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Everyone wants to know how Amazon owner Jeff Bezos got hacked. Not only because its surprising to learn that the tech big-wigs phone wasnt adequately protected against cybercrime, but because it matters in todays political landscape.

A forensic analysis of Jeff Bezos cell phone pointed to a WhatsApp video as the source of the hacking attack. The video was sent to Bezos by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Following reports of the hacking source, the Saudi Arabian embassy issued a statement on Twitter calling the accusations absurd. After all, why would Saudi officials want Jeff Bezos personal information?

There are a few potential answers to that the first and most prominent being to hold it over his head in the wake of Washington Post Journalist Jamal Khashoggis death. Khashoggis murder was called into question by WaPo, and the ordeal soured Bezos relationship with Salman, but was it the reason for Bezos phone hack?

Perhaps, but the timing is questionable. The video in question was sent to Jeff Bezos on May 1 while the two men were having a friendly conversation. Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul five months later.

Some say the fact that the Saudi price was monitoring Bezos device shows how far-reaching the nations cyber surveillance efforts have become. Others claim Salman sent the infected video in hopes of getting some dirt on Bezos if the Washington Posts coverage of Saudi Arabia was unpopular.

Proponents of this theory point to the private text messages published by the National Enquirer nine months later as proof. But while the Saudis are almost certainly responsible for infecting Bezos phone, the why has become increasingly important.

If the Saudi prince was hoping to blackmail Bezos or change the way the Washington Post was reporting, does it make sense to publish damaging personal information posing as someone else? The National Enquirer claims the personal exchanges between Jeff Bezos and girlfriend Lauren Sanchez came from her disgruntled brother.

But her brother tells another story. While he admitted to working with the National Enquirer, Michael Sanchez says he didnt provide the publication with the texts and photographs in question.

Admittedly, there is no concrete evidence linking President Trump to the Jeff Bezos hacking but he is a common thread linking each of the participants. Trump close to the National Enquirers then-owner, David Pecker. The two have been accused of working together to skew media coverage in Trumps favor in the past.

Plus, theres Donald Trumps chummy relationship with Said officials a fact that has been vehemently criticized in the wake of Khashoggis murder. New concerns that the Saudi prince may have been spying on the White House via Jared Kushners phone reveal the president forced [Salmans] security clearance through.

Finally, theres his ongoing conflict with the Washington Post and its owner. Trumps beef with Bezos was rumored to have disrupted a potential deal between Amazon and the Department of Defense. If you subscribe to that theory, is it such a stretch to imagine Trump asking the Saudi Prince to dig up dirt on Bezos?

With Trump currently on trial for abusing his power for his own personal gain, the fact that he has been feuding with Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post for years cant be overlooked. Saudi Arabias bold Twitter post calling for an investigation into claims that Prince Salman is behind the hacking attack are telling. Whether the White House is willing to delve into the matter further is likely dependent on the presidents involvement.

Moving forward, keep an eye on Trumps response and Washingtons willingness to investigate the Saudis cyber-surveillance. While there isnt any evidence linking Donald Trump to the ordeal right now, Id say theres a good chance there will be if the investigation goes further.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.

This article was edited by Sam Bourgi.

Last modified: January 22, 2020 4:49 PM UTC

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Donald Trump May Have Been Behind Jeff Bezos Phone Hack - CCN.com

The enemies of Israel have unleashed a massive air attack on the Promised Land. Hundreds of fighter jets streak across the sky. But before Israel can be destroyed, fire rains from the heavens and the enemy jets explode in mid-air with no explanation. Hailstones the size of golf balls follow the fire. The ground shakes. Birds pick clean the bodies of the fallen attackers. The enemy is vanquished without a single Israeli casualty, and the country is saved.

These are some of the opening scenes of the bestselling 1995 book Left Behind: A Novel of the Earths Last Days, by Jerry B. Jenkins and the late evangelical minister Tim LaHaye. But dont mistake this scenario for a mere action sequence: Its based on the war of Gog and Magog, a biblical conflict prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel. In the Bible, Gog is the leader of Magog, a place in the far north that many evangelicals believe is Russia. According to Ezekiels prophecy, Gog will join with Persianow Iranand other Arab nations to attack a peaceful Israel like a cloud that covers the land. LaHaye, like many evangelicals, believed this battle would bring on the Rapture, the End Times event when God spirits away the good Christians to heaven before unleashing plagues, sickness, and other horrors on the unbelievers remaining on Earth. Meanwhile, the Antichrist reigns supreme.

