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Judge Strikes Down Unconstitutional Parts of Arkansas Law Targeting Librarians
"The court has safeguarded the right of every Arkansan to access ideas and information without fear of censorship or prosecution," said the ACLU of Arkansas legal director.
Dec 24, 2024
In a blow to right-wing efforts to ban books and criminalize librarians, a federal judge on Monday struck down key provisions of an Arkansas law as unconstitutional—though the fight is far from over, with the Republican state attorney general planning to appeal.
Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Act 372 in March 2023. A few months later, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks temporarily blocked implementation of Sections 1 and 5 of the law—and on Monday, he ruled against them in a 37-page order.
Section 1 threatened Arkansas librarians and booksellers with up to a year in jail for providing minors with access to "harmful" materials. Brooks wrote that "if the General Assembly's purpose in passing Section 1 was to protect younger minors from accessing inappropriate sexual content in libraries and bookstores, the law will only achieve that end at the expense of everyone else's First Amendment rights."
"The law deputizes librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship; when motivated by the fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest. For these reasons, Section 1 is unconstitutionally overbroad," added the judge, who also found the provision "unconstitutionally vague."
Section 5 created a process for challenging books in public libraries that critics called burdensome. Brooks found the provision unconstitutional because it is problematically vague and "unnecessarily imposes content-based restrictions on protected speech."
The state's Republican leaders plan to keep pushing for the law. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement to The Associated Press that "I respect the court's ruling and will appeal," and Huckabee Sanders vowed to work with him on that effort.
"This victory over totalitarianism is a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers, and readers who refused to bow to intimidation."
Meanwhile, the broad coalition that took on Act 372—including booksellers, librarians, patrons, and professional associations—celebrated their latest legal victory, which comes as right-wing policymakers in other states work to force through similar policies.
"This was an attempt to 'thought police,' and this victory over totalitarianism is a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers, and readers who refused to bow to intimidation," ACLU of Arkansas executive director Holly Dickson said in a statement. "Arkansans deserve a state where intellectual freedom thrives, and this ruling ensures that libraries remain sanctuaries for learning and exchange of ideas and information."
John Williams, the group's legal director, declared that "this ruling reaffirms what we have said all along—Act 372 is a dangerous and unconstitutional attack on free expression."
"Our libraries and bookstores are critical spaces for learning, exploration, and connection," Williams added. "By striking down these provisions, the court has safeguarded the right of every Arkansan to access ideas and information without fear of censorship or prosecution."
Democracy Forward also represented some members of the coalition battling the law, including the Arkansas Library Association.
"Laws like Arkansas' that seek to threaten librarians and booksellers with jail simply for doing their job are dangerous for people, communities, and our democracy," said Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman in a statement. "Our team is honored to represent librarians in Arkansas to stop this attempt to impede the freedom to read and we will meet further attempts in Arkansas and elsewhere with legal challenge."
Leaders of the American Booksellers Association, Association of American Publishers, Authors Guild, Freedom to Read Foundation, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, WordsWorth Books, Pearl's Books, and WordsWorth Books said in a joint statement that "together with librarians, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers everywhere, we applaud the court's carefully crafted decision upholding the constitutional right to access books."
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Wyden Says GOP Medicaid Purge Puts 'Politics Before Children's Health'
New government data indicates that just nine Republican-led states are responsible for 60% of Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program disenrollments since April.
Dec 19, 2023
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden ripped GOP governors on Monday for endangering the well-being of kids in their states for political purposes as they gut their Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program rolls at an alarming clip, sparking pushback from the Biden administration and healthcare advocates.
"Unfortunately, it's clear that too many Republican governors have chosen to put politics before children's health," Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released new data showing that a small handful of GOP-led states account for the majority of Medicaid and CHIP disenrollments since April.
That month, the federal government began allowing states to resume eligibility checks and disenrollments that were paused during the Covid-19 pandemic. The health policy nonprofit KFF has estimated based on available data that 71% of those kicked off Medicaid across the U.S. since April have lost coverage for procedural reasons, such as a paperwork error.
Wyden said it's "encouraging" that HHS is giving governors "the opportunity to do right by the families they cover" and pledged to work with President Joe Biden's administration to "ensure everything possible is done to protect coverage for families walking an economic tightrope."
According to the HHS analysis, nine Republican-led states are responsible for roughly 60% of Medicaid and CHIP disenrollments this year: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Dakota, and Texas. Additionally, HHS said the 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act "have disenrolled more children than those that have expanded combined."
