It’s been hard to avoid Texas and Florida’s policy and political decisions these days. They’ve both taken a hard right turn and have elected officials who frequently create what is at the root of their biggest complaints. Chris Hayes sent me straight down the rabbit hole of Texas Gun Dealers and Smugglers when I first heard that Mexico was suing U.S. Gun Manufacturers. Russel L. Honoré woke me to the instances of gangs in Haiti and the breakdown of governance and its relationship to gun Smugglers from Florida. Both of the states are banning books, punishing women who require reproductive care, and terrorizing their LGBTQ communities. Both Texas and Florida have had instances of terrible mass shootings and have done nothing to address the root causes. They basically have no control over the explosion of the demand and access to automatic weapons. They appear indifferent that much of that demand comes from arms smugglers who constantly buy large amounts of guns and send them south.
No one needs a weapon of war. It’s a bigger version of the state of Vermont, whose lax gun laws have historically created a problem for its neighbors. Vermont has recently strengthened its laws and now stands as #18 for gun law strength. The biggest problem within Vermont was suicide by gun. They’ve now instituted a program and red-flag laws specifically tailored to address the issue. These statistics are from Everytown Research & Policy, which allows you to track many different public policies for your city and state. Texas is rated #32, while Florida is rated #22. Louisiana is #26. The South is plagued by a gun culture.
We don’t hear much about this, but the Biden-Harris DOJ has an initiative to stop the flow of guns out of the United States that are going to our neighbors in the South. Its primary focus is on the gun traffic to Mexico, which goes directly to the Cartels. Did you know that Mexican laws make it illegal to purchase or have a semiautomatic weapon? It’s our guns that are used to terrorize the locals and send them fleeing to us. It also gives these same folks money to purchase Fentynal to take care of the Opioid addicts in the US who use it in place of the OxyCotin they were given by their doctors who were told by Big Pharma Purdue that its pain drug wasn’t addictive. It is. It’s like the 21st Century Triangle Trade. (Read that link. It goes to UMass Law and a discussion of the company’s bankruptcy and how the Sackler family was shielded from liability.)
The Biden-Harris Administration continues to take significant and historic actions to disrupt the trafficking of illicit fentanyl and dismantle firearms trafficking networks. Drug traffickers’ supply of firearms enables them to grow their enterprises and move deadly drugs, including illicit fentanyl, into the United States. They use these weapons, which consist of everything from handguns to high caliber and assault weapons, against the Mexican people, including law enforcement and military personnel who try to stop their operations. That’s why discovering, disrupting, and dismantling firearms trafficking networks is critical to the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to combat illicit fentanyl.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has revived Mexico’s $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers, which previously was dismissed by a lower court.
Despite the broad immunity granted to gun-makers by the U.S. Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, the Boston-based appeals court unanimously found that Mexico’s lawsuit “plausibly alleges a type of claim that is statutorily exempt from the [act’s] general prohibition,” Reuters reported on Jan. 22.
Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, the lawyer leading the lawsuit for the Mexican government, told El País in an interview on Jan. 25 that the decision to revive the case was “historic.”
“Not only will we have the opportunity to present our evidence, we will be able to ask the defendant companies to share their evidence with us…. That’s the kind of information we’re going to get in litigation. It could be a gold mine,” he said.
The appeals court decision overturns a lower court’s 2022 dismissal, which found that foreign governments cannot sue under U.S. law. It marks a significant legal advancement for Mexico, supported by U.S. gun control advocates.
Mexico has argued that the actions of gun manufacturers have contributed directly to the violence within its national borders.
The lawsuit seeks financial damages and aims to hold these manufacturers accountable for their role in international arms trafficking and related harms, such as declining investment and economic activity in Mexico.
Other companies named in the suit are Beretta USA, Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, Colt’s Manufacturing Co., and Glock Inc. All have denied wrongdoing.
The U.S. law typically shields gun manufacturers from liability for the improper use of their products. The gun companies have argued that Mexico does not have legal standing to sue. (See ACT, September 2022.)
The lower court agreed with the immunity argument, ruling that the law prohibits legal action brought by foreign governments. The appeals court determined that the law was designed only to protect lawful firearms-related commerce and not the problem Mexico identified, namely, companies accused of aiding and abetting illegal gun sales by knowingly facilitating the trafficking of firearms into the country.
According to Celorio Alcántara, the gun-makers unsuccessfully attempted to distance themselves from the issue of gun trafficking by describing the scale and scope of supply chains and the number of individuals involved in those processes.
Mexico, on the other hand, focused on the U.S. law and why it did not apply. “We pointed out that [it] has no extraterritorial effect, that there is a direct violation of the machine gun export ban, and that the defendant companies violate state and federal laws,” Celorio Alcántara said.
The decision to revive the case could pave the way for other litigation against gun manufacturers on similar grounds, potentially affecting how firearms are marketed, distributed, and regulated within the United States and internationally.
“Other countries will surely be able to analyze whether this decision…gives them a window to sue, such as Jamaica, Canada, or other countries that are suffering from the same problem,” Celorio Alcántara said.
As the Mexican case proceeds, it likely will encounter more legal and political hurdles given the power of the gun lobby, contentious gun control debates in the United States, and intricate legal arguments surrounding the law.
The right to own a firearm is guaranteed in the constitutions of both the U.S. and Mexico, but the chances of a Mexican citizen legally obtaining a gun in Mexico are slim.
Gun laws in Mexico are highly restrictive–there is only one gun store from which Mexicans can buy firearms legally in the entire country. Meanwhile, the U.S. has the largest legal gun market in the world.
But many of the guns legally purchased in the U.S. do not stay in the U.S.
Over 2.5 million illicit American guns have crossed into Mexico over the last decade. Over that time, more than 215,000 people have been murdered in Mexico.
According to the Center for American Progress, the U.S. is the primary source of weapons used in violent crimes in Mexico. In 2018, more than 20,000 of the 30,000 intentional murders in Mexico were committed with firearms.
Most of the guns trafficked into Mexico are military and assault style rifles. For years, the Mexican government has urged the U.S. to reinstate the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which made it “unlawful for a person to manufacture, transfer, or possess” a semi-automatic assault weapon. The law was adopted with a sunset clause and expired in 2004, even though the majority of Americans supported a ban at the time.
Today, 67% of Americans support a ban on military and assault-style weapons.
The semi-automatic, military style weapons that cross the U.S.-Mexico border, which were formerly banned under U.S. federal law, are now legal unless banned by state or local law. Arizona, for example, has not banned semi-automatic weapons, nor does the state require private sellers to initiate a background check when transferring a firearm.
More than 90% of Americans support background checks for all gun sales, yet a loophole in federal gun laws–known as the “private sale exemption” or “gun show loophole”–exempts unlicensed sellers from having to perform a background check before selling a firearm. This exemption helps legally purchased U.S. guns easily find their way into the hands of gun traffickers.
For some in Mexico, firearms trafficking is just another way to earn a living. Traffickers can purchase firearms in the U.S. and turn around to sell them in Mexico. They can get upwards of three times what they spent in Arizona at a gun show or through a private U.S. seller. Organized crime and drug trafficking operations take advantage of this supply chain and traffic both in bulk and little by little.
Between 2011 and 2016, over 70% of the 106,000 guns used in violent crimes in Mexico originated in the U.S. Those 160,000 guns represent a small fraction of the total number of weapons crossing the border from the U.S. into Mexico. In 2019, around 28,465 weapons, mostly handguns, were legally sold to Mexico. Yet, it is estimated that between 2010 and 2012, nearly 213,000 legally purchased firearms in the U.S. were illegally smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border. These 213,000 firearms represented 2.2% of arms sales in the U.S. during that time, valued at around $200 million.
U.S.-sourced guns are not only contributing to lethal crime and political instability in Mexico, but also Central America. From 2014 to 2016, 49% of guns used in the commission of a crime seized in El Salvador, and 45% seized in Honduras, were originally purchased in the U.S. This supply chain leads to the displacement of Central Americans fleeing violence in their home countries.
On Tuesday night, friends gathered to mourn the death of a woman who was shot and killed over the weekend.
Diamond Brigman was transgender, which left some wondering if she was targeted.
She was only 36.
Brigman’s friends said her killing is a stark reminder of the violence that trans women, especially Black trans women, face. She was shot and killed while standing on the side of Country Creek Street in southwest Houston early Saturday morning.
A little after 1 a.m. that morning, Houston police said surveillance video showed a white Chevy Malibu circle the area several times before a man got out of the passenger side of the car and opened fire on Brigman.
