Opinion

Republican election officials in at least three states have refused to certify primary votes, in a sign of things to come amid the party's baseless election fraud crusade.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Many Americans, looking at the GOP’s position on the issues, find themselves confused.

Why would the party claiming to be the last bastion of reverence for “life” in America also be the party that supports 50,000 American gun deaths every year, the leading cause of death among children and more than every other developed country in the world combined? Why would they support anti-abortion laws that don’t even contain exceptions for the life of the mother? Why do they fight so hard to keep healthcare out of the reach of so many Americans (12 GOP-controlled states still refuse to offer Medicaid — 90% paid for by the federal government — to their low-income working people)?

The details are still being combed through but it’s safe to say that the bargain struck Wednesday by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and US Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is a BFD.

It isn’t what the Democrats had hoped for months ago, but it’s still huge when you look at what it does. According to the Post this morning, the Inflation Reduction Act “would represent one of the most consequential pieces of economic policy in recent US history.”

There can be no doubt about it: Religion, especially Christianity — while still powerful in American culture — is in decline. Fewer than half of Americans even belong to a church or other house of worship. Rates of church attendance are in a freefall, as younger Americans would rather do anything with their precious free time than go to church. As religion researcher Ryan Burge recently tweeted, "Among those born in the early 1930s, 60% attend church weekly. 17% never attend. Among those born in the early 1950s, 32% attend weekly. 29% never attend. Among those born in the early 1990s, 18% attend weekly. 42% never attend."

Republicans are having difficulty deciding how they should think about Nazis and the Holocaust. They deny actions they have publicly taken, propagate and then delete messages, verbally promote and legislatively limit teaching about what the Nazis did. They seem confused, but aren’t. Some Republicans cozy up to Nazis. Some Republicans, often the same ones, call Democrats Nazis. Many Republicans across the country are attacking the foundation of Holocaust teaching. These three arms of Republican behavior around the Nazis have a single result: to trivialize the Holocaust.

Embracing Nazis always makes news. Carl Paladino, Republican nominee for NY Governor in 2010, Trump’s NY campaign chair in 2016, and current House candidate, is simply the latest fascist advocate. In a radio interview last year, which somehow did not become public news until this month, he praised Hitler: “He would get up there screaming these epithets and these people were just, they were hypnotized by him. I guess that’s the kind of leader we need today. We need somebody inspirational. We need somebody that is a doer.” Paladino combines admiration for Nazis and old-fashioned American racism: in 2016, he hoped that Barack Obama would die of mad cow disease and suggested that Michelle Obama be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.”

Pennsylvania's GOP nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano, is under fire again for his extremist views. The Republican is in hot water for paying consulting fees to Gab, a white nationalist social media site owned by a raging anti-Semite named Andrew Torba. Torba is quoted saying:

"We don't want people who are atheists. We don't want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country."

Needless to say, Torba is also a raging Islamophobe.

Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia set off yet another controversy when, during a Saturday, July 23 interview conducted at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida, she proudly described herself as a "Christian nationalist" and urged the Republican Party to openly embrace an ideology of "Christian nationalism." One of the people who is calling Greene out is Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) and the main organizer for Christians Against Christian Nationalism.

Greene told Taylor Hanson of the right-wing Next News Network, "We need to be the party of nationalism, and I'm a Christian. And I say it proudly: We should be Christian nationalists. When Republicans learn to represent most of the people that vote for them, then we will be the party that continues to grow without having to chase down certain identities or chase down certain segments of people."

If Donald Trump were Black, he'd be doing about four in the box by now. If Donald Trump were Black and poor, he'd probably be booked for the rest of his remaining years. But he's not. Trump is very white, very privileged, and therefore very free.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not an advocate for jail. I strongly believe the system doesn't work. I've had both family members and close friends spend long amounts of time incarcerated — decades, even — and none left felling reformed, refreshed, inspired and ready to contribute to society in the most positive way possible. Some were 100% innocent and lost time. A few others were fortunate enough to change their lives for the better despite the system's ills. But many of these relatives and friends ended up back behind the wall almost as soon as they made it out, hindered by little to no opportunity. The fact is going to jail is extremely easy in America, a country with over 2 million people incarcerated, the largest number of incarcerated people in the world. It's so easy to go to jail here — unless you are Donald Trump, of course.

Throughout the Age of Trump, the American mainstream news media has sounded increasingly like a broken record, repeatedly describing Donald Trump's innumerable misdeeds as "unimaginable" or "unthinkable" or "shocking." This approach clearly attracts clicks and advertising dollars. By comparison, Joe Biden is boring. His administration has been generally competent and free of scandal. Perversely, that's one of the main reasons why the mainstream media has turned against him.

With the House Jan. 6 committee hearings, the media circus has played out true to form, adding the term "revelation" to its recirculating vocabulary for describing Donald Trump and his confederates and their documented crimes. In reality, there is nothing truly "shocking" about the descriptions of Trump's conduct, and the "revelations" emerging from the committee hearings are hardly biblical epiphanies. That conclusion should be obvious for media professionals who are paid to follow public matters. Donald Trump is utterly transparent and predictable — and has unapologetically been that way for all of his public life.

Breaking news! (No, not really.)

It's just a little more than 100 days before the midterm elections, and the Republicans are outwardly giddy and chittering like rabid field mice.

Anyone who’s read George Orwell’s “1984,” the dystopian novel about life in the U.S. under an authoritarian regime, knows that to survive, one had to accept whatever Big Brother said no matter how big the lie. Proof you’d come to fully embrace the all-controlling Party was to believe without question that two plus two never equaled four but always the number five. Anyone who claimed otherwise was considered a traitor and treated as such.

I think of that now knowing that despite the hours of testimony and truckloads of evidence of President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the election, much of it coming from Trump loyalists, the majority of House and Senate Republicans and many Republican voters, including 50% of them here in Oregon, still swallow and spew Trump’s lie, and consider those who do not parrot his prattle like Republican Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, traitors. Both of these conservatives are central to the committee’s investigation and both were censured by Republican party brass for having the temerity to doubt Trump’s math.

In the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the horror stories about what happens when you ban abortion have quickly piled up. Women are bleeding out from miscarriages because doctors cannot abort a failing pregnancy unless the patient is on the verge of death. A 10-year-old girl was forced to travel hundreds of miles to avoid giving birth to a rapist's child. Patients with ectopic pregnancies, which are always unviable, are seeing care delayed and denied, risking their lives and their fertility.

And in the face of all of this suffering, what is crucial to remember is this: This was always the point.

I will be shocked if Donald Trump doesn't announce his candidacy in short order. Why? Because for the first time since he became president, beguiling Republican voters with his astonishing upset in 2016, Trump seems to be losing his iron grip on Republican voters.

Sure, he still has many avid followers but that sense of control and command over the party, the awe at his sheer ability to survive and prevail even when he loses, is suddenly looking a bit weak. Watching his appearances over the last couple of weeks, it appears that Trump is aware of the shift and since giving up is clearly not in his nature — particularly when the need for vengeance and vindication is his reason for being — he will have to try to grab the spotlight and take control sooner rather than later.