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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Be "surprised and shocked every time." [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-25
We begin today with Jennifer Rubin of The Contrarian stating that the nation’s media needs to report more on the Trump regime’s arrest of its political opponents.
When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrested Istanbul Mayor and rival Ekrem İmamoğlu, mass protests erupted. But Erdoğan is hardly the only autocrat pulling that stunt. “A major opposition leader and former prime minister of Chad was arrested early Friday, fueling fears of another crackdown on dissent in a country that has repeatedly used state power to silence critics,” the New York Times reported. Meanwhile, CNN reports: “Tanzania’s main opposition leader Tundu Lissu told his supporters to have no fear as he appeared in court on Monday for the first time since his arrest on charges that include treason.” Domestic critics of these autocrats and the international community rightly condemn such blatant abuse of power. So why has the reaction to Donald Trump’s arrest of political opponents and judges not been greeted with equal outrage? If the corporate media could tear themselves away from selling hysterical tell-all books and kvetching over who knew what about former President Joe Biden’s aging, they might report to the American people that the current president is acting no better than autocrats in Turkey, Chad, or Tanzania. Trump’s out-and-out thuggery, indistinguishable from dictators using state power to jail opponents, strikes at the heart of our democratic system. If we are to retain the rule of law, such conduct can never be countenanced.
One answer to Jennifer Rubin’s sensible question is on the other side of the fold.
Adrienne Matei of Guardian describes the state and processes of “hypernormalization.”
“Welcome to the hypernormalization club,” [Rahaf] Harfoush said in a response video. “I’m so sorry that you’re here.” [...] First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening. The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation. [...] The increasing instability of the US’s democratic norms has prompted these references to hypernormalization.
Harfoush’s Instagram video as well as Matei’s story points to Adam Curtis’ 2016 BBC documentary, HyperNormalization, which you can find in its entirety here.
Tony Romm and Colby Smith of The New York Times points out that the tacky shoe salesman is pressing on with his economic plans no matter who is hurt in the process.
For a president who has fashioned himself as a shrewd steward of the economy, the decision to escalate his global trade war on Friday appeared curious and costly. It capped off a week that saw Mr. Trump ignore repeated warnings that his agenda could worsen the nation’s debt, harm many of his own voters, hurt the finances of low-income families and contribute far less in growth than the White House contends. The tepid market response to the president’s economic policy approach did little to sway Mr. Trump, who chose on Friday to revive the uncertainty that has kept businesses and consumers on edge. The president threatened 50 percent tariffs on the European Union, and a 25 percent tariff on Apple. Other tech companies, he said, could face the same rate. [...] The tax cuts are largely an extension of ones that Congress passed in 2017, meaning that few taxpayers will see an increase to their after-tax income. In fact, some might see their financial situation deteriorate: Many of the lowest earners may even see about $1,300 less on average under the Republican bill in 2030, according to the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, which factored in the proposed cuts to federal safety-net programs. Facing an onslaught of red flags and dour reports, the White House has remained bullish.
William C. Mao and Veronica H. Paulus of The Harvard Crimson report that a federal court has ordered a restoration of two articles by Harvard Medical School researchers that had been purged from a federal website.
HMS professors Celeste S. Royce and Gordon D. Schiff sued the Trump administration in March for withdrawing their articles from Patient Safety Network, a federal site which includes patient safety research. The lawsuit argued that the removals violated the researchers’ First Amendment rights and the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulates federal agencies. Federal District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin granted a preliminary injunction in a Friday order, writing that the plaintiffs are “likely to succeed” in proving that the removal of their articles was unconstitutional. “It is difficult to imagine how Drs. Schiff and Royce will not prevail in proving their constitutional claim. They have established—and, during the motion hearing, the defendants conceded—government conduct that constitutes viewpoint discrimination,” Sorokin wrote in an accompanying order detailing the injunction. The injunction comes just two days after assistant U.S. attorney Shawna H. Yen ’89 conceded at a hearing that the removals constituted “viewpoint discrimination,” a classic violation of the First Amendment. During the hearing, Sorokin seemed skeptical of Yen’s arguments and repeatedly questioned how the take-downs could be constitutional if they discriminated based on the articles’ viewpoints.
Frank J. Thompson of the Brookings Institution shows that conservative advocacy that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning the Chevron doctrine might— just might— backfire.
Conservatives advanced one of their major goals in the 2023-24 Supreme Court session—undercutting the “deep state” by overturning the Chevron doctrine. This doctrine afforded federal agencies substantial deference when courts reviewed their executive actions. Many conservatives viewed Chevron as giving unelected bureaucrats excessive power. However, their “deep state” aversion ignored the fact that many executive initiatives reflect the priorities of a presidential administration rather than federal civil servants. Hence, the question naturally arises—will Chevron’s demise now enhance the ability of Trump’s opponents to block his executive directives in the courts? [...] Chevron has had minimal impact on Supreme Court decisions in recent years. In the Loper Bright majority opinion, Justice Roberts noted that the Supreme Court had “not deferred to an agency interpretation under Chevron since 2016,” before Trump initially took office. This comports with the view of legal scholars that Chevron in the Supreme Court had achieved “zombie status” prior to Trump. Instead, the primary deference to Chevron occurred at the district and appellate court levels. In this regard, one overview of Chevron found that the case had been cited in some 15,000 judicial decisions and more than 40,000 court filings over its first three decades. Any impact of Loper Bright on the Trump unilateral presidency would therefore more likely occur in the lower courts. While some research casts doubt on the magnitude of Chevron’s impact on judicial deference to agency actions, other studies suggest otherwise. They point to higher win rates for agencies in the appellate courts when they applied Chevron. For instance, an analysis of circuit court rulings from 2003 to 2013 found that the executive branch prevailed 77% of the time when these courts cited Chevron compared to 56% when they did not. To be sure, different appellate courts varied in the degree to which Chevron was associated with deference to agency actions. But in only one appellate court out of 13 was the Chevron win rate for agencies less than the overall rate of agency success in that court. On balance, studies suggest Chevron’s demise will make it somewhat more difficult for the Trump administration to prevail in the lower courts.
Lucy Ash of BBC News reports that a number of young American men (the “white” is silent, I guess) are converting to the Russian Orthodox Church.
In a YouTube video, a priest is championing a form of virile, unapologetic masculinity. Skinny jeans, crossing your legs, using an iron, shaping your eyebrows, and even eating soup are among the things he derides as too feminine. There are other videos of Father Moses McPherson - a powerfully-built father of five - weightlifting to the sound of heavy metal. He was raised a Protestant and once worked as a roofer, but now serves as a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) in Georgetown, Texas, an offshoot of the mother church in Moscow. ROCOR, a global network with headquarters in New York, has recently been expanding across parts of the US - mainly as a result of people converting from other faiths. In the last six months, Father Moses has prepared 75 new followers for baptism in his church of the Mother of God, just north of Austin.
Grace Moon writes for The Baffler about how South Korean conservatives have taken over many of that country’s available YouTube channels.
Since YouTube’s entry into the Korean market in 2008, it has expanded with unparalleled force, making South Korea one of the world’s top countries in terms of per capita usage. Today, nearly 90 percent of the entire Korean population spends time on YouTube, the country’s most widely used social platform for news consumption, featuring viral clips of sparring candidates alongside intimate fireside-style live chats hosted by lawmakers. ...YouTube served as a space for leftist voices silenced under the country’s postwar military regimes. With mainstream media dominated by conservative outlets, progressives sought out alternative platforms like YouTube, as well as emerging spaces such as podcasting and live streaming, to become early adopters of new media. Many of them have also fallen into the conspiracy-minded thinking that plagues the far right, with cult talk show host and longstanding left fixture Kim Ou-joon arguably among the most prominent.After the Seoul city government under a conservative mayor voted to pull funding for his wildly popular radio program in 2022, Kim joined YouTube, which perhaps better suited his more outré ideas. Kim’s unapologetic jabs at conservative governments have broken barriers in Korean traditional media while also, at times, straying into conspiracy and triggering public paranoia—speculating, for instance, that the 2014 sinking of a passenger ferry that killed more than three hundred people was a deliberate act. It wasn’t until 2016’s landmark impeachment of conservative President Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s first female leader, that conservative YouTube channels started gaining momentum. (At the center of public fury, including a millions-strong nationwide protest movement, was a long-time confidante of Park, Choi Soon-sil, who was believed to possess “Rasputin-like” powers that allowed her to meddle in state affairs and collect hefty bribes from conglomerates.) For many elderly conservatives, Park’s downfall symbolized the rupture of a sacred bloodline linked to her father, Park Chung-hee. An authoritarian leader who seized power with a coup d’état in 1961, he continues to be mythologized by the generation of war as the iron-fisted savior who instilled vigilance against communist North Korea.
Finally today, Jessi Jezewska Stevens looks at the politics of the 2025 Eurovision contest for Foreign Policy magazine,
This year was an odd time, as an American, to be attending this distinctly European phenomenon. Arriving in Basel, Switzerland, last week for the 69th edition of what is now the world’s largest musical event, whose more than 160 million annual viewers make it one of the most popular broadcasts in all of global television, it occurred to me that these are the very same complaints currently levied against liberal democracy: strained budgets, declining quality of services, and contested elections. As the trans-Atlantic relationship sinks to its lowest point since the Iraq War, the Eurovision slogan, “United by Music,” also feels newly urgent for continental security. The Trump administration could not be clearer: America’s own commitment to liberal tolerance is over, and Europe is on its own. You might say Eurovision is, in fact, a rare example of what that future might look like: a model of the West without America. For despite the influence of American music on artists and the general rise of global Anglophone hegemony, the contest remains, Vuletic said, “quintessentially European” and the very largest cultural event “bringing Europeans together.” Is its ethos—that is to say, spandex, sequins, and the inalienable right to let your freak flag fly—the force holding together the last bastion of the contemporary Western order? [...] For the uninitiated—which is to say, for most Americans—there are many ways to describe Eurovision, but they all lead to the same conclusion: that the contest is characterized by paradox above all. Launched in Switzerland in 1956 to promote cooperation in postwar Europe, today Eurovision is the height of camp, bemoaned by music snobs and celebrated by members of the LGBTQ+ community, who have claimed it as the World Cup for queer people. It serves, simultaneously, as a show of transnational cooperation, a platform for nation-branding, and a “nonpolitical” arena for the celebration of liberal values such as tolerance, diversity, and individual expression—values that, as the recent rise of right-wing movements has shown, turn out be political after all.
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
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