Republicans, Conservatives, and Trump

[Tiassa]

Congratulations! It's "Nota" Dream!

One thing that might not stand out to international neighbors is the idea of "a federal case" as colloquy, i.e., you don't make a federal case out of small crimes. To wit, the New York Times↱ headline that the Trump administration is "Making a Federal Case Out of Low-Level Arrests" makes a certain point: "A single afternoon in court illustrated the new ways in which laws are being enforced after President Trump's takeover of the city's police."

Talking Points Memo, meanwhile, offers an update on how that's working out:

A D.C. grand jury declined to indict the fired DOJ paralegal Sean Dunn who hurled a sandwich at a federal officer during protests against President Trump's hyper-federalization of the nation's capital, the NYT reports.

The incident outside a Subway location (it was reportedly a salami sandwich) came to represent both the intense local opposition to being targeted by Trump on the bogus pretext of out-of-control crime and the overall absurdity of the situation.

Failing to secure an indictment is a relatively rare occurrence because prosecutors control the entire process in front of a grand jury. With few exceptions, prosecutors are not in the business of bringing loser cases to grand juries.

This is the second case in the last week arising out of the Trumpian occupation of the District of Columbia where grand juries have declined to indict felonies. Three different grand juries declined to return indictments against Sidney Lori Reid, accused by prosecutors of injuring an FBI agent near the D.C. jail during the transfer of alleged gang members. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office eventually dropped the charge to a misdemeanor, which doesn't require an indictment.

(Kurtz↱)​

This isn't normal; it's not both-sides. In fact, it's the kind of reminder that people who defended Trump voters¹, even into this last election cycle, really were bullshitting the whole time. Not just during the Trump presidencies, but for decades. What is happening now is precisely the sort of dystopia conservatives have long warned and wailed and whined against. And, sure, back when the way of things was small government except for the part that polices what you do in the bedroom and monitors what books you check out from libraries or buy from stores in order to make sure you're complying with the law, or redefine medical terminology to comport with religion, or assert government as a middleman between patients and doctors. Back when they sent Secret Service after a Christian-school student for an anti-war poster in dormitory, we weren't supposed to look the other way, but justify it, but, sure, it would be absolutely improper to allow such things to say anything about conservatives and authoritarianism. It's like when Dennis Miller rolled because someone pointed out the Bush Administration just did the thing. It's not a matter of everyone who disagrees with someone, but, rather, someone went and said or did the thing. In 2004, when Republicans started arresting people for wearing the wrong clothes, that was the kind of thing Cold War generations were taught to fear of commie liberals.

Short form: It kept happening, and twenty years later, here we are, with a conservative Supreme Court having pulled the rug on prior discussions of judicial activism, conservatives asserting state ownership of commerce and industry, military policing the streets, and federal law enforcement making federal cases out of low-level offenses. Think back to some of the conservatives who used to attend our community; we had a moderator, once, who used the same anti-immigrant invading-army rhetoric that turned up in the Trump White House, and then in a mass shooter's manifesto, but the idea that racism was so important to the Republican platform was so easily written off as unfair or improper; by 2021↗, for instance, we were witnessing "the blurring of the boundaries of Critical Race Theory to mean 'anything about race unflattering to white people'", and it wasn't exactly new, but a matter of degrees and what people were willing to say aloud.

NYT reports the increased severity comes in response to "a directive by the U.S. attorney, Jeanine Pirro, to prosecutors to charge the most serious crimes possible in each case and to do so in federal court, where sentences tend to run much longer." Additionally, the article reports on a case that "has been a point of contention inside the U.S. attorney's office, where a number of prosecutors concluded that officers unlawfully searched Mr. Riley when they stopped him, violating the Fourth Amendment", a case that, previously, U.S. Attorneys "would have been likely to dismiss". DoJ, in its way, is trying to adjust to reality, with "one person familiar with the matter … saying that the prosecutors handling the case did not have a full command of the facts" and suggesting U.S. Atty. Pirro, after reviewing arrest footage, ordered the gun charges dismissed.

Prosecutors did not dismiss the charges. But a judge in D.C. did; NPR↱ reports:

Veteran defense lawyers and law enforcement experts have been warning about the potential for overreach since the federal government muscled its way into policing decisions in the nation's capital nearly three weeks ago.

Inside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Monday, those tensions broke into open court.

"It is without a doubt the most illegal search I've ever seen in my life," U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said from the bench. "I'm absolutely flabbergasted at what has happened. A high school student would know this was an illegal search."

The judge said Torez Riley appeared to have been singled out because he is a Black man who carried a backpack that looked heavy. Law enforcement officers said in court papers they found two weapons in Riley's crossbody bag — after he had previously been convicted on a weapons charge.

The arrest — and the decision to abandon the federal case — come at a time of heightened scrutiny on police and prosecutors in the District of Columbia.​

The NYT article goes on to observe the judge chastising prosecutors over a drunk and disorderly, and closes with an implicit characterization of what the federal judiciary has become: The judge needed a defense attorney to drive his client to a jail in another jurisdiction because law enforcers were for some reason unable to do so.

The shame of yesterday's notas is the marker↗ we can leave for the future↗: It's one thing to ride the zeitgeist, but pay attention to what the words actually mean if put into practice. Whether for an enemy of an enemy being a friend, or the lunky blindness of anti-identification, or, y'know, whatever, the argument against the argument against always runs like the argument in favor. Or↗, as such↗: If they resent being seen on the trolley with infamy, maybe the important question is why they hopped on this particular line.

