They just, you know, wanted to win elections or something

Robpos of the Daily Kos community discussed what they call a civil war in the Democratic Party between oligarchs and populists. The discussion begins with a Congressional House race in New York in which the “campaign spokesman” (there is doubt about the actual role) of one Democratic candidate bashed another Democratic candidate, saying the opponent was too far left, which would cause Democrats to lose the seat. The accusation of too far left is because the opponent supported or worked on the campaigns for Gary Peters (he’s radical?), Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Robpos then noted that the attacker was funded by various PACs that are funded by billionaires. Robpos wrote:

Since the financial crisis of 2008, which made visible, the devotion of the Democratic Party to its billionaire donor class, the billionaires, through dark money PACs and shadowy think tanks, have opened a battle for the soul of the party and sought to purge the influence of its progressive wing.

A quote from Lever News

MAGA has been trying to harness that [populist] outrage for its authoritarian agenda, much like the Tea Party did when Democrats squandered the Obama presidency by turning hope and change into more of the same. But center-left populists now have their own opportunity to channel the rage in a very different, more productive direction — into causes such as campaign finance reform, anti-monopoly policy, Medicare For All, and higher taxes on billionaires.

Robpos concluded:

Billionaires are not your friends, even if they support the Democratic Party. They have the bucks, but we have the votes if we don’t succumb to apathy, resignation and defeatism.

I long ago concluded that while Democrats aren’t (well, don’t appear to be) actively working for billionaires, they are also not actively working against them, either. What we as a country need is what Democrats are failing to do. That’s why, when not compared against Republicans, Democrats have such a low approval rating. Getting rid of the nasty guy and his authoritarianism is not enough. Even gutting the power of the current Republican Party is not enough. For our democracy to survive we must blunt the strength of the billionaires to control our politics. And that Democrats are not doing. The Supreme Court delivered another blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 yesterday. As I understand it, based on various news discussions, the Court attacked Section 2 that bans the use of gerrymandering to deprive racial minorities from seats in Congress. The law (and I think in an update to the law, not the original) said that if a district map appears to deprive minorities of a seat, it is illegal. The Court ruled that to challenge a map the challengers must prove the deprivation was intentional. That is exceedingly difficult to prove. By “Court” I do mean the six conservatives. The three liberals vigorously dissented. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Stacey Abrams, writing for MSNOW:

For decades, Section 2 gave Black voters in the South and brown voters in the Southwest access to the courts to remedy harm. There was something those voters could do when, for example, state legislatures split Black neighborhoods across districts or packed Latinos into as few seats as possible to minimize their broader influence. Section 2 was not a perfect safeguard but it worked, and it instituted accountability. ... Today’s ruling on Louisiana v. Callais strikes even closer to the bone by narrowing the very mechanism communities use to fight discriminatory maps in court. These decisions have steadily built upon one another, eviscerating the protections mandated by the 15th Amendment and perhaps altering the country’s memory of what the VRA attempted to fix. More than just a law protecting voting rights, the VRA stood as a guard against abuse of power by a racial majority that had — and has — repeatedly failed to act fairly.”

Adam Serwer of The Atlantic, discussing the claim that the Court is being “race neutral.”

The Court’s decision is consonant with the philosophy, articulated by Kilpatrick in his earlier days, that the state is oppressive when it interferes with the right to discriminate, and respects liberty when it allows discrimination. And the decision fits just as well with Kilpatrick’s later spin on that philosophy: Attempts to ban racial discrimination are themselves discriminatory—against white people […] It is true that—thanks in large part to the protections that the Roberts Court is carefully dismantling—Americans experience less overt discrimination than they once did. But the obvious flaw in Alito’s logic was revealed when he defended the gerrymander as partisan and not racial by pointing out that most Black people support Democrats, “because race and politics are so intertwined.” In other words: Discriminating against Black voters is okay because they vote for Democrats. Many Democrats in the 19th century, when Black people overwhelmingly voted Republican, would have enthusiastically agreed with Alito’s assessment. But if you apply Alito’s logic to those white-supremacist Democrats, they weren’t racist either. They just, you know, wanted to win elections or something, and Black people were in the way. The fact that discriminating against Black voters would give Republicans an advantage today is not exculpatory; it only establishes a motive for discrimination.

