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It is often hard to try to derive a national message from a single byelection. The effect on party morale usually dwarfs that felt on government policy. The election of Liberal Democrat Sarah Green as the MP for Chesham and Amersham, a commuter-belt seat north-west of London, stuns on both counts. The result will make Conservative MPs in relatively liberal and educated constituencies very jumpy. But it will also slow the progress of Boris Johnsons planning reforms. Voters in bucolic Buckinghamshire plainly feared that these would make it easier for developers to concrete over the countryside.

What the result shows is that the Liberal Democrat cause is not a hopeless one. With just 11 parliamentarians and languishing at 7% in national polls, Sir Ed Davey appeared to be taking his depleted ranks and marching them towards the sound of gunfire. Chesham and Amersham has been held by the Conservatives since its creation in 1974. Yet Ms Green overturned a 16,000-strong Tory majority to take the seat by just over 8,000 votes, a swing of 25%, and upset the odds. The energy of the Tories vaccine bounce seems dissipated. Clearly the death of Liberal England has been prematurely foretold.

But is this a successful revival or a false dawn? In 2016 a swing of 22% saw Londons Richmond Park won by the Lib Dems. Three years later the party won the Brecon and Radnorshire byelection in Wales with a swing of 14%. What was telling was that on both occasions, the Lib Dems benefited from electoral pacts that consolidated a part of the remain vote. These divisions have not been erased just because Britain has left the European Union. Chesham and Amersham voted remain, and it would appear that substantial numbers of pro-EU Labour supporters voted Lib Dem.

The Compass thinktank has identified two clear battlegrounds in England: one between Labour and the Conservatives, another between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. There are few seats where Labour and the Lib Dems square off. It makes sense to join hands to defeat a common enemy. This thought also dovetails with a creeping political realignment in British politics.

The trend is for older, school-leaver Brexit supporters in the north switching to the Conservatives while the ruling party is losing ground among the more middle-class suburban graduates who leaned towards remain. Mr Johnsons divisive nationalism and levelling up rhetoric risks trading red wall gains, such as in Hartlepool last month, for blue wall losses. The new Tory coalition can be divided in other ways: the HS2 high-speed railway is widely welcomed in the north and the Midlands where it ends, but less so in the leafy southern constituencies, such as Chesham and Amersham, that it runs through.

To keep the momentum going will require more than the politics of protest. Sir Ed must see the possibility of a major political restructuring and shape it. He should make a virtue of positions that decentralise power, free the individual citizen and promote quality in public services. He needs policies that are not only popular but also clearly associated in the minds of voters with the Lib Dems. Being a responsible partner to the EU, rather than a troublesome neighbour, would be a good start. Liberalism is its own creed, and its adherents ought to make the case that it remains the one most capable of meeting the challenges ahead.

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The Guardian view on the Liberal Democrats: seeing and shaping politics - The Guardian

Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-N.Y.), a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said that hes exploring the idea of a one-time tax on the wealth of the richest Americans as Democrats seek to increase taxes on the rich in order to pay for spending priorities.

In an interview with The Hill on Friday, Suozzi said hes in the early stages of looking at what he called a patriot tax. This would be a one-time surcharge of 2.5 percent on wealth between $50 million and $100 million and a 5 percent tax on wealth above $100 million. Wealthy people would be able to pay the tax over five years.

Research provided by Suozzis office estimates that such a tax could raise about $450 billion.

Suozzi said that the surcharge hes exploring would reflect the fact that many wealthy Americans were less hurt by the coronavirus pandemic than people with less income.

We all know that people who are wealthy did very well during the pandemic and people that were low-income people did not do well, he said.

He said that for wealthy people, the surcharge would be a way to help your country to build back better.

Suozzi has yet to introduce any legislation based on his idea, and the tax he's considering could face challenges with being enacted. The Biden administration has not endorsed proposals for wealth taxes, and the idea would be sure to face opposition from Republicans.

Suozzi said that the revenue raised by the tax could help to offset the cost of President BidenJoe BidenObama: Ensuring democracy 'continues to work effectively' keeps me 'up at night' New Jersey landlords prohibited from asking potential tenants about criminal records Overnight Defense: Pentagon pulling some air defense assets from Middle East | Dems introduce resolution apologizing to LGBT community for discrimination | White House denies pausing military aid package to Ukraine MOREs infrastructure proposals, as well as restoring the full state and local tax deduction, a top priority for the New York congressman and other lawmakers in his state.

Suozzi spoke to The Hill days after ProPublica published a report detailing how prominent U.S. billionaires pay little in taxes when compared to their wealth gains. The U.S. federal tax system is based on income, not wealth.

Democrats in recent years have increasingly floated ideas aimed at making the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes. The idea from Suozzi, a member of the moderate, bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, has some similarities to wealth taxes proposed by progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth WarrenDemocrats have turned solidly against gas tax Overnight Health Care: Takeaways on the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision | COVID-19 cost 5.5 million years of American life | Biden administration investing billions in antiviral pills for COVID-19 Democratic senatorspressPhRMA over COVID-19 lobbying efforts MORE (D-Mass.), but Warrens proposal would create an annual tax rather than a one-time tax.

