The Belly of the Beast
Steven J. Harper, Esq.
https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/0697b447acac94de8371a24edb3dea423a113c169ca23e934ab400ad82470d0a?s=32
The Belly of the Beast
AN ARROGANT SUPREME COURT IS NOW THE ENEMY WITHIN

This post first appeared at Common Dreams on July 5, 2024.

An Arrogant Supreme Court Is Now the Enemy Within

By Steven J. Harper

Americans know the Supreme Court’s anti-democratic agenda when they see it. Americans know a judicial power grab when they see it. Americans know a king when they see one. Tell me, America, do you like what you see?

Former president Richard Nixon used a ridiculous line to rationalize his misconduct: “If the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.”

On July 1, 2024, Nixon’s outrageous position became the law of the land.

But that is only the most recent illustration of how Donald Trump’s Supreme Court is remaking America. The justices comprising the Court’s six-member conservative supermajority are foisting their personal vision for the country on citizens who largely disagree with that vision. Trump appointed three of them.

Two years ago, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a harbinger. The Court’s six conservatives overruled the landmark 50-year-old precedent, Roe v. Wade, and obliterated a woman’s right to abortion – a right that the vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum support.

Dobbs was only the beginning.

The Court Abandons Stare Decisis

The conservatives justices’ agenda requires violating the bedrock principle of stare decisis.

Justice Kagan explained, “Adherence to precedent is ‘a foundation stone of the rule of law.’…. Stare decisis ‘promotes the even-handed, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles.’ It enables people to order their lives in reliance on judicial decisions. And it ‘contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process,’ by ensuring that those decisions are founded in the law, and not in the ‘personal preferences’ of judges.” [Citations omitted]

Already at a historic low, the Court’s perceived integrity continues to suffer self-inflicted wounds at the hands of its conservative members. They are imposing their personal preferences on the entire nation.

In the waning days of the Court’s 2023-2024 term, some of the most draconian – and dangerous – emerged from the shadows.

The Court Guts the SEC and Imperils Other Federal Agencies

On June 27, 2024, the Court’s conservative block (Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Thomas) issued SEC v. Jarkesy. The ruling bars the Security and Exchange Commission from adjudicating civil fraud actions itself before an administrative law judge. Instead, the SEC must now file all such actions in federal court where a defendant can request a jury trial, thereby crippling the agency’s enforcement capabilities.

On behalf of the Court’s three dissenting liberals (Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor), Justice Sotomayor wrote, “Congress has enacted countless new statutes in the past 50 years that have empowered federal agencies to impose civil penalties for statutory violations… Similarly, there are, at the very least, more than two dozen agencies that can impose civil penalties in administrative proceedings… The constitutionality of hundreds of statutes may now be in peril, and dozens of agencies could be stripped of their power to enforce laws enacted by Congress.”

Justice Sotomayor added, “Today’s ruling is part of a disconcerting trend: When it comes to the separation of powers, this Court tells the American public and its coordinate branches that it knows best… Make no mistake: Today’s decision is a power grab.”

The Court Kills the Climate

Also on June 27, 2024, in Ohio v. EPA, five of the Court’s conservatives blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to protect “downwind” states from the air pollution that “upwind” states generated.

From 1981-1983, Justice Gorsuch’s mother, Anne, had led the EPA during the Reagan administration. Repeatedly, she clashed with environmentalists and congressional investigators challenging her management of the agency. In 1983, the White House forced her to resign.

In her 1986 memoir, Anne Gorsuch wrote that her rocky tenure and unceremonious departure distressed her son, Neil, who was 15 years old at the time:

“You should never have resigned,” he told her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You only did what the President ordered. Why are you quitting? You raised me not to be a quitter. Why are you a quitter?”

Forty years later, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in Ohio v. EPA.

The Court “Grasps for Power”

The following day, on June 28, the conservative block struck again in Loper Bright Enterprises, v. Raimondo, overruling a 40-year-old precedent, Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council.

Back in 1984, conservatives had scored a big victory when a unanimous Supreme Court first issued the Chevron ruling. It required that courts defer to administrative agencies that filled in gaps or resolved ambiguities in Congress’ regulatory statutes.

At the time, business leaders cheered the decision because President Reagan’s EPA (under Anne Gorsuch) had loosened air pollution emission regulations. To preserve that loosening, the affected businesses wanted courts to respect the EPA’s scientific and technical expertise. The Court agreed, observing, “Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of the Government.” The latter point meant that federal judges had lifetime appointments and weren’t accountable to the electorate, whereas agency administrators served at the pleasure of an elected President..

But in the years that followed, businesses chafed at agency regulation. Along with the conservative legal movement, business leaders reversed course and attacked Chevron unsuccessfully – until Trump’s appointment of Amy Coney Barrett gave the conservatives a supermajority on the Supreme Court.

In dissent, Justice Kagan observed that Chevron “served as a cornerstone of administrative law, allocating responsibility for statutory construction between courts and agencies… [It] has formed the backdrop against which Congress, courts, and agencies – as well as regulated parties and the public – all have operated for decades. It has been applied in thousands of judicial decisions. It has become part of the warp and woof of modern government, supporting regulatory efforts of all kinds – to name a few, keeping air and water clean, food and drugs safe, and financial markets honest.”

Under Chevron, Justice Kagan added, the Supreme Court itself “has upheld an agency’s reasonable interpretation of a statute at least 70 times. Lower courts have applied the Chevron framework on thousands upon thousands of occasions… Chevron was cited in more than 18,000 federal-court decisions.” [Citations omitted]

“A longstanding precedent at the crux of administrative governance thus falls victim to a bald assertion of judicial authority,” Justice Kagan concluded. “The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power.”

The Court Helps Trump Avoid Accountability

The conservative block saved its worst for last – the July 1, 2024 ruling in Trump v. US. If democracy dies in America, Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion in the case will have been a key contributor.

“We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office,” Roberts wrote on the final day of the Court’s term. “At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is also entitled to immunity.”

Writing for the three dissenting liberal members, Justice Sotomayor declared, “Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law… [O]ur Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts,….”

Trump asserts that, if re-elected, he’ll be “dictator for a day.” The Supreme Court’s ruling makes him comparable to a king – a law unto himself – for an entire four-year term.

“I Know It When I See It”

In discussing a pornography case, Justice Potter Stewart once remarked, “I know it when I see it.”

Americans know the Supreme Court’s anti-democratic agenda when they see it.

Americans know a judicial power grab when they see it.

Americans know a king when they see one.

And as Americans come to understand the conservative Supreme Court justices’ profoundly negative impact on their daily lives, they won’t like what they see.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE ALITO?

This post first appeared at Common Dreams on June 26, 2024.

Because, for him, the end—achieving national “godliness”—justifies the means, Alito’s approach to his job is disingenuous and dishonest.

***

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has frequently proclaimed his determination to impose his religious views on the entire country. Alito’s tendency toward Christian nationalism—“the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way”—isn’t new. But in a Supreme Court justice, it’s especially dangerous. And lately Alito has become more outspoken on the subject.

Addressing the Federalist Society in 2020, he said, “In certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.”

In a May 11, 2024 commencement speech at a Catholic college in Ohio, he told graduates, “Freedom of religion is… imperiled. When you venture out into the world, you may well find yourself in a job, or community, or a social setting when you will be pressured to endorse ideas you don’t believe, or to abandon core beliefs. It will be up to you to stand firm.”

At a June 3 meeting of the Supreme Court Historical Society, liberal documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor approached Alito. “As a Catholic and as someone who, like, really cherishes my faith,” she said, “I just don’t, I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that, like, needs to happen for the polarization to end. I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.”

Alito agreed with Windsor, saying that she was “probably right” that one side or another is going to win. Along with four of the five other justices comprising the court’s conservative block, he is also a Catholic.

“I mean, there can be a way of working—a way of living together peacefully,” Alito added, “but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

Windsor continued, “People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that—to return our country to a place of godliness.”

Alito replied, “I agree with you.”

It’s not clear what is more remarkable—that a sitting Supreme Court justice holds extreme religious views “that can’t be compromised” or that Alito discusses those draconian views so freely with a stranger at a public gathering.

Religious Absolutism in Practice

Left unsaid was Alito’s more startling point: His definition of “godliness” doesn’t include all religions. The resulting arrogance leads to a simple view of the world as a constant struggle between good and evil. Personal religious beliefs become the sole criterion by which to categorize all conduct. Such myopia creates an unwarranted confidence in one’s own moral certainty where reasonable people disagree.

Alito isn’t just an ordinary citizen advocating his personal preferences. He’s one of nine Supreme Court justices at the top of the country’s judicial system. He casts votes and writes opinions that affect every facet of American life. And because, for him, the end—achieving national “godliness”—justifies the means, Alito’s approach to his job is disingenuous and dishonest.

Facts don’t matter. They yield to a simplistic approach to everything: Abandon secularism and promote “godliness”—as Alito defines it.

For example, wrapping himself in false history under the guise of “originalism” in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, he wrote the 2022 majority opinion that obliterated 50 years of precedent under Roe v. Wade and removed a woman’s right to control her own pregnancy. And he persuaded five other justices to join him, including all three appointees of former President Donald Trump.

As the dissenters in that case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, emphasized, Alito got the supposed historical justification for his aberrant ruling “embarrassingly” wrong. But the consequences were dramatic:

Never before in its history had the U.S. Supreme Court rescinded an individual right in its entirety and conferred it on the states.

Alito didn’t care. Precedent and actual history were irrelevant. He got the religious result he wanted and imposed it on the entire nation.

Passing the Blame

Only 30% of Americans qualify as Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers. In the cosmic battle between good and evil, they believe that they are God’s boots on the ground. They were at the front lines in the fight to overturn the 2020 election of President Joe Biden. And they helped to mobilize Trump supporters on January 6.