I wrote all that before I had a chance to read an article by the Associated Press posted on Kos about the case. Yeah, I’m getting behind on my reading again after a time of carefully keeping up to date. The AP article begins:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down Louisiana’s second majority Black congressional district in a decision that could open the door for Republican-led states to eliminate Black and Latino electoral districts that tend to favor Democrats and affect the balance of power in Congress.

Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent included, “Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.” From the article:

The court did an about-face from a decision in a similar case from Alabama less than three years ago that led to a new congressional map for the state that sent two Black Democrats to Congress. The Alabama decision also prompted Louisiana lawmakers to add a second majority Black district. About a third of Louisianans are Black and they now form majorities in two of the state’s six congressional districts. Alabama has a separate appeal pending at the Supreme Court.

Emily Singer of Kos reported that Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida released a new district map that seeks to flip Congressional seats from Democrat to Republican. Though a lot of state Republicans decried Virginia’s voter recently approved redistricting plan they heaped praise on this Florida plan. Yeah, we can gerrymander, you can’t. The new map was revealed only 48 hours before it was to be voted on – no chance for public comment. And it violates the state constitution. Back in 2010 Florida voters overwhelmingly added Fair Districts standards, which also outlawed partisan gerrymandering. Communities were not to be divided for political gain. I hear it passed the legislature. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos included a tweet from Kimberley Johnson, who included a message from Trond Solberg:

Hi. Norwegian here. A big misconception about social democracy is that everyone makes the same money, and that you can’t get rich. But Norway has wealthy people, entrepreneurs, successful CEOs. The difference is that a janitor can afford healthcare. A teacher can afford a home. And the wealthy still live in a society that works. Social democracy doesn’t put a ceiling on wealth. It raises the floor. Follow for more glimpses into life in a social democracy, where dignity is not a privilege.

I went to Johnson’s tweet. It had a reply from Fac Americae Abire:

The complaint I kept hearing is “Why do I have to help ….” That’s one very good reason why social anything doesn’t work in US. Even “Love thy neighbour” doesn’t work.

And charlie859 included a meme:

“In America, people think social democracy is some kind of communism. They think capitalism is freedom. It’s not. It’s only freedom to exploit people.” – Oscar-nominated actor Skarsgård explains his egalitarian worldview

Bill also quoted an article from Mediaite that says Wall Street traders, the ones who described the nasty guy as TACO, have come up with another: NACHO – Not A Chance Hormuz Opens.

Didn't bend, didn't cower, emerged with dignity intact

I finished the book Leg, the Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It by Greg Marshall. This is a memoir of Greg growing up with “tight tendons” that cause him to walk with a limp and about recognizing he is gay and beginning to act on it. He doesn’t learn the true reason for his limp until he’s close to the age of 30. The setting is Salt Lake City in the 1990s and beyond. Marshall is one of the few in his school who is not Mormon. His mother cycles between bouts of cancer with chemo and remission, still hanging on decades later. Marshall seems to accept being gay more easily than walking with a limp. He is afraid that no one will love him. Between the short term trysts (with fear of AIDS) he does have three long-term boyfriends. He wishes that two of them were more honest, and he talks about why that matters. When he’s in middle school the French Club goes to France. His father is one of the chaperons and Marshall is a bit jealous how easily his father gets along with some of the natives, even though he knows little French. A decade later his father develops ALS and Marshall is a key caregiver, partly because his mother is going through another round of chemo. I enjoyed the book. My Sunday movie was The Adventures of Mark Twain, directed by Will Vinton, the subject of the documentary Claydream I watched last week. In my description last week I said it was rated PG-13, if that rating was around in 1985. I was wrong – it is rated G. What the documentary said was that the movie has adult themes, but marketed to kids. I had interpreted that wrong. The adult themes were not about sex. They were about topics children wouldn’t understand or have much interest in. Those topics were Satan and Heaven and Twain’s ridicule of them. The time is 1910 and Halley’s comet is in the sky again. Twain had held the belief that since he was born with the comet in the sky he’ll leave this world when it comes back. In this story to help that happen he has created an airship so he could rise up and actually meet the comet. Three of his characters – Tom Sawyer wanting to be famous, Huck Finn and his pet frog Homer, and Becky Thatcher – steal aboard. During the flight they encounter more of Twain’s stories. Homer becomes the star of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Then comes The Diary of Adam & Eve, Twain’s version of the story from the Bible. There is The Mysterious Stranger, a novella Twain never finished in which the main character is Satan who has a rather poor view of humans. Another was Captain Stormfield’s Diary, which gave Twain a chance to criticize the popular view of Heaven. These are some of the views a discouraged Twain developed later in life. Through it all the story takes advantage of all the things that Vinton had developed during his work on claymation. I enjoyed it. My favorite quote of the movie: Twain says...