"States must take bold action to prevent a large increase in their uninsured child population. Three million losing Medicaid and counting is a terrible way to ring in the new year."
In letters to the nine states' GOP governors, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra urged them to "ensure that no child in your state who still meets eligibility criteria for Medicaid or CHIP loses their health coverage due to 'red tape' or other avoidable reasons as all states 'unwind' from the Medicaid continuous enrollment provision that was in place during much of the Covid-19 public health emergency."
"HHS takes its oversight and monitoring role during the renewals process extremely seriously," Becerra added, "and will not hesitate to take action to ensure states' compliance with federal Medicaid requirements."
Becerra suggested a few strategies aimed at improving the states' often byzantine renewal processes, including boosting auto-renewals and engaging in more active outreach efforts to make sure families know how to keep their coverage.
At least one state leader, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, signaled she has no intention of acting on Becerra's recommendations.
"The failing Biden admin sent letters to GOP-led states in a politically motivated PR stunt, accusing us of restricting Medicaid access. That's false," Sanders, who served as former President Donald Trump's press secretary, wrote on social media in response to Becerra's letter. "Arkansas is in compliance with state and federal law, while Biden plays politics at Christmas."
Arkansas has worked aggressively to curb its Medicaid rolls this year, stripping more than 427,000 people of coverage in just six months. In September alone, more than 21,000 people were removed from the program for not returning their enrollment paperwork, according to state data.
The nationwide Medicaid purge that began in April has been described as "the largest concentration of health insurance loss in American history," and both Republican governors and the Biden administration have faced criticism for failing to prevent disaster.
Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families (CCF) estimates that, as of Monday, more than 3 million children have been disenrolled from Medicaid since eligibility checks resumed in the spring.
"In 2022, 3.9 million children were uninsured, so even if the majority of children losing Medicaid have other sources of coverage, the number of uninsured children is rising sharply," CCF executive director Joan Alker wrote in a blog post on Monday. "States must take bold action to prevent a large increase in their uninsured child population. Three million losing Medicaid and counting is a terrible way to ring in the new year."
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Arkansas Schools Will Teach AP African American Studies, Defying GOP Law
Educators will teach the course despite the fact that the law also weakens rules protecting them against unjust dismissals.
Aug 17, 2023
Despite a threat this week by the Arkansas Department of Education that it would not allow students to receive credit for Advanced Placement African American Studies, every public high school in Arkansas that previously offered the course announced that it will remain on their schedules for the coming school year.
The Arkansas Education Association, which represents unionized teachers across the state, applauded the Little Rock School District's decision on Wednesday to continue offering the AP course in defiance of Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' signature law banning so-called "indoctrination" in public schools.
April Reisma, president of the union, told The New York Times that the school district's decision was "bold" considering the law, called the Arkansas LEARNS Act, also repealed decades-old laws that protected teachers from being dismissed without notice.
Teachers who will offer the class "are very scared," Reisma told the Times. "They can be let go at any moment for any reason."
Earlier this week, the state Education Department said if schools proceed with AP African American studies, the course would not count as credit toward graduation, and said it will not provide students with assistance if they can't afford the $98 fee to take the final test.
In a letter to students and parents on Wednesday the Little Rock School District (LRSD) said the class "will be weighted the same as all other AP courses" and that the district will cover the cost of taking the exam.
"Our educators are committed to providing engaging and thought-provoking lessons that encourage critical thinking, empathy, and a deep appreciation for cultural diversity," said the district.
In addition to Little Rock Central High School—the first in the nation to be racially integrated in 1957, over the objections of racist white people—high schools in Jonesboro, Jacksonville, and North Little Rock also said they will offer the course.
Huckabee Sanders' move banning the teaching of material that "would indoctrinate students with ideologies" followed a similar law in Florida. In July, a federal judge blocked another law passed by Arkansas' Republican Legislature which criminalized librarians who distributed materials that were deemed "harmful to minors."
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Federal Judge Blocks Arkansas Law Criminalizing Librarians
"Do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties," said the head of the state ACLU.
Jul 30, 2023
A federal judge on Saturday temporarily blocked the implementation of an Arkansas law criminalizing librarians and booksellers who provide access to materials deemed "harmful to minors."
