RSN: David A. Graham | Trump Is Caught in a Double Bind
12 September 22
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The former president’s winning strategy is also a losing one.
But despite his noted laziness, he sure is trying. Last week, he used his Truth Social site to share (or “ReTruth,” in the platform’s tortured jargon) a series of messages promoting the QAnon-conspiracy universe. A day later, he told a conservative Pennsylvania radio host that if he was reelected president, he would “very, very seriously” consider pardoning people convicted for their roles in the January 6 insurrection, and said that he was financially assisting some defendants. (Don’t take it to the bank.) Then this past weekend, he hosted a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where—among other lowlights—he attacked the current president as an “enemy of the state” while praising the autocrats Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Trump also hit all the customary false notes about the 2020 presidential election being stolen, but he hit them harder than usual, including saying that Republican officials who didn’t aid him should be “ashamed of themselves.”
Guessing the cause of all of this is not hard: Trump finds himself in a dicey situation over his alleged improper removal of presidential records, many of them classified, from the White House—the subject of an FBI search at Mar-a-Lago last month. Even after a federal judge issued an order Monday pausing the Justice Department’s review of the documents, the investigation is a real threat to Trump, and that’s only one of the many current political and legal dangers he faces. Meanwhile, numerous Republican candidates are struggling, among them two he was stumping for in Pennsylvania: Doug Mastriano, a true-believing Trumpist seeking the governorship, and Mehmet Oz, a stiffly phony Trumpist trying for the U.S. Senate.
When Trump finds himself backed into a corner, he often responds with particularly extreme remarks. Whether this is simply a defensive reflex or is a conscious attempt to find something wild enough to change the subject is a question for a psychologist or, better yet, a psychic, not a journalist. The political effects of the pattern, however, can be explored here.
These outbursts tend to bind Trump’s strongest supporters to him ever more closely while alienating the general electorate. This puts Republican officials in a dilemma: They can either preserve their immediate political future by aligning themselves with him or risk it by getting off the bus. They nearly always choose the first option. Sometimes, as in his two impeachment trials, that’s enough to save Trump. Other times, as in the 2020 election, it is not.
Since before Trump was elected, pundits have puzzled over his tendency to do and say things that endear him to the base at the expense of broader popularity. Typically, politicians want to find a way to maintain a political identity while maximizing the number of supporters they can attract. Moving too far toward maximizing support can, ironically, backfire: You risk coming across as having no convictions. Trump has long erred in the other direction. He has not only stuck to a political identity but sometimes gone out of his way to convey it in the most pugnacious way he can, at the risk of turning off even some ideological compatriots.
But Trump has sometimes succeeded anyway. He won the 2016 presidential election with a minority of the popular vote, thanks to some good instincts, a weak opponent, and good luck. Once he was in office, the antipathy of the general electorate was less important. Rallying his base had the effect of forcing Republican officeholders to back him too. It didn’t matter that Trump’s overall approval rating hovered in the low 40s. GOP officials understood that thanks to a decline in competitive constituencies, their fate would be decided by the most motivated primary voters, which often means the hardest-core Trump backers. As a result, even if many of them personally detested or distrusted Trump—and private quotes suggest that they did—they still gritted their teeth and lined up behind him.
That dynamic helped Trump survive several serious scandals. When Republicans controlled the House and the Senate, they made no serious effort to restrain the White House. Once Democrats won back the House in 2018, they twice impeached Trump, but Republicans remained unified enough to prevent him from being convicted in the Senate, including after his post-election attempted autogolpe.
But the trick is not perfect; reread that previous sentence: “Once Democrats won back the House …” Republicans took a beating in 2018 because Trump was very unpopular, and even though he was not formally on the ballot, he sought to make himself the focus of the election. This is not my interpretation, but Trump’s. As he said in October 2018: “I’m not on the ticket, but I am on the ticket, because this is also a referendum about me. I want you to vote. Pretend I’m on the ballot.”
Two years later, Trump was literally on the ballot, and he again lost. It is true, as he has said, that he won more votes than any other Republican candidate in history. Trump is very good at turning out his voters. The problem is that revulsion to him also drives voters who oppose him, who turned out in even greater numbers to vote for Joe Biden, or perhaps for not–Donald Trump. Republican candidates actually outperformed Trump in many cases, but even if he had them in the palm of his hand, they couldn’t help him actually win—though it is true that some of them, in some states and in Congress, did their best to aid his election-subversion campaign.
