Far too many Americans aren't aware of how far the GOP has gone down the road of authoritarianism while abandoning democracy and this is mostly the media's fault. Is the media blind and delusional in not seeing what is right in front of their eyes, too cowardly or profit-oriented to rock the boat or are they complicit in this lurch away from democracy? Either way, our democracy hangs in the balance and it is long past time to call the GOP what it is. The party that wants to kill democracy, serve only the obscenely wealthy and help them get their serfs back.

Goodbye, CNN's Chris Licht. But what's the lesson? https://robertreich.substack.com/p/goodbye-cnns-chris-licht-but-whats?

#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#TheRichOwnTheMedia

"CNN sought to move to a "center" that no longer exists
ROBERT REICH

As I predicted yesterday, Chris Licht is out at CNN.

David Zaslav — CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN — delivered the news this morning to CNN staff, noting that Licht’s job "was never going to be easy" and that Licht had "poured his heart and soul into it."

What should CNN or any other media enterprise learn from this debacle?

The lesson is that Licht’s goal of shifting CNN from anti-Trump confrontation toward an imagined political center was doomed from the start, because there is no longer a political center.

For years now — since Newt Gingrich took over the House in 1995 — Americans have been moving toward either authoritarianism or democracy.

The old political center of “liberal” Republicans like Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller and “conservative” Democrats like Scoop Jackson and Joe Lieberman (and, some would say, Bill Clinton) has been disappearing.

Before Newt there had been stirrings of rightwing fascism — led by Father Coughlin, Huey Long, and Charles Lindbergh in the 1930s, Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, and by George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew in the 1960s.

But Newt turned the growing anger of the non-college white working class into the beginnings of an authoritarian political movement that would undergird the Republican Party for the next thirty years.

By 2016, Donald Trump was helpful to anyone who still had trouble making the choice between authoritarianism and democracy. Trump required they take sides.

Chris Licht’s predecessor at CNN was Jeff Zucker, who understood that the only big pool of viewers available to CNN were those who still believed in democracy. Zucker competed mightily with MSNBC for them.

Trump was helpful to Zucker in the same way he was helpful to Americans who had trouble making the choice. Trump forced viewers to choose between Fox News and the alternative, thereby giving Zucker’s CNN a fitting nemesis.

CNN’s new management came along at a time of establishment confusion over whether the old political center would return after Trump. America’s business establishment — including Warner Bros Discovery billionaire John Malone — hoped it would. But that proved a pipe dream. The division between authoritarianism and democracy is now too deep. If anyone had any doubts, CNN’s Trump town hall should have erased them.

What especially confused Chris Licht and the rest of CNN’s management was the difference between being politically partisan, and standing up against authoritarian demagogues. They assumed that holding Trump accountable for what he did (and continues to do) was inconsistent with so-called “balanced journalism.”

Wrong. It is not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy. That’s where CNN’s audience wanted — and presumably still wants — CNN to be.

That’s where most Americans want the nation to be."

This is how you get your way when democracy doesn't give it to you. You do an end-run around democracy so you can have minority rule forever! Who needs democracy, congressmen, senators or presidents when you own the judiciary?

Court decision in clean water case is more legislating from the bench https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/26/supreme-court-clean-water-kavanaugh/?

#PartisanCaptureOfJudiciary
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPIsTheRichsBitch
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GreedKillsDemocracy

"The Supreme Court’s decision gutting the Clean Water Act isn’t just a disaster for efforts to control pollution, although it is that, too. It is yet another illustration of the conservative supermajority’s aggressive willingness to rewrite statutes to its liking, abandon precedent and lunge to intercede in disputes that could be easily sidestepped.
...
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh (good for him!) joined the court’s three liberal justices in a far more reasoned interpretation of the Clean Water Act that would have respected text and precedent while still finding for the Sacketts.

Once again, the conservative justices reveal themselves to be textualists of convenience. The Clean Water Act requires a permit for dumping pollutants — and this includes the backfilling that the Sacketts were doing to prepare their lot — into the “waters of the United States.” Such waters are explicitly defined to include “wetlands” that are “adjacent” to streams, rivers and other navigable bodies of water covered by the law.

The majority agrees on all this but then waves its magic statutory wand to redefine, and narrow, the meaning of “adjacent.” It transforms the definition to apply solely to wetlands that are actually adjoining — that have a “continuous surface connection” — to the larger body.

