Why I Was Inspired By A Stephen Miller Quote

It's your Bad Faith Times.

Photo by Gage Skidmore. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

Andrew Fleming, your Canadian pal, is on a summer break. Here’s Wonkpal Denny Carter from the Bad Faith Times instead!

My haters, of whom there are many, can accuse me of many things: Posting too much on Bluesky, interpreting every right-wing action as a bad-faith maneuver, and hating Bears quarterback Caleb Williams.

What my haters cannot deny, however, is that I can write a clickable headline. And so I have here, implying that the wretched Stephen Miller, a fascist, pain-feeding ghoul without equal, inspired me with a social media comment from back in the summer, when the Trump regime was testing out its capacity for invading and occupying opposition strongholds and terrorizing those who did not vote for the Republican god-king.

“Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced,” Miller posted on the X platform formerly known as Twitter as National Guard troops and ICE agents invaded Los Angeles mostly to make slick social media videos that have become a key part of the American Right’s social media-driven unreality. Miller was responding to LA Mayor Karen Bass calling for an end to the regime’s invasion of her city under the guise of immigration enforcement. Continuing a long Trump regime tradition of framing everything as rape, Miller added to his reply to Bass, “You have no say in this.”

I recall reading this exchange last summer and fuming. Like you, the good and decent Wonkette reader, I struggle with the dark thoughts and impulses that come with seeing injustice permeate every part of our society, our culture, our politics. To see the bully run rampant against the marginalized and powerless sparks within me the kind of outrage that quickly hardens into sadness, then anger, then fury. Seeing the bully — in this case the vampiric Miller — grin and tell the mayor of LA there was nothing she could do to stop the terror Miller had brought to her city was, in a word, upsetting.

But I returned to that Miller quote — “Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced” — when I was writing my new book, After The Great Redo (Wonkette cut link), because I think there is — or can be — utility to that approach to governing. Certainly not for weaponizing the American government to launch a terror campaign against cities that disagree with you politically, but for stopping Republican-held states from fighting real democratization in whatever comes after the Trump regime.

The Great Redo, in my imagination, is two parts Reconstruction, one part New Deal. It is an all-out effort to right the wrongs of America’s failure to bring democracy to every corner of the country and to offer dignified lives for its people. Imagine that. I did, and it’s quite nice.

There was a time, not too long ago, when former Confederate states — their white power structure having shown it can’t be trusted to govern itself — had to secure clearance from the federal government before making any changes to laws that would affect voting rights or access. They certainly couldn’t create explicitly Jim Crow congressional districts meant to strip power from Black Americans. These states could not be trusted to do the right thing and expand and uphold the rights of all citizens. They still can’t be trusted. That’s why the Great Redo (the speculative fiction version, anyway) includes a raft of federal laws and statutes designed to bring democracy to the states of the former Confederacy — not again, but for the first time in the country’s history. Though my book focuses on what the democratization of Texas might look like, I imagine this for every state whose elected leaders have fought for generations to remain autocracies in which power is systematically kept far away from racial and ethnic minorities.

Today we watch with guarded hope as pro-democracy forces in Wisconsin emerge from the shitpipe of autocracy created by a radicalized Republican Party that used the state as a laboratory for what it would one day do to the entire country. In Wisconsin, to use one example, this can never happen again. A state is in no way abiding by democratic norms when a political party can win 55 percent of the statewide vote and remain a vast legislative minority, as Wisconsin Democrats have been for more than a decade. Republicans can’t be expected to retain power forever. When they lose — and they will lose one day — the United States government has to have the authority and willingness to enforce liberal democratic norms. Every Republican victory cannot be a generations-long setback for American democracy.

And that’s where Miller’s quote enters the equation. If the US is going to re-democratize itself like Hungary is re-democratizing itself, we are going to need a pro-democracy administration that tells red states “federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced,” maybe in slightly less fashy language. Hungary’s new pro-democracy president has pulled no punches in his administration’s desire to deliver justice to the country’s former authoritarian regime and shore up laws and institutions that might prevent a future slide into the autocratic shitpipe.

When power is wrestled away from the anti-democracy American Right, there can be no hesitation in punishing those who have committed crimes against us and forcing every state in the union to abide by small-d democratic norms. They’re going to have to be reminded that federal law is supreme. This was the tragically missing ingredient in the country’s post-Civil War Reconstruction, which failed because the good guys did not have the will to beat back the enemies of freedom.

But enough of that. Below are some of the Bad Faith Times blogs I’ve written over the past month, including some podcasts and video content, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Weaponized Colorblindness Killed The Voting Rights Act (this is a clickable link)

John Roberts learned from the best that interpreting civil rights law in bad faith is the best way to undermine those laws and eventually destory them, as he’s done with the Voting Rights Act. Roberts and the Supreme Court’s far-right jurists must be colorblind if they are to advance the Right’s agenda. It’s a fun little trick.

Winning, Losing, And The Platner Problem

I finally weighed in on the Senate candidate that sparks a thousand Bluesky flame wars every hour: Graham Platner. I wrote about his appeal in a time of rising authoritarianism, the Left deciding it wants to win, and whether he can be trusted to fight back against a radicalized GOP that has no place in a functional democracy.

‘We’ve Got To Get Creative About Power’

We’re back to Platner, who had some interesting comments about the Supreme Court no longer operating in good faith. As the purveyor of Bad Faith Times, I am legally required to write about any prominent political figure mentioning good or bad faith.

Republican Judges Killed The Virginia Gerrymander. It Doesn’t Matter.

Forgive the glib headline. It does matter that right-wing judges found a loophole and killed Virginia Democrats’ perfectly legal and above-board redistricting plan. I argue that it won’t matter much for the 2026 midterms since Democrats are likely going to win most of the seats they were targeting in the redistricting plan. A blue tsunami is coming. You won’t hear about it in the New York Times.

Why I Was So Wrong About 2024, And What That Means For 2026

I did yet another mea culpa about all the optimistic blogging I did in the run-up to the 2024 election. I saw no path to a Trump victory, but I didn’t realize his allies — especially Elon Musk — could algorithmically control the realities of those who opposed his hideous agenda. That’s what they call a game changer, and it could matter in 2026.

An Insurrectionist Slush Fund And A Win For The Unreality of January 6

The slush fund Trump wants to create for those who tried to overthrow the US government following his 2020 loss was possible thanks to a highly coordinated effort to create alternative versions of the January 6 siege of the Capitol. Without right-wing media coordinating with Republican lawmakers to make a choose-your-own adventure insurrection narrative, there would be no second Trump term.

There Is No Such Thing As Centrism

Recent NYT polling perpetuated the lie of centrism, which is only expected of Democrats. There is only Left and Right. I argue that there is no such thing as centrism on most issues. If you can prove me wrong, please do.