This week in the classified-documents case, Trump once again got help from a Republican in office, though not an elected one: On Monday, he received the very favorable ruling from Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed to the bench, and whose decision drew incredulous reactions from a range of experts. One question that remains is how voters will respond. Polling suggests that a majority of Americans believe that the investigation into Trump’s handling of presidential records is justified. Polling also suggests that Republican hopes for a huge victory in November have dimmed somewhat: Democrats now stand a decent chance of holding the Senate, and the expected size of the GOP majority in the House has shrunk. That is in part a testament to Trump’s visibility, and also a testament to backlash to the Supreme Court’s overturning of abortion rights in Dobbs—a decision made possible by Trump’s focus on the courts.
Though it seems fair to say that Trump is complicating Republican midterm efforts, isolating his role in the final result in November will be impossible. But his continued hints—if anything so blunt can be called a hint—that he intends to run for president again in 2024 mean that we’ll get another chance to observe the trend. That election may not work the same way, though. Trump and his allies have already shown that they have a workaround for the broad public antipathy toward him: They’re planning to make sure he goes back to the White House, even if it means rigging the election.
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Ukrainian military vehicles travel on a main road in the Kharkiv Oblast region on Sept. 11. A fast-moving Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed Russian forces into a stunning retreat from key strategic areas in the northeast Kharkiv region. (photo: Heidi Levine/WP)
“They just dropped rifles on the ground,” Olena Matvienko said Sunday as she stood, still disoriented, in a village littered with ammo crates and torched vehicles, including a Russian tank loaded on a flatbed. The first investigators from Kharkiv had just pulled in to collect the bodies of civilians shot by Russians, some that have been lying exposed for months.
“I can’t believe that we went through something like this in the 21st century,” Matvienko said, tears welling.
The hasty flight of Russians from the village was part of a stunning new reality that took the world by surprise over the weekend: The invaders of February are on the run in some parts of Ukraine they seized early in the conflict.
The Russian Defense Ministry’s own daily briefing Sunday featured a map showing Russian forces retreating behind the Oskil river on the eastern edge of the Kharkiv region — a day after the ministry confirmed its troops had left the Balakliya and Izyum area in the Kharkiv region, following a decision to “regroup.”
On Sunday, Ukraine’s commander in chief, Valery Zaluzhny, said Ukrainian forces had retaken more than 3,000 square kilometers (more than 1,100 square miles) of territory, a claim that could not be independently verified, adding that they were advancing to the east, south and north.
“Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian lines to a depth of up to 70 kilometers in some places,” reported the Institute for the Study of War, which closely tracks the conflict. They have captured more territory in the past five days “than Russian forces have captured in all their operations since April,” its campaign assessment posted Sunday said.
The apparent collapse of the Russian forces has caused shock waves in Moscow. The leader of the Chechen republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who sent his own fighters to Ukraine, said if there are not immediate changes in Russia’s conduct of the invasion, “he would have to contact the leadership of the country to explain to them the real situation on the ground.”
Evidence of the Ukrainian gains continued to emerge Sunday, with images of Ukrainian soldiers raising a flag in central Izyum, after it was abandoned by Russian forces, and similar images from other towns and villages such as Kindrashivka, Chkalovske and Velyki Komyshuvakha.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declined to elaborate on his army’s next moves, except to say in a CNN interview, “We will not be standing still. We will be slowly, gradually moving forward.”
In a forceful statement to Russia on Sunday night, Zelensky insisted the invaders would be expelled. “Read my lips,” he said. “Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? Without you. Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your ‘friendship and brotherhood.’ ”
Ukrainians emerged into the string of just-liberated villages southeast of Kharkiv hailing the end of their ordeal, and wondering whether it is truly over. “Only God knows if they will be back,” said Tamara Kozinska, 75, whose husband was killed by a mortar blast soon after the Russians arrived.
It is not over by any means, military experts warned. Russia still holds about a fifth of Ukraine and continued heavy shelling over the weekend across several regions. And nothing guarantees that Ukraine can keep recaptured areas secure. “A counteroffensive liberates territory and after that you have to control it and be ready to defend it,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov cautioned in an interview with the Financial Times.
But as Ukrainian soldiers continued Sunday to sweep deeper into territory that had been held by Russia, more of them were willing to see the campaign as a possible turning point.
In Zaliznychne, a tiny agricultural village 37 miles east of Kharkiv, residents were feeling their way back to normality Sunday, sleeping in bedrooms rather than basements for first the first time in months and trying to make contact with family on the outside.
Kozinska hasn’t seen her daughter since February — even though she lives 12 miles away — but had just received word that she will come to pick her up as soon as officials open access to the village, just as the weather turns cold.