Flags associated with the insurrection and Christian nationalism have flown outside Alito’s two homes. But when called to account, Alito couldn’t take the heat. He blamed his wife for flying outside his Virginia residence an upside-down American flag on January 17, 2021. It’s a universal symbol of dire distress that the pro-Trump mob promoted on January 6 in connection with the bogus “Stop the Steal” movement. Alito said that his wife flew the flag after a confrontation with a neighbor, but the confrontation actually occurred weeks later—in mid-February. Alito’s excuse fell apart.

Likewise, Alito pointed an accusing finger at his wife for flying an “Appeal to Heaven” flag outside the Alitos’ New Jersey beach house in 2023. He claimed not to have known its political or religious significance.

Above the Law

If you’re Samuel Alito, none of the rules applies to you. Unlike the rest of the federal judiciary and every state court, U.S. Supreme Court justices have no mandatory ethical requirements. The court has no process for forcing recusal in cases where a justice has a clear conflict of interest. And it has no recourse for dealing with a justice who accepts thousands of dollars in gifts from individuals or groups seeking influence.

When the media exposed Alito’s free travel on a billionaire’s private jet to a luxury fishing resort in Alaska, he responded that if he hadn’t taken the seat, it would have remained empty. So the fact that the one-way ride would have cost him more than $100,000 was somehow irrelevant, and he didn’t have to disclose it pursuant to federal law.

Huh?

When it comes to flouting ethical standards, Alito’s conservative colleague, Justice Clarence Thomas, is even worse. Over 20 years, Thomas received unreported gifts worth millions of dollars. Alito took second place with $170,000.

In Alito’s conversation with Laura Windsor during which he agreed that America should return to a place of “godliness,” she asked what could be done to restore public trust in the court—which is at record lows. Alito blamed the media: “I wish I knew. I don’t know. It’s easy to blame the media, but I do blame them because they do nothing but criticize us. And so, they have really eroded trust in the court.”

Clarence Thomas has the same attitude. Complaining recently about the “nastiness and lies” he has faced, he called Washington, D.C. a “hideous place” and one reason that he and his wife, Ginni—who was intimately involved in promoting the January 6 insurrection—“like RVing.”

The Thomas’ also probably like traveling in their luxury motorcoach because a millionaire forgave the $267,000 loan that Thomas used to buy it.

When they were kids, I wonder how often Alito and Thomas told their teachers that the dog ate their homework. Or when caught doing something wrong replied with comedian Flip Wilson’s line, “The devil made me do it.”

How do you solve a problem like Alito—or Thomas?

Shine a spotlight on them.

Wait for them to retire or die.

And vote for a President who will not fill their seats with like-minded replacements.

THE SECOND U.S. CIVIL WAR HAS ALREADY BEGUN

This post first appeared at Common Dreams on June 14, 2024.

This time, the rebels are using their power inside the government and their influence through social media to subvert fundamental democratic institutions.

***

For those who are concerned that America’s increasing political polarization could lead to another Civil War, I have some disheartening news: The Second Civil War is already underway.

It’s not a clash of opposing armies on a traditional battlefield. The weapons are not bombs, rifles, guns, or semi-automatic firearms. Rather, the rebels are using their power inside the government and their influence through social media to subvert fundamental democratic institutions.

Wrapping themselves in the American flag and the false rhetoric of freedom, morality, and a return to “godliness,” they’re targeting the rule of law itself. Some, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, admit brazenly that they are pursuing personal agendas aimed at transforming the country into a quasi-theocracy.

And they’re conducting the war along multiple fronts.

FRONT 1: POISONING THE BODY POLITIC

Even before Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, he rallied his followers with rants about the need for “vengeance” against his enemies who have “rigged” every American institution against him. “Enemies” means anyone who disagrees with him or defends the foundations of our democracy, including free and fair elections, the civil and criminal justice systems that have held him accountable, and the rule of law itself.

Trump’s agenda is not the pursuit of the country’s best interests. His sole focus is whatever is best for Donald Trump. If a scorched-earth strategy to obliterate the Constitution will allow him to avoid accountability—and prison—so be it.

One-by-one, his followers—virtually the entire Republican party—have fallen into line. Rather than defend the rule of law, they parrot his lies.

FRONT 2: JORDAN’S “WEAPONIZATION” COMMITTEE

Along another front, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and his “weaponization” subcommittee in the House professed for more than a year to be investigating the Biden administration’s wrongdoing. The effort was supposed to provide the basis for impeaching President Joe Biden. After fruitless hearings that became another forum for frivolous conspiracy theories, his committee found nothing.

So now Jordan has asked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and prosecutor Matthew Colangelo to explain the decision to prosecute Trump. The answer is that a jury of Trump’s peers concluded unanimously that prosecution was appropriate because Trump had broken the law. But harassing state prosecutors is Jordan’s latest gasp to breathe new life into his moribund investigations.

FRONT 3: MOBILIZING GOP INVESTIGATORS AND PROSECUTORS

On May 31, Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News, “Is every House committee controlled by Republicans using its subpoena power in every way it needs to right now? Is every Republican DA starting every investigation they need to right now? Every facet of Republican Party politics and power has to be used right now to go toe-to-toe with Marxism and beat these communists.”

Likewise, Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, gave Republicans their marching orders: “There are dozens of ambitious backbencher state attorneys general and district attorneys who need to ‘seize the day’ and own this moment in history.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is on Trump’s short list of vice presidential prospects, tweeted that it was time for Republicans to “fight fire with fire.”

Another close Trump associate, Mike Davis, is a former top Senate Judiciary Committee attorney. He offered his fellow Republicans this advice: “The Republican attorneys general in Georgia and Florida and the county attorney in Maricopa County, Ariz., need to open investigations” into the prosecutors and investigators pursuing the indictments of Mr. Trump and his allies. “Then on Day 1, when he wins, President Trump needs to open a criminal civil rights investigation.”

FRONT 4: MOBILIZING GOP MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that the U.S. Supreme Court should “step in,” overturn Trump’s conviction, and grant him immunity from prosecution. That’s nonsensical, but other Johnson actions are deadly serious.

At the behest of Trump, he appointed two of Trump’s lackeys—former Freedom Caucus chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Trump’s former White House physician, Ronny Jackson (R-Texas)—to the House Intelligence Committee, one of Congress’ most sensitive committees. It oversees the entire U.S. intelligence community—the CIA; FBI; National Security Agency; the intelligence activities of the Justice, State, and Treasury Departments, and the intelligence activities of the armed forces. The appointments stunned even some of Johnson’s fellow Republicans.

Perry was a central figure in efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss. He was among at least 11 Republican members of Congress involved in discussions with Trump administration officials about reversing the results, including plans to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to throw out electoral votes from states that Biden won. Shortly before the January 6 attack, he also endorsed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol. The FBI seized his phone, and a judge ordered him to turn over cellphone records and disclose thousands of documents to government investigators.

As for Jackson, the Pentagon demoted him amid allegations that he mistreated subordinates, sexually harassed a woman, and drank and took sleeping pills while serving as the White House physician. But Trump then endorsed him as a congressional candidate, and he won.

Jackson told the pro-Trump network Newsmax, “President Biden should just be ready because on January 20 of next year when he’s former President Joe Biden, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander… I am going to encourage all of my colleagues and everybody that I have any influence over as a member of Congress to aggressively go after the president and his entire family, his entire crime family, for all of the misdeeds that are out there right now related to this family.”

After years of futile searching, Jordan’s subcommittee found no evidence of any such “misdeeds.”

Immediately after Johnson announced the appointments of Perry and Jackson, another fierce Trump loyalist, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), tweeted his approval to placing them on one of Congress’ most sensitive national security committees:

Congrats to @RepRonnyJackson & @RepScottPerry on these very significant appointments. President Trump now has MAJOR REINFORCEMENTS for his plan to obliterate the Deep State. This is now the most Pro-Trump intel committee we have ever had. By far.

FRONT 5: OBSTRUCTING THE SENATE

Republican Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) recently opened another front in the Second Civil War: obstruction. After the 2020 election, Lee had promoted false conspiracy theories and fake elector schemes to overturn the results and keep Trump in power. He backed off that position, but has now retaliated for Trump’s later conviction. He tweeted that that the Trump trial showed the White House had made “a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in un-American ways,” even though the trial in New York was a state case with no connection to the Biden administration.

Now Lee leads a group of far-right Senate Republicans trying to block all White House nominees and Democratic legislation. As of noon on June 5, Lee and 12 others had signed a pledge to follow his lead. Among the signatories are two senators on Trump’s short list of vice presidential candidates: Rubio and J.D. Vance (R-Ohio).

ARE WE WORTHY OF OUR LEGACY?

On June 6, 2024, the free world celebrated the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion—a crucial moment leading to Allied victory in World War II. In the four-year fight (1941-1945) to save democracy, more than 400,000 Americans lost their lives. History is now asking their successors—all of us—to sacrifice much less in return for much more: Devote the time it takes to understand the stakes in the November 5, 2024 election and then cast a vote to save America.

The battle has been joined. The Second Civil War has begun. Ignoring reality will not change it. But complacency will result in tragedy from which the nation—and the world—will not soon recover.

FASCISM, DONALD TRUMP, AND THE LAWYER’S DILEMMA

This post first appeared at Common Dreams on June 4, 2024.

Trump’s assault on democracy’s essential institutions has always been open and notorious. Examples abound—and they are laced with lies. If you were an attorney committed to defending democracy, could you defend this man?

