Dana Milbank: Kevin McCarthy is the O.J. Simpson of Jan. 6

“I will pursue as my primary goal in life the killer or killers who slaughtered Nicole and Mr. Goldman.” — O.J. Simpson, vowing to find the real killers

“We will run our own investigation.”— Kevin McCarthy, vowing to find the real insurrectionists

Last Thursday was another key day in House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s pitched battle against reality — and the English language.

On abortion: “We’ve watched babies survive at 13 weeks and others, that be as small as an M&M wrapper and be able to have life,” he told California’s KGET-TV.

An M&M wrapper? An Eminem rapper?

On Afghanistan: “We’ve watched the biggest military failure that we have watched in my history of my life.”

Vietnam must not be in his history of his life.

And then, the coup de grace. How deeply, an interviewer asked, was President Donald Trump involved in the events of Jan. 6?

“The FBI has investigated this,” McCarthy replied. “The Senate had bipartisan committees that come back. And you know what they have found? That there is no involvement.”

No involvement! No collusion! It was a perfect call.

To the extent that McCarthy has control over what comes out of his mouth, what he voiced was a lie. The Senate probe avoided the question of Trump’s role, and the FBI has reached no such conclusion. (McCarthy was apparently referring to a Reuters report citing anonymous sources on whether Jan. 6 was the result of a centrally controlled conspiracy.)

McCarthy embodies the corruption of truth that has consumed the GOP. He led the effort to kill an independent, bipartisan Jan. 6 commission negotiated by his own point man. He then marshaled Republican votes against the bill creating the House select committee to scrutinize the attack. Next, he appointed two saboteurs to the committee (one with an obvious conflict), and when Speaker Nancy Pelosi objected, he called a Republican boycott of the panel.

Now he’s threatening telecom companies that cooperate with the committee’s request to preserve phone and social media records of people (including lawmakers) who may have been involved in the insurrection. A future “Republican majority will not forget,” he threatened, and would hold cooperating companies “fully accountable.”

But, rest assured: He’s still seeking the real culprits — just like O.J. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/07/kevin-mccarthy-jan-6-investigation-culprits-interview/

Reid J. Epstein and Catie Edmondson: On Afghanistan, G.O.P. Assails the Pullout It Had Supported Under Trump

Early last year, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, praised former President Donald J. Trump’s deal to pull American troops out of Afghanistan as “a positive step.” As secretary of state, Mike Pompeo helped negotiate that agreement with the Taliban. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri pressed last November for a withdrawal as soon as possible.

Now, the three are among dozens of prominent Republicans who, with President Biden seeing the pullout through, have sharply reversed themselves — assailing Mr. Biden even as he keeps a promise that Mr. Trump had made, and carries out a policy to which they had given their full-throated support.

The collective U-turn reflects Republicans’ eagerness to attack Mr. Biden and ensure that he pays a political price for the way he ended the war. With Mr. Trump reversing himself as the withdrawal grew chaotic and, in its endgame, deadly, it also offers new evidence of how allegiance to the former president has come to override compunctions about policy flip-flops or political hypocrisy.

“You can’t be going out there and saying, ‘This war was worthless and we need to bring the troops home’ in May, and now hitting Biden for doing just that,” said Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a Republican who broke with Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and has long favored maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan. “There’s no shame anymore.” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/us/politics/republicans-afghanistan-withdrawal-support.html

Adam Serwer: Five Justices Did This Because They Could

Under Trump, the justices allowed policies such as the administration’s travel ban targeted at mostly Muslim nations, its prohibition against trans people serving in the military, and its restrictions on asylum to go into effect. Under Biden, they have barred the administration’s attempt to prevent evictions because of the coronavirus pandemic and accepted a lower-court ruling demanding that the White House reimpose the controversial Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced migrants into “precarious conditions in dangerous Mexican border cities where thousands became victims of kidnappings, rapes and extortion,” according to The Washington Post. The decision compels the Biden administration to renegotiate an agreement with a foreign country reached during a prior administration; deference to the president’s constitutional authority to set foreign policy, which the justices had memorably cited in Trump-era cases, was suddenly absent.

