Several weeks ago we had a reunion of Northeastern University journalism alumni who were involved in student media in the 1970s and early ’80s. Among those attending was David McKay Wilson, one of the very few in our crowd who is still working as a full-time reporter. And he was excited about a story he was digging into about a Republican politician who seemed to have infiltrated a Democratic group in the suburbs north of New York City using a fake name.
Today The Journal News published that story, and it is weird and wonderful. Erin Crowley, a county legislator who also works for Republican congressman Mike Lawler, appears to have gotten herself inserted into an anti-Lawler chat group on Signal using the name “Jack Thomas.” Once in, Thomas — again, almost certainly Crowley — tried to generate an uproar against Lawler at a town meeting he was holding in May. Thomas/Crowley apparently believed that such behavior would create sympathy for her boss.
Although there is no definite proof, Thomas’ phone number is identical to one that Crowley has used. Wilson writes:
After two Lawler critics were carried out of the hall by New York State troopers, Thomas posted that chat group members should leave the auditorium to protest Lawler’s crackdown on dissent and his evasive answers to questions from the audience.
“Should we walk out en masse?” posted Thomas. “Make a point we won’t tolerate his bullsh** anymore.”
Wilson also quotes an anti-Lawler activist named Ann Starer, who says, “Walking out of the hall would have been to their benefit. That would have been great for them. I said on the chat that I didn’t think it was a good idea.”
The story is locked behind a paywall. Because The Journal News is a Gannett paper, I was able to access it through my USA Today subscription. If that’s not an option, you can read a thorough synopsis by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who calls it “my official new favorite story ever.”
Wilson has tangled with Lawler before, as I’ve written, and last month he was kicked out of a Lawler event for photographing Crowley. David’s doggedness at holding power to account at an age when many of his peers are retired is an inspiration.
Lyndon Johnson on the campaign trail in 1954. Photo via the LBJ Library.
The IRS has ruled that religious leaders can endorse political candidates from the pulpit, thus overturning a ban that had been in place since 1954. The New York Times broke the story, but in case you can’t get around the paywall, here is The Associated Press’ version.
The news is sure to be greeted with consternation among many observers, especially on the left. But the ban was, in fact, an unintended consequence of a move by Lyndon Johnson to silence a tax-exempt political group that opposed his re-election to the Senate. Johnson’s chief aide, George Reedy, told an interviewer years later that he believed LBJ had not intended to include religious organizations in the ban.
The IRS action comes just days after the presiding bishop of our denomination, Sean Rowe, wrote a powerful commentary in which he called on the Episcopal Church to be an engine of the resistance to Donald Trump’s authoritarian rule. (You may recall that Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budd got Trump’s second term off to a rousing start by admonishing him from the pulpit on Inauguration Day.) It sounds like it just became easier for our church to speak out and not have its tax status threatened, although who knows if the regime will try to punish religious liberals? Here is part of what Bishop Rowe wrote:
Churches like ours, protected by the First Amendment and practiced in galvanizing people of goodwill, may be some of the last institutions capable of resisting this administration’s overreach and recklessness. To do so faithfully, we must see beyond the limitations of our tradition and respond not in partisan terms, but as Christians who seek to practice our faith fully in a free and fair democracy.
We did not seek this predicament, but God calls us to place the most vulnerable and marginalized at the center of our common life, and we must follow that command regardless of the dictates of any political party or earthly power. We are now being faced with a series of choices between the demands of the federal government and the teachings of Jesus, and that is no choice at all.
In 2017 I wrote a commentary for GBH News in which I expressed agreement with Trump after he called for the Johnson Amendment to be overturned. Now that has happened. I’m posting the full piece after the jump.
A protest in Chicago against the illegal detention of Kilmar Ábrego García in a Salvadoran prison. Photo (cc) 2025 by Paul Goyette.
This is likely to be my last post of the week, and it’s a depressingly fitting one this Fourth of July. Although we may have much to celebrate in our own lives, we all recognize that our country is in great danger. Donald Trump is trampling on the Constitution, and the Republican-led Congress and Supreme Court are doing nothing to slow him down.
