ornstein, norman

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merri ok

see faSCISM

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AN 10 26

Once the "initial euphoria" wears off in the increasingly likely scenario that the midterms wipe away President Donald Trump's GOP in a blue wave, Democrats will have to tackle a "long and extremely urgent to-do list" lest the country "suffer deeply," one top political scholar warned for The New Republic.

Norman Ornstein is a veteran political scientist and scholar, best known for co-authoring the prescient book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks, about the growing partisan divide threatening the U.S. and jamming up Congress. On Sunday, he published his latest piece for The New Republic, warning that the "initial euphoria from everybody hoping to put a halt to the nihilism and march toward corrupt autocracy driven by the destructive narcissist Donald Trump and his minions" will quickly subside after the midterms, before the newly empowered Democratic Party is faced with a key question:

"What do we do now?"

Ornstein proceeded to lay out at least "three big challenges" the party will need to tackle if and when it retakes the majority in the House, and possibly the Senate as well.

"First, a lot of those who voted for Democrats are expecting action to improve their economic conditions," Ornstein explained. "Run on affordability, you better improve affordability. Second, and related, with Democrats holding a sizable piece of power in Washington, the failures of policy driven by the reckless Trump and his administration could be blamed on them—and it is a sure thing that hundreds of millions will be spent by Trump allies to try to pin the problems on the Democrats. Americans already think Washington isn’t working; if it looks like Democrats are a part of the problem and not of the solution, that could have brutal consequences in 2028."

He continued: "Third, it is clear that the Democratic Party base wants toughness and serious pushback against the corruption, misconduct, and mayhem that are the core of Trump’s presidency. Witness the negative reaction to the private meeting between House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, looking for areas of possible common ground after January 3. Rank-and-file Democrats want pushback, not compromise. Of course, compromise will be necessary to meet the first challenge of improving people’s economic circumstances. But if it is not led by Democrats using every tool at their disposal to name names, kick ass, and stop further destruction, there will be hell to pay with the base."

As for the immense task of actually addressing these issues, Ornstein further outlined six key tools that House Democrats should have at their disposal: lawmaking, the power of the purse, oversight investigations, the bully pulpit, advice/consent in the Senate and impeachment. In order to better enact laws without pushback from Republicans, he advised them to "consider reforming the Senate’s Rule XXII, not by eliminating the filibuster but by putting the onus on the minority by flipping the numbers—41 required to continue debate, not 60 required to end it." As for reclaiming the power of the purse, he urged Democrats to use Republicans' favored tool of reconciliation, "which requires only a majority in the Senate," and would allow them to "pass and send to Trump tough spending measures to right the balance toward decency and the rule of law"

"Third is investigations and oversight: to dig into wrongdoing, corruption, lawbreaking, and malfeasance inside and out of government, along with the failure to see that the laws are faithfully executed," Ornstein detailed further. "

Fourth, and related, is the bully pulpit: the ability to use debate on the floor and in committees, and the megaphone provided by the legitimacy of Congress, to report to the public what you are doing and to shed light on failures or gaps in norms, laws, and policy.

Fifth is advice and consent in the Senate: the power to examine the qualifications and character of presidential nominees for federal courts and executive positions, and to reject those unworthy of confirmation. Sixth is impeachment: the power in the House to hold miscreants to account and recommend their removal to the Senate."

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjuD0nACraM

It's Not Both Sides. It Never Was.

Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie

74.3K subscribers

April 22, 2026.

Around 2012, two veteran Washington analysts — Thomas Mann of Brookings and Norman Ornstein of AEI — published a book arguing that American political dysfunction wasn't a "both sides" problem.

They argued that the Republican Party, had veered hard to the right, abandoned norms of fair play, and embraced a winner-take-all politics aimed at delegitimizing the opposition. Washington largely ignored them. More than a decade later, their diagnosis looks not just correct but understated.

Democrats have moved left on economics and culture — that's real — but they remain committed to elections, democratic norms, and governing for the whole country. The Republican Party, meanwhile, has gone completely off the rails, exemplified by the rise of Donald Trump.

To frame the core problems in American politics as a question of "both sides" is a failure of basic observation. One party is trying to preserve American democracy. The other isn't.