“What is so troubling about this trend is its continuing acceleration, not in volume, but in quality,” Vladeck said. “The Court seems increasingly untroubled by deciding big questions that affect lots of people this way.” Having a conservative-dominated tribunal determine such questions, however, is an ideal arrangement for a party that has not won a majority of the votes in a presidential election since Tobey Maguire was Spider-Man, and that sees the popular majorities that vote against it as composed of illegitimate semi-citizens who have no right to govern. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/supreme-court-guts-roe-shadow-docket/619957/

Jackie Calmes: With Texas abortion law, a far-fetched dystopia has come to pass

In its term starting next month, the Supreme Court will consider a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation. That the court even agreed in May to take the case showed the impact of the Trump justices. It’s safe to say no prior configuration of the court would have done so. Roe established a constitutional right to abortion until a fetus becomes viable, generally considered at about the 24th week of pregnancy, far beyond the cutoff dates in the Mississippi or Texas laws. As recently as 2016, the court struck down a less restrictive Texas law.

The current stampede started in 2019, just after the Senate confirmed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the second of Trump’s nominees and the one who solidified an antiabortion majority on the high court. Red states rushed to enact clearly unconstitutional laws, to force the issue. “What I’m trying to do here is get this case in front of the Supreme Court so Roe v. Wade can be overturned,” boasted the sponsor of an Alabama law to criminalize abortion.

For decades, the antiabortion cause has spurred conservatives to political activism, in turn prompting Republican officeholders to work harder than Democrats (and play dirtier) in legislative and judicial battles. Geoff Garin, a longtime Democratic pollster, said the latest developments “will raise the stakes” in next year’s elections “and drive up Democratic turnout.”

For abortion rights, it’s most likely too late.

Three years ago this month, at Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, I thought the red-robed protesters evoking “The Handmaid’s Tale” were a bit over the top. I was wrong. They warned us. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-09-02/with-texas-abortion-law-a-far-fetched-dystopia-has-come-to-pass

Dana Milbank: Texas shows us what post-democracy America would look like

Texas this week showed us what a post-democracy America would look like.

Thanks to a series of actions by the Texas legislature and governor, we now see exactly what the Trumpified Republican Party wants: to take us to an America where women cannot get abortions, even in cases of rape and incest; an America where almost everybody can openly carry a gun in public, without license, without permit, without safety training and without fingerprinting; and an America where law-abiding Black and Latino citizens are disproportionately denied the right to vote.

This is where Texas and other red states are going, or have already gone. It is where the rest of America will go, unless those targeted by these new laws — women, people of color and all small “d” democrats — rise up.

On Wednesday, a Texas law that bans abortions later than six weeks went into effect, after the Supreme Court let a deadline pass that would have blocked the statute. Because 85 to 90 percent of women get abortions after six weeks, it amounts to a near-total ban. Already on the books in Texas is a “trigger” law that automatically bans all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. At least 10 other states have done likewise.

Also Wednesday, a new law went into effect in Texas, over the objections of law enforcement, allowing all Texans otherwise allowed to own guns to carry them in public, without a license and without training. Now, 20 states have blessed such “permitless carry.”

And on Tuesday, the Texas legislature passed the final version of the Republican voting bill that bans drive-through and 24-hour voting, both used disproportionately by voters of color; imposes new limits on voting by mail, blocks election officials from distributing mail-ballot applications unless specifically requested; gives partisan poll watchers more leeway to influence vote counting; and places new rules and paperwork requirements that deter people from helping others to vote or to register. At least 17 states have adopted similar restrictions.

In Texas, the legislature this term also banned the fictional menace of “critical race theory,” put in new restrictions on demonstrations and banned homeless encampments. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) also banned mask and vaccine mandates while the pandemic rages. Meanwhile the legislature failed to expand Medicaid eligibility to low-wage workers, refusing billions of federal health-care dollars for the state with the most uninsured residents in the nation. Instead, Texas cleared the way for people to buy beer and wine before noon on Sundays.