“I have been so scared about winter,” said the woman with lung problems, clutching a just-distributed paper giving her a number to call if she finds a land mine. “We have no power and it’s hard for me to collect firewood.”
The first Russian soldiers who set up in the village, turning the sawmill into their base and launching rocket attacks at Ukrainian troops in the next town, had at first not harassed the residents, she said. When they shot pigs on an abandoned farm, they sometimes let residents butcher some of the meat.
But as the occupation ground on, with the Russians rotating out every month, the troops became more aggressive. One of them asked to borrow Kozinska’s phone.
“I gave it to him so he could call his mother, but he took my SIM card,” she said.
One of the medics treated Halyna Noskova’s back after she was hit by mortar shrapnel in her front yard in June. Her 87-year mother pulled out the metal shard. “It was still hot,” she said. The Russian bandaged her up.
“They helped me, but I’m glad we are liberated,” said Noskova, 66.
The residents, all of whom are Russian speaking in this region adjacent to the Russian border, described treatment generally more humane than that experienced by occupied communities farther to the west. The discovery of more than 450 bodies in Bucha, near Kyiv — many showing signs of torture — set off international outrage over atrocities.
“They were not monsters, they were kids,” said Matvienko, who once asked Russian troops to move the tank they parked in front of her house. “I asked what they wanted from us and they said, ‘We can either be here or we can be in jail.’ ”
Others told the villagers they weren’t there to fight Ukraine, but to “protect us from America.”
The Russians’ biggest rule for residents was to get inside by 6 p.m. and stay there, quiet and in the dark, several said. Violating that order could be fatal, as two men on the street learned early on. The friends were drinking and had a light on, said Maria Grygorova, who lives in the attached house next door. The next morning she found them on the floor.
“Konstiantyn had two bullet holes in his head,” she said.
She and two friends buried them in the side yard. The same two friends dug them up Sunday, with Ukrainian war crimes investigators looking on.
The team from Kharkiv collected two other bodies during their visit, including a security guard whose remains have been rotting on the floor of a gravel elevator at an asphalt plant for months, even as the Russians used it as a sniper tower. One investigator vomited over a guardrail repeatedly as officers collected the remains.
“We’re here looking into war crimes,” said Serhii Bolvinov, chief investigator of the Kharkiv Regional Police, as his crew waited on demining techs to clear one area of explosives before they could recover some of the bodies.
The residents were scared of the Russians, several village residents said. But they almost pitied them in their scramble to escape the recent Ukrainian onslaught.
Half of the soldiers fled in their vehicles in the first hours of the offensive, they said. Those stranded grew desperate. Some residents overheard their radio pleas to unit commanders for someone to come get them.
“They said, ‘You’re on your own,’ ” Matvienko recounted. “They came into our houses to take clothes so the drones wouldn’t see them in uniforms. They took our bicycles. Two of them pointed guns at my ex-husband until he handed them his car keys.”
Buoyant Ukrainian officials said they would no longer negotiate a peace deal that would let Russia keep an occupying presence in any territory, even in Crimea and part of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by Russia or Russian-backed separatists for years.
“The point of no return has passed,” Reznikov, the defense minister, said at the Yalta European Strategy summit in Kyiv on Saturday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday seemed to backtrack on his previous assertion that the time wasn’t right for peace negotiations, as Russia was preparing to stage a round of sham referendums meant to annex occupied territories.
“We are not against the talks; we are not refusing the talks,” Lavrov said on the state TV program, “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin.” Rather, “Those who refuse should understand that the longer they delay this process, the more difficult it will be to negotiate.”
A Russian serviceman guards an area of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in May. (photo: AP)
In a message Sunday morning, the nuclear operator Energoatom said that power lines had been restored to the Zaporizhzhia plant but that they were powering down Reactor No. 6, preparing it to be cooled and transferred to a safer state.
Because of shelling in and around the area, the entire plant has been cut off from the electricity grid for several days, with the one working reactor, on "island mode," essentially powering the rest of the plant's crucial cooling systems.
The owners have been discussing shutting down the plant — because of the power issues and the condition of the Ukrainian workers.
The powering down was a precaution, as it's the safest mode for the reactors. There are still major worries the plant could be disconnected from the grid by shelling.
In that case, the plant would have to fire up emergency diesel generators to keep the reactors cool and prevent a nuclear meltdown. The company's chief said on Thursday that the plant only has diesel fuel for 10 days.