...

If you want more of my work you can read me over at the New York Times or subscribe to my podcast Unclear and Present Danger on the political and military thrillers of the 1990s.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/jamelle-bouie

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

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omfg

AN 8 25

FASCISM

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has agreed to a request from U.S. Senator John Cornyn to locate the Texas Democratic state lawmakers who exited the state in an effort to deny Republicans a quorum—part of a broader attempt to block Governor Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump’s push to redraw congressional maps and boost GOP-held House seats, the Texas Republican announced Thursday.

“We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Senator Cornyn said in a statement that referred to the Texas Democrats as “supposed lawmakers.”

Axios reported that “Texas issued civil warrants for the Democratic lawmakers, but local law enforcement can’t make arrests outside the state.”

The Texas Democrats are in Illinois, according to that state’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker.

IFrame Content

Legal and political experts are blasting the move.

“There’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation. None,” Governor Pritzker Jessica Yellin on Wednesday, according to Axios.

“The key question here is on what grounds would the FBI be doing this,” wrote MSNBC Justice and Intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian. “What is the crime they are investigating? The FBI can’t just use its vast surveillance powers to locate random citizens. In fact, that’s what conservatives have long been so concerned about re FISA authorities.”

“This is a patently unlawful, unconstitutional abuse of federal power,” constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis said on Thursday.

“We are in a deeply dangerous, illiberal place in America when the federal government will deploy law enforcement to force state legislators to act on legislation that’s contrary to their conscience and an attempt to undermine free elections,” Kreis added.

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, addressed Senator Cornyn: “John, I understand your need to tilt crazy right to counter your lunatic primary challenger. But calling on the FBI to act illegally and wrongly to go after Texas Democrats is beneath you, and simply shameful. You used to believe in the law and the Constitution.”

Asking what “criminal interest” the FBI could have in this, U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) called it “yet another disgusting partisan abuse of power by the FBI,” and said that “any agent asked to assist should refuse to do so.”

Watch video of Governor Pritzker below or at this link.

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AN? --> 4 25

Trump’s recent escalating rhetoric and actions across multiple fronts have alarmed political experts, who are now warning that the United States is not just drifting but accelerating toward fascism—and may have already crossed the threshold.

“He’s threatening media companies who are critical of him,” warned Republican Sarah Longwell, a political strategist and publisher of The Bulwark. “He’s talking about sending Americans to foreign prisons. He’s signing executive orders to investigate former staff members who spoke out against him. Don’t you see what’s happening here?”

Trump on Sunday night attacked CBS and its “60 Minutes” newsmagazine, a top-rated and esteemed broadcast for more than five decades. The President, apparently angered by its reporting, called for CBS’s broadcast license to be revoked. He also called on his hand-picked head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior,” namely, reporting facts he did not like.

On Monday, Trump told reporters he has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate sending U.S. citizens to foreign gulags, as The New Republic reported, without due process, something he floated last week, which experts say is illegal.

“Trump is denying due process to foreign nationals here legally — ripping them from their families and deporting them. Do we really believe this regime will follow any sort of due process for American citizens before he tries to deport them? Call it what it is: fascism,” declared U.C. Berkeley Professor of Public Policy and former Cabinet secretary Robert Reich.

“If Trump can claim a ‘national emergency’ to disappear legal residents without due process, what’s to stop him from doing the same to U.S. citizens who oppose him?” asked Professor Reich. He warned: “No one is safe — not even people legally in the country, possibly not even American citizens. Fascism is here.”

Reich pointed to a conversation (video below) between Trump and Bukele, caught on camera, where the U.S. president says, “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places.”

Also sounding the alarm, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer on Monday warned: “The Constitutional Crisis Is Here.”

“Between the path of outright defiance of the Supreme Court and following its order to ‘facilitate’ the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s infamous Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), the Trump administration has chosen a third way: pretending it is complying while refusing to do so.”

Abrego Garcia is the legal U.S. resident the Trump administration admits it wrongly “deported” to the notorious El Salvador mega-prison. Trump officials have made clear, through word and deed, they have no desire to right that wrong.

“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us,” Attorney General Bondi told reporters. “That’s not up to us. If they want to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.”