Suozzis comments also come amid a debate over how to pay for infrastructure spending. Biden has called for paying for his two proposed packages, which combined would cost about $4 trillion, through tax increases on high-income households and corporations. Republicans, however, oppose rolling back their 2017 tax-cut law.

Excerpt from:
Exclusive: Democrat exploring 'patriot tax' on multimillionaires' wealth | TheHill - The Hill

The right-wing freakout over critical race theoryor, at least what some Republican politicians and pundits think it ishas been playing out simultaneously in statehouses and TV studios, with lawmakers crafting bills to ban schools from teaching about systemic racism and conservative media figures fanning the flames. Fox News, for one, has mentioned critical race theorythe academic movement that positions race and racism as embedded in American institutionsnearly 1,300 times in the past three-and-a-half months, Media Matters reports, with mentions more than doubling month over month since February. Last week marked a new high for Fox News obsession, as the network mentioned critical race theory 244 times, up from 170 the week before.

As conservative media outlets help stoke a national panic, opposition to anti-racism teaching is now having a tangible impact in school systems across the country. At least 165 local and national groups seeking to stifle lessons on race and gender have surfaced, NBC reports, with conservative organizations backed by disgruntled parents, right-wing think tanks, law firms, and Republican political figures. The groups swarm school board meetings, inundate districts with time-consuming public records requests and file lawsuits and federal complaints alleging discrimination against white students, according to NBC. One such group, the Nevada Family Alliance, has reportedly proposed putting body cameras on teachers to make sure they arent teaching the demonized theory. At least two angry parents have appeared on Fox News to make their case against what they claim is an imminent threatdespite, as NBC notes, that nearly all school districts say they are not teaching critical race theory.

There have been 50 recall efforts aimed at ousting 126 school board members this year; NBC reports that while most of these fights stemmed from COVID-19 restrictions, the five most recent campaigns involved unrest over the idea of critical race theory, which has reportedly been a source of local unrest in at least 50 school districts from Washington to Florida. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is among the prominent GOP actors readily embracing such oppositionostensibly with the hopes that the local movement could motivate conservative voters in next years midtermsas he vowed this month to make sure theres not a single school board member who supports critical race theory.

While critical race theory is being deployed as a blanket term to describe racial equity work that U.S. schools are doingefforts prompted in part by the national reckoning over raceits become clear that most people lack a general understanding of what the buzzword even means, as Temple University's Marc Lamont Hill illuminated on BNC:

Some lawmakers crafting bills against it dont even seem to know what theyre trying to ban. Take Alabama Rep. Chris Pringle, a Republican who wants to make it illegal to teach critical race theory in the state. Asked by Alabama Media columnist Kyle Whitmire how hed define the theory, Pringle said it basically teaches that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin, period but was unable to produce any specific examples of theorists promoting that concept or instances where it was put into practice. I can assure youIll have to read a lot more, he told the reporter. The Alabama lawmaker was, however, sure that America is still the greatest country thats ever, ever been in the history of the world and the radical left is trying to divide this country based on race and class, which is exactly what they do in communist countries.

Read more:
The Right-Wing Meltdown Over Critical Race Theory Is Spiraling Out of Control - Vanity Fair

The contrived panic behind the Texas bill and others like it is emblematic of the legislative process of the modern GOP. In that process, Fox, led by frontman Carlson, latches onto an issue and carves it into the consciousness of viewers, leveraging their reach and influence to pull elected Republicans into the fold or drag them along if need be. Attacks on critical race theory are only the tip of the iceberg.

In just the first three months of this year, Fox News aired at least 72 segments on trans athletes, with Tucker Carlson Tonight once again setting the tone for the networks coverage. At the same time, a record-breaking number of anti-trans bills were also introduced in the United States this year, as at least 33 states considered such measures and governors signed legislation against trans athletes into law in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Carlson himself gave cover to this extreme anti-trans legislation by lying about medical care for trans youth, and he even went so far as to describe the existence of trans people as a challenge to the perpetuation of the species.

But the Fox host is also willing to attack Republican officials who didnt comply with his vision of the party platform. He savaged Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson in April for his initial veto of an anti-trans health care bill that the GOP leader described as a step way too far. The month before, Carlson targeted South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem over whether she was caving to the NCAA by not signing a bill barring transgender women from competing in women's sports. Carlson followed up interviews with both Republican governors by continuing to criticize them in subsequent episodes, with right-wing media and anti-LGBTQ figures echoing his attacks.

Carlson has emerged as the unequivocal leader of the Republican Partys war on democracy. From his Fox perch, he often railed against the pandemic-led increase in mail-in voting throughout 2020, often getting facts blatantly wrong. Weeks before the election, he launched a conspiracy theory that a cabal of Democrats were planning to use such ballots to launch a coup, clearly setting the stage for what was to come.

