Progressives Every Day: The Troll Has Been Silenced
Progressives Every Day: The Troll Has Been Silenced
Now what?
Welcome to a Friday evening edition of Progressives Everywhere. What a week.
I’ve got some state and local news to report, but first, let’s look at a few stray national news items.
On Sunday, I’ll have a very timely interview with an expert in right-wing extremism who will clear up the many, many questions so many of us have about QAnon and all those other lunatics.
The Week Everything Changed
First, the big news: Tonight, Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter. The platform said that he presented a clear security risk. The ban was a culmination of a day-long suspension spree executed by major social media platforms. Facebook suspended Trump until at least the day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, YouTube banned Steve Bannon’s channel, and Twitter wiped out a whole lot of QAnon and right-wing misinformation accounts.
These accounts should have been suspended years ago, but Big Tech companies were terrified of what Trump might do to them. Instead, they coddled the president… and then he lashed out and tried to wreck them with his crusade against Section 230, anyway. Now, Trump and his allies are basically powerless to hurt these tech monopolies; instead, the bigger threat to the Silicon Valley titans comes from the newly empowered Democrats that have wanted to break up the tech giants for years now.
Profiles in courage, they are not… but at least they’re doing more than Democratic leadership at the moment.
We knew that the tenuous alliance between progressives and the party’s conservative leadership would fissure and collapse at some point during the Biden administration, but I don’t think anyone expected it to come before Biden was inaugurated. Maybe that was naive — one of the big schisms was always about how to deal with Trump and his right-wing cuck terrorists and there was never any real chance that he would go quietly into the gold-foil night.
As it stands now, the fight is about when to impeach Trump. After a few days of a small portion of the caucus play-acting at outrage, the GOP (minus a few sane folks like Lisa Murkowski) has lined up against impeachment. And at first, Democratic leaders were also trying to toss cold water on removing Trump from office, but the uproar was so swift and powerful that they had to almost immediately reconsider preemptive surrender.
(This is where I write a disclaimer, which feels necessary based on some emails I’ve been getting from readers: I am a Democrat. I have raised $5.8 million for Democratic candidates and progressive causes. I have given all my free time to the fight, and at this point, it’s taking up most of my work time, too. I think Democrats are better than Republicans in every way. But it is healthy and in fact necessary to question your leaders and push them to be better — we always wonder why Republicans don’t push their leadership, so it makes no sense to not do that of our own. Politicians are largely interested in power, so it’s our job to make them work harder and do better by us to retain it. Thank you.)
The process has been remarkable to watch play out in real-time, as top Democratic leaders, so used to controlling the caucus with an iron fist, have been suddenly unable to silence a growing number of younger, progressive lawmakers and influential grassroots activists. Each compromise they’ve floated has been swiftly and loudly rejected, and now, with public pressure hitting a fevered pitch, they’re now on the brink of actually taking action. Here’s a condensed timeline for those of you who have better things to do than follow this madness:
Thursday:
Dick Durbin says there’s “little appetite” on the Democratic side to impeach Trump.
House and Senate leaders call a recess for the rest of the week.
Rep. Ilhan Omar debuts articles of impeachment.
Rep. Mondaire Jones introduces an impeachment resolution.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries calls for immediate impeachment (important — he’s the number four Democrat in the House and wanted to “move forward, not backward” after news of Trump’s criminal Georgia call broke).
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer suggest that they’ll begin impeachment if Mike Pence doesn’t invoke the 25th amendment.
The Squad (along with new members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush) send a letter to leadership, asking that they immediately reconvene Congress to get rolling on impeachment.
Friday morning and afternoon:
Over 200 Democrats call for Trump’s removal (timeline variable).
Donald Trump tweeted this shit.
Democratic leadership suggests they’ll have articles of impeachment written up for “mid-week” next week. Outrage at the delay ensues.
Rep. Pelosi says she is working to ensure that Trump can’t access the nuclear codes.
Rep. Adam Schiff explains that Democrats are remarkably paranoid about hypothetical factors in the 2024 election, thus putting impeachment in question.
Reports suggest that Democrats are preparing impeachment proceedings if Trump doesn’t resign '“immediately.”
Articles of impeachment on Monday; AOC and many other Democrats, including a fair number of non-Squad representatives, say we don’t have the luxury of time.
Friday evening (current time):
Rep. Pelosi confirms that they are planning to introduce articles of impeachment on Monday.
Why Monday? Some people (such as Christine Pelosi) have suggested that Democrats have to wait two days to proceed with impeachment, but from everything I’ve read, that’s not the case. I can’t say why they’re putting it off for the weekend, but the end result is that it took them two days to get to this point and they’ll give it another two days before they actually take action.