U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—issued a preliminary injunction against two sections of Act 372 (also known as S.B. 81), a censorship bill introduced by Arkansas state Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-20), passed by the Republican-controlled state Legislature, and signed into law by GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in March.
The law—which would have gone into effect on Tuesday—makes it a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison to provide to a minor material "that to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest."
The legislation also allows parents and legal guardians to access minors' library records.
Brooks' temporary injunction against Act 372 applies to Section 3—which criminalizes librarians and booksellers for providing access to materials deemed "harmful to minors"—and Section 5, which requires libraries to establish material review processes and empowers courts to compel libraries to remove materials that may be protected by the First Amendment.
"If merely having a book accessible on the shelf where a minor can reach it will potentially subject librarians and booksellers to criminal penalties, such books may simply be removed," Brooks wrote in his 49-page ruling. "As a result, these patrons claim their First Amendment right to access non-obscene (i.e., constitutionally protected) reading material will be dramatically curtailed."
In May, the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) led a lawsuit against the legislation. CALS executive director Nate Coulter said he is "extremely pleased and gratified" by Brooks' ruling.
"I'm relieved that for now the dark cloud that was hanging over CALS' librarians has lifted—they will not be threatened with jail for making books available to our patrons," Coulter told the Arkansas Advocate.
ACLU of Arkansas Executive Director Holly Dickson also welcomed the ruling, saying in a statement that "we commend the court's decision to stop the enforcement of Sections 3 and 5 of Act 372, which would have jeopardized the essential First Amendment rights of all residents of Arkansas."
"It's regrettable that we even have to question whether our constitutional rights are still respected today," Dickson added. "The question we had to ask was, do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties."
Earlier this year, the American Library Association said that a record-breaking 2,571 unique titles were challenged by people or groups seeking bans in 2022, a 38% increase from the previous year.
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Biden Administration Urged to Act as States Throw 1.2 Million Off Medicaid
"We never got anything telling us to recertify," said one Florida resident whose children lost coverage. "We never got anything saying we were booted out of the system."
Jun 16, 2023
A healthcare catastrophe is unfolding across the U.S. as states—now unrestrained by coverage rules enacted early in the coronavirus pandemic—continue to remove people from Medicaid at an alarming clip, mostly for procedural reasons unrelated to their eligibility for the program.
The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), which has been tracking Medicaid disenrollments since Congress and the Biden White House agreed late last year to begin unwinding pandemic-era coverage protections in April, estimates based on state data that more than 1.2 million people have been removed from the program in 21 states as of Thursday.
KFF found that in the states with available numbers, "76% of all people disenrolled had their coverage terminated for procedural reasons." Such disenrollments, KFF noted, "can occur when the state has outdated contact information or because the enrollee does not understand or otherwise does not complete renewal packets within a specific timeframe."
Eligibility checks and renewal procedures, which vary by state, are a bureaucratic maze in which many are bound to get lost.
In Republican-led Florida, the state with the most disenrollments thus far at close to 250,000, some residents say they've been removed from Medicaid without receiving any notice from the government, finding out about their lack of coverage only when they attempted to schedule a doctor's appointment or pick up a prescription.
"We never got anything telling us to recertify," said one Florida resident whose children recently lost their Medicaid coverage. "We never got anything saying we were booted out of the system."
Similar reports are emerging from Arkansas, where Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is publicly bragging about the pace of her state's Medicaid purge. Federal guidance gives states up to 14 months to complete their Medicaid eligibility screenings, which were paused during the coronavirus pandemic to limit coverage disruptions.
But Sanders has pledged to finish the process in half that time—and many are falling through the cracks as a result.
More than 110,000 thousand Arkansans have lost Medicaid since April, the third-largest disenrollment total in the country behind Florida and Arizona, according to data compiled by KFF.
Politico reported earlier this week that "seven in 10 Arkansans who have lost their insurance have been dropped for procedural or administrative reasons," meaning "the government hasn’t determined someone makes too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but rather that the person failed to respond to a letter or provide extra information to renew their coverage."
"In some cases, people are losing coverage because of system glitches," the outlet added. "What's happening in Arkansas is unique in its speed but the state’s early efforts are a cautionary tale for the roughly 93 million Americans on Medicaid who are expected to go through the renewal process during the next year."
"These numbers are staggering and suggest excessively high rates of denials on procedural grounds that could severely harm access to care for children."
