito went further, arguing that Congress doesn’t have the ability to set rules and guidelines for the Court at all. Meanwhile, although no one has formally declared the change, it has become generally accepted that no justices will be confirmed while the Senate and the White House belong to opposite parties, and that justices will not retire while a president of the opposite party is in office. When you combine these two factors, the old method of checking the Court—winning elections and letting time take its toll—has been rendered unworkable. The Court is thus, to use a phrase popularized by Game of Thrones and embraced by Donald Trump and his movement, demanding that the American people bend the knee. It is asking them to accept that their country will continue to become
JoriPress
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
We begin today with Charles Homans of The New York Times Magazine look at the prevalence of political violence in the American imagination.
America is a country where college students occupy campus lawns in kaffiyehs but only until summer internships start, where suburban militia members outfit themselves with body armor and military-style AR-15s borrowed from wars they never served in. We are a comfortable and sheltered people who talk a big game that is usually just talk. Until someone throws a Molotov cocktail through a storefront, or storms the Capitol, or tries to kill a former president. [...]
If the acceptance of political violence in America has been with us since the beginning, its contours have changed, in important and alarming ways. Since the 1990s, as Americans have sorted themselves into sharply diverging ideological and cultural camps along partisan lines, citizens on opposite sides of this divide have come to think of each other in decreasingly human terms. In 2017, [Nathan P.] Kalmoe and [Lilliana] Mason found that 60 percent of Republicans and Democrats believed that the other party was a “threat”; 40 percent believed it was “evil”; 20 percent believed its members were “not human.” All three figures rose over Trump’s presidency — more for Republicans than Democrats, but not by much.
The result is a climate of what Kalmoe and Mason call “moral disengagement.” It is not violence, but an essential precursor, and it has reshaped the language of political violence in this country — and its targets. Rhetoric that two or three decades ago might have been directed at the federal government is now directed at other partisans, too.
The “contours” may have altered since the 1990’s but is this atmosphere all that different from the right-wing extremism prevalent in Dallas in the days before the JFK assassination in 1963?
Felipe De La Hoz of Slate points out that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States granting a U.S. President immunity form official acts has made the implementation of Trump’s mass deportation plans much easier.
At his RNC speech on Thursday, Trump repeated his bizarre and farcical claim that migrants are “coming from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and terrorists at levels never seen before,” before once again pledging “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country—even larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower many years ago.” This latter bit is an explicit reference to Operation Wetback (yes, that was its real name), a 1954 initiative to round up and deport hundreds of thousands of presumed Mexican immigrants that not only violated their civil and human rights but, historians agree, also targeted U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. That was a military-style operation using an armed Border Patrol, but Trump seems enthusiastic to go whole hog and just use the military.
This shockingly fascistic design hasn’t really come into the public consciousness for a number of reasons, including its sheer breadth, but also because it’s easy to wave away as patently illegal. Troops are prohibited from conducting any domestic law enforcement under the longtime principle known as Posse Comitatus, and so this plan is dead before it can start, right?
Sort of. That picture has now been complicated by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States, in which the justices decided that presidents are fully immune from prosecution for any conduct that involves a “core constitutional power.” In fact, such official actions can’t even be used as evidence in other investigations.
David Litt of The Atlantic says that President Biden’s proposals for U.S. Supreme Court reform might be a “proper blueprint” for the necessary reforms.
As the Court has become more politicized, its conservative judges have insisted that checks and balances ought not apply to the judicial branch. Chief Justice Roberts declined an invitation to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, citing separation of powers. Alito went further, arguing that Congress doesn’t have the ability to set rules and guidelines for the Court at all. Meanwhile, although no one has formally declared the change, it has become generally accepted that no justices will be confirmed while the Senate and the White House belong to opposite parties, and that justices will not retire while a president of the opposite party is in office. When you combine these two factors, the old method of checking the Court—winning elections and letting time take its toll—has been rendered unworkable.
The Court is thus, to use a phrase popularized by Game of Thrones and embraced by Donald Trump and his movement, demanding that the American people bend the knee. It is asking them to accept that their country will continue to become more conservative for decades, maybe forever, no matter what they want or whom they vote for.