The plant, one of the 10 biggest atomic power stations in the world, has been occupied by Russian forces since the early stages of the war. Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for shelling around the plant that has damaged the power lines connecting it to the grid.
In a statement early Sunday, Energoatom urged Russian forces to leave the Zaporizhzhia plant and allow for the creation of a "demilitarized zone" around it.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog which has two experts at the plant, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday. Its director has called for a safe zone around the plant to avert a disaster.
New York state has accused Steve Bannon of stealing $1m from donations to the We Build The Wall campaign. (photo: Peter Foley/EPA)
One longtime Bannon watcher says it’s too early to count him out – even a prison term could enhance his status among the Maga crowd
Donald Trump’s former strategist said his arrest on Thursday was an attempt to shut down his War Room pod and video cast because it is driving grassroots support for the former president’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement and reshaping the Republican party ahead of the midterm elections.
“They are coming after all of us, not only President Trump and myself. I am never going to stop fighting,” he said.
That much was apparent from Bannon’s final broadcast before his arrest as he let loose against the Biden “regime” and “social media oligarchs” he accused of conspiring to fix elections for the Democrats. For Bannon, the endless war is between “people in our posse” and Joe Biden’s “global attack on Maga”.
The audience for this daily assault on reality is not as large as it once was. YouTube blocked the War Room two days after the storming of the Capitol in January 2021 for falsely claiming the presidential election was stolen. Exact numbers of listeners are hard to come by but the programme has been downloaded millions of times and still regularly appears in the top 50 most listened to podcasts in the US, at times reaching No 2 in Apple podcasts about American politics.
From there, the War Room appears to be having an impact far beyond the sight of most Americans, as Bannon pushes a strategy for Maga supporters to infiltrate the Republican party before the midterms and 2024 presidential election.
But now the 68-year-old architect of Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory, and briefly a White House aide, could be stopped in his tracks by his legal problems. Bannon already has a conviction for contempt of Congress under his belt for refusing to testify over his role in the attack on the Capitol that could send him to jail for months when he is sentenced in October.
The latest charges put the white nationalist back on the hook for alleged crimes for which he was pardoned by Trump in the last hours of his presidency. That pardon covered only federal crimes and New York state has waded in to accuse Bannon of stealing $1m from donations to the We Build The Wall campaign to help construct an anti-migrant barrier on the US border with Mexico. Two other men have already pleaded guilty in connection with the alleged fraud and face lengthy prison sentences.
Madeline Peltz, who has followed Bannon’s broadcasts for the past two years for Media Matters, which monitors conservative and far-right commentators, said that for all his problems, it would be a mistake to write off the populist agitator.
“The big picture shows that you can never really count out Steve Bannon, both because of the trajectory of his career as well as the status of the movement in which he is a prominent figure,” she said.
Bannon has maintained that status by keeping the myth of the stolen 2020 presidential election front and centre in his broadcasts as key to engineering Trump’s comeback if he runs again in two years.
But Bannon’s most important role at present may be his championing of what is known as the “precinct strategy”, which seeks to take control of the Republican party from the bottom up, getting Trump supporters to take low-ranking, often vacant, positions within local branches. They are then in a position to select more senior party officials and to influence decisions such as the staffing of elections and selection of candidates, and ultimately to move up the party ranks.
Maga activists are also targeting school boards and poll monitoring positions.
“We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct,” Bannon said in one of his shows pushing the strategy.
ProPublica contacted dozens of Republican party county leaders across the US who reported significant increases in membership applications that appear tied to the precinct strategy.
Peltz said that the consequences could be with America for years.
“If Bannon is successful in shoehorning grassroots activists, which it appears that he is, he could have loyalists controlling the levels of power within the Republican party and, even more concerning, in election administration. That could be almost impossible to unwind for years and decades to come,” she said.
For all that, Bannon faces challenges.
As he sought to remain politically relevant after a brief and turbulent stint as a White House aide at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, Bannon launched a far-right group in Europe, the Movement, that rapidly failed.
He also fell out badly with Trump, with the president saying that his former strategist had “lost his mind” after Bannon was quoted as describing a meeting between one of the president’s sons and a group of Russians as “treasonous”. Bannon backed off but the damage was done and it cost him his position running the far-right Breitbart News after a major financial backer withdrew support over the Trump comments.
Bannon reingratiated himself in part by launching the War Room from a Washington townhouse three years ago to campaign against Trump’s impeachment. Within a few months, it evolved into War Room: Pandemic to exploit uncertainty and fear about the spread of coronavirus. Eventually, it broadened as a platform for Bannon’s rants about whatever was frustrating him.