“Shot numerous pistol rounds out of the car. And, of course, the result of that is this individual dead on the side of the road,” an investigator said at the scene.
The shooter was described as being about 5 feet, 5 inches tall. Police said the shooter and the driver ditched the car and ran. They still haven’t been found.
“She was larger than life she had a lot of energy and always smiling and personable,” Joelle Espeut said.
Espeut is a local trans advocate and a friend of Brigman. She said crimes like this shouldn’t be happening in 2024.
“The rate and level of violence that is inflicted on Black trans women is parallel to the violence that is inflicted upon Black cisgender women,” Espeut said.
She said the majority of the killers are the same, too.
“Both Black trans women and Black cisgender women are being killed and murdered through intimate partner violence,” Espeut said.
Diamond Brigman. Say her name. Violence against women continues to plague this country. “When Your Home State Also Becomes Your Abuser’ The leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide, most often by an abusive partner with a gun. And Texas is forcing victims to stay pregnant while making it easier for abusers to get guns.” This is from HuffPo. It’s reported by Alanna Vagianos.
The leading cause of death among pregnant and postpartum women in the U.S. is homicide, most often by an abusive partner with a gun. Pregnant and postpartum women are more than twice as likely to be murdered than to die from sepsis, hypertensive disorders or hemorrhage.
Experts tell HuffPost other states with abortion bans are also seeing an increase in domestic violence, but Texas stands out for a few reasons. The state was the first to severely restrict abortion in 2021, forcing women to stay pregnant nearly a year before Roe fell and exposing domestic violence victims to more violence with fewer ways to escape. At the same time, the Lone Star state has the largest rate of gun sales in the country and continues to have lax firearm restrictions. The state is so firearm friendly that gun rights groups chose it as the testing ground for a Supreme Court case that will determine if domestic abusers get to keep their guns.
In the last decade, the amount of women shot and killed by an abuser has nearly doubled in Texas.
Blame and punish the victim. It’s a Republican policy thing. These things wouldn’t even pass Richard Nixon’s muster. It’s a game to see how cruel we can be!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Together we’ll stand, divided we’ll fall Come on now people, let’s get on the ball and work together Come on, come on let’s work together, now, now people Because together we will stand, every boy, every girl, and a man Before when things go wrong, as they sometimes will And the road you travel, it stays all uphill Let’s work together, come on, come on, let’s work together, ah You know together we will stand, every boy, girl, woman, and a man Oh well now, two or three minutes, two or three hours What does it matter now, in this life of ours Let’s work together, come on, come on Let’s work together, now, now people Because together we will stand, every boy, every woman, and a man Oh, come on Oh come on, let’s work together Oh well now, make someone happy, make someone smile Let’s all work together and make life worthwhile Let’s work together, come on, come on Let’s work together, now, now people Because together we will stand, every boy, girl, woman, and a man Ah, yeah Well now, together we will stand, every boy, girl, woman, and a man Ah, yeah
At the Gardner Museum, an empty frame hangs where a painting was stolen.
Before I get started on today’s political news, I wanted to note the anniversary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist on Monday. It’s a Boston story I’ve always found fascinating. I’m illustrating this post with some of the 13 missing works of art.
BOSTON — Thirty-four years ago two thieves robbed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, making off with hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen artwork. The heist has been the subject of mystery and documentaries ever since.
“I have been here for a long time looking for these, and I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t affect me. I walk by the empty frames every day,” said Anthony Amore, Director of Security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
In 1990, two men snuck into the museum disguised as police officers answering a distress call. The duo tied up to two guards and were in the museum for 81 minutes. They made off with numerous pieces of art including 13 works from famous painters like Rembrandt. The art is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“I believe that information is going to come in, or I am going to get the stuff first, but one way or another we will get the art back,” said Amore.
Over the past year, the museum and the FBI have received hundreds of tips and emails. Amore says most are theories or conjecture, but a few are an occasional tip. He says 20 of those calls came from people who thought they spotted the works of art on the wall during house showings or on pictures from Zillow. They were just reproductions used to stage the homes for sale.
“There is a lot of these things out there, and when we do see things from Zillow, or any other real estate website, we don’t look at it and say, ‘That is our painting.’ Nevertheless, we follow it,” said Amore. “I am amazed that people notice because Zillow has millions of listings, and people go through and go, ‘That’s that missing Gardner painting.”
There is a $10 million reward for information leading to finding the paintings.
In the pre-dawn hours of March 18, 1990, following a festive St. Patrick’s Day in Boston, two men dressed as police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and walked off with an estimated $500 million in art treasures. Despite efforts by the local police, federal agents, amateur sleuths and not a few journalists, no one has found any of the 13 works lost in the largest art theft in history, including a rare Vermeer and three precious Rembrandts.
The Concert, by Johannes Vermeer
The legacy of the heist is always apparent to museum visitors who, decades later, still confront vacant frames on the gallery walls where paintings once hung. They are kept there as a reminder of loss, museum officials say, and in the hope that the works may eventually return. Last month, Richard Abath, the night watchman who mistakenly allowed in the thieves, died at 57. He was a vital figure in an investigation that remains active, but where the trails have grown cold.
Here are five oddities that make this one of the most compelling of American crimes.
The thieves took a really strange array of stuff.
Important paintings were taken from their frames during the heist. But other items that were stolen were not nearly of the same caliber: a nondescript Chinese metal vase; a fairly ordinary bronze eagle from atop a flagpole; and five minor sketches by Degas. The thieves walked past paintings and jade figurines worth millions, including a drawing by Michelangelo, yet they spent some of their 81 minutes inside fussing to free the vase from a tricky locking mechanism.
The handcuffed guard was later scrutinized.
Abath, one of two guards on duty, was handcuffed and gagged with duct tape. He was never named a suspect. But over the years investigators continued to review his behavior because he had, against protocol, opened the museum door to the thieves. (The second guard, who is still living, was never a focus of investigative interest.) The F.B.I. monitored Abath’s assets for decades but never saw any suspicious income. He consistently said he told investigators everything he knew, and an F.B.I. polygraph he voluntarily took was deemed “inconclusive.”
The empty frames have stayed on the walls.
The museum was once Gardner’s home and she wanted to ensure that her expansive art collection was displayed in the same manner she had arranged it. She stipulated in her will that not a thing was to be removed or rearranged, or the collection should be shipped to Paris for auction, with the money going to Harvard University. Though it’s long been reported that the empty frames are left hanging to accord with that will, the museum says that is actually a long uncorrected mistake. “We have chosen to display them,” it said in a statement “because 1.) we remain confident that the works will someday return to their rightful place in the galleries; and 2.) they are a poignant reminder of the loss to the public of these unique works.”
Read the rest at the NYT.
I wish I could spend the day reading about famous art thefts and missing or recovered paintings, but I suppose I’d better take a look at the politics news . . .
On Monday Judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon shocked legal observers with a strange order.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s proposal tips the scales so far in Trump’s direction that legal experts say the prosecutor, Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, might ask an appeals court to remove her from the case.
Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney, said the Presidential Records Act isn’t a way around rules for handling classified documents because the records are still government property, not Trump’s personal possessions.
Rembrandt von Rijn Self-Portrait
“Expect their response to be hard-hitting,” Vance said of prosecutors in a post on Substack. “The bottom line is that the Presidential Records Act doesn’t forgive Trump for violating criminal laws regarding handling of national secrets.” [….]
Cannon gave lawyers for Trump and Smith until April 2 to submit proposed jury instructions for the eventual trial. The order on Monday came after a hearing in which she didn’t resolve the dispute over whether the documents fell under the Presidential Records Act.
But her order called for lawyers on both sides to “engage” with two possible instructions she proposed.
In one, Cannon said jurors should “make a factual finding as to whether the government had proven beyond a reasonable doubt” the records are personal or presidential.
In the other, Cannon proposed telling jurors “a president has sole authority under the PRA to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency. Neither a court nor a jury is permitted to make or review such as categorization decision.”
Neither of those instructions reflects what the Presidential Records Act says.
Legal experts blasted the order as “insane” and “nuts.”
George Conway, another lawyer and frequent critic of Trump, argued Cannon shouldn’t be hearing the case and shouldn’t even be a federal judge. Cannon was appointed by Trump and has been widely criticized for decisions that have delayed the trial, including two overturned by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Vance said both proposals from Cannon “virtually direct the jury to find Trump not guilty.”
“It turns out it’s two pages of crazy stemming from the Judge’s apparent inability to tell Trump no when it comes to his argument that he turned the nation’s secrets into his personal records by designating them as such under the Presidential Records Act,” Vance said.