The story of Gog and Magog is central to the bloody eschatology long embraced by millions of American evangelicals. In recent years, End Times has gained special political currency as believers have seen any number of Middle East conflagrations as fulfilling Ezekiels prophecy, notably the US invasion of Iraq and the war in Syria. Gog and Magog took on fresh relevance earlier this month, when the Trump administration assassinated Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Irans elite Quds Force.

On many levels, President Donald Trumps self-created crisis in Iran seems to have no relationship to any sort of coherent foreign policy or geopolitical plan for the future. The assassination has yielded few if any tangible rewards for the US. But there is an eager constituency for Trumps improvised policy toward the Middle East and Iran in particular: the evangelical Christians who see it as a means of ushering in the return of Christ. Lured by the promise of conservative Supreme Court justices, anti-abortion measures, and a commitment to Christian supremacy under the guise of religious freedom, white evangelicals voted for Trump in higher numbers than any other groupmore than 80 percent.

He desperately needs them if hes going to be reelected. And while some have expressed concern about the administrations inching toward war with Iran, many of those with what were once fringe beliefs have cheered the killing of Soleimani. Iran has this big part to play in biblical history, says religious historian Diana Butler Bass, who grew up in the evangelical church, attended an evangelical college and seminary, and wrote her Ph.D. thesis at Duke University on American fundamentalism. There are these particular prophecies from Ezekiel, where there is talk of a war that will happen at a very important moment in Israels history. And that war is going to kick off the End Times. People in this prophetic community believe Iran is going to be one of these aggressors.

Bass thinks this worldview may be central to understanding Trumps foreign policy. When Iran gets into the news, especially with anything to do with war, its sort of a prophetic dog whistle to evangelicals. They will support anything that seems to edge the world towards this conflagration, she says. They dont necessarily want violence, but theyre eager for Christ to return and they think that this war with Iran and Israel has to happen for their larger hope to pass.

Not all or even most evangelicals believe inthe literal truth of these sorts of prophecies, though nearly 60 percent of white evangelicals, according to one 2010 poll, believe Jesus is definitely or probably going to return by the year 2050. But those who do subscribe to this apocalyptic world view seem to be overrepresented among Trumps religious supporters and advisers. In October, a host of influential evangelical pastors came to the White House to pray with Trump to protect him from impeachment. Among those who laid hands on the president as he stood, head bowed, in the Oval Office, was repeat visitor Greg Laurie, pastor of a California megachurch. A few days after the killing of Soleimani, Laurie made a YouTube video with Don Stewart, author of 25 Signs We Are Near the End, to discuss Iran and the End Times. The scenario that the Bible predicted, seemingly so impossible, Stewart promised, is now falling into place.

From the outset, Trump has surrounded himself with people who hail from the fringes of the evangelical community that is steeped in the language of biblical prophecy, and his administration regularly reflects that language back to them in its messaging. In March 2017, for instance, Trump issued an official White House statement recognizing the Persian New Year in which he misattributed a quote to Cyrus the Great, the libertine pagan leader of the ancient Persian empire who was anointed by God to free Jews in Babylon. Ordinary Americans probably wouldnt have even noticed the announcement, but evangelicals knew that Trump was speaking their language. Many of them believe Trump is like Cyrus, a flawed nonbeliever who nonetheless is chosen by God to work his miracles on Earth.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was reportedly instrumental in pushing for the killing of Soleimani, is also a master of such messaging. In March, during an interview in Jerusalem with the Christian Broadcasting Network (founded by another apocalyptic preacher, Pat Robertson), Pompeo showed his familiarity with another Iran-centric Bible story popular with End Times evangelicals. In the story, a Persian king is urged to slaughter the Jews in his kingdom at the urging of the evil adviser Haman. But his Jewish Queen Esther convinces him not to and saves her people. Asked whether he thought Trump could be a modern-day Esther, saving the Jews from Iran, Pompeo replied, As a Christian, I certainly believe thats possible. The secretary of states End Times beliefs made headlines again after the Soleimani killing, as meme-makers circulated a quote from a speech he made in a Kansas church in 2015. A few days after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Pompeo said: We will continue to fight these battles. It is a never-ending struggle. until the Rapture.

