Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of February 23

Democrats' secret report found Gaza cost Harris votes

Top Democratic officials who worked on the party's still-secret autopsy of the 2024 election concluded that Kamala Harris lost significant support because of the Biden administration's approach to the war in Gaza, Axios has learned.

So many reasonable people refused to believe this could be true. There was polling that suggested this back in the summer of 2024, though between the Uncommitted movement in the primaries and the thousands of people who marched in the streets, we shouldn't have needed it in the first place. But hey, better late than never.

In totally, completely unrelated news, Democrats are polling at about the same level as Trump

Asked whether they trust Trump or Democrats in Congress to handle major issues, 33 percent cite the president, 31 percent say Democrats, 4 percent say both equally and a crucial 31 percent say neither. In April, Trump led by 37 percent-30 percent on this question.

...

For Democrats, the new poll offers a reminder of the challenges they face, not just in the 2026 elections but looking further ahead. For one, they have struggled to persuade Americans that their ideas are superior to Trump’s.

Asked whom they trust to deal with reducing the cost of living, for example, about one-third of Americans say Trump, one-third say Democrats and one-third say neither. On immigration, Trump continues to have a slight advantage, 38 percent to 34 percent for Democrats.

Similarly, when asked who is more connected to the concerns of people, Trump and the Democrats fare equally poorly. By nearly 2-1, Americans say each is out of touch. Trump has shown a slight deterioration on this measure over the past year while Democrats have shown a slight improvement. But the broad findings are a reminder of the distrust that Americans have about their elected officials no matter the party.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a pillow waiting to be screamed into with my name all over it.

Judge blocks release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump classified documents case

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, granted a request from the president to keep under wraps the report on an investigation alleging that Trump stored sensitive documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left the White House following his first term and that he obstructed government efforts to get them back.

I don't think it's hyperbole to say that this is a stunning conflict of interest to be able to appoint a judge that makes frequent rulings in your favor.

There's a good read here on how right-wing narratives get promoted into mainstream news, featuring some very basic open source journalism.

Spin Class Case Study: I Caught POLITICO and the New York Times Laundering Pink Slime "News" -
How the sexist backlash to AOC and Gretchen Whitmer at the Munich Security Conference led me to a scammy "local news" outlet pushing a coordinated right-wing narrative

Trump Mocks U.S. Women's Hockey Team After Gold Medal

We’ll do the White House,” Trump told players. “We’ll just have some fun, we have medals for you guys. And we have to — I must tell you — we’re going to have to bring the women’s team, you do know that,” the president said, chuckling. The players laughed. “I do believe I probably would be impeached [if I didn’t],” Trump continued.

The players laughed, twice. At how funny it was that the women's team would "have to" get invited. Never mind they scored the same and beat the same country for gold. Never mind that for the overall medal count, the US women athletes carried the entire Olympic team. Never mind that allegedly we care so much about the integrity of women's sports we have to harass all the trans women out of them.

None of them have spoken up after. Oh wait, one has, but only in how it was "super cool" for the president to call them. I know enough to know to expect shitty people, the Tkachuks in particular but just ew.

The Olympics and the World Cup are the only time I get all "USA" about anything and only because it's sports. It's been harder and harder and fuck if this didn't make it all turn sour in my mouth.

Maybe I'll try to get into the PWHL. Idk. Fuck every single one of those players though. Not a fucking one had a drop of courage or principle, not even the next day after being out of the locker room and away from the environment.

It Can Now Be Plainly Said: Trump Is Planning a November Coup d’État (The New Republic)

During the campaign, it was kind of hard to picture the specifics of how Trump might pull such a thing off. Alas, it’s getting less hypothetical by the week.

The Republican Party Has a Nazi Problem
How did the GOP become a haven for slogans and ideas straight out of the Third Reich?

Over the past few months, during his agency’s chaotic crackdowns in Chicago and Minneapolis, the U.S. Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino has worn an unusual uniform: a wide-lapel greatcoat with brass buttons and stars along one sleeve. It looks like it was taken right off the shoulders of a Wehrmacht officer in the 1930s. Bovino’s choice of garment is more than tough-guy cosplay (German media noted the aesthetic immediately). The coat symbolizes a trend: The Republicans, it seems, have a bit of a Nazi problem.

By this, I mean that some Republicans are deploying Nazi imagery and rhetoric, and espouse ideas associated with the Nazi Party during its rise to power in the early 1930s. A few recent examples: An ICE lawyer linked to a white-supremacist social-media account that praised Hitler was apparently allowed to return to federal court. Members of the national Young Republicans organization were caught in a group chat laughing about their love for Hitler. Vice President J. D. Vance shrugged off that controversy, instead of condemning the growing influence of anti-Semites in his party. (In December, at Turning Point USA’s conference, Vance said, “I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.”)

Even federal agencies are modeling Nazi phrasing. The Department of Homeland Security used an anthem beloved by neo-Nazi groups, “By God We’ll Have Our Home Again,” in a recruitment ad. The Labor Department hung a giant banner of Donald Trump’s face from its headquarters, as if Washington were Berlin in 1936, and posted expressions on social media such as “America is for Americans”—an obvious riff on the Nazi slogan “Germany for the Germans”—and “Americanism Will Prevail,” in a font reminiscent of Third Reich documents.

Trump, of course, openly pines to be a dictator. In his first term, he reportedly told his chief of staff, General John Kelly, that he wished he had generals who were as loyal as Hitler’s military leaders. (The president was perhaps unaware of how often the führer’s officers tried to kill him.) More recently, the White House’s official X account supported Trump’s pursuit of Greenland by posting a meme with the caption “Which way, Greenland man?” That is not merely a clunky turn of phrase; it’s an echo of Which Way Western Man?, the title of a 1978 book by the American neo-Nazi William Gayley Simpson, a former Presbyterian minister who called for America to expel its Jewish citizens.