When it turned out that Trump lost and Biden won, Carlson continued with the lies, only embarrassing himself further. He briefly criticized Sidney Powells election conspiracy theories, only to later suck up to Powell associate, and Carlsons leading advertiser, Mike Lindell for pushing virtually identical lies about the election. Carlson was named in Dominions lawsuit against Fox News. On January 4, Carlson claimed virtually every power center on Earth rigged the election for Biden.

And then the January 6 attack happened.

Carlson immediately set up his show as a spin room for a defense of the insurrectionists as people protecting their rights, declared that the attackers were not terrorists and it was not an insurrection, suggested that antifa was behind it, mocked people who feared for their life, launched a conspiracy theory about additional security after the attack, lied about white supremacist involvement, and demanded answers to his question while attacking efforts to establish an investigative commission.

Carlson then somehow hit a new nadir in recent days. Jumping off a blog post from a former Trump speechwriter fired after attending a white nationalist conference, Carlson claimed that the federal government was behind the January 6 attack on the Capitol building. Of course, he and his source were blatantly misreading charging documents, but Carlson was undeterred.

The claim was immediately picked up by someRepublicans. Embattled congressional representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Green called for an investigation into the FBI, a stark contrast to the established anti-commission position of Republicans. As conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones jumped on board, Carlson is suddenly leading a truther movement about the attack.

The canary in the coal mine for this particular conspiracy theory was Carlson laughing about a plot during the height of the pandemic by right-wing extremists to kidnap Democractic governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.

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Tucker Carlson has full control over Fox and its stranglehold on the Republican Party - Media Matters for America

August 2008 proved to be a monumental month in the history of the Green Bay Packers and an unreconcilable month between the franchise and their legendary quarterback Brett Favre. After retiring and unretiring, Favre finally made a trip up to Green Bay to visit the team. Excitement among fans about a positive resolution never came to fruition - instead they were subject to open dialogue between both sides in the media that only tarnished the relationship further.

Within days, Favre was traded out of Green Bay and the Aaron Rodgers era commenced.

As the new saga between the Packers and Rodgers continues on this summer, the hope is that this August, looming less than two months away, will be one remembered for entirely different circumstances. Yet, the history behind Favres arrival back in Green Bay proves that communication between the two sides must remain as confidential as possible.

Although silence, particularly on Rodgers side, has been frustrating for fans seeking answers this offseason, it has been a rather commendable attribute of both parties thus far. On draft day, Rodgers was radio silent when the breaking news was released, and even when pressed by Kenny Mayne on ESPN, he remained politically correct in his voicing of dissent. While general manager Brian Gutekunst has been the assumed subject of Rodgers displeasure, there were no names and no particular situations publicly discussed. By keeping it this way, Rodgers has left his window to return open without unrepairable damage on the back end.

The Packers, likewise, have been been careful to admit their own mistakes in previous communication with Rodgers while remaining steadfast in their public desire to bring him back into the fold. They have also disclosed their trips to see Rodgers throughout the offseason without divulging the details. While the team can be internally frustrated by the situation, the entire organization must walk a fine line with its words and phrasings with the press. However, Mark Murphy recently tested that line with comments about the rift dividing the fan base in a column, while echoing the sentiment that feelings should be kept to themselves in the same breath:

We are working to resolve the situation and realize that the less both sides say publicly, the better.

The issue with this is that Murphy (and the Packers) must heed his own advice. In the past week, Murphy continued down a slippery slope, calling Rodgers a complicated fella and it will be imperative that these type of remarks end as training camp nears and the situation approaches an inevitable tipping point. Going back in time, it was a lack of control that drove a wedge between Green Bay and Favre around that same time.

In a New York Times article recapping the narrative in real-time that fateful August, a pair of comments from both sides about communication stood out.

They want to know if Im committed, but I want to know if theyre 100 percent committed. The problem is that theres been a lot of damage done, and I cant forget it. Stuff has been said, stories planted, that just arent true. Can I get over all that? I doubt it. So they can say they welcome me back but, come on, the way theyve treated me tells you the truth. They dont want me back, so lets move on. ~ Brett Favre

The he-said, she-said thing definitely took a toll on Brett, theres no doubt about it. We both agreed on this: We both wish things had been handled differently. But thats the spot that were in. ~ Mike McCarthy

While the Packers and Rodgers may or may not be able to come to an agreement that keeps the All-Pro in a green and gold uniform, these quotes offer a lesson that trust, based heavily on communication, will go a long way in finding a solution. Both sides find themselves in an eerily similar position as the one with Favre in searching for the commitment level of the other and it would be wise for the closed-door conversations to stay that way. Clearly in the case of Favre, words could not be unsaid and actions could not be undone, especially if the team itself was to move forward without a season-long, tense distraction.

Perhaps an old adage accurately sums up the situation for both sides in finding a happy ending: if you dont have anything good to say, dont say it at all. While each party has been mostly successful in doing so thus far, the true test is yet to come as the summer comes to a close.

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Less communication with the media is more for Packers & Rodgers before training camp - Acme Packing Company