Despite the worrying statistics and anecdotes, the Biden administration has declined to intervene or criticize the Medicaid redetermination process of any specific state.
Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter to the governor of every U.S. state expressing concern over the "high number of people losing coverage due to administrative processes" and reminding officials that they "must comply with federal rules regarding how they conduct" Medicaid renewals, including affording due process to those kicked off the program.
Becerra sent the letter after Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) implored federal health officials to "ensure states are held accountable for complying with federal law, and step in to protect vulnerable populations from being improperly disenrolled from Medicaid."
"We urge you to move swiftly to use these tools to prevent more coverage losses among eligible children and adults in Florida, Arkansas, and other states," the lawmakers wrote, citing a " disturbing report" that "described a family of a five-year-old with cancer spending hours on the phone with Florida's Medicaid agency to determine if their son had lost coverage after the website indicated he had."
"In the first month of redeterminations in Florida, over half of the people whose eligibility was checked were terminated," wrote Pallone and Wyden. "Over 80% were for procedural reasons and most are likely to be children and parents given that Florida has not expanded Medicaid to adults. These numbers are staggering and suggest excessively high rates of denials on procedural grounds that could severely harm access to care for children."
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Iowa Becomes Second GOP-Controlled State This Year to Pass Repeal of Child Labor Protections
The legislation, which Gov. Kim Reynolds has said she will sign, will permit children as young as 14 to complete work including roofing, construction, and demolition.
May 05, 2023
Along with passing forced pregnancy laws and measures to punish parents for supporting their transgender children, the Republican Party is pushing numerous bills to loosen child labor regulations—and on Thursday Gov. Kim Reynolds confirmed she plans to make Iowa the second GOP-controlled state to enact such a proposal this year.
The Republican said she plans to sign Senate File 542, which removes so-called "unnecessary restrictions" that have kept minors from working in hazardous workplaces and from working long hours during the school year.
The bill was given final approval by the state Senate on Wednesday, with just two Republicans joining Democrats in voting against it, defying lobbying campaigns by right-wing groups including Americans for Prosperity and restaurant and construction industry groups.
"Even if this isn't happening in your state, it is coming to your state soon. I promise you."
Under the legislation, businesses will be permitted to employ children as young as 14 for work including roofing, construction, and demolition as long as they are participating in a "work-based learning program" through the state. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds will be allowed to serve alcohol, and teenagers older than 13 will be permitted to work up to six hours a day until as late as 9:00 pm during the school year and until 11:00 pm in the summer. Currently teenagers can only work four hours per day.
Reynolds said the bill is aimed at developing a "strong work ethic" in children and allowing them "to work to get ahead in life or save money for college." Supporters have heralded the legislation as a solution to what they say are "labor shortages"—which labor unions and workers' rights advocates have long said could be solved with wages that keep up with inflation and fair working conditions.
Republicans and the industry groups that back them "will do literally anything—even endangering the lives of children (!)—to keep wages low for restaurant workers," said economic justice group Patriotic Millionaires last month as the bill moved through the Iowa Legislature.
Reynolds announced her intention to sign the bill days after hundreds of children as young as 10 were found to be working at McDonald's locations across Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, and Indiana.
If the bill is signed, Iowa will become the second state this year to eliminate labor protections for children. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law in March rolling back age verification requirements for workers under 16.
Bills proposed in Minnesota would lift restrictions on hazardous work for teenagers, as Senate File 542 does in Iowa, and extend the hours when children can work. Extended hours bills have also been proposed in Missouri, Iowa, and South Dakota this year, and were passed last year in New Hampshire and New Jersey—where a Democratic governor signed the legislation into law.
"Even if this isn't happening in your state, it is coming to your state soon. I promise you," Charlie Wishman, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO,
told The Real News Network in March.
Debbie Berkowitz, a former policy advisar at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, told The Washington Post the Iowa proposal is "the most anti-child, anti-family bill that I've seen."
"This law is an ideological solution when there is no problem," she said, adding on social media that if Reynolds wants teenagers to be able to earn money, "there are plenty of jobs kids can do now" without allowing companies to employ them on roofing and construction projects.
As the state legislative session ended Thursday, the Iowa Senate Democrats tweeted that the child labor bill was just part of a Republican agenda this year that will harm the state's children in multiple ways.
"This session will go down in history as one of the most divisive and cruel ever seen in Iowa," said the Democrats.