So today I want to make sure you’ve seen this story about Kilmar Ábrego García, one of the better known victims of Trump’s persecution of undocumented immigrants. Earlier this year, Ábrego García, of Maryland, charged with no crime other than living in the U.S. without the proper papers, was illegally shipped off to a prison in El Salvador. He’s back, at least for now, and his lawyers filed chilling documents on Wednesday alleging that he was tortured while in Salvadoran custody. Maanvi Singh reports for The Guardian:
While being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador, Ábrego García and 20 other men “were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM”, according to the court papers filed by his lawyers in the federal district court in Maryland.
Guards struck anyone who fell from exhaustion while kneeling, and during that time, “Ábrego García was denied bathroom access and soiled himself”, according to the filing.
Detainees were held in an overcrowded cell with no windows, and bright lights on 24 hours a day. They were confined to metal bunk beds with no mattresses.
Ábrego García is back in the U.S., and now federal prosecutors are charging him with human smuggling and being a member of the MS-13 gang. We’ll see if there’s any actual evidence; the case has all the hallmarks of a story that the Trump regime concocted after the fact.
But why should we take seriously Trump’s alleged desire to crack down on MS-13? On Monday, a team of six New York Times reporters revealed (gift link) that Trump had returned a notorious MS-13 killer and other gang members to El Salvador who are allies of that country’s thuggish president, Nayib Bukele. The transfer appears to be a quid pro quo for Bukele’s willingness to accept U.S. deportees.
I hope there will come a time when Trump and everyone associated with his brutal reign is held to account, perhaps by the International Court of Justice. In the meantime, we have to live through this and do what we can to call out their shocking behavior and engage in acts of resistance. For what it’s worth, I write.
May you, your families and friends have a wonderful Independence Day. There will be better times ahead.
For a brief moment Monday, it looked like Donald Trump had given up on his ridiculous lawsuit against The Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer.
You may recall that Trump claimed they had committed consumer fraud because of a poll taken just before Election Day showing Kamala Harris with a 3-point lead in the Hawkeye State. Notwithstanding Selzer’s sterling reputation, Harris ended up losing Iowa by 13 points, which is about what you’d expect. She was wrong, and the error may have hastened her retirement, but the notion that she put out a false poll to help Harris is transparently ludicrous.
Well, Monday’s good news didn’t last. It turns out that Trump withdrew his suit from the federal courts and refiled it in state court one day before an Iowa anti-SLAPP law was scheduled to take effect, William Morris reports for the Register. SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuits against political participation,” and it’s designed to give judges a reason to throw out garbage suits such as Trump’s. No such luck since Trump beat the deadline.
This isn’t the first time Trump has sought to have his Iowa case heard in state court. Apparently his lawyers believe the federal courts are unlikely to tolerate his foolishness. To its credit, the Register’s corporate owner, Gannett, has hung tough. A spokesperson for the paper, Lark-Marie Anton, said in a statement:
After losing his first attempt to send his case back to Iowa state court, and apparently recognizing that his appeal will be unsuccessful, President Trump is attempting to unilaterally dismiss his lawsuit from federal court and refile it in Iowa state court. Although such a procedural maneuver is improper, and may not be permitted by the court, it is clearly intended to avoid the inevitable outcome of the Des Moines Register’s motion to dismiss President Trump’s amended complaint currently pending in federal court.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is representing Selzer, said on social media that Trump’s attempt to move the case to state court was “a transparent attempt to avoid federal court review of the president’s transparently frivolous claims,” according to The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, there have been some developments in one of Trump’s other legal attempts to intimidate the press. According to media reporter Oliver Darcy, all seven correspondents at CBS News’ “60 Minutes” have sent a message to their corporate owner, Paramount, demanding that it stand firm in fighting Trump’s lawsuit over the way the program edited an interview with Harris last October. Darcy writes:
They pointedly expressed concern that Paramount is failing to put up a fierce and unrelenting fight in the face of Trump’s lawsuit over the program’s Kamala Harris interview, which has been widely denounced by the legal community as baseless, according to the people familiar with the matter. They said Trump’s allegations against the storied program are false and ripped his lawsuit as baseless. And they warned in no uncertain terms that if Paramount were to settle with Trump, it will stain the reputation of the company and undermine the First Amendment.