Read more about the Presidential Records Act at USA Today.
The MAGA-friendly federal judge who keeps siding with Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago classified records case has forced prosecutors to make a stark choice: allow jurors to see a huge trove of national secrets or let him go.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ultimatum Monday night came as a surprise twist in what could have been a simple order; one merely asking federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers for proposed jury instructions at the upcoming trial.
Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, by Rembrandt van Rijn
But as she has done repeatedly, Cannon used this otherwise innocuous legal step as yet another way to swing the case wildly in favor of the man who appointed her while he was president.
Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith must now choose whether to allow jurors at the upcoming criminal trial to peruse the many classified records found at the former president’s South Florida mansion or give jurors instructions that would effectively order them to acquit him.
Alternatively, Smith could appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, where more experienced judges have already overturned Cannon and reined her in. But doing that will only further delay a trial that’s at least three months behind schedule, entirely by the judge’s own design. (She froze the investigation and tried to slow-roll document review until the appellate court forced her to stop.)
…[O]ver the last six months, a slow-moving car-crash of a case has been unfolding, with a judge who seems committed to protecting the former president at every turn of the road. In that case, Judge Aileen Cannon is adjudicating the prosecution of the former president in the classified documents case in a haphazard way at best. At worst, she is doing all she can to protect the former president from facing the classified documents case before the election, if at all.
Her recent rulings—announcing she is likely to release the names of the government’s witnesses and potentially expose them to ridicule and violence, and a highly questionable decision on how she may instruct the jury should we ever get one—do not just make special counsel Jack Smith’s case more difficult. In a perverse way, the more difficult she makes it, she might actually help Smith in the end.
Should Smith ask an appellate court to review Judge Cannon’s rulings, not only is he likely to get those decisions reversed, her actions to delay and attempt to block the effort to bring the former president to justice may end up getting her removed from the case altogether.
In many respects, we’ve been here before. Back in 2022, in a highly questionable move, Judge Cannon presided over a case challenging the FBI’s entry into Mar-a-Lago pursuant to a lawful subpoena to determine whether the former president was harboring classified documents there (he was). Her willingness to entertain such a brazen and unprecedented effort should have been laughed out of court. Instead, she intervened in that case to protect the former president.
The appeals court “roundly criticized” Trump for filing the case and Cannon for accepting Trump’s arguments and order the case dismissed.
That order to dismiss the underlying case was one filed by Trump. Here, should Smith appeal and prevail on any of the questionable decisions issued by Judge Cannon, the remedy would not include dismissal of that case.
That does not mean Smith is without recourse. Should Smith prevail, an appellate court would be well within its rights to send it back to the trial court, but unlike where it ordered Cannon to dismiss the case brought by Trump, here, it could direct that a different judge take up the matter.
And that is exactly what might happen if Judge Cannon continues to do what should seem obvious that she is doing to anyone watching this matter: she is putting her thumb on the scale in favor of the defendant over and over again.
If Judge Cannon keeps going down this road, Smith can seek an immediate appeal of any of those orders that seem to improperly hamstring his prosecution and ask the appellate court. In this instance, that would be the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the same court that previously overturned Cannon in her fool’s errand related to the search of Mar-a-Lago. Smith can ask the court to not just overturn those orders, but also re-assign the case to a different judge.
I hope this latest insanity from Cannon will convince Smith he needs to get her removed from the case.
If Mr Trump wants to continue his appeal in the case without the state seizing the fine from him, he must submit the full amount in cash or secure a bond from a private company by 25 March.
But on Monday, his lawyers said that despite their “diligent efforts” it had been “practically impossible” to find a company willing to act as a guarantor of the full sum and asked for a pause.
“We really are in a moment of serious crisis for Trump personally, as well as for his business,” said Professor Will Thomas from the University of Michigan Ross Business School.
So with the clock seemingly ticking, here’s what could happen next in the case.
If Mr Trump wants to continue his appeal in the case without the state seizing the fine from him, he must submit the full amount in cash or secure a bond from a private company by 25 March.
But on Monday, his lawyers said that despite their “diligent efforts” it had been “practically impossible” to find a company willing to act as a guarantor of the full sum and asked for a pause.
“We really are in a moment of serious crisis for Trump personally, as well as for his business,” said Professor Will Thomas from the University of Michigan Ross Business School.
So with the clock seemingly ticking, here’s what could happen next in the case….
A panel of appeals court judges will decide by 25 March whether the $464m judgement can be paused while Mr Trump appeals.
This would be a best case scenario for the former president, who is no doubt eager to avoid having to pay an estimated 16% of what Forbes reports is his $2.6bn net worth.
The fact that Mr Trump has assets in the state of New York that can be seized, however, could reassure a court that he would be able to pay the penalty if he lost the appeal, according to Mr Thomas….
“I think it is very likely that he will get some kind of stay – unless they find some other stopgap option,” he told the BBC.
I certainly hope that doesn’t happen. Trump has gotten enough special treatment. The next possibility:
Mr Trump could still find a way to secure a bond – for a fee – if his request for a stay is rejected, although according to his lawyers, this could be difficult.
The bonding company would be agreeing to pay the financial penalty if Mr Trump loses his appeal and cannot do so himself.
But his legal team said they had already approached 30 companies without success.
Read about the other possibilities at the link. Again I’m sick and tired of Trump getting special treatment.
Donald Trump and his co-defendants were in talks with insurance giant Chubb for a $464 million appeal bond in the former president’s civil fraud case, but the company backed out — days after it raised eyebrows for giving Trump a bond in a separate case, according to a Trump lawyer.
Chubb was one of more than 30 companies that refused to craft a bond that would put the massive business fraud judgment on pause, attorneys for Trump said in a New York appeals court filing Monday.
The attorneys in that filing asked the appeals court to “put the brakes” on the judgment before New York Attorney General Letitia James can start to collect on it — a process that could begin as soon as next week. James has said she will seize Trump’s assets if he cannot pay the judgment.
A panel of judges on that court has yet to rule on Trump’s request to pause the judgment without him having to post a fully secured bond.
Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said in that filing that Chubb was the only company willing to consider underwriting an appeal bond secured by a blend of liquid assets and real property.
The other companies — which included Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Liberty Mutual, Allianz, and Travelers — wanted only cash or other liquid assets.
More details at the link.
In other news . . .
Yesterday the Supreme Court gave Texas the go-ahead to enforce a new law allowing police to arrest people they suspect of being undocumented immigrants. An appeals court quickly blocked the law again, according to the Texas Tribune. Texas’ new immigration law is blocked again.
A federal appeals court late Tuesday night stopped a state law allowing Texas police to arrest people suspected of illegally crossing the Texas-Mexico border — hours after the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed it to go into effect.
Earlier in the day, the high court had allowed the law to go into effect after it sent the case back to the appeals court, urging it to issue a ruling promptly. The appeals court soon scheduled a hearing for Wednesday morning. And on the night before hearing oral arguments the appeals court issued an order to let a lower court’s earlier injunction stopping Senate Bill 4 stand, according to a filing.
Edgar Degas, La Sortie de Pesage
The Supreme Court earlier Tuesday let SB 4 go into effect but stopped short of ruling on the law’s constitutionality, which has been challenged by the Biden administration.
Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas at Austin law professor, said the back-and-forth is “indefensibly chaotic.”
“Even if that means SB 4 remains paused indefinitely, hopefully everyone can agree that this kind of judicial whiplash is bad for everyone,” he said.
SB 4 seeks to make illegally crossing the border a Class B misdemeanor, carrying a punishment of up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.
The law also requires state judges to order migrants returned to Mexico if they are convicted; local law enforcement would be responsible for transporting migrants to the border. A judge could drop the charges if a migrant agrees to return to Mexico voluntarily.
Mexico will not accept deportations made by Texas “under any circumstances,” the country’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow Texas to arrest migrants who cross into the state without authorization.
The ministry condemned the state law, known as Senate Bill 4, saying it would separate families, violate the human rights of migrants and generate “hostile environments” for the more than 10 million people of Mexican origin living in Texas.
Mexico’s top diplomat for North America, Roberto Velasco Álvarez, rejected the ruling on the social media on Tuesday, saying that immigration policy was something to be negotiated between federal governments.
The Mexican government has severely criticized the measure since last year, and rejected the idea of local or state agencies, rather than federal authorities, detaining and returning migrants and asylum seekers to Mexican territory.
More details at the NYT link.
Those are the biggest stories today, as I see it. What do you think? What else is happening?