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Let the Loathsome Lies Begin (Again)
Like fetid sludge seeping from a storm drain, former press secretary and Wicked Witch of the Lies Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the first Trump accomplice to announce she's running for office, as governor of Arkansas. Sanders launched her bid with a gaslit, curdled, lie-filled, grievance-packed, long-ass video vowing to "defend your right to be free of socialism and tyranny" by "the radical left," and yes the ghastly woman who said it was "biblical" to put kids in cages really does talk that way.
Jan 24, 2021
Hideous peas in a pod. Getty Image
Like fetid sludge seeping from a clogged storm drain, former White House Press Secretary and Wicked Witch of the Lies Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the first Trump accomplice to announce she's running for office, in her case as governor of Arkansas. Sanders, who took over from Sean Spicer in July 2017, spent most of the next two years shamelessly, relentlessly, belligerently shilling for a sociopath, endlessly spewing lies to a press she clearly, truly despised as the enemy of the people even though she was, umm, the press secretary. As the brutally partisan agent of a president who "transformed 'fake news' from an offhanded insult into a democratic anxiety," in the view of many she "broke the news," repeatedly using her bully (sic) pulpit to foster the idea that "facts themselves have a political bias...She has deflected, she has belittled, she has eye-rolled, she has condescended, she has obfuscated, she has misled, she has lied." Most grievously, in increasingly "gladiatorial" and then rare press conferences, she helped foster the deeply anti-democratic notion that facts don't matter as long as you win. And so - why not? - she lied: About the hush money, the jobs for African-Americans, the women Trump assaulted, the way he never encouraged violence, the "countless" FBI people "very happy" he fired Comey, the perfectly benign practice of ripping immigrant kids and babies from their parents to put them in cages - to which Stephen Colbert once responded, "There are two ways to look at the story. You can be horrified - or work for Donald Trump." Who lied even more than she did.
Evidently proud of her achievements as a loyal cog in that heinous machine, Sanders launched her run for governor Monday with a curdled, grievance-packed, fear-mongering, culture-war stoking, seven-minute-46-second video vowing to "defend your right to be free of socialism and tyranny," and warning, "With the radical left now in control of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense," and yes she really does talk that way. Starting with a soft-focus fairy tale about soldiers fawning over Trump when he visited Iraq for 20 minutes before they knew he called them "losers," she sprinkles in red-meat words - abortion, AOC, Pelosi, big government - and says she'll protect guns, religious liberty, free speech and immigrant-free cities against "Venezuelan-style socialism." You can trust her, she notes, because in her earlier gig "I took on the media, the radical left, and their 'cancel culture,' and I won." Say what? retorted Jim Acosta, who in fact often beat her at her own game and now warns, "This campaign is going to be gaslit." In one of their most memorable confrontations, Acosta asked her about Evil Elf Jeff Sessions quoting the Bible to rationalize putting kids in cages, to which Sanders sanctimoniously sneers, "It is very biblical to enforce the law." Now here she is again, telling us how "Christian" she is. Online, some seem unconvinced. How do her non-stop grievances create jobs, improve schools, provide infrastructure, "you know, the stuff governors actually need to be good at?" asks one. And, "Arkansas: If she's the answer, it must have been a really stupid question." With Sanders likely only the first in a long, dingy line of former Trumpers looking for work, Politico reports their prospects look dim, especially after the Capitol riot. Given everything that's come before, says one source, "They are really fucked." Reap what you sow.
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Politicon Lineup Exposes Event as 'Circus': Critics
"Why should the average voter invest in US politics if those running it think it's all a sport?"
Sep 10, 2019
Progressives beomaned the fact that the nation's premiere political convention, Politicon, is once again placing hard-right figures like Jordan Peterson and Ann Coulter onstage with mainstream political commentators in a now-familiar move by the nation's media and government elite that uses the event's lineup to launder the extreme right.
"Politicon is a circus for godless political grifters and it's shocking that so many decent people still participate," tweeted Vox's Carlos Maza.
It's not just Coulter and Peterson--the duo will be joined at the event by former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Fox News host Sean Hannity, Iraq War booster David Frum, and others. Former Sen. Al Franken, former Democratic operative Donna Brazile, and CNN's Chris Cillizza are among the mainstream politicos at the event.
"Al Franken coming to you live with my good friend Ann Coulter, with whom I may have some collegial disagreements but at the end of the day we're both Americans god dammit," Twitter user @zlingman said sardonically.
