Dispatches

TRUMP UNDERPERFORMANCE IN SOUTH CAROLINA IS ANTI-MAGA TRIUMPH. When Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley won 43% of the vote in New Hampshire’s GOP primary Jan. 23, it seemed like a probable blip in a nominating process that was destined to be dominated by front-runner Donald Trump. The Granite State’s highly educated electorate, with its healthy libertarian streak, was custom built to give Haley a hopeful but short-lived boost—a spirited protest vote—before Trump continued his glide path to the Republican nomination.

But Haley’s surprise 40% showing in deeply conservative South Carolina Feb. 24 was something altogether different, signifying a substantial strain of resistance to Trump and a rejection of MAGA politics, Kerry Eleveld noted at Daily Kos (2/26). Sure, Haley is the former governor of South Carolina, but pre-election polls had predicted a bloodbath, with Trump trouncing her by some 30 percentage points.

During her buoyant election-night speech, Haley told a room full of jubilant supporters that while they didn’t win the Palmetto State, her share of the electorate also was not “some tiny group.”

“Today, in South Carolina, we’re getting around 40% of the vote,” Haley said, adding, “I’m an accountant. I know 40% is not 50%. But I also know 40% is not some tiny group. There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.”

In other words, her anti-Trump 40% isn’t a blip. It’s a trend.

Election analyst Ronald Brownstein echoed the point in The Atlantic, writing, “[F]or all the evidence of Trump’s strength within the party, the South Carolina results again showed that a meaningful floor of GOP voters remains uneasy with returning him to leadership.”

Brownstein then quoted a female Republican voter from the Isle of Palms, part of the greater Charleston region, saying of Trump, “I like his policies, but I’d like to cut his thumbs off and tape his mouth shut.”

Haley’s unexpected resiliency in both the primaries and the financial race has little or nothing to do with her policies or her popularity—it is quite simply a distillation of anti-Trumpism.

For instance, voters signaled no negative reaction whatsoever after Haley totally flubbed an answer about in vitro fertilization following an Alabama ruling declaring that frozen embryos are children under state law. Support for IVF is extremely high, sometimes polling north of 80%, despite extremist anti-abortion Republicans seeking to ban the procedure.

Shortly after one of Alabama’s largest hospitals said it was pausing IVF treatments, Haley appeared to signal her agreement with the court ruling. “Embryos, to me, are babies,” she told NBC News. But in a subsequent interview, the candidate quickly tried to moderate that statement, telling CNN, “I didn’t say that I agreed with the Alabama ruling.”

But voters weren’t walking through Charleston—a Haley stronghold—registering concern about her IVF statements. They were talking about cutting off Trump’s thumbs and curing his verbal diarrhea with a little duct tape.

On election night, the vibe of Haley’s room full of losing supporters felt triumphant. And the night arguably was triumphant—not for Haley but for the anti-MAGA resistance and for the country as a whole. Haley will not win the GOP nomination, because the party has been subsumed by Trump extremism. But Trump’s continued underperformance against Haley is a reflection of the fact that Trump and his MAGA base are still far too extreme for the country, including some 40% of Republican primary voters.

In exit polling, Haley performed best among late-breakers, independents, anyone who didn’t identify as a White evangelical Christian, college graduates, high-income earners, people of color, and women.

• Decided within the last month: 67%
• Independents: 62%
• People who aren’t White evangelical Christians: 55%
• College graduates: 54%
• Family income $100,000 or more: 49%
• Nonwhite voters: 46%
• Women: 43%

The data provides President Joe Biden with a wide berth of persuadable voters to target for the general election. As former Obama White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote in his “Message Box” Substack, “Based on the exit polls, Trump’s campaign team should be popping some Xanax with the champagne over his win in South Carolina.”

TRUMP’S WEEKEND AT CPAC WAS TOUR DE FORCE OF BIGOTRY AND INCOMPETENCE. The Conservative Political Action Conference and its associated activities (Feb. 21-25) provided a showcase for Donald Trump as he was given the chance to deliver multiple speeches, mix with Nazis, and share a bear hug with Argentine Trump imitator Javier Milei, Mark Sumner noted at Daily Kos (2/26).

Over the course of the weekend, Trump went big on bigotry as he spoke at the Black Conservative Federation Gala, using some of the most stereotypically racist language imaginable. That included saying that Black people liked him because he had been indicted multiple times. “My mug shot, we’ve all seen the mug shot,” said Trump. “And you know who embraced it more than anybody else: the Black population.”