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The outrageous speech given by Trump in Dayton, Ohio, over the weekend, has grabbed the attention of the media. Despite Republican damage control, few believe that his use of the term “bloodbath” meant anything but calling the deplorables back to riot and insurgency if he doesn’t get his way. He has a lot of bad news this week, so be prepared for more rhetorical evil like this. Aaron Blake writes this at the Washington Post.“‘Bloodbath’ aside, Trump’s violent rhetoric is unambiguous. Trump has already warned of “riots,” “violence in the streets” and “death & destruction” if he’s wronged. All of that context is vital.”
In an interview with Donald Trump that aired over the weekend, Fox News host Howard Kurtz presented Trump with a not-exactly-novel theory: that Trump uses “over the top, sometimes inflammatory language” to draw attention.
Trump conceded that “if you don’t use certain words, that maybe are not very nice words, nothing will happen.”
The weekend provided ample evidence of that dynamic, particularly whenTrump invited yet another tempest with his violent rhetoric. This time, he warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses in November. Trump’s allies claim he’s being taken out of context and unfairly attacked.
To recap: Appearing at a rally in Ohio, Trump riffed on his proposal for a 100 percent tariff on Chinese-made cars to protect the U.S. auto industry.
“Now, if I don’t get elected,” he continued, “it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
Here’s what we can say: Trump might indeed have been speaking metaphorically in this case. But the broader context here is vital. And that context is that Trump has repeatedly invoked the prospect of actual violence by his supporters while speaking about similar circumstances — his losing or facing criminal accountability, for example. We also saw a pronounced example of his supporters seizing on his rhetoric when they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Which makes it much more difficult to dismiss the “bloodbath” comment as overheated rhetoric. Trump is, at the very least, deliberately playing with fire. And this is merely the most recent example.
Trump backers and even some conservative Trump critics dismissed the comment as, more or less, standard-issue political rhetoric. Some suggested that Trump was merely talking about a “bloodbath” for the auto industry (even though he was clearly saying the “bloodbath” would extend beyond that industry).
I have no idea why anyone would give him any wiggle room on this unless they are scared of his rabid and well-armed idiots. We see more of his usual contempt for law and democracy in a new headline today in The Guardian. “Trump calls for Liz Cheney to be jailed for investigating him over Capitol attack. “Adam Gabbat reports the story.
Donald Trump has renewed calls for Liz Cheney – his most prominent Republican critic – to be jailed for her role in investigating his actions during the January 6 Capitol attack launched by his supporters in 2021, a move that is bound to raise further fears that the former president could persecute his political opponents if given another White House term.
In posts on Sunday on his Truth Social platform, Trump said other members of the congressional committee that investigated the Capitol attack – and concluded he had plotted to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat to Joe Biden – should be imprisoned.
Those statements followed Trump’s previous comments that he would act like a “dictator” on the first day of a second presidency if given one by voters.
Cheney, who served as vice-chair of the January 6 committee and was one of two Republicans on the panel, lost her seat in the House of Representatives to a Trump-backed challenger, Harriet Hageman, in 2022. She responded later on Sunday, saying her fellow Republican Trump was “afraid of the truth”.
Trump has been charged with four felonies in relation to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. The US supreme court is considering Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity from prosecution in the case because he served as president from 2017 to 2021.
Elizabeth Crisp of The Hillreports on what one Trump primary challenger has faced recently. “Hutchinson says decision not to endorse Trump’ costly and difficult’.”
Hutchinson says in the piece that he voted for Trump twice, but that insight gleaned from former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) and the Department of Justice on the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol changed his mind.
“In terms of history, we all witnessed the violent attack on our national Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by those wishing to overturn the last election,” he writes. “This was not an act of patriots as Trump likes to say, but it was a real threat to democracy.”
Nearly 400 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees during the riot, including more than 100 people who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.
“With Donald Trump’s domination of the GOP primaries and the elimination of all primary opponents, including the party leadership and Republican elected officials are clicking their heels in obedience to the victor and presumptive nominee. I have not endorsed Donald Trump for president, and I will not do so,” he writes.
“A bloodbath.” What would you say if you saw this in another country? https://t.co/aUnNAoAWfE
I know what friends in other countries are saying about us and Trump’s befuddled lies and ugliness. They can’t believe we would let this happen, and I can’t either. Another headline in today’s Washington Post lets us know that we cannot ignore the Trump push to replace democracy with a MAGAtrocity. “Pro-Trump disruptions in Arizona county elevate fears for the 2024 vote. A meeting in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, ended chaotically last month, raising concern that the former president’s supporters could try to undercut the election.” They’re trying to make our elections mirror those of Putin.
As the board of supervisors for Arizona’s largest county abruptly ended a meeting late last month, a swarm of people rushed toward the dais, shouting that the members were illegitimate.
The Maricopa County leaders made a beeline for a side door and were swiftly escorted out of the chamber by security guards, who called for backup from the sheriff’s office. After the meeting’s live-feed went dead, a member of the crowd yelled that a “revolution” was underway.
“I’m here today to put you on public notice and to inform you that you are not our elected officials,” said Michelle Klann, co-founder of a pro-Trump group, from a podium she had commandeered. “This is an act of insurrection. Due to all the voter fraud, you have never been formally voted in.”
The scene at the Feb. 28 meeting terrified many Maricopa employees and others who were reminded of what happened after Joe Biden won the county — and, with it, Arizona — in the 2020 presidential race. Back then,Trump supporters used baseless fraud claims to try to pressure or scare elected leaders into changing the results for the metro Phoenix county, which is home to more than half of Arizona’s residents.
Louisiana has become the latest state to be taken over by White Christian Fascists. Big John Stanton writes about the latest shady moves through special sessions that throw our state back into the Dark Ages. “One Landry to Bind Them All: Under the watchful eye of Gov. Jeff Landry, Republicans push a regressive legislative agenda.”
The regular session of the state legislature has only just begun, but Republicans have already notched scores of key legislative victories thanks to two special sessions and a series of executive orders remaking the state government in Gov. Jeff Landry’s image.
The breakneck pace at which Republicans have dismantled the modest criminal justice reforms of the past decade has been nothing short of breathtaking. In less than two weeks last month, they not only undid decades of hard work to modernize the state’s justice system but instituted new punitive policies, including eliminating parole and authorizing new, inhumane forms of capital punishment.
And they’re not done. Lawmakers are proposing a number of additional criminal justice bills increasing prison sentences for some convictions to legalizing vehicular homicides under certain circumstances.
But those changes during the second special session are likely only the beginning of a broad push to impose a host of often cruel conservative policy positions. Lawmakers in the House and Senate are once again targeting the LGBTQ community — particularly transgender and gender nonconforming people — with a series of bills legislating their very identities.
Republicans and business interests also are gunning for what remains of Louisiana’s already weak labor protections, ranging from eliminating key child labor rules to banning public sector unions.
The rights of young people are also under assault in a host of areas, including proposals to require the Ten Commandments be posted in public schools, ban their ability to freely use social media, limit the types of books they can find in libraries and further restrict their ability to make health care decisions.
Even bar owners find themselves in the GOP’s sights this year, with bills to raise the age of bartenders, make concealed carry legal in their establishments and even put them on the hook for liability if someone underage is served and is involved in a DUI.
His latest move on education is frightening. It adds to the data that we live in a police state here.
The more Jeff Landry robs public schools to fund private corporations, the more crime will increase pic.twitter.com/0XPZACxaoG
States that adopt the MAGAtrocity agenda move back to the Dark Ages Quickly.
"[Idaho] has lost 22 percent of its practicing OGBYNs in the 15 months following Dobbs… 55 percent of the state’s high-risk OB-GYNs have left the state, leaving less than five in the entire state to treat patients." https://t.co/LNvjquMGsR
Former President Donald Trump has not been able to get a bond to secure the $464 million civil fraud judgment against him, his lawyers said in a court filing Monday.
Trump and his company need to post a bond for the full amount by next week in order to stop New York Attorney General Letitia James from being able to collect while he appeals. They’ve asked an appeals court to step in in the meantime and said Monday that they have not had any success getting a bond.
“Defendants’ ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is ‘a practical impossibility,'” the filing said. “These diligent efforts have included approaching about 30 surety companies through 4 separate brokers.”
Their efforts, including “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world,” have proven that “obtaining an appeal bond in the full amount” of the judgment “is not possible under the circumstances presented,” the filing said.
