Pretty soon the U.S. Supreme Court is going to have to get involved in the Trump mess. That became even more likely after the we got big news out of Colorado. The state’s supreme court has banned Trump from the 2024 ballot.
In a historic decision Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court barred Donald Trump from running in the state’s presidential primary after determining that he had engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
The 4-to-3 decision marked the first time a court has ruled to keep a presidential candidate off the ballot under an 1868 provision of the Constitution that bars insurrectionists from holding office. The ruling comes as courts in other states consider similar cases. All seven justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were initially appointed by Democratic governors.
If other states reach the same conclusion, Trump would have a difficult — if not impossible — time securing the Republican nomination and winning in November.
The decision is certain to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it will be up to the justices to decide whether to take the case. Scholars have said only the nation’s high court can settle for all states whether the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol constituted an insurrection and whether Trump is banned from running.
“A majority of the court holds that President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the decision reads. “Because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.”
The U.S. Supreme Court justices separately are weighing a request from special counsel Jack Smith to expedite consideration of Trump’s immunity claim in one of his criminal cases — his federal indictment in Washington on charges of illegally trying to obstruct Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Trump has denied wrongdoing.
The Colorado Supreme Court’s majority determined that the trial judge was allowed to consider Congress’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which contributed to the determination that Trump engaged in insurrection.
“We conclude that the foregoing evidence, the great bulk of which was undisputed at trial, established that President Trump engaged in insurrection,” the majority wrote.
The decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to remove Donald Trump from the GOP primary ballot has cast us deeper into uncharted waters.
I had a vague notion even into adulthood that the constitutional order in America was challenged every 50 years or so in ways that stress-tested the system. By that measure, I regret to inform you that we live in extraordinary times.
Since 1998, some of the markers – by the numbers:
3 going on 4 presidential impeachments;
2 winning presidential candidates losing the popular vote;
1 going on 2 presidential elections decided by the Supreme Court;
1 attempted coup; and
4 criminal prosecutions of an ex-president.
While it’s not just Donald Trump, you can see his outsize impact on those numbers.
I’m not of the view that testing constitutional limits is somehow dangerous or ill-advised. We should thoroughly ventilate the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause, as is being done now. It’s been a mistake, in my view, to spend decades circling around but never quite confronting the true extent of executive privilege. In the half century since Watergate, we shouldn’t have operated under the untested specter of a Justice Department opinion that sitting presidents can’t be criminally charged.
So I don’t think there’s anything inherently ill-advised about treating the Constitution as a robust mechanism to be used, tested, amended, and reinvigorated. Not every brush with a constitutional question is a constitutional crisis. (To clear up any possible confusion, I’m talking here about the constitutional structure itself, not the scope of individual rights protected by the Constitution, whose developments have their own history and evolution under the law.)
The next few months are going to see a series of new tests.
Read more, with suggestions for further reading at the TPM link.
I am traveling and so I offer only some brief and initial thoughts here about what the United States Supreme Court may and should do in light of the Colorado Supreme Court’s determination that Donald Trump is ineligible to serve as president under Section 3 of the 14th amendment for encouraging insurrection.
By Anatoly Deverin
My bottom line is that the Colorado opinion is a serious and careful opinion that reaches a reasonable conclusion that Trump is disqualified. Nonetheless the opinion reaches many novel legal issues that the U.S. Supreme Court could decide the other way should that court reach the merits. (The three dissenters on the Colorado court did not really reach the merits.) Trump would need to prevail on only one of these legal issues to win on any appeal, so in some ways the legal odds are with him.
It is far from clear that the U.S. Supreme Court will reach the merits—there are many legal doctrines like ripeness and mootness that would give the Court a way to avoid deciding the issues in the case. But it is imperative for the political stability of the U.S. to get a definitive judicial resolution of these questions as soon as possible. Voters need to know if the candidate they are supporting for President is eligible. And if we don’t get a final judicial resolution before January 6, 2025 a Democratic-majority Congress could decide Trump is disqualified even if he appears to win the electoral college vote. That would be tremendously destabilizing.
In the end the legal issues are close but the political ramifications of disqualification would be enormous. Once again the Supreme Court is being thrust into the center of a U.S. presidential election. But unlike in 2000 the general political instability in the United States makes the situation now much more precarious.