The State Department did not respond to questions about how Pompeos religious views may affect his foreign policy decisions. But its not hard to see how apocalyptic evangelicalism might be influencing the Trump administration as it seeks to mobilize the millions of evangelicals reached by televangelists and megachurch pastors preaching the End Times. The most blatant appeal to this constituency came when Trump made the controversial decision to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a long-desired goal of evangelicals who see it as fulfilling a biblical prophecy necessary in securing the Second Coming. What may be less obvious is how Trumps disdain for international governing bodies like NATO also dovetails almost perfectly with End Times theology, whether he realizes it or not.

Matthew Avery Sutton, a Washington State University history professor and author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism, says evangelicals who believe the end is near have always been hostile to any sort of international organizations. Thats because they believe biblical prophecies that say that in the last days, a world leader who preaches peace will emerge and move toward a one-world government. In fact, the prophecy goes, that leader will be the Antichrist who will force the world to accept a false religion and persecute people who dont accept him as a Messiah. (In Left Behind, the Antichrist is a Romanian UN secretary-general.) Evangelicals love Trumps talk of pulling out of NATO, his attacks on the UN, and his trashing of the Paris climate change accord. They hate the UN, Sutton says. Trumps unilateralism is also music to their ears.

Trump is not the first president to surround himself with evangelical Christians with an apocalyptic bent. Ronald Reagan was advised by Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, and personally believed in the End Times and the coming apocalypse, writing about it in his journals. He appointed people like Interior Secretary James Watt, a Pentecostal fundamentalist whose disdain for environmental conservation seemed to be informed by his belief that the end of the world was nigh. In an appearance before Congress, he told stunned lawmakers, I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.

Apparently George W. Bush was also part of this apocalypse-now group. When Bush was trying to convince French president Jacques Chirac to support an invasion of Iran in 2003, he reportedly told Chirac:Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled. Chirac had no idea what Bush was talking about and had to consult a biblical scholar.

Trump, who seems unable to distinguish between the New and Old Testaments, doesnt seem particularly fluent in the prophecies of Ezekiel. But he has brought into the White House a host of people who are. Quite a few also hail from what Bass delicately describes as the not respectable charlatan wing of evangelical Christianity. Theyre the prosperity preachers and prophets of the sort depicted by Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry. I have no doubt at all that those people are sitting right next to [Trump], giving him these Bible verses, telling him about these prophecies, Bass says, which means that they are kind of egging him on, [telling him] that hes part of Gods prophetic fulfillment for these last days.

Many of those who have become White House regulars are associated with something known as the New Apostolic Reformation, what Christianity Today describes as a loosely connected group of Pentecostals and Charismatics. Theyre the ones who speak in tongues, scour the news for clues to biblical prophecies, engage in faith healing, and preach prosperity gospelthe notion that faith in God (or, usually, the preacher) will make people wealthy (or at least enrich the preacher). These apostles tend to embrace dominionist theology that implores Christians to take over of all levels of government, media, and education as a way of preparing for the End Times and return of Christ. Influential politicians like former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who has made several visits to the Trump White House, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and former Trump Energy Secretary Rick Perry fall into this camp.

Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at the liberal nonprofit People for the American Way who has tracked the religious right for many years, says that the network of preachers who come from NAR and Pentecostal media operations are telling people over and over again that Trump was chosen, that God intervened in the election. Some of them say very explicitly that Trump is playing a role in Gods End Time plans to bring about the return of Christ.

One of the most prominent representatives of the Left Behind wing of the evangelical movement is San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, who has been calling for a war with Iran for more than a 15 years. In 2005, Hagee wrote a best-selling book, Jerusalem Countdown, that claimed the Bible predicted a war with Iran. (In 2011, it was turned into a movie of the same title, starring Bionic Man Lee Majors and Randy Travis.) Shortly after the book was published, Hagee created Christians United for Israel, a Christian Zionist organization that now claims to have 8 million members. It lobbies for support for Israeli settlements, military aid to Israel, and for the US to join with Israel to launch a preemptive strike on Iran.