Trump is claiming consumer fraud in a Texas federal court under the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, alleging that “60 Minutes” edited its interview with Harris to make her appear more coherent, thus helping her campaign. “60 Minutes” has defended the editing as normal and routine. The interview has been nominated for an Emmy in the editing category, no doubt to send a message to the White House.
Unfortunately, Darcy reports that Paramount continues to lurch toward a settlement with Trump in order to pave the way for federal approval of a merger with Skydance Media.
The late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, left, and Iran’s current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photo of mural in the city of Qom (cc) 2013 by David Stanley.
I think the most rational response to President Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities is to hang back a bit — that is, to acknowledge that he’s the wrong leader to do this, that he was more likely acting on ego and personal pique than out of any strategic vision, but that it’s too soon to tell whether this will be a disaster or might actually accomplish some good.
One starting point is that Iran shouldn’t be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. Another starting point is to understand that what led to this really is all Trump’s fault. President Barack Obama painstakingly negotiated an agreement with Iran that significantly slowed Iran’s race to get a nuclear bomb, and Trump undid that in his first term for no discernible reason other than to disrespect Obama.
Lincoln led not just the birth of a new nation but of a new political party as well.
We are awash in terrible news, so this morning I’d like to address something completely different. On Saturday, Nate Cohn of The New York Times asked, “Is There an Opening for a Third Party?” (gift link). My answer is an emphatic no, with a caveat.
Cohn is a smart guy who understands numbers. But he omits some important reasons for why the rise of a real alternative to the Democrats and Republicans will remain a fantasy unless it is accompanied by a thorough-going change in the way we hold elections.
Cohn’s reasoning for why there might be an opening is solid, though I think that opening is much smaller than he imagines. He argues that as the two major parties have both embraced different forms of populism, the neoliberals and globalists who were ascendant as recently as 20 years ago have been left behind. He writes:
What’s the group? It doesn’t have a name, but it favors things like deficit reduction, deregulation, free trade and high-skilled immigration. It may be recognizable by the labels its critics on both the left and right have already assigned: “neoliberals” or “globalists.” (Though, to be fair, this new group doesn’t necessarily idealize markets or oppose government spending.)
So essentially Cohn is talking about Never Trump conservatives plus Joe Manchin. You could fit them all in a phone booth. (For you young ’uns, here’s a phone booth.) Cohn pays lip service to past examples of third parties like the Progressives of the early 20th century and the Republicans in the 1850s. But he misses some vital context.
A two-party system is baked into our politics not because anyone likes it but because we have winner-take-all elections in which the candidate who comes in first is the victor, even if they get less than 50% of the vote. Yes, I realize there are some exceptions, such as jurisdictions that hold runoffs or have embraced ranked-choice voting. But that’s how it works for nearly all of our major-office elections such as the House, the Senate and gubernatorial races. (Let’s not get started on the Electoral College.)
Now, I don’t want to take credit for an idea that I read somewhere else recently. I can’t seem to find it, but I thought it was something that Josh Marshall wrote for Talking Points Memo. But the examples of the Republicans and the Progressives actually show why third parties flop.
First, the Republicans couldn’t succeed unless they replaced the Whigs, which were one of the two major parties along with the Democrats. The Whigs were conflicted on slavery while the Democrats were all for it. Thus there was an opening for a party that was staunchly anti-slavery. Within just a few years’ time, the Whigs fell apart and were replaced by the Republicans, maintaining the major-party duopoly. So that’s my caveat, and it’s not much of one.
The Progressives actually ran a popular former president, Theodore Roosevelt, as their standard-bearer in 1912. Roosevelt managed to come in second, with the incumbent Republican president, William Howard Taft, finishing in third and getting swamped in the Electoral College. Roosevelt’s challenge succeeded only in getting Democrat Woodrow Wilson elected, and he proved to be a racist warmonger with an unparalleled contempt for civil liberties.
Progressive ideas started to permeate into the two major parties, especially the Democratic party. And Roosevelt’s distant cousin Franklin embraced a progressive agenda once he became president in 1933.
So how would we have to change the system in order to give a third party a chance to emerge as a significant force? With congressional and state legislative races, the surest route to new parties would be multicandidate districts and proportional presentation, as explained in this data-rich opinion piece (gift link; trust me when I tell you this is well worth your time) published by The New York Times earlier this year. The piece even anticipates the emergence of five parties under such a system. (I’d be a New Liberal with some New Populist sympathies.)
Massachusetts has nine U.S. House members, so imagine dividing the state into two districts, one with five members and the other with four. Let’s say that in the five-member district 60% of voters chose the New Liberal Party (traditional Democrats, more or less), 40% chose the Growth and Opportunity Party (traditional Republicans) and 20% chose the Progressive Party. The district would send three Democrats, two Republicans and one Progressive to Washington. The other two parties under this scheme: the Patriot Party (Trumpers) and Christian Conservatives.
Such a system, the Times essay argues, would encourage coalition-building and would give voters the opportunity to feel like there’s a party that represents their beliefs and interests — something that is entirely missing today.
All of this is why talking about a third party is a waste of time unless it’s accompanied by deep, systemic change. Given our slide into populist authoritarianism and the emergence of millions of Americans who oppose that slide, either we’re further than ever from trying something completely new — or we’re closer than we’ve ever been before.
This morning I feel like anyone who comments on media and politics ought to say something about Thursday’s unprovoked assault on U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla. But I’m at a loss for words. I assume you’ve seen it; if you haven’t, here it is (gift link), along with a detailed New York Times account.
Federal agents are seen dragging the California Democrat from a room where Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was holding a news conference, forcing him to the floor and handcuffing him. He was soon released and was not charged, but this is what an authoritarianism takeover looks like.
I was interested that Noem at least had the presence of mind to lie, falsely claiming that Padilla had “lunged” toward the stage and didn’t identify himself. All you have to do is watch the video to see the truth. All he was trying to do was ask a question. And, of course, Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have picked up on her lies. Heather Cox Richardson writes:
While much focus has been on the assault itself, what Noem was saying before Padilla spoke out is crucially important. “We are not going away,” she said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
In other words, the Trump administration is vowing to get rid of the democratically elected government of California by using military force. That threat is the definition of a coup. It suggests MAGA considers any political victory but their own to be illegitimate and considers themselves justified in removing those governmental officials with violence: a continuation of the attempt of January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a presidential election.
Finally, I am never going to mention Noem without reminding you that she bragged about shooting her dog and her goat.
Public media’s last stand
I had hoped that President Trump’s plunge in the polls might stiffen the spines of House Republicans enough that they would not vote to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides some of the revenues for PBS and NPR. No such luck.
As NPR reports, the House voted on Thursday to eliminate $1.1 billion in previously appropriated money that was supposed to fund CPB for the next two years. Another $8.3 billion was cut from international-aid programs. The measure passed, 214 to 212, with every Democrat and four Republicans voting against it.
So now it’s on to the Senate, where the Republican majority is slightly less right-wing than the House’s. At this point, though, all bets are off.
A curious omission
There is so much going on, nearly all of it bad, that I’m going to have to leave most of it aside. But I do want to mention that on Thursday I listened to Ezra Klein’s New York Times interview (you can subscribe to “The Ezra Klein Show for free at all the usual podcast haunts) with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who has accused the Netanyahu government of committing war crimes in Gaza.
It was a long, fascinating conversation. Yet there was scarcely a mention of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program and none at all of the possibility that Israel would soon act to destroy it — something that definitely had been in the news lately.
I don’t want to waste a lot of space on the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Pixels aren’t cheap, you know. But I do want to push back on the notion that this is (1) some kind of pre-arranged stunt; (2) a distraction from what’s really important; or (3) a prelude to their eventual reconciliation. I think it’s both real and important, and that the fallout will be long-lasting.
“Well, Elon Musk finally found a way to make Twitter fun again,” wrote Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer for his newsletter, The Message Box. Indeed it is fun — these are two people who are doing enormous damage to our country, and it’s hard not to enjoy watching their very public falling-out.
Trump has no friends. One of the keys to the way he operates is that he also has no permanent allies and no permanent enemies. Everything is conditional. After all, he and Steve Bannon patched up their relationship after Bannon absolutely torched him in Michael Wolff’s book 2018 book “Fire and Fury.”