The human race, in all its poverty, has only one truly effective weapon: laughter. Against the assault of laughter - ha-ha-ha-ha! - nothing can stand.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos quoted from Carbon Brief:

Renewable energy has overtaken coal to become the world’s largest source of electricity in 2025, according to think tank Ember. The growth of solar and wind meant that, for the first time since 1919, the share of coal power was lower than that of renewables. Fossil-fuel generation fell by 0.2% in 2025, the think tank’s latest annual review says, with wind and solar alone meeting 99% of the growth in electricity demand last year.

Nadra Nittle, in an article for The 19th posted on Kos, discussed book bans and libraries. Nittle tells the experience of librarians faced with demands to ban books and dealing with hostile school boards or city councils. It’s a story that’s been going on for a while, so here are some of the ideas included: Pennsylvania is behind Texas and Florida in highest rates of library censorship. Many people think other states would be higher. Because of the hostility “few fully certified librarians remain in the Philadelphia school district.” Back in the 1990s there were over 170.

“This is also a class war,” [American Library Association President Sam Helmick] said. “Whether people read freely and have access to information is really at risk. We’re in an information age. If we’re not willing to invest in our communities so they can successfully navigate the digital divide and digital citizenry, we will not be equipped to continue to be a nation of, by and for the people.” ... Despite a sustained years-long effort during the 2020s to restrict reading materials, Helmick finds hope in polls indicating that 70 percent of the public opposes censorship of any kind. “That’s quite incredible because I joke that 70 percent of Americans wouldn’t agree that water is wet,” they said. “The vast majority are uninterested in this, which makes me wonder why we’re attacking the public information sector in the middle of an information age.”

Tracy Fitzmaurice, a librarian in rural North Carolina warned her fellow librarians not to buckle to outside pressure.

Don’t do anticipatory compliance. ‘If I just move this book, maybe they’ll go away.’ They won’t. These people have been at it for five years. What it really comes down to is local elections.

Nittle linked to the American Library Association list of the most challenged books of 2025. There are 11 books in this year’s list because there is a four-way tie for eighth place.

The 2025 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts continue to originate from organized movements. In 2025, 92% of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, and decision makers, up from 72% in 2024. Less than 3% of challenges originated from individual parents.

As has been the case for many years the usual justifications for filing a complaint against a book are false claims of illegal obscenity for minors, LGBTQ characters or themes, or topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice. There were 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025. That’s second only to the 4,240 titles in 2023. In 2025, 1,671 (40%) titles were about LGBTQ people and people of color. Out of the 11 books in this year’s list three of them are definitely about LGBTQ characters. There are likely more, but book descriptions are not on the page of the list and I don’t recognize the titles. An email from March For Our Lives discussed the number of shooting deaths over the first quarter of 2026 compared to prior years. In these three months of this year there were 3,103 lives lost to gunfire. There were shooting deaths in every one of the 50 states. That is way too many. But MFOL sent the letter because that number is lower than every year since 2015, which was slightly above 2026. The death toll rose each year with the highest in 2021 at well more than 4,500 deaths in 3 months. The chart doesn’t show actual numbers. Since 2021 the death toll has dropped. The MFOL message is that the culture is shifting away from guns and their advocacy to reduce and halt gun violence is having an effect. A week ago Emily Singer of Kos reported:

Since retaking office more than a year ago, the amount of corruption and lawlessness President Donald Trump has engaged in has been truly staggering. Between his grifts and profiteering off of the presidency, his pay for play pardons, his use of the Department of Justice for political retribution, and his shredding of the Constitution to impose tariffs, launch wars, and commit war crimes without congressional approval, Trump is committing impeachable offenses at a fast clip. And now, a majority of Americans agree it’s too much, with a new Verasight/Strength in Numbers poll finding that 55% of Americans say Trump should be impeached for a third time. Another 37% opposed and another 8% said they were unsure. “That net +18 verdict puts Trump in the neighborhood of the numbers Richard Nixon saw at the peak of the Watergate scandal in August 1974,” “Strength in Numbers” author G. Elliott Morris wrote.