Trump got his chance to deliver his main-event speech at CPAC on Saturday, and that speech wasn’t just riddled with odd statements, it was also overrun with lies. Trump lied about Russia. He lied about Iran. He lied about the border wall, and China, and electric cars. He even lied about Al Capone, the Chicago gangster. He also referred to his wife as “Mercedes.”

But the speech wasn’t just disturbing because of its lies and distortions. This was a genuinely bizarre event. This was not only a speech utterly divorced from reality but also one that pushed a vision that’s darker, bleaker, and more apocalyptic than anything Trump voiced four years ago.

This was either the ramblings of a madman or the last desperate push of a timeshare salesman who can tell that his marks are about to leave. Or both.

Much of Trump’s speech was devoted to describing a vision of America that might have been lifted from the opening moments of a “Terminator” movie—the part that comes after the bombs fell. If Joe Biden is reelected, said Trump, everything is going to “collapse.” Medicare? Collapse. Social Security? Collapse. Education? Collapse. He predicted that the United States would be “starved of energy” and plagued by “constant blackouts,” while the terrorist group Hamas rampages through American streets.

And while this postapocalyptic vision might be short a few rampaging machines, Trump told his audience that “40 to 50 million” undocumented migrants “stampeding” across the southern border while “weaponized law enforcement hunts for conservatives and people of faith.” America, Trump said, would “sink to levels that were unimaginable” and face “obliteration.”

Trump’s speech did include an alternate vision to the one in which Christians are hunted for sport. Should America reelect Trump, according to Trump, it would be “richer and safer and stronger and prouder and more beautiful than ever before.” Crime would be ended “in one day.”

But missing from Trump’s speech—and from the New York Times’ reporting—was any concern about how Trump planned to do that.

In case no one has noticed, Joe Biden is president right now. Social Security is not collapsing. Medicare is doing fine. Not only does America have all the energy it needs, it’s actually producing more energy—both renewable energy and oil and gas—than at any point in history. Illegal border crossings are drastically down. The stock market is near record highs. Suburbs are … suburban.

Trump doesn’t bother to explain why any of these things would be different in a second Biden term. And no one seems to be concerned about this.

CHILDCARE CRISIS GRIPS US AS IRS CHIEF SAYS WEALTHY TAX DODGERS COST $150 BILLION A YEAR. A survey of early childhood educators and caregivers shows the post-pandemic collapse of federal funding is fueling a national crisis for young children and their families as centers suffer and out-of-pocket costs soar, Jon Queally reported at CommonDreams.org (2/25).

The findings of the survey—titled “We Are NOT OK” and put out by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)—resulted from questions posed to over 10,000 professionals in the early childhood education sector.

Of those polled, more than 50% reported staffing shortages in the various kinds of centers they own or operate, including faith-based programs, family child care homes, Head Start facilities, and childcare centers. Those shortages, according to respondents, stem in part from low wages and burnout from staff who are overloaded but underpaid since federal support dried up.

Rising costs but diminishing support from public subsidies have forced operators to increase tuition which in turn has put pressure on families to withdraw—creating a vicious loop.

“The loss of federal funds that helped the early childhood sector weather the pandemic has exacerbated long-standing challenges like low wages and high operating costs, leading to staff shortages, program closures, and rising family tuition rates,” said Michelle Kang, NAEYC’s CEO.

“Significant public investment in child care is needed urgently to ensure programs can retain qualified educators and remain open to serve children and families.”

Republicans in Congress, joined by too many right-leaning Dems, have backpedaled on social spending in the wake of the pandemic. Multiple economic analyses and reams of data have shown that public investments in childhood education and poverty reduction had immediate and far-reaching positive impacts, but austerity-guided policies and refusals to raise federal revenues by taxing the rich or corporations have seen those gains erased.

Last fall, Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) put forward a bill to provide $16 billion in annual childcare funding over five years to prevent what experts predicted would be a childcare disaster.

No Republican in the Senate backed the measure and the bill still languishes in Congress thanks to GOP control of the .US House..

On Feb. 22, Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Danny Werfel told CNBC in an interview that the U.S. government loses approximately $150 billion annually from tax evasion by the nation’s wealthiest individuals.