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, backing up the Trump administration, declared on Monday he has no intention of returning the 38-year old Abrego Garcia to the United States.

“This morning, however,” Serwer wrote, “Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller claimed on Fox News that the acknowledgement that Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported had been made by a ‘saboteur,’ in the Department of Justice and that ‘he was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador’; he added that ‘this was the right person sent to the right place.’ This is a lie—the admission of error was made by an ICE official in a court filing.”

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a well-known political scientist, warned: “Defying the Supreme Court, planning to spirit American citizens to El Salvador and saying that the courts have no role since it is a foreign country and the president has all foreign policy powers. We have entered the realm of fullblown fascism.”

Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote: “Disappearing people without any due process is fascism — full stop. I’m sick to my stomach and we all should be.”

Thomas Kennedy, who works with the Florida Immigrant Coalition, responded to the video of Trump and Bukele.

“Referring to citizens as ‘home-growns’ while asking a foreign country known for prisons that operate like black sites to build more of those prisons so he can send those ‘home-growns’ is fascist stuff and it needs to be called as such.”

Watch the video below or at this link. RUPAR

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scotus coup

SCOTUS 'staged a coup' and will resemble Russian courts if Trump wins: conservative expert - Alternet.org

carl gibson jun 2024

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has grown far too powerful, and could permanently alter the government established by the framers if current trends continue, according to a conservative legal expert.

On Saturday, Norman Ornstein — who is an emeritus scholar at the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute — offered a frank and stunning condemnation of SCOTUS in a post to X (formerly Twitter). After a wave of controversial rulings in the final week of its 2023-2024 term, Ornstein opined that the Supreme Court is rapidly transforming into courts seen in authoritarian governments seen in other parts of the world.

"I wonder how long it will take before Americans wake up to the brutal reality that the US Supreme Court has staged a coup, brazenly seizing power from the other two branches in a way that is utterly contrary to the framers vision of the role of a court and a judiciary," he tweeted. "And it is crystal clear that if [former President] Donald Trump wins, the Supreme Court will be much closer to the Russian or Hungarian courts than the one in our constitution."

Ornstein's tweet comes on the heels of a busy week for SCOTUS, with justices siding with a January 6 insurrectionist in his challenge of a criminal charge against him — potentially impacting charges filed against hundreds of other participants in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Court also notably overturned 40 years of precedent after officially disposing of a long-respected legal process known as the Chevron Doctrine.

Under that doctrine — which was first established in the 1984 Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council case — courts deferred to experts within federal agencies to interpret how federal laws impact the industries those agencies are tasked with regulating. In summing up January’s oral arguments, SCOTUSBlog noted that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed out that if the Court overturned the Chevron Doctrine, it would mean policy decisions wouldn’t rest with experts working for federal agencies, but with the Court itself. After Friday's ruling overturning that precedent, the federal judiciary now has additional powers to set policy within all federal agencies.

Judges taking the place of experts in deciding how to interpret regulations could prove problematic, as Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch recently demonstrated in his opinion in a separate decision. Forbes reported that in the *Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency* case, Gorsuch mistakenly referred to the pollutant nitrogen oxide as "nitrous oxide," which is the laughing gas used by oral hygienists.

Perhaps the most highly anticipated decision of this term is *Trump v. United States*, in which the former president is arguing that he has absolute broad criminal immunity for all official acts carried out as president. His D.C. election interference trial has been on hold while SCOTUS considered his argument, which was already rejected by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and by a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel. Despite flags seen flying outside two of conservative Justice Samuel Alito's homes that were carried by insurrectionists, the justice refused calls to recuse, and Chief Justice John Roberts declined to meet with two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the incidents.

Ornstein isn't alone in his view of the Roberts Court becoming an increasingly partisan institution. Earlier this week, Newsweek reported that multiple federal judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents are casting doubt on the Court's ability to rule on cases in an objective manner.

David S. Tatel, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton to the D.C. Circuit, wrote in his memoir that his "low regard" for SCOTUS prompted him to retire from the bench.

"My views, I think, are widely shared throughout the judicial system," Tatel said. "Obviously, there are people who don't agree with them, but there are, I can assure you, a large number of judges who will not find anything I've said in this book surprising."

