Susan B. Glasser: Trolled by Trump, Again

At the end of another long week of Trumpian fury, signifying not much of anything, we are no closer to knowing how the story ends, only that, for now at least, the fantasy—or nightmare, depending on your perspective—of Trump handcuffed and perp-walked into a sordid new place in American history as our only indicted former President will have to wait a little longer.

But, then again, by now we’re used to waiting. It’s worth noting, in that context, that more time has elapsed between January 6, 2021, and now, with the Justice Department still contemplating what, if anything, to do about Trump’s role in the insurrection, than did during the entirety of the Watergate scandal, from the initial break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters, in 1972, to Richard Nixon’s resignation. (We’re currently at eight hundred and six days past January 6th and counting, in case you were wondering.) And, of course, it’s been far, far longer than that since July, 2006, when Trump had his ill-fated tryst with Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, and October, 2016, when she received the six-figure payoff from Michael Cohen, acting, he says, at Trump’s behest.

So, is this, at last, what the law finally catching up with Trump looks like? I guess we can wait a few more days, weeks, or months to know the answer. In the meantime, we’ll still have Donald Trump to kick around. I’ve just received a new message, in fact, from him. He seems very excited to have lasted the week without being arrested and wants us all to know that Bragg’s office is wracked by “tremendous dissension and chaos” because there is in fact “NO CASE” against him. Make of that what you will. You’ve been warned. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/trolled-by-trump-again

Michael C. Bender and J. David Goodman: As Trump Rallies in Waco, His Followers Shore Up His 2024 Bid

In the last 28 months, former President Donald J. Trump has been voted out of the White House, impeached for his role in the Capitol riot and criticized for marching many of his fellow Republicans off an electoral cliff in the 2022 midterms with his drumbeat of election-fraud lies.

He dined at home with a white supremacist in November. He called for the termination of the Constitution in December. He declared himself “more angry” than ever in January. He vowed to make retribution a hallmark of a second term in the White House in March.

He has embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, described President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a genius and used a gay joke to mock a fellow Republican. He has become the target of four criminal investigations, including one in New York that he warned might result in “potential death & destruction.”

Still, Mr. Trump remains a strong front-runner for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination. At least one reason for this political durability was assembled Saturday morning outside the airport in the central Texas city of Waco in various combinations of red caps, antagonistic T-shirts and MAGA-button flair — the Trump die-hards. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/us/politics/trump-2024-rally-waco-texas.html

Heather Cox Richardson: Why Trump’s Hush Money Payment Is a Big Deal

Trump bought Daniels’s silence because he was willing to break laws in order to get elected. Then–Trump fixer Michael Cohen paid Daniels for her story in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. Cohen testified that he paid her through a shell company to keep Trump’s connection to the payment hidden.

Then Trump reimbursed Cohen for ‘legal fees.’

That’s a problem with regard to business filings and tax fraud. It is also a problem for the campaign finance laws intended to protect clean elections. Cohen’s payment was a contribution to the Trump campaign because it was made ‘in order to influence the 2016 presidential election.’ The payment was intended to make sure voters didn’t hear another sex scandal in October 2016, just after the Access Hollywood tape came out in which Trump talked vulgarly about sexually assaulting women, when it might have hurt his chances at election. The $130,000 contribution was far above the individual limit of $2,700, and the Trump campaign did not disclose it.

This is not small potatoes. When the issue came to light, Cohen pleaded guilty for his role in the payments, and he was sentenced to three years in prison. Cohen testified that he made the payments at Trump’s direction. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-22-2023

NY Times Editorial Board: The Dangerous Race to Put More Children to Work

In February, the Department of Labor announced that it had discovered 102 teenagers working in hazardous conditions for a company that cleans meatpacking equipment at factories around the country, a violation of federal standards. The minors, ages 13 to 17, were working with dangerous chemicals and cleaning brisket saws and head splitters; three of them suffered injuries, including one with caustic burns.

Ten of those children worked in Arkansas, including six at a factory owned by the state’s second-largest private employer, Tyson Foods. Rather than taking immediate action to tighten standards and prevent further exploitation of children, Arkansas went the opposite direction. Earlier this month, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, signed legislation that would actually make it easier for companies to put children to work. The bill eliminated a requirement that children under 16 get a state work permit before being employed, a process that required them to verify their age and get the permission of a parent or guardian.