Bannon’s influence is not without its limits. Most of the candidates he backed in the 2022 Republican primaries lost. Peltz said that he is also financially vulnerable.
“A big weakness is that he’s super desperate for money. His billionaire benefactor, Gou Wengui, declared bankruptcy. Since then the whole show has turned into a big rightwing direct-to-consumer ad for a variety of scammy projects, including gold, MyPillow, satellite cellphones, prepper supplies. That’s a sign that he’s not in a good position,” she said.
Then there is the prospect of prison. He would not be able to broadcast the War Room from his cell, although others might hold the fort if he was serving a relatively short spell in jail. A longer prison sentence of several years, which is quite possible if he is convicted on the fraud charges, would be a different matter.
Still, Peltz said that a prison sentence could bolster Bannon’s credibility on the right. “He ultimately will be a bigger hero among the Maga crowd than ever, and I think that his sort of profile in American politics could take off from there,” she said.
This March 26, 1972 file photo shows the Rev. Jesse Jackson speaking to reporters at the Operation PUSH Soul Picnic in New York as Tom Todd, vice president of PUSH, from second left, Aretha Franklin and Louis Stokes. (photo: Jim Wells/AP)
Franklin, who died in 2018, was monitored ahead of several performances and attendances she made for civil rights groups, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose first president was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Informants mentioned Franklin, a Detroit native, in separate memos for possibly appearing at the SCLC's 1967 and 1968 national conventions, in Atlanta and Memphis, respectively. The FBI mailed several copies of "The Atlanta Voice" newspaper, which reported on her visit to town, to FBI offices around the country, as well as the U.S. attorney general and the Secret Service.
During this time, Franklin was, in fact, actively involved in the civil rights movement through her music and personal connections. In 1970, she offered to pay the bail of Angela Davis, a notable activist who had been arrested for kidnapping, conspiracy and murder and was later acquitted. Aretha's father, Rev. C.L. Franklin, was also a close friend of King's, and she went on to work with King, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and others.
In a memo dated April 8, 1968 – four days after King was assassinated – Franklin was scheduled to perform at a memorial concert for him in Atlanta, along with Sammy Davis, Jr., Marlon Brando, Mahalia Jackson and The Supremes.
However, it was canceled by the SCLC after "A source...states [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] members felt the performance by these prominent entertainers would provide emotional spark which could ignite racial disturbance in the area."
"Of this group, some have supported militant black power concept and most have been in forefront of various civil rights movements," the memo said.
She was identified in a 1969 memo titled "Possible Racial Violence, Urban Areas, Racial Matters" when, in the year before, Denver concertgoers rioted after she refused to perform at the Red Rocks amphitheater due to not being properly paid.
In 1971, memos named the Black Panther Party of Los Angeles and the Boston Young Workers Liberation League as organizations who intended to book her for rallies.
Though, in May 1973, two informants said they never knew Franklin to be associated with any "radical movements."
"In view of the fact there is no evidence of involvement by Miss Franklin in [Black Liberation Army] activities and in view of her fame as a singer, it is felt that it would not be in the best interests of the Bureau to attempt to interview her," the memo said.
Franklin's father, C.L. Franklin, was also surveilled.
At an August 1968 SCLC meeting, in which Rev. James Bevel criticized America's role in the Vietnam War and spoke of a shift away from nonviolence, C.L. Franklin spoke of how China was becoming a more powerful nation, eclipsing England, which had "degenerated from a first to a third-rate power."
"There is no vestige of doubt that consciously or sub-consciously the SCLC leadership has taken a 'hate America' and a 'pro-Communist' line, which the mass of Negroes will not recognize but which they will blindly follow..." an informant said in the memo.
The FBI additionally surveilled a call C.L. Franklin received from the Black Panther Party in order to get in touch with Aretha Franklin. The agency matched the phone number to C.L. Franklin through a "pretext phone call" to his hotel. The purpose of those types of calls is to "solicit incriminating statements from the suspect," according to the Department of Justice.
"No further investigation is being conducted by the Los Angeles office concerning Aretha Franklin," the memo said.
The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request made by Courage News founder Jenn Dize in 2018. The documents additionally show death threats made against Franklin and infringements of her music and performances.
Republican efforts to block voter referenda in Michigan are yet more evidence of the GOP’s increasing willingness to do away with democratic norms when it fits its agenda. (photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
In Michigan, conservatives are aiming to use technicalities to block popular referenda to protect reproductive freedom and make voting easier. Their efforts are part of a long and increasingly brazen right-wing campaign to restrict democracy.