Less voting and less health care, but more guns and more booze: This is the present in Texas, and the future for all of us — unless we mobilize to arrest the Republicans’ destruction of democracy. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/01/texas-shows-us-what-post-democracy-america-would-look-like/

David Frum: Texas Republicans Got What They Wanted. They Might Regret It.

Today, accountability has suddenly arrived. Texas Republicans have just elevated abortion rights to perhaps the state’s supreme ballot issue in 2022. Perhaps they have calculated correctly. Perhaps a Texas voting majority really wants to see the reproductive lives of Texas women restrained by random passersby. If that’s the case, that’s an important political fact, and one that will reshape the politics of the country in 2024.

But it’s also possible that Texas Republicans have miscalculated. Instead of narrowly failing again and again, feeding the rage of their supporters against shadowy and far-away cultural enemies, abortion restricters have finally, actually, and radically got their way. They have all but outlawed abortion in the nation’s second-largest state, and voted to subject women to an intrusive and intimate regime of supervision and control not imposed on men. At last, a Republican legislative majority has enacted its declared beliefs in almost their fullest form—and won permission from the courts to impose its will on the women of its state.

This is a new reality, and one that opens a way for the prolonged U.S. abortion-rights debate to be resolved. If the Texas Republicans prosper politically, then abortion-rights advocates must accept that the country truly is much more conservative on abortion than they appreciated and adjust their goals accordingly. But if not, and I’m guessing that the answer is not, anti-abortion-rights politicians are about to feel the shock of their political lives. For the first time since the 1970s, they will have to reckon with mobilized opposition that also regards abortion as issue No. 1 in state and local politics. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/texas-republicans-abortion-ban-backfire/619956/

Maureen Dowd: Drowning Our Future in the Past

It isn’t a pretty picture.

One coast is burning. The other is under water. In between, anti-abortion vigilantes may soon rampage across gunslinging territory.

What has happened to this country?

America is reeling backward, strangled by the past, nasty and uncaring, with everyone at one another’s throats.

With its new abortion law, sending women back to the back alley and encouraging Stasi-like participation from the citizenry, Texas now becomes the capital of American unreason. The law “essentially delegated enforcement of that prohibition to the populace at large,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.

There were medieval fiefs more enlightened than the Lone Star G.O.P.

Between putting women in danger by pushing that law and putting children in danger by imposing his anti-mask mania on school districts that want to mask up, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has become a scourge of the first rank.

A cynical slice of the Republican Party — and this includes Trump — privately denigrates anti-abortion activists as wackos, but publicly moves in lock-step with them in order to cling to that base and keep power.

But the anti-abortion forces were somehow clever enough to hijack the Supreme Court and Republicans will have to contend with the backlash when the court tosses Roe v. Wade aside.

With a memory like a goldfish, America circles its bowl, returning to where we have been, unable to move forward, condemned to repeat a past we should escape. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/04/opinion/drowning-our-future-in-the-past.html

Perry Bacon Jr: The Texas abortion decision shows why the Democrats must push to add four justices to the court

Adding justices to the Supreme Court is a terrible solution to the problem of a majority that is so radicalized it assented to Texas’s scheme to basically outlaw abortion in the state. It is also the only actual solution.

It’s a terrible idea for obvious reasons. We don’t want the judiciary to become a third branch of government dominated by partisanship. We don’t want justices deciding cases based on the party they align with. We don’t want to set off a tit-for-tat whereby Democrats add judges to create a Democratic majority when they are in power, and Republicans in turn add judges to create a GOP majority once they regain control — with ominous implications for rule of law. Would mayors, governors and even presidents from the party that doesn’t “control” the Supreme Court start ignoring rulings from a majority formed with newly appointed justices of the opposite party?