Where we are, today, is both what conservatives pretended to struggle against, and what they struggled for, the whole time. Either Republicans betray themselves along with everyone else, or they were insincere the whole time. But they could not have done this all on their own, "they had to be let in"↗.
____________________

Notes:

¹ The "nota" phenomenon, i.e., "not a racist", "not a misogynist", "not a conservative", &c., has long been a ridiculous, self-denigrating pretense only enforced by numbers and will. But for so many people who were not a something, but defended it against imagined liberal offenses, that thing they were defending has shown itself to be what it was; it's one thing to be embarrassed, but if one responds to that self-inflicted denigration by tripling down and hardening resolve, they're not a nota. The notaracists must, at some point, acknowledge the durable value of white supremacism in the conservative politic; the notamisogynists must, at some point, acknowledge that history led to where they were told it would; and the notaconservative antiliberals are between the rock and hard place of either acknowledging that all of the alternatives, the other reasons for supporting rightism, they pretended on behalf of conservatives have fallen away, or pretending they can't figure it out. It's nota circumstance we should envy.​

Barrett, Devlin. "In Washington Crackdown, Making a Federal Case Out of Low-Level Arrests". The New York Times. 24 August 2025. NYTimes.com. 27 August 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/us/politics/trump-dc-crime-takeover-federal-court.html

Johnson, Carrie. "'The most illegal search': Judges push back against D.C. criminal charges". NPR. 26 August 2025. NPR.org. 27 August 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/08/26/g-s1-85119/crime-washington-dc-judges-arrests

Kurtz, David. "DC Grand Jury Declines to Indict Sandwich Thrower". Talking Points Memo. 27 August 2025. TalkingPointsMemo.com. 27 August 2025. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/d-c-grand-jury-declines-to-indict-sandwich-thrower

 

[ThazzarBaal]

Setting Aside the Freudian Slip



Yeah, sure, whatever, but you just skipped out on the question, again.

When did the Republican Party stop being conservative?

And, compared to the shift away from conservatism, what should Republicans have done if they actually were conservative?

Speaking for myself, I'll make mention of the nature of manifesting truths and the apparent aim to isolate people to old paradigms that inevitably end up being altered to some extent over spans of time and social development. Would you seriously expect this or are you being fictitious and intellectually dishonest?

It's better to have never known the truth than to know it and turn away.

It's about change, which is termed repentance in some circles, and ongoing development and progress.

What is pigeon holeing, anyway?

 

[Tiassa]

Speaking for myself, I'll make mention of the nature of manifesting truths and the apparent aim to isolate people to old paradigms that inevitably end up being altered to some extent over spans of time and social development. Would you seriously expect this or are you being fictitious and intellectually dishonest?

You're working too hard to make believe; it's an inquiry about basic integrity.

Compared to the historical process you refer to, the long habit of conservatives and Republicans to interchange the terms compared to a sudden delineation, is what drives the question. Every time we might look at what went awry with this thing over here, i.e. American conservatism, it turns out this thing isn't conservatism. What, then, is it?

And that's the thing. As you see from this discussion, people don't actually seem to know.

Furthermore, in consideration of the transformation of old paradigms, consider your question, "Would you seriously expect this …?" is something of a straw man: The latter-day attempt to carve out conservatism from its own politics doesn't really go much further than insisting that the Republican Party politics of the last nearly ten years, a distillation of its politics for over forty years before that, are not conservative. To wit, it's not really a matter of "old paradigms that inevitably end up being altered to some extent over spans of time and social development", but, rather, the sudden abandonment of what is inconvenient in the moment. Nonetheless, as I asked: Compared to the shift away from conservatism, what should Republicans have done if they actually were conservative?

That is to say, if the conservative alteration of their own paradigm isn't conservative, then what would have been conservative.

And, as you happened to mention "intellectual dishonesty", well, we don't have a Skitt's Law for what you just did, but still. The "old paradigms that inevitably end up being altered to some extent over spans of time and social development" actually make for a fascinating discussion, but not as some overwrought fallacy that only really tells us about you; the subject requires a certain intellectual integrity that just isn't present in what you do around here.

Like, repentance. You used the word repentance. See #19↑ above:

A question #nevertrump Republicans aren't thrilled to countenance has to do with what they will do when all of this is over. That the question presumes this rightist spiral ends is significant in its own context, but nevertrumpers like Bill Kristol (Bulwark) and David French (National Review, FIRE) were always reasonably content with, and would accept even more and greater, disparate impact, and for them it seems the real problem about the Trump experience and magatude are matters of form and etiquette.​

It's a point that comes up from time to time: October, 2024↗:

So, consider what happens to the NeverTrump Republicans after Trump is finished. How quickly will the Bill Kristol conservatives reconcile with the Lindsey Graham conservatives? The thing is, the NeverTrump faction was always okay with disparate impact and discriminatory outcomes as long as they were able to pretend it was all just an accident. A certain portion of Republican discomfort with the Trump experience is what has come to be described as saying the quiet part out loud.​

January, 2025↗:

