- The BC Conservative Party is experiencing a lot of internal strife as it tries to figure out whether it wants to be a pragmatic centre-right party or a youth-oriented, populist, far-right one. The firing of staffer Lindsay Shepherd was not the only one in recent weeks; caucus researcher Siavash Tahan was also fired in September; both say that they were fired for being too conservative for the party. Many of this lot cite leader John Rustad's failure to talk enough about such things as reversing the NDP's attempts to bring the province's legislation in line with the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the province’s existing gender identity education framework, known as SOGI 123. The thing is, in order to have a path to victory the Tories need to appeal to suburban voters, many of whom are understandably a bit spooked by hardcore social conservatism. Part of me hopes that the extremists win out, because that will likely keep them out of power for quite a while. The problem with this, though, is that sooner or later any government is going to wear out its welcome, and one person in this Reddit thread sums it up nicely:
Wish for your competitor to be crazy, and you get what happened to America, or the Fords in Ontario, or Alberta. It's an unsafe bet - the public might just elect crazy to spite you.
It's also worth noting that moderation of one's position to attract suburban voters is not limited to the right. The NDP also has tended to take more moderate, centrist positions, even as it tries to make incremental improvements to society. (The Liberals, of course, have no such problem, because suburban voters are their bread and butter). It's not limited to Canada either, though the problem is more acute in countries like ours (or the US or the UK) due to our first-past-the-post electoral system.
- Former FBI director James Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges of misleading the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2020. In that hearing Comey told the committee that he had not authorized any associate to serve as an anonymous source to the media regarding investigations into Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The indictment makes no mention of what was allegedly leaked or who the source was; a Trump loyalist, Lindsey Halligan, who was appointed to head the prosecution, is having difficulty getting staff to work on the case.
- David Frum thinks that Trump may be running out of time to consolidate his power as public opinion turns against him with next year's midterms looming. Frum cites Trump's pressure on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute as many of his enemies as possible, and thinks that Bondi is having to weigh the merits of keeping in the president's good books with the possibility of herself facing prosecution once he is out of office. This may be wishful thinking, however; I think the odds are already against the midterms being anything resembling free and fair elections.
- A historian at Rutgers University who teaches a course about resistance to fascism is putting all his courses online and moving with his family to Spain due to threats and doxxing from the far right. He has already received numerous death threats, including one in which someone threatened to kill him in front of his students. The university's chapter of Turning Point USA, the group founded by Charlie Kirk, has already called for him to be fired, ironically claiming he is "a risk to their safety". Admittedly, he is on record as saying that "violence is sometimes necessary" to stop fascism, but that is entirely true.
- The pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago is suing the federal government after he was shot with a pepper ball, apparently without provocation, while protesting at an ICE facility in nearby Broadview. Rev. David Black says he was taking part in a prayer vigil outside the facility when officers opened fire.
- Two social media accounts popular with the MAGA crowd, Defiant L’s and Resist the Mainstream, are run by a Macedonian national who has never set foot in the US and who once donated over $3,000 to far-right conspiracy theorist Ron Watkins' unsuccessful bid for the Republican primary for Arizona's 2nd congressional district (as donations by foreign nationals are illegal, Watkins returned the money when this was discovered).
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