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an badash 2 23

The highly controversial and highly unpopular **U.S. Supreme Court** isn’t just facing a historic loss of confidence, it’s now facing yet another ethics scandal that is likely to lower even further public opinion of the far-right institution that in under two decades has seen its approval rating slashed.

Although it will not hear arguments, the issue before the Supreme Court and the American people’s view of it, is, should a justice’s spouse – in this case the spouse of Chief Justice John Roberts – be able to make millions of dollars recruiting attorneys who are placed into top law firms that argue cases before it?

That’s the latest allegation, and already a spokesperson for the Court has issued a statement denying any ethical violations.

The New York Times reports that “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicatingMrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court,according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.”

Jane Sullivan Roberts left a law firm where she was a partner after her spouse was confirmed as Chief Justice.

“Mrs. Roberts, according to a 2015 deposition,” The Times reports, “said that a significant portion of her practice was devoted to helping senior government lawyers land jobs at law firms and that the candidates’ names were almost never disclosed.”

Documents in that case “list six-figure fees credited to Mrs. Roberts for placing partners at law firms — including $690,000 in 2012 for one such match. The documents do not name clients, but Mr. Price recalled her recruitment of one prominent candidate, Ken Salazar, then interior secretary under President Barack Obama, to WilmerHale,a global firm that boasts of arguing more than 125 times before the Supreme Court.”

That case involves “a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts,” Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, who “has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice.”

“According to the letter,” sent by Price to DOJ and Congress, which the Times reports it obtained, “Mr. Price was fired in 2013 and sued the firm, as well as Mrs. Roberts and another executive, over his dismissal.”

Doug Lindner, Advocacy Director for Judiciary & Democracy for the League of Conservation Voters remarked: “Another day, another ethics concern about another life-tenured conservative justice on the most powerful court in the world, which has no binding ethics rules.”

Indeed, the lack of a Supreme Court code of ethics has been repeatedly condemned for years, including by some of the nation’s top critics.

On Sept. 1, 2022, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin tweeted out her opinion piece: “Ginni Thomas pressed Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory .. just another insurrectionist.”

Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor for the Atlantic, responded:

“Another reminder of how unethical is Justice Clarence Thomas, while Chief Justice Roberts turns a blind eye and continues to resist a code of ethics for a Supreme Court now distrusted by a majority of Americans. This defines the Roberts Court.”

The following month Ornstein slammed the Roberts Court once again.

“It is a stain on the Supreme Court that Chief Justice Roberts refuses to support a Judicial Code of Ethics, and stands by silently while Clarence Thomas flouts ethical standards over and over and over,” Ornstein charged.

Less than one month later he again unleashed on Roberts.

“Roberts is culpable,” he tweeted. “He has resisted over and over applying the Judicial Code of Ethics to the Supreme Court. This is Alito’s court, and it is partisan and corrupt.”

Ornstein is far from the Court’s only critic.

“If Chief Justice Roberts really wanted to address Supreme Court ethics, he would have immediately worked to implement a Code of Conduct after Clarence Thomas failed to recuse from cases involving January 6th despite having a clear conflict of interest,” the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tweeted a year ago in May. The following month CREW published an analysis titled: “Chief Justice John Roberts is wrong: the American judicial system is facing a major ethics crisis.”

Meanwhile, in late November Politico reported that Democrats in Congress were outraged at the Roberts Court.

“Two senior Democrats in Congress are demanding that Chief Justice John Roberts detail what, if anything, the Supreme Court has done to respond to recent allegations of a leak of the outcome of a major case the high court considered several years ago,” PoliticoJosh Bernstein reported, referring to the leak of the Dobbs decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision – itself a massive ethics crisis for the Court.

“Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) are also interested in examining claims about a concerted effort by religious conservatives to woo the justices through meals and social engagements. They wrote to Roberts on Sunday, making clear that if the court won’t investigate the alleged ethical breaches, lawmakers are likely to launch their own probe.”

Whitehouse and Johnson “also criticized the high court’s response to a letter they sent Roberts in September, seeking information about the court’s reaction to reports in POLITICO and Rolling Stone about a yearslong campaign to encourage favorable decisions from the justices by bolstering their religiosity.”