Any number of "nevertrump" Republicans are just fine with certain outcomes as long as they never have to say it so explicitly. In law, we refer to disparate impact, and the infamous "Southern Strategy" is as direct an expression of how to deliberately pursue disparate impact as you will ever hear an American politician express. As I put it during the first Trump administration↗, contemporary iterations across the conservative spectrum seem imbued with a post-Southern Strategy faux-naïveté whereby not saying it explicitly somehow absolves responsibility for consciously pursuing an effect.​

How about February↗:

Akin to Kristol and French vis à vis the Southern Strategy. They're okay with disparate impact, just don't be undignified about it. It's a lot harder to say that about rape.​

Moreover, your overwrought, self-righteous fallacy about paradigms and change and repentance completely missed #17↑ above, which discusses, as you put it, "old paradigms that inevitably end up being altered to some extent over spans of time and social development":

The question of what Republicans should have done if they were actually conservative opens up myriad pathways; it can get complicated really fast. But there is also a fair question of when who knew—i.e., learned—what insofar as some old superstitions about how the economy works don't hold up to scrutiny. Living wages, for instance, in an economy dependent on consumer spending. Or government spending; what we couldn't afford at home we bought on credit, abroad, and the thing is, certain forms of domestic spending, even on credit, turn out to actually grow the economy. What "conservatism" would say in those alternative circumstances is unclear, but we can probably wonder about at least thirty years, if not more. At some point, the argument becomes utterly speculative.

Still, though, it should be easy enough to at least assert an historical case for when and how the GOP stopped being conservative. And toward that, the question of what they should have done is largely framed by the when and how.

What, then, of the possibility that the problem is that there is no case to make? As an absolute proposition, that seems impossible, but, sure, as a practical question, that might be where we're at.​

Or was that too subtle?

Because the thing about pigeonholing, TB, is that you tried too hard. The alteration of paradigms over time is fundamental to the inquiry about how common cause is represented over time. And the reduction of someone else's life to a lie in service of another's need might well be something you consider a better condition than awareness of exploitation, but this isn't the nineteenth century and you're not an American slave owner.

And the thing about repentance, or even simply changing one's mind, is that the very terms suggest some sort of difference between one condition and the next. Here, in order for you to be able to look back on something that happened and laugh, like, "Oh, my gosh, that was silly!" or, "What an amazing misunderstanding!" whatever is happening has to stop; something needs to be over with before you can look back at it as something that happened instead of something that is still happening. If, this time later, they still hold the same position as before, then they don't seem to have changed their mind.

Similarly, it's hard to see any latter-day separation of Trumpism from conservatism from the Republican Party. It's one thing to argue or suggest certain discontiguity in the GOP narrative, but compared to the underlying contiguity of the conservative appeal, stylistic inconsistency in window dressing is not so durable in that way, nor definitive of any substantial shift or break.

So, the thing about pigeonholing brings us back 'round: "Compared to the historical process you refer to", that is to say, vis à vis "change", and the alteration of paradigms, that's actually built into the question; again, #17, above: Consider Trump's conditions are not conservative (states' rights, &c.) according to the conservative pitch, but precisely conservative according to the conservative track record over the last fifty years, at least.

Or, perhaps, #19↑: If, as the venture capital guy↱ responded, "Republicans today aren't conservatives," but reaches back to the period between Eisenhower and Reagan to mark the departure, we might wonder what a conservative actually is, or has to do with anything.

I suppose the longer outlook on the larger question has to do with how many more times do we need to pretend this is something new. Again, it's like Buckley conservatism met the Southern Strategy and realized they were the same person. Approximately speaking, supremacist bullyism is the durable appeal of American conservatism, and the actual result is belligerent government, fiscal irresponsibility, and a whole lot of complaining about who should be thrown out of society.

Short form, it's kind of ridiculous to keep pretending the supremacist tyranny that keeps emerging from conservatism is somehow a separate thing.

 

[TheVat]

what should Republicans have done if they actually were conservative?

Well, here's an expose from the Post today suggesting that actually fixing government waste and fraud is no longer a priority:

https://wapo.st/3VN0qw9

Taxpayers will spend roughly $193 billion this year for the Department of Veterans Affairs to compensate about 6.9 million disabled veterans on the presumption that their ability to work is impaired. VA officials say most veterans’ disability claims are legitimate.

Yet The Post found that millions of the claims are for minor or treatable afflictions that rarely hinder employment, such as hair loss, jock itch and toenail fungus....

About 556,000 veterans receive disability benefits for eczema, 332,000 for hemorrhoids, 110,000 for benign skin growths, 81,000 for acne and 74,000 for varicose veins, the most recently available figures from VA show. Individual payouts for such mundane conditions vary, but collectively they cost billions of dollars a year.

In contrast, far fewer veterans receive compensation for certain combat-related injuries. About 10,900 service members who have suffered “severe” or “penetrating” brain injuries since 2000 are eligible for benefits. Fewer than 1,700 receive disability payments for losing limbs during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The easy-to-manipulate regulations have turned the disability program into a rich target for con artists, who are typically prosecuted only in the most egregious and flagrant cases.

The investigation exposed an increasingly costly disability program prone to rampant exaggeration and fraud, which make it harder for veterans with legitimate claims to get their benefits processed. Bipartisan political indifference and a weak array of checks and balances have compounded the dysfunction.

Veterans’ advocates, for-profit companies and VA itself encourage vets to file as many claims as possible to milk the system. The documents and data obtained by The Post spotlighted other obvious signs of waste and abuse, as well as an internal awareness and tolerance of such problems.

And here's the response from a Trump lackey at the VA:

“The extraordinarily liberal Washington Post never met a government program it didn’t love — until now,” he wrote. “Unbelievably, the far-left Washington Post believes many Veterans don’t deserve the VA benefits they’ve earned.

“Our message to the out-of-touch liberal activists peddling this garbage story is simple: America’s Veterans earned their VA benefits, and it should be easier — not harder — to get them. Under President Trump, we are improving VA so it’s faster and more convenient for Veterans to get what our nation owes them.”


LOL "far left Washington Post"

 

[Tiassa]

The Importance of Historical and Narrative Contiguity

… we might consider the stuffy, bureaucratic ossification of everything wrong with sprawling bureaucracies within the American government during my lifetime, but at least those cold bastards could explain it contiguously.

So, this is one of the ways in which conservatives hurt themselves.

Associated Press↱ summarizes: "Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court struck down laws, including the first U.S. ban on pill abortions."

Reporter Mead Gruver↱ explains:

Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that two laws barring the procedure, including the country's first explicit ban on abortion pills, violate the state constitution.

The justices sided with the state's only abortion clinic and others who had sued over the abortion bans passed since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

Wyoming is one of the most conservative states, but the 4-1 ruling from justices all appointed by Republican governors was unsurprising in that it upheld every previous lower court ruling that the abortion bans violated the state constitution.

Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea's Fund and four women, including two obstetricians, argued that the laws violated a state constitutional amendment ensuring competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions.

Voters approved the constitutional amendment in 2012 in response to the federal Affordable Care Act. The justices recognized that the amendment wasn't written to apply to abortion but said it's not their job to “add words” to the state constitution.​

Here's the shorter form, from some guy named Joe↱:

This is so funny. Basically in 2012 they enshrined in their constitution that the government can't control personal health decisions in order to try to prevent Obamacare. But all it did was protect abortion.​

Reporter Matthew Chapman↱ chimed in to remind:

And the law as written didn't even affect Obamacare, because nothing in the ACA forces anyone to make or not make a personal health decision — it just reformed how health insurance is structured and paid for.​

Once again, it seems Republicans have overpromised impossibility. And this is something that any number of notas need to get through their skulls: Some significant portion, likely a majority, of antiliberal frustration, is self-inflicted; people like what they hear regardless of its plausibility, and when it falls through they blame everyone else except the grifters who grifted or themselves for falling for it. That is to say, it can only be the Demmycrat Party's fault. All those paternalistic, condescending feminists and negroes and queers just forced these poor feebles to vote for stupid impossibility.

And that's the thing about narrative contiguity. Anybody paying attention to the 2012 law should have been able to see this coming; all they had to do was guess that the Supreme Court would invent an arbitrary excuse to overturn Roe v. Wade, and then the implication of the state's attempt to guard against federal law would become glaringly apparent.

And that's kind of how law and jurisprudence have worked in this country since the outset; inasmuch as that contiguity does not support certain things people want, and expect their privilege should warrant, they must choose an arbitrary say-so to justify their departure from precedent, i.e., they must tell a new story to pretend a new contiguity.
____________________

Notes:

Gruver, Mead. "Abortion stays legal in Wyoming as its top court strikes down laws, including first US pill ban". Associated Press. 6 January 2026. APNews.com. 6 January 2026. https://apnews.com/article/abortion-wyoming-ruling-legal-a8396f0ed4a3229eed5e9fea575be63e

https://twitter.com/x/status/2008617371058270365

 

[Tiassa]

The Young and the Maga

"So, I do think there's a bloodline that isn't human. There's no way some people can have no humanity, no grace, no sense of, like, y'know how, like, for example, someone like Laura Loomer, who just berates me for being a recovered drug addict: 'Oh, you're once an addict, always an addict', 'all these drug addicts with fried brains', like, they have no sense of grace? Or, like, forgiveness, or God's mercy, or anything like that; they, they cannot―; she recently attacked Tucker Carlson's brother for a DUI he had. Like, it's like, she―; those type of people, I swear, their, like, DNA is tainted with a demon, or something, because there's no sense of grace, or forgiveness, or any kind of―; and I, I don't think, even, like, it's not human."

―Lauren Witzke↱​

The white nationalist says what?

QAnon, antiqueer, white nationalist, Republican U.S. Senate nominee Lauren Witzke came a long way from being found unresponsive behind the wheel in the middle of an intersection. That the antifeminist, antivax, antitrans, antisemitic Putin sympathizer finds herself feuding with Laura Loomer, the thirty-two year-old conspiracist, white nationalist, antiqueer, antivax Republican also-ran Trump whisperer with her own history of mental health difficulties, is its own sort of spectacle, to be certain. The point of complaining about a lack of grace while accusing demon taint is its own sort of icing.

We should take a moment for gratitude to those free speech warriors who worried that it would somehow suppress political views or silence political voices to expect supportable arguments, good faith, or even simply making sense.

After all, these are only the days of our lives. Why wouldn't we struggle to empower what seeks to destroy us?

https://twitter.com/x/status/2014038413368844450

 

[Tiassa]

Little Signalgate

Big trouble in Arizona; the short form from Zach Buchanan↱ of Phoenix New Times:

Last week, we asked Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller if he used Signal. He said no. We asked if Signal was on his phone. He said no.

