Daily Archives: September 24, 2021

John C. Carroll, a steadfast Republican who served four terms in the state House and one in the state Senate, has died at age 91.

In an email statement, the Honolulu County Republican Party said Carroll died Sunday while surrounded by family members, and added, We are forever grateful for Johns service to our country in the U.S. Army and Air Force, and his service to Hawaii as a statesman.

Carroll pursued public office in this heavily Democratic state far more times than he held office, running 15 times and winning five races in a span of 54 years. Most recently, he was an unsuccessful candidate in the nonpartisan 2020 Honolulu mayoral race.

He ran for different offices because he didnt want that office to go unchallenged, former state Sen. Sam Slom said. He wasnt your normal politician. He could be very serious on issues. He wrote a number of papers. But he also had a sense of humor self-deprecating humor. I really appreciated that.

Slom said Carroll also kept his humor in check, had more experience than most people in town and was always willing to share that and his time.

A lot of people took John for granted, how he could work and volunteer, and he didnt always take up popular causes, Slom said. I lost a good friend.

Born Dec. 18, 1929, in St. Marys, Kan., Carroll attended Saint Marys College. On a football scholarship, he transferred in 1949 to the University of Hawaii at Hilo, where he played under coach Tommy Kaulukukui. He obtained a bachelors degree in education at UH Manoa. Carroll served in the Army during the Korean War, and went on to serve in the Air Force Reserve, holding the rank of colonel.

Trained as a combat-ready fighter pilot, after leaving the military, Carroll worked as a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines. He also went on to practice law in Hawaii as an attorney for more than five decades, representing Save Our Surf, the Hawaii Rifle Association and other organizations. Upon retiring from his law practice in 2017, Carroll announced plans to pursue a return to public service.

Carroll first dipped his toes into Hawaiis political waters in 1966 when he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and lost. He tried again in 1968 and switched to a county race and suffered yet another defeat. The third time was a charm, with Carroll winning a seat in the state House. He served four terms there (1971-79), representing Waikiki, Moiliili and McCully; and one in the state Senate (1979-81), representing Nuuanu to Diamond Head. Also, he chaired the Hawaii Republican Party from 1981 to 1983.

State Rep. Bob McDermott (R, Ewa-Iroquois Point), assistant minority leader, said, In the later years, running for office was more of a hobby than a serious attempt to get elected. He wanted to contribute to the mix of ideas. He wanted to provoke thought. Noting that Carroll was always quick with a smile and a joke, McDermott said, he cared deeply about this country and will be missed.

In 2018 Carroll was a candidate in the Republican primary race for the governorship, losing to Andria Tupola, who now serves on the Honolulu City Council. In launching his 2020 mayoral campaign, he told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he was running because of the failed leadership in the state.

Among other campaign positions, Carroll said he wanted to halt Honolulus $9.2 billion rail-to-nowhere project until we know what were doing with it to get it finished properly.

Star-Advertiser columnist Richard Borreca, who covered state politics for decades, said Carroll struggled to become a statewide leader and was never able to move up from the state Legislature to a larger position.

His eagerness and ambition were boundless, but he never could click with the voters, Borreca said. During his career he knew some of his political positions would not be popular. He could put up the good fight, but his Republican positions were just not what voters wanted.

In 2002 Carroll ran in the gubernatorial race against Linda Lingle on a platform that featured an anti-abortion stance, no tax increases and a push to repeal the Jones Act, which opponents say overcharges Hawaii residents and raises the cost of living.

The Jones Act, also known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires all goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on U.S.-flagged vessels owned by U.S. citizens and crewed by U.S. residents for national security purposes and reliability.

Former Gov. Neal Abercrombie said, We met in the 1970s when we both began our legislative careers.

He said Carroll was a real legislator who was under the view that we were there to legislate not pontificate.

Though they were on opposite sides of the aisle, when the day was done, we were all friends and we were colleagues.

John always did his best for Hawaii, Abercrombie said. He was a good and honorable man. He wanted to serve the people of Hawaii.He was never self serving.

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John Carroll, longtime Republican leader lauded for his Hawaii and military service dies at 91 - Honolulu Star-Advertiser

In this years NBA playoffs, fans saw the Philadelphia 76ers championship aspirations evaporate in an embarrassing second-round loss in part because their star point guard, Ben Simmons, repeatedly refused to even attempt a shot in the fourth quarter.

Simmons, the first overall pick in the 2016 draft, is a great defensive player and passer and has been a three-time All Star. However his inability to make a jump shot, or even attempt a jump shot, has clearly held his team back.

What makes that maddening, not just for Sixers fans but for NBA observers at large, is that Simmons has always had this weakness in his game. But instead of working on it and developing a shot, Simmons has been stubborn and seems to have decided hed rather pass the blame and fail playing his way, than grow his game so his team can succeed.

Life offers plenty of examples of this kind of thing: people deciding theyd rather refuse to change or hold tightly to ill-advised beliefs than succeed.

Id argue we have a prime example of this currently happening here, with California Republican activists and unfortunately their stubbornness has the potential for far more harm than the dashed aspirations of an NBA team.

After mounting a recall attempt that was handily defeated by Gov. Gavin Newsom and seeing their favorite replacement candidate receive an icy reception from anyone outside of the Republican base, you would think that Republican activists would recognize that their only chance of winning statewide office rests in getting away from Trumpian politics and conspiracy mongering.

That doesnt appear to be their approach, though.

Before ballots were even counted, Republican frontrunner Larry Elder and former President Donald Trump pushed unfounded conspiracies that the gubernatorial recall election was rigged. In fact Elders team promoted a website calling for voters to demand the California legislature investigate the twisted results of the 2021 recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom all before ballot counts were even being reported.

Days after the recall results were revealed and Newsom clearly won, The Transparency Foundation led by conservative radio host Carl DeMaio quickly joined the fray, pushing the same narrative. They sent an email blast stating the group was looking into an extensive voter fraud effort and asked for tips about potential incidents.

Of course, they also requested donations to support their investigation.

Although there were a few voting issues on Election Day, claims of widespread voter fraud were unfounded.

One polling place was closed because of a threat of wildfire. And there were reports in one Los Angeles neighborhood of some people showing up to vote and being told they had already voted, but that was caused by faulty equipment that made it look as though people who came to vote in-person early had already checked in, according to county registrars. However they were still able to cast a provisional ballot, which the registrar will use until voter eligibility is sorted.

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Agence France-Presse, an international news outlet based in Paris, also did a fact check on many other baseless claims and conspiracies floating around about the recall election and found them all to be false.

A Republican has not won statewide office in California since 2006. And if Republicans continue to lean into the Trump brand of politics, its pretty clear that wont change anytime soon.

So why stick with it and take this conspiracy-mongering approach?

I asked Jack Pitney, professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College, that very question. Pitney is a lifelong conservative who has worked on multiple Republican presidential campaigns but left the party the day Trump was elected.

He noted that Elder, the top Republican candidate, got only 27% of the total California vote if you count the many voters who skipped the second question on the ballot, effectively rejecting all the replacement candidates.

That showing reconfirms that a hard-right candidate has practically no chance of winning statewide in California, Pitney said.

Still, there are some small enclaves where those candidates can win, he added.

Sure, a Trumpian candidate may be able to pick up a congressional seat or legislative district here or there, but they wont be able to actually do much of anything to help their residents or voters statewide, on a large scale.

To me that seems like a bizarre tactic to prioritize hustling for dollars and feeding a vocal minority over actually trying to influence public policy.

Pitney said that approach doesnt have a direct practical impact on public policy, but thats not really the point.

Political activity is a way of affecting emotions, not impacting public policy, he said, adding it also can register with some donors. Proponents would prefer to energize a shrinking base than build a majority coalition.

That somewhat explains the desire of DeMaio and other Republican activists to keep pushing these unfounded narratives and extreme beliefs that ultimately lead to rejection from most California voters.

But its still deeply troubling.

I say that not only because of the potential threat it poses to our democratic institutions and democratic process, but also because, in the long run, it typically hurts states when there is only one competitive political party.