Arkansas is at the vanguard of a concerted effort by business lobbyists and Republican legislators to roll back federal and state regulations that have been in place for decades to protect children from abuse. Echoing that philosophy, bills are moving through at least nine other state legislatures that would expand work hours for children, lift restrictions on hazardous occupations, allow them to work in locations that serve alcohol, or lower the state minimum wage for minors. The Labor Department says there has been a 69 percent increase since 2018 in the illegal employment of children.

The response in these states is not to protect those children from exploitation, but instead to make it legal. Voters in these states may support deregulation, but they may not know that businesses can use these bills to work children harder, cut their wages and put them in danger. There is time for them to persuade lawmakers to say no to these abuses. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/opinion/editorials/arkansas-child-labor.html

Ron Brownstein: How Working-Class White Voters Became the GOP’s Foundation

The escalating confrontation between the parties over the federal budget rests on a fundamental paradox: The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is now more likely than Democrats to represent districts filled with older and lower-income voters who rely on the social programs that the GOP wants to cut.

House Republicans, in their ongoing struggle with President Joe Biden over raising the debt ceiling, have signaled they will push for sweeping reductions in domestic social programs, likely including Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, the principal federal programs providing health care for working-age adults. And while House Republicans appear to have backed away from pursuing reductions in Social Security and Medicare, the conservative Republican Study Committee has set a long-term goal of cutting and partially privatizing both programs.

The Republicans who seem least concerned about targeting the social safety net are those who represent the places that need those programs the most. That’s another telling measure of just how fully the concrete has settled beneath a modern political alignment that revolves more around culture than class. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/03/working-class-white-voters-gop-house-agenda/673500/

David A. Graham: Wokeness Has Replaced Socialism as the Great Conservative Bogeyman

Defining what conservatives mean by wokeness is, as the writer Bethany Mandel learned the hard way this week, not easily done. For the purposes of discussion here, it also isn’t necessary. Many people use the term in different ways, to describe a general constellation of progressive ideas on race, gender, and sexuality, but what matters is the fact that they are using it, and using it somewhat indiscriminately. After all, most of what an earlier generation of conservatives called “socialism” wasn’t really socialist, either.

“Socialism” has faded as a rallying cry because this conservative movement can hardly pretend to be horrified by big government, and it has learned that its voters aren’t especially interested in cutting spending programs, either, at least the ones that benefit them.

Attacking wokeness fills that void—we might even cheekily call this the GOP’s successor ideology—with an alternative that is malleable enough to apply to nearly any situation. But as the SVB story demonstrates, the malleability is also a weakness. If wokeness is an explanation for everything, it is also an explanation for nothing. Although it’s a good way to gather a range of cultural resentments, it offers little in the way of policy ideas to improve lives, even in contrast to vague promises such as trickle-down economics. No one has yet provided any explanation of what an anti-woke bank-regulation regime might look like—and no one will. This is an attack suited to a party that exists only to campaign, with no interest in actually governing. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/wokeness-socialism-liberal-threat-public-discourse/673430/

Helen Lewis: How Did America’s Weirdest Most Freedom Loving State Fall For An Authoritarian Governor

DeSantis is a politician who preaches freedom while suspending elected officials who offend him, banning classroom discussions he doesn’t like, carrying out hostile takeovers of state universities, and obstructing the release of public records whenever he can. And somehow Florida, a state that bills itself as the home of the ornery and the resistant, the obstinate and the can’t-be-trodden-on, the libertarian and the government-skeptic, has fallen for the most keenly authoritarian governor in the United States. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ron-desantis-florida-state-politics-gop/673489/

The DeSantis Conundrum

DeSantis’ biggest political asset is that he’s viewed favorably by nearly all of the Republican Party’s voters — across the ideological spectrum.

His biggest challenge is that those sky-high approval numbers are likely to falter now that he’s sparring with former President Trump — and as he makes tough decisions on where he stands on hot-button national issues.

But, so far in his public pronouncements, DeSantis has left little daylight between himself and Trump on policy — on Ukraine (at first), his combative tone on cultural fights and skepticism toward COVID-19 vaccines (where he's positioned himself to Trump's right).

But by siding with the MAGA wing of the party, he risks alienating traditional Republicans, who still make up a majority of the GOP electorate. https://www.axios.com/2023/03/26/desantis-conundrum-trump-maga-polls

Stephen Collinson: Trump leans into extremism at first 2024 rally as legal woes mount

Donald Trump is igniting his White House bid at a moment of unprecedented peril in the criminal investigations against him – a confluence that could send America into a new political and legal collision.