The other bond companies will not “accept hard assets such as real estate as collateral,” but “will only accept cash or cash equivalents (such as marketable securities),” the filing said. The lawyers also noted those companies typically “require collateral of approximately 120% of the amount of the judgment” — which would total about $557 million.
“In addition, sureties would likely charge bond premiums of approximately 2 percent per year with two years in advance—an upfront cost over $18 million,” the filing said. That $18 million would not be recoverable even if Trump wins his appeal.
Karma is a bitch, Don the Con! #TrumpIsBroke is trending on X. Susan B Glasser continues her narrative on how to cover this pariah of a politician in a system and media set-up that just doesn’t seem to get it. “Susan Glasser Slams ABC Panel: Take Trump’s Words As Fact. The New Yorker reporter reminded her panel members that Trump is “peddling an alternate reality vision of America that is built on lies.” I wrote about her article on Monday. This is from Crooks & Liars.
Glasser joined ABC’s This Week and, during a panel discussion, laid out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Trump’s words and lies.
“Yes. I mean, look, Donald Trump, it seems to me, it’s very hard, eight years into this, we still struggle with how to cover him as journalists. But in a way, the unhinged, rambling rants that you see from the former president of United States are baked in. And I think in a way, we are all desensitized and endured to the extraordinarily remarkable and very at times un-American and threatening things that the former president is saying.
I’m not saying it’s easy to understand how to cover it. I think we have to cover it when the former president, who’s already incited violence among his followers, says that there’s going to be a bloodbath. What? After the election, if he does not win, he is telling us what he is going to do.”
Too many journalists and his right-wing allies ignore Trump’s violent rhetoric and Hitler-like catcalls and instead sugarcoat and re-imagine what he’s actually saying.
After two other talking heads downplayed Trump’s behavior, and tried to pretend “we don’t know what a second Trump administration will be like,” Glasser came back with even more fire in her belly.
“I’m sorry, I just have to say something. Like Donald Trump is attacking, in a broad-brush sense, the basic pillars of American democracy, period, full stop. If that’s not news to you. It’s not about tariffs. That’s not the reason why millions of Americans are supporting Donald Trump. Let’s be real about that. You have a Republican congressman who came on here today, and he can’t even condemn in forthright, straightforward, honest terms, that ransacking of the United States Capitol by thousands of Trump supporters.
He says, well, you know, maybe there’s some problems with that. Donald Trump opens his campaign rally, Sarah, by saying, these are martyrs. These are victims. These are heroes. His whole campaign now is being built around an alternate reality, by the way, constructed on an enormous number of lie after lie after lie. That’s what he’s peddling to the American people. Not tariff policy. He’s peddling an alternate reality vision of America that is built on lies.”
No one should sit this election out. No one should make up excuses for what’s going on or shake off the danger. I left the Republican Party 30 years ago because it left me and it left well-researched effective policies in the trash heap. Liz Cheney is the only one who makes sense these days and look what is happening to her. My sister bailed in 2015 and did what I did then. Register as an independent if you have to and vote like your entire life depends on it because it does. Also, purity progressives need to drop the whining and suck up and vote like adults. We’re all in this. Not one of us will have an input into policy decisions if Trump gets back in. He didn’t casually mention detention camps; they’re suitable for many more people than you’d like to think.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Walter Chandoha plays with one of his subjects at his home studio in 1955.
Today I’m featuring cat photos by Walter Chandoha. Chandoha was a famous photographer of animals–mostly cats. You can read about him and see more photos in this 2019 New York Times obituary by Richard Sandomir: Walter Chandoha, Photographer Whose Specialty Was Cats, Dies at 98.
Taking pictures of cats soon began to look like a more fulfilling career path than the one in advertising that Mr. Chandoha had planned while attending New York University, after serving in World War II. So, after graduating, he turned to freelance photography for a living — and, by the mid-1950s, he had begun a long period as the dominant commercial cat photographer of his era.
“Walter Chandoha’s cat models, shown on this page, must be alert, graceful and beautiful,” read a newspaper ad in 1956 for a cat food brand that featured his photos. “To keep them that way, Mr. Chandoha feeds them Puss ‘n Boots because Puss ‘n Boots is good nutrition.”
On a winter’s evening in 1949, Walter Chandoha was walking to his three-room apartment in Astoria, Queens, when he spotted an abandoned gray kitten shivering in the snow. He put it in a pocket of his Army coat and brought it home to his wife, Maria.
The kitten’s antics — racing through the apartment each night as if possessed, shadowboxing with his image in a mirror — inspired the couple to name him Loco. Mr. Chandoha (pronounced shan-DOE-uh) was moved to photograph Loco and quickly sold the pictures to newspapers and magazines around the world.
By the time he died, on Jan. 11, Mr. Chandoha had taken some 90,000 cat photos, nearly all before cats had become viral darlings of social media. He was 98.
Now, on to the day’s news:
It’s becoming very clear that the courts are not going to protect us from a possible Trump dictatorship. Thank goodness for E. Jean Carroll and NY AG Letitia James. At least two New York courts have hit Trump where it hurts–his finances. But the two federal cases seem stalled and the Georgia case just took a bit hit. Those three prosecutions of Trump are unlikely to take place before the election now. We are going to have to defeat him at the ballot box.
Judge Scott McAfee has ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on the case against Donald Trump in that jurisdiction, provided that Nathan Wade, the prosecutor on the case with whom she had a relationship, withdraws. I guess we count that a win, although to be honest, Willis has so damaged herself by her colossally terrible judgment that it probably would have been better if she were out of the picture.
Cats play together in 1962.
The other problem with Willis’s scandal is how it slowed the case down, giving Trump’s lawyers a chance to make this not about the defendant but about her—and another chance to delay, delay, delay.
Meanwhile, Thursday, down in Florida, we saw Trumpy Judge Aileen Cannon issue yet another ruling in the classified documents case that helps Trump. She didn’t support Trump’s lawyers’ motion to dismiss the case, but she kicked the can down the road in a way that’s very helpful to Trump. MSNBC analyst Andrew Weissmann even called it the “worst possible outcome” for the government. “If the judge had simply said, ‘I agree with Donald Trump, and I find that this is vague, and I’m dismissing it,’ the government could have appealed it to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, as they have done twice before and won twice before,” Weissmann said. “But she also did not want to rule in favor of the government. So what she did is said, ‘Why don’t you bring this up later? I think there’s some real issues here.’”
Also this week, in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case against Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg shocked us all by asking for a 30-day delay in the trial, which was scheduled to start March 25. Trump’s lawyers had requested a 90-day delay. Bragg conceded that some delay was appropriate.
Why? It looks like it’s the fault of federal prosecutors. Bragg’s office requested certain documents a while ago from the Southern District of New York, and it shared them with Trump’s lawyers during the discovery process. Trump’s lawyers suspected there was more, especially relating to Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, so they subpoenaed the SDNY. That happened in January. It was only earlier this month that the Southern District turned over all the documents….
It’s more than fair to ask: Why did the Southern District take so long to produce these documents? And we must also ask this: Did Merrick Garland know his prosecutors were taking so long to hand over documents, and thus playing into Trump’s hands? And if he knew, did he do anything about it?
And then there’s the most significant case of all–the one about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Finally, let’s recall the status of the fourth criminal case against Trump, the biggest one, at least to my mind—the January 6 insurrection case. On that one, we’re basically waiting on the Supreme Court, which announced on February 28 that it would hear arguments in Trump’s claim of complete immunity but set the argument date for April 25. The high court could easily take another month—or even two—to hand down its decision after that, meaning that this crucial trial, about whether a sitting president initiated an insurrection against the government of the United States, may not happen before Election Day.
How in the world did all this happen? A few weeks ago, it looked like the wheels of justice were finally turning, catching up on a man who has flouted and broken laws not only during his presidency but for his entire adult life,
going back to when he and his father wouldn’t rent apartments to Black people in Queens. There was the judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case. And then the whopping penalty in the New York attorney general’s case against the Trump Organization.
But this week, it looks like everything is falling apart.
An American shorthair in 1966.
We can’t count on the courts. They move slowly and they favor the rich and powerful. We can’t count on the media either. They seem to favor another Trump presidency because the bosses believe the insanity and chaos would be good for their bottom line.
CNN on the Fani Willis case:
Another problem comes from MAGA threats. MSBNC’s Kyle Griffin wrote on Twitter that
“Judge Scott McAfee had written his order on Willis and Wade early last week, according to NBC News, but because he had been receiving threats, he waited until today to make it public in order to allow for proper security to be in place for him and his family.”
The trial in the New York hush money case against former President Donald Trump has been delayed until the middle of April, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday.
