Greg Sargent/Washington Post:
Hartford Courant:
John Breunig/The Hour:
Max has a rather long thread but it includes what the Founding Fathers actually said, rather than made up quotes like Abraham Lincoln’s reminder not to believe everything you read on the internet.
Washington Post:
Matthew D Taylor/Bulwark:
Thomas Zimmer/ “Democracy Americana” on Substack:
Biden has a theory of MAGA that just might be working
There is a tension in Biden’s approach to the GOP. His initial rationale for running was that the GOP is largely hostage to an extremism that foundationally threatens the American experiment. His reelection case is that he has begun to defuse that threat and another term will complete that task.
Yet Biden also plainly believes that conducting the nation’s business on a bipartisan basis is inherently stabilizing. That sometimes requires treating the opposition — or a large swath of it — as a mostly conventional political party, which risks mitigating perceptions of the threat it poses.
In the debt limit outcome, that tension proved far more navigable than many, including me, expected. How this tension will play out in 2024 is hard to predict, but for now, the Biden theory of MAGA has mostly been vindicated.
the deal you get when only one side really cares about governing: "the Biden team was willing to give Republicans victories on political talking points, which McCarthy needed to sell the bill. "But in the text details, Biden wanted to win on substance." https://t.co/I77lLOcN77
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) June 3, 2023
Hartford Courant:
Connecticut governor poised to sign state’s most sweeping gun measure since post-Sandy Hook laws
A slate of gun control measures was headed Saturday to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk, after an all-night state Senate debate and early morning vote to approve the state’s most wide-ranging gun legislation since the laws that followed the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.
Lamont, a Democrat, plans to sign the measure. He said in a statement that the legislation would “modernize our firearm safety laws in a smart and strategic way to help prevent tragedy from happening.”
Among other things, the changes would ban openly carrying firearms and prohibit selling more than three handguns within 30 days to any one person, with some exceptions for instructors and others.
Other provisions include expanding Connecticut’s current assault weapon ban to include some other similar weapons; stiffening penalties for possession of large-capacity magazines; expanding safe-storage rules to more settings; and adding some domestic violence crimes to the list of disqualifications for having a gun.
John Breunig/The Hour:
Newtown not alone in CT's book (ban) club
It's a lot of noise over two books that are gathering dust on the high school shelves, particularly since “Blankets” was only checked out once and “Flamer” never was. Still, it’s preferable to an alternate universe where book bans become business as usual.
If anything, Newtown represented one of the louder outcries in Connecticut over the last century. Book banning may not seem like a state pastime, but it is revived every few years like a high school musical production of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables,” which was banned from Bridgeport classrooms in the 1930s.
The last time Connecticut earned significant national attention for efforts to ban books came 50 years ago in Ridgefield.
"The Founding Fathers" are portrayed as one single mass of marble, a mighty oracle from which a unified American political theory emerged. But the question of what our Constitution is - and what it should be - raged as hard then as it does now. Here are their words:
— Max Burns (@themaxburns) June 4, 2023
Max has a rather long thread but it includes what the Founding Fathers actually said, rather than made up quotes like Abraham Lincoln’s reminder not to believe everything you read on the internet.
Washington Post:
Arizona’s water troubles show how climate change is reshaping the West
In one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country, it’s a boom time — water-intensive microchip companies and data centers moving in; tens of thousands of houses spreading deep into the desert. But it is also a time of crisis: Climate change is drying up the American West and putting fundamental resources at ever greater risk.
“I’m incredibly concerned,” said [Jay] Famiglietti, an Arizona State University professor who is leading a multiyear effort to assess the water supply the state has above and below ground. “I don’t think that people, and this is everyone, the general public, but right up to our water managers and elected officials, really understand now that groundwater is the key to our future.”
“There’s just not enough for all the things we want to do,” he said.
Matthew D Taylor/Bulwark:
Roger Stone and the Key to Trump’s Evangelical Support
Following a conversion experience, the Trump adviser has found a new audience in a movement of MAGA prophets.
EVANGELICALISM IN AMERICA is a big, complicated movement that includes, depending on how you define the category, between 13.6 percent and 25.4 percent of the U.S. population. That’s somewhere between 45 and 84 million Americans, with a host of theological, political, and identity currents among them. Much has been written over the past eight years about the American evangelical attachment to Donald Trump, but a lot of this commentary has missed the central evangelical demographic at the heart of Christian Trumpism.
To be clear, evangelicals (particularly white evangelicals) gave major electoral support to Trump in 2016 and 2020. But, if you look closely at the Evangelical Advisory Board, an inner circle of religious advisers Trump assembled while in office, and his most loyal Christian proponents who were willing to show up in force on January 6th, a striking pattern emerges: Trump’s most ardent Christian advocates are nondenominational Charismatic evangelicals, a group sometimes referred to by academics as Independent Charismatics or Independent Network Charismatic Christians.
Independent Charismatics are evangelical Christians who attend nondenominational churches or, alternatively, who may infrequently or even regularly attend a more typical denominational church while giving their real spiritual attentions and enthusiasm to online prophecy ministries and preachers. Independent Charismatics emphasize a modern, supernaturally driven worldview where contemporary prophets speak directly for God; miracles are everyday experiences; menacing demonic forces must be pushed back through prayer; and immersive, ecstatic worship experiences bolster Christian believers’ confidence that they are at the center of God’s work in the world. These believers are country cousins to the more denominationally aligned Pentecostal evangelicals, though the lack of denominational oversight and the freewheeling nature of the independent Charismatic sector leaves them more vulnerable to radicalization.
The “hush” video posted by Ukraine is a reflection of this. No bragging, no bluster, no indicators of what is happening…just a nuanced “we’re ready, and we’re about to go.” You never underestimate your enemy, but you must be confident in your potential. 2/
— MarkHertling (@MarkHertling) June 4, 2023
Thomas Zimmer/ “Democracy Americana” on Substack:
The Status-Quo Fundamentalism of the “Moderate” Arbiters of Reason CNN’s boss displays a deeply ideological belief in his own superior objectivity that is pervasive among America’s elites – and makes him a willing henchman of a reactionary political project
On Friday, The Atlantic published a massive profile of Chris Licht, the man who took over as the CEO of CNN about a year ago, written by Tim Alberta. The author tries really hard to be fair, and Alberta is not particularly unsympathetic towards Licht and the challenges he has faced at CNN. And yet, the profile amounts to a devastating indictment of Licht – and of a worldview that is widely held among those who dominate the civic institutions of American life.
I have already written two long pieces on how justifications for CNN’s disastrous Trump town hall reveal the deeper pathologies and fallacies that have characterized the Trump discourse since 2016. The Atlantic profile provides plenty more evidence of how much Licht’s political diagnosis is shaped by myths of liberal “echo chambers” and the idea that Trump speaks for an “authentic” America that is rightfully aggrieved – how much he wants all of us to buy into those chimeras.
It's really worth digging into Licht’s case one more time, however, because what stands out from this profile is the combination of naivety and arrogance – all coming on top of an ideological status-quo fundamentalism that stands in marked contrast to Licht’s self-perception as a reasonable actor untarnished by the “irrationalities” that supposedly plague everyone who disagrees with him. This peculiar mindset is pervasive among not just the highest ranks of media executives, but also among the country’s elite echelons in politics, society, and culture more generally.