I go to work, I sue the federal government, and then I go home

My Sunday movie was The Blue Caftan. It is a film from Morocco. Halim and his wife Mina run a caftan shop. She runs the counter, he makes the caftans. One might think of the dressing gowns that are worn around the house. That’s not what he makes. These are elaborate outfits in satin and silk with gold cord sewn onto the fabric in elaborate patterns. The blue one he has been asked to make will take six weeks to complete by hand. Halim dearly loves Mina. He also goes to the men’s baths and while there frequently has liaisons. As the story opens they have hired Youssef as an apprentice. Halim is getting behind in his work. At times they all wonder whether bringing Youssef into the business is wise because the craftsmanship may be fading as machines might soon do equivalent work. In working together Halim begins to see Youssef might be receptive to his overtures. In one way the movie does go where expected. In other ways it very much does not. I wanted a different sort of movie this time and I certainly got it. This is a tender story. One aspect of the ending was very much a surprise, yet very fitting. I enjoyed and recommend this one. One may think (as I did) this is a gay story, so which man wears the caftan? Neither. It’s not that kind gay story. IMDb trivia for this movie says this was Morocco’s submission to the 2023 Oscars for Best International Feature Film. It is worthy of that category. Erin Tulley of Daily Kos Activism reported on Saturday that the US has surpassed 400 mass shootings in 2023. That’s an average of almost two a day. It’s devastating news. I note, as have others, mass shootings have become so common they usually don’t make the news. Tulley noted that an assault weapons ban went into effect in 1994. It reduced the risk of dying from a mass shooting by 70%. Congress failed to extend the ban in 2004. An assault weapon was used in most of the horrific mass shootings – Sandy Hook, Tree of Life Synagogue, Parkland, Uvalde. Time to renew the ban. The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom reporting on the state’s politics and policy. Eleanor Klibanoff of the Tribune wrote about the reaction of the Texas Republicans to Obama being elected president. This is the second of two articles and I missed the first one. Back in 2008 Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (now governor) turned his office into a Republican war machine. He and his office filed suit against any Obama policy they didn’t like, 30 in six years. Abbott defined his role: “I go into the office, I sue the federal government, and then I go home.” As part of that effort Abbott began to gather other state AGs into joining suits with him. He also began asking judges to issue, not regional or state, but national injunctions. A Texas spat with Obama could affect the entire country. The usual charge was that Obama overstepped his authority and sidelining Congress. Another charge was whatever Obama did was a violation of the Constitution (as Abbott interpreted it). A frequent target was the EPA which was trying to regulate the Texas oil industry. Abbott’s successors, down to Ken Paxton today, have built on what Abbott created. Paxton was the one leading the charge against transgender students. He was also the one choosing cases in such a way to make sure his case was heard by a conservative judge. And because Obama didn’t place a priority on judges (his VP is not making that mistake) there were a lot of open positions for the nasty guy to fill. Steve Inskeep of NPR talked to Russel Vought. He had been the nasty guy’s budget director and now heads the think tank Center for Renewing America. That group is planning how to reshape the executive branch if the nasty guy gets back in the White House. Part of their goal is expressed by the nasty guying “I will totally obliterate the deep state.” Vought’s goal is essentially, as he said:

Civil servants should be oriented to accomplishing the agenda of a president, not the office of the president, not their institutions, Office of Management Budget or the EPA or Department of Justice. They should be working for the agenda of a president that gets elected by voters.

Yeah, that’s trashing the idea of a civil servant who carries out the laws passed by Congress. Vought’s goals aren’t aimed at just the employees of the cabinet departments. He’s after the agencies that Congress created but set apart from the president – the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Elections Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, esepcially the Environmental Protection Agency, and whatever agency creates regulations (should be better known as consumer and democracy protections) that conservatives don’t like. Inskeep did bring on a rebuttal of sorts, Jane Manners of Temple University who explained what the administrative state really does and that some agencies need to be insulated from political influence. Vought still claimed that presidents should be able to influence all agencies, though meddling in some might be unwise, offensive, or odious. He’s confident the nasty guy, back in the White House would not do that. That’s a confidence I don’t at all share. Inskeep included some words by Republican presidential candidate Will Hurd (hadn’t heard of him), who shares my skepticism. Inskeep describing what Hurd said of the nasty guy, “He's not being prosecuted because he's running, it's the other way around.” And Hurd himself: “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.” In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted an article in Rolling Stone also discussing plans being assembled for when the nasty guy gets back in the White House. It refers to Jack Smith, who handed down two sets of indictments.

Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters. ... In this vision, such prosecutors would go after the usual targets: Smith, Smith’s team, President Joe Biden, Biden’s family, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray. But they’d also go after smaller targets, from members of the Biden 2020 campaign to more obscure government offices.

Dworkin also quoted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and related tweets reporting on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, recently flipped from conservative to progressive. In that situation it is not at all surprising (but sill quite annoying) that the conservatives would issue claims of the progressives that use such words as “rogue,” “usurp,” “illegitimate,” and “gut.” From what I can piece together, there is a rule in Wisconsin that public officials must hold meetings in public. Conservatives on the court rewrote those rules decades ago. And the progressives met behind closed doors (certainly permissible under conservative rules) to end the closed door rule. And doing so, according to the conservatives, is a blatant power grab. Could be an interesting term ahead for the Wisconsin Supremes. The progressives may have a majority, but the chief justice is still conservative. Down in the comments by Denise Oliver Velez is a cartoon by Clay Jones:

MAGA person: All these indictments are election interference... Second person: And what’s he being indicted for? Third person: Election inteference.

In another roundup Dworkin quoted David Rothkopf of the Daily Beast. He said defeating the nasty guy and his defenders in the 2024 election isn’t enough to save our democracy.

That is because quite apart from the harm done (and still threatened) by Trump and his followers, our system has already sustained such deep damage that it is more than just at risk. It is profoundly broken. Part of this is the result of a decades-long systematic effort by those on the right to promote minority rule in America and, in particular, to ensure that the interests and power of a small fraction of Americans—primarily rich, white, Christian men—would remain protected. Part of this is due to the fact our system was born deeply flawed and our efforts to fix it were fitful and incomplete. Part of this is simply due to neglect, to failing to do the work of reassessment and reinvention that the Founders themselves anticipated would be a central strength of their legacy.