Today, we have a story about Brad Miller using Signal to avoid public records disclosures.​

And the detail, per Stephen Lemons↱ of the same:

Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller has denied that he uses the encrypted messaging app Signal to shield work communications from public records scrutiny, as alleged in a notice of claim letter sent to his office last month.

Yet, according to records recently reviewed by Phoenix New Times, the MAGA-aligned prosecutor and key members of his staff utilized Signal — which allows users to set messages to be automatically deleted after certain periods of time — in an apparent effort to skirt Arizona public records law.

The allegation first came to light when New Times reported earlier this month on a December notice of claim letter from a former member of Miller's executive staff. The letter detailed a pattern of sexual discrimination and retaliation against several female staffers. It also noted that shortly after Miller assumed office in January 2025, Miller chief of staff Jeremiah Brosowske directed staffers to use Signal for the purpose of "keeping government messages offline" and "avoiding public records request laws." The letter claimed one staffer was terminated, in part, because they raised concerns about using Signal.

Since first reporting on the claim letter, New Times has reviewed scores of messages apparently sent and received by Miller and members of his staff, including Brosowske and others. The messages, which were made available by a former employee of Miller's, appear in four Signal accounts: one under Miller's name and phone number, another administered by Brosowske under the title "CA Miller Media," a third titled "Working Group Chat" and a fourth named "Social Media Approval."

The Signal account under Miller's name used the seal of the Pinal County Attorney's Office as its logo. Messages on this account began in March 2025 and extended through much of the year. In them, Miller discussed press conferences, legislative issues and general office administration. In other words: Government business subject to open records law.​

It occurs to wonder, honestly: At what age is someone too young for the excuse that they really didn't know? And, then, what is it they don't know? Miller is in his forties, and he apparently thought he could hide the fact of Signal use. It's just that any number of times people try to circumvent recordkeeping, or stay out of sight, someone turns up with the records. Rightists went through this a couple years ago with Discord server logs; staying off the radar went fine until someone got their feelings hurt and took the chat logs to antifa osint. And even before the Pentagon Signalgate, it was known that rightists communicated with various comms apps to control information availability, and one of the reasons it was known was that someone coughed up some records.

Inasmuch as it is alleged that "shortly after Miller assumed office in January 2025, Miller chief of staff Jeremiah Brosowske directed staffers to use Signal for the purpose of 'keeping government messages offline' and 'avoiding public records request laws'", and the New Times reports that "one staffer was terminated, in part, because they raised concerns about using Signal", there remains a question of who thought they could get away with it.

And, really, when all is said and done, it doesn't seem unreasonable to account for that fact in assessing culpability and significance. Whether a matter of corruption or incompetence, there really is no good look for this, and no good reason to presume otherwise.
____________________

Notes:

Lemons, Stephen. "Pinal County Attorney used Signal to skirt public records law". Phoenix New Times. 22 January 2026. PhoenixNewTimes.com. 22 January 2026. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/new...sed-signal-skirt-public-records-law-40638436/

https://twitter.com/x/status/2014388088894869715

 

[Tiassa]

On Future Retrospection

Adam Kinzinger↱ addresses unnamed staffers writing social media posts:

Dear staffers who write this tweet for this account: you know me. I used to be a member. When you are 30 you will have a giant hole in your resume (and soul) because you’d rather pretend to have been unemployed than admit you were enabling this. This is a good time to leave.​

The former Republican Congressman from Illinois Eleven also noted a related political organization, but the point holds; this is not work they will be proud of.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2025399433437884499

 

[Tiassa]

Tom Nichols↱ explains:

The Republicans, it seems, have a bit of a Nazi problem.

By this, I mean that some Republicans are deploying Nazi imagery and rhetoric, and espouse ideas associated with the Nazi Party during its rise to power in the early 1930s. A few recent examples: An ICE lawyer linked to a white-supremacist social-media account that praised Hitler was apparently allowed to return to federal court. Members of the national Young Republicans organization were caught in a group chat laughing about their love for Hitler. Vice President J. D. Vance shrugged off that controversy, instead of condemning the growing influence of anti-Semites in his party. (In December, at Turning Point USA's conference, Vance said, "I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.")

Even federal agencies are modeling Nazi phrasing. The Department of Homeland Security used an anthem beloved by neo-Nazi groups, "By God We'll Have Our Home Again," in a recruitment ad. The Labor Department hung a giant banner of Donald Trump's face from its headquarters, as if Washington were Berlin in 1936, and posted expressions on social media such as "America is for Americans"—an obvious riff on the Nazi slogan "Germany for the Germans"—and "Americanism Will Prevail," in a font reminiscent of Third Reich documents.

Trump, of course, openly pines to be a dictator. In his first term, he reportedly told his chief of staff, General John Kelly, that he wished he had generals who were as loyal as Hitler's military leaders. (The president was perhaps unaware of how often the führer's officers tried to kill him.) More recently, the White House's official X account supported Trump's pursuit of Greenland by posting a meme with the caption "Which way, Greenland man?" That is not merely a clunky turn of phrase; it's an echo of Which Way Western Man?, the title of a 1978 book by the American neo-Nazi William Gayley Simpson, a former Presbyterian minister who called for America to expel its Jewish citizens.

