Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Half of Congressional senior staffers are ready to quit

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.

We begin this Easter Sunday with Paul Kane of The Washington Post reporting that about half of Congressional senior staffers are tired of their working environment.

What’s driving this new bout of staff departures is the overall environment on Capitol Hill. That includes pandemic fallout, ranging from partisan battles over mask mandates to the long closure of the buildings to the public. It also accounts for the ongoing toxicity since the January 2021 attack on the Capitol. These factors have added to an institution that was already pretty partisan. […]

Most congressional aides have gone to college and studied public policy or political science, and maybe have an advanced degree in law or some key issue area. They largely come to Washington to try to shape things toward their party’s ideological vision of things.

But now, too often, newer members of Congress show up without much concern about policy and instead focus on their communications staff and getting attention on social media and cable news. […]

Their collective ire also goes toward the representatives and senators themselves, who have amped up their bombast so much that it makes it harder for aides to secure the goodwill needed to do their jobs effectively. Almost half of senior aides strongly agreed that the tone taken by lawmakers “inhibits the ability of staffers to collaborate across party lines.”

Remember that it’s those Congressional staffers ranging from the chief of staff to the intern that do the overwhelming bulk of the work for Members.

More from the “State of the Congress 2024” report by the Congressional Management Foundation.

Biden can use the rebuilding process to champion Black labor in the construction industry. If done right, he can incorporate the issue in his efforts to generate enthusiasm among Black working-class men broadly. He can use it to demonstrate awareness of how the civil construction industry needs to address a history of excluding Black labor.

Throughout his term, Biden has fumbled moments to crusade for racial reforms in construction and, in particular, to stand with Black men seeking skilled jobs and contracting opportunities. The high rates of displacement and discouragement stem from a history of union racism and contractor preference for immigrants. As such, the racial demographic in the construction industry is now 60 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent Black American, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. […]

To be sure, the problems of today have a long origin. In the 1970s, Black workers demanded inclusion through the United Construction Workers Association (UCWA). It was a union for equity established after a federal court found that Seattle unions were operating in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The UCWA expanded across the country, held protest rallies to demand inclusive hiring and helped people get skilled labor jobs.

However, the surge of immigration since the 1980s provided a source of cheap labor that contractors desired and unions could not hold off, and Black labor was the odd man out. Even during disasters like Hurricane Katrina, federal contractors opted to use the labor of immigrant work crews rather than hire and train Black men from the region.

I can hear the MAGA peanut gallery now. But so what?

Adam Gabbatt of Guardian reports that now Biden is willing to “go low” in criticizing the shoe salesman.

American voters, and the country’s political class, are long used to Trump’s insult-laden and often crude rhetoric. “Everything Joe Biden touches turns to shit,” Trump said in Georgia earlier this month, during a rally at which he also also mocked Biden’s stutter.

But recently Biden and his campaign team appear to have decided to fight fire with fire, after previously seeking to stay above the fray. It’s a shift that seems to accept that Trump has moved the standards of US politics and that it’s more effective to embrace that notion than remain out of the fight. […]

In recent months, Biden has dubbed Trump “mentally unfit”, while this week his campaign declared that the US “deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump”.

The president’s campaign has dubbed Trump “weak and desperate – both as a man and a candidate for president”. They’ve also taken to calling Trump, who says he is a multibillionaire but was recently unable to pay a court-ordered $454m bond, “Broke Don”.

Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker wonders if the “f-word” is useful in describing the threat of Trump.

If Fascism is a distinctly historical phenomenon, something that took place only in Western Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, then it can’t happen here, by definition. (As the old Internet joke goes, it’s only true fascism if it comes from Italy; otherwise, it’s just sparkling authoritarianism.) As soon as you allow for a broader definition, though, the debate becomes more subjective. In the nineteen-teens, Benito Mussolini adopted the fasces, a bundle of sticks with an axe at its center, as a symbol of military might and unity of purpose. Even in its original form, fascism represented a bunch of conflicting impulses bound together—“a beehive of contradictions,” in Eco’s words. (Some have claimed that Trumpism is too devoid of consistent ideological content to be mapped onto any previous movement; others have countered that its fluidity makes it more like fascism, not less.) The sociologist Dylan Riley, in the New Left Review, writes that “the interwar fascist regimes were a product of inter-imperial warfare and capitalist crisis, combined with a revolutionary threat from the left.” He argues that the structural conditions in the contemporary U.S.—no military draft, a “smaller, weaker” left, and a relatively stable two-party system—do not justify the comparison. “Preparing for war,” Evans points out, “defined fascist theory and praxis.” Trump does enjoy a military parade, but, Evans continues, “there is no indication . . . that he has been consumed by a desire for foreign conquest.” […]

Right now, if I had to take a binary position on whether Trump is a fascist, I would lean toward no. Even though his repertoire is still full of what Paxton called “fascist staples”—arguably, the staples grow only more deranged and draconian over time—I worry that the epithet, as used, often obscures more than it illuminates. But there are plenty of disconcerting labels, such as “competitive authoritarianism,” that don’t seem like a stretch to me. Besides, history keeps happening, and I’d be willing to change my mind. By another binary metric, deflationism versus alarmism, I suppose this would make me relatively open to alarmism, or at least not reflexively averse to it. We live in a weird and contingent world, and I’d prefer to have a wide enough dystopic imagination to be ready for whatever comes next.