Any time people start fighting on the internet, someone will inevitably reach for the Hitler comparison. It’s a virtually unbreakable rule known as “Godwin’s law,” named after Mike Godwin, an early internet enthusiast who coined it back in 1990. It’s also understood that often the party mentioning Hitler or the Nazis is losing the argument, though that’s not part of the law itself.
Godwin’s law was invoked this weekend when President Joe Biden’s campaign said former President Donald Trump had “parroted Adolf Hitler” when he accused undocumented immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”
But according to Godwin himself, that doesn’t mean Biden is losing the argument.
Lights in the Murk, 2022, Jeremy Miranda (American, b.1980)
“Trump’s opening himself up to the Hitler comparison,” Godwin said in an interview. And in his view, Trump is actively seeking to evoke the parallel.
Trump made almost identical comments in an interview with the far-right website The National Pulse in November, around the same time Trump also called his political opponents “vermin” — all rhetoric that Hitler used to disparage Jews.
“You could say the ‘vermin’ remark or the ‘poisoning the blood’ remark, maybe one of them would be a coincidence,” Godwin said. “But both of them pretty much make it clear that there’s something thematic going on, and I can’t believe it’s accidental.”
Comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis happen all the time, particularly in online discourse, but they’re often dismissed as ridiculous or clumsy. When public figures or their staff mention the H-word, it can provoke derision. But the Biden campaign has made a deadly serious statement, and a political wager that the public won’t dismiss the charge as hyperbole.
Read an interview with Godwin at the Politico link.
Former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday doubled down on his widely condemned comment that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” rebuffing criticism that the language echoed Adolf Hitler by insisting that he had never read the Nazi dictator’s autobiographical manifesto.
Mr. Trump did not repeat the exact phrase, which has drawn criticism since he first uttered it in an interview with a right-leaning website and then repeated it at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday.
But he said on Tuesday night in a speech in Iowa that undocumented immigrants from Africa, Asia and South America were “destroying the blood of our country,” before alluding to his previous comments.
“That’s what they’re doing. They’re destroying our country,” Mr. Trump continued. “They don’t like it when I said that. And I never read ‘Mein Kampf.’ They said, ‘Oh, Hitler said that.’”
He added that Hitler said it “in a much different way,” without making his meaning clear.
Undocumented immigrants, he added, “could be healthy. They could be very unhealthy. They could bring in disease that’s going to catch on in our country.” And he again said that they were “destroying the blood of our country” and “destroying the fabric of our country.”
Mr. Trump and his campaign have dismissed the comparisons between his remark and language used by Hitler using the words “poison” and “blood” to denigrate those who Hitler deemed a threat to the purity of the Aryan race.
In one chapter of “Mein Kampf” named “Race and People,” Hitler wrote, “All the great civilizations of the past became decadent because the originally creative race died out, as a result of contamination of the blood.” In another passage, he links “the poison which has invaded the national body” to an “influx of foreign blood.”
I believe that Trump has never read “Mein Kampf,” because he doesn’t read anything; but I have no doubt that Steven Miller–who writes Trump’s speeches–has read it. Trump was reading these Hitler-like words from his teleprompter.
When Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wanted an assured hand to right the newspaper’s shaky finances, he turned to Will Lewis, a 54-year-old former editor of The Daily Telegraph and former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, whom he called “exceptional, tenacious.” Lewis will start as the Post‘s publisher and CEO in early January.
A dozen years ago, media magnate Rupert Murdoch also turned to Lewis when he wanted to find someone to rectify the hacking and bribery scandals engulfing his British Sunday tabloid, News of the World.
Lewis’ publicly stated charge was to root out newsroom corruption, cooperate with police and help settle claims from people targeted by the company’s journalists for voicemail and email hacking. The Guardian called him “News Corp’s clean-up campaigner.”
A very different picture of Lewis emerges from material presented in London courtrooms in recent months and reviewed by NPR. The man picked to lead the Post — a paper with the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — stands accused of helping to lead a massive cover-up of criminal activity when he was acting outside public view.
In lawsuits against News Corp.’s British newspapers, lawyers for Prince Harry and movie star Hugh Grant depict Lewis as a leader of a frenzied conspiracy to kneecap public officials hostile to a multibillion-dollar business deal and to delete millions of potentially damning emails. In addition, they allege, Lewis sought to shield the CEO of News Corp.’s British arm, News UK, from scrutiny and to conceal the extent of wrongdoing at News of the World‘s more profitable sister tabloid, The Sun.
In sum, the Duke of Sussex and Grant argue that Lewis was a linchpin of efforts to limit the fallout during a key period between late 2010 and 2012.
