The Associated Press -- like essentially every other major journalism outlet -- has totally normalized extremism.

Calling the new house speaker a "staunch conservative" -- a pathetically weak euphemism for far-right extremist -- is only the latest example of Big Journalism's collapse into willful helplessness.

It's journalistic cowardice in the face of a movement that aims to bring down democracy, and by extension journalism.

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@deborahh @dangillmor Yeah, that's a pretty good article, I think.

We see he encouraged Trump to keep up the lawsuits and stuff. I think filing lawsuits /etc like this like Gore and Trump (and many others) did after losing has to be seen as reasonable, although Gore did it with much more class, of course. Like, when you hit 50 lawsuits that's probably a sign you crossed a line awhile ago. But gauche is Trump's brand, I guess? (Did Johnson do anything to encourage violence, or "martial law" or whatever?)

We see here that he is pro-life. Lots of people are pro-life: is a label like "far-right" dependent on %age of popular support, or would you label like 40% of the population as "far-right"? I guess, whatever, if "far-right" means "more right than I like" then you do you, but I wouldn't waste any energy complaining about media not following your lead. Same point with certain gender-affirming medical procedures for minors.

We see that like a lot of Rs these days, he doesn't support aid to Ukraine. This is also pretty popular, so it's hard to label this position as far-right as above. Personally I have mixed feelings: I desperately want Ukraine to win decisively and take back donbass/crimea, and I have some concept of the broader problem with this sort of thing happening, but as a practical matter, if nothing else, our continued aid clearly means more civilian deaths in the near term. (Similar analysis in Israel/Gaza.)

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