This disrespects — actually, it ignores — the law’s text and traditional methods of statutory interpretation. As Kavanaugh noted, dictionary “definitions of ‘adjacent’ are notably explicit that two things need not touch each other in order to be adjacent.”
...
No longer, according to the majority, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Kavanaugh charitably labeled the majority’s approach “unorthodox” and “atextual.” Another word might be lawless. The majority’s approach blithely dismissed some 45 years of consistent interpretation through eight presidential administrations, Republican as well as Democrat. Even the Trump EPA thought adjacent meant adjacent.
...
Sackett reinforces what we already knew: This is a court that doesn’t like government regulation and it is going to do what it can — text and precedent be damned — to neuter it. Thus the majority, in last year’s West Virginia v. EPA, invented a “major purpose” test to limit the reach of another major environmental law, the Clean Air Act. In this case, it adopts another new test — when Congress exercises such power “over private property” it must use “exceedingly clear language” — to rewrite the Clean Water Act to its liking.

As Justice Elena Kagan explained in a concurrence joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, this is nothing short of another judicial power grab. “The vice in both instances is the same: the Court’s appointment of itself as the national decision-maker on environmental policy,” Kagan wrote.

And why? Not because the law compels it, but because the majority doesn’t like the law. “Congress, the majority scolds, has unleashed the EPA to regulate ‘swimming pools and puddles,’ wreaking untold havoc on ‘a staggering array of land-owners,’” Kagan observed. “Surely something has to be done; and who else to do it but this Court? It must rescue property owners from Congress’s too-ambitious program of pollution control.”

More judicial power-grabbing to follow. The court next term will consider whether to ditch the four-decade old practice, known as Chevron deference, of having courts defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the laws they administer when the statutes are ambiguous. If Chevron falls, as seems all but inevitable, courts will be even more firmly in the driver’s seat to control policymaking.

This isn’t right, and it is also unnecessary. When the court reached out to take Sackett, the Biden administration was in the midst of rewriting the rules on how the Clean Water Act applied to wetlands. But the majority had its votes. Why wait? Why hold back? That could be the motto of this radical and impatient court."

They bought/groomed the GOP into their lapdog and they are doing the same with the media, all in an attempt to undermine our democracy and disinform the voting public. These obscenely wealthy, insecure, selfish, greedy, and power-hungry jerks, want to impose their will and views on our country as if it were theirs alone.

Why did CNN do it? - Robert Reich https://robertreich.substack.com/p/after-last-night-anyone-still-trust?

#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#CNNIsNowFoxLite

"Why in hell did CNN give Donald Trump a full hour of prime-time television before an audience of ardent supporters who applauded every lie and laughed at every sexist insult?

The germ of an answer could be found last August, when Chris Licht, CNN’s new chairman and CEO, canceled Brian Stelter’s Sunday show, “Reliable Sources,” which had been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, right-wing media in general, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican party.

Licht also fired Stelter and his staff.

The show had been commercially successful. It was doing better than several of CNN’s prime-time shows.

Around the same time, Licht told CNN staff they should stop referring to Donald Trump’s “big lie” because the phrase sounded like a Democratic party talking point. Licht also told the staff he wanted more “straight news reporting,” along with more conservative guests.

Why?

Follow the money. CNN’s new corporate overseer is Warner Bros. Discovery Inc, whose CEO is David Zaslav.

Zaslav has been pushing Licht to reposition CNN to be a network preferred by “everybody … Republicans, Democrats.”

But CNN was never going to be the network preferred by Republicans. Fox News has that sewn up.

Besides, facts, data, and logic are no longer relevant to the Republican base.

The anti-democracy movement in America is among the biggest issues confronting America today. Is reporting on it considered “straight news” or “opinion?” Wouldn’t failing to report on it in a way that sounded alarms be a gross dereliction of duty?
...
So, what’s motivating Zaslav? Keep following the money.

The leading shareholder in Warner Bros. Discovery is John Malone, a multibillionaire cable magnate. (Malone was a chief architect in the merger of Discovery and CNN.)

Malone describes himself as a “libertarian” although he travels in right-wing Republican circles. In 2005, he held 32% of the shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. He is on the board of directors of the Cato Institute. In 2017, he donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration.

Malone has said he wants CNN to be more like Fox News because, in his view, Fox News has “actual journalism.” Malone also wants the “news” portion of CNN to be “more centrist.”

It’s unlikely that Malone instructed Zaslav to tell Licht to fire Stelter. Power isn’t exercised that clumsily in large corporate media bureaucracies.

It’s more likely that Licht knew what Zaslav wanted, and Zaslav knew what Malone wanted. A source told Deadline’s Dominic Patten and Ted Johnson that even if Malone didn’t order Stelter’s ouster, “it sure represents his thinking.”

When you follow the money behind deeply irresponsible decisions at the power centers of America today, the road often leads to right-wing billionaires.
...
Last August, on his last show, Stelter said:

“It’s not partisan to stand up for decency and democracy and dialogue. It’s not partisan to stand up to demagogues. It’s required. It’s patriotic. We must make sure we don’t give platforms to those who are lying to our faces.”

Precisely.