These concerns about Lewis’ actions have been percolating for years.
Through a spokesperson, Lewis declined to comment to NPR for this story. He previously denied the broad outlines of these accusations, saying they are utterly unfounded. Lewis has not personally been sued as part of any of this current litigation, which offers greater specificity and sweep to the allegations.
Long before Ron DeSantis’ presidential ambitions began to falter, it was clear to anyone paying close attention that there were fatal flaws in his much-hyped political operation.
“I had to have it explained to me the first time DeSantis came here for a parade,” an early DeSantis supporter in New Hampshire recalled to The Daily Beast. “I was gonna show up for the parade and I was informed, ‘This is a Never Back Down event, so you can’t mention anything about the campaign.’ And I was like, what the hell is this?”
This, the New Hampshire presidential campaign veteran would come to learn, was how the DeSantis campaign thought they’d cracked the code to beat former President Donald Trump.
Never Back Down was launched as a super PAC—loaded up with $80 million transferred from DeSantis’ state-level PAC in Florida—designed to carry him to the presidency through sheer force. The prospect of a talent-stocked PAC spending historic sums on organizing and campaign messaging was initially so fearsome that some Republicans dubbed Never Back Down the “Death Star.”
As the New Hampshire source’s befuddlement at the parade showed, however, Never Back Down’s ambitious vision was destined to collide with the strict federal rules barring campaigns and super PACs from cooperating on strategy or even communicating at all.
But few in Republican politics expected just how spectacularly this vaunted Death Star would ultimately implode.
“This will go down as maybe the worst-orchestrated effort in modern presidential history,” said a person familiar with Never Back Down’s operations.
Forest in Winter, Lawren S. Harris, Canadian, 1885-1970
After months spent out of sync with the campaign, a number of officials with Never Back Down have either resigned or been fired; top PAC strategists have cursed at each other and nearly come to blows in private meetings; and a new breakaway PAC has formed.
Most troubling of all, DeSantis might be sliding backward in his quest for the presidency despite the staggering sum of nearly $100 million that his PAC has spent to support him.
With DeSantis struggling to maintain even second place as the Iowa and New Hampshire contests near, the governor’s sympathizers are fully considering the consequences of his team’s big bet that they could outsource a huge primary victory to a super PAC.
“It is gonna cost us the election,” the DeSantis supporter, who later switched allegiance to a rival non-Trump campaign, recalled thinking to themselves several months ago, now describing the decision to outsource so many critical functions to Never Back Down as “a huge, huge mistake, and we could not afford one on this.”
“We’ll never win another election if we don’t stop PACs trying to become the campaign,” the former DeSantis supporter said.
Read more details at The Daily Beast.
Three more interesting stories, before I wrap this up:
A federal judge in New York has ordered a vast unsealing of court documents in early 2024 that will make public the names of scores of Jeffrey Epstein’s associates.
The documents are part of a settled civil lawsuit alleging Epstein’s one-time paramour Ghislaine Maxwell facilitated the sexual abuse of Virginia Giuffre. Terms of the 2017 settlement were not disclosed.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted of sex trafficking and procuring girls for Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
Anyone who did not successfully fight to keep their name out of the civil case could see their name become public — including Epstein’s victims, co-conspirators and innocent associates.
Judge Loretta Preska set the release for Jan. 1, giving anyone who objects to their documents becoming public time to object. Her ruling, though, said that since some of the individuals have given media interviews their names should not stay private.
The documents may not make clear why a certain individual became associated with Giuffre’s lawsuit, but more than 150 people are expected to be identified in hundreds of files that may expose more about Epstein’s sex trafficking of women and girls in New York, New Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and elsewhere. Some of the names may simply have been included in depositions, email or legal documents.
Some of the people have already been publicly associated with Epstein. For instance, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is publicly named in the judge’s order. Certain minor victims will remain redacted.
Before Rudolph W. Giuliani was ordered to pay $148 million to two Georgia election workers he defamed, and before he owed his own lawyers several million dollars more, federal prosecutors were scrutinizing whether he pursued dubious business dealings in Ukraine to shore up his dwindling fortune, according to court records unsealed late Tuesday.
The documents lifted the veil on a criminal investigation that federal prosecutors spent three years conducting into the dealings of Mr. Giuliani, the former New York mayor who had reinvented himself as Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer and attack dog.
