Dem
47
GOP
53
Ed Martin is the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (note the italics, because they are going to matter later). Ever since he's gotten his mitts on the reins of power, he's indulged in a wide array of uber-Trumpy stunts. A rundown of some of the more egregious:
This week, Martin is in the news yet again. He sent letters to at least three medical journals demanding to know how the journals protect the public from misinformation, whether they take care to present competing viewpoints, and whether their content is influenced by advertisers.
Although we leave room for the possibility that Martin is an ignoramus who has no idea how the scholarly process works, we tend to assume he knows full well that his letters are absolute nonsense. First of all "protecting the public from misinformation" and "presenting competing viewpoints" are, in this context, largely contradictory. If Chest (the official journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, which received the first Martin letter) publishes a study that found that, for example, washing one's hands with an alcohol-based solution before surgery cuts down on the incidence of infection by 20%, what's the "competing viewpoint"? That washing your hands before surgery isn't actually helpful? That sounds a lot like... misinformation to us.
Beyond that, nothing published in a journal like this claims to be the unvarnished and eternal truth, for all time. A person or group does a study, submits it, and it gets peer-reviewed. If the study design, the handling of data, the analysis, and the conclusions pass muster (often with changes made at the suggestion of the anonymous referees), then it's published. Other professionals can use that to guide their own research or their own practice, or might choose to try to replicate the findings. Never does anyone read a journal article and say "Well, now that's settled." And, of course, any journal that had the faintest whiff of kowtowing to advertisers would be instantly dead in the water.
We don't know exactly what Martin's specific agenda is here, but we assume it has something to do with stifling articles about masking, vaccination, or both. He's a conspiracist and a hard-core Trumper, so this would make sense. Needless to say, the editors of these journals do not give a damn about his inquiries, or whatever threat is implied by his letters. Beyond the fact that there is a little thing called the First Amendment, Chest, for example, is based in the Chicago area. Last we checked, Chicago is not in Washington, DC (of course, our map still says "Gulf of Mexico," so it may be outdated).
We also don't exactly understand Martin's broader agenda, either. Here is what we mean. His main audience is Donald Trump, and undoubtedly Trump is thrilled with many of these stunts. However, the Dear Leader has already given his blessing to Martin by nominating him to be U.S. Attorney. At this point, it would seem to us that the more important audience, assuming Martin wants that "acting" to be removed from his title, is the 53 Republicans in the U.S. Senate. And all of these fascist-adjacent actions are not helping him with the Lisa Murkowskis (AK) and John Curtises (UT) of the world.
Again, it is possible that Martin is a moron, and does not know how the game is played. It is also possible that he's a True Believer™, and that he either cannot wait to get to work on his theocratic fantasies, or that he cannot imagine that anyone thinks differently than he does.
However, our best guess is that Martin has decided that the audience of one is still the one that matters. It could be that, with the various dirty deeds in his past (e.g., appearing on Russian propaganda outlets hundreds of times, and then "forgetting" to mention that in his Senate confirmation paperwork), Martin knows he won't be confirmed, and so wants Trump to keep him on in an acting capacity for as long as is possible. Or it could be that Martin believes Trump can muscle the nomination across the finish line with a few phone calls, and he wants to give the President every motivation to make those phone calls. Whatever is going on here, it will be very interesting when Martin finally comes up for confirmation. (Z)