Last week, Republican election officials blocked both proposals from going on the ballot. The state’s supreme court, with a Democratic majority, will likely overturn the decision this week. But even though Republicans are unlikely to succeed in these two cases, their efforts are yet more evidence of the party’s increasing willingness to do away with democratic norms when it fits its agenda.
In both cases, legal objections rest on weak foundations. The two Republicans on Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers agreed with conservative activists who objected to the spacing of the text in the “Reproductive Freedom for All” ballot initiative. They also agreed with objections to the early voting referendum on the grounds it did not sufficiently describe the parts of the state constitution it would amend. The language of both referenda was previously approved by state election officials, and no one claims that either proposal failed to gather the number of valid petition signatures required to appear on the ballot.
In an effort to avoid the appearance of partisanship in election decisions, the Board of State Canvassers, which has the final say on what appears on the ballot, is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans. Based on the idea of “mutual policing,” the board was designed to run by consensus or at least to prevent overt favoritism by either party.
But since Donald Trump’s loss in 2020, Republicans have become increasingly aggressive in trying to turn ostensibly neutral, bureaucratic election rules and procedures into one more way to seize an advantage. Taken in tandem, the Right’s efforts to prevent a democratic decision about women’s bodily autonomy and to prevent easier voting are particularly galling.
Recall the core of the conservative argument in the Supreme Court decision that overturned the federal right to abortion: “Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.” In other words, conservatives argued that courts had undemocratically created rights that were properly the domain of democratic decision-making.
Setting aside for today the question of whether individual rights should be subject to majority rule in the first place, Michigan Reproductive Freedom for All organizers did exactly what conservatives on the Supreme Court said they should: take the decision about the right to reproductive health to the people. Michigan conservatives’ response was to try to deny the people of the state the right to make that decision — on the flimsiest of pretexts. On top of that, with their objections to expanding absentee and early voting, they want to make it more difficult than necessary for people to vote at all.
These objections are probably going nowhere, and both referenda have a very strong chance of passing in November. But the weakness of the objections reveals the conservatives’ instrumental attitude toward democracy; they are happy to affirm it (rhetorically, at least) when it suits them and will use whatever methods they can to restrict it when it doesn’t — even when their attempts are a longshot.
The Board of State Canvassers decision is part of a broader, more disturbing trend with the potential for much more serious consequences. Earlier this year, Michigan Republicans nominated Kristina Karamo to run for secretary of state, Michigan’s top election administrator. An unhinged election denier who was among the pro-Trump mob that gathered to intimidate Detroit election workers in 2020, Karamo has called public schools “government indoctrination camps” and likened abortion to “child sacrifice,” deeming it a “satanic practice.” Karamo also allegedly threatened and attempted violence against her family. It is hard to imagine fair elections in Michigan with Karamo running the show.
And it’s not just Michigan. Across the country, from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin to Arizona, Republicans are running for and often winning state and local offices on a platform of little more, in substance, than baseless accusations that Democrats and some Republicans who ran the 2020 elections committed massive fraud. At the same time, federal courts and state governments dominated by Republicans have accelerated their long-running efforts to make sure voters can’t do anything as silly as reject their agendas or check their power. They’ve long held democracy in contempt, but that doesn’t mean things can’t get worse.
Former president and poll front-runner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rallies his supporters in Belo Horizonte, the Minas Gerais state capital, in August. (photo: Ricardo Stuckert/Mongabay)
Bolsonaro is running for reelection in October, where he’s expected to face off against former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round. Polls show Lula in the lead. As far as the Amazon goes, then, the choice between the two men who have both held the highest office in Brazil boils down not just to different policies for the future, but two contrasting legacies on the Amazon.
In his eight years as president, from 2003 to 2010, Lula adopted policies that slowed the rate of tropical forest loss. Deforestation declined by 82%, from 27,772 to 4,571 square kilometers (10,723 to 1,765 square miles) between 2004 and 2012, when Lula’s successor and ally, Dilma Rousseff, was in power. The 2012 figure was the lowest rate recorded since satellite monitoring began in 1988. Under Bolsonaro, deforestation rates have increased by nearly 60%.
From August 2021 to July 2022, 10,781 km2 (4,163 mi2) of rainforest were cut down, an area the size of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. That’s the highest rate in the last 15 years, and puts 2022 on track to be the fourth consecutive year with deforestation of more than 10,000 km2 (3,900 mi2) — a streak not seen since 2008.