Sadly, there are still many in America — and not just billionaires like Malone — who believe that holding Trump accountable for what he has done (and continues to do) to this country is a form of partisanship, and that such partisanship has no place in so-called “balanced journalism.”

This belief is itself dangerous.

After I first criticized Licht for the direction he was pushing CNN, he phoned me. He was angry that I doubted his motives, and said he took the top job at CNN because he “believes in journalism.”

When I mentioned the particularly challenging time American journalism now finds itself in — with Trump, most of the Republican Party, and most Republican candidates for office denying that the 2020 election was won by Joe Biden, thereby on the way to undermining America democracy — Licht agreed that it’s challenging. He said, emphatically, that this was why he is so deeply committed to restoring CNN’s credibility as an “unbiased” source of news that “people can feel they can trust.”

Well, Chris, after what you did last night, you can forget the public’s trust in CNN."

The GOP and their base are not coming to their senses. If anything they are becoming more extreme, more illiberal, more fascistic, more racist and more reactionary. The GOP and its base no longer care about truth and democracy. They are angry, aggrieved, longing for power and in their delusional models of reality, certain they are victimized and justified in hating and hurting their "enemies." They have been weaponized by the obscenely wealthy, the power hungry and their religious and cultural demagogues, to destroy democracy and create an oligarchic, Christian nationalist government. The base only knows they are angry, economically hurting and victims and they are primed to destroy whatever their demagogues tell them is to blame for their woes. It's not the wealthy who have impoverished them and it's not the religious leaders who have misguided and used them, it's the minorities who have stolen their jobs, their privileges and their cultural dominance. There are no economic, industrial, educational or political policies they are being offered by their leaders that will help them. Instead they are being directed to hate and destroy real education, economic opportunities, health care, political and voting reform and progressive policies that could actually benefit them and their children. They are being primed to destroy our democracy, our progress and our society. We must not lose sight of this or we are all doomed.

Opinion | Has the GOP Lost Its Brain? Hardly. | Common Dreams https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/has-the-gop-lost-its-brain-hardly

#GOPFascism
#GOPRacism
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPAreTheToolOfTheRich
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GOPAuthoritarianism
#GOPTheocracy

"The GOP might be confused about what it is for. But it is crystal clear about what it is against.

And while the nasty skirmish about Kevin McCarthy’s House Speakership might have centered on “egos and power rivalries,” it is a fact that McCarthy, Elise Stefaniak, Steve Scalise and their attack dog Marjorie Taylor Greene in short order came together with Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar—all of whom voted to undo Joe Biden’s election as president—to commit themselves to a culture war against the left and indeed against cultural modernity itself.

Today’s GOP contains idiots and nihilists and pathological liars like George Santos. It contains sheer opportunists such as Mitch McConnell and even McCarthy himself. And since 2016, it has been dominated by a group of right-wing ideologues, inside and outside of government, who have fueled and been fueled by Trump and who are emphatically committed to a reactionary nationalist, racist, and authoritarian vision of “American Greatness.” Whether this vision is carried forward by Trump, or DeSantis, is for them quite beside the point. For that is the GOP vision.
...
They surely inhabit a strange intellectual and moral universe of their own deluded contrivance. But they are not without ideas. They are fanatics, in possession of and possessed by very dangerous ideas. These ideas helped to promote an insurrection. They continue to sustain lies about the legitimacy of the Biden administration and to justify efforts to undermine democratic procedures, voting rights, and racial and gender equality. And they are currently being instrumentalized to reshape K-12 education and higher education in the U.S.

These ideas are very dangerous. And in order to defeat them we need to treat them with the seriousness they deserve."

Yet another reminder that what is going on in Washington is not business as usual. The GOP, as the hand-puppet of the obscenely wealthy, is hellbent on destroying democracy and instituting autocracy and fascism. They are in bed with Mike Flynn and Putin and are using deluded Christian nationalists, and a partisan-captured Supreme Court to destroy our country and democracy. The election deniers/insurrectionists/fascists are now in control of the house of representatives. They aren't going to stop destroying our democracy until we stop them!!

"The point of everything Republicans do is to undermine democracy, with a huge helping of self-interest on top."

American Fascism, Billionaires, And You - by Sarah Jones https://politicususa.substack.com/p/american-fascism-billionaires-and

#GOPFacism
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GOPLies
#IlliberalIsFascism

"Stanley also explained the role of undermining truth in fascism: “The heart of fascist politics is the destruction of truth. Fascist politics is based on a friend/enemy distinction where your enemy's not a legitimate opponent. Your enemy is hiding terrible crimes, and you can't treat them as any kind of normal opponent. And this is the purpose of conspiracy theories like QAnon.”