One party control usually ends badly, whether its a Republican or Democrat, Pitney said. That leads the dominant party to be overconfident, sloppy on both ethics and policy.

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Column: Republicans have to decide if the hustle is more important than shaping public policy - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Eric Schneidewind| Detroit Free Press

During my time as volunteer president of AARP in Michigan and nationally, I saw firsthand how passionate older Americans are about voting and preventing identity theft.

Thats why Im so concerned about the Michigan Republican Partys petition drive that would make it harder for all Michiganders to vote, and expose to increased threat of identity theft anyone choosing to vote by maila choice many older voters have found easy, secure and safe, especially in these days of the COVID pandemic.

When it comes to voting, Americans 65-74 years of age had the highest turnout rate in 2020, at 76% (compared to 51.4%for those 18-24), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Older Americans also led in what the Census calls non-traditional voting absentee and early voting, often by drop box, with 77.7%of voters over age 65 voting non-traditionally, compared to 69.7% ofyounger voters.

More: Michigan Republicans plan to launch petition drive to pursue voting overhaul

More: Sidney Powell, Kraken legal team face sanctions, court costs and potential disbarment over election lawsuit

The Michigan Republican petition takes aim at senior voters when it endeavors tohinder voting by absentee ballot and drop boxes. The manipulative political consultants running this effort to change our election laws claim we need to make it harder to vote to increase election security, even though an extensive examination of the 2020 election by a committee led by state Sen.Edward McBroom (R-Vulcan)showed zero evidence of any widespread security issues in absentee or drop box voting (or any other part of our current election process).

The GOP plan would prevent local and state officials from sending absentee ballot applications to voters unless the voter explicitly requests an application. Instead of government making it easy and just sending all registered voters an application (as they do for driver licenses and the like), you would have to take an explicit action one thats easy to forget.

The GOP petition would also impose a new requirement when you send in your ballot. Right now, you sign it, and the local clerk carefully compares that signature to the one on file to prove you are indeed a registered voter.

The Republican plan, which will certainly be approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature and would not besubject to review by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer if the ballot petition signatures are certified, would force you to put on that application even more personal data driver license and Social Security numbers that could easily be stolen by identity theft professionals from mailboxes or clerks offices. Local clerks would then be required to waste hours on computers looking up those numbers on state databases.

On top of these efforts to undermine senior voting, the Republican proposal would make it harder for local clerks to offer secure the election drop boxesused by many seniors, who might want to avoid the mail for whatever reason, and to pay for extra election officials many communities rely on to speed lines and tally ballots on Election Day.

Today, if you wish, you can make a contribution to your local government for election equipment and to pay for additional staff, just as you can make contributions for bulletproof vests for local police, or special smoke vision goggles for firefighters In 2020, non-profit groups came together to make such donations so that it was easier to vote than ever. Butunder the GOP plan, such contributions to local governments would be banned if they were designed to make voting easier.

There is only one goal here: To make it harder for Michiganders to vote. These new requirements will fall heaviest on senior citizens. They are opposed by local clerks around the state.

In coming weeks, you may see someone with a petition saying they want to make voting more secure or to require ID for voting. We already have one of the strongest voter ID laws in the nation only about 11,400 persons in 2020 voted by signing an affidavit saying they had forgotten their ID and that they were indeed the properly registered voter on the voting rolls. Many were likely seniors, driven to the polls by friends or relatives, who just forgot their driver license. Not one was challenged.

But now you know the truth: The petition will really make it harder for the millions of Michiganders, including seniors, who voted absentee or with drop boxes to cast their ballots, without adding any ballot security to our process that already has been proven secure by legislative investigation.

When you see thosesignature collectors, tell them no thanks. Tell them you like to vote, that dont want to make it harder, andthat you dont want to expose yourself to identify theft. And tell your friends and relatives they shouldnt be supporting the GOP plan to make it harder for seniors and others to vote. You can learn more at http://www.votersnotpoliticians.com/freedom.

Eric Schneidewind is the former president of AARP Michigan.

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Real goal of GOP petition drive is to make voting harder | Opinion - Detroit Free Press

Yet in one remarkable text exchange obtained by POLITICO, Gruters and lead House sponsor state Rep. Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill) went back-and-forth over proposals to shorten how long mail-in ballot requests are valid.

Gruters defended a Senate proposal to cancel all existing mail-in ballot requests, saying that it would be devastating for Republicans to keep them valid heading into the 2022 election when DeSantis and other state GOP officials are up for reelection. More than 2.18 million Democrats used mail-in ballots compared to 1.5 million Republican voters during the 2020 election where Trump easily won Florida. Part of that was due to the ongoing pandemic, as Democrats strongly encouraged voters to change their habits nationwide.

We cannot make up ground. Trump campaign spent 10 million. Could not cut down lead, Gruters wrote to Ingoglia, who had been chair of the Republican Party of Florida before Gruters.

Gruters (R-Sarasota) also said it would hurt the GOP in non-partisan races, noting that our school board member got killed in a local race. Gruters this week filed legislation that would ask voters to make school board races partisan.

The final election bill did not include the Senate proposal to cancel all requests. Instead, lawmakers voted to grandfather in existing requests. But over the protests of Democrats, the Republican lawmakers still shortened the time the requests would remain valid from two election cycles to one.

When asked about his text messages, Gruters said what I said in my text message was accurate. I think the failure to do a reset will have a detrimental impact going forward.

The emails and text messages obtained by POLITICO were handed over as part of an ongoing lawsuit by several groups including the League of Women Voters of Florida challenging the newly-enacted law that put in new restrictions on the collection of mail-in ballots and the use of drop boxes. The groups contend the new law illegally targets elderly and disabled voters, as well as minority voters. The National Republican Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are helping defend the measure.

The groups challenging the law asked for the records to be turned over as part of their preparation for trial. POLITICO asked for copies of all records turned over by the House, Senate and governors office. These records included legislative drafts that are usually shielded from disclosure.

Included in the records were several emails between Ingoglia and Ben Gibson, an attorney for the firm of Shutts and Bowen who has been chief counsel for the Republican Party of Florida the last two election cycles. Gibson, an ally of DeSantis who the governor appointed to the State Board of Education, has also represented national Republicans in election-related lawsuits including the one challenging the new law.

Gibson recommended several provisions that made their way into the final legislation, although not all the ideas he shared with Ingoglia were included, such as one that would have given additional power to Floridas secretary of state to investigate local election supervisors. At one point he provided a lengthy side-by-side of House and Senate bills that recommended which provisions should be kept and which ones should be jettisoned. Ingoglia downplayed his communications with Gibson.

In a text message to POLITICO, Ingoglia said, I had an open door policy and listened to everyone. Some ideas we took, and many were discarded. The legislature wrote this bill. Any suggestion otherwise is not accurate. Ultimately Im proud of what the Florida Legislature passed.

Ingoglia also brushed aside the back-and-forth with Gruters. He said he was very clear from the beginning that allowing mail-in ballot requests to remain valid for two election cycles was too long.

I was on record for this well before any text message was received, Ingoglia said. This was a policy decision all along and had nothing to do with partisan reasons.

Democrats who sharply criticized the voting legislation said they were not surprised that it was drawn up with the assistance of a top Republican attorney.

Unfortunately, I am not shocked, said state Rep. Evan Jenne (D-Dania Beach). Democracy is just a game to some.

Democrats also made sure to consult outside groups as well while the bill was under debate. During session, Senate Democrats held a caucus meeting where a lobbyist and consultant representing civil rights groups encouraged Democrats to ask questions that could be used in a potential lawsuit.

State Sen. Annette Taddeo (D-Miami) said that if legislators wanted to improve Floridas elections they would have relied more on local supervisors.

If this was truly about democracy and integrity of elections we would be taking the advice of experts, Taddeo said. Clearly this shows this was partisan where they were colluding to undermine democracy.