Trump’s bluster is famously unreliable, but, since 2021, he has called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”; he has referred to his political opponents as “vermin”; and he seems prepared to wield the levers of state more ruthlessly in a second term (including, among many other proposals, potentially using the Insurrection Act and other emergency powers to militarize the border). Doesn’t some of this sound a little fascist, at least aspirationally? Alarmists often come off as wild-eyed and silly; deflationists, in contrast, get to seem coolheaded and dignified. But “Tyrannophobia,” the law paper Moyn cites, notes that “rational actors should update their risk estimates in the light of experience.” When does a commitment to deflationism risk turning into denialism?

Who needs to have a “desire for foreign conquest” when you can simply “bomb the shit out of them?”

…By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come. 

But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.

George Orwell “As I Please 17” (otherwise known as “What is Fascism?”)

Eric Garcia of MSNBC writes that too many people are using Sam Bankman-Fried’s autism as an excuse for his crimes.

Last month, though, there were people on Bankman-Fried’s side arguing that, because he’s autistic, he may not have known what he was doing.

Maria Centrella, the parent of an autistic 34-year-old man, said she became interested in Bankman-Fried after watching a CBS “60 Minutes” report about him and wrote to the court asking for leniency. She said that she’d never met Bankman-Fried but, “I firmly believe that while he may be an MIT grad — he did not fully understand the scope of what was going on and did not have malicious intent.” […]

His mother, Barbara Fried, meanwhile, submitted a letter saying she feared what life might be like for Bankman-Fried in prison, saying, “It may be that some of the inmates will come to appreciate Sam once they get to know him. But miscommunication in that environment is dangerous, and Sam’s traits greatly increase the likelihood of it occurring.”

Reading these statements as an autistic person evoked in me conflicting thoughts: The plea for leniency because of Bankman-Fried’s neurotype follows a tired trope. We’ve seen such appeals before. An attorney for Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman, said of him and other January 6 defendants, “These are people with brain damage, they’re f—— retarded, they’re on the g–d—n spectrum.” Those narratives equate bad behavior with autistic traits and imply that autism makes people commit crimes.

Meg Little Reilly writes for Forbes with a reminder that it’s down-ballot races that are most vulnerable to election disinformation that is decisive.

It’s logical to be concerned about the security of national elections, but the focus on the most high-profile electoral races in the U.S. may leave broad swaths of the democratic process — those most vulnerable to disinformation — unattended at a time when they need the most protection.

“I’m very worried about down-ballot races of all kinds,” said Sasha Issenberg, veteran political reporter and author of the just-released book The Lie Detectives: In Search of a Playbook for Winning Elections in the Disinformation Age.

[…]

As Politico has reported, disinformation campaigns often target voters of color, so the impacts of these lies are not felt evenly across all communities. In advance of the 2020 election, Facebook ads that characterized Joe Biden as a communist were targeted at Asian American and Latino communities. It didn’t change the outcome, but if the same smear had been used on a candidate running for city council or school board, it might have. In the aggregate, such misinformation can change the political and demographic make-up of local government; it can dissuade voters from participating in future elections and dramatically erode civic trust.

Gaiutra Bahadur (with photos by Keisha Scarville) of The New York Times takes a close look at the trade-off of environmental protection for fossil fuel development in Guyana.

Before oil, outsiders mostly came to Guyana for eco-tourism, lured by rainforests that cover 87 percent of its land. In 2009, the effort to combat global warming turned this into a new kind of currency when Guyana sold carbon credits totaling $250 million, essentially promising to keep that carbon stored in trees. Guyana’s leadership was praised for this planet-saving effort.

Six years later, Exxon Mobil discovered a bounty of oil under Guyana’s coastal waters. Soon the company and its consortium partners, Hess and the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation, began drilling with uncommon speed. The oil, now burned mostly in Europe, is enabling more global emissions — and producing colossal wealth.

[…]

This struggle between the existential threats of climate change and the material gains dangled by fossil fuels bedevils rich countries, too. The International Energy Agency predicts that oil demand will peak in five years as big economies transition to renewable sources. But it is a transition of indeterminate length, and in the meantime, the Biden administration approved drilling in the Alaska wilderness just last year, and the United States is producing more oil than ever in its history. A country like Guyana, with an emerging economy, has even more reason to jump at temptation.

Meron Rapoport of +972 Magazine looks in the reasons the Israeli people are not in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza.