Some of the attendees with history could run into one another, creating the potential for stick situations, The Week explained:
Politicon, now in its fifth year, brands itself as an "unconventional political convention," though unconventional is perhaps too soft a term. Sure, former FBI Director James Comey has made the morning (and evening, and late night) show rounds, but now he'll appear on the same stage as Sanders, who spread misinformation about his firing. And Jordan Peterson, a men's rights advocate who, as far as we know, only eats beef, will for some reason give an uncontested keynote.
But it appears unlikely that there will be any conflict as the event is billed as a tony celebration of politics where everyone sets aside their partisanship in order to take part in "endless humor and exhilarating conversation."
The event is the kind of thing that leads people to take a jaundiced view of politics, media critic Adam Johnson said in a tweet.
"This ethos is the single biggest driver of cynicism," said Johnson. "Why should the average voter invest in US politics if those running it think it's all a sport?"
Maybe it's time to start over, opined Willamette University professor Seth Cotlar.
"Is it possible to hit the reset button on a nation's political culture," Cotlar wondered, "and start over from scratch?"
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There Will Be No Justice For Trump's Enablers
The moral and professional accounting some Republicans feared will never take place.
Aug 19, 2019
After Donald Trump became his party's nominee for president in 2016, a great many Republicans in Washington said publicly and privately that they would never work in his administration if he were to win. For some it was because they doubted his commitment to conservative ideology, but for most it was about Trump as a person: He was erratic, unqualified, and most of all an utterly corrupt and immoral person who sullies everything he touches.
They had principles, and reputations to defend. He might be in office for four or eight years, but they would be around after that time was over. Working for Trump could only end in shame and ignominy. If things went poorly, it might even be career suicide. Just imagine what kind of accounting there could be at the end of what was certain to be a disastrous presidency! No one who had put themselves in the service of this repellent man would escape blame.
Three years later, there are some prominent "Never Trumpers" around, but their numbers are tiny. The overwhelming majority of Republicans--elected officials, political professionals, policy wonks--have to one degree or another bent the knee to Donald Trump. Even the party's eminence grises are in line; former vice president Dick Cheney, who has criticized the administration on foreign policy, will be raising money for Trump's reelection.
Which is as good a sign as any that the moral and professional accounting some Republicans feared--or hoped for--will never take place.
There may be some places where those who placed themselves in Trump's service will receive the contempt they deserve, like Kirstjen Nielsen being heckled in one restaurant and Sarah Huckabee Sanders being refused service in another. But by and large they'll be fine, because they live in a world where nearly everyone is complicit. That means that they will all have an interest in convincing each other and the world that working for the single most odious human being to ever sit in the Oval Office was a perfectly reasonable, even noble, thing to do.
Consider Sanders, who defended and justified the most dishonest politician in American history (and perhaps that of the entire world) with an almost superhuman degree of commitment and enthusiasm. What will happen to her? She'll probably write a best-selling book, and have corporations give her obscene sums to obtain her wisdom on damage control when they're caught despoiling the environment or killing their customers. A Fox News gig will be hers for the asking, should she not find that too pedestrian. For the moment, she's considering a run for governor of Arkansas. And she'd probably win.
Their party may pay a price at the polls, but the men and women who signed up to aid Donald Trump will not get what they deserve.
There is Trumpite here or there who has really suffered from their identification with this president, like Sanders's predecessor, Sean Spicer. What got Spicer in such trouble, however, was the fact that he felt shame for his service to Trump. Everyone knew he was lying whenever he went before the cameras, and he obviously knew that everyone knew, and felt bad about it. That's what made his brief tenure so embarrassing, and why he's one of the few that left the White House with his reputation having suffered the proper degree of damage.
There are others who fared as poorly, if they pled guilty to crimes, or were accused of domestic abuse, or undertook a spree of penny-ante corruption. But they're still the exceptions, when true justice would demand that every last one of them be ostracized and denounced. Sure, one sees the occasional story about something like young Trump staffers complaining that no one wants to date them. But there will be no truth and reconciliation commission, no universal condemnation, no shunning of even the worst offenders.
The reason is that the entire Republican Party will make sure it doesn't happen, because nearly all of them are implicated.
Consider someone like Stephen Miller, probably the most villainous figure in the administration. The latest revelation about Miller is that he tried for some time to find a way to get states to bar undocumented immigrant children from going to school; he was thwarted not because other officials said, "My god, what kind of monster are you?" (they didn't) but because the scheme was obviously illegal.