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'Devastating': Florida Republicans worried about 2022 as they crafted election law - Politico

On the eve of California's second-ever gubernatorial recall election, pollsshowed dire news for those hoping to bounce Gavin Newsom from office and replace him with someone with a more conservative mindset. Despite my issues with the governor, I was far more disappointed with the statements from recall supporters than from the polling data.

Before voting was even finished, Republican "leaders promoted unsubstantiated claims that the race was rigged or compromised by misconduct," APreported. It noted that leading replacement candidate, Larry Elder, said, "there might very well be shenanigans." And Donald Trump asked, "Does anybody really believe the California Recall Election isn't rigged?"

Apparently, Republicans onlytrust election results when they emerge as winners. That poses a long-term problem for the health of our democratic system, butin California, in particularit poses an existential problem for the GOP. When a party refuses to live in the real world, it's not going to make sensible decisions that help it get back in the political game.

I talked to some conservative activists in the weeks before the vote, and many of them were living in a fantasy world. Some were sure that the polls weren't accurate because of liberal polling bias and the recall really was on track, while others believed the nonsense about fraud. After Newsom scored an impressive 64 percent to 36 percent victory, recall supporters were looking for everyone but themselves to blame.

Let's see, a Democratic governor was victorious in a strongly Democratic state by margins that approximate the usual Democrat v. Republicanbreakdown, and the best people can do is claim voting irregularities. Sorry, but recall advocates ran one of the worst campaigns in memory. They failed to make a compelling case to non-Republicans.

I covered the 2003 recall ofGov. Gray Davis, whose incompetence in the face of rolling electricity blackouts and budget deficits led to widespread voter frustration. The electorate was more Republican 18 years ago than it is today but still was heavily Democratic. I'd argue that the list of Festivus-like grievances against Davis pales in comparison to the ones against Newsom.

The current governor has restricted charter schools, which are an educational bright spot. Violent crime is rising, homelessness is spreading civic disorder, and wildlands are on fire. There's the Employment Development Department scandaland much to critique in Newsom's handling of COVID-19. The budget is in great shape (if we ignore the state's unfunded liabilities), but there are myriad reasons for disgruntlement.

Yet in 2003, recall supporters built a broad-based coalition that focused on the key issues that upset Californians of all political persuasions. They recruited a candidate,Arnold Schwarzenegger, who not only was a popular celebritybut who carefully pitched a moderate, bipartisan, and generally optimistic governmental reform message.

This time around, recall advocates made it perilously easy for Democrats to turn this into a partisan"Republican recall"race. I like Larry Elder and have admired his past years of libertarian-oriented punditry, but he and other GOP replacement candidates campaigned as if they were appealing to a mostly conservative electorate.

In my rural area, pro-Trump signs and those obnoxious blue-stripe flag desecrations accompanied virtually every recall-signature table. Doubling down on stridently conservativemessagingin a state where conservatives are a dwindling and fleeing minority (and having insufficient resources to run compelling ads), doesn't seem like a winning strategy. Maybe that's just me.

The "yes" vote on the recall question received roughly the same percentage as Republicans routinely receive in statewide races. How surprising. Conservatives have long advocated for a take-no-prisoners campaign, but they couldn't even reach John Cox's dismalnumbers. He lost to Newsom in 2018 by 24 percentage points, which is a nail-biter compared to Tuesday's showing.

I've often criticized the largely unprincipled state GOP, but at least the establishment makes an attempt to woo unaffiliated and Democratic voters. The problem started with the recall petition. Instead of focusing on broad concerns, it chided Newsom for favoring "foreign nationals, in our country illegally," as if immigrants rather than homegrown politicians are the problem.

Recallers should have recruited the right candidate before they started collecting signatures. The campaign initially put pressure on Newsom to moderate some of his coronavirus restrictions, but as the race heated up and the GOP ran right, it pushed Newsom further to theleftto shore up his base. The downside always was obvious. If the recall didn't succeed, it would leave Newsom and the supermajority Democrats stronger than ever.

"Democrats have been sharpening their attacks on Republicans over the pandemic, former president Donald Trump and other polarizing topics, and now, emboldened by victory in California's recall election, party leaders are seeking to further escalate hostilities ahead of the midterm elections," The Washington Post concluded. It's hard to disagree.

Go ahead and blame voting issues. As themidtermsapproach, I'm sure that will be a winner.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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Republicans Got What They Deserved in California Recall - Reason

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WASHINGTON Lizzie Pannill Fletcher's political career became something of a trophy to Washington Democrats in 2018 after she won the Houston-based 7th Congressional District long a bastion of Texas Republican leadership.

The seat was once held by the late President George H.W. Bush, and one of Fletcher's most prominent constituents is U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. TX-7 was designed to be a safe Republican stronghold, but the 46-year-old former trial attorney snatched it away three years ago. And while many of her classmates from the 2018 Democratic wave lost reelection in 2020, she held on against a formidable Republican opponent.

Any day now, she'll find out how intent Texas Republicans are on taking the seat back.

The Texas Legislature is poised to unveil its proposed maps for new Texas Congressional districts, and some expect they'll redraw the 7th Congressional District in a way that dooms Fletcher's chances of winning there again.

Fletcher is well aware she is in political purgatory.

Ive always known that this is just part of the process and theres so much happening here, that perhaps its good that its not my focus, she said in an interview. Its on my radar that my job is to represent my constituents and certainly hearing what Ive heard, knowing what I know, I do feel a responsibility to try to protect the district and to protect them.

During two terms in the U.S. House, Fletcher has been a somewhat overshadowed presence, a quietly loyal party member among the boisterous pack of Democrats who took back the chamber in 2018.

She is a strong fundraiser amassing more money this cycle than any other Texas Democratic member. She does not create headaches for party leadership and avoids the bombast of modern social media politicking.

But redistricting is a blood sport, and Republicans this time around have an even freer hand to carve up the state for partisan advantage after the U.S. Supreme Courts 2013 decision gutting key provisions of federal laws that protected voters of color.

No Texas Democrat is more often cited as a likely victim of the redistricting pen than Fletcher. Whether or not Republicans take an aggressive posture toward her could set the stage for the next decade in the Texas congressional delegation.

Much of the animus toward her in the Republican consultant class is rooted in geography: Fletcher represents a seat that was never meant to be competitive, let alone held by a Democrat.

Two of the previous congress members elected there are Republican legends: the elder Bush and former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer. Fletcher does not run from that history.

Shes loosely in touch with the Bush camp, and when she met this week with one of her interns from the University of Texas who is part of a program named for Archer, Fletcher was quick to point out that he once represented the district.

While some Republicans take umbrage with this, she is a creature of her hometown.

Reared in the Afton Oaks neighborhood during the 1980s oil bust, she attended the citys most elite private school. She left the state for her undergraduate degree and law school but returned in 2006 to work for Vinson & Elkins, one of the most politically wired firms in town. Prior to her run, she was a partner at Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anaipakos, Alavi & Mensing law firm.

Now, as the congresswoman, she has two grown stepchildren and lives with her attorney husband near the area where she grew up.

She came to this political place in early 2017. Fletcher joined the wave of political neophytes who ran for Congress in a backlash to the election of former President Donald Trump. She ultimately defeated U.S. Rep. John Culberson, a longtime Republican who had mostly faced nominal Democratic opponents in the past.

Her first election was so crucial to national Democrats that they sent one of their most effective surrogates the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis to campaign with her at African American worship services the weekend before the election.

That day still imbues her Washington office, where she displays several framed photos of herself with Lewis from that time and another from a pre-pandemic 2020 march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma where decades earlier the civil rights icon was nearly beaten to death by police.

Houston iconography also abounds coasters with one of the local area codes, 713 and her older sisters art work celebrating the city. There are two framed maps of the 7th Congressional District which includes much of west Houston and its suburbs.

What that district will look like after the Legislature is done drawing new maps is now one of the most debated questions in Texas politics, and the merciful scenarios for Fletcher are limited.