But Musk has suggested that Trump was involved in the late Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile sex ring, and that goes many steps beyond a normal knock-down-drag-out. Here’s what Musk wrote on Twitter: “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
Of course, “in the Epstein files” is doing a lot of work in that tweet. Trump has been photographed with Epstein and even joked (gift link) about Epstein’s predeliction for young girls, because that’s the kind of dirtbag Trump is. Musk, though, is hinting at something much, much worse on Trump’s part.
Now, it has to be said there’s no reason to believe that Musk even knows what’s in the Epstein files, and that if Trump is in there, it’s likely as a walk-on, not as a participant. As much as I loathe Trump, he strikes me as way too cautious to get caught up in anything that evil — and, more to the point, illegal. (Before you @ me, read this.)
Musk also has a habit of accusing his enemies of engaging in child rape. Here’s an example, and it’s not the only one. What’s missing are any examples of Musk kissing and make up with someone he’s accused of such horrendous activities.
Right-wing billionaire Bill Ackman took to Twitter and urged Musk and Trump to “make peace.” Musk responded, “You’re not wrong.” But though the two may find it’s in their best interest not to maintain a white-hot level of animosity, it strikes me as exceedingly unlikely that Musk will ever return to a position of real power in Trump’s White House. Good.
The Trump administration’s war on access to knowledge will result in the end of public library access in Massachusetts to a number of academic databases and The Boston Globe. The cuts take effect on July 1.
The dispiriting news is reported in a memo issued May 20 by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners that is weirdly titled “MBLC Maintains some Databases, Support for eBooks, and ComCat.” I don’t mean to be critical of the commissioners, since Trump’s perversity is not their fault. But the news here is what’s being cut, not what’s being saved.
The cuts are the result of an executive order issued by Trump on March 14 titled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” The order eliminates a number of agencies and programs, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which in the current fiscal year provided $3.6 million for library services in Massachusetts as well as grants to local libraries. The MBLC spent about $2.2 million of its federal allocation on access to various online databases. MBLC director Maureen Amyot said in a statement:
The federal impact cannot be overstated. In Massachusetts, over 1,600 school, public, academic and special libraries from across the state benefit from federal IMLS funding. Millions of people rely on federally funded library services. Developing a plan for services in an environment of almost daily federal change has been challenging, but our goal has remained constant: to maintain services that are integral to the functioning of our system and heavily relied on by the people of the Commonwealth.
The MBLC was able to preserve access to some databases. The decisions about what to cut and what to keep were based on usage, according to the MBLC. In addition, the statewide program that funds access to e-books and audiobooks will continue, as well the Commonwealth Catalog, or ComCat, which provides access to items that a local library may not have.
Needless to say, there is no reason for any of this. Trump inherited a strong economy that continues to perform reasonably well despite his efforts to take a wrecking ball to it. These cuts call to mind his infamous outburst in 2016: “I love the poorly educated.” It appears that he wants to keep them that way.
Sen. John Fetterman. Photo (cc) 2022 by the office of Gov. Tom Wolf.
New York magazine has published an incredibly disturbing story (paywalled, but see below) about U.S. Sen John Fetterman, the hoodie-wearing Pennsylvania Democrat who was elected in 2022 while recovering from a serious stroke.
Reporter Ben Terris portrays Fetterman as suffering from what sounds like serious mental-health issues. We knew about his struggles with depression, but this goes much deeper than that, veering into what at times seems like a disconnection from reality, compounded by a refusal to take his medications.
Adding to its power is that much of the story is based on the on-the-record comments of Fetterman’s former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, as well as a 1,600-word email that Jentleson wrote to Fetterman’s doctor. “I believed in John’s ability to work through struggles that lots of Americans share,” he told Terris. “He’s not locked into a downward trajectory; he could get back in treatment at any time, and for a long time I held out hope that he would. But it’s just been too long now, and things keep getting worse.”
This is an important piece of journalism, but unfortunately it’s locked behind a paywall. So I’m going to tell you something you may or may not know: There’s a service that lets people save paywalled articles at publications they subscribe to so that others can read them for free. It’s at archive.is. You can search by keywords or URL. That’s how I found the Fetterman article.
I’m going to be a hypocrite and tell you that I’m uncomfortable sharing free links from archive.is, but that I’m not adverse at telling you how you can do it yourself. So if you want to read the Fetterman story, you know what to do.