Merchan said the trial — originally scheduled to begin March 25 — would be pushed back 30 days from Friday.
He also scheduled a hearing for the trial’s initial start date, to discuss a motion filed by Trump’s attorneys regarding document production in the case.
Merchan said he will set a new trial date “if necessary” when he rules on that motion, meaning it’s possible the trial proceedings could be delayed beyond the middle of next month.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had previously said he would support the trial being delayed at least 30 days, into late April. Trump’s legal team requested that it be postponed 90 days.
Bragg said Thursday that Trump’s request to delay the trial was the result of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan providing over 100,000 pages of discovery, which Bragg said were “largely irrelevant to the subject matter of this case.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office provided an additional 15,000 pages of discovery on Friday, which Bragg’s office said were also “likely to be unrelated to the subject matter of this case.”
The documents relate to Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in 2018 to numerous criminal charges, including making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings with Russia and failing to report millions of dollars in income.
Echoing MIchael Tomasky, WTF is going on with the Southern District and the DOJ. Are there MAGA people still in place that are helping Trump delay justice?
This 1955 photo is one of Walter Chandoha’s most famous shots. “My daughter Paula and the kitten both ‘smiled’ for the camera at the same time. … But the cat’s not smiling, he’s meowing.”
Speaking of the rich and powerful, why is Elon Musk still getting federal contracts after his support for Nazis and white supremacists and his support for Russia’s war against Ukraine?
SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.
The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.
The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.
If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.
The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.
The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.
Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits, and that the spy agency that Musk’s company is working with is the NRO.
Will Musk have access to this program, as he does with Starlink? How do we know he won’t share information with Russia? Am I an idiot to ask that?
Chandoha’s backlighting technique dramatizes the defensive posture of a kitten seeing a dog in 1957.
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald J. Trump, confirmed on Friday that he was closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, the latest example of the former president’s family doing business abroad even as Mr. Trump seeks to return to the White House.
Mr. Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Mr. Trump was in office. Mr. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with Richard Grenell, who served briefly as acting director of national intelligence under Mr. Trump and also as ambassador to Germany and special envoy to the Balkans.
One of the proposed projects would be the development of an island off the coast of Albania into a luxury tourist destination.
A second — with a planned luxury hotel and 1,500 residential units and a museum — is in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, at the site of the long-vacant former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army destroyed in 1999 by the NATO bombings, according to a member of Parliament in Serbia and Mr. Kushner’s company.
These first two projects both involve land now controlled by the governments, meaning a deal would have to be finalized with foreign governments.
A third project, also in Albania, would be built on the Zvërnec peninsula, a 1,000-acre coastal area in the south of Albania that is part of the resort community known as Vlorë, where several hotels and hundreds of villas would be built, according to the plan.
Mr. Kushner’s participation would be through his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which has $2 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, among other foreign investors. In a statement, an official with Affinity Partners said it had not been determined whether the Saudi funds might be a part of any project Mr. Kushner is considering in the Balkans.
How does Kushner get away with this? Why aren’t Congressional Democrats investigating him, even if the DOJ is too busy or corrupt? I don’t get it.
Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (who was also a senior adviser in his White House) has been ramping up his overseas business dealings undeterred by the optics of doing so in the midst of his father-in-law’s presidential campaign.
A Friday report in the New York Times scrutinized Kushner’s real estate deals in Balkan countries of Albania and Serbia, in which he stands to reap significant financial benefits once they’re completed. The Times reported that Kushner has been working with Richard Grenell, who was Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence who also served as German ambassador and a special envoy to the Balkans.
An American shorthair squeezes into a glass in 1960.
Notably, two of the three projects Kushner is aiming to finalize this year involve the transfer of land currently owned by Albania and Serbia, meaning a member of the president’s immediate family (Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka) stands to receive money directly from foreign governments. According to the Times, the first project involves redeveloping an island off the Albanian coast into a high-end luxury resort, and the second would be a 1,500-unit apartment building, museum and luxury hotel in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade. The third — which doesn’t involve a direct land acquisition from a foreign government — is a planned resort development in coastal southern Albania.
Kushner has been capitalizing on his foreign connections since leaving the White House. After Kushner’s departure became official, he launched his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as well as from other foreign business interests in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
The former president’s son-in-law worked closely with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman while he was in the White House, as Trump frequently put him in the driver’s seat in negotiations with Middle Eastern countries. In 2018, bin-Salman was accused of playing a direct role in the dismemberment and murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (President Joe Biden made it clear in 2022 that the Saudi crown prince was immune from any legal action in relation to Khashoggi’s assassination)….
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, for his own foreign business deals even as Kushner plows ahead in the Balkans. House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) both maintain that the president improperly influenced foreign governments in his son’s favor, though their respective investigations have yet to yield any smoking gun evidence.
Over 44 painstakingly scripted minutes on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, spoke of his Jewish identity, his love for the State of Israel, his horror at the wanton slaughter of Israelis on Oct. 7 and his views on the apportionment of blame for the carnage in Gaza, saying that it first and foremost lay with the terrorists of Hamas.
Then Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat and the highest-ranking elected Jew in American history, said Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was an impediment to peace, and called for new elections in the world’s only Jewish state.
The opposition was not nearly so painstaking.
Within minutes, the House Republican leadership demanded an apology. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, declared: “Make no mistake — the Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem. It has an anti-Israel problem.” And the Republican Jewish Coalition proclaimed that “the most powerful Democrat in Congress knifed the Jewish state in the back.”
Walter Chandoha, 1962
The months that have followed the slaughter of Oct. 7 and the ensuing, calamitously deadly war in Gaza have been excruciating for American Jews, caught between a tradition of liberalism that has dominated much of Jewish politics and an anti-Israel response from the political left that has left many feeling isolated and, at times, persecuted.
But Mr. Schumer’s speech was potentially a watershed moment in a much longer political process, pursued initially by Republicans but joined recently by left-wing Democrats — to turn Israel into a partisan issue. Republicans, as they see it, would be the party of Israeli supporters. Democrats, as the rising left would have it, would be the party of Palestine
At the root of that divide is a fundamental question: Is support for the Jewish State separable from the support of Israel’s democratically elected government? For years, Republicans have said no. Increasingly, the Democratic left agrees but from a different perspective: Israel is bad, regardless of who governs it.
“The pressure — electoral, social, cultural — on American Jews right now to declare themselves” on the justice of the war in Gaza and on the legitimacy of the Israeli prime minister has been “unrelenting, unforgiving and sometimes downright vicious,” said David Wolpe, a prominent rabbi in Los Angeles and a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.
Mr. Schumer’s speech and the ensuing partisan response have made that pressure even more intense.
“It’s impossible to understate the seismic event this was,” said Matthew Brooks, the longtime chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who made it clear that the group would use the speech to drive Jewish voters to the G.O.P.
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday said he “cannot in good conscience” endorse presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, a stunning repudiation of his former running mate and the president he served with.
“Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years. That’s why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign,” Pence said on Fox News.
A cat cozies up to a dog, 1968
The former vice president, after ending his own presidential bid in October, withheld an endorsement in the 2024 Republican primary, but he previously vowed to back the eventual GOP nominee. Trump had said after Pence dropped out that his former vice president should endorse him, saying, “I chose him, made him vice president. But … people in politics can be very disloyal.”
While he said he is “incredibly proud” of the record of the Trump-Pence administration, Pence argued that the former president has walked away from conservative issues, pointing to Trump’s stance on abortion and US national debt and his reversal on TikTok.
“During my presidential campaign, I made it clear there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues. And not just our difference on my constitutional duties that I exercised January 6th,” Pence said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
“As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt. I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life. And this last week, his reversal on getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s efforts to force a sale of ByteDance’s TikTok,” he added.
Many other former members of Trump’s administration have also said they won’t vote for him. Yesterday Ron Filipkowski posted this list on Twitter:
The Republican 43rd President won’t endorse Trump.
Alabama Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville had a stark warning for the approximately 100 Utah GOP delegates who crowded into a Bluffdale warehouse to hear him speak on Friday afternoon: Malevolent supernatural forces are working to undermine America.
“I’ve traveled all over the country — all 50 states — I’ve been in good places and bad places. The one thing I saw, we are losing our kids to a satanic cult,” Tuberville, who traveled to Utah to campaign for GOP U.S. Senate candidate Trent Staggs, warned.
The former college football coach and ardent Donald Trump supporter gave his full endorsement to Staggs, one of 11 Republicans vying for the GOP nomination to succeed Sen. Mitt Romney in Washington.