Its an open secret that House GOP leadership wants to elevate her 2020 rival, retired veteran Wesley Hunt. And after Republicans held on to the Legislature last year, speculation began about how to draw maps in a way that would make it impossible for her and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a Dallas Democrat also elected in 2018 to win reelection.

Given that House Democrats have only an eight-vote margin, it was easy to see early this year how the road to a majority for Republicans must pass through Texas and through Fletcher's district.

When youre looking at the big picture ... You definitely have heard people saying there is an effort to take back the House through redistricting, she said.

I dont think its a good idea to take back the House by not letting people vote, she said, referencing the recently passed state voter access bill. I also dont think its good to take back the House by dismantling districts that are effectively performing for their constituents.

Theres also a frustration in GOP circles that Fletcher has a Teflon shield. She tends to vote with her party but is perceived locally as a moderate. They argue she is weak on the districts main economic sector fossil fuels. The 7th Congressional District has long been home to many of the great oil barons. Its a charge that can bring flashes of subtle ire to Fletchers normally cheerful disposition.

Already, a Republican group aligned with national GOP leaders called American Action Network has made a small television buy tying her to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The House GOP campaign committee is also keeping an eye on Fletcher.

Texans are paying more for gas and groceries because Lizzie Fletcher keeps supporting Democrats socialist spending sprees, said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Torunn Sinclair. It will cost her reelection.

But eight state and national Republican operatives with direct ties to the Texas delegation warned in interviews that an aggressive effort to unseat Fletcher could endanger the Republican incumbents who surround her district: U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul of Austin, Dan Crenshaw of Houston and Troy Nehls of Richmond.

Historically, the Legislature listens to the sitting Congressional Republicans when they redraw maps, and McCaul, as a senior Republican, is serving as a point person between the state lawmakers and his GOP colleagues.

While early details of the new districts remain closely held, some Republican sources said they sense survival instincts are setting in among the federal Republicans. Meaning, few are excited about the notion of pulling conservative voters from nearby Republican incumbents districts to take out Fletcher.

Instead, the map drawers could decide to leave Fletcher alone and siphon Republicans from her district to bolster the long-term reelection chances of Republicans in neighboring districts.

But that might hurt Fletcher in a different way: Her district could end up including many new Democratic voters unfamiliar with her, leaving her vulnerable to a primary challenge from an established Houston Democrat.

While incumbents across the country carried a bit of anxiety around the Capitol this week, Fletchers fate remains the focus in Texas.

By all appearances, Fletcher likes serving in Congress. She has a coveted seat on the U.S. House and Energy Committee, which has oversight of the oil and gas industry, and shes begun branching out on national television to discuss a key issue she ran on as a candidate: abortion rights.

But if the maps bring bad news her way, she will have some difficult choices to make.

I dont know that Ive thought through my process, she said, describing how she will sort out her political future. But Im generally most concerned about making sure that my constituents get the representation they deserve.

At this point, all options are on the table, she said.

When asked if that included retirement, she laughed: Im too young to retire, right?

But there is another option.

The 2018 wave was consequential in Texas partly because it gave Democrats a farm team for the first time in decades. Fletcher could run for a different office.

If I think I have something to offer, or if I think I can contribute ... I have to kick the tires for a long time before I feel confident that I can do a job here, but I think Ive done a good job here, she said.

As for the psychology of this strange, once-in-a-decade political dance, she said the sheer volume of legislation before the congress this week an abortion bill, a potential government shutdown, House Democratic efforts to convince the Senate to take up a voting bill has kept her too busy to dwell.

I cant control everything, so Im in a pretty good place, and Im going to see what my options are and make my decisions, she said. Its not much of a process.

But you know, Im going to see what my options are, and I tend to be pretty analytical, and so Im sure Ill think for a long time, and well see.

You never know, right?

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Democratic US Rep. Lizzie Pannill Fletcher could be GOP target in Texas redistricting - The Texas Tribune

In an interview with WTOP this week, Youngkin said of the Virginia gubernatorial election that "it's certainly not about President Trump. There are two people on the ballot and that's me and Terry McAuliffe."

Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate in Virginias race for governor, has treaded lightly around the issue of former President Donald Trump over the course of his campaign, and hes starting to get some public pressure from Trump to be more openly supportive.

In an interview with radio host John Fredericks on Thursday, Trump was asked whether he thought Youngkin, a political newcomer, could beat his Democratic opponent former Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Trump responded by saying, I do, but you know what I find? The only guys that win are the guys that embrace the MAGA movement, referring to his Make America Great Again movement.

The former president went on to suggest that Youngkin should stop trying to play it down the middle.

When they try to go down a railroad track, you know, Hey, oh yeah, sure, love it, love it. Oh, yeah, love Trump. Love Trump. OK, lets go, next subject. When they do that, they never win. They have to embrace it, Trump said.

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While Youngkin once said that President Trump represents so much of why Im running, he has since carefully tiptoed around Trump-related questions.

In an interview with WTOP this week, Youngkin said of the Virginia gubernatorial election that its certainly not about President Trump. There are two people on the ballot and thats me and Terry McAuliffe.

When asked if he would vote for Trump if he ran for president again, Youngkin responded by saying: I dont know if hes going to run for president again.

Youngkin has repeatedly said that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected, in contrast to Trump, who said the election was stolen.

Despite Trumps nudging of Youngkin during the Thursday interview, he later sent an email to supporters saying that Terry McAuliffe was a badly failed Governor and including a link to a University of Mary Washington pollshowing Youngkin leading.

It showed that, among likely voters, 48% favored Youngkin while 43% picked McAuliffe. Of registered voters, it was 46% for McAuliffe and 41% for Youngkin.

The poll included 1,000 Virginia residents, was conducted from Sept. 7-13 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

View original post here:

Republican in Va. governors race receives warning from Trump - WTOP

For decades, Republican state lawmakers have been able to vote for and pass highly restrictive abortion laws without living through the political consequences, because the laws were typically enjoined by the courts before they ever took effect. The politicians got to check the pro-life box important to a segment of their voters without their constituents ever living under those strict laws. This kept the political backlash to their votes to a minimum.

This month, the Supreme Court called these legislators bluff by letting the Texas abortion law stand. Now the most restrictive abortion law in the country is under the political microscope and Republicans in Washington are being uncharacteristically quiet at least in part because they sense that this law will do more to motivate the opposition than it will to rally the faithful.

Already, the Democrats cant stop talking about it. After a brutal August that mired the Biden White House in one bad news cycle after another, the Supreme Courts decision on Texas was like rain breaking a long drought for Democratic operatives. The issue allowed Democrats to unite their warring factions on the Hill, moved the news cycle off wall-to-wall coverage of Bidens botched Afghanistan withdrawal, and raised money for Democratic candidates.

If larger historical trends hold, Republicans would be favored to win back the House in 2022, but the question now is whether anti-abortion advocates just handed a beleaguered White House the key to energizing their pro-abortion rights voters and potentially staving off a GOP landslide. By finding a legal loophole that allowed the Texas law to go into effect, did they win the battle but lose the war?

In answering that question, first, we shouldnt pay too much attention to abortion issue polls. As a general matter, issue polling is deeply flawed in that it asks people to summarize their often complex and contradictory views into answers like agree and strongly agree. And unlike campaign polling plagued by its own inadequacies the results are never verified by an actual election.

Moreover, abortion is uniquely poorly polled. Whether someone identifies as pro-life or pro-choice which are highly correlated with partisanship isnt helpful when debating, for example, whether a woman should be required to have an ultrasound before aborting a pregnancy. Asking respondents whether Roe should be overturned is only useful if the pollster is actually trying to determine whether voters think abortion restrictions should be decided by federal courts or state legislatures. Do you believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases gives us no information on the voter who believes that abortion at eight months should be prohibited and at six weeks should be legal.

So the more relevant question is whether the abortion issue motivates voters in both political camps and which side it motivates more.

Theres some research to show that abortion doesnt motivate Republican voters all that much. As Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, found based on data from 2018, large numbers of white evangelicals dont place a great deal of importance on abortion and other issues like immigration and issues of race may be even more effective at turning out the base in the future.

