Dispatches

TRUMP MOCKS JIMMY CARTER, CONTINUES FASCIST RHETORIC, VOWING TO ‘DRIVE OUT THE GLOBALISTS.’ Donald Trump has been getting increasingly unhinged and aggressive in his speeches and social media posts. He is no longer simply taking cues from authoritarian regimes and fascist strongmen but is now embracing the genocidal language of “Mein Kampf.” In a Sunday (11/19) post on Truth Social, Trump called the 2024 election “our final battle.”

“2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL!”

“Omit the date and Biden’s name from the screed and it is indistinguishable from the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler,” “Hunter” wrote at Daily Kos (11/20). Trump’s movement will “demolish,” “expel,” “drive out,” “cast out,” “throw off,” “rout,” and “evict” enemies, which consist of “the Deep State,” “globalists,” “Communists, Marxists, and Fascists,” politicians who “hate” our country, and the free press.

It caps off, of course, with a vow for a final solution, a promise that he will “finish the job once and for all.” No longer does “Make America Great Again” mean anything but a supposed war against fellow Americans.

The statement on the Truth Social platform echoed themes of a Veterans Day speech in Claremont, N.H. (11/11) in which Trump promised to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”

Trump’s malevolence was on full display on the campaign trail as well. On Nov. 17, the family of former President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter confirmed that Rosalynn had entered hospice care. On Nov. 18, Trump mocked Jimmy Carter at an Iowa rally.

Trump, criticizing Biden at a rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa, told a crowd of supporters that “the happiest person anywhere in this country right now is Jimmy Carter because his administration looked brilliant compared to these clowns.”

“Compared to Biden, Jimmy Carter was a brilliant, brilliant president,” Trump said.

“Trump has never displayed a single redeeming quality. He has never not been a cheat, a liar, and a self-obsessed narcissist who is convinced that any stumble on his part amounts to a conspiracy against him. He now faces legal perils that could yet see him imprisoned for the rest of his seditionist life, and the evidence against him is solid in every case,” Hunter wrote.

“No longer confident he can win in any courtroom, Trump appears to be betting instead on a ‘final’ solution: retaking the government and then driving out, indicting, or imprisoning his investigators. He will burn the country down to protect himself, and in a conservative movement that has long sought just such a guiding figure, he continues to find allies eager to help him do it.”

TRUMP’S DECLINE HAS FLOWN UNDER THE RADAR. Many polls in recent months have suggested that while voters are concerned about President Joe Biden’s ability to handle a second term at age 80 and beyond, they are not proportionally as concerned about Donald Trump’s age.

The dynamic turned up in the Daily Kos/Civiqs poll in September, with 75% of voters expressing concern about Biden’s age, while just 49% said the same of Trump, Kerry Eleveld reported at Daily Kos (11/14).

Part of the differential is simply a product of the fact that Democratic voters are more willing to question Biden than Republicans are willing to question Trump. In the Civiqs survey, only half of Democrats brushed off concerns about Biden’s age, while 71% of Republicans dismissed age-related worries about Trump.

But another reason for the discrepancy in perception is the fact that far fewer Americans have been confronted with Trump’s declining mental acuity. That’s partly because Biden has a press corps that covers his every utterance 24/7 and reporters have fixated on anything that plays into voters’ perception, so it’s a self-reinforcing loop.

Trump, on the other hand, has typically not drawn as much scrutiny, partly because he isn’t surrounded by reporters every minute of every day and journalists haven’t obsessed over his verbal slips and gaffes in the same way.

Plus, as former Obama White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer notes, Americans who don’t follow the news closely also aren’t being confronted with the increasing signs of Trump’s senility.

Pfeiffer writes in his Message Box Substack:

“[I]n previous times, individuals who were not actively seeking political news would still come across it inadvertently. Open up Facebook to check in on your nieces or pop on X (formerly Twitter) to see how people are reacting to an NBA trade, and you would almost always see some political news posts. That is no longer the case. Both platforms have tweaked their algorithms to show people less news—specifically, less political news. According to an Axios report based on data from Similarweb, referrals to news sites from Facebook and X have plummeted since Trump left office.”

Trump’s miscues, however, are beginning to attract increased attention—so much so that Fox News hosts recently attempted to paper over the fact that Trump cannot seem to remember Biden is president, not Barack Obama.

On Nov. 12, Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade tried to pass off Trump’s inability to remember Biden’s name as an intentional effort to imply that Obama is “pulling the strings” behind the scenes.

“He’s convinced Barack Obama is running the country—that’s why he says it. He wants you to think that,” Kilmeade explained.

As if that rationale is a ringing endorsement of Trump’s keen insight.

Even the unnamed woman appearing in the same Fox segment retorted, “Oh Brian, c’mon.”

