The Washington Spectator

01/03/2025

"The American constitutional order has been broken, and it’s not clear it can be recovered. Many are still in denial about it, and continue to report on political machinations, business as usual. But this is just muscle memory: journalists have beats and write the stories they are expected to write, and the great game of Washington marches on unfazed. But few are facing this grim reality: the United States government is being ripped apart, limb by limb, with little consideration to the future, to national security, to the welfare of the population, or the country’s role in the world."

The American constitutional order has been broken, and it’s not clear it can be recovered. Many are still in denial about it, and continue to report on political machinations, business as usual. But this is just muscle memory: journalists have beats and write the stories they are expected to write...

09/01/2025

Recalling the words of a beloved Rabbi on this day of national mourning for Jimmy Carter.

From Rabbi Leonard Beerman's introduction of Jimmy Carter, recipient of the Courage Prize, at the annual luncheon for the Ridenhour Prizes held at the Press Club in Washington, DC on April 4, 2007. These are the words of Franz Kafka, written not too many years before the birth of the 39th president....

24/10/2024

In 1969, at the first abortion speak-out, before an audience of 300 in downtown New York City, twelve courageous women testified about their harrowing attempts to obtain a safe abortion. This event broke the taboo on the public discussion of the subject and was the catalyst that led to an outpouring of women telling their stories across the country.

Last week we published a chronicle of Shirley Chisholm's experience as the first Black woman to serve in Congress, and later, to run for president, excerpted from The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973 by Clara Bingham. The following account of the first abortion speak-ou...

18/10/2024

"It is incomprehensible to me, the fear that can affect men in political offices. It is shocking the way they submit to forces they know are wrong and fail to stand up for what they believe. Can their jobs be so important to them, their prestige, their power, their privileges so important that they will cooperate in the degradation of our society just to hang on to those jobs?"
- Rep. Shirley Chisholm, 1969

Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman to serve in Congress (elected in 1968) and the first Black woman to run for President (1972). The writer Clara Bingham's absorbing and poignant oral history, The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973, depicts the impediments faced b...

04/10/2024

From Russia, with Love

In 2017, barely a year into Donald Trump's term as president, rumors - about his business dealings with shady Russian oligarchs, with Deutsche Bank, their money-laundering bank of choice, and his potential vulnerability to prominent Russian political figures - engulfed the new administration.

Yet despite multiple Justice Department and Congressional investigations, little was confirmed about the actual extent of Trump's engagement with Russian economic and political interests.

How did Trump escape scrutiny?

In "What Mueller Missed," his current article in The Washington Spectator, the veteran investigative reporter Bob Dreyfuss has reconstructed the history of failed attempts by law enforcement and the legislative branch to unearth Trump's potentially compromising relationships with powerful and well-positioned Russians.

As president, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to quash the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Trump fired Preet Bharara, the chief of the Southern District of New York, after his attempt to dig into money laundering by Deutsche Bank. Trump replaced him at SDNY with Geoffrey Berman, an attorney who’d represented Deutsche Bank, and Robert Khuzami, his deputy, who’d been Deutsche Bank’s general counsel.

Trump later fired Comey's successor at the FBI, Andrew McCabe, a) for opening a criminal inquiry focusing on whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey, and b) for launching a separate counterintelligence probe which sought to determine whether the president was acting on behalf of the Russian government.

Trump's Justice Department then fired veteran FBI agent Peter Strzok, ostensibly for expressing derogatory views of Trump's conduct in office. Strzok has suggested that the range of Trump's Russian involvements invite consideration of his vulnerability to Russian manipulation.

Trump, who refused to disclose his tax returns, used the power of the presidency to assert that anything related to his finances was off limits, a “red line,” making it clear that he would shut down the whole Mueller investigation if they peeked into his bank accounts, tax returns, cash flow, and the internal workings of the Trump Organization and the Kushner Companies.

When the House Financial Services Committee issued a subpoena for Deutsche Bank’s records on Trump, Trump sued the committee in an effort to quash the subpoena. Despite rulings in the District Court and 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the subpoena and the right of Congress to investigate, in July 2020, the Trump-friendly Supreme Court shot down the subpoena, finding that investigations of a President were required to meet a higher standard.