The current deforestation rate is pushing the Amazon to what scientists call a “point of no return,” beyond which the rainforest won’t be able to recover on its own and turn into a dry savanna, in the process emitting more planet-warming greenhouse gases than it absorbs them. This scenario is already happening in heavily deforested parts of the Brazilian Amazon.
Brazil holds 60% of the Amazon, and 21% of the Brazilian portion is already gone, an area three times greater than the United Kingdom. The main drivers of this deforestation are livestock ranchers, loggers, illegal miners and land grabbers, who have acted largely with impunity in the absence of law enforcement. That’s why the Brazilian people’s choice in next month’s election will be a “game changer” for the planet’s future, said Mercedes Bustamante, a professor at the University of Brasília and one of the country’s leading authorities on environmental issues.
“The Brazilians’ decision will have worldwide repercussions. Actually, we have an escalation of forest losses supported by the executive and legislative branches,” Bustamante told Mongabay by phone.
Lula’s success in bringing down the deforestation rate was attributed to coordinated actions by several government agencies working together, and not relying solely on the Ministry of Environment and related agencies. The strategy was called the “Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon” (PPCDAm), and was implemented from 2004 to 2015, focusing mainly on monitoring, enforcing and punishing environmental crimes and the regularization and planning of land use.
“But development and economic fostering policies to keep the forest standing were lacking,” Adalberto Veríssimo, co-founder of Imazon, a Brazilian conservation nonprofit, told Mongabay by phone.
Another strategy by Lula, who appointed activist Marina Silva as his environment minister from 2003 to 2008, was the creation of new protected areas and Indigenous lands. His administration approved a total of 268,000 km2 (103,500 mi2) of protected areas and 88 Indigenous territories.
Despite all his progress in bringing deforestation under control, Lula was criticized by environmentalists and scientists for reviving projects from Brazil’s military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985. These include the Belo Monte hydroelectric power plant. One of the largest of its kind in the world, the project was carried on by Rousseff’s administration, causing severe environmental damage and displacing Indigenous communities. Lula was also criticized for his alliances with the soybean and meat-packing industries.
When Lula left office in January 2011, he had an overall approval rating of 87%, according to polls, but public support for environmental policies was lower, at 60%.
Slashing and cutting
Brazilians will go to the voting booths on Oct. 2 amid a mix of crises: a pandemic-induced economic downturn, high inflation and unemployment rates, and the return of the country to the U.N.’s hunger map. Nonetheless, the fate of the Amazon Rainforest remains a major concern. A recent poll commissioned by the environmental NGO Instituto Clima e Sociedade found that 76% of Brazilians say the Amazon is “very important” to the future of Brazil and should be a priority for the presidential candidates.
Although conserving the Amazon has widespread public appeal, and most Brazilians agreed with Lula’s policies for the forest, those sentiments didn’t seem to matter when Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 while promising to halt the demarcation of all awaiting Indigenous territories and slash environmental regulations. When he took office in January 2019, he proceeded as planned. He froze 3.3 billion reais ($640 million) from the Amazon Fund, which since 2008 has invested donations by Norway and Germany to protect the rainforest. The fund was key to paying for projects initiated by governments and NGOs to help Indigenous lands and protected areas and boost sustainable forest management.
No new Indigenous territories or protected areas were established during Bolsonaro’s presidency — this remains one of the few campaign promises he has managed to keep.
In April 2020, Ricardo Salles, the environment minister at the time, suggested slashing environmental regulations while the country was focused on the COVID-19 crisis — “running the cattle” as he put it. He resigned in June 2021 after being caught up in an investigation into illegal logging in the Amazon. The case is still under investigation.
Bolsonaro also slashed funding as promised: In 2021, the Ministry of Environment’s budget was the lowest since 2000. He also stocked key positions in Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs, with political supporters who had no technical experience and a track record of anti-Indigenous actions or rhetoric.
The Bolsonaro government is also supporting bills in Congress that would weaken environmental licensing, open Indigenous lands to mining, oil exploration and agribusiness, allow greater unregulated use of pesticides, and legalize land grabbing in the Amazon.
“Today, we have actions that are the complete opposite of previous governments,” Izabella Teixeira, the environment minister in the Lula and Rousseff administrations, told Mongabay by phone. “Bolsonaro has destroyed the country’s environmental governance and tries to fool the world by promising to fight deforestation in the Amazon.”
Bolsonaro has publicly said he opposes illegal activities in the Amazon, but experts say his policies empower these very crimes. “Socio environmental destruction and organized crime have taken over the forest thanks to this government’s total lack of action,” said Imazon’s Veríssimo. A study by the NGOs Instituto Centro de Vida, Instituto de Manejo e Certificação Florestal e Agrícola and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), supported by WWF-Brazil, concluded that practically all deforestation (94%) in the Amazon and the Cerrado savanna is illegal.
