The Washington Post has a bit of a Washington, D.C., real estate scoop to report. It turns out that a rash of recent property sales in a block just east of the U.S. Capitol were not mere coincidence, but a quiet move by the Conservative Partnership Institute, chaired by hard-right former Sen. Jim DeMint and Donald Trump seditious conspiracy ally Mark Meadows.

So that's what Mark Meadows has been doing between dodging demands for his testimony about the Trump White House's involvement in helping to assemble a violent, armed mob and march them to the Capitol as part of a wider effort to nullify the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential elections. He's been leading an effort to purchase over $40 million worth of connected or nearly-connected real estate using a series of shell companies, all for the purposes of creating a new "academy" supporting sex traffickers, white nationalism, and attempts to topple the U.S. government on behalf of whichever new Dear Leader figure next wedges his way into the movement's underpants.

CPI is calling the nine gathered properties "Patriots' Row," and they have big plans for it. Their most recent annual report spells it out:

[...] For five years now, we've been forming the networks and the strategies—and building the permanent infrastructure—that the conservative movement has needed for far too long.

With our expanded presence in D.C., we're launching CPI Academy—a formal program of training for congressional staff and current and future members of the movement. With your support, our culture and community will grow and become more united and more effective.

Oh Lord, Mark freaking Meadows is building a School of Sedition. A University of Un-American Activities. An Insurrection Institute with a tenured treason track.

Patriots’ Row? That’s a bold one, but, as Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin cracked to the Post, it should probably be called "Seditionist Square."

Now, if you are a perennially wrong sort of person, you might be questioning why this new CPI move to create a close-to-Congress "campus" that trains Republican staffers and elected officials is going to be the sedition-spewing monstrosity Republicanism's critics believe it will be. It's because CPI is extraordinarily tied-in with the most sedition-backing members of Congress, and has been backing fraudulent talk of election hoaxes even after every one of them was well and thoroughly debunked.

In addition to being the new resting point of Donald Trump's last and most cowardly chief of staff, the one who stood by and did nothing as a pro-Trump mob sent by Trump himself violently attacked police officers in an attempt to capture Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress who were seen as standing in the way of Trump's return to power, here are some of the other names connected to or promoted by this Meadows-DeMint grift:

• Sedition-backing Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and white nationalist Paul Gosar.
• Sedition-backing Republican drug orgy boy and credibly accused sex trafficker Rep. Matt Gaetz.
• Trump administration white nationalist and sedition advocate Stephen Miller.
• Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who joined Trump on his phone call to Georgia election officials pressuring them to alter vote totals. The Post notes that Mitchell's "Election Integrity Network" was still calling the 2020 election "rigged" as late as last July, tweeting that "Trump won."

So yes, we can be quite sure that Meadows, who remains unindicted despite his own role in helping Trump to assemble an insurrection-seeking mob, to direct them to Congress, to direct them specifically to the fleeing Mike Pence, and who sought to take advantage of the violence even as it was underway, is focusing "Institute" efforts on the seditionist hard-right.

That's not to say the new CPI Academy might not offer training on how to be a better white nationalist or how to get away with holding hotel-based cocaine and sex parties without anyone else in Republicanism or the Republican base giving a damn, but the think tank's current focus seems squarely on pushing whatever new conspiracy theories about "leftists" can best justify Republicanism's push to exercise non-democratic power after the nation's democracy gave them one too many movement setbacks.

"In 2022, the Left tried to drag America further into a dark future of totalitarianism, chaotic elections, and cultural decay," opens the CPI's annual report. It references COVID-19 vaccination conspiracy theories, brags about strict "ideological vetting" of would-be congressional staffers to make sure they hold the proper views "on border security and immigration" and on "life," and a partnership with the fascist hoax-obsessed Turning Point USA.

It's still remarkable to me that Republicanism has absolutely no problems propping up even central figures in an attempted overthrow of our nation's government, giving them new offices, new salaries, and new powers to further enable others who backed the seditious plot. It's not remarkable that they would try; it's remarkable that they succeed without the slightest difficulty, simply because nobody in the Republican Party, the Republican National Committee, among Republican staffers or Republican voters give a flying damn about staging a violent coup inside the U.S. Capitol. All of these people are only irritated that it didn't work.

Republicanism is a fascist movement, and if you want more evidence of that, then look at the awards and the new paychecks each of those most closely tied to the seditious conspiracy have been giving each other in the two years since their first attempt failed. There's literally nothing you can do to be ostracized from the party except to oppose the coup attempt, as Liz Cheney did. If Matt Gaetz wanted to do a line of coke off the Capitol statuary, lead a naked underage teen through the gallery, and attack Democratic lawmakers with a smuggled-in knife, the Conservative Partnership Institute would give him an award and name a conference room in his honor.

Backing an attempted coup is nothing to Mark Meadows. He doesn't care, Jim DeMint doesn't care, and nobody wandering into the new institute for insurrectionists cares even one little bit.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.