While voters’ concerns about Biden’s age won’t disappear overnight, a recent push by Team Biden along with Trump’s rivals on the campaign trail is starting to take hold with reporters.

Trump is plenty addled: Voters just need to see it for themselves.

‘NO LABELS’ IS ALL GRIFT. Fascism is on the ballot in 2024. Donald Trump has made no bones about that, and should he fail to get the GOP nomination, the Heritage Foundation is creating its “Agenda 47” to make sure the next Republican president has a fascist gameplan ready anyway. The stakes couldn’t be higher for democracy, but the supposedly “centrist” No Labels is still readying a spoiler campaign, Joan McCarter noted at Daily Kos (11/17).

Despite attempts to get a No Labels ticket on the presidential ballot in all 50 states, No Labels isn’t an actual political party. It’s a political nonprofit, and it is exploiting that status to the max by raking in millions of dollars of dark money, with most of its donors undisclosed. Some of the high-profile donors are known—and notorious. For example, Harlan Crow, best buddy and benefactor to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has hosted fundraisers for the group and donated more than $130,000 of his own cash.

While we don’t know where a lot of No Labels’ money is coming from, The Daily Beast got hold of the group’s tax forms. We now have a window into where a big chunk of that dough is going: toward paying its directors’ lavish salaries. Nancy Jacobson, the group’s CEO, made $300,000 last year despite not having received a salary in 2021.

Their former “chief strategist,” Mark Halperin, earned $336,879 in 2022, a raise from $240,753 in 2021. And yes, it is that Mark Halperin we’re talking about, the former journalist fired from his last journalism gig at NBC after at least a dozen women publicly accused him of sexual harassment and/or assault—allegations he did not deny. Just some context there on the No Labels ethos. Halperin left the organization earlier this year.

Then there are the co-executive directors, with Margaret White making $315,440 for No Labels last year and Elizabeth Morrison taking home $203,975. The next highest earners were Megan Shannon at $160,833 for her work as the VP of development and McKinley Scholtz, the deputy director, at $134,723.

That’s $1.5 million going to the top six executives in the organization. The Daily Beast reports that No Labels has spent about $3 million on its efforts to appear on ballots nationwide. “Campaign finance experts said the group is going right up to the boundaries of a nonprofit, compared to a traditional political party. when it comes to spending on ballot access, which was around 25% of its spending last year,” The Daily Beast says. Jacobson claims the group has raised $60 million so far this year for the effort.

All of this suggests the group’s lofty rhetoric about this being just an “insurance project” to offer an alternative “Unity Ticket” that will unite right and left in a Biden/Trump election is nonsense. It’s about the money. It’s as cynical and political a ploy as you will ever witness.

No Labels says it’s standing up for an electorate that is fed up with “political leaders who fixate on yesterday’s hatreds and grievances instead of focusing on the future.” But when “yesterday’s hatreds and grievances” are literally rhetoric and plans lifted straight from Hitler and Mussolini, the future is in too much jeopardy for this kind of game.

UAW CLINCHES RECORD DEALS WITH BIG 3, TURNS TO ORGANIZING TESLA, FOREIGN AUTOMAKERS. United Auto Workers (UAW) said 64% of workers at the Big Three automakers voted to ratify new record contracts after a six-week targeted strike, as the union turns its attention to organizing foreign-owned and Tesla auto plants, Reuters reported (11/20).

The votes lock in the UAW’s tentative agreements with GM, Ford and Stellantis through April 2028, which include a 25% increase in base wages and will cumulatively raise the top wage by 33%, compounded with estimated cost-of-living adjustments to over $42 an hour.

It also cut the number of years needed to get to top pay from eight years to three years, will boost the pay of temporary workers by 150% and make them permanent employees and includes retirement improvements.

More than two-thirds of UAW workers at Ford and Stellantis backed the contracts, but the vote was closer at General Motors, where some large plants voted against the deal out of concern that veteran workers are receiving a lower raise relative to others.

The union released a video on social media touting the “UAW Bump,” referring to raises workers at non-union automakers have received since the agreements were reached with the Big Three. President Joe Biden appears in the video, which urges non-union workers to join the UAW.

The UAW for decades has unsuccessfully sought to organize auto factories operated by foreign automakers. In recent weeks, Hyundai Motor, Toyota Motor and Honda Motor have all announced they would hike US factory wages after the UAW contract.

“Now, we take our strike muscle and our fighting spirit to the rest of the industries we represent, and to millions of non-union workers ready to stand up and fight for a better way of life,” UAW President Shawn Fain said.

Biden, who has backed the UAW efforts to unionize other carmakers, hailed union ratification. “The UAW is fighting hard to ensure that all auto jobs are good, middle-class jobs – and I stand with them in that fight,” Biden said.

Fain told Reuters the UAW was getting expressions of interest in organizing from many Tesla workers. “Workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda, and others are not the enemy — they’re the UAW members of the future.”

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS FUNDED. WHAT’S NEXT? President Biden signed the continuing resolution to keep the government running (11/16), tweeting: “[W]e have more to do. I urge Congress to address our national security and domestic needs—and House Republicans to stop wasting time on extreme bills and honor our bipartisan budget agreement.” That sums up what’s next for Congress when they return from their Thanksgiving break, Joan McCarter noted at Daily Kos (11/17).

This CR extends current levels of funding for government operations in two tranches, with expiration dates early next year. It funds military construction and veterans programs, Agriculture and food agencies, and the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development until Jan. 19; and the State, Defense, Commerce, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments, among others, until Feb. 2.

Because this clean bill with no massive cuts passed with a majority of Democratic votes, the Freedom Caucus wing of the House GOP is on a rampage, which is going to make finishing the job of funding the government permanently by Feb. 2 difficult at best. The House has passed seven out of 12 total funding bills and has struggled to pass the remainder. Also, their bills will not pass in the Senate or be signed by Biden because of poison-pill riders and slashed funding levels.

This means they will have to be reconciled with the Senate appropriations bills, only three of which have passed so far. The Senate is ahead of the game, however, because they have agreed to funding levels and passed all of the bills out of the Appropriations Committee. It’s just a matter of the long process of getting them on the floor and passed. Because everything takes forever in the Senate, they tend to package up several bills into one—it takes less floor time to do minibus or omnibus packages. House Republicans hate omnibus bills because they often come with other must-pass legislation attached.

The other must-pass matter this time around is Biden’s $105 billion supplemental request for aid to Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, and the Indo-Pacific. That’s already become toxic. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s first act in the job was to split aid to Israel and tie it to cutting funding for the IRS, a bill that won’t even make it to the Senate floor and which Biden would veto.

Complicating matters further, Senate Republicans are insisting that funding for Ukraine be tied to immigration reforms—not just increased funding for border security but also radical policy changes to the asylum system, which Democrats won’t accept. There’s a bipartisan Senate working group trying to hash that out, but it’s not going well or quickly, and it needs to be settled before the end of the year.

As if all that weren’t complicated enough, the House will return on Nov. 28 to face the potential expulsion of one of its members, Rep. George Santos, the GOP fabulist fraudster from New York. And the Senate is going to have to deal with Sen. Tommy Tuberville and his increasingly unhinged blockade of officer promotions, which threatens to cripple the military.

OHIO GOP PLANS TO GUT CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROTECTING ABORTION RIGHTS. Now that Ohioans overwhelmingly voted to amend their state constitution to include explicit protections for abortion rights—only the fourth state in the country to do so—Republicans in the Ohio General Assembly are eager to neuter the amendment by prohibiting the courts from interpreting the amendment, Quinn Yeargain noted at Daily Kos (11/20).

Several Republican members of the state House recently issued a press release that claimed that “[f]oreign billionaires”—antisemitic code for “George Soros”—were responsible for the passage of Issue 1, which they characterized as “foreign election interference.” They also announced that they would “consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative.”

When the trial balloon quickly crashed and burned, with widespread condemnation of its blatant disregard for voters, the legislators followed it up with a proposed bill.

The “Issue 1 Implementation Act” grants the legislature “exclusive authority” over implementing the constitutional amendment and withdraws “[a]ll jurisdiction” from state courts “on any and all claims attempting to enforce or implement” the amendment. It also directs that any lawsuits to enforce the amendment be “immediately dismissed” and any existing court rulings to be “vacated.” Finally, it makes any effort by a judge to interpret the amendment an impeachable offense.

In short, they’re proposing to strip their state courts of the power to rule on what the abortion-rights provision in the Ohio Constitution means—and when state laws might be unconstitutional under it.

Passage of the bill is far from certain, Yeargain noted. House Speaker Jason Stephens (R) recently said the legislature wouldn’t pass the act—“This is Schoolhouse Rock-type stuff,” Stephens sniped—but for decades, Republicans claimed that they had no interest in overturning Roe v. Wade, either.

IN TRUMP’S PARTY, STATE GOPs ARE A HOT MESS OF INFIGHTING AND LEGAL BILLS. What if the Republican Party was uber-Trumpy but without Donald Trump’s charisma, huge platform, or large following? State Republican parties are testing that out, and it’s not going so well for them, the Washington Post reported (11/13).

Michigan Republicans, under the leadership of state party chair and failed secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo, are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and have talked about selling their party headquarters—except it’s owned by a trust, not the party.

Arizona Republicans are saddled with debt from paying legal bills for the fake electors in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. Jeff DeWit, the state party chair, has been reduced to begging Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel for help, reportedly telling her, “We desperately need to keep the lights on.”