***

“Thus was democracy finally interred…. [I]t was all done quite legally, though accompanied by terror. Parliament turned over its constitutional authority to [the dictator] and thereby committed suicide, though its body lingered on in an embalmed state to the very end…, serving as a sounding board for some of [the dictator’s] thunderous pronunciations, its members hand-picked by the [dictator’s party], for there were no more real elections….” —William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)

In his book, Shirer then quoted historian Alan Bullock, whose observation decades ago frames the lawyer’s dilemma in representing Donald Trump today:

“‘The street gangs… had seized control of the resources of a great modern State, the gutter had come to power….’ But —as Hitler never ceased to boast—‘legally,’—by an overwhelming vote of Parliament. The Germans had no one to blame but themselves.”

The Constitutional Right to Representation

In the United States, anyone charged with a crime is entitled to a defense. But representing someone seeking to undermine the U.S. Constitution by destroying its institutional foundations and the rule of law is an entirely different matter. That’s because every lawyer swears an oath to support the Constitution.

Trump’s assault on democracy’s essential institutions has always been open and notorious. Examples abound—and they are laced with lies.

The Big Lie(s)

More than 60 federal and state courts ruled that Trump lost the 2020 election. But Trump claims falsely that he won. Yielding no ground to facts or reality, he and his allies claim that—unless he wins—every election is “rigged” against him and no one should credit the outcome, including the upcoming contest on November 5, 2024.

Likewise, a jury of Trump’s peers convicted him of 34 felonies. But Trump asserts that the entire civil and criminal justice system is out to get him. As for January 6, he labels the convicted insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol “patriots” and “martyrs,” and promises to pardon them if he recaptures the White House.

Trump’s congressional sycophants have fallen in line behind him in adopting his false, revisionist history of the insurrection and his assault on the criminal justice system. But as the attack on the U.S. Capitol occurred, Republicans in Congress—including then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—were clear about what was happening and who was responsible. A week after the riot, McConnell went to the Senate floor and said, “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”

After voting to acquit Trump in his second impeachment, McConnell said:

There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day…

The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president, and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.

He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored.

No. Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily—happily—as the chaos unfolded. Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger.

Today McConnell supports Trump’s re-election bid.

History Might Not Repeat Itself, But Sometimes It Rhymes

Trump has followed the lead of his most heinous predecessor.

Trump peppers his rants with bigotry, fear, and terror. He refers to immigrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the United States. He says, falsely, that they are criminals from “prisons,” “mental institutions,” and “insane asylums.” Trump warns Americans to resist immigration or “you won’t have a country anymore.”

In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that he “was repelled by the conglomeration of races…repelled by this whole mixture of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs, and Croats, and everywhere the eternal mushroom of humanity – Jews and more Jews… [His] hatred grew for the foreign mixture of peoples….” (Shirer, p. 27) And he spoke repeatedly about the need to “increase and preserve the species and the race.” (Shirer, p. 86)

Pledging that, if elected, he will be “dictator for a day,” Trump has vowed publicly to “root out” his political opponents. And he promises to stack the federal government with cronies who will never disagree with him.

Hitler said repeatedly that he would “know neither rest nor peace until the November criminals [who, he falsely claimed, had ‘stabbed Germany in the back’ with the onerous Versailles Treaty of 1918] had been overthrown.” He banished or executed those who crossed him. (Schirer, p. 70)

During his first term in office, Trump stacked his administration and the courts with allies, including a federal judge in Florida who presides—and delays—one of the three remaining criminal cases against him. That judge—and many of his other appointees—were and are manifestly unqualified for their jobs.

Hitler co-opted the judiciary and then established his own special courts. He alone became the law. (Shirer, 268-274)

The Washington Post reported in February 2024:

Just before the former president lost the 2020 election to President Biden, Trump issued an executive order designed to gut civil service job protections for workers across the government. It would have paved the way for the workers to be replaced with others, including political partisans, subject to termination at will—a move the Republican president backed because he felt nonpartisan bureaucrats were hampering many of his policies. Trump has promised to reinstate the directive, which Biden quickly revoked after his inauguration. It created a new federal employment category, Schedule F, that would make federal jobs vulnerable to partisan political whims by weakening guardrails meant to ensure a nonpartisan bureaucracy.

Initial estimates that Trump’s edict would apply to more than 50,000 government employees were far too low.

Hitler populated the government with his lackeys. Before becoming chancellor, he vowed that “when the National Socialist movement is victorious in this struggle, then there will be a National Socialist Court of Justice too. Then the November 1918 revolution will be avenged and heads will roll!” (Shirer, p. 141)

Trump understands the importance of symbols and branding. “MAGA” and related paraphernalia—hats, T-shirts, flags—are no accident.

Hitler likewise understood the power of symbols and used the swastika as a unifying image.

Trump co-opted religious evangelicals, many of whom view him as the divine messenger for their cause.

Hitler exploited his country’s history to gain the support of its religious institutions. Then he assumed control over all of them.

Trump has persuaded many industrial magnates to support him because his policies will favor them economically, including a promise to reverse climate initiatives affecting the major oil companies in return for $1 billion in contributions to his current campaign.

Hitler cultivated industry leaders who supported his rise to power – until it was too late to stop his heinous acts that disserved even them.

Trump understands the power of lies, deception, and disinformation. He rode to the White House on the wings of his “birther” lie about President Barack Obama’s origins.

Hitler rode lies to power too: “[A]t a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down… This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty…” (Shirer p. 22-23)

Trump understands the power of fomenting fear and encouraging terror. January 6, 2021 made that abundantly clear.

One hundred years earlier, Hitler had discovered that power, writing: “I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical terror toward the individual and the masses… For while in the ranks of their supporters the victory achieved seems a triumph of the justice of their own cause, the defeated adversary in most cases despairs of the success of any further resistance.”

Trump has never won a majority of the popular vote for President.

Hitler topped out at 37 percent before an aging President Paul von Hindenburg gave him the chancellorship.

Trump uses television and social media to outline his views and to reveal—in advance—how he will proceed if he gains control of the government.

Hitler used Mein Kampf as a roadmap of his ambitions and his plans to fulfil them. Trump meets all of the criteria that one of Hitler’s professors listed in describing the future dictator: lacking “self-control and, to say the least, he was considered argumentative, autocratic, self-opinionated, and bad-tempered, and unable to submit to school discipline.”

The Lawyer’s Dilemma

So Adolf Hitler seeks your help in dismantling the foundational institutions of government and undermining popular support for democracy.

He offers you a big retainer and dangles the promise of a media spotlight for his outrageous positions.

Your assignment is simple: Do whatever it takes to help him achieve power—but all of the steps must be lawful. His objective—and yours if you accept—is the destruction of the U.S. Constitution and the demise of the rule of law.

Do you take the case?

My Latest Interview

The U.S. Supreme Court’s pathetic code of ethics, Trump’s dangerous antics, and the long arc of history are among the topics of my latest interview on Radio Parallax. You can listen to it here (click on the #2 segment of this program): https://www.radioparallax.com/playshow.php?sid=1145&seg=1

Northwestern’s Commercialization Plan: It Was Never About Six Concerts

This article first appeared in Evanston Roundtable on November 13, 2023.

Northwestern spread two false narratives framing the most consequential issue in Evanston’s history. The Evanston Land Use Commission exposed and exploded the first. The other endures.

“We Need the Money – Really, We Do”

The first whopper was Northwestern’s claim that it needed $2 million expected from six concerts to make the new Ryan Field financially viable. In the ensuing discussion, the university’s more than $14 billion endowment had nowhere to hide.

Evanston’s Land Use commissioners had a few choice words describing NU’s absurd suggestion: “unconvincing,” “unfortunate,” “not credible.” Even Commission Chair Matt Rodgers, Northwestern’s ally who floated a last-minute proposal aimed at salvaging the university’s zoning change as it went down in flames, found NU’s assertion “laughable.”

“Come on – It’s Only Six Concerts”

But the second narrative has not only survived, but also dominated the media coverage of the new stadium: Northwestern wants “only” six concerts.

That’s incorrect. Northwestern wants 66.

Here’s the pertinent language from its proposed text amendment:

“Outdoor lectures, speakers, non-musical festivals, social events and other community or cultural events, and musical performances in conjunction or associated with the foregoing (which shall require loudspeaker permits from the City for any noise amplification), hosted by the University or City and designed for the University or local community, provided that the capacity for such events is no greater than 7,500, and no more than 60 days of programming occurs annually.” (Emphasis supplied)

To put Northwestern’s request in perspective:

The seating capacity of Welsh-Ryan Arena is 7,500.

The UIC Pavilion can seat 10,000 people.

The Aragon Ballroom capacity is 4,500.

Ravinia’s pavilion has a seating capacity of 3,000.

Describing Northwestern’s 60 events as “smaller” ignores the fact that as a stand-alone music venue, it would be one of the largest in the Chicago area. The events are “small” only when compared to Wrigley Field (42,000), the United Center (23,500), and the new Ryan Field. (35,000).

“Ignore the Problem and It Will Go Away”

At the Land Use Commission hearing, the undisputed evidence submitted by an acoustic expert established that noise pollution from musical performances outside the proposed stadium could be worse than the noise generated from concerts inside the stadium.

That’s because large touring acts that would play inside the stadium bring their own sound equipment. They use sophisticated line array loudspeaker systems that better direct sound to audience members. The acts that would likely perform before smaller but still significant crowds of up to 7,500 people outside the new stadium often use cluster loudspeaker systems. Typically, those speakers sit on each side of the stage and blast out music indiscriminately to the fans.

Chicago weather will require all concerts – the six and the 60 – to occur over a 15-week period from late spring to early fall.

That’s four events outside the stadium every week.

Plus a mega-concert inside the stadium every two-and-one-half weeks.

And anyone who believes that Northwestern will stop at six mega-concerts hasn’t followed the saga of Wrigley Field. In 1988, the Cubs started with 18 night games. They now host 43 “night events.”