Apple Grove Moon, Peter Skulthorpe
The investigation, which did not result in charges for Mr. Giuliani, centered on whether he illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials. Those same Ukrainians helped Mr. Giuliani dig for dirt on Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was then on his way to becoming the Democratic presidential nominee and who would ultimately defeat Mr. Trump in 2020.
The prosecutors had assembled enough evidence to persuade a judge in April 2021 to authorize the seizure of Mr. Giuliani’s phones and computers, an extraordinary step to take against any lawyer, let alone one who had represented a sitting president. And for a time, it appeared as if the prosecutors, working in the same Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office that Mr. Giuliani had presided over decades earlier, might seek to indict him.
But when they failed to find a smoking gun in Mr. Giuliani’s electronic records, the prosecutors notified the judge overseeing the matter that they had ended the long-running investigation.
A spokesman for Mr. Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Tuesday.
The judge, J. Paul Oetken, recently ordered the prosecutors to release the search warrant materials in response to a request from The New York Times. Mr. Giuliani consented to the newspaper’s request, as did the government, with certain redactions to protect privacy interests.
While much of the evidence that underpinned the search warrant had already come to light in the media and through Mr. Trump’s first impeachment proceedings in late 2019,the search warrant materials represent the government’s most comprehensive catalog yet of Mr. Giuliani’s ties to Ukraine.
And for the first time, the records explicitly linked Mr. Giuliani’s recent financial troubles to his dealings in Ukraine, suggesting that he did not just want Ukrainian officials’ help in attacking Mr. Biden but also their money.
A federal judge on Tuesday granted the Justice Department access to nearly 1,700 records recovered from the cellphone of Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) in a long-running legal battle in the criminal investigation of former president Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of D.C. gave investigators access to 1,659 records and withheld 396 others after a federal appeals court directed him to individually review 2,055 communications from Perry’s phone to decide which were protected by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which grants members of Congress immunity from criminal investigation when acting in their official capacities.
The FBI seized Perry’s phone in August 2022 under a court order seeking to understand Perry’s involvement in the machinations that were the subject of Trump’s criminal indictment this August for allegedly plotting to prevent President Biden from taking office.
An outline of the contents of Perry’s sensitive discussions with Trump’s legal advisers, aides and others spilled into public view in a quickly withdrawn court filing last month, revealing details of efforts to gain access to secret intelligence about the election, to replace the attorney general with former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and to reverse the department’s finding that Biden had been elected fairly. The filing also described Perry’s discussions with Pennsylvania state officials who supported Trump’s fraud allegations, with private individuals claiming expertise in cybersecurity and with attorneys for Trump’s campaign.
Tuesday’s order will determine which messages investigators with special counsel Jack Smith can actually use as potential evidence in any case, pending an expected renewed appeal by Perry, part of legal fight that has tied up the records for more than a year.
Read more at the WaPo.
That’s it for me today. What are your thoughts? What stories are you following?
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The 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, a pivotal event on the road to the American Revolution, will be marked with a series of events in the city on Saturday, culminating in a reenactment of the destruction of the tea.
On Dec. 16, 2023, the Sons of Liberty stormed aboard the brig Beaver and ship Eleanor to destroy wooden chests of East India Company tea. They dumped more than 300 crates of tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxes imposed on the colonies, who did not have representation in Parliament.
Two-and-a-half centuries after that famous act of defiance, reenactors plan to recreate the historic event starting at 8 p.m. Saturday. Members of the public are invited to the Harborwalk at 510 Atlantic Ave. to witness the reenactment.
“When history asked Boston in 1773 if we were willing to do what it takes to defend our liberties, we took tea leaves for ink and made the ocean our page,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said.
Earlier Saturday, a series of other events are planned:
4 p.m. to 5 p.m.: An outdoor screening at Faneuil Hall plaza of “Faneuil Hall and the Boston Tea Party: A protest in principle. A retrospective on revolution.” Free tickets to this event are sold out.
6 p.m. to 7 p.m.: Reenactors portraying citizens of colonial Boston will present news of the tea crisis at Downtown Crossing, Reader’s Plaza at Milk St. and Washington St.
6:15 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.: Reenactors will recreate a vigorous debate inside Old South Meeting House, which hosted several meetings about the tea crisis, including the final meeting before Samuel Adams gave the signal that started the Boston Tea Party. Tickets for this event are sold out.
7:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.: A fife and drum corps will lead a rolling rally from Old South Meeting House to the Harborwalk for the tea party reenactment.