Hagee, now 79, had once been popular with powerful Republicans during the George W. Bush administration, despite some of his more controversial statements. Among other things, he has said that gays caused Hurricane Katrina, referred to the Catholic Church as the great whore, called Hitler a half-breed Jew, and said that Hitler was part of Gods plan to get the Jews back to Israel. His star began to fall in 2008 after he endorsed Sen. John McCain for the GOP presidential nomination. McCain rejected his support, calling Hagees views crazy and unacceptable.

The election of Barack Obama consigned Hagee to his megachurch in San Antonio. But Trump has restored him to the corridors of power in Washington. Hagee endorsed Trump early in 2016. Once Trump was elected, Hagee met with the new president for two hours in 2017 to discuss moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Foreign policy experts feared the embassy relocation would destabilize the region and hamper peace talks, but Trump moved it anyway in May 2018. Israeli troops killed more than 50 people in the protests that followed.

Hagee attended the opening ceremony alongside notables such as Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner, and he gave the closing benediction. Let every Islamic terrorist hear this message: Israel lives, he announced. Let it echo down the marble halls of the presidential palace in Iran: Israel lives. He later told the Texas Observer that he was looking forward to Trump confronting Iran, explaining, The sum of Irans evil is greater than the whole of its parts.

When Christians United for Israel held its annual DC confab and lobbying day last summer, Trump sent no fewer than five top administration officials to address attendees, including Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence (both evangelicals themselves), thennational security adviser John Bolton, a special envoy to the Middle East, and the US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Pompeo opened the speech by telling the crowd of more than 5,000 people, This is what it must have looked like to be part of the crowd for the fishes and the loaves. What a miracle that was. Once more the story of Queen Esther came in handy, this time as Pompeo compared it to modern-day Iran.

Hagee is one of the most prominent of Trumps evangelical supporters who see a war with Iran as a necessary step towards the End Times, but hes far from the only one. The White House has hosted a steady stream of dominionists and NAR apostles since Trump took office, including Lance Wallnau, author of Gods Chaos President. An evangelical leader with a consulting business in Dallas, Wallnau has become famous as one of the few evangelicals who accurately prophesied Trumps election after receiving divine inspiration to read chapter 45 of the Book of Isaiah. Thats the story of King Cyrus, whom Wallnau and many other evangelicals think Trump resembles. (For $45, Wallnau and ex-con televangelist Jim Bakker now sell a Trump/Cyrus coin that people can use to pray for Trumps reelection.) Dr. Lance, as hes known, has made several visits to the White House, including for a private briefing on Jared Kushners Middle East peace plan.

Facilitating many of these visits is Paula White-Cain, the controversial televangelist associated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network who became Trumps spiritual adviser after he saw her preach on TV in the early aughts. White led a 20,000-strong megachurch in Tampa that was investigated by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2007 for lavish spending on private jets and big houses and possible violations of its tax-exempt status. His report did not find any wrongdoingchurch leaders refused to cooperate with the investigationbut in 2012, Whites church declared bankruptcy. She went on to lead a mostly African American church in Florida where she remained until last spring, when her son took over the ministry.

Now on her third marriage, White has long been at odds with more elite, mainstream evangelicals because of her particular self-help brand of prosperity gospel. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore called White a charlatan and heretic. Nonetheless, in late October, Trump installed her in an official post at the White House office of public liaison to do outreach to evangelicals, formalizing access for some of the more extreme members of that group. She has referred to Trump as a modern-day Esther and called his enemies demonic.

Bass says that evangelical elites of the sort who associated with President George W. Bush have long looked down their noses at populist preachers like White and her crowd, but Trump has elevated them to positions of power. Its a win-win situation. The evangelicals are at last in the influential positions those who disparaged them once held. And Trumps narcissism is receiving special nourishment by their insistence that he was chosen by God. I think that Trump likes it when people think hes close to Godhe called himself the chosen oneand to think that all of this has some sort of divine backing, Bass says. I dont think theres ever been a president who was quite influenced by this stream of evangelicalism as Trump has been.

