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Don’t Speculate or Surrender

Here’s what I’ve found interesting: wait for the evidence and don’t spread conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt, refuse to obey in advance to demands to silence legitimate criticism, how Trump has already pivoted away from unity, remembering why Trump needed a new Vice President, we shouldn’t fall for the GOP’s abortion platform lie, recalling that time J.D. Vance said women shouldn’t leave abusive marriages, People magazine publishes one of the best articles so far about Project 2025, the story of a wrongful conviction made possible by horrific police interrogation tactics, and the U.K. Prime Minister’s nuclear letters of last resort.

#1

Don’t Spread Baseless Conspiracy Theories About The Assassination Attempt (Noah Berlatsky, Everything is Horrible)

As everyone probably knows, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt [Saturday]. And, to no one’s surprise, social media is not covering itself in glory in the aftermath.

Of course, many on the right are already floating rabid conspiracy theories arguing with no evidence that the shooter was somehow radicalized by Democrats who pointed out (accurately) that Trump is a threat to democracy.

But progressives have not been particularly sober or responsible either. Some commenters are insisting (with little historical evidence, and no polling) that Trump being shot at assures him of victory in November. Even more irresponsibly, many people who should know better are speculating—utterly without evidence, or, I should say, in the face of all the evidence we have so far—that the shooting was a false flag operation, which must have been organized by Trump himself.

The incentives to believe this nonsense are obvious enough. Trump remains a terrifying threat to democracy and an evil man. People do not like to admit that bad things can happen to bad people, because they do not want to sympathize or express any level of concern for bad people who are threatening them. False flag conspiracy theories allow you to turn the victim into the perpetrator, which is a lot more comfortable when the victim is someone as horrible as Trump.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Violence is never acceptable in our political process. I hope former President Donald Trump is recovering well from his injuries. I extend my condolences to the family of the victim who was killed and everyone who has been traumatized by these horrible events.

What happened Saturday night is not a joke. It is another warning of the crisis facing our democracy.

Nothing good is served by speculating about what happened. We need the facts. I am sure the FBI and other law enforcement agencies will do all they can to determine a motive. I anticipate we will learn how a potential assassin could get so close to a presidential candidate with a direct line of sight to take their shot. We need to let the investigation answer some of these questions.

That said, I agree with journalist Jennifer Schulze, who is wondering how it is possible that we still do not have any official word on Trump’s injuries more than 48 hours after the shooting. How are the same media outlets that aggressively (and wrongly) speculated about President Biden’s health last week not asking more questions about what happened on Saturday night? Was Trump hit by a bullet or by glass? What is the delay in determining and publicizing these fundamental facts? Failing to answer these basic questions will lead to more conspiracy theories. We should be demanding answers.

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#2

Rewriting the Rules of Engagement: GOP’s Attempt to Silence Legitimate Criticism (Parker Malloy, The Present Age)

By equating criticism and standard campaign rhetoric with calls for violence, these Republican figures are engaging in a dangerous form of false equivalence. They’re not just misrepresenting their opponents’ words; they’re actively working to reshape the boundaries of acceptable political discourse, chilling legitimate criticism and debate. This is, to put it simply, nonsense.

As Financial Times Associate Editor Edward Luce wrote on X, “Almost any criticism of Trump is already being spun by Maga as an incitement to assassinate him. This is an Orwellian attempt to silence what remains of the effort to stop him from regaining power.”

This is especially rich coming from the party that openly discusses being in the middle of “the second American Revolution,” wear AR-15 pins on the House floor, whose leader mocked the attempt to assassinate Paul Pelosi, and posts videos of Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck.

North Carolina’s Republican Lieutenant Governor and candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, who just last month went on a hateful rant about how “some folks need killing,” is one of the scheduled speakers at this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. For this party to pretend that stating the obvious about Trump’s authoritarian aspirations is incitement to violence, to pretend that they are suddenly “words are violence” people? I don’t buy it.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

In his book On Tyranny, Tim Snyder, an expert in authoritarianism, shared 20 lessons from the 20th Century about defending freedom. His first lesson was, “Do not obey in advance.”

Timothy Snyder quote from On Tyranny "Do not obey in advance."

