Ben Jacobs/Vox:
“Lord of the Flies”: The House’s chaotic next era, explained
New House Speaker Mike Johnson faces a long to-do list and a caucus with short patience for compromise.
The challenge for Johnson is that he is going to face one tripwire with his conference even before he’s fully moved into his new office: the matter of Ukraine aid, opposition to which has become a shibboleth for many on the MAGA right. The Biden administration has proposed a major funding bill that would combine aid to Israel and Ukraine as well as funding for border security.
Marc Jacob/Twitter via Threadreader:
1. You were active in the effort to nullify Biden’s election. Please cite your evidence of widespread election fraud.
2. You’re a lawyer. If the case for election fraud was so strong, why did Team Trump lose 60+ lawsuits?
4. You want to keep fraudster George Santos in the House because “the margin” of the GOP majority is thin. Isn’t that the kind of moral relativism you'd otherwise condemn?
Dahlia Lithwick/Slate:
No Wonder Donald Trump Loves Mike Johnson
There is, in the end, nothing scarier than a MAGA heart that comes dressed as a sober attorney. Jim Jordan looks as if he wants to punch you in the neck with a second’s notice. Mike Johnson will end you with a footnote or case citation. But as the Framers could have warned you, a nation that was dreamed up chiefly by lawyers was almost overdetermined to be run into the ground by them one day. It was de Tocqueville who famously argued, “Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.” If you are willing to achieve your craziest ends by any means necessary—and the processes and trappings of the law are a means at your disposal—Johnson is the inevitable consequence of that vision. He prides himself on his creative lawyering. In 2020, after then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously ripped up a copy of Trump’s State of the Union speech, Johnson cleverly tried to turn it into a criminal activity: “A lot of people have been talking about this the last 48 hours, and I did a little legal memo to point out to my colleagues that she actually committed a felony when she tore that paper up,” Johnson told Fox News. Team Trump on the sanctity of official documents.
Arthur Delaney/HuffPost:
Whatever Happened To Ken Buck's Election Integrity Stand?
A ticktock of Ken Buck’s unusual path from opposing Jim Jordan over his 2020 antics to supporting Mike Johnson for speaker in spite of his 2020 antics.
Buck supported Johnson even though the Louisiana Republican was the lead name on a Supreme Court brief seeking to throw out the presidential election result in December 2020, citing “an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities,” even though no serious allegation of organized fraud ever materialized.
“That’s absolutely how you challenge an election, you go to court,” Buck said, noting that he had added his own name to the brief before he spoke out against plans to vote against certifying the election.
Just like Jordan, Johnson dodged reporters’ questions this month about whether the election was stolen ― including at a press conference during which Johnson smiled while his colleagues yelled at a reporter to “shut up.” But Buck said Jordan’s case was different because of his Jan. 6 involvement, which included multiple phone calls with Trump that day.
Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:
In the most chilling time for free speech since 1950s McCarthyism, heroes speak out against war, gun violence.
Suddenly, we find ourselves in a moment of unspeakable violence when “peace” has become the most dangerous word — where daring to say that we don’t need to live like this can risk your political career or holding onto your job. That’s why I can’t think of anything more important right now than offering praise, love and support for those heroes willing to risk speaking the truth.
Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:
Taylor Swift Is the Antidote We Need in the Age of Donald Trump
A generational talent, yes—but also kind and tough.
I remember mean girls from junior high school, and I’m sure they’re still around. Swift is the antidote we need, especially now. She shows young girls, women, and her many male fans that you can be a rich celebrity while also treating others with kindness and respect. You can give away extra money to people who work for you, instead of stiffing them for what they’re owed. You can be strong without threats and intimidation. You can show that kindness is not weakness. In the age of Donald Trump, these are all lessons that bear repeating.
Simon Sebag Montefiore/The Atlantic (no paywall):
The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False
It does not accurately describe either the foundation of Israel or the tragedy of the Palestinians.
Whatever the enormous complexities and challenges of bringing about this future, one truth should be obvious among decent people: killing 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 200, including scores of civilians, was deeply wrong. The Hamas attack resembled a medieval Mongol raid for slaughter and human trophies—except it was recorded in real time and published to social media. Yet since October 7, Western academics, students, artists, and activists have denied, excused, or even celebrated the murders by a terrorist sect that proclaims an anti-Jewish genocidal program. Some of this is happening out in the open, some behind the masks of humanitarianism and justice, and some in code, most famously “from the river to the sea,” a chilling phrase that implicitly endorses the killing or deportation of the 9 million Israelis. It seems odd that one has to say: Killing civilians, old people, even babies, is always wrong. But today say it one must.
How can educated people justify such callousness and embrace such inhumanity? All sorts of things are at play here, but much of the justification for killing civilians is based on a fashionable ideology, “decolonization,” which, taken at face value, rules out the negotiation of two states—the only real solution to this century of conflict—and is as dangerous as it is false.
Cliff Schecter: