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Florida’s book-ban frenzy targets Nora Roberts, and she’s not happy
Florida’s book-ban frenzy targets Nora Roberts, and she’s not happy, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, The Washington Post
This signals a new trend: Book banners are increasingly going after a wide variety of titles, including romance novels, under the guise of targeting “pornography.” That term is a very flexible one — deliberately so, it appears — and it is sweeping ever more broadly to include books that can’t be described as such in any reasonable sense.

Martin County is where 20 Jodi Picoult novels were recently pulled from school library shelves. This, too, was largely because of objections from that same Moms for Liberty activist, Julie Marshall, head of the group’s local chapter.
They call it ‘national conservatism’ but it’s a divisive, far-right movement. Why are Tories embracing it?
They call it ‘national conservatism’ but it’s a divisive, far-right movement. Why are Tories embracing it?, John Harris, The Guardian
The banner under which everyone is coming together was conceived in the US, and in the context of recent(ish) European history it may have a somewhat unsettling ring. But there it is: the people who will be addressing audiences at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster between 15 and 17 May are seemingly happy to endorse the theory and practice of “national conservatism”.

The international initiative its organisers shorthand as “NatCon” – which has branches in the US, UK, Hungary and the Netherlands, and staged its first London gathering four years ago – is an offshoot of the Edmund Burke Foundation, an American thinktank-cum-pressure group founded in 2019. In June last year, its prime movers published a stark statement of values, seemingly designed to decisively turn the page on the economic liberalism propagated by mainstream parties of the right since the 1980s, and develop the kind of chaotic populism associated with figures such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson into something much more moralistic, and highly organised and codified.
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The Proud Boys Seditious Conspiracy Conundrum
The Proud Boys Seditious Conspiracy Conundrum, Roger Parloff, Lawfare
The government argues that it need not prove a plan. As Department of Justice attorney Conor Mulroe caustically put it at one point, the charge is not seditious plan; the charge is seditious conspiracy. And as long as there is an agreement—even an unspoken and implicit one—to achieve an unlawful objective, that’s sufficient. The shared objective, the government alleges, was the goal of stopping the certification of the election by any means necessary, up to and including force. The jury instructions, approved by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the District of Columbia, seem to accommodate the government’s theory.

If this is a correct description of the law, I personally think the government has proved its case. But the jury may disagree and, of course, so might an appellate court.
Maybe Becoming President Takes More Than Just Being a Dick
Maybe Becoming President Takes More Than Just Being a Dick, Dan Friedman, Mother Jones
Did Ron DeSantis draw the wrong lesson from Trump?

The main example in this genre, of course, is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis has been elected in the country’s third biggest state twice, and has won extensive media attention in part by being unprecedentedly obnoxious to the press. No one can accuse him of being nice. DeSantis’ banning of books that address racism, his prohibiting saying “gay,” his use of state funds to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, and his (losing) fight with Disney are undeniably obnoxious. If American wants another jerk in the White House, here is a champion.

And yet it is not working. DeSantis’ confrontational public persona and his reportedly off-putting interpersonal vibe have damaged his presidential hopes. We have seen reports that he eats pudding with his fingers, that he blows off donors and generally stinks at retail politics. On Saturday came news from DeSantis’ effort to court British business chiefs at a London event Friday. According to Politico, attendees called his performance “horrendous” and “low wattage.” One attendee said that DeSantis “looked bored” and “stared at his feet” during the meeting, part of what was nominally billed as an effort to build Florida’s foreign trade ties. One person defended the performance as “fine.”

Boring some Brits is not that big a deal. But this is the latest indication that DeSantis struggles with the basic political skill of getting people to like him. And that still matters. The Florida governor’s struggle offers a corrective: Yes, Trump showed that assholes can win the presidency. But it takes a little more than that.
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The under-the-radar issues that could shake up 2024
The under-the-radar issues that could shake up 2024, Shia Kapos, Adam Wren and Madison Fernandez, Politico
POLITICO asked a panel of strategists and elected officials what under-the-radar issue they think could play an outsize role in 2024.

We asked a panel of prominent political strategists, elected officials and operatives gathered at the University of Chicago for a campaign journalism conference in recent days to tell us the under-the-radar issue they think will play an outsized role in the 2024 campaign...
Biden is inviting us to argue about freedom. We should.
Biden is inviting us to argue about freedom. We should., E.J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post
When President Biden announced in a video last week that he was seeking reelection, he opened the possibility that the 2024 campaign will involve a genuine — perhaps even searching — philosophical debate over the meaning of freedom.

If this seems outlandishly optimistic or highbrow, please hold your skepticism for at least a few paragraphs and bear in mind that voters will still be offered plenty enough of the normal fodder of electioneering, including the divisive harangues and personal attacks.

Biden’s video opened with the word “freedom,” used it four more times and threw in a mention of “bedrock freedoms” for good measure. During a 90-second campaign ad that followed, the word was mentioned six times. In addition, the video declared: “Joe Biden has made defending our basic freedoms the cause of his presidency.

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