Six concerts at the new Ryan Field? It’s not just a deflection that hides the real number – 66. It’s a Trojan Horse and a distraction from what is really happening: Northwestern seeks to create a massive, summer-long performance entertainment venue.

“Wow! That’s a Lot of Money”

On October 30, Northwestern launched its newest false narrative – that it’s offering the city of Evanston $100 million in return for the zoning changes it seeks. Fortunately, the media took a closer look at that one – and it collapsed under the weight of a straightforward analysis. Most of the money NU has offered is either not new, illusory, voluntary, remains within NU’s control, or is someone else’s – including Pat Ryan’s and the people who will pay the taxes, fees and surcharges on concert tickets.

But here’s the problem, as an old proverb observes, “A lie will go round the world while truth is still pulling on its boots.” And then the lie sticks.

At the November 13 City Council meeting, we’ll see how firmly it sticks among those whose responsibility as elected officials is to sort fact from fiction and protect the voters who empowered them.

Northwestern trustees, speak up against Ryan Field redo or be forever linked to fulfilling a billionaire’s dream

[This op-ed first appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business on October 30, 2023.]

Pity the members of Northwestern University’s Board of Trustees whose last name isn’t Ryan. Those 142 individuals — including 76 “life trustees” — are lashed to the mast of a billionaire’s vanity boat. It will haunt their remaining days.

For his $480 million donation, life trustee and former Northwestern board chairman Patrick G. Ryan is getting a new stadium bearing his name. His fellow trustees are enduring the early days of that dubious legacy:

• More than just a replacement football stadium, Northwestern seeks to transform its athletic facilities site into a performance entertainment venue. The surrounding residential neighborhood includes homes, parks, playgrounds, schools, churches, a fire station and a major hospital with a Level 1 trauma center. NU’s plan has united and mobilized unprecedented opposition.

• Northwestern’s win-at-all-costs tactics have exploited and deepened divisions in the community.

• In promoting the project, Northwestern relied on an economic impact study that would have embarrassed its world-renowned economics department. It relied on a traffic study that the acclaimed Northwestern Transportation Center never would have issued. And it presented a noise pollution assessment that would not have survived even a cursory peer review by Northwestern’s illustrious McCormick School of Engineering.

• By a resounding 7-2 vote, Northwestern lost its effort to persuade the Evanston Land Use Commission that it should recommend commercialization of the site.

• The new Ryan Field will be a shrine to a disgraced football program and a permanent reminder of a time when hazing scandals produced the university’s darkest hours.

• Even as a football stadium, this big bet could become a historic loser. Attendance for the first four Northwestern home games this year has declined to an average of 20,500 fans, rivaling the 1960 low point, which has been described as the “worst in modern history.”

Ryan’s donation does not cover the total cost of the $800 million project. Hundreds of millions of dollars must come from somewhere else.

A year ago, on Oct. 12, 2022, Northwestern President Michael Schill attended his first Faculty Senate meeting. According to the minutes, then-Provost Kathleen Hagerty said that financing for the stadium was as follows: “The University contributes $124 million (which had already been budgeted for deferred maintenance) plus another $100 million in fundraising and everything else will be covered by the gift from the Ryan family and the operating income from the stadium (estimated total cost of building the new stadium is $800 million).”

But on Oct. 16, 2023, President Schill told the Faculty Senate that the university would take on debt to fund the stadium. Over the past year, interest rates have surged. What does the project’s financial pro forma look like now? What’s the status of the $100 million fundraising effort?

Trustees otherwise inclined to turn a blind eye to Ryan’s myopic vision should watch a video of Northwestern representatives’ sworn testimony before the Land Use Commission on Sept. 6, 2023:

Commissioner: “Specifically, where are you with the capital campaign, you know, kind of the overall project cost? I understand, (it) is $800 million. How much is in place and when do you expect to have the funding fully in place?”

Northwestern: “The overall budget . . . is $800 million. . . .That has not been funded by a single taxpayer dollar. That is all through gifts or elsewhere funded by other means.”

Commissioner: “The question was, is that funding in place?”

Northwestern: “The basis of the funding is in place. Correct.”

Commissioner: “For the whole $800 million?”

Northwestern: “For the whole $800 million, yes.”

It turns out that “elsewhere funded by other means” and “basis of the funding” mean loans.

The last time Northwestern got over its financial skis, faculty, staff and students — the key participants in the university’s educational mission — suffered the consequences. In January 2018, then-Provost Jonathan Holloway assured the Faculty Senate that the projected deficit of $50 million to $100 million was an “annoyance,” not a crisis. It was “not going to have a major impact on our academic priorities.”

Then the hammer fell:

• The credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Northwestern from Aaa to Aa1, a decision then-President Morton Schapiro said was due largely to Northwestern’s budget crisis.

• Eighty staff members were laid off because, according to Schapiro, the situation was worse than he or the Board of Trustees expected.

• All academic units — schools, departments and programs — cut their budgets by 5%.

• Student groups funded by schools and departments faced thousands of dollars in cuts to their budgets.

• Administrative units — including the Division of Student Affairs — suffered a 10% cut.

• Northwestern drew down its endowment to cover two years of deficits.

Northwestern’s trustees have a fiduciary duty to the university, not Pat Ryan. Its state-enacted charter requires that they use the property “solely for purposes of education.” The remedy for non-compliance is forfeiture.

Trustees who remain silent now will be forever linked to a regime that relied on specious arguments, divisive rhetoric, non-existent evidence and magical thinking to fulfill a billionaire’s dream. The result: abandonment of Northwestern’s educational mission, exacerbating a city’s divisions, pitting Evanston against neighboring Wilmette, devastating a residential community and creating potentially disastrous risks to the university and its environs.

That’s quite a legacy.

Northwestern throws ‘Hail Mary’ for Ryan Field stadium rebuild

This op-ed first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on August 22, 2023 (Online) and August 25, 2023 (print): https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/8/22/23841796/northwestern-ryan-field-stadium-rebuild-letters-evanston-steven-harper-op-ed

If NU successfully pushes the proposed new stadium through Evanston City Council, the wounds to the community will take generations to heal, lawyer Steven Harper writes.

Everyone has a price? What’s yours?

Last Thursday, Northwestern University President Michael Schill sent that message in his desperate quest to save billionaire donor Pat Ryan’s vanity project: an open-air performance venue masquerading as a shrine to a disgraced football program. Amid the firestorm of growing opposition, Schill released two letters.

One went to the “Northwestern community” — where a faculty in revolt has called for a pause in the plan. Another went to the “Evanston community” — where NU has exacerbated schisms in its divide-and-conquer strategy to push the project through the Evanston City Council.

Even in those two letters, Schill couldn’t keep his story straight.

No two ways on finances

Schill addressed a Northwestern community concerned about misguided university priorities resulting in a plan costing $800 million. A big chunk comes from the Ryan family. But NU’s share — hundreds of millions — could be spent pursuing its actual educational mission.

Seeking to assuage that group, he said that, even without concerts in a new performance venue, the existing stadium would require equally costly repairs:

“Northwestern would have to make a similar financial investment to restore the current, crumbling Ryan Field to an adequate level to play seven football games per year as it will to create the new Ryan Field.” (Emphasis supplied)

But when addressing the Evanston community, Schill said that at least six major concerts in the proposed venue were necessary “to realistically operate the venue” and to “ensuring financial viability for the project to move forward.”

He can’t have it both ways.

No listening or learning

Schill told the Evanston community that NU had conducted “meetings and forums” where it had an opportunity to “listen and learn” from its neighbors.

Meetings? Only on NU’s terms. Listening and learning? Nope.

Before Schill’s presidency, NU formed a working group in February 2022. It consisted of NU representatives, residents, and an Evanston City Council member. Residents in the group canvassed the surrounding community extensively and reported its views on a new football stadium.

Then NU ignored them.

On Sept. 28, 2022, NU released its proposed stadium design to the media. Two weeks later, it announced that the venue would host major concerts and sell alcohol. A member of the working group later wrote: “This was another complete surprise to us because we had repeatedly emphasized the neighbors’ request that the use of the stadium not be expanded.” (Emphasis supplied)

Recently, NU proved again that it listens only to what it wants to hear. The university joined the City of Evanston’s motion asking a federal court to quash criticismof the new Ryan Field proposal at “town-gown” committee meetings that have occurred for the past 19 years. The court denied the request.

Schill also told the Evanston community that “[o]ur goal has always been to host community-oriented events such as winter festivals, holiday celebrations, family movie nights, and youth sports events, as well as additional student and community programming to take full advantage of the plazas and new park being built.”

NU could do all of that today without building a United Center (North) — without a roof.

Whose project is it?

Schill is just the messenger. The project is Pat Ryan’s.

To the Evanston community, Schill expressed “thanks to a remarkably generous gift from the Ryan Family…” and announced that they, not NU, had offered another $10 million to create a “workforce technology upskilling program.”

Will Ryan’s additional money buy the love needed to get the plan through the city council?

Schill also tempted Evanston to start down a slippery slope: Allow more concerts and you’ll get more money. And he’s using other people’s money to do it: tax and fee revenue “tied to events at the new stadium” and a “ticket surcharge” that concertgoers would pay, not NU.

Likewise paying homage to NU’s biggest donor, Schill told the Northwestern community: “We have arrived at this pivotal point in the Ryan Field rebuild project thanks to a remarkably generous gift from the Ryan Family.”

Schill’s tone-deafness continued to the final sentence of his missive to the Northwestern community: “I firmly believe this rebuild will help us create an opportunity to build toward a positive and exciting future where we do what we do best at Northwestern — bring people together and positively impact communities.”

Schill, Ryan, and the board of trustees have fractured their relationship with the faculty, exploited divisions among residents, and negatively impacted nearby communities.

