We must be their voice.

May 8, 2023

          I dread writing the newsletter on days when a mass shooting occurs—just as you dread reading the news on such days. After thousands of mass shootings in the last two decades, words cannot express the grief, contain the anger, or relieve the weariness inflicted by our national madness. And yet we must force ourselves to speak for the dead and wounded, for their families, and for communities that will forever bear the scars of tragedy. Most urgently, we must be the voice of future victims whose lives depend on our willingness to speak hard truths and act boldly before it is too late. So, we must once again rouse ourselves to action despite grief, anger, and weariness.

          In Texas, a man trained as a security guard used an assault rifle to kill eight people at a shopping outlet near Dallas. Per CNN and NBC, the man expressed sympathy for neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies on social media. See The Guardian, Texas mall shooting: gunman expressed interest in neo-Nazi views.

          Those who promote the cult of guns and death did not wait for the bodies to be buried before they began their lies. Texas Governor Greg Abbott appeared on Fox News to claim that states with strong gun laws—like California—have more gun deaths than Texas. Abbott’s statement is a damnable lie—and he knows it. (Abbott said, “I think that the state in which the largest number of victims occurred this year is in California, where they have very tough gun laws.”)

          Abbott is wrong in every possible way. Over the last 90 days, Texas has had more gun deaths in absolute numbers (211) than California (132), even though California has 10 million more residents than Texas. See Number of Deaths in 2023 | Gun Violence Archive. More to the point, the gun death rate in Texas is far higher than in California—by 53%! See World Population Review, Gun Deaths by State 2023.

          Gun death rates follow in inverse proportion to gun laws—i.e., states with fewer gun laws have higher gun death rates. See Gun Death Rate by State 2019. And red states have higher gun death rates than blue states. See Forbes, Red States Have Higher Gun Death Rates Than Blue States. Here’s Why.

          Red states try to explain away their higher gun deaths by claiming that the “big Democratic cities” within their borders contribute disproportionately to gun deaths. Wrong again. Per Forbes,

Data suggests New York saw significant drops in homicides between 2021 and 2022, while Florida saw significant increases. According to Third Way, some Republicans argue crime rates in their states are only high because of the blue cities within them. But murder rates have increased in rural, urban and suburban locales.

          The correlation between guns and glorification of gun violence on the one hand and gun deaths on the other is not rocket science. Where “open carry” mixes with the false bravado of MAGA extremism, gun death rates are higher. In Mississippi, Republican Governor Tate Reeves opened his 2024 reelection bid with a video of him superimposed as Clint Eastwood in a “spaghetti western” shooting people of color. See Talking Points Memo, Mississippi Gov Launches Reelection Bid With Video Of Him As Clint Eastwood Shooting People Of Color.

          Guess where Mississippi ranks in gun death rates among states? Fourth—behind Alaska, Louisiana, and Alabama. If Governor Tate is looking for ideas on how to reduce gun violence in his state, he could begin by abandoning campaign videos that show him killing people.

          The problem is guns. But it is also those politicians who are willing to trade the deaths of their constituents for votes. Finding the words to describe such behavior is impossible. Depraved? Evil? Cruel? Cowardly? Sick? Complicit? However we describe their behavior, we must vote them out.

          We must ban assault weapons. But we must also impose liability on gun manufacturers when weapons they design to kill people are used for that purpose. And we must impose liability on those who sell weapons by appealing to the depraved fantasies of angry men with little impulse control or who suffer from mental illness.

          Every American of good conscience must include gun control on their list of top electoral priorities. Educate yourself. Subscribe to The Trace (“The only newsroom dedicated to covering gun violence.”) Support the many worthy organizations fighting to end gun violence, such as Moms Demand Action, Brady United, and Sandy Hook Promise.

          How you become involved is less important than becoming involved in some way. The vast majority of Americans want to end gun violence. If every concerned American became involved in that effort, we would hasten the day when gun violence would begin to decrease in America. That would be a watershed moment.

Truck kills pedestrians in Brownsville, Texas.

          An incident in Brownsville, Texas, is still unfolding. A truck plowed into a crowded bus stop, killing eight pedestrians. It is not clear whether the incident was intentional or reckless. See ABC News, 8 dead after car runs into pedestrians in Brownsville, Texas, alleged driver arrested. Tensions are high in Brownsville as foreign nationals await the expiration of Title 42 restrictions on asylum in the US—leading to crowded sidewalks and streets in border towns.  