In the 250 years since members of the Sons of Liberty boarded ships in Boston Harbor to dump their cargo of imported tea overboard — on Dec. 16, 1773 — the right to protest over inadequate representation has been a central liberty of Americans.
There was already broad agreement in 18th century Britain and its American colonies that taxation without representation violated a supposedly free person’s rights.
But the British government had a far more limited view of what constitutes actual representation than the Colonists did. Parliament asserted that it represented the people in Britain’s American colonies even if they had no role in electing it.
After the Sons of Liberty action, Americans began to feel differently. A mercantile protest against tax breaks and corporate welfare for a private but influential monopoly (the British East India Co.) became a blow against the entire panoply of legislation and taxation adopted to coerce loyalty to the crown and Parliament.
The principle of no taxation without representation became increasingly about the definition of representation.
In the ensuing two and a half centuries, the American republic has moved in fits and starts toward perfecting democratic representation. It has had a very long way to go. Enslaved Africans and their descendants, Native Americans on reservations and women were represented in government in name only until recently, without voting power, the same way British Parliament once claimed to represent people who had no ability to say “yes” or “no” to their supposed delegates. In a sense, American democracy did not actually come into being until 1965, when the Voting Rights Act finally guaranteed Black voters equal rights to elect their government officials.
The fight isn’t over. Court rulings have permitted racial and partisan gerrymandering that undermine the Voting Rights Act and weaken the principle of one-person, one-vote — itself a fairly recent principle in American democracy. Residents of the District of Columbia will tell you, accurately, that they are taxed without representation. In many states, people who have served time for felonies cannot regain their right to vote, at least not without re-enfranchisement procedures so cumbersome as to be practically impossible….
In observing the semiquincentennial of the Boston Tea Party, it’s important to recall that although it began as an anti-tax protest, it was ultimately about the true meaning of representative government. The people of Boston in 1773 were unwilling to support a government in which they had no say. The Tea Party’s proper legacy is the continuing fight for fuller, more representative voting rights.
If you’d like a longer read about the Boston Tea Party, the long struggle for democracy in the U.S. and the unique dangers to liberty we face today, check out this interesting piece in The New York Times by Jennifer Schluessler: The Boston Tea Party Turns 250 and Raises 21st-Century Questions.
A jury on Friday ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers who said he had destroyed their reputations with lies that they tried to steal the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump.
Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court in Washington had already ruled that Mr. Giuliani had defamed the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The jury had been asked to decide only on the amount of the damages.
The jury awarded Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss a combined $75 million in punitive damages. It also ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay compensatory damages of $16.2 million to Ms. Freeman and $16.9 million to Ms. Moss, as well as $20 million to each of them for emotional suffering.
Mr. Giuliani, who helped lead Mr. Trump’s effort to remain in office after his defeat in the 2020 election but has endured a string of legal and financial setbacks since then, was defiant after the proceeding.
“I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said outside the courthouse, suggesting that he would appeal and that he stood by his assertions about the two women.
He said that the torrent of attacks and threats the women received from Trump supporters were “abominable” and “deplorable,” but that he was not responsible for them.
His lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, had also argued that Mr. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and federal prosecutor, should not be held responsible for abuse directed to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss by others.
Mr. Sibley had warned that an award of the scale being sought by the women would be the civil equivalent of the death penalty for his client. Outside the courthouse on Friday, Mr. Giuliani called the amount “absurd.”
Break out the tiny violin. A bit more:
Over hours of emotional testimony during the civil trial in Washington, Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss described how their lives had been completely upended after Dec. 3, 2020, when Mr. Giuliani first suggested that they had engaged in election fraud to tilt the result against Mr. Trump in Georgia, a critical swing state.
The women, who are Black and are mother and daughter, were soon flooded with expletive-laden phone calls and messages, threats, and racist attacks, they testified. People said they should be hanged for treason or lynched; others told them they fantasized about hearing the sound of their necks snapping.
They showed up at Ms. Freeman’s home. They tried to execute a citizen’s arrest of Ms. Moss at her grandmother’s house. They called Ms. Moss’s 14-year-old son’s cellphone so much that it interfered with his virtual classes, and he finished his first year of high school with failing grades.
“This all started with one tweet,” Ms. Freeman told the jury, referring to a social media post from Mr. Giuliani saying, “WATCH: Video footage from Georgia shows suitcases filled with ballots pulled from under a table AFTER supervisors told poll workers to leave room and 4 people stayed behind to keep counting votes.”