The people pushing such trash are offended by the accusation that they are pantomiming Nazis. "Calling everything you dislike 'Nazi propaganda' is tiresome," a DHS spokesperson told Politico. But when even Laura Loomer—conspiracy theorist and ardent Trump supporter—says on social media that "the GOP has a Nazi problem," then perhaps the GOP has a Nazi problem.​

The "former Republican" reaches back to 1979, when he "first joined the GOP"; once upon a time, a party and movement "spent generations fighting off intrusions from the far right, including the John Birchers and the Ku Klux Klan", and now someone who worked in the party during that time wonders, "So how did a major American political party become a safe space for such people?"

Details will vary according to the telling, but Nichols' version is not unfamiliar: Way back when, "the party around me did not seem hospitable", Massachusetts sent a two-term black Republican to the Senate, "liberal Republicans" were a real thing in the world. And Nichols recalls another real thing, that he was "a resolute ticket-splitter, voting often for local Democrats but always for Republican presidents", and "believed the national GOP was a moderate institution".

That was then. And if we consider his first encounter with "fringe elements of the conservative base", ca. 1990, while working for Sen. John Heinz (R-PA): "I remember fielding an angry phone call from a constituent who grilled me about whether the senator was part of a globalist one-world-government conspiracy."

That sort of stuff didn't come to the fore until Clinton was elected, but it's true the New World Order really unsettled some conservatives. It's one thing to recall a Christianist conspiracy theory about witches, communists, and Catholics, but even then it was still the Christianist fringe, and in that way, it was hard to imagine what would come. Even as Pat Buchanan pulled twenty-three percent in the '92 Republican primary, and according to Nichols, "Buchanan's speech, which envisioned a 'religious war' for the country, shocked many Americans", people would not easily foresee the next thirty-five years of American conservatism.

Gingrich "carried Buchanan's culture war into the House speakership", and in Nichols' telling there is an important distinction; Gingrich wasn't really part of the movement, but a cynical exploiter: "For Gingrich, politics was solely about winning; his scorched-earth approach treated opponents as enemies and compromise as treason. He wanted votes, and wasn't concerned about who was animated by his viciousness."

It's an important distinction; even after "Gingrich was eventually driven from the speakership", and Buchanan departed the GOP for Reform, "an example had been set of welcoming extremism (extreme ideology, extreme tactics) for the sake of winning":

Later Republican presidential nominees—good men such as John McCain and Mitt Romney—represented the moderate coalition that had brought people like me into the party. As they stood in the center of the GOP tent, they began to see who was now lurking in the back. In 2008, the nation saw too, when McCain had to defend Barack Obama as a "decent family man" to a delusional town-hall participant who had obviously imbibed racist right-wing propaganda.​

From Buchanan in '92 to McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012; that's sixteen, and then twenty years in which the GOP struggled with its extremist bargain, and even then, calling these people Nazis, or even merely fascists, was outside the pale.

A question that arises is when these attitudes stopped being fringe elements, and started being the GOP mainstream. Nichols recounts:

Soon after McCain's loss to Obama, the Tea Party movement barreled into American politics. I was among those appalled by the Tea Partiers' juvenile public behavior and anti-government nihilism; others believed they represented a new grassroots movement and the future of the party. In the end, their revolt against government bailouts soured into a giant yawp of anger at the first Black president. By the time Romney was running against Obama, in 2012, Trump had launched his political career by pushing the "birther" lie, which capitalized on racial animus toward the 44th president. Rather than try to push Trump out of the tent, Romney accepted his endorsement. McCain came to be viewed as a traitor by the Republican base; Trump made that permissible by mocking his war-hero status.​

Consider that phrase: "Trump made that permissible". Yes, he did, but one thing that is absent from Nichols' telling is people. Sure, he recalls individuals, but even as he strives to address his own question, "Was this a radical, unpredictable metamorphosis, or was a fascist tendency latent in the DNA of the party?" what is missing is the voters themselves. Nichols asked longtime operative Stuart Stevens, who "joined the Republicans in his youth rather than the segregationist local Democrats, then bolted from the party because of Trump":

For Stevens, racism is the original sin of the modern Republican Party. White voters were alienated by the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the violence around the 1968 Democratic primaries. As Black voters deserted Republicans, the segregationist George Wallace proved with his '68 presidential run that white southerners were up for grabs. Richard Nixon made a cunning and cynical calculation to sweep up those disaffected white voters, using appeals to "law and order" to stoke racial anxiety. By the 1970s, the GOP was the de facto white party in the United States.​

Maybe "Nixon and Reagan held racist views, as did many men of their generation" but "they certainly weren't Nazis"; and, sure, it's one thing if, "By the 1970s, the GOP was the de facto white party in the United States", but now we're looking at fifty years in which this is the will of conservative voters. "Critics of the GOP," Nichols recalls, "have long argued that something like the Trump movement, and the emergence of a new American Nazism, was inevitable—that conservatism, as a belief system, inevitably decays into fascism."

And if, as Geoffrey Kabaservice told Nichols, "Reaganism, the strongest vehicle of 20th-century American conservatism, didn’t lead directly to Trumpism", and that Trump populism is "a repudiation of conservatism", we must countenance who would repudiate, and why.

Because it's like a conservative columnist suggested two years ago↗ when admonishing Trump's liberal critics "to think a little more deeply about the enduring sources of his appeal".

Nichols makes an interesting case that supremacism is the durable value of that enduring appeal, but calling that many people racists, supremacists, or Nazis has long been controversial, so he avoids the implication.