Nothing has changed.

When the Roberts Court earlier this month announced its lengthy investigation did not find the draft Dobbs decision leaker but also did not include the Justices themselves, Stokes Prof. of Law at NYU Law School Melissa Murray, an MSNBC host, tweeted, “This is a Roberts Court leitmotif–The Chief loves to handle things–even big things–in-house. Ethics issues? No need to get involved, Congress. We’ll sort it out ourselves. Leak needs investigating? No need to call in an actual investigative body, the Marshal will handle it.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigative reporter Jodi Kantor, pointing to how the Justices were not thoroughly investigated during the leak probe, in earlier this month said: “Last week the court released statements that confirmed the gap between how the justices and everyone else were treated.”

“The whole situation amplifies a major question about the court: are these nine people, making decisions that affect all of us, accountable to anyone?”

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gop took a hard right turn, even more trumpista?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-extremism/

When President Barack Obama was reelected in 2012 and defeated Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, pundits offered a variety of explanations for Romney's loss. Some pundits on the far right insisted that Romney wasn't conservative enough — that he lost because he was a RINO: Republican In Name Only. Others, however, argued that Romney's campaign was doomed by wingnuts in his party. Two of the people who warned that extremists were taking over the Republican Party were Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, and according to CNN's John Harwood, their warnings about the GOP of 2012 are still relevant in 2021.

On April 27, 2012 — when the presidential election was still over half a year away — the Washington Post published an op-ed by Mann and Ornstein headlined, "Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem." Mann was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, while Ornstein was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Mann and Ornstein wrote, "The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country's challenges…. It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct."

That op-ed from nine years ago, according to Harwood, shows that the Republican Party was overrun by extremists long before Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Harwood explains, "It didn't mention Marjorie Taylor Greene, the deadly January 6 insurrection or Donald Trump's Big Lie. In fact, the words 'Donald Trump' did not appear at all. Published in 2012, that Washington Post piece demonstrates more than the foresight of its political scientist authors, Tom Mann of the center-left Brookings Institution and Norm Ornstein of the center-right American Enterprise Institute. It shows the disease within the Republican Party had spread long before Trump metastasized it."

One of the Republicans Mann and Ornstein slammed as a kook in their op-ed was then-Rep. Allen West, who claimed that "78 to 81" House Democrats of 2012 were communists. The Bulwark's William Kristol, now a Never Trump conservative, remembers believing that the op-ed exaggerated the influence of extremists in the GOP; Harwood quotes Kristol as saying, "People like me were thinking, 'Yeah, there are some kooky people around, but c'mon.'"

But since 2012, Harwood writes, Kristol has been "slugged by reality." For The Bulwark, Kristol has written countless articles slamming the GOP as a party that has been hijacked by dangerous authoritarians. And in 2020's presidential election, Kristol and his Bulwark colleagues endorsed Joe Biden.

Mann, nine years after that Post op-ed, told Harwood, "I don't get much satisfaction out of being right. A country, and a system, like ours has to have two strong governing parties. The fact is, we only have one." And Ornstein told Harwood, "It's a grim picture for the foreseeable future. We have a serious risk of losing our democracy."

Harwood notes what has happened to the Republicans of 2012. Romney and Rep. Liz Cheney are now pariahs in much of the GOP for rejecting Trumpism, while West now chairs the Texas GOP. And Harwood says of West, "His 2021 successors have grown loonier. Greene won a House seat from Georgia last year after expressing support for bizarre QAnon fantasies, which link Democrats with pedophilia."

According to Harwood, "When Mann and Ornstein wrote their 2012 piece, Tea Party Republicans had menaced the American economy with a debt crisis. But this year's insurrection created physical menace — for Capitol Police, lawmakers of both parties, even then-Vice President Mike Pence. Cheney warns that Trump may incite further violence."

Another person who believed that Mann and Ornstein exaggerated in their 2012 op-ed was former Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. But now, Dent (who chaired the House Ethics Committee) finds the GOP's direction to be increasingly disturbing.

"I don't like where we're heading," Dent told Harwood, "but (I) don't think it's inevitable that we get to that terrible place."

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