The problem with that data, however, is that it was gathered before the confirmation of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, in an era when the court was striking down most abortion restrictions. Not surprisingly, then, those researchers also found that the same voters believed it was very unlikely that the two SCOTUS precedents upholding a constitutional right to an abortion, Roe and Casey, would ever get overturned. In other words, its possible that voters stopped caring about abortion because they knew they couldnt get far on the issue. This could mean that if the new 6-3 Court actually does move the ball down the field so to speak later this year, these voters would be much more motivated to vote on their anti-abortion beliefs.

Meanwhile, abortion is showing signs of being a motivating issue for Democrats, who are fighting to keep control of the House and Senate in 2022. According to a Morning Consult poll from last week, the share of Democratic women who say that issues such as abortion, contraception and equal pay, are their top voting concerns has risen from 8 percent to 14 percent since the Texas law went into effect. That may sound small, but if midterm elections are largely about motivating your own voters, then having an issue that can move turnout by a few percentage points is often the difference between winning and losing a top tier race.

So, both sides have reason to believe this issue can motivate their base under the right circumstances. But only the Democrats have the motivator of fear both in the form of an obviously unconstitutional law that is currently being used to stop abortions in a state that they once again hope to flip in 2022 and the now much more realistic threat of similar laws passing in states with open Senate seats like Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

The second point to consider is that the abortion debate will only gain steam next year, an election year. Because of the bizarre legal quirks of the Texas law, it will continue to wind its way through the courts for months and pop up in the news from time to time. But the true national abortion fight will come when the Supreme Court issues an opinion about Mississippis 15-week abortion ban, mostly likely in next June just four and a half months before the 2022 election. (SCOTUS will hear the case later this year.) This not the Texas case represents the real challenge to Roe and Casey.

If the Supreme Court holds that there is no longer a constitutional right to obtain an abortion or holds that such a right only exists until roughly the end of the first trimester, individual states would be able to pass laws restricting abortion access or Congress would be able to pass a law recodifying a federal right to abortion access. This could make every state legislative race and congressional election a referendum on abortion legislation in a way that the country has never experienced. And the unpredictability of the outcome of such a large-scale fight should worry both sides.

Third, the Texas law is dividing the right. There are two big fault lines within the anti-abortion movement, and the Texas law is exacerbating both of them.

One dividing line is whether the goal of the anti-abortion movement should be to ban abortion or end abortion. The ban abortion crowd wants to pass laws that prohibit abortions. The end abortions folks, however, want to use whatever means are effective to reduce the number of abortions in the country. They are quick to point out that there are fewer abortions today than in 1973, when abortions were banned in large swaths of the country, proving that laws banning abortion will never end the practice by themselves. There are plenty of people in this crowd who think the Texas laws reliance on abortion bounty hunters, as some people are calling them, to report abortions is a gross, counterproductive idea that will do more to turn people away from the movement than win hearts and minds to the cause.

Another fracture within the movement is reflected in almost every political fight the incrementalists vs. the absolutists. The Texas law mandating a 6-week abortion ban and punishing those who aid and abet anyone who gets an abortion after that period is an absolutist one. The absolutists knew it was unconstitutional under current Supreme Court precedent and will likely be overturned, but they think it will have been worth the effort as long as it can save a few lives for the few weeks it is actually in effect. The incrementalists, on the other hand, wrote the law in Mississippi a 15-week ban on abortion that relies on the consensus in Western European countries, which almost all restrict abortions after the first trimester. Most legal scholars believe this law could be the vehicle the conservative court uses to narrow or overturn Roe and Casey. These more incrementalist anti-abortion advocates still want to end abortions in the U.S. but they are willing to play a game of inches to get the ball into the end zone rather than throw a pass that has a high likelihood of getting intercepted by Chief Justice Roberts.

The result is that the anti-abortion movement is divided against itself. Proponents of the Texas law are claiming vindication, but the end abortion crowd is questioning its efficacy. The incrementalists are arguing that its counterproductive, and legal conservatives are pointing out that the same concept could now be used by liberals to create bounties on other constitutional rights like gun ownership and religious exercise. This leaves sizeable portions of the GOPs base divided against themselves heading into a midterm that will require thousands of grassroots staff and volunteers across the country to all row in the same direction.

The Supreme Court in Roe purported to settle the abortion issue nearly 50 years ago, but instead the justices only moved the fight from the ballot box to the courts themselves. As one federal judge put it this month, wrenching responsibility from the hands of state legislatures and giving it to judges has resulted in acrimony and results-oriented decisions. Not coincidentally, judicial confirmation fights have only gotten more contentious since Roe, as the elected branches increasingly bring the courts into their political battles. In the first half of 2021, state legislatures passed more anti-abortion regulations than in any year since the Roe was decided in 1973 all of which will be litigated in the courts.

If the Supreme Court gets out of the abortion business in the lead up to the 2022 elections, it will be up to voters and legislators to decide the issue for themselves. Midterm elections historically favor the party out of power, but Republicans may have just handed Democrats the issue they needed to motivate the Democratic voters that often stay home between presidential elections.

Excerpt from:

Why Republicans Are Scared of Texas New Abortion Ban - POLITICO

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today on The Argument, do Kara Swisher, Ezra Klein and I agree on anything?

This week, Im doing something a little different. Instead of a typical debate, today Im doing a special roundtable discussion on the stuff in the news that I and my colleagues cant stop thinking and arguing about. Im joined by my fellow hosts from New York Times Opinion. Kara Swisher is the host of Sway, and Ezra Klein hosts The Ezra Klein Show. And as youll hear, we agree on some things, but definitely not everything. Well be back next week with a regular Argument episode. And its going to be a barn burner. First, heres Ezra kicking off our conversation.

Jane, Kara, hello.

Hello.

Hey, how are you doing?

How are you feeling, Kara? I hear youre a little froggy over there.

Im a little froggy. Its really bad because Ive got 103 interviews to do in the next two days. So itll be fine. Too much screaming at the kids.

Yeah, well, and probably theyre bringing all the germs. Ive been getting sick now that people are doing stuff. My son keeps coming home with a snotty nose.

Yes.

We got a lot to cover today. Were going to talk about the media. Were going to talk about Facebook. Were going to talk about all kinds of different things. But I want to begin where I live in California, where the recall effort just got stomped into the ground. Gavin Newsom won by about 27 points. And he won by that much in part because the Republicans, to the extent they unite around anybody, united around the most terrifying possible candidate to most Californians. Jane, when we worked at Vox, you did a great piece about the California Republican Party and what it had become. And I thought about that piece a lot over the past couple of weeks. So Im curious how you read the Republicans in this election and what California Republicans are.

So, as I wrote back in 2018 in this piece, the California Republican Party is largely an entity that exists to produce conservative/anti-liberal thought in other places. Like, the degree to which California conservatives have largely given up on California as evidenced by, I think, running a conservative radio host who has said many conservative radio host things, instead of someone who is purely going to be aimed at Gavin Newsom, I think is evidence of that. One of the things I found interesting about this is that this election or this recall potentially could have been successful if Democrats were caught napping and Republicans could coalesce around someone who was like, Im not Gavin Newsom. I will never go to French Laundry while you cant go to things. I will never do these things that appear to annoy you. Instead, they went with a conservative radio host in Larry Elder, who very much started out by saying that Joe Biden won the election and then backtracked, because thats what you have to do in a conservative media ecosystem right now not in California in conservative radio. Its interesting how this was where the nationalization of politics really bit back for Republicans, because this became a race about how Larry Elder was going to get rid of all Covid-related mandates, and he was going to discourage vaccination. Whether or not he would have, it just became this nationalized race. And it became about him, not about Gavin Newsom. And it was very easy to say, Larry Elder is basically Trump. He invited Trump into this race. And if Californians arent that thrilled about Gavin Newsom, they are especially not that thrilled about Donald Trump.