This lesson is one Democrats must remember as we decide how to react to these bad-faith demands from Republicans that President Biden and Democrats must stop talking about what Trump did in his first term and what he plans to do if he wins in November.

As Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick observed, “So I’m unclear why both mainstream media and Democratic leadership are finding it so hard right now to express what I think is a fairly basic point. Political violence is bad and a second Trump presidency means more of it.”

The first two days of the Republican National Convention have demonstrated that MAGA supporters are not going to stop with their violent and authoritarian rhetoric. They do not get to decide how we respond. Democrats must not stop telling the truth about the stakes of this election. Democrats must not agree in advance to surrender to Trump and to MAGA.

#3

Trump’s Ugly New Post-Shooting Rant Instantly Wrecks His “Unity” Pivot (Greg Sargent, The New Republic)

Only a few hours after that report appeared, Trump uncorked a new rant on Truth Social that left zero doubt that he remains fully committed to the range of positions that make Trump and his movement such a profound threat to democratic stability in this country—the very same ones that have done so much to bring about the “tinder box” that Axios imagines he is now preoccupied with addressing.

This led some to chortle that media predictions of a Trump “pivot”—a stock joke at this point—have imploded yet again. But it should occasion something else too. If media figures are so eager to depict Trump as unifying, then let’s lay down a hard metric: Before such claims are made, the absolute minimum threshold he must clear is fully renouncing the authoritarian designs he is threatening to inflict on this country and its people if reelected president.

I propose we go further, by insisting on the following: No calling Trump a “unifier” until he renounces plans to pardon the January 6th rioters and prosecute his opponents, stops casting the application of the law to himself and his movement as inherently corrupt, repudiates his threat to terminate parts of the Constitution, unequivocally commits to accepting the election results, and tells his allies to stop planning to treat any election loss as illegitimate in advance. And that’s just a start.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I wish we lived in a universe where Donald Trump reacted to the assassination attempt against him to seek to unify the country. Alas, such an outcome will remain in the dreams and stories of our nation’s political pundits.

I agree with Sargent that, at a minimum, we should establish some measurable goals to help us determine if Trump is seriously attempting to unify the country. His list is a great start.

There’s also no chance Trump will do any of it. So, can we stop with the unifying dreams and deal with our political reality?

#4

The most important story about Trump’s VP is why he needs a new one (Matt Gertz, Media Matters)

Pence won’t be joining him, however. Indeed, Pence, who maintains that “Trump was wrong” and that the then-president bears responsibility for the insurrection, says he won’t be supporting Trump at all in the general election. 

Pence wouldn’t pretend that Trump won the 2020 election, and he refused to help him remain in power unlawfully, and so he is off the ticket in 2024. And it beggars belief that Trump might pick someone without getting assurances that they would follow through where Pence balked. Journalists understand what’s going on here, and they don’t serve their viewers, listeners, and readers by hiding the ball. 

Indeed, while the contenders have various pluses and minuses, they share two qualities. They all looked at what happened on January 6 and decided they were still willing to take the VP slot, and they’ve all spent the last several months publicly supplicating to Trump by winking at 2020 election denial and pooh-poohing questions of whether they would accept the results of the 2024 race.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

I tried brainstorming whether there was a job I’d be willing to take despite knowing my potential boss had encouraged his supporters to murder my predecessor. It’s not the 14th Century, after all, and no duchies appear to be available. Alas.

I realize Trump and the Republicans are working to rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. However, Trump’s need for a new vice presidential candidate is one of the most obvious indications of the national trauma we experienced that day.

Yes, President Grover Cleveland needed a new Vice President when he won his second non-consecutive term. But that was because Cleveland’s first vice president died of a heart attack after just eight months in office—it wasn’t because Thomas Hendricks refused to go along with a plan to stop the peaceful transfer of power. That’s a significant difference.

Senator J.D. Vance has admitted he wouldn’t have certified the 2020 election had he been vice president. Vance will also ensure the implementation of the extremist Project 2025 agenda. Trump learned that he needed personal loyalty to fulfill his commands. Vance has made clear that he will support Trump and not the Constitution. I hope we discuss this situation during this campaign.

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#5

Don’t Fall for the GOP’s Platform Lie (Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day)

A leaked draft of the new Republican party platform says that fetuses have a constitutional right to personhood, a radical stance in a moment when Americans overwhelmingly oppose bans and want abortion to be legal. And despite headlines to the contrary, the GOP’s abortion plank still supports a national ban.