Naturally, there are political benefits to all of this. The administration has struggled to provide evidence of any imminent threats from Soleimani, but the timing for the assassination was certainly fortuitous for someone looking to mobilize evangelicals. Not only was Trump embroiled in impeachment hearings, he was still chaffing from a recent editorial in the evangelical publication Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham, calling for him to be removed from office on moral grounds. Trump announced the killing of Soleimani just hours before appearing at the launch of his campaigns Evangelicals for Trump coalition in Miami.

That event took place at a Pentacostal Latino church headed by Guillermo Maldonado, who speaks in tongues and hosts a TV show called The Supernatural Now. Hes the founder of the King Jesus International Ministry, a Miami megachurch with upwards of 20,000 members and a large TV and radio presence. Maldonado is also another regular White House visitor who has preached that Trump has a role in Gods plans for the End Times. At the 2019 Global Prophetic Summit, he claimed that God told him, America, I have prepared this time, I have raised somebody in office to open the doors for my gospels.

Andr Gagn, a theology professor at Concordia University in Montreal, says the apocalyptic worldview is concerning at such high levels of power, because believers may be rather sanguine about the possibility that assassinating an Iranian general might spur an even bigger war or nuclear confrontation in the Middle East. If it brings the end of the world, it brings the end of the world, Gagn says. Theyre ready. They cant wait for the Rapture to happen. For them its the ultimate reunion with God.

Top image credits: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP; Kenneth Thomas/AP; Sebastian Scheiner/AP; Steve Parsons/WPA Pool/Getty; Getty Images (2)

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Evangelicals Love Donald Trump for Many Reasons, But One of Them Is Especially Terrifying - Mother Jones

Trumps allegations are not new he has sporadically claimed for years that the Democratic establishment sought to undermine Sanders in 2016, as have Sanders own supporters but they come as Trump has accelerated his offensive against the Vermont senator, who continues to show strength in early polling.

Earlier this week, Trump sought to play up a feud between Sanders and Warren, who are battling for progressive voters, and his campaign has begun to single Sanders out in press releases and on social media more often rather than focusing more exclusively on Biden.

Trump has also recently stepped up his attacks on former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is pouring money into TV ads attacking Trump to boost his late-start bid.

But Sanders rejected Trump's "attempts to divide Democrats" in a statement Friday evening.

Lets be clear about who is rigging what: it is Donald Trumps action to use the power of the federal government for his own political benefit that is the cause of the impeachment trial," he said. "His transparent attempts to divide Democrats will not work, and we are going to unite to sweep him out of the White House in November.

When the trial begins in earnest on Tuesday, all senators will be required to attend each day of the proceedings for as long as they last.

But Sanders isnt the only 2020 candidate who will be kept off the campaign trail as the impeachment trial drags on.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), whom polls have shown is within striking distance in Iowa; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who is hoping for a come-from-behind victory in the Hawkeye State, and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), a longshot who has placed more stock in the New Hampshire primaries in less than a month, will all be sidelined by the proceedings.

The trial could be a huge boon to White House hopefuls like Biden and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who are clustered with Sanders and Warren at the top of the field. The senators currently running for president have all expressed disappointment at being kept off the campaign trail while pledging to fulfill their constitutional obligations and sending surrogates to campaign on their behalf.

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Trump accuses Dems of using impeachment trial to hurt Sanders campaign - POLITICO

Winston Churchill supposedly said: Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else. In his new book, Andrew Bacevich goes far towards proving the second half of that sentence and casts doubt on the first, without offering much in the way of alternatives.

In what is mostly a social history of the post-cold war era dont expect to find an analysis of the Balkan wars Bacevich seeks to chronicle how the US wasted little time in squandering the advantage it had gained. Few would disagree.

Yet he defines Americas supposed post-cold war consensus as globalized neoliberalism, global leadership, freedom (as the expansion of personal autonomy, with traditional moral prohibitions declared obsolete and the removal of constraints maximizing choice), and presidential supremacy. The 2016 election, he writes, presented the repudiation of that very consensus.