Trump's response to all this official interest in the details of the relationship between the American president and his Russian partners was “Russia has never tried to use leverage on me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” He issued this statement even as his representatives were pursuing business deals in Moscow.

Dreyfuss paints the picture of a self-absorbed autocrat who employs anti-democratic means and raw political power to advance his self-interest, and whose prospects for returning to the presidency are rated a toss-up.

11/09/2024

The big news this week, I suppose after Tuesday night’s debate over the future direction of the country, is that The Memory of Justice will be featured at Anthology Film Archives, starting this Thursday, September 12 and running for a week through the 18th. The theater is located at 32 Second Avenue in New York City, and showings begin each night at 6 pm. I started working on this film 50 years ago, and now courtesy of the Film Foundation we can view a brilliantly executed digital restoration. Leading archivists have suggested the visual dynamics of this restoration are superior to the original film version. The Memory of Justice was described by Vincent Canby of the NYTimes at the time of its release as “the film by which all future films of this sort will be compared to it.” There are many people with more authority than me and less of a stake in the film’s reputation who cite this masterpiece by Marcel Ophuls as their candidate for the greatest documentary work ever made. It’s a commitment, I know - maybe go on consecutive nights, see the first half one night, the second half the next - but one way or another, treat yourself to this rare opportunity and head down to Anthology.

05/09/2024

Dear LA Friends - Next Thursday evening, September 12, I'll be at the Diesel Bookstore in Brentwood where Randy Fertel will be talking about his fascinating new book Winging IT! beginning at 6:30 PM.

Randy will be joined in conversation by the LA-based screenwriter Lolis Eric Elie, whose many credits include the HBO series "Treme.

A rollicking plunge into the origins and culture of improv, Winging It! has been called "A masterwork-voracious in scope," and its author a "whip-smart, plate-spinning savant."

Please RSVP at the link below. I hope to see you there!

Ham

This event is free to attend and will be held in the courtyard at DIESEL, A Bookstore in Brentwood. All attendees are welcome to stay for a booksigning and reception immediately following the discussion. 

02/08/2024

Facebook/meta has informed me that they took down my post from January of this year that began "After the debacle of 2020, when Trump lied incessantly about the election results, pressured local officials to tamper with the vote totals, recruited fake electors, launched a deadly insurrection and...."
...and the reason given was because it was misleading.

07/07/2024

On the 248th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Gary Hart traces the origins of republican ideals and democratic principles.

"In the long human search for means of governance, from kings in armor to radical cults, none so far has surpassed those that have combined the enduring values of equality, justice, and fairness of democracy embedded within the framework of a citizen-controlled republic. Even now, a democratic republic such as the United States—250 years after its creation— continues to ricochet between the excesses of self-proclaimed autocracies and the shortcomings of the liberal democratic state."

As America celebrates the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the threat to the survival of our long-running democratic republic from political and religious extremism is palpable. Former Senator Gary Hart offers a timely reflection on the enduring principles ingrained in the chart...

07/07/2024

From The Erosion of Ideals, by Gary Hart, currently in The Washington Spectator:

The more we perfect our obligations of citizenship, the safer our rights will be.

This argument is particularly important now when we hear candidates for national and sometimes state office pronounce that we need less government…except when they are in charge; we need more concentrated authority at the top, also when they are in charge; that a touch of dictatorship now and then is necessary…again when they are in charge; and less government regulation in the public interest is needed…when they are not in charge.

As America celebrates the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the threat to the survival of our long-running democratic republic from political and religious extremism is palpable. Former Senator Gary Hart offers a timely reflection on the enduring principles ingrained in the chart...

13/06/2024

Detective Komanoff investigates the disappearance of congestion pricing.

Not two months ago, in a brief history of how congestion pricing triumphed in New York, I canonized New York Governor Kathy Hochul, placing her alongside transportation legends Bill Vickrey (Nobel-winning traffic theorist), Ted Kheel (transit-finance savant), and the upstart Riders Alliance that in....

22/05/2024

We’ve heard a lot during the hush-money trial in New York about Donald Trump’s treatment of and attitude toward women. And, regardless of the trial’s ultimate outcome, what we’ve heard curiously resonates with past allegations — never quite substantiated and perhaps too often simply dismis...