It will take years for NU to recover from its athletic team scandals. If NU builds the new performance venue, the resulting wounds will endure for generations.

Steven J. Harper, a Northwestern University and Harvard Law School graduate, is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern Law School, former partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, and author of several books.

Don’t Buy Into Report that Evanston Would Benefit from Rebuilt Northwestern Stadium

This op-ed first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on August 7, 2023 (online – https://chicago.suntimes.com/2023/8/7/23820166/northwestern-stadium-evanston-tripp-umbach-report-cost-benefit-analysis-steven-harper) and August 8, 2023 (print edition)

The opening pages read as if the billionaire sponsor of the project, Pat Ryan, had written them himself.

***

Northwestern University President Michael Schill outlined the criteria for proceeding with NU’s pop/rock performance arena to replace its current football stadium. Trying to distance the project from burgeoning scandals surrounding the school’s athletic programs, he told The Daily Northwestern:

“Ryan Field needs to be resolved on its own merits and based upon the benefits that it will create for the community versus the costs that will occur.”

If Schill and the board of trustees actually applied that standard, NU’s plan would have reached the dustbin of history long ago.

Schill, a Princeton University and Yale Law School graduate, knows what a real cost-benefit analysis looks like. He also knows that consulting firm Tripp Umbach’s report — the sole basis for the stadium’s claimed economic benefits to the community — isn’t one. The opening pages read as if the billionaire sponsor of the project, Pat Ryan, had written them himself:

“In September 2021, esteemed Northwestern alumni Patrick G. Ryan and Shirley W. Ryan committed the largest philanthropic gift in Northwestern history….”

“Now, catalyzed by the unparalleled generosity of the Ryan family….”

It’s a puff piece, not a rigorous assessment of the proposed stadium’s economic impact on the community.

A Cost-Benefit Analysis Doesn’t Ignore Costs

In addition to numerous methodological pitfalls and plain inaccuracies in its underlying assumptions, Tripp Umbach’s approach considers only the benefits of the proposed stadium and ignores costs. Describing the underlying computer model (IMPLAN) used in the analysis, economist Jon Sanders explained, “[T]his is a model of sums — it is all plus signs. Despite what it says, it doesn’t measure the total economic impact; it measures only benefits…”

The report also ignores externalities — costs that the project will inflict on victims in Evanston and beyond. Examples:

Northwestern’s acoustic consultant has mapped dangerous projected levels of noise pollution that will travel far into Evanston andWilmette residential areas.

Concert semi-tractor trailer trucks and shuttle buses emitting dangerous pollutants will damage roadways. Traffic congestion will delay anyone trying to reach the Level 1 trauma center at a hospital less than 2,000 feet from the stadium. (Here’s a video of the street separating Evanston and Wilmette shortly before a February 2023 basketball game at Welsh-Ryan Arena, which has one-fourth the seating capacity of the proposed stadium.)

Northwestern’s planned arena will irreparably damage the quality of life in a residential community that includes parks, schools, playgrounds and churches. (Here’s a 2½-minute time-lapse video depicting the seven-day load-in and set-up for a rock concert at a comparably sized stadium in Dresden.)

Hypocrisy at the Highest Level

Fifty years ago, sociologist William Bruce Cameron wrote, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Northwestern Board of Trustees Chairman Peter Barris understands that principle. But he ignores it unless the project interferes with the quiet enjoyment of his property.

Barris has a Martha’s Vineyard home worth $24 million. It’s across the water from a century-old landmark hotel where the cast of Jaws stayed in 1975. Railing against an “assault on the very character of the neighborhood,” Barris sought to rein in the hotel’s 2021 expansion.

“Although our residence is a mile away by road, it sits directly across the harbor,” he wrote to his local government. “Sounds are very efficiently carried across the water, particularly when the winds are blowing out of the north.” His request: “Protect us from the unbridled development that puts at risk the very things that brought us here in the first place.”

Asked about the letter In light of Northwestern’s assault on its community, Barris said, “The surfacing of this personal circumstance, which is distinctly dissimilar to Northwestern’s proposal, is an attempt to distract from our goals — to transform a century-old stadium into a community asset that will benefit all of Evanston….”

Benefits? Evanston jobs and tax revenue, Tripp Umbach claims. But it calculates that after construction, the new arena will create at most 323 new Evanston jobs, with no assurance that Evanston residents will fill any of them.

At most, concert events could generate additional annual tax revenue equal to about one-half of 1% of the combined budgets for Evanston and its two school districts.

The only other claimed benefits are intangible, as are those Tripp Umbach ignored on the cost side of the arena’s ledger. Meanwhile, residents will suffer from the externalities.

So in the long run, who really benefits? A billionaire who gets his name on another Northwestern building — and a disgraced athletic program in disarray.

All at another cost that isn’t in the Tripp Umbach report: a legacy of ongoing division inside and outside the university.

Steven J. Harper, a Northwestern University and Harvard Law School graduate, is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern Law School, former partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, and author of several books.

Northwestern Should Have Given Up on a Ryan Field Redo Long Ago

This op-ed first appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business on July 25, 2023: (https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/northwestern-should-give-new-ryan-field-opinion)

Letter writer Joseph Flanagan urges Northwestern University not to give up on its proposed new Ryan Field. But the venture was misguided from the start, and it hasn’t aged well.

First, it violates fundamental principles that guide the university’s stated mission:

“Northwestern is committed to excellent teaching, innovative research and the personal and intellectual growth of its students in a diverse academic community.”

Northwestern doesn’t want to renovate the existing stadium for students. The nonprofit institution seeks to construct a major performance venue that would compete with the United Center (seating capacity: 23,500) and Allstate Arena (seating capacity: 18,500).

Nor does the university propose a handful of outdoor events. In addition to 10 concerts with seating for 28,500, it wants an unlimited number of additional concerts for 10,000 fans — 50% more than the capacity of the Welsh-Ryan Arena.

Except for a handful of college football games, there’s nothing in this for the students. NU’s consultants have acknowledged that the outdoor concerts would occur during the late spring through early fall, when most students are away.

Second, Patrick Ryan and his family are contributing toward the stadium, but their pledge doesn’t cover its $800 million cost. The remaining balance — hundreds of millions of dollars — will come from Northwestern funds that could actually have been used for purposes that are consistent with its mission statement.

Third, concerts will generate dangerous noise pollution blanketing blocks of a residential area that includes schools, playgrounds, parks, churches, a fire station and a hospital with a Level 1 trauma center. How dangerous and how far away? For weeks, NU has stonewalled requests for its consultants’ data answering those questions.

Fourth, Northwestern has yet to develop a credible, comprehensive transportation management plan for the unprecedented burdens on the community that the concerts would create.

Fifth, Flanagan asserts, “The project is estimated to bring in more than $10 million to Evanston in direct fees the first year alone.” But those are a one-time occurrence for construction permits and fees. His claimed “millions in subsequent years” actually amount to a net increase of about $3.5 million annually — one-half of 1 percent of the combined annual budgets for Evanston and its two school districts. Likewise, when the dust settles and the 3,000 construction jobs disappear, the new stadium would create, at most, about 300 new Evanston jobs.

Instead of creating a “community hub,” Northwestern’s proposal is generating schisms in Evanston and beyond. More than 250 NU professors have signed an open letter to President Michael Schill and other leaders, urging them to halt the project “until (the hazing) crisis is satisfactorily resolved.

Patrick Ryan could stop the madness with a single public statement. Absent that, he is creating a legacy of irreparable division inside and outside a university that he surely loves.

Steven Harper is a former partner at Kirkland & Ellis and Northwestern graduate. He is also an adjunct professor at Northwestern and an author of several books.

Northwestern University’s Guide to Quashing Community Dissent in 3 Acts

This op-ed first appeared in Common Dreams on July 31, 2023: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/northwestern-university

From a professed desire for transparency surrounding a new stadium project, Northwestern has moved all the way to a surreptitious assault on free speech.

The problem began as a vanity project for one of the school’s largest donors. Along with his family, billionaire and Aon founder Patrick G. Ryan pledged $480 million to the university—provided that a big chunk went toward a new $800-million football stadium.

But the site’s main purpose had nothing to do with football. It would be a for-profit, open-air outdoor performance venue competing with the Chicago area’s largest, including the United Center (seating capacity 23,500; home of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks). The arena would seat 28,500 concertgoers and replace the existing stadium in the midst of a residential community with schools, parks, playgrounds, churches, a fire station, and a hospital with a Level 1 trauma center.

In the past, Northwestern University (NU) has tried and failed to get zoning changes and special use permits for large concerts at the current stadium. The city of Evanston would have none of it.

Northwestern wanted this time to be different.

ACT I

First, the university tried to co-opt potential voices of dissent. While developing plans for the stadium, it formed a working group consisting of four NU representatives with key leadership roles in the project, four residents from the neighborhood surrounding the stadium, and the Evanston city council member representing the district where the current stadium is located. A resident member later described Northwestern’s promises to that working group:

At our first meeting, it was agreed that this would be an informal and transparent way for Northwestern to listen and solicit input from the surrounding community regarding the stadium rebuild project.

The university described the group as a “key stakeholder” and “expressed its hopes that this forum would be the beginning of an effort to rebuild trust with community residents.”

From March through June 2022, residents in the working group canvassed neighbors and reported concerns. Among the most important: Neighbors did not want the use of the stadium expanded.

Residents thought Northwestern was listening to them—until the university announced that it had completed a single stadium design concept that contemplated pop/rock concerts. The residents in the working group didn’t see it until September 28, 2022, when Northwestern announced the plan to the world.

ACT II

The working group died, but it had served a useful purpose for the university. The canvassing had revealed residents’ widespread concerns about expanding the stadium, so Northwestern tried to obfuscate them.

