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OCTOBER 26, 2023
On the Prospect website
* Gabrielle Gurley reports on Houston's mayoral campaign, and Rep.
Sheila Jackson Lee
's
subversion of her own candidacy
* Jarod Facundo notes that Apple's support for "right to repair"
legislation may be undercut
by Apple's control of the necessary components
* Luke Goldstein, while reporting on Google's current antitrust trial
,
updates us on the skirmishes preceding Google's next antitrust trial
Meyerson on TAP
The New Speaker Is Not Just Trump's Man; He's Putin's Man, Too
Whence Mike Johnson's opposition to funding Ukraine's defense? Putin
is his fellow gay-bashing bro.
One year ago, standing before a gathering of officials in the Kremlin,
Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the annexation of four
Ukrainian regions that Russian troops had occupied. Half of his speech,
however, detoured into an attack on gay and transgender rights, which,
he made clear, Russia would extirpate on every inch of Ukraine that it
seized.
"Do we want children in elementary schools to be imposed with things
that lead to degradation and extinction?" Putin asked, making very clear
just what those things were. This has long been a Putin refrain. In a
speech he delivered almost a decade earlier, he accused "the
Euro-Atlantic countries" of "rejecting their roots, including the
Christian values" and "implementing policies that equate large families
with same-sex partnerships."
Under the sway of an Eastern Orthodox Church much like Russia's,
Ukraine has hardly been a paradise for its LGBTQ citizens, but in recent
years, under the presidency of Volodymyr Zelensky, it has grown more
tolerant than Russia. Heckled by a homophobic listener as he delivered a
speech in 2019, Zelensky responded, "We all live together in an open
society where each one can choose the language they want to speak, their
ethnicity, and [sexual] orientation. Leave those people be, for God's
sake."
Now, is it any mystery which side of this conflict the new Speaker of
the House is on? In the course of his career as a fundamentalist
Christian lawyer, Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson has excoriated not only
the Supreme Court's decision legalizing gay marriages, but also its
earlier decision striking down a Texas law that criminalized gay sex. He
is, as one "moderate" House Republican said yesterday, "a man of
principle," and of such principles is Johnson's opposition to
providing for Ukraine's defenses made.
The unanimity with which House Republicans invested Johnson with the
Speakership yesterday is not really all that surprising. Johnson is a
leading advocate of the three strands of contemporary Republicanism.
First, like his "mainstream" Republican predecessor as House Speaker,
Paul Ryan, he favors gutting social provision, privatizing Medicare,
reducing the annual Social Security COLAs, and raising the age for
Social Security eligibility to 69. Second, he is a biblical culture
warrior, mixing theocracy with statecraft even while reducing
Christianity to a kind of pre-Enlightenment primitivism. Third, he is
and has been the shrewdest Trump champion on Capitol Hill, having
persuaded a majority of House Republicans in the aftermath of the 2020
election to attempt to overturn its outcome not on the grounds of fraud
but on legal technicalities that the Supreme Court instantly rejected.
Unlike Jim Jordan, whose MAGA advocacy pales alongside Johnson's,
however, Johnson serves up his noxious brew with a calm and affable
manner. One of my friends described him to me yesterday as "a calm
maniac," and after going through three weeks during which they rendered
themselves not just despicable but ridiculous, even House Republicans
who knew how loony-tune extreme Johnson really is decided that the calm
made the mania sufficiently acceptable, particularly since voting
against him would only extend and deepen their clown show.
Deciding to forgo suicide, one of William Faulkner's beleaguered
protagonists concludes, "Between grief and nothing, I will take grief."
That's pretty much the choice that House Republicans made yesterday:
refusing to prolong the nothing of a Speaker-less House, and richly
deserving of all the electoral grief that, by anointing Johnson,
they've heaped upon themselves.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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Dueling Petitions Highlight DOJ-Big Tech Revolving Door
While Google seeks to toss Jonathan Kanter off a pending case concerning
its adtech business, the company hired a law firm that previously
represented its direct competitors. BY LUKE GOLDSTEIN
No One Knows Sheila Jackson Lee Like Houston Does
Although a front-runner in the mayor's race, the congresswoman was
vulnerable long before a now-infamous audio recording went viral. BY
GABRIELLE GURLEY
Apple's Cooperation on Right to Repair May Be a Bait and Switch
The White House praises the tech giant's support for federal
pro-repair legislation-but Apple's vertical dominance puts into
question what a national right-to-repair law would actually look like.
BY JAROD FACUNDO
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