Georgia Republicans are also struggling to pay legal bills for fake electors, and Gov. Brian Kemp has created his own separate political operation, raising money and helping candidates but not contributing to the state party.

In each case, the state parties have been plagued by infighting—even physical altercations in Michigan—and weakened by embracing Trump’s obsessive denial that he lost in 2020. It goes to show what happens when regular, non-Trump people emulate Trump. They end up with far more of his weaknesses than his strengths—and Trump’s weaknesses already outweigh his strengths, as shown by his own 2020 loss and Republican losses during the time he’s led the party, Laura Clawson noted at Daily Kos (11/13).

Even if you don’t personally see it, Trump has a charisma that works on frighteningly large numbers of people. The heads of state Republican parties don’t have that. Trump has a platform, with even media organizations that should know better covering him closely (and glossing over the most damning stuff). Heads of state Republican parties are extremely easy to ignore except when their level of messiness rises high enough to be entertaining. Trump has an army of small-dollar donors propping him up even as he uses their money for legal bills rather than winning elections. The financial states of the Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan Republican parties show quite clearly that they don’t have that.

State Republican parties don’t have those strengths, but increasingly, they have Trump’s weaknesses: the cult of personality replacing strategic thinking, personal grievances dominating everything, the mounting legal bills. It’s not a good combination for them.

Trump can pull off Trumpism, to an extent. (Not well enough to win the popular vote in a presidential election.) But the kind of petty infighting he promotes, and the extremist amateurs he has pulled into active roles in state parties, aren’t a good way to institution-build. Instead of building strength, remaking itself in Trump’s image is hollowing out the Republican Party. Long may it continue.

VIOLENCE RELATED TO WATER SCARCITY SURGES TO ALL-TIME HIGH. A global think tank said Wednesday that it has been alarmed by recent updates to its records on water-related conflicts, which now show a significant spike in violence breaking out over water access in 2022, following a steady increase over the past two decades, Julia Conley reported at CommonDreams (11/15).

The Pacific Institute, which regularly updates its Water Conflict Chronology, reported that at least 228 water conflicts were recorded in 2022—an 87% increase over 2021—driven in large part by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Russian forces attacked water pipelines and supply systems in a number of Ukrainian cities after invading in February 2022, targeting water resources a total of 56 times since the war began.

Dozens of civil society groups called the destruction of the Kakhova hydropowered dam in Kherson "an act of ecocide" after the attack inundated at least 50 towns, cut off water to 500,000 hectares of farmland, and killed more than 50 people. Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the dam's collapse.

"The extensive attacks on dams and water delivery systems in Ukraine have contributed to the recent dramatic increase in water-related violence," said Peter Gleick, co-founder and senior fellow of the Pacific Institute.

But aside from violence geopolitical conflicts, Gleick said, "violence associated with water scarcity" is being "worsened by drought, climate disruptions, growing populations, and competition for water."

The group's chronology found that despite the high-profile attacks on water resources in Ukraine, incidents are "disproportionately concentrated in the Middle East, southern Asia, and Africa," particularly as intense competition and rising demand for water supplies are exacerbated by planetary heating.

Currently, Israel's total blockade and bombardment of Gaza has left the enclave's 2.3 million residents facing severe water shortages. Israel's decision to cut off fuel and electricity access has caused water desalination plants to cease operations, fueling a rise in infectious diseases and fears that even more severe water-borne illnesses, like cholera, will soon take hold.

Before Israel's most recent escalation in the occupied Palestinian territories, the country's military demolished numerous water wells and supply lines last year in the West Bank. Settlers also flooded Palestinian lands with wastewater and sabotaged wells.

In sub-Saharan African countries including Burkina Faso, Mali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, and Kenya, violence has escalated in recent years between ranchers, farmers, and herdsmen as competition for water and land resources intensifies.

One-third of the world's droughts occur in the region, and in 2022 Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia were especially hard-hit by the Horn of Africa's worst drought in four decades. At least four people in Somalia were killed last year in disputes over water resources, and in Kenya, at least 10 people were killed in fighting over watering points and pasture lands.

"We're seeing the effects of years of poor water resources management—due to politics, lack of financial resources, debt, corruption, conflict, or other priorities—together with the effects of climate change, and this is leading to more intense competition over water resources," said Liz Saccoccia, a water security associate at the World Resources Institute, told The Guardian.

The report comes days after the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) released a report titled The Climate Changed Child, detailing how 1 in 3 children—739 million—face water scarcity, with countries including Yemen, Burkina Faso, and Namibia among the most affected.

In an opinion piece at The Guardian, Gleick noted that "although there is plenty of water on Earth, it is unevenly distributed in space and time, with humid and arid regions as well as wet and dry seasons."

From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2023

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