Thread of my short #SNP20 speech - The British Government are pressing ahead with their constitutional priorities regardless of the current pandemic. Brexit has happened and our parliament is under attack.

Dear Media, here is the clear truth:

Donald Trump is explicitly seeking to turn America into a white Ethnostate.

He is following an openly racist plan, crafted by open racists.

If you report this story any other way you are not reporting the facts or being objective.

1/

If you think this is an extreme position or an opinion, you haven't read enough about the white nationalist movement, Stephen Miller, Bannon, Sessions, etc.

Eliminating birthright citizenship is a central plank in a well-articulated, coherent movement to make America whiter.
2/

Blaming Soros is a central tool. It is part of a (crazy, wrong, but internally coherent) theory of the case:
- By nature, people can only form society with their closer kin.
- Yadda Yadda (the arguments are terrible) White people have certain values that non-whites don't.

3/

(continuing the white power explanation)

- All whites, by nature, would know they only want a white society.

- An outside group--hint, it's the Jews!--is tricking them into going against their nature (white nationalists think they know a lot about core human nature).

4/

(continuing views I hate to explain them)

- There is an existential race to save America. By 2046, it will become majority minority and then (in this fevered nonsensical view) there will be a civil war because unlike people can't form stable societies.

5/

Congratulations to Jacobin for, the day after Lula's defense team filed it's 2nd motion to dismiss due to illegal US involvement in Lava Jato, its timid reference to the US DOJ partnership. This relationship has been public knowledge for over 5 years but better late than never.

When William Barr, from the US DOJ, responded to the 13 democrat's congressional inquiry into US involvement in in Lava Jato last year, he responded that they have been posting information about this partnership on their website since 2016 and linked this.

I don't think that "Democrats were cowards and couldn't stand up to McConnell" is the correct framing. Dems clearly made a political calculation. Plenty to potentially criticize about that calculation, but it was informed by factors unrelated to generalized "fear of republicans"

What we largely know now:
-There would never have been enough GOP votes to convict
-GOP had the power to hold up *all* Senate business & that means COVID relief (Dems would have been blamed for this hold up)
-Witnesses were uncooperative & would have had to have been subpoenaed

So I think the correct framing is that Democrats made a political calculation that the benefit of adding witnesses (who would not change the outcome) was not worth the political & moral cost of holding up COVID relief, as well as important confirmations. . . .

This calculation can be criticized on its own merits, but it's categorically different than just being scared of McConnell & the GOP.

For my own part, I think an error Democrats made w/r/t witnesses was not calling cooperative police officers who had been attacked that day. Just a few personal narratives from the police would have deeply embarrassed the GOP. That's a missed opportunity, in my view.