But because political reporters and mainstream news outlets have fallen for a Republican disinformation campaign, the platform’s new language is being covered as a ‘softening’ on abortion rights. 

The stakes are high so I’m not going to mince words: This is about as big of a fuck up as it gets. So let’s get into it.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Argh. Will people really fall for this?

As we’ve discussed before, the Republican Party and Trump’s Project 2025 don’t need to pass a law to enact a nationwide abortion ban. Trump can order the Department of Justice to enforce the Comstock Act, a zombie law that prohibits mailing medical devices used for abortions. Trump could order the FDA to revoke its approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.

Most importantly, the GOP platform calls for giving fetuses equal rights under the 14th Amendment. As Slate’s Susan Rinkunas explained, “The platform’s language embraces the idea that the 14th Amendment protects fetal personhood—an interpretation that would ban abortion nationwide. In fact, it infers that the Constitution already prohibits abortion and that such a ban would spring to life as soon as it’s recognized by the Supreme Court, as University of Texas law professor Liz Sepper noted on Twitter.”

Yeah, let’s be clear: this isn’t an issue Trump/Vance and the Republican Party plan to leave to the states.

This election could come down to whether enough people understand that Trump is trying to obfuscate what he’ll do about abortion if he wins this election. Reporters should know better, but we can’t count on that. We need to do the work and build on the great work Vice President Kamala Harris has been doing on reproductive rights.

#6

“Shift spouses like they change their underwear”: J.D. Vance decried divorce — but now loves Trump (Amanda Marcotte, Salon)

As recently as 2021, the newly announced Republican candidate for vice president, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, had harsh words for Americans who divorce, including those who did so to leave abusive marriages. Divorcees, Vance argued, are quitters who ruin their children’s lives.

“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,” Vance told the audience at Pacifica Christian High School in Southern California.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

The Republican Vice Presidential nominee thinks divorce is too easy, even for women suffering from violence. Isn’t it weird that Vance hasn’t offered any recent criticism about the marital history of the former President whose ticket he just joined?

In this piece, Marcotte explains why this isn’t necessarily hypocritical. After all, as she writes, “It’s an attachment to traditional hierarchies that allow such appalling double standards to flourish.”

In that context, all of this begins to make more sense. The thread that ties so much of MAGA and Christian Nationalism together is, as Marcotte writes, “an allegiance to male domination.”

In that frame, it isn’t hard to see why Republicans want to ban abortion, contraception, and no-fault divorces. The plans are in Project 2025. All of this is at stake in this election.

#7

What Is Project 2025? Inside the Far-Right Plan Threatening Everything from the Word’ Gender’ to Public Education (Kyler Alvord, People)

A sweeping proposal for how Donald Trump should handle a second term in office has sparked concern for its implications on the role of federal government and its calls to eliminate a number of basic human rights.

The 2025 Presidential Transition Project, more commonly known as Project 2025, released a 900-page manifesto last year titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” The policy guidebook — compiled by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation in partnership with more than 100 other conservative organizations — lays out a far-right, Christian nationalist vision for America that would corrode the separation of church and state, replace nonpartisan government employees with Trump loyalists and bolster the president’s authority over independent agencies.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, a rumored candidate for Trump’s chief of staff in a second term, promoted his group’s extreme positions during a July interview, saying, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

People magazine publishing one of the best stories about Project 2025 was not on my Campaign 2024 bingo card. But I am here for it.

Alvord puts Project 2025 into a political context, including an explanation of its connection to Christian Nationalism. The story explains the proposals to politicize the civil service, restrict reproductive rights, eliminate protections for LGBTQ+ people, ban an expansive definition of pornography, politicize the Justice Department and FBI, severely limit immigration, empower far-right groups in our schools, and reject climate change action.

The story also includes links so people can dig into the details and see that none of the above is an exaggeration.

This story explains the stakes of this election. I hope many mainstream media outlets learn some lessons from People’s outstanding work.