In early January 2023, the university hired a consultant to conduct a telephone poll of 500 registered Evanston voters. A slight majority—56%—answered yes to this loaded question:

As you may know, Northwestern has proposed a plan to replace the existing Ryan Field with a new stadium with significantly less seating and that is environmentally sustainable and accessible. Do you support or oppose removing Ryan Field and replacing it with a new stadium in the same location?

Without providing any information about the challenges that rock concerts pose—dangerous sound transmission, traffic congestion, transportation complexities or parking problems—phone interviewers asked the 500 respondents what the “right number of concerts per year” would be. This time, unlike the exhaustive canvassing that the working group had performed, Northwestern got the answer it wanted: numbers greater than zero.

Mission Accomplished. Northwestern now had its disingenuous talking point on the biggest obstacle facing the plan.

But it didn’t stick. Facts about the project and doubts about Northwestern’s false assurances became clearer. Grassroots opposition grew. Voices of dissent got louder.

ACT III

So the next scene in this saga took a bizarre twist. Under a 19-year-old consent decree that settled a case Northwestern had brought against the city, the parties had established a “town-gown” committee to discuss the university’s plans for certain areas of the campus, including one of the Ryan Field parking lots.

But the public committee hearings had now become a forum for residents to register their complaints about the new stadium. More importantly, the media—even Northwestern’s student newspaper—was covering them.

So unbeknownst to residents and Evanston city council members who opposed the plan, the city asked a federal judge to modify the decree to protect Northwestern. Remarkably, it wanted to ban residents from discussing the proposed arena in the town-gown committee hearings.

On June 29, 2023, Northwestern and the city filed a joint brief supporting the ban. Stunning as it seemed, even before the first zoning commission hearing on the university’s unprecedented request to amend the ordinance, Evanston had aligned itself with Northwestern—in secret.

THE RECKONING

The scandal came to light in response to an Evanston resident’s FOIA request. Facing criticism for his failure to notify Evanston’s city council of the action, the city’s corporation counsel later said that his department had determined that he did not need its approval.

So who approved it? All lawyers act at the direction of their clients. The corporation counsel reports to the city manager. Did the city manager authorize the filing? The city manager reports to Evanston’s mayor and city council. What did they know, and when did they know it?

On July 23, the Chicago Tribune broke the story: “Evanston residents angry about legal move by city to bypass public discussion on Northwestern stadium project.” The following morning, it appeared on the front page of the newspaper’s print edition.

On July 25, Northwestern and the city of Evanston lost in court.

“I have crystal clear contractual language, and you all are asking me to read in this limitation,” U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Maldonado saidwhile denying the motion. “No one put this in there, no one limited the discussion of the committee…”

From a professed desire for transparency, Northwestern has moved all the way to a surreptitious assault on free speech. Apparently, it has allies in Evanston’s city government willing to do its bidding.

The scandals at the university—and now Evanston’s city government—aren’t over. Not by a long shot.

How Wealth Inequality is Subverting Higher Education at Northwestern.

[This post first appeared at Common Dreams on July 11, 2023]

The problem of wealth inequality in higher education transcends the favored treatment that many admissions officers give alumni donors. Well-heeled contributors pursuing personal agendas can place the very soul of an institution at risk.

With the Supreme Court’s dismantling of affirmative action, legacy admissions are now the hot topic in higher education. But the impact of wealth inequality transcends the preference that many admissions officers give well-heeled donors. When a university allows benefactors with large fortunes to pursue personal agendas, the educational mission itself becomes a casualty.

My alma mater, Northwestern University (NU), is a poster child for the phenomenon.

To be clear, my wife and I have been dedicated Northwestern alumni for decades. We met there as undergraduates and both obtained advanced degrees. Over the years, we have made substantial contributions that helped to create scholarships, fund a lecture series, and endow a professorship.

My wife and I have also taught there. I was an adjunct professor in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences (WCAS) and in the Pritzker School of Law; she was a clinic director and lecturer. I’ve served on several NU committees and was the keynote speaker for the 2010 WCAS Convocation ceremony. My wife and I chaired our respective reunion committees. We bleed NU purple.

But when a good friend of many years goes astray, silence is not an option.

Educational Mission? What’s That?

Like most institutions of higher education, Northwestern has a “Mission Statement”:

“Northwestern is committed to excellent teaching, innovative research and the personal and intellectual growth of its students in a diverse academic community.”

But NU is allowing a donor with deep pockets to subvert that mission. Catering to the whims of a single alumnus with big bucks, the university is now seeking to build an $800 million outdoor performance venue in the midst of a quiet suburban Chicago residential community. The project makes a mockery of NU’s Mission Statement.

NU’s project seeks to attract top pop/rock concerts that would perform from late spring through early fall. Its proposal acknowledges that most students would be away when the concerts occurred. Only incidentally would the proposed stadium also host a handful of college football games. [Full disclosure: We live a few blocks away from the current football stadium, which the proposed venue would replace.]

With a concert seating capacity of 28,500, NU hopes to compete with top Chicago-area venues – including the United Center (the home of the Bulls and the Blackhawks; seating capacity: 23,500) and Allstate Arena in Rosemont (where the Chicago Wolves hockey team plays all of its home games; seating capacity: 18,500).

In addition to 10 mega concerts throughout the summer, NU seeks permission from the City of Evanston to hold an unlimited number of events with a seating capacity of 10,000 fans – a formidable crowd.

How does the project square with Northwestern’s “Mission Statement”? It doesn’t.

Why is it happening? Because a single wealthy donor wants it: Patrick Ryan (B.A, ’59), who played football at Northwestern, founded AON Corp., and – along with Justice Clarence Thomas – is a member of the recently newsworthy and elite Horatio Alger Association. Ryan and his family have donated $480 million dollars to help cover the cost of the new state-of-the-art open-air stadium.

You might ask, “What’s the big deal? NU gets a new stadium.”

But Ryan’s contribution won’t come close to covering the total cost of the project. The remaining balance – hundreds of millions of dollars – will come from Northwestern University funds that could actually have been used for purposes that are consistent with its Mission Statement.

Therein lies the insidious subversion of the university’s stated mission.

University “Values”? What Are Those?

Northwestern also has a “Statement of Values”:

“Commitment to faculty, and to excellence in research, scholarship, creative work and teaching

“Commitment to student experience

“Commitment to balancing Northwestern’s present and future needs

“Commitment to diversity and inclusion”

How is the proposed entertainment venue consistent with those espoused values? About as well as it serves NU’s stated mission.

Students won’t even be on campus for the summer pop/rock concerts. A concert venue does not contribute to faculty excellence. Apart from NU’s unenforceable promise to “work with minority- and women-owned business enterprises as part of the construction,” it does nothing to promote diversity or inclusion. It is, instead, a donor’s vanity project and a proposed profit center for a non-profit university.

What’s Next?

The City of Evanston has not yet approved NU’s proposal. The plan has encountered serious opposition from the community because the adverse impact on the neighborhood – which has no buffer zone separating it from the stadium – would be profound:

Dangerous and disruptive noise pollution would blanket what has been a quiet residential area that includes schools, playgrounds, parks, churches, and a hospital with a Level 1 trauma center.

A series of pop/rock concerts requiring “load in,” “set up,” “tear down,” and “load out” would create a summer of endless construction projects. Here’s a video of the seven-day “load in” for a Rammstein concert in Dresden – a comparably-sized outdoor performance venue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgGuRKgvWQ4

Northwestern has yet to develop a comprehensive transportation management plan to handle the unprecedented traffic, congestion, and parking burdens on the community that the venue would create.

The construction period alone would take years, starting with demolition that NU estimates would result in 70,000 tons of demolished material.

Sustainability? Climate concerns? The list of open questions about what NU economists would call externalities goes on and on, but Northwestern is urging a fast track toward approval.

As the battle continues, Northwestern has all the weapons of wealth: a massive endowment ($14-15 billion); a big law firm pushing the project forward (DLA Piper); the ability to dangle potential revenue dollars that tempt a city needing them; and a cynical willingness to divide the community along racial and socioeconomic lines.

Will grass-roots objections from residents who have the most at stake prevail over such a mighty adversary?

As summer turns to fall and NU tries to rush its project through the approval process, we’ll all find out.

Dangerous DeSantis

Is he more deadly to democracy than Trump?

In my latest interview on Background Briefing with Ian Masters, we discuss Ron DeSantis.

Here’s the link: https://www.backgroundbriefing.org/2023/05/28/background-briefing-may-28-2023/

Ron DeSantis Has a Very Un-American Vision For America

This post first appeared on Common Dreams on May 25, 2023.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) wants to be the 47th president of the United States. He’s running on his record as governor, which an overwhelming majority of Americans should find alarming. Armed with a Republican legislature that rubber stamps his every whim, DeSantis’s most celebrated accomplishments defied the will of most Americans:

He spearheaded a ban on abortions for women who are more than six weeks pregnant, even though many women don’t know by then that they’re pregnant and most Americans oppose such a draconian restriction.

Only days after the mass shooting in Nashville, he signed legislation allowing gun owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit or training. The vast majority of Americans want more gun restrictions, not fewer.

He defunded diversity, equality, and inclusion programs at all state universities, ignoring the contrary desires of most students.

His crusade against the LGBTQ community has compromised the freedom of an oppressed minority and morphed into a blood feud with Mickey Mouse. Popular opinion is running against him on those issues as well.

And most recently, a vivid illustration of his dangerous view of the First Amendment emerged – once again defying the wishes of most Americans.

DeSantis: Leading the Way to Illiteracy

On March 25, 2022, DeSantis signed the “K-12” bill – one of three state laws aimed, at least in part, at reading or instructional materials in schools. It’s an integral element of his ongoing attack on public education.