Trump’s wild rhetoric at his first official 2024 campaign rally Saturday previewed the divisive national moment ahead should he be indicted in any of multiple criminal probes. As he whipped up a demagogic fervor in Waco, Texas, to try to secure a new presidency dedicated to “retribution,” Trump’s extremism – laced with suggestions of violence – left no doubt he would be willing to take the country to a dark place to save himself. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/27/politics/trump-extremism-2024-legal-woes/index.html

Greg Sargent: In Michigan, an agenda countering the anti-woke GOP frenzy takes shape

The advent of “right to work” in Michigan — and neighboring Wisconsin — resulted from the GOP’s 2010 takeover of many state governments. As the American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson notes, those laws — entrenching antilabor policy in the heart of the Democratic Rust Belt — were as central to the GOP’s radicalization as a national party as its hard-right cultural lurch has been.

If Michigan Democrats repeal “right to work” while protecting abortion and LGBTQ rights — making voters feel represented in the process — it could start undoing those big developments that haunt the party and the country.

There is a long way to go. Wisconsin, where the GOP controls the legislature, will remain “right to work” for years to come. Democratic majorities have proven skittish about implementing pro-labor policy in places with less union history, such as Virginia.

But getting the labor-culture balance right could prove just the antidote to the reactionary GOP frenzy. If Republicans can sell their culture war agenda as appealing to “working-class values,” so too can Democrats sell an unabashed liberal answer to it as better for workers — on economic issues and cultural values alike. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/27/michigan-democrats-repeal-right-to-work/

Elaine Godfrey: Trump Begins the ‘Retribution’ Tour

You’d think that, by now, Donald Trump’s fans would be tired of all this. The long lines and the self-indulgent speeches and the relentless blasting of Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” as they stand outside exposed to the elements. But they aren’t. Not at all.

After six years, the former president’s rallies still have summer-camp vibes—at least at first. At last night’s event in Waco, Texas—the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign—Trump’s thousands of supporters seemed delighted simply to be together at the Waco airport hangar, wearing their ultra maga T-shirts and drinking lemonade in the hot sun. Sure, the vendors ran out of water at one point, and there was no shade to speak of, but nobody really complained. They were too busy singing along to the Village People and bonding with new friends over their shared interests (justice, freedom, theories about a ruling Deep State cabal).

But the sunny mood of Trump’s supporters contrasted with his 2024 campaign message, which is different this time around—darker, more vengeful, and, if such a thing is possible, even more self-absorbed. “The abuses of power that we are witnessing at all levels of government will go down as among the most shameful, corrupt, and depraved chapters” in history, Trump told the crowd in a clear reference to a potential indictment he’s facing related to hush-money payments to the porn actor Stormy Daniels—and probably also to the three other main legal cases against him. He spent 30 minutes soliloquizing about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the corrupt “thugs” in America’s justice system, and the apparent threat to his attorney-client privilege. Behind Trump, supporters held up witch hunt signs that had been given out by the campaign. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/03/donald-trump-rally-waco-2024-campaign/673526

David A. Graham: The Most Disturbing Part of Trump’s Latest Rant

At his rallies in 2016, Trump used to tell his supporters, “I am your voice.” Last night, he offered something more sinister. “I am your warrior. I am your justice,” he told them. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

Choosing Waco for his first campaign rally of the season was a little on the nose even for Trump, a man who has always relished a chance to say the quiet part out loud. In the spring of 1993, federal law-enforcement agents laid siege to the Branch Davidian compound, where a leader had bound his followers to him with apocalyptic warnings. Thirty years later, here was Trump, whipping up his own supporters with claims of similar law-enforcement overreach—which, in Trump’s case, may mean being charged with crimes related to his dealings with a star of Porking With Pride 2.

At times over the past week, Trump has seemed almost giddy at the prospect of an indictment, reportedly musing with aides about how he might behave during a potential perp walk. The past few days have also been anxious ones for Trump, according to the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, but also according to anyone reading Trump’s frantic social-media posts. On Truth Social, in between site ads for mole and skin-tag removal, the former president has been Truthing and Retruthing with the all-caps enthusiasm of a middle schooler hopped up on Pixy Stix. “EVERYBODY KNOWS I’M 100% INNOCENT,” he wrote last week. “OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED, AS THEY TELL US TO BE PEACEFUL!” Trump predicted an imminent arrest, and urged Americans to “PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!” On Thursday, presumably while pacing the gilded halls of Mar-a-Lago, Trump amped up his rhetoric by warning—or maybe, threatening—about the “death & destruction” that could occur if he is eventually charged. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/trumps-threats-death-and-destruction-if-indicted/673508/