03/05/2024

Trump supporters at the Heritage Foundation have produced a blueprint for his administration, should he win. According to the distinguished Duke University historian Nancy MacLean, "What people need to know is that from its outset the Heritage Foundation blended the toxic cocktail that today’s right is gulping in large doses to achieve its goals: libertarian economics; Christian nationalism; and the weaponization of racism, gender anxiety, and parental fears about s*x."

What will the prescriptions in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 mean for parents, public schools, and multiracial democracy? The law professor and social critic Kimberlé W. Crenshaw interviewed historian Nancy MacLean recently at a “Homeroom” webinar of the Freedom to Learn Coalition, whi...

18/04/2024

It's way past time to account for the endless lies, nationalist fervor, slander of immigrants, contempt for women, xenophobia, hatred of marginal groups, voter suppression, incitement to violence, media manipulation and persistent lawlessness.

April 19, 2025. WASHINGTON (AP)—At the direction of Donald Trump, forty-seventh president of the United States, Attorney General Ken Paxton yesterday sent teams of FBI agents to the residences of General Mark Milley, Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton. Knocking on their doors at precisely 9 a.m., the...

15/03/2024

There's growing concern in the press and elsewhere over what Trump and his followers in Congress will do if he loses the election again. In the most harrowing of these scenarios, the Speaker of the House declares there was no clear electoral winner, and invokes the 12th Amendment and its provisions for a contingent election in the Congress.

A number of once improbable things would have to happen to get to that hazardous moment. For one, a presidential candidate would have to object to the outcome of the election, no matter the size of his defeat. Imagine that.

Members of his party would have to contest the outcomes of several congressional races at the state level, purposefully throwing the partisan composition of the new incoming Congress into doubt. State legislative allies of the defeated candidate would have to ignore the popular vote and submit slates of electors committed to their defeated candidate. Renegade or faithless electors could switch their allegiance from the winner of the election to support the loser.

The rogue party of the losing candidate would have to declare their majority in the new House and vote to elect a Speaker of their choosing. The Court would have to decline to review these developments on the grounds that they traditionally keep clear of procedural matters relating to elections (a practice they conveniently suspended in Bush v. Gore in 2000).

The newly elected (or re-elected) Speaker would have to declare that the winner of the election did not win the election, thus invoking the 12th Amendment which calls for a vote in the Congress. Each state congressional delegation is controlled by whichever party has the majority of congressional districts in that state, and each state gets one vote (California gets one vote, Wyoming gets one vote). And according to the current math of the state delegations in Congress, the contingent election would be won by the defeated candidate.

None of this could ever happen here, right? Actually, most of these events have already transpired. And if you are deluded into thinking that the remaining hurdles will save us, let me remind you that the new Speaker, MIke Johnson, is a Christian fundamentalist, a Trump acolyte and an avid election denier who in 2022 led a sizeable though ultimately unsuccessful revolt in the House against a package of bi-partisan reforms aimed at curbing exactly these scenarios.

The unofficial contest to become Donald Trump’s running mate has underscored the enduring Republican plot to overturn elections. At the beginning of this election year, Rep. Elise Stefanik, of New York, chair of the House Republican conference, stated that she would not agree to certifying the res...

11/03/2024

Republican extremists in the Congress have a plan to overturn the popular vote, force a "contingent election" in the House and install the candidate of their choice as president. For those who still cling to "it can't happen here," see Countering the Threat of a Contingent Election by Jonathan Winer in The Washington Spectator.

The unofficial contest to become Donald Trump’s running mate has underscored the enduring Republican plot to overturn elections. At the beginning of this election year, Rep. Elise Stefanik, of New York, chair of the House Republican conference, stated that she would not agree to certifying the res...

24/02/2024

Joy Reid provides a brilliant summary of Dancing in the Dark, The Washington Spectator's electrifying story about vulnerabilities in the election system between Election Day and the Inauguration on January 20th, 2025 - if we have one.

GOP election deniers in the MAGA Republican-led House could steal the next presidential election for Donald Trump according to a new opinion piece. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center at NYU Law, join The ReidOut to discuss.

31/01/2024

https://x.com/kaitlancollins/status/1752524707067297906?s=46&t=ZbFGUYa3BS59uunfFpKWiA