Earlier this month, the IRS announced that it could collect approximately $560 billion in additional tax revenue over the next decade so long as Republican lawmakers were thwarted in their efforts to claw back large portions of $80 billion in funding the agency was provided as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

As the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) noted in response to Werfel’s comments on, $150 billion annually would amount to $1.5 trillion over the coming decade.

That’s enough, ATF added, “to expand the Child Tax Credit for 10 years, lifting millions of kids permanently out of poverty. We can do great things when we crack down on wealthy tax cheats.”

That $150 billion figure is also nearly 10 times what it would cost to fund the Murray-Sanders childcare bill for one year.

TRUMP WILL DESTROY HEALTH CARE, AND HIS VOTERS DON’T CARE. Donald Trump has been on the warpath against the Affordable Care Act for a long time now, and the MAGA crowd of Republican officials is still 100% behind his call to replace the ACA. The thing is, a good amount of MAGA voters know that Trump doesn’t have a plan to replace the ACA, and sizable shares of Republican voters want to keep its key protections, Joan McCarter noted at Daily Kos (2/21).

KFF’s health survey in February found the ACA with an almost record-high approval of 59% among registered voters. That figure includes most Democrats (87%) and independents (55%) as well as 33% of Republicans, the highest level of GOP support since the law passed. And one of the law’s key protections—ensuring coverage for people with preexisting conditions—enjoys majority support among Republicans, with 54% saying it is “very important” to them and 35% saying it is “somewhat important.”

What those Republicans also know is that Trump doesn’t have a plan for health care. “A majority of voters, including seven in ten Republican voters, say they do not think President Trump has a health care plan to replace the ACA (42%) or that they are not sure if he has a plan (43%),” KFF reports. And just 35% of self-identified MAGA Republican voters believe that he’s got a plan to replace the law.

Health care remains a potent issue in this election year. For instance, KFF finds that 80% of voters believe it’s “very important” for 2024 presidential candidates to address health care affordability. Even key Republicans in the Mississippi legislature see that, and they’re pushing for Medicaid expansion against the wishes of MAGA Gov. Tate Reeves, who’s all in with Trump.

Reeves’ comments come despite the fact that conservatives in Mississippi’s legislature wrote the legislation to expand Medicaid. And state House Speaker Jason White responded to Reeves tweet, telling MississippiToday, “My position’s been pretty clear on the fact that we were going to explore and look at Medicaid as it affects hard-working, low-income Mississippians.”

It will never hurt Democrats to lead on health care, especially after fighting so hard to gain and keep the ACA’s level of protection. Public opinion remains with them. As KFF reports, “Half of the public say they would like to see the next president and Congress expand what the ACA does. A smaller share wants to keep the law as it is (16%) and about a third want to either scale back what the law does (14%) or repeal it entirely (18%).”

MAKE BIG MONEY PEDDLING COVID MISINFORMATION! One of the great perplexities of our time is how do we get this country back on the rails if there’s so much money to be made peddling ignorance and dangerous nonsense, Charles P. Pierce notes at Esquire.com. (2/22) . The Washington Post reports that COVID misinformation has become a viable growth industry:

Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., received $23.5 million in contributions, grants and other revenue in 2022 alone — eight times what it collected the year before the pandemic began — allowing it to expand its state-based lobbying operations to cover half the country. Another influential anti-vaccine group, Informed Consent Action Network, nearly quadrupled its revenue during that time to about $13.4 million in 2022, giving it the resources to finance lawsuits seeking to roll back vaccine requirements as Americans’ faith in vaccines drops. Two other groups, Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors, went from receiving $1 million combined when they formed in 2020 to collecting more than $21 million combined in 2022, according to the latest tax filings available for the groups ...

The four groups routinely buck scientific consensus. Children’s Health Defense and Informed Consent Action Network raise doubts about the safety of vaccines despite assurances from federal regulators. “Vaccines have never been safer than they are today,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its webpage outlining vaccine safety. Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors promote anti-parasitic or anti-malarial drugs as treatments for covid, long after regulators and clinical trials found the medications to be ineffective or potentially harmful.

According to the Post, there are connections between these organizations and some of the more energetic Bible-banging enterprises, as well as the libertarian Right. And the people in charge are living the sweet life as well.