          Per ABC News,

The FBI is working to determine if the crash was an intentional act and, if so, whether there was a domestic violent extremist motive behind it, law enforcement sources told ABC News on Sunday. The FBI is supporting local and state investigators, and is not the lead agency in the investigation.

At this point, investigators have not reached any conclusion about whether the crash was a deliberate act targeting the victims because of their perceived immigration status or an accident, the sources said.

          The impending expiration of Title 42 and its effect on asylum seekers at the border is explained in CBS News, How Title 42's end will shape immigration and border dynamics. As usual, the solution to the problem lies with Congress, which seems incapable of acting.

Dealing with the debt crisis.

       Legal scholars and politicians have been considering whether the Fourteenth Amendment provides a solution to the debt crisis. As noted previously in this newsletter, the Fourteenth Amendment says that

the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned.  

          Over the last year, support for the theory that Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a default on the national debt has gained support. The latest legal scholar to weigh in is Professor Laurence Tribe, who taught constitutional law to generations of judges and lawyers. Professor Tribe explained his views in an op-ed in the NYTimes, Why I Changed My Mind on the Debt Limit. (This article is accessible to everyone.)

          Professor Tribe has a more nuanced and sophisticated view of the application of the Fourteenth Amendment to the debt crisis than most commentators, but he comes out in the same place. He writes, in part,

The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.

The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.

The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.

There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.

          President Biden is playing coy on the question of whether he will invoke the Fourteenth Amendment—as he should. Congress should affirmatively raise—or eliminate—the debt ceiling. It should not be up to the president to refuse to comply with an unconstitutional limitation imposed by Congress.

Trump decides not to testify in E. Jean Carroll trial.

          The judge in the E. Jean Carroll rape/defamation trial gave Trump until Sunday, May 7, 2023, to decide whether to testify in person at the trial. The deadline came and went with no word from Trump. Trump misses deadline to testify in E. Jean Carroll civil case | The Hill.

          Closing arguments will begin on Monday. If the jury properly applies the facts to the law, the jurors should return a verdict against Trump in favor of E. Jean Carroll. Although the standard of proof in a civil trial is “preponderance of the evidence” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt,” a judgment against Trump will allow his opponents to accurately say that a jury concluded Trump raped E. Jean Carroll. We should expect a verdict this week. In a just world, Trump will finally be held to account for his predatory sexual conduct.

Do not support the “No Labels” Party.

          Do not support the “No Labels” Party. It is funded by Republican dark money and is intended to be a third-party “spoiler” to help Trump win the presidency in 2024. Need more proof of that fact? One of the major donors to “No Labels” is none other than Harlan Crow, the GOP mega-donor who has lavishly subsidized Justice Clarence Thomas and Ginny Thomas. See The New Republic, No Labels Took More Than $100,000 From Clarence Thomas Buddy Harlan Crow.

Help Civic Influencers empower young voters.

          I received the following note from Civic Influencers regarding a virtual briefing on its efforts to empower the youth vote in 2023-24. Check out the briefing per the note below:

On Tuesday, May 9, from 2:00 to 3:00 PM Eastern (11:00 AM to 12 Noon Pacific), Civic Influencers will be hosting a virtual briefing on its data-driven approach to empowering young voters—and how it’s working to ensure wins for pro-democracy candidates across the country. In the 2022 midterms, 34 races were decided by less than 1%. The organization deploys voter-engagement “fellows” (i.e. Civic Influencers) to many of these districts, with a specific focus on often-overlooked institutions like community colleges, HBCUs, MSIs, as well as trade, technical, and vocational schools. Its “Mobilizing the Margins” strategy offers a unique and powerful approach to helping GenZ voters make the connection between the importance of voting and the issues they care most about—from climate change and gun control to reproductive freedom, racial justice, and LGBTQI+ equality. 

To RSVP, please click here.  Or, RSVP directly to Emily Bush at emilybush@civicinfluencers.org.

Concluding Thoughts.

          A strong majority of Americans are fed up with the rationalizations, lies, and corruption of politicians who support the cult of guns and death. We need to concentrate our collective political will on a single politician who is a leading proponent of guns—e.g., Ted Cruz—and defeat him in a campaign in which gun violence is the leading issue. If we do that—and we can—it will be a bracing warning for other politicians that support for guns is no longer a political insurance policy but is instead a one-way ticket to defeat. Let’s do this. We owe it to our children and grandchildren. We must be their voice.

Talk to you tomorrow!