The nasty guy is losing support from Republicans – 21% of those who voted for him in 2024 now support impeachment. In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Kevin Kruse commenting on the Department of Justice dropping its criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve and its outgoing chairman Jerome Powell. That investigation was more about intimidating Powell to get him to lower interest rates to boost the economy before the midterm elections.

Didn't bend, didn't cower, didn't even feel the need to stand next to Trump grinning awkwardly like it was normal. And now he's emerged unscathed with his job and his dignity intact and his reputation even stronger than before. Huh. Seems like this could be a model for others in power.

Jonathan Last of The Bulwark

Yesterday Secretary of the Navy John Phelan was fired. Twenty-one days ago, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George was fired. Fifty-four days ago, the American military launched its largest war in a generation. These datapoints are linked. They are an admission by the president that America is losing the war. Because the simple fact of the matter is: You do not make high-level personnel changes in the middle of a war if you are winning.

In Monday’s roundup Dworkin quote Mike Brock of Notes from the Circus discussing an article Ben Shapiro wrote explaining why he voted for the nasty guy. Shapiro admits that the nasty guy is what every liberal critic says he is – a usurper who was constrained by strong American institutions. Brock then quoted and discussed Shapiro’s reasoning on why voting for the nasty guy was still a good idea.

The reasoning is the lunacy: “The guardrails would largely hold… his worst mistakes would end up being mitigated by the pushback of reality.” This is the argument. The president of the United States is a man who would, if he could, end the constitutional order. The reason it is acceptable to elect him is that he probably cannot. The institutions are strong enough to contain him. The Madisonian architecture will hold, the Supreme Court will strike things down, the Treasury Secretary lives on Earth, the bad picks will be replaced by the merely bad picks. The wannabe dictator is, in the Shapiro analysis, a manageable risk.

Sheesh, wasn’t that said about Hitler? In Tuesday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo.

Donald Trump lost this war in its very first days. Everything that has happened in recent weeks — the threats, the negotiations, the live-on-social-media breakdowns — has simply been a matter of trying to get free of that fact. This isn’t a political attack. It’s simply an accurate appraisal of what we all see. More importantly, it is the only way to understand what is happening now. Everything that’s happening today and for weeks has been focused on breaking Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz, something it didn’t have before the war started. That’s the definition of failure: fighting a war and continuing a war to clean up the mess the war of choice actually created. By this measure, the best way to achieve what is now the central war aim — opening the Strait — would have been simply not to start the war in the first place. You can see the reality of the power balance in the visible fact that Trump wants negotiations and an end to the conflict more than Iran does. He keeps asking for them or demanding them. Iran holds back. They have the upper hand, notwithstanding all the vast damage to infrastructure, civilian and military, Iran has suffered.

In today’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet from Anne Applebaum mentioning and linking to an article on Financial Times. Applebaum’s tweet:

Hungarian oligarchs begin fleeing the country, transferring assets, in anticipation of corruption investigations.

The article title and subtitle:

Hungary’s business elite pivots away from Viktor Orbán. Several loyalists have moved overseas while others vow to form ‘constructive co-operation’ with incoming premier.

David French of the New York Times:

A remarkable thing has happened on the world’s battlefields. Ukraine — a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion — has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process. It has become an indispensable security partner in the Western alliance, including in the war against Iran. Now, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is taking the next step, one that would have been unthinkable even as recently as 2024. By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence. This is what happens when, as Phillips Payson O’Brien wrote in a piece for The Atlantic, “Kyiv appears to have given up on the United States.” If that is true — and it looks as though it is — it may be worse news for the United States than it is for Ukraine.