Now try to imagine the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute saying to Miller in 2021, "We're sorry, but we cannot offer you a senior fellow position, because your actions during the last four years were so morally abhorrent that we do not wish to associate ourselves with you." The very idea is ridiculous. We know what will happen: Heritage, AEI, and any number of other prominent conservative organizations will fall all over themselves to offer Miller a comfortable sinecure from which he can continue to advocate a whiter future for America.
In fact, they'll undertake a massive project of historical revisionism to convince the country that what we just lived through was all a figment of our imagination. "Just remember: What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening," Trump said last year, and this project will attempt to convince us that what we saw, read, and experienced never actually happened. Donald Trump was a fine and responsible president, they'll say, and even if he might have gotten a little silly on Twitter from time to time, anyone who supported him should take pride in their service to the GOP and to America.
And since the entire Republican Party will repeat this line again and again and again, it will become, if not conventional wisdom, at the very least a respectable position to hold. At worst, if Trump leaves office in disgrace Republicans will say what they did when George W. Bush slinked off in 2009 with the two wars he started still dragging on and the country experiencing the worst economic crisis in 80 years: I never liked him anyway. He wasn't a real conservative. And of course I didn't figure that out until it was all over, so don't blame me.
By and large, they won't be blamed. Their party may pay a price at the polls, but the men and women who signed up to aid Donald Trump will not get what they deserve. There may be a political reversal, but if you're waiting for justice, you might not want to get your hopes up.
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"Not Founded On Anything": The Epitaph for the Sarah Huckabee Sanders Era
The now infamous phrase points to how the Trump administration has embraced a cruel, cynical, nihilistic worldview rooted in nothing but the quest to obtain and maintain power in the service of personal gain
Jun 14, 2019
At Politico's "Women Rule" event in late 2018, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who President Trump announced Thursday would soon be leaving her position as White House press secretary, said that she hoped her legacy would be as a person who was, "transparent and honest throughout that process" and did "everything I could to make America a little better that day than it was the day before."
"In essence, Sanders embraced a scorched earth strategy where--in a quite shameless effort to defend Trump--she would gladly sacrifice core elements of democratic society."
Of course, given the sheer volume and magnitude of lies Sanders and her boss have inflicted on the U.S. population over the years, it's hard now not to laugh at these words. Most recently, Sanders claimed that she had heard from "countless...individuals who work at the FBI who said they were very happy" with the firing of James Comey. It should go without saying that Sanders simply made that up. When offering testimony under oath to the Mueller investigation, Sanders openly admitted that her statement "was not founded on anything."
"Not Founded on Anything." I can't think of a better epitaph to trademark for the Sarah Huckabee Sanders era at the White House. Actually, I can't think of a better epitaph for the Trump administration in general.
The phrase "Not Founded On Anything" points to the role of Sanders in the embrace of a cruel, cynical, nihilistic worldview rooted in nothing but the quest to obtain and maintain power in the service of personal gain. (After all, this is a person who even lied about the death of migrant children at the U.S. border.) I previously described this Trumpite worldview as "corrosive dystopianism" which encourages "the rejection and destruction of the very structures in society that can, if reformed properly, be agents for positive change." Journalists? The state? Universities? Courts? Science? Immigrants? The FBI? All pitched as obstacles in the way of so-called "patriots" searching for their piece of the American Dream. If we have to lie to crush those institutions, well, that's the rather counter-intuitive price of freedom.
In essence, Sanders embraced a scorched earth strategy where--in a quite shameless effort to defend Trump--she would gladly sacrifice core elements of democratic society, such as a free press.
Make no mistake, this strategy was not a glitch or bug in the Trumpite operating system. It was--and remains--a feature of that system. Sanders was not simply doing her best at an "impossible job," as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tweeted. On the contrary, Sanders was doing precisely the job that she was asked, and loved, to do: lie, attack, deflect and question the very nature of reality, and undermine anyone or anything that threatened the power of the privileged.
And, let's not lose sight of the irony of conservatives who endlessly pontificate about the evils of "liberal, postmodern" university classes where the "nature of reality" is questioned gleefully falling into lock-step behind an administration that has done nothing but question fact, truth, and reality.
So farewell, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Your tenure was indeed "Not Founded on Anything." And that's one of the most dangerous foundations imaginable.
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