You know what surprised me, Kara, was that none of the super rich, super cranky, super I can do anything better than anybody else billionaires out in Silicon Valley put themselves on the ballot. There had been talk of that. They are filled with criticisms of how Democrats run California. And I thought that was a kind of from the side, a little bit independent candidacy that could have been pretty dangerous to Newsom.

Sure.

Im curious how you read the absence of any of them

Well

in the final options.

Well, they dont like to be inconvenienced, right? [LAUGHTER] Thats the whole thing. But I thought Chamath Palihapitiya hes a big investor, former Facebook executive might have run. He sort of teased it, but then said no. And I did a Q&A with him in The Times about what happened. But you know, they just like to get on Twitter and be huffy. And then they were leaving California. Im like, just leave. Just leave. Goodbye, see you later. Whats interesting is there are a couple of things, what Jane was talking about is, look, Californias not in the worst shape, right? Theres a budget surplus. Covid rates right now are declining rather precipitously. Obviously, it has huge problems with homelessness, et cetera. But that was way before Covid and will continue for a long, long time. And I think in general, people are not necessarily French Laundry aside, which I thought was a real mistake on Newsoms part, since hes been so tough on Covid stuff I think people are pretty OK with him. They dont necessarily love him, you know? But they dont dislike him. And thats what I think is interesting.

Yeah, there is this glut in conservative media of why Im leaving California stories

Yeah, whatever. See ya.

and why everyones moving to Miami or Austin or something. But I think that theres an idea that is going to turn into a political movement of sorts.

Its like dont let the door hit you. Dont let the excellent produce hit you on the way out. Just go. [LAUGHTER] You made all your money here. California gave you all kinds of opportunity. Kick it in the teeth and leave. I think whats interesting about Newsom, that speech he gave I dont know, Ezra, what you thought of it. I thought it was quite graceful, given he could have kicked them back in the teeth. And hes been a big supporter of tech and has not, like a lot of California politicians, has kind of let them roll all over everybody, essentially. So Im just curious what you imagine that speech was about?

I think Newsom understands that even being threatened with a serious recall campaign does not mean youre in the strongest position. And so hes not trying to be a factional governor. Hes trying to re-establish himself with a pretty stunning victory here as a governor who can credibly represent California. You dont want to be the guy who squeaked through. And to his credit, he, in the end, wasnt. But I did a piece right before the recall actually happened, where I chatted with him for it. But before I chatted with him, what Id been doing was running through the Democrats record in California. And particularly in the last 18 months, the amount of actual legislating they have done is astonishing. I mean, they passed a universal transitionary kindergarten program, so basically an entire new grade of school for four-year-olds. They put $12 billion into homelessness. Well see what comes of it, but we dont see an investment like that anywhere else in the country. They just signed right after the recall they passed before through the legislature, but Newsom signed right after a series of bills on housing that, among other things, end single-family zoning in California. Theres this huge list. And this goes, I think, to your point, Kara Newsom wants to be seen and wants to be understood as one of the great governors, one of the transformational governors of California. And what he somehow needs to do is get himself out of the way so the record can actually speak and also be implemented because getting all this policy done, particularly during the period of Covid, is going to be very, very, very difficult. But I think on some level, he gets that. And so the question that hes sort of asking is, can he just get Californians to hold on long enough, such that the easing of Covid can really be felt at the same time that the spending down of the surplus that they are tossing around like Oprah money now begins to reverberate in the lives of everyday Californians? If he can get to the other side of that without overly polarizing himself, he has a possibility to look in the long run like a great governor.

Im curious how does the elitism I think that is his real problem. He looks elite. He sounds elite. Everything about him is like elite liberal, although I dont think hes quite as liberal as people make him out to be, right? So thats his big, scary weakness, I would say.

I wrote this in the beginning of the piece. I think that Newsom is fascinating because the reality of his politics is an inversion of his reputation. Newsom looks to people like a guy whos all style and no substance. Hes got this super coiffed hair. He looks like the guy you would cast to play a slippery politician in a movie. He had this very tabloidy personal life, particularly back when he was in San Francisco. He makes these terrible mistakes, like French Laundry.

And Kimberly Guilfoyle, but go ahead. [LAUGHTER]

Yes, and Guilfoyle. But the truth of Newsom is that its like perfectly the inverse. Hes a stylistically very weak politician whos constantly misjudging situations, and substantively, a pretty good one, whos passed a lot of good policy and really does understand a lot of the issues California is facing, can give you chapter and verse on a lot of the things that theyre working through the legislature. Not a perfect governor by any means, but I think this is the essential paradox of Newsom. I think I wrote it this way, that hes like an earnest nerd who presents as a slick jock. And hes never found a way to out-communicate that.

I once told him his skin was just too nice. I know it sounds terrible and completely lookist. He was like, why do you think people dont believe me? Im like, youre too handsome.

Let me ask Jane one thing before we move off of Newsom, which is one of the things youre hearing from Newsoms team, from Democrats, is that running on tough Covid regulations was actually a huge winner for them. Even if you look nationally right now, vaccine mandates poll really well. Most people are vaccinated, and they want other people to be vaccinated. And so the one thing Im hearing Democrats consider extracting out of the recall campaign is really seeing possibly tough Covid regulations as something that could help them politically over the next year, even into the midterms when that happens. Do you think theres something to that?

I mean, I think it goes to maybe Im just going to have to do a giant the nationalization of politics is generally bad because I do think its on a state by state basis. Like, for instance, theres a race going on right now in Virginia. Im in Washington, D.C. So Virginia its over there somewhere. Right now, Youngkin, whos the Republican candidate, is getting hit really hard on being close to Trump. The Virginia Democrats are going really hard on Covid related stuff. But I also think if you are trying to win down ballot races or youre trying to win in more purple states because increasingly, Virginia is a blue state until proven otherwise, I think that that wont work. I do agree, though, that one of the challenges weve had is that we have heard a lot about extremely loud people coming to school board meetings and screaming about masks. But the vast majority of people are not like that. The challenge will be, can you build a winning coalition on being tougher on Covid? I mean, its not a very satisfying answer, but I think itll depend on where you are.

So speaking of nationalizing everything, Jane, I think you want to talk a bit about the media.

I do, and Im annoyed. Im incredibly annoyed, and I need to be told whether or not my annoyance is justified, because I want to talk about how the media reports on and criticizes other media. This is one of those moments in which I recognize that I am a part of the media. I am a part of the problem.

Its media all the way down.

It really is. Now, you may have seen Fox News posted a story about media frets over too many white Emmy winners. And then there was a dust-up between Politico and a Washington Post columnist that then Fox News reported on ad nauseum. Theres a lot of reporting on people writing on Substack and just a lot of people going back and forth and back and forth about the media. And it is driving me absolutely insane.

You mean the people on Substack. The hot take hacks thats what I call them.

Some of them are, and some of them are just on Substack.

Yeah, good. Yeah.

But even the conversation about Substack is one of those moments where Im like, OK, why is it seeming to overtake talking about the news that is actually happening?

Because it scares the media. Because Substack scares media companies, it scares media people. Theres also a bunch of FOMO. Like, should I be on Substack earning a million dollars? Which you wont.

Right.

I think thats totally normal, dont you think? Its like Hollywood right now obsessing over streaming, but that counts, actually.

I want to cut to different kinds of media takes here aside, because I dont think anybodys having Substack conversation, except, like, 50 people on Twitter and Substack. That does not strike me as something that has erupted into wider consciousness.

Exactly! So we should stop doing it.

Well, Im not talking about it. I said

Good!

that specifically so I wouldnt have to talk about it for the rest of this episode.

Amazing. Perfect.