The law bans the use of any instructional materials in classrooms, in school libraries, or on school reading lists that are “not suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented, or is inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used.”

A key provision allows any parent or resident to lodge a complaint for anything that violates the law’s amorphous standard. So far, among the books removed from circulation in one of Florida’s school districts are Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

Now another victim is focusing attention on DeSantis’s unpopular crusade.

DeSantis: Pandering to the Lowest Common Denominator

At President Joseph Biden’s inauguration, Amanda Gorman delivered The Hill We Climb – a 700-word poem – to great acclaim. Then she published it as a book, but a parental complaint under DeSantis’s new K-12 law led a Miami-Dade county school committee to limit student access to it.

The parent was Daily Salinas, who has attended Proud Boys rallies and posted anti-Semitic tropes on social media (deleted after the Miami Herald revealed her identity on May 22 and the group Miami Against Fascism highlighted them in an expose’ on Twitter the next day).

Salinas completed the complaint form in her own hand, and the form itself merits scrutiny as a marvel of ignorance and illiteracy:

TITLE OF THE MATERIAL IN QUESTION: “The Hill We Climb”

AUTHOR-PUBLISHER: “Oprah Winfrey”

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO ABOUT THIS MEDIA: Box checked: Remove the challenged material from the total environment

TO WHAT DO YOU OBJECT (please be specific, cite pages or sections): [Left blank]

WHY DO YOU OBJECT TO THIS MATERIAL? “Is not educational and have [sic] indirectly hate messages – page 12-13”

DID YOU REVIEW ALL THE MATERIAL? “Yes”

ARE YOU AWARE OF PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS OF THIS MATERIAL? “I don’t need it”

WHAT STRENGTHS DO YOU PERCEIVE IN THIS MATERIAL? [Left blank]

FOR WHAT AGE GROUP WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THIS MATERIAL? “Not for schools”

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS THE FUNCTION OF THIS MATERIAL? “Cause confusion and indoctrinate students”

IN ITS PLACE, WHAT MATERIAL WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THAT WOULD RESULT IN THE SAME OUTCOME? [Left blank]

That’s the sum total of what it took to start the DeSantis process that culminated in removing Gorman’s acclaimed book from a public elementary school library. To summarize:

Salinas got the author’s name wrong.

She said that she didn’t need any awareness of the glowing professional reviews that Gorman’s poem received, but claimed that it was “not for schools.”

She said she had reviewed “ALL THE MATERIAL,” but concluded that it was not educational, has “hate messages,” and can cause “confusion and indoctrinate students,” referring only to these lines (page 12-13):

“We’ve braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,

And the norms and notions of what ‘just is’

Isn’t always justice.

“And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow, we do it.

Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed

A nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”

Salinas also complained about four other books. Only one – Countries in the News: Cuba – remained available for all students in the school. The others, including The Hill We Climb and The ABC’s of Black History (which was written for ages five and up), are now kept in the middle school section of the media center where elementary school students won’t see them.

Salinas, along with one of the many school committees that now live in fear of a governor known for political retaliation, accomplished all of that destruction in just a week.

How did she miss Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech?

Gorman said that she wrote the poem “so that all young people could see themselves in a historical moment. Ever since, I’ve received countless letters and videos from children inspired by The Hill We Climb to write their own poems.” She added, “A school book ban is any action taken against a book that leaves access to a book restricted or diminished.”

DeSantis: Conning the Public

DeSantis asserts that criticisms of his assault on the First Amendment are a “book ban’ hoax. “Hoax” has a familiar ring. I wonder where he heard it.

“Exposing the ‘book ban’ hoax is important because it reveals that some are attempting to use our schools for indoctrination,” he said, claiming that “inappropriate materials have been snuck into our classrooms and libraries….”

Snuck?

As a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, DeSantis knows that he’s running a con. He’s exploiting and amplifying culture war issues to win Trump’s MAGA crowd. To borrow Amanda Gorman’s phrase, DeSantis has put Florida in another “historical moment.” Now he wants the entire country to join him there.

But Gorman’s poem is a message of hope, as its concluding lines demonstrate:

“The new dawn blooms as we free it,

For there is always light,

if only we’re brave enough to see it,

If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

Watch the video of Gorman delivering her message on Inauguration Day. Then imagine a country where just one person of marginal literacy can fill out a form that will prevent your child from reading it.

That’s only one scene in Ron DeSantis’s vision for America.

My Latest Interview: The Debt Ceiling, Clarence and Ginni Thomas Scandals, and the Supreme Court’s Upcoming Decisions

Chaos surrounds the U.S. debt ceiling; scandals surround the Thomases, and big questions surround the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming decisions.

Click here for my May 17, 2023 interview on Radio Parallax.

.

The Durham Report: New Addition to Trump’s Library of Lies

This post first appeared at Common Dreams on May 19, 2023.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) wants special counsel John Durham to testify in his “weaponization” hearings. Created as part of a dark deal that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made with far-right Republican extremists to secure his speakership, Jordan’s new subcommittee claims to be investigating “the politicization of the FBI and the Department of Justice” against Republicans.

So far, Jordan’s subcommittee has found nothing. Durham didn’t find anything either, but he spun his report with useful GOP soundbites that are sufficient to achieve Republican objectives:

Muddy the scene. Arouse the mob. And accuse adversaries of your own nefarious deeds. Then exploit the resulting confusion and chaos.

In fact, John Durham is now a case study in the GOP’s weaponization of the Justice Department.

Trump Mastered “Weaponization”

Any genuine “weaponization” probe would have started with former President Donald Trump and his attorney general, William Barr.

From the beginning of his presidency, Trump urged then-FBI director James Comey to end the investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia. Comey refused and Trump fired him.

Trump then urged his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to kill the investigation. Instead, Sessions recused himself. Trump was incensed and eventually Sessions lost his job too. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump fumed, referring to his notorious personal lawyer and fixer. In the 1950’s, Cohn had been Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-WI) hatchet man during the “Red Scare” investigation into communist activity – one of the darkest chapters in American political history.

After firing Sessions, Trump turned to the manifestly unqualified Matthew Whitaker, who had publicly criticized special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Amid mounting bipartisan criticism of Whitaker, Trump turned to Barr. Six months earlier, Barr had sent Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – Mueller’s boss – an unsolicited memo arguing that Mueller should shut down his obstruction of justice probe.

Trump had found his Roy Cohn.

“Weaponization” Rises to a New Level

In March 2019, Barr had been on the job for only two months when Mueller gave him – but not the public – his 448-page report. It proved that:

Russia wanted Trump to win the 2016 election;

Trump embraced Russia’s assistance; and

Trump obstructed the subsequent investigation into his campaign ties to Russia.

Mueller secured convictions against Trump’s top campaign advisers, and he expressly refused to exonerate Trump personally. But notwithstanding powerful evidence proving Trump’s obstruction, Mueller believed that he could not indict a sitting president.

Immediately, Barr issued a deceptive “summary” of Mueller’s report that kneecapped the actual findings. Relying on Barr’s summary, Trump then tweeted one of the more than 30,000 lies spewed during his presidency:

“No Collusion. No Obstruction. Complete and Total EXONERATION!”

Barr’s summary drew an immediate, albeit private, rebuke from Mueller himself because it created “public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation.” Barr wasn’t confused. He knew exactly what he was doing. And no one could challenge Trump’s or Barr’s lies because Barr didn’t release Mueller’s report to the public for another three weeks.

A year later, a federal judge blasted Barr’s pre-release “distortions” and “lack of candor.” The court questioned “whether Attorney General Barr’s intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller Report — a narrative that is clearly in some respects substantively at odds” with it. Barr made “a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings… to the contrary.”

After-the-fact judicial condemnation didn’t matter to Barr. He had weaponized Trump’s false mantra that the FBI’s Russia investigation had been a “hoax” and that Mueller had “exonerated” him.

Durham Became Barr’s Henchman

Barr didn’t stop at confusing the public about Mueller’s damning conclusions. He appointed federal prosecutor John Durham to search for evidence supporting Trump’s key talking point: The FBI was out to get him and had no basis for starting the Russia investigation.

Barr took a personal interest in the assignment. In the fall of 2019, he and Durham traveled to Italy and asked officials for evidence that might discredit the Justice Department’s Trump-Russia investigation. Italian officials had nothing to help them, but they did offer a tip: Trump was engaged in suspicious financial activity.

Uh-oh. The Italian tip required a criminal investigation. But rather than assign the matter to another prosecutor, Barr added it to Durham’s plate. Notably, Durham’s final report doesn’t mention the tip or what became of it.

Meanwhile, Durham’s search for FBI abuses or institutional animus toward Trump reached a dead end. So he changed course and tried to blame the Clinton campaign for promoting the suspicious Russia links surrounding Trump.

Durham’s revised mission failed too. His final report acknowledges that, after Wikileaks published hacked Democratic emails, the FBI opened its investigation based on information from an Australian diplomat. The diplomat said that a Trump campaign aide told him that Russia had damaging material on Clinton. At that point, even Durham admits, there was “no question that the FBI had an affirmative obligation to closely examine” the Trump-Russia connection.

But Durham believes that the FBI should have started with a “preliminary investigation” before moving to a “full investigation.” That’s not exactly the blockbuster that Trump and his allies had wanted him to find.

Durham Leaves a Legacy of Professional Disgrace

Durham’s final report is an effort to justify the time (four years) and money (more than $6.5 million) wasted on his probe.

About half of Durham’s report discusses problems with the infamous Steele dossier. But contrary to his suggestion, the dossier didn’t “trigger” the Trump-Russia investigation. The Australian diplomat’s tip did. The dossier didn’t reach the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigators until the probe had already been underway for six weeks.

Durham admits that comparing the FBI’s investigation of Trump with those of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation is not an “apples-to-apples” task. But then he does it anyway.