Brandishing an upside-down pocket Constitution, Tuberville said the 2024 election wasn’t Republican vs. Democrat but “anti-American vs. American.”
“We’ve lost our moral values across the country. We’ve got to get back to the Constitution, and we have got to get back to the Bible. We’ve got to get God back in our country,” Tuberville said. “There’s not one Democrat that can tell you they stand up for God.”
What exactly is he talking about? Is he saying the Democratic Party is a satanic cult or is he referring to the Mormon Church? Probably the former, I know.
Republican delegates ate it up as he careened from anti-transgender statements to discussion of immigration and chaos at the border to a prediction left-wing mobs are set to wreak chaos across the country this summer to help Joe Biden win reelection.
Tuberville even went so far as to claim the federal government has been corrupted to go after conservatives instead of criminals, which was seemingly an indirect reference to the hundreds of Trump supporters who were charged after attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We’ve lost our Department of Justice. In most of the country, we don’t have a criminal justice system anymore. Nobody goes to jail, unless you’re an innocent person that really loves this country, then they’ll put you in jail,” Tuberville said. “We have never overcome a cult like we’re dealing with right now.”
The loudest boos from the GOP delegates on hand came when Tuberville and Staggs took swipes at Sen. Mitt Romney, who was the party’s presidential nominee just a dozen years ago.
What a wacko.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all are having a nice weekend!
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It’s another busy news week and Friday. The most consequential headline this morning is on the decision of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee on the “appearance of impropriety” brought about by Willis’ romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. This analysis is from NBC News.
A Georgia judge ruled Fridaythat Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should not be disqualified from prosecuting the racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and several co-defendants — with one major condition.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found the “appearance of impropriety” brought about by Willis’ romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade should result in either Willis and her office leaving the case — or just Wade, whom she’d appointed to head the case.
The choice is likely to be an easy one: If Willis were to remove herself, the case would come to a halt, but having Wade leave will ensure the case continues without further delay.
The judge said the prosecution “cannot proceed” until Willis makes a decision.
Trump attorney Steve Sadow said in a statement that, “While respecting the Court’s decision, we believe that the Court did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade.”
“We will use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place,” he added.
Willis’s office did not immediately comment on the ruling.The judge found there was no “actual conflict” brought about by the relationship, a finding that would have required Willis to be disqualified. “Without sufficient evidence that the District Attorney acquired a personal stake in the prosecution, or that her financial arrangements had any impact on the case, the Defendants’ claims of an actual conflict must be denied,” the judge wrote.
“This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment or the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing. Rather, it is the undersigned’s opinion that Georgia law does not permit the finding of an actual conflict for simply making bad choices — even repeatedly — and it is the trial court’s duty to confine itself to the relevant issues and applicable law properly brought before it,” he added.
The judge did, however, also find “the prosecution is encumbered by an appearance of impropriety.”
“As the case moves forward, reasonable members of the public could easily be left to wonder whether the financial exchanges have continued resulting in some form of benefit to the District Attorney, or even whether the romantic relationship has resumed,” he wrote. “As long as Wade remains on the case, this unnecessary perception will persist.”
The Manhattan D.A. has joined the list of Judiciary officials letting Trump delay trials on frivolous and specious arguments. This is from the New York Times. “As Trump Seeks Trial Delay, N.Y. Prosecutors Offer 30-Day Postponement. The Manhattan district attorney’s proposal came in response to Donald J. Trump’s request for a 90-day delay to allow his lawyers time to review a new batch of records.”
Less than two weeks before Donald J. Trump is set to go on trial on criminal charges in Manhattan, the prosecutors who brought the case proposed a delay of up to 30 days, a startling development in the first prosecution of a former American president.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which accused Mr. Trump of covering up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, said the delay would give Mr. Trump’s lawyers time to review a new batch of records. The office sought the records more than a year ago, but only recently received them from federal prosecutors, who years ago investigated the hush-money payments at the center of the case.
In response to the records — tens of thousands of pages of them — Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested that the trial be delayed 90 days. Although the former president frequently requests such delays, prosecutors consenting to any postponement makes one far more likely.
Mr. Trump, who clinched the Republican presidential nomination for the third time this week, faces four criminal trials and several civil lawsuits. The Manhattan case had been the only one of the four criminal cases not mired in delays.
“Mired in delays” is the understatement of the year-to-date. Meanwhile, Trump gets more incoherent by the day. His appearance is more startling than usual. Susan B. Glasser of The New Yorker has this analysis. “I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You. The ex-President is building a whole new edifice of lies for 2024.”
And yet, like so much about Trump’s 2024 campaign, this insane oration was largely overlooked and under-covered, the flood of lies and B.S. seen as old news from a candidate whose greatest political success has been to acclimate a large swath of the population to his ever more dangerous alternate reality. No wonder Biden, trapped in a real world of real problems that defy easy solutions, is struggling to defeat him.
This is partly a category error. Though we persist in treating the 2024 election as a race between an incumbent and a challenger, it is not that so much as a contest between two incumbents: Biden, the actual President, and Trump, the forever-President of Red America’s fever dreams. But Trump, while he presents himself as the country’s rightful leader, gets nothing like the intense scrutiny for his speeches that is now focussed on the current occupant of the Oval Office. The norms and traditions that Trump is intent on smashing are, once again, benefitting him.
Consider the enormous buildup before, and wall-to-wall coverage of, Biden’s annual address to Congress. It was big news when the President called out his opponent in unusually scathing terms, referring thirteen times in his prepared text to “my predecessor” in what was, understandably, seen as a break with tradition. Republican commentators grumbled about the sharply partisan tone of the President’s remarks and the loud decibel in which he delivered them; Democrats essentially celebrated those same qualities.
Imagine if, instead, the two speeches had been covered side by side. Biden’s barbed references to Trump were all about the former President’s offenses to American democracy. He called out Trump’s 2024 campaign of “resentment, revenge, and retribution” and the “chaos” unleashed by the Trump-majority Supreme Court when it threw out the decades-old precedent of Roe v. Wade. In reference to a recent quote from the former President, in which Trump suggested that Americans should just “get over it” when it comes to gun violence, Biden retorted, “I say: Stop it, stop it, stop it!” His sharpest words for Trump came in response to the ex-President’s public invitation to Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to nato countries that don’t spend what Trump wants them to on defense—a line that Biden condemned as “outrageous,” “dangerous,” and “unacceptable.”
Trump’s speech made little effort to draw substantive contrasts with Biden. Instead, the Washington Post counted nearly five dozen references to Biden in the course of the Georgia rally, almost all of them epithets drawn from the Trump marketing playbook for how to rip down an opponent—words like “angry,” “corrupt,” “crooked,” “flailing,” “incompetent,” “stupid,” and “weak.” Trump is, always and forever, a puerile bully, stuck perpetually on the fifth-grade playground. But the politics of personal insult has worked so well for Trump that he is, naturally, doubling down on it in 2024. In fact, one of the clips from Trump’s speech on Saturday which got the most coverage was his mockery of Biden’s stutter: a churlish—and, no doubt, premeditated—slur.
Trump still is unhinged when it comes to Hillary Clinton. This analysis was written by Phillip Bump for the Washington Post. “Trump goes on a weird riff about acid — again. The former president claimed that Hillary Clinton destroyed some emails with acid, an assertion that is not only untrue but has been debunked countless times.”
For his interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, Donald Trump didn’t stray far from home. The two sat down in uncomfortable-looking, formal chairs in one of Mar-a-Lago’s self-consciously ornate rooms for a discussion about how inept President Biden is.
“We have a man that can’t talk,” Trump said of Biden. “He can’t negotiate. He doesn’t know he’s alive.” As a result, the former president concluded, “this is a very dangerous time for our country.”
All of this came shortly after Trump claimed that Hillary Clinton had destroyed some emails with acid — an assertion that is not only untrue but has also been debunked countless times over the past eight years. But it’s still lodged in his brain, somehow, and he is unable or unwilling to dislodge it.
Because this claim is so old and because it has been debunked so many times (for example), we’ll just run through this quickly. In August 2016, after House Republicans investigating Clinton had stumbled onto her use of a private email server, former South Carolina congressman (and current Fox News host) Trey Gowdy announced that Clinton’s team had used free software called BleachBit to erase a hard drive that once contained her emails. (Messages determined by her attorneys to pertain to her government work had already been turned over.)
