DL Open Thread: Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Dog Bites Man: Rethugs Capitulate On Hegseth.  You were expecting anything different?:

The seriousness and breadth of the allegations against him — from sexual assault to excessive drinking to sheer lack of experience — demand the most searching and responsible of inquiries. Instead, the Hegseth nomination has largely produced reflexive party-line salutes.

What unfolded during Tuesday’s hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee was the continuation of a relentless lack of curiosity — an utter absence of willingness to take the constitutional role seriously — that has marked this nomination from the start. If the GOP goal is getting Hegseth across the finish line — well, mission accomplished, it appears. If the point was to determine whether he is fit for the job, abject failure.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host, dismissed allegation after allegation against him as “anonymous smears.” But not all the allegations are anonymous, as Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) pointed out. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reported this week that Republican Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Susan Collins of Maine refused the opportunity to meet with the woman who claims Hegseth sexually assaulted her at a conference in 2017. (Hegseth, who was married to another woman at the time and had just fathered a child with the woman who later became his third wife, said the encounter was consensual.)

Ernst said after the hearing that she would vote for his confirmation.  Orchestrated from the very start.  Josh Marshall gets the whole charade, and what D’s should do, correct:

Republicans have a three seat majority. They have the vote of the Vice President in a tie. What happens or doesn’t happen is entirely a matter decided within the Republican caucus. It is totally out of Democrats’ control. What follows from that is that everything Democrats do, inside the hearing room or outside is simply and solely a matter of raising the stakes of decisions Republicans make and raising those stakes for the next election. The aim isn’t for any Democratic senator to try to claw their way through the steel wall of Republican loyalty to Donald Trump. It’s to do everything they can to illustrate that Donald Trump staffs his administration with unqualified and/or dangerous toadies and that Senate Republicans are fine with this because they put loyalty to Trump over loyalty to country.

Sleepwalking Into Autocracy?:

Since Donald Trump’s election victory, we have witnessed striking accommodations to his narrow win and mandate, what has been called “anticipatory obedience.”

Are we sleepwalking into an autocracy? We hope not, and would be glad if the threat does not materialize. But as close observers of people and places where democracy has come under pressure and occasionally buckled, we see creeping autocracy as a distinct and under-discussed possibility. We know well other nations, including Hungary and Poland, where leaders have steered policies that lead to a backsliding of democracy. We see eerie similarities between what transpired in those countries and what Mr. Trump and his transition team have already done and promise to do.

The Trump transition has featured the rapid-fire appointments of several cabinet officials who are both unqualified and potentially dangerous to the security and health of the American people. The transition has also included a flurry of actual and threatened libel actions against critics, followed by several media executives and owners caving in.

In a second term, Mr. Trump’s actions may be even more dangerous because he is now following the playbook created by Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, who after losing and then regaining office moved his country from a democracy into an “illiberal state,” as he put it. It was one of the faster collapses of a robust democracy on record.

Even before Mr. Trump’s appointees have entered their designated offices, however, Mr. Trump and his admirers have launched libel cases and threats of criminal investigation to intimidate journalists and political opponents, just as Mr. Orbán did. ABC News just settled one such case for $15 million rather than risk the cost and Trumpian ire of defending its journalist. Mr. Trump has made no secret of wanting to weaken the landmark Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan, which creates a high bar for proving libel against public officials.

Matt Meyer’s Pick For Secretary Of Education Looks Really Promising:

Cynthia “Cindy” Marten knew she wanted to teach by 5 years old.

She’s done a bit more since then. Marten has spent over three decades in education. She worked as a teacher, a school-wide literacy specialist, a principal. She served as the superintendent of the second-largest school district in California. Since 2021, she served as deputy secretary in the U.S. Department of Education under President Joe Biden.

“I’m not just coming in with answers from D.C. or answers from California and pretending like I know better. And yet, I do have something to bring to the table,” Marten told Delaware Online/The News Journal through smiles. “We have a governor-elect who has a clear, strong vision, and he’s looking for leadership that can convene and empower to interrupt the status quo in education.”

“Deputy Secretary Marten’s substantial record of working collaboratively with educators and families to improve public education earned her high marks from the National Education Association and other pro-union organizations that have had an opportunity to work with her,” said President Stephanie Ingram, after the Delaware State Education Association sat down with the nominee.

Marten’s first state-level position draws her in with priorities that echo that of Meyer’s – modernizing the school funding formula, combating Delaware’s teacher shortage, boosting early childhood education, as well as improving literacy and overall outcomes or public school students.

“He’s been very clear that the status quo is unacceptable,” she said. “And that change is coming.”

Kent County Whistleblower To Get $350K.  Good.  Perhaps this will get through to elected boneheads determined to hide their unethical behavior:

The Kent County Levy Court will pay its former county administrator, Ken Decker, at least $350,000 over the next two years, after he was fired following complaints he made to a state ethics board.

In a settlement agreement, which Spotlight Delaware obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request, the county agreed to place Decker on paid administrative leave until the end of February 2027.

A settlement between Decker and the county will bring closure to an issue the county would have rather kept under wraps and out of the hands of a judge.

What do you want to talk about?