All of this works in concert with the Republican efforts to undermine the working classes first with Trump’s tax cuts that largely were meant to benefit the wealthy and corporations, and now that Republicans lead the House, they want to use the debt ceiling to steal Social Security from working people and they’re also floating a 30% sales tax on people.

As I discussed yesterday in our podcast about the inspiring strikes in France and Britain, working people (which is all of us who are not the 1%) need to be united in order to fight encroaching fascism, and unions are one good antidote to oligarchical fascism, which is behind the propaganda funding for a lot of the global right-wing push for fascism.

“The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump,” Jason Stanley wrote in The Guardian in December of 2021, noting how the United States’ racism makes it fertile ground for fascists.

The conservative and racist Breitbart empire is funded by billionaires Robert and Rebekah Mercer and Daily Wire, for example, received several million dollars in funding from the billionaire fracking and petroleum interests. The Daily Wire is now a $100 million dollar a year enterprise, according to them.

All of this division, the anti-vax lies, the election lies — it’s all being funded by billionaires.

This is what The People are up against, all around the globe. Here in the United States, no one is funding media for The People. The only people doing it are people who have put the interests of their country and her citizens above their own self-interests because it does not pay, and actually, under Trump, it started to cost money due to a variety of forces, and many outlets went under.

The already embattled and barely made-it Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy also has a horrific track record on democracy:

Signed Texas amicus brief

Objected to certification of electoral college votes in one or more states

Made false and/or irresponsible public statements against democratic system

Voted against impeachment or conviction of Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection

Voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack

Voted against holding Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress

The power grab is the point. All of the chaos we are witnessing, including Kevin McCarthy’s willing embrace of Representative George Santos, a man with many names and aliases and stories and cons, it all tells the same story.

If we look at the pieces, it is infuriating and frustrating. But if we look at the whole, it becomes the clearest call to unite with other democracy-minded people in order to battle fascism."

Yet another reminder that what is going on in Washington is not business as usual. The GOP, as the hand-puppet of the obscenely wealthy, is hellbent on destroying democracy and instituting autocracy and fascism. They are in bed with Mike Flynn and Putin and are using deluded Christian nationalists, and a partisan-captured Supreme Court to destroy our country and democracy. The election deniers/insurrectionists/fascists are now in control of the house of representatives. They aren't going to stop destroying our democracy until we stop them!!

"The point of everything Republicans do is to undermine democracy, with a huge helping of self-interest on top."

American Fascism, Billionaires, And You - by Sarah Jones https://politicususa.substack.com/p/american-fascism-billionaires-and

#GOPFacism
#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#TheRichHateDemocracy
#GOPLies
#IlliberalIsFascism

"America is already in the legal phase of pre-fascism. This is not meant to be alarmist, but rather to clarify that there is actually a point to what Republicans are doing.

If people are waiting for the arrival of Russian-style fascism here in the United States, they are not looking for the right symptoms and signs. It’s Hungary style “soft-fascism” that we must be looking for. And that involves using the legal system to seize power from opponents.

Sure, Republicans are using some of Putin’s tricks, like using Christianity and “traditional morals,” as a cultural weapon, but so does Hungary.

What does legal fascism look like? One big sign is what we tepidly call “election denialism,” also known as eroding trust in small d democracy. It’s not just Trump who does this, and while the 2022 midterms offered a beating to Republicans’ slate of election deniers, some of whom proudly announced their plan to steal the next election for their side, the Republican-led House of Representatives is teeming with election deniers.

It is even led by an election denier. “President Trump won this election. Everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet, do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes, we need to unite together,” Kevin McCarthy said on Fox News when it was clear Trump was losing on November 5th, 2020.

It’s worth noting that the lower third on Fox News’ screen is also wrong, because of course it wasn’t an election failure for Democrats and Democrats did not “revolt” against Pelosi. This, too, is an effort to weaken democracy.

Democracy is not possible without shared facts. Fox News and other well-funded Republican and conservative media outlets (how can the Daily Wire afford to offer a conservative commenter $50 million when the entire digital publishing world is on its knees?) work daily to separate their listeners from facts, to repeat conspiracies and outright lies, to make basic things like getting vaccinated into a culture war.

In an interview in 2020 with NPR, Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, explained fascism in a way that sounds exactly like Trump Republicanism: “So, fascism is a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by minorities, liberals and immigrants. He represents the cities as corrupt, filled with foreigners and disease, and the heartland as the true nation that he represents. And then he takes over a political party, transforms them into a cult of the leader and says only he can deal with the problem.”

“So we're - we've seen his election campaign focus on Black Lives Matter, on a minority social justice movement. We've seen him promise patriotic education in a second term - all sorts of tactics that we ideologically associate with far-right ultranationalism, i.e., fascism.”

We are already there in terms of the Trump cult. We kicked them out of the White House, but now they now lead the U.S. House of Representatives."