In places like the Vale do Javari, where Brazilian Indigenous rights activist Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips were murdered in June, criminal organizations are engaged in drug trafficking, wildlife poaching, and illegal fishing.
With much of their budget slashed, protection agencies have been hamstrung, critics say. Due to government inaction, public lands, Indigenous territories and protected areas all over the Amazon, such as the Juami-Japurá Ecological Station (near the border with Peru and Colombia), are being destroyed by deforestation, logging and gold mining by groups from Brazil and neighboring countries.
A report by the Indigenist Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic Church-affiliated NGO, notes that under Bolsonaro, there have been an average of 275 annual invasions of Indigenous lands. Killings of land defenders are also up: 157 on average since 2019. The BBC reports that government inaction can also be measured by the decrease in environmental fines issued, despite the growing number of violations.
Bolsonaro doubles down
In an interview with foreign media on Aug. 22, Lula promised to eject illegal miners from the Amazon and fight the criminal networks wreaking destruction in the rainforest. He also said he would rebuild IBAMA, the federal environmental protection agency, as well as create a new ministry for Native peoples, and make the climate crisis an “absolute priority.”
“We will put a complete end to any kind of illegal mining. This can’t be simply through a law — it must be almost a profession of faith,” Lula said, according to The Guardian.
Lula’s plan should he win office, a document made public in August, also promises to “defend the Amazon from the policies of devastation put into practice by the current government” and says “illegal mining, particularly in the Amazon, will be harshly fought.”
“We will fight environmental crime promoted by militias, landowners, loggers and any economic organization that acts against the law. Our commitment is to combat illegal deforestation and promote zero net deforestation implacably,” the document says.
“Many of these measures depend on the National Congress and governors’ support,” said Bustamante from the University of Brasília. “Brazilians need to focus not only on the presidential election but search for a set of representatives aligned with what the country really needs.”.
Experts largely agree that Lula would restore the functions of the Ministry of Environment if elected. Under Bolsonaro, the ministry has often been even harsher against the environment than the Ministry of Agriculture, which has long sided with the powerful agribusiness lobby.
However, Lula does not rule out infrastructure projects deep in the forest. In a replay of his support for the Belo Monte plant, the former president said in an interview in late August that it is possible to combine the protection of the environment and the reconstruction of the BR-319 highway. The plan is supported by Bolsonaro and opposed by environmentalists, who believe that the road would ease the access of land grabbers and loggers to untouched parts of the Amazon.
Unlike Lula’s plan, Bolsonaro’s reelection plan avoids addressing his government’s records on deforestation and violence. And despite the trail of destruction, it doesn’t back down from his environmental policies. Instead, it recycles the proposals that helped win him the presidency in 2018, such as allowing mining and oil exploration on Indigenous lands, weakening environmental licensing, legitimizing land grabs, and deregulating the use of pesticides. The renewal of his plan was celebrated by the agribusiness caucus in Congress and other political and economic groups aligned with Bolsonaro, whether by ideology or profit motives.
“We made progress with the pesticides bill, on environmental licensing, land regularization, issues that had been blocked for 10, 20 years,” Sérgio Souza, leader of the agribusiness caucus in the lower house of Congress, said at an event in August attended by Bolsonaro. “Our alignment between the National Congress and the executive [branch] is essential for these achievements.”
In an interview on a popular podcast in August, Bolsonaro reaffirmed his ideology. He blamed “Indians and riverside dwellers” for some of the record-breaking numbers of fires in the Amazon. He also said the forest “doesn’t catch fire because it’s humid.” He said the investigation against his former environment minister, Ricardo Salles, is “nonsense that does not interest the population,” and downplayed the deforestation rate during his time in office, suggesting instead that people should “compare them with Lula’s first three years.” The first years of Lula’s presidency had high deforestation rates, but the numbers declined to the lowest rates ever measured.
Experts say this agenda could isolate Brazil even further if Bolsonaro is reelected. “It’s no use to soften speeches while letting everything run wild. There is no control over what happens in the Amazon and in the rest of the country,” Bustamante said.
“Unfortunately, the [environmental] issue is not decisive in the elections, but regardless of who wins in October, the Amazon will always be on the global agenda,” Veríssimo from Imazon said.
The agribusiness caucus and the federal government’s Special Secretariat for Social Communication did not respond to Mongabay’s requests for an interview.
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