Venturing far beyond the scope of his assignment, knowledge, training or experience, Durham speculates that “confirmation bias” may have influenced the investigative process in a way that disfavored Trump.

Durham charged no high-level FBI or intelligence official with a crime. He has only three prosecutions to show for his pursuit of the Trump/Barr agenda.

The first was a negotiated plea deal involving a doctored email that Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz had flagged in his 2019 report on the FBI’s Russia probe. But the underlying offense had no impact on the key conclusion: The FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation was not politically motivated.

Durham’s other two cases involved allegedly false statements to the FBI. At trial, he lost both cases, but large sections of the final report rehash evidence and arguments that failed to persuade those juries.

Several attorneys on Durham’s team tried unsuccessfully to protect him from his misguided deference to Trump and Barr. His deputy, as well as a prosecutor, resigned in protest.

But as Durham lost trials and the respect of colleagues, he won a new friend:

“While attorneys general overseeing politically sensitive inquiries tend to keep their distance from the investigators, Mr. Durham visited Mr. Barr in his office for at times weekly updates and consultations about his day-to-day work,” the Times wrote. “They also sometimes dined and sipped Scotch together….”

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who drafted the special counsel regulations that should have governed Barr’s and Durham’s conduct, observed:

“The special counsel is supposed to be someone who cannot be reasonably accused of laundering an attorney general’s dirty work… Indeed, no one involved in developing these regulations thought that a prosecutor who has regular Scotch-sipping sessions with the attorney general would ever be remotely fit for the job.”

Durham’s report doesn’t undermine any of Mueller’s conclusions. Nor does it conflict with DOJ Inspector General Horowitz’s conclusion that Trump was not the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy against him.

Rehashing criticisms of certain investigative procedures that the Justice Department and FBI Director Christopher Wray corrected years ago, the report “does not recommend any wholesale changes in the guidelines and policies that the [Justice] Department and the FBI now have in place to ensure proper conduct and accountability in how counterintelligence activities are carried out.” The report’s only substantive recommendation is that the FBI create a new position to help ensure the integrity of politically sensitive investigations.

But none of these facts will prevent Durham’s report from becoming a worthy addition to Trump’s rhetorical library of lies. And when Durham appears before Jordan’s subcommittee, watch Republicans lift phrases from the report, ignore context, and weaponize it.

On second thought, don’t watch any of it.

The GOP Has a Very Anti-American Agenda

This post first appeared at Common Dreams on May 12, 2023.

If you vote for a Republican, you’re selecting someone who – once elected – is unlikely to support your views on the issues that matter to you most. Instead, here’s what you’re choosing:

Guns

The vast majority of Americans favor simple and effective gun control measures. They want:

universal background checks and “red flag” laws that would alert law enforcement to gun owners with serious mental health issues;

a national database for gun ownership;

laws requiring gun owners to store their weapons in a safe storage unit; and

the prohibition of semi-automatic rifles – weapons of war that killers have used in the seven deadliest mass shootings of the last decade.

But elected Republicans oppose all of those measures.

Women’s Rights

The vast majority of Americans want to preserve a woman’s right to control her own body.

But elected Republicans unite to enact legislation that outlaws abortion altogether – even for rape, incest, or the health of the mother – or that moves the period of any permissible abortion ever closer to the date of conception and before a woman even knows she’s pregnant.

The Debt Ceiling

Americans want a functional government that doesn’t face a financial crisis every time Republicans decide to hold the nation hostage to their unpopular demands. When Donald Trump was president, neither party in Congress created a debt-limit crisis.

But with President Joe Biden in the White House, elected Republicans have:

abandoned all pretense of “fiscal responsibility” – a perennial GOP rhetorical talking point;

threatened to crash the U.S. economy into recession or worse, create chaos in global markets, increase the nation’s borrowing costs that will increase future federal deficits, and jeopardize America’s international financial credibility; and

united in opposing an increase in the nation’s debt ceiling – despite Congress’ bipartisan authorization of the expenditures that created the debt in the first place and the U.S. Constitution’s command that the “public debt of the United States, authorized by law, shall not be questioned.”

Cult of Trump

Most Americans want honest, courageous, and hard-working leaders with personal integrity.

But elected Republicans refuse to condemn their leading candidate for the 2024 presidential nomination, notwithstanding:

his adjudicated liability for sexual abuse and defamation;

his indictment on charges that he paid off a porn star in his effort to win the presidency in 2016;

criminal investigations involving his unlawful retention of highly classified documents and his obstruction of government efforts to retrieve those materials;

and state and federal criminal investigations surrounding his attempt to subvert the 2020 election and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. Although videos of the deadly assault on law enforcement personnel on January 6 are irrefutable, Trump has pledged to pardon the insurrectionists who have been imprisoned for serious felonies.

Democracy

Most Americans want the United States to remain a democracy. Our forebears fought and died in wars to secure and defend it. In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, congressional Republicans blamed Trump for the January 6 riot. They described it as a heinous and unprecedented attack on the U.S. government.

But now elected Republicans pretend that it never happened, calling the insurrectionists “tourists” engaged in “peaceful protest.”

Voting Rights

Most Americans want to make voting easier. After all, it is the bedrock of any democracy.

But elected Republicans pursue voter suppression with a vengeance – literally. Committed to the opposite of democracy, they enact legislation that makes casting a ballot more difficult for those who are likely to vote against them.

Government Priorities

Most Americans support higher taxes on the rich.

But elected Republicans oppose taxes on the wealthiest Americans, while urging reductions in government spending that target, among other vulnerable groups, veterans, Social Security recipients, Medicare beneficiaries, poor mothers, and infants.

Climate

Most Americans want the government to take seriously the existential threat of climate change.

But elected Republicans ignore or ridicule it, while promoting activities that contribute to the destruction of the planet.

Culture Wars

Most Americans despise the polarization that has infected the body politic.

But elected Republicans use culture wars – including the rejection of science – to promote illiteracy and ignorance across a range of issues, deepening the schisms among us. In addition to the topics listed above, here are two more examples:

Polls show that a vast majority of Americans oppose book bans, but elected Republicans are pushing them.

LGBTQ rights enjoy an overwhelming majority of popular support, but GOP leaders seek to reverse them.

Your Vote Should Matter

Stated simply, if you vote for a Republican, you’re probably voting against your personal preferences for the nation.

You’re voting against democracy, which is supposed to honor voters’ desires.

You’re voting for those who claim to care what you think, but use such rhetoric to seduce you.

You’re voting for people whose sole agenda is the acquisition and retention of power. Other than Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) desire to retain his slim, four-person GOP majority in the House of Representatives, there’s no reason for him or any true party leader to tolerate the continuing presence of Rep. George Santos (R-NY), who was a disgrace long before his recent federal indictment for fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and false statements.

Eventually, the actions of elected Republicans betray them – and most of their supporters. But until it’s personal and GOP voters actually feel the impact, they won’t care.

Because in America today, that’s what it means to be a Republican voter.

Jimmy Hoffa – Almost 50 Years Later

On July 30, 1975, the Teamsters’ former president, Jimmy Hoffa, disappeared. He remains one of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th century.

In 1960, my father stumbled unwittingly into a power struggle with Hoffa. My dad escaped with his life, his wife and his kids, but little else.

He was one of the lucky ones.

My first book, Crossing Hoffa – A Teamster’s Story. was a Chicago Tribune “Best Book of the Year” in 2007, and it continues to attract attention. You can listen to my latest interview about the story here.

Radio Parallax interview with Steven J. Harper

Democracy Lost: Dominion v. Fox

This post first appeared at Common Dreams on April 26, 2023.

Both parties to the litigation won.

Staple Street Capital, a New York-based private-equity firm, is in the business of maximizing the return on its clients’ investments. In 2018, it bought a 76 percent interest in Dominion Voting Systems for $38.3 million. Five years later, Fox’s $787.5 million payout represented a staggering gain.

Fox News makes money by telling its audience what it wants to hear, even if Fox knows they’re lies. The settlement preserves its lucrative business model.

Democracy lost.

Panic at the Top

In the runup to the election, Fox enjoyed historic ratings and revenues. But a momentous Election Night decision put everything at risk. A small sample of Fox’s internal communications tells the story – and the public probably hasn’t seen the most damning ones.

Nov. 3, 2020, 11:20 p.m.: Fox became the first network to announce that Joe Biden had won Arizona – a disastrous development for Donald Trump’s re-election prospects. The Trump campaign was livid. On behalf of Bill Sammon’s Decision Desk team, Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt went on live television, defending the call to skeptical on-air hosts Tucker Carlson and Bret Baier.

Fox soon began hemorrhaging viewers in the far-right audience it had cultivated for decades.

Nov. 11: Raj Shah, Fox Corp.’s senior vice president and Trump’s former White House deputy press secretary, warned company leaders that “bold, clear and decisive action is needed for us to begin to regain the trust that we’re losing with our core audience.” Two days later, he wrote to Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan, that “Fox News is facing a brand crisis” and “open revolt… precipitous decline in Fox’s favorability among our core audience… poses lasting damage to the Fox News brand unless effectively addressed soon.”

In another email, Shah told colleagues that the network’s brand was “under heavy fire from our customer base.” In yet another, he wrote, “We are not concerned with losing market share to CNN or MSNBC right now. Our concern is Newsmax and One America News Network ….”

Lying as a Corporate Strategy

Nov. 12: Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich fact-checked a Trump tweet that referred to Fox’s broadcasts. She said that there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion voting machines. In a text chain with Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson wrote, “Please get her fired. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”

Nov. 13: The “Brain Room” – Fox’s fact-checking and research division – concluded that claims about Dominion voting machines were “100% false. Dominion systems continue to reliably and accurately count ballots, and state and local election authorities, as well 