I’m glad they’re finally seeing the light, but I have to wonder, what does it say that there will be a five-day gap between Trump inciting an armed invasion of the US Capitol and any real response?
Trump is an unstable maniac of a president who loves breaking laws and stoking violence, so he’s a clear and present danger. The lack of urgency suggests the opposite; instead, being wishy-washy and dragging heels on taking action signals that Trump isn’t all that much of a threat and that his sedition didn’t require an emergency response. Further, the unwillingness they’ve shown to hold him accountable up until this point — remember, they wanted to let him walk after the Georgia mob boss phone call — implies that Democrats aren’t serious about fighting corruption and that they only condemned Trump for performative campaign purposes. As I wrote on Wednesday, when there are never any consequences for extremists, they only grow more extreme.
Now, one argument against impeachment being floated in the press is that a trial would likely take up the first few days of Biden’s presidency, which might be distracting. But Biden will be president for four years and if Democrats don’t take a stand, he’s likely to be undermined every step of the way. And a trial doesn’t stop him from getting things done — Biden should be using his first few days to issue executive orders that undo Trump’s policies and cancels student debt, and nothing about a trial in the Senate would prevent him from doing so. Actually, there could be no better optics than the dual action of Democrats making tangible differences in people’s lives as they hold Trump accountable at the same time.
Still, there’s a lot to take away from this week. Democrats won both Senate races in Georgia. We saw that leadership can be pushed to do the right thing. Trump lost his social media platforms. It became clear that many Republicans are terrorist sympathizers and cannot be trusted to acknowledge the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency, let alone compromise with him on any legislation. Right-wing neo-Confederate extremists who mostly live online were exposed as truly maniacal threats IRL. And no matter what happens, Donald Trump will never have his image rehabilitated, no matter how much the media might want to do so.
Important News You Need to Know
Yes, there’s other news happening!
Pennsylvania: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a masterful progressive communicator who has become a social media star this year thanks to his natural shitposting abilities and willingness to humiliate Republican bullies, is exploring a run for Senate. If the Capitol police continue to fail in their duties to protect the Senate, Fetterman will be able to pick up the slack. Dude is huge.
The Stimulus: Sen. Joe Manchin experienced the internet blowback buzzsaw himself today when he appeared to take a hard stance against the $2000 stimulus checks that gave Democrats the Senate majority this week. He quickly “clarified” that he wasn’t necessarily opposed to the checks, but instead wanted to make sure vaccine rollout was the top priority.
His quotes make clear that he was full of it — “I don’t know where in the hell $2,000 came from,” Manchin said. “I swear to God I don’t. That’s another $400 billion dollars.” But hey, his quick backtracking is another sign that conservative Democrats can be pushed on these things.
Kentucky: A City Commissioner from Richmond, a small city in Kentucky, was seen at the QAnon Capitol insurrection on Wednesday and it’s causing a bit of a stir back home. This isn’t a huge scandal by national standards, but in a way, it’s just as scary.
Local and state governments have always been loaded with right-wing idealogues, but now, internet-addled conspiracy theorists have infiltrated every level of the American bureaucracy. We can monitor the deranged things that kooks like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene do in Washington, but these local officials will go largely unnoticed, poisoning every aspect of our civic life with their delusions and cruelty. This is one reason why I’m still so focused on local and state politics — we can’t let these people destroy us from the inside.
Texas: Speaking of idealogues doing awful things on the down-low, the conservative-dominated US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals gave Texas Medicaid officials the go-ahead on their plan to remove Planned Parenthood from the program’s list of covered providers.
Texas already has the highest uninsured rate in the country, owing to the GOP’s refusal to expand Medicaid, and now the few people who do benefit from the program have less than a month to find another health provider. Thousands of people in the state rely on Planned Parenthood for their overall healthcare — reproductive services are just a small part of what it offers — and now, amidst a pandemic, they have to seek out new doctors.
Weed news:
New Jersey: The hang-up over punishing kids for possessing legal marijuana seems to have been settled:
Under the newest proposed changes, anyone between 18 and 21 years old would be subject to a $50 to $250 fine if they possess 6 ounces or less of marijuana, the legal threshold for adults over 21 years old. Possession of over 6 ounces would come with a maximum fine of $100 to $500.
Montana: Nearly 60% of voters in Montana approved the legalization of recreational marijuana in November. Uninterested in the wishes of their constituents, Republicans in the state legislature are refusing to provide the funding that is required to get the legal pot program off the ground. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
Nebraska: Speaking of voters getting their say on weed, a State Senator in Nebraska has introduced a constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana that would require popular approval to ratify. "If South Dakota approved it, why put off the inevitable?" said Omaha State Sen. Justin Wayne.
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