The villains in this telling are the elites who pushed the consensus heedless of other views or interests expectations raised, but unfulfilled; outraged citizens left with no place to stand to the point where Donald Trump was elected and no one could understand why.

In 2016, he writes, financial impotence was to turn into political outrage, bringing the post-cold war era to an abrupt end. As for the people who shop for produce at Whole Foods, wear vintage jeans and ski in Aspen, they never saw it coming and couldnt believe it when it occurred.

Bacevich argues that the seeds of this failure were present throughout the cold war, notably in Vietnam and Ross Perots insurgent White House run in 1992. But how could there ever have been a consensus if the country were so divided?

We have been here before, both in the history of the US and of ideology. Post-1989 featured the same universal self-congratulation and flinging up of caps that Thomas Carlyle critiqued in The French Revolution. Bacevich is right to criticize it again. But it is surely wrong to claim, for instance, that Reagans entire presidency was a pseudo-event, its achievements based on the masterful creation and manipulation of images. Mikhail Gorbachev, for one, doesnt think so.

Acerbic, even curmudgeonly his catalogue of Americas social ills is harsh but fair Bacevich veers between the commonplace and the sarcastic. The promotion of globalization included a generous element of hucksterism, he writes, the equivalent of labeling a large cup of strong coffee a grande dark roast while referring to the server handing it to you as a barista.

Clearly, for those who favor an expansive role for America and the west, and operating according to the principles of grand statecraft, the post-cold war years were the years the locust has eaten. Social mobility declined. The plight of the poor worsened. But JD Vance wrote more sensitively about this in Hillbilly Elegy and Bacevich adds little on either the wars or the peace.

Even if the Donald Rumsfeld-endorsed, technology-friendly Revolution in Military Affairs only purported to describe the culmination of a long evolutionary march toward perfection, which great power today does not rely on technology for military might? And what, other than isolationism, would preclude the possibility of another Vietnam?

Similarly, even as he chronicles their failures Bacevich is harshly critical of the view that presidents direct history. Abraham Lincoln, call your office. FDR too.

The elites Bacevich chides had many faults, and no president of the period left office fully content. But sometimes the authors strategy, as well as his history, is simply wrong.

The horrors of 9/11 notwithstanding, he writes, terrorism does not pose an existential threat to the United States and never has. As innumerable commentators have noted, terrorism is merely a tactic, and an ancient one at that.

Yet one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day, as the bumper sticker read, and any leader is responsible for maintaining vigilance. Which threats can be ignored? Air piracy? Chemical weapons? Nuclear smuggling? Bacevich never offers what he would do to states harboring terrorists, even while noting failures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The book starts out critical of Trump but then takes a more nuanced position. Chiding Barack Obama as the one who saved globalized neoliberalism and inadvertently laid the way for a powerful backlash, he says Trumps detractors commit this categorial error. They confuse cause and effect. They charge him with dividing America. Yet which other recent president attacked fellow citizens so harshly and took delight in smashing the norms of political debate?

Bacevich focuses on the neoconservative project in terms of wars but ignores its Burkean focus on domestic policy, not least David Brooks idea of national greatness conservatism, a very different thing than Maga. John McCain, who articulated a similar vision of national purpose, and whose policies were designed to help Joe the Plumber far more than Trump has, gets one brief mention.

Some people saw what was happening and sought to answer the question Rabbit Angstrom asked and Bacevich cites: Without the cold war, whats the point of being an American? They were ignored.

Bacevich now urges Americans to ignore the tweets and focus on events. But the tweets are events, the way in which the old guardrails are broken down and the boundaries of legitimate discourse weakened, which has let loose some very dangerous ideas, not least on race and republican norms. A tweet is not a notification to Congress under the War Powers Act.

Despite Bacevichs call for conversation on issues formerly beyond the pale such as abandoning globalism and militarism, his book has a fatal weakness: he never quite says what or who he is for. He is too good a historian not to know there was a tendency of anti-anti-communism during the cold war. Perhaps his book is about anti-anti-Trumpism. But the pale is there for a reason

One hopes some future historian will find the seeds of success in our present troubles. Meanwhile, Americans must pick up the pieces as best they can.