Maybe this really was the durable value, the enduring appeal. But at what point in Nichols' telling would Americans have allowed themselves to have that discussion?

"Calling everything you dislike 'Nazi propaganda' is tiresome," the DHS spox said, and maybe everyone who tried a variation on that line in recent years (decades) might take a moment to recall what they thought they meant.
____________________

Notes:

Nichols, Tom. "The Republican Party Has a Nazi Problem". The Atlantic. 23 February 2026. TheAtlantic.com. 23 February 2026. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/republican-party-nazi-problem/686055/

 

[TheVat]

Even federal agencies are modeling Nazi phrasing. The Department of Homeland Security used an anthem beloved by neo-Nazi groups, "By God We'll Have Our Home Again," in a recruitment ad. The Labor Department hung a giant banner of Donald Trump's face from its headquarters, as if Washington were Berlin in 1936,

And, just a few days past, the DOJ building. We're entering a deluge of Nazi parallels recently. For people who are forgetting, the recent (2024) Netflix six part documentary, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, is a good review of the original Nazis and their tropes. The resonances with now are chilling.

Thanks for posting that! Will read the new Atlantic piece posthaste.

 

[Wizard of Whatever]

And, just a few days past, the DOJ building. We're entering a deluge of Nazi parallels recently. For people who are forgetting, the recent (2024) Netflix six part documentary, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial, is a good review of the original Nazis and their tropes. The resonances with now are chilling.

Thanks for posting that! Will read the new Atlantic piece posthaste.

A feeling I get from the news is, it is on both sides.

 

[Sarkus]

A feeling I get from the news is, it is on both sides.

Such as?
I mean, if you're going to claim the news is giving you the feeling that we're seeing Nazi parallels from both sides, then you're going to have to support it, please. I don't just mean with "well, Fox News has said the Left is just as bad", but rather I mean provide actual examples of what the Left is doing that gives you the feeling that they are paralleling the Nazis. Can you do that for us, please?

 

[Roosters for ever]

Think of the dabblers who think they have some views that are right wing, but don't want to be seen as rightists:

​

My political views are actually formed irrespective of which end of the political spectrum others like to put it. I don't like to be labelled anything. I see Trump as a Hitler like madman, based on the evidence. I see racism and superiority as a ridiculous aspect of any group of humanity. I see the political climate today as dangerous, more dangerous then the cold war period in which I lived through. I see Trump and Putin as the instigators of that situation. It's what I like to call the "Them and Us" mentality. The folly of which is shown in the brilliant Carl Sagan narrative and photograph called "The Pale Blue Dot" I have much empathy towards the non delusional decent USA citizens, that see Trump for what he actually is...an egotistical, self appraised, criminally insane, pussy grabbing, habitual lying convicted felon and pedophile. I have much admiration for Canada's PM Carney, and I believe at this time, the rest of the world need to unite against this madman, both economically and militarily.

 

[Randwolf]

I mean provide actual examples of what the Left is doing that gives you the feeling that they are paralleling the Nazis. Can you do that for us, please?

I can't wait for WoW's response, especially since he's been enjoined by JamesR to support his nonsensical claims.

 

[Tiassa]

Degrees of Congress

It's not quite six degrees of scandal, nor rising temperature:

It used to be the sort of thing that would end a congressional career.

In recent days, texts have surfaced that appear to show Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, pressuring one of his employees into a sexual relationship. Months later, that employee died by suicide.

In a more robust majority, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., might demand Gonzales' resignation. Day by day, more lawmakers are calling on Gonzales to step down. But privately, Republicans and Democrats acknowledge a gross political reality: With his razor-thin majority, Johnson can't afford to lose Gonzales — or any House GOP member, for that matter.

(Schnell↱)​

One unnamed House Republican suggested "a game of numbers" "in a losing battle", and that the needs of a thin Republican majority made "an incredible bargaining chip".

Another House Republican, also granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics, noted that Republicans can only afford to lose one GOP lawmaker on a party-line vote.

"Leadership right now is scrambling just to do the normal business of the day," this Republican said.

With Republican Rep. Thomas Massie frequently breaking from his party, this lawmaker added that House GOP leaders functionally can't afford a resignation.

"They can't lose a single vote, and so members almost seem untouchable right now," this lawmaker said.

The "untouchable" status of Republicans has forced Johnson into a tenuous defense of Gonzales.

Asked whether Gonzales should resign, Johnson called the accusations "very serious," "alarming" and "detestable." But he stopped well short of calling on him to step down.

"I endorsed Tony before all these allegations came out," Johnson said Monday. "They're obviously very serious, and I've spoken with him and told him he's got to address that in the appropriate way with his constituents and all of that. So it's too early for anybody to prejudge any of that, but we'll see how it develops."​

"These things will play out," the Speaker explained of ethics and law enforcement investigation, as well as a primary election in coming days: "So we're allowing that to happen."

It's not unusual for Johnson to eschew a more definitive stance in these circumstances; Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL07) struggles against a deluge of scandal including sexual impropriety as well as private sector business misconduct and false congressional disclosures; the Speaker acted as if his arm was twisted, complaining against the ouster of Rep. George Santos (R-NY03). Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY04) suggests Johnson is "making a short-sighted calculation".

And yet another unnamed House Republican …

… granted anonymity to discuss the private sentiment within the conference, told MS NOW that while members have to be held accountable, decisions have to be made with the majority in mind.