As the groups’ coffers grew, so did the salaries of some top executives. Children’s Health Defense paid Kennedy, then chairman and chief legal counsel and now an independent candidate for president, more than $510,000 in 2022, double his 2019 salary, tax records show. Informed Consent Action Network paid Executive Director Del Bigtree $284,000 in 2022, a 22% increase from 2019. Bigtree now works as communications director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Some of the individuals behind the family foundations or trusts that fund the four groups also contributed the legal maximum in personal donations to Kennedy’s presidential bid, according to OpenSecrets, which tracks political donations. Bigtree did not respond to requests for comment about his or Kennedy’s salary. Neither did the media team for Kennedy’s campaign.

They also have connections that reached into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s all one big universe of crazy, and now it pays very well.

The Post reported America’s Frontline Doctors paid the group’s founder, Simone Gold, $581,000 in 2022, more than 17 times what she was paid by the group in 2020, according to tax filings. Gold’s lawyer, Jimenez, said she was released after serving 48 days of an original 60-day prison sentence in 2022 for trespassing in the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by supporters of Donald Trump.

“It’s a living, I guess. For these people, anyway,” Pierce concluded.

CATHOLIC LEADERS PROTEST TEXAS AG’S ABUSE OF POWER AS LAWSUIT TARGETS EL PASO MIGRANT MINISTRY. Catholic leaders and local officials condemned an attempt by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to shut down a Catholic nonprofit serving migrants and asylum-seekers at the Southern border, calling it an abuse of power and a violation of religious liberty, the National Catholic Reporter noted (2/26).

Paxton’s office accused Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas, of “facilitating illegal entry to the United States” and “human smuggling,” filing a lawsuit in an attempt to shut it down.

Paxton’s lawsuit sparked immediate outrage from Catholic Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, who vowed in a Feb. 22 statement supporting Annunciation House that the church would “vigorously defend the freedom of people of faith and goodwill to put deeply held religious convictions into practice.” He wrote, “We will not be intimidated in our work to serve Jesus Christ in our sisters and brothers fleeing danger and seeking to keep their families together.”

Ruben Garcia, director of Annunciation House, told reporters the nonprofit has been providing food, shelter and water to migrants and refugees who arrive at the border for nearly 50 years in consultation with the US Border Patrol.

“There are individuals who have decided that that should be illegal,” he said.

In a Feb. 20 statement announcing his lawsuit against Annunciation House, Paxton’s office alleged the group was a “stash house” facilitating illegal entry to the United States, a charge Garcia took particular umbrage with.

“I personally am taken aback by the use of words like ‘smuggling,’ to call our houses of hospitality ‘stash houses,’ “ Garcia said. “Is there no shame?”

Jerome Wesevich, a Texas RioGrande Legal Aid attorney representing Annunciation House, said Paxton’s office sent representatives to Annunciation House demanding the group hand over documents within just one day and without judicial review, which he said was outside appropriate legal norms and requirements.

Wesevich said that courts, not the attorney general’s office, are the appropriate arbiters of whether documents should be turned over, and, if so, then which documents.

UAW COMMITS $40 MILLION TO ORGANIZING EV BATTERY WORKERS. With the electric vehicle battery industry expected to add tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years, the United Auto Workers announced its plan to ensure the new workers will benefit from labor protections and fair wages, Julia Conley reported at Common Dreams (2/21).

The UAW’s International Executive Board voted Feb. 20 to commit $40 million to help support and organize nonunion autoworkers and battery workers, said the union.

The decision reflects that “organizing the unorganized and fighting for a just transition for workers in the emerging EV industry are our union’s top priority!” said Chris Brooks, an adviser to UAW president Shawn Fain.

Thanks to a surge in organizing activity, including a six-week “Stand Up Strike” last fall that pushed the “Big Three” automakers to provide employees with improved pay and working conditions, said the UAW, “new standards are being set” as the battery sector begins to expand.

The union announced during the strike that EV workers would be included in its national agreement.

Jobs at electric vehicle battery facilities “will supplement, and in some cases largely replace, existing power-train jobs in the auto industry,” said the union. “Through a massive new organizing effort, workers will fight to maintain and raise the standard in the emerging battery industry.”

Last month, the UAW announced that more than 10,000 autoworkers at 14 nonunion companies have signed union cards since the union’s successful strike that ended last October.

“The UAW is committing serious resources to help autoworkers organize their workplaces,” said UAW organizing director Brian Shepherd. “Building a worker-led movement ain’t easy but it’s the most important thing we can do.”

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2024

Populist.com