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The Age of Illusions review: anti-anti-Trump but for what, exactly? - The Guardian

Were not even a full month into 2020, but the unmistakable buzz of a landmark election year is already thick in the air.

Many of us are understandably focused on the massive change Election Day could bring, but three upcoming dates in January offer us a chance to reflect on just what were fighting for come November. Equally critically, though, these dates show us why federal courts should matter to all of us and why Trumps efforts to pack the courts with narrow-minded elitists are so dangerous.

First up is Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 20. Dr. King spent his life fighting for and achieving important civil rights victories concerning voting, housing, and other issues. His call to give us the ballot led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and his leadership in the Chicago Open Housing Movement laid the groundwork for the Fair Housing Act, which passed one week after Dr. Kings death.

But right-wing judges, many of whom have been appointed by Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpNational Archives says it altered Trump signs, other messages in Women's March photo Dems plan marathon prep for Senate trial, wary of Trump trying to 'game' the process Democratic lawmaker dismisses GOP lawsuit threat: 'Take your letter and shove it' MORE, have seriously eroded that progress. Take the Supreme Courts 2013Shelby County v. Holderdecision, which effectively overturned a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and, as onestudyput it, opened the floodgates to laws restricting voting throughout the United States. Nowhere is that more evident today than in states across the South and Industrial North, where African American, Latino and young voters face a myriad of barriers to the ballot box.

More recently, Trump-appointed judges on the 5th Circuit cast crucial votes to seriously cut back rights under the Fair Housing Act, a decision that even a conservative judge appointed by President George W. Bushcriticizedbecause it moves us backwards on the pathway to equality and integration.

And 10 years ago, on Jan. 21, five conservative justices on the Supreme Court decided, in the disastrousCitizens Unitedcase, to overturn congressional limits on election spending. That decision made it legal for corporations, the very wealthy and other special interest groups to spend unlimited amounts of money influencing elections and dramatically diminished the political power of the rest of us. Eight years later, the amount of such independent expenditures had more thanquadrupled, from $205.5 million to over $1.1 billion.

Trump judges have made the situation even worse, most recently in an 8th Circuitdecisionthat partly struck down a state lobbyist registration and disclosure law, despite dissents by two conservative Bush judges. And on the 5th Circuit, a Trump-appointed judgeevenarguedthat limits on campaign contributions are unconstitutional, a position rejected by a number of conservative Bush judges.

Finally, Jan. 22, marks the anniversary of the Courts landmark 1973 decision inRoe v. Wade, which established womens right to abortion care.In the last few years, a growing number of states launched an unprecedented assault on reproductive rights, passing extreme early abortion bans and slashing state funds for reproductive health care.And on the federal level, right-wing federal judges, many of them Trump appointees, are also eager to weaken or overturnRoe.

For example, a 6th Circuit Trump judge wrote adecisionupholding a restrictive state law that requires doctors to subject women to unnecessary and potentially harmful procedures before providing abortion care. A 5th Circuit Trump judgecriticizedwhat he called the moral tragedy of abortion, puttingRoesquarely in his crosshairs. And in a currently pending Supreme Court case in which Trump appointees Brett KavanaughBrett Michael KavanaughDemocratic group plans mobile billboard targeting Collins on impeachment January reminds us why courts matter and the dangers of 'Trump judges' Planned Parenthood launches M campaign to back Democrats in 2020 MORE and Neil GorsuchNeil GorsuchJanuary reminds us why courts matter and the dangers of 'Trump judges' Planned Parenthood launches M campaign to back Democrats in 2020 Appeals court appears wary of letting Trump reinstate death sentences MORE may well cast deciding votes, more than 200 Republican members of Congress recently filed a brief asking the Court to consideroverturningRoe.

Januarys anniversaries show us why federal courts matter.

As we continue to look forward to Election Day, lets not forget what were fighting for and the dangerous role that Donald Trump, Republican legislators, and Trump-appointed judges are playing in stripping us of our rights.

Elliot Mincberg is a senior fellow atPeople For the American Wayand a former chief oversight counsel for the House Judiciary Committee.

Originally posted here:
January reminds us why courts matter and the dangers of 'Trump judges' | TheHill - The Hill