Ask the taxi driver what their PhD is in

This episode of Gaslit Nation is titled The Untold Inspiring History Behind Mrs. Orwell That Terrifies the Kremlin. Host and author Andrea Chalupa and artist Maya Hayuk discuss Chalupa’s new graphic novel Mrs. Orwell. Both Chalupa and Hayuk are of Ukrainian descent and children of refugees. One might think that Hayuk is the illustrator of the book, but that was Brahm Revel (I looked it up – Goodreads gives it 4.05/5). The discussion between Chlupa and Hayak is over an hour long and was posted on April 7, a few days before the election in Hungary. I worked from the transcript. They do talk about Orwell, but not much. Most of their congenial discussion is about having similar Ukrainian ancestry. Chalupa began:

I want to remind everyone that Hungary, Orban's Hungary, is the Kremlin's agent in the EU. There's been several investigations confirming that, including a recent one, showing how Orban's government was on the phone with the Kremlin, doing everything they could to weaken EU sanctions designed to try to stop Russia's genocidal invasion of Ukraine.

Good to know Orbán has been booted. Mrs. Orwell is Eileen Blair, wife of George Orwell, who wrote Animal Farm and 1984, novels that explain fascism. His real name was Eric Blair. Chalupa wrote the film Mr. Jones about the Holodomor, Stalin's Genocide famine in Ukraine (I’ve watched and recommend it). George Orwell makes an appearance in that film and Chalupa wanted Eileen Blair to do the same, but she needed her own project. And this graphic novel is it. Chalupa says of the book:

It's a tribute to this unsung heroine of literature. There would've been no George Orwell without her. She is so important to his greatest works of art. It was really a reminder to us that it takes a team, it takes community, it takes a love affair to get the truth out into the world today. We all have to find our great loves in this moment. We all have to hold on tight to the gentleness inside ourselves and others and show ourselves in grace and get through this time together and create, create, create, whatever that looks like to you.

Hayuk, speaking through grief and rage over Ukraine, said that the Iran war is great for Putin. Sanctions were lifted because the world needs his oil. The nasty guy is upset with NATO for refusing to help him in Iran – and dissolving the West is one of Putin’s goals. Yet the Ukraine war was close to collapsing the Russian economy – until the sanctions were lifted. Chalupa added that puts Ukraine as the front in the global war between democracy and fascism. And Russia is one of the nodes of the transnational crime network we’re up against. Netanyahu is another node. Netanyahu has said the Iran war will be long. The nasty guy responds with the war being good cover to drop the Russian sanctions. Hayuk wondered how a guy with 34 felonies was elected president. He wouldn’t be hired at McDonalds. Chalupa noted there are laws, which is separate from enforcing the laws. America doesn’t have the moral will to enforce its laws. At minute 36 they begin discussing Orwell. He served in the British Imperial Police in India for five years. He was one of the “boots smashing the face.” Women helped him out and shaped him, such as his Aunt Nellie, who helped him find a job at a London bookstore. It was Eileen, a springtime spirit. She gave him a happy nest from which he could create. Hayuk then talked about becoming an artist. She inherited talent from her father, though he wasn’t a professional artist. For her art isn’t a career, but a way of living, of being an activist, engaged deeply in the world. She has drawn and painted, but is also a photographer and theater scenic designer and builder. It’s gig work with a lot of administrative work. It’s a decent living. Chalupa said that researching and writing Mr. Jones she saw the same forces face us today. Back in 2015 she warned people that the nasty guy is a Russian asset. Most of her warnings were ignored. That prompted starting Gaslit Nation. Part of being defiant is building something. Chalupa and Hayuk talk about their ancestry. While in a German refugee camp at the end of WWII one of Chalupa’s ancestors got a Ukrainian language edition of Animal Farm. Chalupa now has that book. In that camp the Ukrainians organized to teach kids – whatever your profession back home you had to teach it to the kids. Even ballet. And Animal Farm was assigned reading. That prompted Chalupa to say many refugees are quite talented. Their potential needs to be developed for the sake of the world. Hayuk added that “every time you get into a taxi cab, have a conversation with what the taxi driver's PhD is in.”