Meanwhile (part 4)... per @summer_meza — a Trump administration led by men who will be dead before the worst effects of climate change are felt argues catastrophe is inevitable, so we should do nothing. theweek.com/speedreads/798…
Meanwhile (part 5)...via @CurtisSChin — thread with images from devastating earthquake & tsunami that crushed city of Palu in northern Sulawesi, Indonesia yesterday.
Meanwhile (part 6)...@statnews writer @HelenBranswell with an update on a new #Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where armed conflict is slowing medical response.
Meanwhile (part 7)...circling back to the Trump administration’s White America program, one aspect of it is mucking up an important military program of long standing. From @lbaldor via @jpaceDC
With the intense discussion over a Supreme Court nomination dominating Twitter (the non-#Packers part of it anyway), this thread is my small contribution to letting people know about other important stories being covered now. @threadreaderapp will you please unroll.
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I'm out, too. After more than 40 years, I'm leaving the Republican Party. <thread -- I'm afraid it's a long one. Sorry.>
2. I started my professional life as a conservative Republican, moving from a entry-level job at @NRO just after college to Washington to work on the Hill. I've worked on campaigns for Republican politicians in four states, and in government for...
3...Republican elected officials from four different states, in both houses of Congress and the Capitol here in Madison. For both political and personal reasons I did mostly business and nonprofit work in more recent years, retaining my political identity as a Republican...
HT @SCClemons for this by Justice Kagan. Her full thinking is no doubt deeper than this comment, which misses the point of the entire episode that began with the death of Justice Scalia: a Supreme Court majority loyal to the Republican Party and its sponsors.
2. The traditional rhetoric about what the Court is meant to do has obscured in recent years what it actually has done when purely partisan interests were at stake.
3. Citizens United in 2010 ensured a torrent of cash to support the massive and growing Republican campaign infrastructure. Shelby County in 2013 removed the obstacles the 1965 Voting Rights Act had placed in the way of state action to suppress African American turnout...
2. I’ve never believed in apocalyptic thinking, believing it to be an excuse for willful impotence (in a religious context, also, an excuse for lapsing into sin, but that’s another story). And yet there is no denying the power of a moment that changed so much even while...
3. ...for most Americans, in most places, changing nothing. America is a place used to peace, prosperity, & orderly government — more used to this combination of blessings, perhaps, than any place on earth. For such a country, complacency is a constant temptation.
I’ve seen this @HeerJeet thread about John McCain’s funeral retweeted a lot this morning. It deserves attention, though I think the analysis here has limitations.
2. I think the main one is a failure to reckon with what McCain was — not an establishment figure or the leader of a political movement, but rather an American Cold War politician grappling with the meaning of politics after the Cold War ended.
3. McCain was a believer in the American-led international order. But the original cause motivating the establishment of that order — defense against Soviet Communism in all its malignancy — ended in 1991. Americans’ traditional skepticism about the value & importance...
I had another thought about John McCain: Americans have a weakness for following electoral politics like sports. McCain ran for President twice, reaching the finals — the general election — only on the second try, in 2008.
2. The 2008 race — the one McCain, burdened by the Bush administration’s toxic unpopularity, had next to no chance of winning — is the one most Americans remember. But his 2000 primary challenge to Bush was more significant. It was a turning point.
3. G. W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, had a big advantage over McCain as a former President’s son. He inherited most of his father’s donors, and had enthusiastic support among white evangelicals. He entered the race as a near-prohibitive favorite for the GOP nomination.
Stipulate right at the start that I am not mad at @benjaminwittes over judicial confirmations. He is going in @TheAtlantic for the safe, respectable "both sides" position, though, and deserves to be dinged for that. Personally, I tend toward the conservative side...<thread>
2...with respect to judicial philosophy -- though conservatism to me means giving due respect to legislative history (as, say, Scalia did not) and recognizing the practical necessity of Chevron deference to agency judgement (as Scalia did but Kavanaugh does not).
3. Kennedy, a judicial supremacist, drove me nuts. But politicians tend not to get this far into the weeds. I agree with @benjaminwittes that many of them have gotten way too keen on putting judges on the bench who will ratify specific policy choices or try to remake society.