In proposing checks on the Court, Biden is refusing to capitulate to this new arrangement. This is particularly notable given his former opposition to such changes. He is going beyond a single decision or appointment and taking on the structure of the Court itself.
Lily Hay Newman of WIRED reports that along with last Friday’s CloudStrike outage also comes the scams associated with that outage.
While most individuals are not personally responsible for addressing CloudStrike-related computer outages, the incident is ripe for exploitation because some of the IT professionals working on remediation could be desperate for solutions. In most cases, the fix for impacted computers involves individually booting and correcting each one—a potentially time-consuming and logistically difficult process. And for small-business owners who don't have access to extensive IT expertise, the challenge may be particularly daunting.
Researchers, including those from CrowdStrike intelligence, have thus far seen attackers sending phishing emails or making phone calls where they pretend to be CrowdStrike support staff and selling software tools that claim to automate the process of recovering from the faulty software update. Some attackers are also pretending to be researchers and claiming to have special information vital to recovery—that the situation is actually the result of a cyberattack, which it's not.
CrowdStrike emphasizes that customers should confirm that they are communicating with legitimate company staff members and only trust the company's official corporate communications.
Tom Spender and Paul Adams of BBC News report on Israel’s military strike against the Houthis in Yemen in response for a Houthi drone that struck Tel Aviv last Friday night, killing one man.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said his country aimed to send a message to the Houthi movement.
"The fire that is currently burning in Hodeidah, is seen across the Middle East and the significance is clear," he said.
Houthi-linked news outlets said three people were killed and more than 80 injured in Saturday's strikes, in what Houthi official Mohammed Abdulsalam said was a "brutal Israel aggression against Yemen". [...]
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: "After nine months of continuous aerial attacks by the Houthis in Yemen toward Israel, IAF [Israeli Air Force] fighter jets conducted an extensive operational strike over 1,800km [1,118 miles) away against Houthi terrorist military targets" in the area of the port of Hodeidah.
Yossi Verter of Haaretz reports that early next week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Washington. Netanyahu will, indeed, meet with President Biden and hopes to meet, of course, with the shoe salesman.
The meeting with Biden... will be important. Even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees Biden as a lame duck, he will have to fight hard to ignore Biden's unequivocal demand to speed up the negotiations for a hostage deal.
If Netanyahu manages to line up a meeting with Donald Trump, he will be hearing, "Get it over with, damn it." Trump's vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, said so explicitly this week: "You want to get this war over and as quickly as possible, because the longer it goes on the harder [Israel's] situation becomes." In the past, Trump himself has expressed reservations about continuing the offensive.[...]
The address to Congress won't advance Israeli interests one inch, or those of the hostages. On the other hand, it may improve Netanyahu's situation in the weekend polls. That's what it's designed to do. Several hostages or their families (among them Noa Aragamani, who was freed by special forces last month) will accompany the prime minister to the United States.
No one should object to their joining him. But how cynical and malicious it is for Netanyahu to use them as a backdrop for his private political show. After all, he's the one who's been destroying any chance of a deal. He's the one who repeatedly trots out the Religious Zionism ministers – in earlier rounds Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (an emissary who is by now a worn-out tool) and this week National Missions Minister Orit Strock – to threaten to bring down the government if he dares to give up on this point or another.
Beleniuk is one of more than 120 Ukrainian men and women destined to compete at what will be Ukraine’s eighth Olympic Games since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It will be the first since Vladimir Putin sought to reverse history with his full-scale invasion of Beleniuk’s country in February 2022, with the support of Belarus’s president, Aleksandr Lukashenko.
Despite the privileged access to information that comes with being in parliament in the same political party as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Beleniuk never thought the invasion would happen. A return to war on this scale in Europe seemed such a preposterous prospect, but in the early hours of 24 February he heard the explosions from his bed. By 7am he was in the Ukrainian parliament voting in martial law.
Like 100 or more other sports men and women he ended up camping out at the Olympic base for a month. “There was a lot of different people, not only athletes, but a lot of relatives of these athletes like grandmas, mums and fathers,” he says. “And because, you know, the Kyiv region was occupied by the Russians on the north side, and our base is closer to the south so we had a good road if it was necessary to get out of Kyiv.”
Try to have the best possible day everyone!