"The Gonzales one is a really ugly situation," this GOP lawmaker said, adding that, "hopefully, as numbers get better," Republicans can "afford" to hold stricter ethical standards.

"On one hand, you got to be sure that we can govern, and because of the small majorities, you kind of have to let some stuff slide until you can take care of it," this Republican said.

While many GOP lawmakers are privately acknowledging how bad of a look it is for their party to stand by Gonzales, some Republicans were proud to defend him.

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, told reporters that Gonzales shouldn't be forced to step down because he hasn't been indicted for any crimes. The Texas Republican conceded that "the optics are horrible," but noted that if Gonzales resigned, the majority could slip to Democrats.

"If he does that, then you got to give the gavel to Hakeem Jeffries," Nehls said on Wednesday. "I wouldn't do that for any reason."​

In its way, conservative insincerity is unsurprising, and even predictable. One thing to bear in mind, compared to the quetion of a primary election, the strongest challenge to Gonzales is a white supremacist firearms podcaster; compared to the Hispanic guy with a hideous sex scandal and increasingly unsatisfactory rightist bona fides, it's entirely possible Texas Twenty-Three will go with the white supremacist.

And then, compared to electing a Democrat, that, too, is almost predictable.
____________________

Notes:

Schnell, Mychael. "'They can't lose a single vote': Republicans say a razor-thin majority has made them 'untouchable'". MS NOW. 26 February 2026. MS.NOW. 26 February 2026. https://www.ms.now/news/republicans-razor-thin-majority-untouchable-tony-gonzales

 

[Tiassa]

Pride and Priority

James Tate↱ observes:

And, yes, this is a person in drag, at CPAC, interacting with children. Make it make sense.​

Yes, "Lady Maga", the "It's OK to be White" drag queen at the Gaylord Texan.

CPAC.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2038336574866203003

 

[Tiassa]

Something About Priorities

Once upon a time, maybe even in the prior century, Bill Maher would explain, "I would be a Republican if they would."

Anyway, a former congressman writes:

Hey, what happened to Bill Maher?

I've been wondering this now for, gosh, maybe almost two years. Bill Maher, longtime comic, longtime brilliant comic, host of "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO Max. Always been a great, interesting, engaging talk show. Back in the day, I went on Bill Maher's show a lot. Bill Maher, longtime independent thinker, longtime kind of a small-l libertarian, always a contrarian, always an independent voice, always suspicious of government power and authority.

What happened to Bill Maher? Because for a year or two, increasingly, Bill Maher sounds like nothing but a Donald Trump fanboy. Bill Maher―smart, independent, son-of-a-bitch kind of a comedian―for the last year or two, increasingly sounds like some crazy MAGA dude.

And I don't mean to offend MAGA dudes out there, but some of you are crazy. I mean, what happened? There's been a noticeable shift and a noticeable change really ever since Trump began to run again in '24, and then from the moment Trump got elected in '24, Bill Maher seemed to, with both feet, jump on the Trump bandwagon, which to my way of thinking goes against everything Bill Maher said he stood for, everything comedian Bill Maher represented and advocated.​

That would be Joe Walsh↱ an Illinois Republican:

I was an outspoken Tea Party voice. I was an outspoken right-winger, and Bill Maher hated right-wingers. He hated us outspoken Tea Party folk. And every time I'd come on, he'd go at me. Every time I'd come on, he'd make fun of me. He'd call me Crazy Tea Party Joe Walsh. And I get it. I understood it, and I played with it. And I went back at him.

But now? He's nothing now but a crazy MAGA guy? And crazy Tea Party Joe Walsh is now Mr. Never Trumper? What happened to Bill Maher? He used to speak to the unique threat that Trump is. The unique threat is to the truth, the unique threat that Trump is to government power, the unique threat that Trump is to freedom and a free press and free speech, democracy, the rule of law, all the rest.

Bill Maher, a few years back, when I listened to him, used to understand that Trump was a unique danger. Bill Maher is a cynic. He's a skeptic. I get it―like I am with government authority or anybody in government. And so to Bill Maher, all politicians lie, all politicians bullshit, all politicians to a degree are corrupt. I get it, I get it. All politicians are self-interested. Bill Maher recognized that and spoke to it. But I always got the sense back then that Bill Maher understood that Trump was a unique threat in all of these categories, above every other politician.

But the last couple years? No. The last couple years, Bill Maher's normalized Trump, kind of embraced Trump. Bill Maher's lied for Trump. Bill Maher stroked Trump. Bill Maher has actually approved of stuff that Trump has done. Most dangerously, Bill Maher has normalized Donald Trump​

Honestly, back when Maher used to play the part of jaded, fallen-away conservative, you might have actually thought the racist, religious authoritarianism was part of what he disagreed with.

But even more, between the icon of political incorrectness and the Tea Party congressman, maybe the shaming just stands out as so apropos:

Shame on you, Bill Maher. Shame, shame, shame on you. Shame on you for selling out. And I will still say for not saying what you really believe.

The old Bill Maher would have opposed Donald Trump with every bone in his body. That Bill Maher is gone.​

____________________

Notes:

Walsh, Joe. "What Happened to Bill Maher?" The Social Contract. 13 May 2026. SocialContractWithJoeWalsh.Substack.com. 14 May 2026. https://socialcontractwithjoewalsh.substack.com/p/what-happened-to-bill-maher

https://twitter.com/x/status/2054791591425085538