…
In his most recent telling, the claim is very specific. Clinton used “acid testing,” or, I guess, “essentially acid that will destroy everything within 10 miles.” This is very Trumpian, the effort to take a minor detail and inflate it to apocalyptic proportions. Not only has debunking this claim not had an apparent effect, he is now so used to making this nonsensical assertion that he feels like the baseline misinformation isn’t enough for his audience.
This is common behavior from Trump, certainly, in the abstract and the specific example. But it is more fraught now than it used to be, given the extent to which Trump and his allies have focused on mental sharpness as a necessary qualification for the presidency. Americans are asked — as Trump endeavors in his conversation with Kelly — to view Biden as muddled and addled.
That has triggered some blowback, including from Biden’s campaign team, focused on elevating moments in which Trump himself seems to be confused. Just this week, Democratic lawmakers responded to criticism of Biden’s memory by compiling clips showing Trump misspeaking or misidentifying people.
Meanwhile, the TikTok and social media battle continues. We have a Supreme Court Decision plus an interest by MAGA cultists to buy TikTok to use as a propaganda tool. NBC Newsreports on the latest SCOTUS foray into social media control. “In shadow of Trump tweets, Supreme Court outlines when officials can be sued for social media use. Former President Donald Trump’s frequent use of Twitter lurked in the background as the justices weighed whether an official’s online activities can constitute government action.” This analysis is written by Lawrence Hurley.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that members of the public in some circumstances can sue public officials for blocking them on social media platforms, deciding a pair of cases against the backdrop of former President Donald Trump’s contentious and colorful use of Twitter.
The court ruled unanimously that officials can be deemed “state actors” when making use of social media and can therefore face litigation if they block or mute a member of the public.
In the two cases before the justices, they ruled that disputes involving a school board member in Southern California and a city manager in Michigan should be sent back to lower courts for the new legal test to be applied.
In a ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court acknowledged that it “can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private” because of how social media accounts are used.
The court held that conduct on social media can be viewed as a state action when the official in question “possessed actual authority to speak on the state’s behalf” and “purported to exercise that authority.”
While the officials in both cases have low profiles, the ruling will apply to all public officials who use social media to engage with the public.
During October’s oral argument, Trump’s use of Twitter — before it was renamed X — was frequently mentioned as the justices considered the practical implications.
The cases raised the question of whether public officials’ posts and other social media activity constitute part of their governmental functions. In ruling that it can, the court found that blocking someone from following an official constitutes a government action that could give rise to a constitutional claim.
But the court made it clear that conditions have to be met for a claim to move forward, with Barrett noting that government officials are also “private citizens with their own constitutional rights.”
Determining whether a claim can move forward is not based simply on whether the person is a government official, but on the substance of the conduct in question, she added.
Factors such as whether the account is marked as official and the official is invoking his or her legal authority in making a formal announcement can be taken into account, Barrett said.
“In some circumstances, the post’s content and function might make the plaintiff’s argument a slam dunk,” she added
The TikTok story just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
It appears MAGA billionaires want to buy it and turn it into a propaganda outlet. https://t.co/XLRDatcYof
— Dr. Kat PhD. … not your kiddo, buddy🇺🇦🌻 (@Dakinikat) March 15, 2024
The Washington Examiner had this screaming Op-Ed today by someone named Jeremiah Poff. “TikTok needs a conservative US buyer.” Yup, just what we need; more Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk to create a more violent and unhinged right wing.
The prospect of TikTok needing a U.S. buyer increased this week after the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require the social media app’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app or face a ban.
On a 352-65 vote on Wednesday, the House showed unusual bipartisanship and passed a bill that would force the app to decouple from China or be banned in the United States. The app’s connection to the Chinese Communist Party has raised serious national security concerns that have motivated the legislative action.
While the bill’s fate is uncertain in the Senate despite President Joe Biden pledging to sign it, there needs to be some consideration about what will happen to the app if the bill becomes law and TikTok is sold to a U.S. investor.
Social media companies such as Meta and Google are dominated by the Left. As was evidenced by the 2020 election, they have a sizable influence on what content people see and their political perceptions. A similar concern was obvious with Twitter until it was bought by Elon Musk and rebranded as X.
TikTok has an enormous user base of 170 million in the U.S. Its potential for influencing the population at large is vast, which means Silicon Valley tech companies with an overrepresentation of left-wing views must not be allowed to buy it, lest censorship and liberal propaganda replace Chinese government propaganda.
So, that last sentence is why we don’t need right-wing hysterical and culturally nasty propaganda replacing Chinese government propaganda. You heard it from me first.
My last word is, please remember where and who we were four years ago with President (sic) Trump and his bumbling management of Covid-19. I think it’s an excellent answer to Stefank’s question with a loud YES. The media should remind us how awful it was. Refrigerator trucks with dead bodies and no toilet paper are just two reminders. This is from Mediaite. “Hannity Claims Democrats’ Cannot Run on, Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?” Michael Luciano has the lede. Hannity is still carrying Trump’s diseased water.
Sean Hannity said President Joe Biden and Democrats will be unable to make the case that Americans are better off in 2024 than they were four years ago.
Biden is seeking a second term and will face former President Donald Trump as congressional Democrats try to retake the House of Representatives and undertake the tall order of holding the Senate.
“They spread fear, hysteria, all things hate Trump, hate Trump 24/7,” Hannity said of Democrats during his opening monologue Thursday on Fox News. “And of course, Democrats will call Republicans racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic that want dirty air and water. In other words, Democrats are using fear and division to mask what has been a terrible four years under Biden.”
Hannity then invoked an election refrain made famous by Ronald Reagan during a 1980 debate with then-President Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
“I repeat, they cannot run on, ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’” Hannity said. “This is all they have left.”
Some quick, back-of-the-napkin math indicates that four years ago, the year was 2020. History buffs may recall that this period in time was marred by a once-in-a-century global pandemic that wound up killing more than one million Americans and torpedoed the economy. Trump’s handling of the country’s pandemic response arguably cost him reelection.
In the early days of the pandemic, Trump sought to downplay the threat posed by Covid-19. In February 2020, he reacted to the news that a handful of Americans had been diagnosed with the virus by saying, “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
This headline made me giggle. It’s from Raw Story. It’s written by Kathleen Culliton. “‘Freudian slip?’ RNC chair says America is better off under Biden than Trump:” It takes a lot of energy to keep lies going in the face of obvious truth.
The Republican National Committee’s new chair Friday gave a resounding “No” to a question he asked himself on nationally broadcast television: Was the nation better off under former President Donald Trump?
Whoops.
Michael Whatley appeared on Fox News to promote the presumptive Republican nominee and the RNC’s co-chair Lara Trump’s father-in-law in his bid to reclaim the White House in 2024.
Have a great weekend! We’re about to get a rainstorm, and I’m getting ready to make a good-sized meatloaf and potatoes, which was basically my mother’s weekly recipe.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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We don’t hear much about this, but the 
Here is an academic publication on the topic. “
Diamond Brigman. Say her name. Violence against women continues to plague this country. “When Your Home State Also Becomes Your Abuser’ The leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide, most often by an abusive partner with a gun. And Texas is forcing victims to stay pregnant while making it easier for abusers to get guns.” This is from 
The cruelty continues in the MAGAtrocity. “HOUSE REPUBLICANS WANT TO BAN UNIVERSAL FREE SCHOOL LUNCHES. The Republican Study Committee’s annual budget also calls to permanently defund UNRWA and eliminate the National Labor Relations Board.” This is from 
I have no idea why anyone would give him any wiggle room on this unless they are scared of his rabid and well-armed idiots. We see more of his usual contempt for law and democracy in a new headline today in The Guardian. “
Elizabeth Crisp of The Hill 
Louisiana has become the latest state to be taken over by White Christian Fascists. Big John Stanton writes about the latest shady moves through special sessions that throw our state back into the Dark Ages. “One Landry to Bind Them All: Under the watchful eye of Gov. Jeff Landry, Republicans push a regressive legislative agenda.”
Will this movement continue even after Trump has left the building? His lawsuits are mostly delayed, but the impact becomes obvious, starting with the total takeover of the RNC. This headline from NBC News is an omen of things to come. “
Karma is a bitch, Don the Con! #TrumpIsBroke is trending on X. Susan B Glasser continues her narrative on how to cover this pariah of a politician in a system and media set-up that just doesn’t seem to get it. “
“Mired in delays” is the understatement of the year-to-date. Meanwhile, Trump gets more incoherent by the day. His appearance is more startling than usual. 
Trump still is unhinged when it comes to Hillary Clinton. This analysis was written by Phillip Bump for the 
The Washington Examiner
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