Im not going to be part of the problem. Im going to be the change I seek to see in the world. I like a lot of Substack, so I think its all fine. This is a place where Im going to speak up for the right wing critique of things. Not that the media is all liberal and fake news and everything, but something the right has understood for a very long time is that the media as an institution is really important in a way that media as an institution does not want to admit. The media as an institution is a super important political actor, who we choose to cover how we cover what stories, to the point you were just making, Jane, we choose. Those are incredibly important. And because the media wants to pretend that it is some kind of unbiased mirror to the world, not those of us who are in the opinion section, but elsewhere in the world

Right.

the media has a lot of trouble explaining the role it is playing and the frameworks through which it is trying to play that role well. And so it falls to people outside of it who feel ill served by it to make a big issue out of it. But then the problem is there is no one media anymore I mean, if there ever was. But there really is not now. And then social media is not a media in the way that a network news channel is. And so I would like to say, I think media criticism is very worth doing. I just think we need way better media criticism because these little gossipy flare-ups, they are trading on deep feelings people have that the media is important and it doesnt represent them. But its not able to get at that real conversation that is a worthwhile one and might have.

But they do. But people do not trust the media. I dont know how many relatives you have, depending on where, but I often get relatives saying I dont trust the media, and Im in the media. Ive even had my mom I did an interview with Hillary Clinton, and she called me up and she said, you cant believe what Hillary Clinton just said. And she then repeated back to me via the Fox filter. And I was like, no, no, thats not what she said. And she goes, oh, thats your opinion. And I was like, no, she talked to me. Like, I was the one who did the interview and it was like astonishing. And then the media, which is so manifestly insecure, then seizes upon it and gets into a big cycle of being defensive, when you should just, like every other industry, some of us suck, some of us dont. When we make mistakes, we try to admit it. The media also gets so insecure that they cant help but feel bad that people dont like them.

I also do think when people are like, oh, I dont trust the media, that implicitly says to me like, I trust some media. I just dont trust you. Its just like youve got your media, and Ive got my media, and our mediums hate each other. And then they fight. And I get concerned sometimes that the overemphasis on the media turns into a moment in which Im like, I would also be distrustful of institutions that seem to mostly discuss themselves and people like them.

See, unlike Ezra, I think social media has ruined the media because everybody can say something. You dont know where the sourcing is sometimes. Its taken apart the already tenuous relationship media had with its users and has blown it wide open. And so everybody has a voice. Everyones screaming past each other. And so the power of media, especially institutions, like The New York Times and other places, has just going to be diminished, even if a lot of important people do pay attention to it.

Do you think, though, that this is something because what are we thinking about social media the entity that I think about is Twitter, but most people, most journalists are on Twitter, most people in general are not.

Facebook is where they are.

Yes.

Yeah.

But Twitter drives the entire media because all the journalists are there. I mean, were going to talk about Facebook in a minute I have said this forever, I think the biggest problem in the direct media is the medias intense reliance and presence in Twitter. We are all talking to each other and its not just to the point Kara was making. Yes, everybody has a voice. And some people a voice are terrible, and theyve got big followings, but also the media tweets like nobody is watching.

That is a good line Ezra.

And look Im very sympathetic to the idea that people were too constrained in the media for a long time. But I logged on to Twitter and I always think to myself, you know everybody can read this, right? People act on Twitter in a way that is not well designed to increase trust in them or their institutions, and then they turn like why does nobody like or trust me anymore? [LAUGHTER]

I am often texting media people at night saying, get off, put it down. [LAUGHTER] But if youre not a professional, youre crashing your care into the wall.

Youre like the Twitter guardian Angel?

I do it all the time, Im like put it down. Im a professional, put it down.

Ezra Klein: So Kara The Wall Street Journal has been publishing the series called The Facebook Files, and to sum up a few of the major findings, Facebook lied about equal application of standards, they have whats basically a V.I.P. pass exempting celebrities and notable people from some rules. Maybe not all. They withheld research about the negative mental health impact of Instagram especially on teen girls, and despite promises to the contrary, Facebook was a major source of misinformation about the pandemic and the vaccine. So Im curious what you think of all this. Oh, it goes on. Doesnt it? The beat goes on. Nick Clegg who is the head of global affairs had a reaction to it, which was sort of a non-reaction, reaction or one of those non-denial, denial kind of things. Where he said, its complex

Its all true, but how dare you?

Well, no. I dont know what he said. He just got on there he said, its complex and were not evil. And I was like, OK, we didnt think either of these things were not true. I think what was powerful about the Journal pieces and the times its done great pieces doing a lot of people have. Casey Newton and many others, is that its just more proof of what we already thought. As it builds, it sort of gives us a picture of something we already know about them but adds more data and more documentation to whats happening in there. Which is, I think more of a hot mess than other people do. I dont think its calculated I think its sloppy. I think the architecture is rotten. And Im not sure its fixable the way its set up. Especially the constant shifting of priorities. And lastly, that everything rises and falls with Mark Zuckerberg. And he is completely incapable of doing this. The wisest person in the world couldnt do this job, and he, I am sorry to say, is not the wisest person in the world.

If youve got that kind of ehh feeling about Facebook two months ago, what has been learned that should change that in any way?

I think some of this data about girls, young girls, and the toxicity of Instagram for it, and you know Facebooks working on, Oh my God, Instagram for kids. Like no stop, right now. It was a lot of data around it and some of the research that Facebook did about itself, which is good. Thats great to look at yourself, but that didnt act upon as some people in the company thought. And thats why youre getting all these documents because people inside the company are just tossing documents over the wall, because theyre tired of it I suspect. I think it just continued to show in a wide range of areas, whether it was how celebrities and famous people are treated, the impact on kids, the difficulty of managing misinformation on the platform, and the fact that one person makes all the decisions. Its the same through line, though, is that this place is impossible to manage because its so big and so powerful.

And like, the challenge we have is that, every single time Facebook has gone before congressional hearings, all that has been displayed is that members of Congress have no idea what Facebook page or how it works.

Thats not true. The recent David Cicilline ones in his report was excellent, was fantastic actually. One of the things thats interesting about this, is that Facebook continues to fend off this stuff because were so disorganized. Look over whats going on in China, theyre taking over tech right now. Theyve decided its too powerful and theyre just taking over the place. I think one of the problems politically is that Facebook knows our political system is chaotic in normal times. And now its really chaotic, theyve hired a mess of lobbyists and PR people and everyone else to stave off whats inevitable. And so it just goes on. And by the way shareholders are rewarding them quite a lot still no matter what.

One of the problems with them it always seems to me, is that theyre running something that is on the scale now of a global governance system or a religion maybe. I mean, things dont operate on that multibillion person scale and one of the repeated revelations of the Journal reporting, but also all reporting and also if you just look at what is happening on Facebook for 20 minutes, is that they dont have policies that are equally and fairly applied. And of course, they dont. For the most part, things of that scale very rarely do, but what things at that scale tend to have, is some reason to believe in the legitimacy of the outcome. So if you are the U.S. government, in theory there are elections and the whole system of government, and theres representation, right? Theres representation. And if youre the Catholic Church like in theory the Pope is the Gods representative on Earth, so theres at least divine authority. And the problem I see with what Facebook has been trying to do, one place I would give them a little bit of credit is that for years in a way, you dont see in that many companies, theyre trying to be creative with how to constrain themselves at least a little bit. They tried to create this Facebook Supreme Court-style situation. They do try to create policies, and try to create boards, and so on. Theyre trying to create within it a kind of thing that looks almost like a government, but my critique of them is always they are doing so without representation. Like its all a bit of a show game because in the end, its only Mark Zuckerberg there with his super shares who has true power over this situation. Theyre not trying to create a situation where the Facebook users can vote on what the policy should be and how they should be applied, nothing. And so in the end its just them running something that is too big for any just them to be legitimate doing.

I think what theyre doing is hand waving and with all that stuff. They dont mean it. They dont, they meant it Mark Zuckerberg could be fired like most other C.E.O.s in this country or anywhere else. Secondly, if they have this much power and refuse to be transparent, all this stuff around research, that just says to you, theyre just hand waving at everybody and until Mark Zuckerberg can be fired or until they can be sued, nothings going to happen here. And their shares go up, are you kidding? Nobody is going to change this situation even if it has a deleterious effect on people. And then they can say, Oh you know what, we didnt cause Jan 6. Well, thats not what were saying. Were saying your tools in the hands of malevolent players are super dangerous, but we have no power over them whatsoever, and thats going to be the problem. Even if theyre the nicest people in the world, which they try, were not a terrible people. Stop impugning No one is saying theyre Thanos. Some people are, thats not true. But what were saying is you are imperfect people, with an imperfect platform, and youre making decisions that affect people rather significantly on very serious issues like vaccinations, and getting people into a state of rage almost constantly. Thats the real problem is this addiction rage, self-esteem circle that affects the psyche of people.