#8

Pressured by cops, a mom made a false murder confession. Now, her sons can prove she’s innocent (Anita Chabria and Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times)

More than a decade later, Dahl would crumble under the relentless questioning of detectives who made false statements about the evidence, and the tricks of her own mind that left her believing that she was involved in the killing — that she was, in fact, the biter whose teeth had sunk into the woman’s back. After a series of manipulative interrogations over a period of years, Dahl falsely confessed that she had participated in the murder.

She told that same false story in court, identifying her ex-boyfriend, Davis, as the killer and sending him away for 16 years to life. She was jailed for four years, before returning home to try to pick up life with her young children.

But she could not escape that terrible image of herself, the consequence of a method of policing that allows detectives to deceive and threaten in pursuit of a confession. And she passed that scar onto her sons, who lived with her addictions and chaos, but still could never quite believe their mother was a killer.

They were right.

In 2020, Davis became the first person in California ever to be exonerated based on genetic genealogy, the use of family trees to track down an identity from unknown DNA samples.

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Many people believe they would never admit to a crime they didn’t commit. But people do. It’s one of the most common reasons for wrongful convictions.

This story provides another example of how it can happen and how lives are destroyed because the police, prosecutors, and witnesses focus on getting a conviction rather than finding the truth.

The police should not be able to psychologically torture suspects. They should not be allowed to lie to suspects during interrogations.

Wrongful convictions harm generations of people. They allow those who are actually guilty to escape justice. How do such results serve our society?

#9

Now Keir Starmer Has to Decide If He’d Use Nukes (Brian Klaas, The Atlantic)

The moment Keir Starmer is officially made prime minister of the United Kingdom, he will be given a flurry of briefings, piles of documents, and the urgent business to run the country. Lurking among those papers is a moral land mine.

Starmer will be given a pen and four pieces of paper. On each paper, he must handwrite identical top-secret orders that—hopefully—no other human being will ever see. The previous set of orders, written by outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, will then be destroyed, unopened. These top-secret papers are called the “letters of last resort.”

During the Cold War, British authorities constantly feared that London could be wiped out in a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. If the British government ceased to exist in a blinding flash of atomic light, and everyone in the civilian chain of command was dead, who would have the authority to launch a counterattack? Without the credible threat of a “second strike” in response to a nuclear assault on the capital, Britain lacked a deterrent.

The letters of last resort are the solution to that dilemma: They allow the prime minister to issue orders for a counterattack from beyond the grave. If the submarine captain has reason to believe that London has been destroyed in a nuclear blast (one of the cues is said to be that the BBC has stopped broadcasting), then the captain is to make every attempt to verify that the British government no longer exists. Once satisfied that the worst has indeed taken place, only then may the captain open the two safes, unseal the letters, read their contents, and execute the order from the now-deceased prime minister. Should the United Kingdom release its nuclear arsenal and retaliate—or not?

WHY I FIND IT INTERESTING: 

Writing these letters is one obligation that immediately emphasizes the burden of taking over the government of the United Kingdom. The campaign is over. The burdens are real.

What choice will a new Prime Minister make for a nearly unthinkable outcome? Imagine what you would write, knowing how much the situation would have deteriorated if the submarine captains needed to open the safe to read these final orders.

The global security situation is unstable. Russian President Vladimir Putin has engaged in nuclear saber-rattling as part of his Ukranian invasion. More countries are considering creating their own nuclear deterrent. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its doomsday clock to just 90 seconds to midnight—the closest it has been to the end.

It is a reality of our world. And it is one of the reasons elections matter.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“Maybe the United States turns into a fascist dictatorship. Maybe Leonard Leo coronates King Donald I at the National Cathedral. Maybe another pandemic, caused by climate change, sweeps through the country, killing off a third the population, and there are no scientists left to make new vaccines. Maybe the Northeast states and the Pacific Coast states secede from the Union, on the grounds that the Constitution does not demand allegiance to a monarch. Maybe there will be an actual second Civil War, like the MAGA trolls have been calling for for years. The New Right doesn’t care. They don’t care. To the neo-reactionaries, any outcome is preferable to the woke society we live in now. As long as the Cathedral—or the Deep State, or the regime, or whatever you want to call it—comes tumbling down, it’s all good, as far as they’re concerned. They don’t care. Let me reiterate: They. Don’t. Care.”—Greg Olear, Rough Beast: Who Donald Trump Really Is, What He’ll Do if Re-Elected, and Why Democracy Must Prevail

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