onfocus

Useful! Here’s a brief summary of each executive order day by day.

"But none of these bills will pass a Senate in which the filibuster forces 60-vote supermajorities on routine legislation. And that clarifies the real question Democrats face. They have plenty of ideas that could improve people’s lives and strengthen democracy. But they have, repeatedly, proven themselves more committed to preserving the status quo of the political system than fulfilling their promises to voters. They have preferred the false peace of decorum to the true progress of democracy."

I agree this is the test for Democrats. They need to be able to endure a few bad media cycles to get important work done. Majority rule is how the system is supposed to work.

See also: The Senate Filibuster Is Another Monument to White Supremacy (Aaron Burr really was the worst.)

"The United States, in other words, pays an enormous price for its long lame-duck period. There’s no good reason the US cannot join Canada, Britain, France, India, Japan, and other nations in transitioning swiftly to a new administration after a presidential election."

100 emoji.

"Journalists, if they take their core mission seriously, should think hard about how they’re going to confront this Big Lie, as it’s become known."

I hope journalists start using these but I’m not holding my breath. The idea that the two political parties are both operating in good faith and should have equal time to promote their "views" is a hell of a drug.

"If you took Parler out of the equation, you would still almost certainly have what happened at the Capitol," he told Salon. "If you took Facebook out of the equation before that, you would not. To me, when Apple and Google sent their letter to Parler, I was a little bit confused why Facebook didn't get one."

I want to quote this whole article. We still have a broken system.

Representatives from AWS spoke with Parler executive leadership on both January 8 and 9 about the platform's “content moderation policies, processes, and tools,” Amazon said. In response, Parler allegedly offered steps that would rely on “volunteer”moderation, and Parler CEO John Matze allegedly told AWS that “Parler had a backlog of 26,000 reports of content that violated its community standards and remained on its service.”

It’s starting to look like Amazon didn’t move fast enough.

"Recriminations were swift, with more than a dozen corporate giants — including AT&T, Nike, Comcast, Dow, Marriott, Walmart and Verizon — pledging to withhold donations to Republican lawmakers who voted to reject the outcome of the election in Arizona or Pennsylvania."

I think this is the responsible thing for them to do. It’s one important lever for ending the big lie but we shouldn’t rely on corporations alone to continue to do the right thing. Their track record isn’t great.

"The new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Jan. 8-12 among 5,360 U.S. adults, including 4,040 who say they voted in the presidential election, finds that a sizable majority of Americans do not want Trump to remain a major political figure after he leaves office. About two-thirds (68%) say Trump should not continue to be a major national political figure for many years to come; just 29% say he should remain a major figure in U.S. politics."

The public isn't as evenly divided as we think.

"Throwing out an election isn’t like disagreeing on tax policy or stimulus checks. It’s not something to move on from or forget. If no line is drawn, the attempt will surely be repeated, quite likely without the mob, by the polite legislators in suits and ties insisting that they want fair elections as they vote to gut what remains of our democracy."

The election was fair as every legal challenge showed. Yet 66% of Republicans in Congress voted to overturn the results and continue to lie about it. We need consequences for officials who continue to spread this lie. (A few corporations are starting to suspend donations to these Republicans.)

"Our big lie is typically American, wrapped in our odd electoral system, depending upon our particular traditions of racism. Yet our big lie is also structurally fascist, with its extreme mendacity, its conspiratorial thinking, its reversal of perpetrators and victims and its implication that the world is divided into us and them. To keep it going for four years courts terrorism and assassination."

Excellent analysis of our present moment by a Yale professor of history.

"Popular Information contacted 144 corporations that, through their corporate PACs, donated to one or more of these eight Senators in the 2020 election cycle. Popular Information asked if they would continue to support these Senators in the future. In response, three major companies said they would stop donating to any member of Congress who objected to the certification of the Electoral College vote."

More corporate responsibility like this please. Voting against our Democracy should have consequences.

"We have laws that criminalize the solicitation of violence and conspiracy to overthrow or seriously interfere with the operations of government. Pursuing them should be the immediate priority of law enforcement."

It does feel like there’s no clear direction right now. They’re rounding up some participants but what about the organizers and leaders?