Especially because the algorithms are encouraging this, I really recommend well link it in our show notes, but the research that Instagram is well aware of the mental health impact that Instagram can have on teen girls and on teen boys, and its well aware of this. Facebook has publicly played down the apps negative impacts. They havent make the research available. And I think that thats something where you have a company that is being duplicitous. It is being duplicitous because it can be. Because it assumes that you will eventually move on. There is a memo that was by Facebook Vice President Andrew Bosworth, who said that maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe when someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools, and still we connect people.

Guns dont kill people, people kill people, its the same thing. Its the same thing. But Im curious Ezra as to your thoughts on this as someone whos been thinking about the intersection of this industry with politics, the political solutions, and what this means for our polarization problem. A thing I hear you wrote a book about.

I did, I did. This is just hard. Let me just Ill quickly make the argument from Facebooks perspective, so somebody has, which is: They are running a multi-billion person platform. And you will have all the good and the bad of humanity on it. You will have all of the bullying, and also people getting together to raise money for kidneys. And youll have also just a lot of banal stuff where people are saying, did you did you see the thing that happened on TV last night. I think a lot of this is a dodge, because they are amplifying peoples emotions to highly engaging material. And so its like you take human interactions and you run them through an emotion amplification machine, and I dont think thats healthy. But thats their view of it, and to the point about political solutions to the extent there are any, these are hard. I mean, I see in politics people often trying to fit the problem of social media into a box that I dont think is quite the right one. So we have recognized approaches to things like antitrust, Facebook should not have been allowed to buy Instagram. I think now, that is like looked back on as a pretty clear mistake. But that doesnt mean that if they didnt buy Instagram you would not have the problem of the company Instagram, which is now a gigantic company, and is running itself in a way that is bad for many teens. Because of course having young people live their lives on a platform that is seeing curated photos of their friends, and how much more fun everybody else is having and how they look and so on is going to be bad for you. Like of course its going to be bad for you. So there is a broad problem here of what if society is just choosing to spend a lot of time on technologies, that for some value of we, some of we dont think are good. And the thing I will sometimes hear from Facebook people and Kara Im sure you hear this more than I do, is you know what, candy bars arent good for you either. And white bread isnt good for you either. And the tricky thing here, is you are making value judgments on what is OK for people. There are things in society we dont allow people to do certain kinds of drugs and by scorpion missile launchers, but mostly we say, if you want to buy things that are bad for you to eat or you want to buy alcohol and youre over 21 even though you might be an alcoholic, we let you do it. And Facebook has a lot of those, and Instagram has a lot of those dimensions in addition to, of course other dimensions that are fine. Politics doesnt have a good language for that.

Theres no laws. This is as if you built a city and everybody pays you rent by way of their data, right? So you live in the city, you dont get police, you dont get water, you dont get stopped signs, you dont get fire people, you dont get regular food, youre just on your own and its the purge. And then they write, they have the audacity to write you: Well, its a free country. And so at some point, theyve got to put in speed limits. Theyve got to put in warning labels. If they want to play like this, then lets have some real teeth behind it and then people can make their decision. But they wont do that, because they know that our country unlike China or some other places are not going to crack down on them. Now in other countries India, and just now in Russia you just saw that just happen. They cracked down. They understand the power of this thing. Even if theyre authoritarians, they get it. And so they rely on us being the most dysfunctional democracy so that they can continue to do what they want, and then try to say that theyre virtuous. Theyre not virtuous, theyre just not.

I do not feel good about the terms crack down and comparisons like, I think thats the complicated thing here is that the Russian government could care less about the impact that these outlets are having on young women and on bullying. That was for political purposes. And I think that thats something when you hear from some on the right who are very much about like, oh, we need to crack down those platforms. Their issue is that sometimes if you say something mean about Donald Trump or a lie about vaccines, you might get your post removed, and theyre mad about that. So I think that thats the thing that concerns me here is that the incentives behind how we would think about a regulatory environment are so different depending on the politics of the people. Like theres a lot of talk about antitrust with relation to other I think there was a house committee that essentially ruled that Facebook needs to be broken up, and that these entities are too big. But again like, I dont know, Im concerned.

Its very hard to break them up. The way theyve constructed it, is the thing. What do you break up, precisely?

Well even if you do break it up do you do the things youve broken up now just have more incentiveto compete in even more destructive ways for market share, because they cant cross-subsidize from the thing. This is my only point on regulating these things which I think everybody knows Im pretty for, is that you have to define which problem youre trying to deal with at any given time, very tightly. And you might need to do a lot of different things. The issue for anti-competitive practices by Facebook or by Amazon might be very different. The solutions for that issue might be very different than solutions for we think Instagram is bad for kids. Like those are two separate problems and you could solve one without solving the other, but currently we are solving neither. I think that is a good place to come to a close here. So were going to do what recommendations around a book, a movie, a TV show, some good you like. I see youre doing constant monitoring, glucose monitoring in your newsletter now Kara.

Yeah.

So weird gadget, whatever you want. Jane

Im downing honey right now, Im sure my glucose is off the charts right this second. [LAUGHTER]

I want to recommend two books that Im reading simultaneously because one is an upper and one is a downer. The downer is Anthony Beevors The Fall of Berlin 1945, which is fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. It is also devastating. About the Eastern Front of the Second World War which is something I knew a lot about, I wrote my undergraduate thesis on that subject and yet somehow there are things that I read here and then I need to take a long soothing walk to get over having read. But Im also reading Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by the great science writer Mary Roach, which deals with things like what do you do when elephants kill people, and how do you deal with killer trees, or bears, or cougars. Which I assume are issues that you have in California. I dont know. Its wild out there, but both books are great. Read them simultaneously because it really helps balance it out. Its like having kale and ice cream but good together.

Kara.

I think you just talked about continuous glucose monitoring, Im super interested in stuff like that. This sort of quantified self is it selfie? I guess you call it. I would recommend Michael Pollans latest book, This is Your Mind On Plants. I think anything he writes is really interesting. This is about opium, coffee, and mescaline essentially. And I think its really interesting because Ive been interviewing a lot of people lately about these trials around the use of psychotropic drugs in PTSD and depression, and you can all laugh, ha ha Im on a trip. But some of this stuff is incredible promise, and is moving through including up to and including LSD and things like that.

And I recommend actually just some straight-up fiction, nothing too heavy, Ive been into a fantasy series. Its called silk punk, so its very Asian-inflected, by Ken Liu called The Dandelion Dynasty. Ken Liu is super interesting. Hes won a bunch of awards for short fiction. Hes the translator of two of the Three Body Problem series books. But these books are just really cool if youre into a good story that is both like highly about science and gods but also just about how governance would work in a somewhat feudal society, and how a revolution would work. I loved it. The first one is called The Grace of Kings, the second one, is also great and the third one has just come out. But you should begin with The Grace of Kings, and the whole series is called The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu. Well, Jane, Kara, thank you all so much. This was a lot of fun.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks so much to Kara and Ezra for chatting with me. You can subscribe to their shows Sway, and The Ezra Klein Show in your favorite listening app, and next week Ill be back with an argument you wont want to miss.

This episode was produced by Phoebe Lett, Annie Galvin, and Roge Kama. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce, Alison Bruzek and Nayeema Raza. Engineering, music and sound design by Isaac Jones and Sonia Herrero. Fact checking by Kate Sinclair, Michelle Harris and Kristin Lin. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special Thanks to Matt Kwong, Daphne Chen and Blakeney Schick. 438 00:34:07,060 > 00:34:16,000

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Opinion | How They Failed: California Republicans, Media Critics and Facebook - The New York Times