The opposition to a ceasefire may seem strange to some. Many Israelis accept the claim that Netanyahu is continuing the war to further his political and personal interests. The families of the Israeli hostages, for instance, are growing more critical of Netanyahu’s “foot-dragging” and amplifying their calls for a “deal now.”

Even within the Israeli security establishment, more people are openly saying that “eliminating Hamas” is not an achievable goal. “[T]o say that one day there will be a complete victory in Gaza — this is a complete lie,” former IDF spokesman Ronen Manelis recently said. “Israel cannot completely eliminate Hamas in an operation that lasts only a few months.”

So if the view that Netanyahu is continuing the war for personal interests is growing; if the futility of continuing the war is becoming clearer, with regard to both toppling Hamas and releasing the hostages; if it is becoming obvious that continuing the war is liable to damage relations with the United States — how can one explain the consensus in Israel around the “danger” of a ceasefire?

Mar Centenera, Juan Esteban Lewin, and Georgina Zerega of El País in English looks at the diplomatic crises caused by Argentine President Javier Milel insults of other Latin American leaders.

Since taking office as president of Argentina, Javier Milei has maintained the incendiary tone that made him popular during the electoral campaign, but his provocations are now morphing into diplomatic crises. After the tension sparked by his early attacks against the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the most recent bilateral relation that Milei has tested has been with Colombia. Bogotá has demanded an apology after Milei called Gustavo Petro a “terrorist murderer” during an interview with CNN, and has announced the expulsion of Argentine diplomats from the country. Ties with Mexico have also become strained: Andrés Manuel López Obrador has accused Milei of “despising the people” after the Argentine right-wing leader described him as “ignorant.” […]

Milei’s words concerning Petro are particularly incendiary in Colombia because they touch on the sensitive subject of the armed conflict and the president’s search for an elusive “total peace.” Petro was a member of the M-19 guerrillas, a group with more social democratic than communist leanings, which signed a peace agreement more than 30 years ago. The organization adhered to its decision to lay down its arms and become a political party despite the assassination of its leader and then-presidential candidate, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, in April 1990. As a political formation, M-19 was one of the fundamental forces in the drafting of the 1991 Constitution, recognized as a great advance in democratic openness and social rights. […]

López Obrador did not let Milei’s latest offense go unanswered: his response came Thursday on social networks. The Mexican president, who addresses the country on a daily basis, took a vacation for Easter and did not give his usual morning press conference. On X, however, he wrote: “Milei claimed that I am an ‘ignoramus’ because I called him a ‘conservative facho [fascist]’. He is right: I still do not understand how the Argentines, being so intelligent, voted for someone who despises the people and who dared to accuse his countryman Francis of being a ‘communist’ and ‘representative of the Evil One on earth,’ when he is the most Christian Pope and defender of the poor that I have ever known or heard of.”

Elçin Poyrazlar of POLITICO Europe looks at the significance of the municipal elections in Istanbul today.

This Sunday’s election in Istanbul, which comes on the same day as regional and municipal votes across Turkey, is a case of double or nothing.

If Erdoğan’s anointed candidate snatches back the country’s most important metropolis, where the president himself made his name, it would snuff out the remaining bastion of opposition to his rule.

But if the opposition Istanbul mayor holds on and keeps control of the city, which accounts for 18 percent of Turkey’s population and a third of its economy, it could provide him a stepping stone to national power.

[…]

The stakes, both practical and symbolic, could hardly be higher for politicians fighting over Turkey’s future. The election will decide whether Erdoğan deepens and consolidates his autocratic and Islamist-oriented rule, or whether an alternative path still remains.

Finally today, Alex Stitt writes a “love letter” in recognition of today, the International Transgender Day of Visibility, for Psychology Today.

March 31 is International Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), so consider this a love letter addressed to whom it may concern.

Executive director and cofounder of Transgender Michigan, Rachel Crandall Crocker, LMSW, set TDOV on the calendar in 2010. As an occasion for celebration and social awareness, TDOV is all about humanizing gender-diverse people around the world. On every social media platform, you will see the courageous faces of people of every age, generation, race, and ethnicitywho share who they are. You will see coming out stories recalled from the past or happening in real-time, as many use the date to announce their authenticity. You will see posts of solidarity and advocates flying trans and nonbinary flags. And for every visible trans and nonbinary person you see, there is an untold number who remain unseen.

Perhaps it’s not time yet.

Perhaps their gender is still gestating.

Perhaps there are too many risks.

Social camouflage is sometimes necessary, as so many of us traverse hostile environments. Yet herein lies the importance of TDOV. Whether you’re out and visible or biding your time, it’s heartwarming to know there are so many gender-diverse people who understand and empathize with the trans experience. More than that, it’s socially empowering and psychologically invaluable.

Thinking about the late, great Monica Roberts now.

Have a good day everyone!

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