But many of the worst outcomes from a partisanized Supreme Court are already occurring. Major decisions break along party lines. The current 6-3 conservative majority essentially acts as an arm of the Republican Party, frequently overturning laws and policies adopted by blue states and Democratic presidents, defending those adopted by GOP presidents and red states, and issuing rulings on voting rights and gerrymandering that clearly benefit the GOP. And one party has already fiddled with that supposedly sacrosanct number nine: The Republicans used their control of the Senate to temporarily turn the court into an eight-member body after Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, but rushed to make sure it remained at nine in 2020, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. The majority may not always side with the Republicans (it upheld Obamacare and rejected the Trump election lawsuits), but it’s clearly on Team Red. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/03/texas-abortion-decision-shows-why-democrats-must-push-add-four-justices-court/

Robert Reich: Trump’s coup attempt has not stopped – and Democrats must wake up

The former president’s attempted coup is not stopping. He still refuses to concede and continues to rile up supporters with his bogus claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Tens of millions of Americans believe him.

Last Sunday, at a Republican event in Franklin, North Carolina, Congressman Madison Cawthorn, repeating Trump’s big lie, called the rioters who stormed the Capitol on 6 January “political hostages”.

Cawthorn also advised the crowd to begin stockpiling ammunition for what he said was likely to be American-versus-American “bloodshed” over unfavorable election results.

“Much as I am willing to defend our liberty at all costs,” he said, “there’s nothing I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American.”

Yet even as Trump’s attempted coup gains traction, most of the rest of America continues to sleep. We’ve become so outrage-fatigued by his antics, and so preoccupied with the more immediate threats of the Delta variant and climate-fueled wildfires and hurricanes, that we prefer not to know.

A month ago it was reported that during his last weeks in office Trump tried to strong-arm the justice department to falsely declare the 2020 presidential election fraudulent, even threatening to fire the acting attorney general if he didn’t: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the [Republican] congressmen.”

The news barely registered on America’s collective mind. The Olympics and negotiations over the infrastructure bill got more coverage.

It is imperative that America wake up. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/05/donald-trump-coup-attempts-election-2020

Omer Aziz: Bin Laden Won

The Western intellectuals who wrote book after book about the threat from Islam were working within a ripe tradition. Ten years before 9/11, the Princeton historian Bernard Lewis had coined an important phrase in The Atlantic to describe the coming conflict. “This is no less than a clash of civilizations,” Lewis wrote, “the perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.” By defining the battle in such grandiose terms, we accepted the same narrative as the jihadis — that this was a war over civilization, for the very soul of humanity. The war on terror, we were told, wasn’t a counterterrorism operation or a law-enforcement matter, but a battle of good versus evil.

Twenty years later, it feels like evil won. Osama bin Laden had laid a trap, even if that wasn’t his original intention. Only by getting the West drawn into endless wars abroad, and into plots against enemies at home, could he bankrupt the American behemoth. In the decade since his death, the results have been plain to see: conflict and instability across the greater Middle East; more refugee flows into the West, combined with anti-immigrant violence in response; the rise in America of terrorist attacks carried out by white extremists, goaded on by an authoritarian leader who made a name for himself demonizing Muslims. The surveillance state now has extensive access to every facet of our lives. Trust in political institutions is decaying. Democracy itself is in peril.

In many ways, Donald Trump was the singular creature of the forever wars, elevated to national office in a country that had become exhausted and angry at outsiders. All of Trump’s signature policies — from banning Muslims to building the Wall — found a receptive audience in an America that saw its way of life threatened by foreign enemies. It was only a matter of time before contempt for the Other turned inward.

Here lay the great tragedy of the 9/11 era: that something much worse than terror wounded our society over the last two decades. An essential faith in the future was lost. Perhaps this is true for the end of all empires, and despair always precedes the fall. But if younger generations are to emerge from the darkness of the 9/11 era — and it remains my naïve hope that they will — we must first acknowledge the damage we wrought on ourselves. That was the deepest cut of all. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/bin-laden-won-the-war-on-terror.html