All lies, of course.
No one knows how much Rudy is worth these days, because he refused to provide information on his assets to the court. But it’s highly unlikely he has anything like the millions he’s been ordered to pay. Of course, he’s planning to appeal.
Rudy Giuliani followed his time in public service with a lucrative career in the private sector that turned him into a multimillionaire. But the former New York mayor now faces legal damages of $148 million in a defamation case filed by two Georgia election workers.
A jury of eight Washington, D.C., residents ruled Giuliani must pay $148 million to the election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. Their attorneys had asked the jurors to award $24 million each in damages. Giuliani was earlier found liable for several defamation claims against them.
The jury on Friday said the former mayor must pay $16.2 million to Freeman and $17 million to Freeman, as well as $20 million to each for emotional distress and an additional $75 million in punitive damages.
So how much is he worth today?
Giuliani’s current net worth could be worth less than $50 million, based on his attorney’s comment that the damages sought by Moss and Freeman would “be the end” of him.
About 15 years ago, Giuliani’s net worth was more than $50 million, with $15 million of that total from his business activities, including his work with lobbying firm Giuliani Partners, according to CNN. At the time, he earned about $17 million a year, the news outlet reported.
How much has Giuliani’s net worth changed over the years?
Giuliani faces considerable expenses, hurt by a third divorce and pricey lawsuits, and signs suggest they have taken a financial toll. To generate cash, he’s sold 9/11 shirts for $911 and pitched sandals sold by Donald Trump ally Mike Lindell. He also started selling video messages on Cameo for $325 a pop, although his page on the site says Giuliani is no longer available.
Giuliani owes about $3 million in legal fees, according to The New York Times. He earns about $400,00 a year from a radio show and also receives some income from a podcast, but it’s not enough to cover his debts, the newspaper reported. Earlier this year, Giuliani’s long-term attorney sued him, alleging that the former mayor owes him almost $1.4 million in legal fees.
Meanwhile, Giuliani in July listed his Manhattan apartment for $6.5 million, and it was still available in mid-December, according to Sotheby’s. The 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom co-op includes a library with a wood-burning fireplace and a butler’s pantry.
Unfortunately, Trump is still in the news. Here’s what’s happening with the narcissistic wannabe dictator.
When Donald Trump sat down in the office of his Bedminster, N.J., golf club late this summer to flesh out his trade and border policy, familiar faces were across from him: Robert Lighthizer and Russell Vought, two of the architects of the former president’s populist first-term record.
Trump’s former trade representative and White House budget director, respectively, are part of a cadre of allies helping him shape policy proposals across a range of topics, laying the groundwork for what would be an aggressive and controversial second-term agenda.
The group—which also includes Stephen Miller, driver of hard-line immigration policies, former Housing Secretary Ben Carson and John Ratcliffe, former director of national intelligence, among others—is stocked with veterans of Trump’s first term who are closely aligned with his vision of protectionist economic policies and an isolationist approach to foreign policy.
They are likely to take key administration roles should Trump win the election, according to the campaign, which has worked to counter speculation over Trump’s inner circle and policy-formulation process.
Importantly for Trump, these figures have stuck by him following his loss to President Biden in 2020, unlike the many past cabinet officials and other top aides who now oppose him.Trump’s first term was marked by dissension, with policy disagreements and personality clashes leading to heated Oval Office arguments and damaging leaks to reporters.
In contrast, aides say, the current group of Trump confidantes is on the same page. Whether such harmony could be preserved in an actual second Trump administration—which would include hundreds more aides and a full cabinet—is less clear.
Trump’s policy development, like much of what he has brought to government, is unorthodox—a mix of his gut instincts and working style. He eschews traditional meetings and flowcharts, aides say, and instead draws on his experience in business and direct conversations with an extended network of contacts of longtime friends, CEOs and people he has met in politics. He often pits one viewpoint against another, a hallmark of his first tenure in office.
Flights to and from campaign events have turned into policy huddles with staff and are where Trump reads articles, instructing aides to get someone on the phone when they land or the following day, according to people involved in the discussions.
His policy agenda has excited core supporters while alarming Democrats and some Republicans.
“He’s been pretty clear in saying he will use the levers of government to go after his political opponents, which is anathema to conservatives,” said Marc Short, who served in the Trump administration and was a top adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence’s presidential campaign. Short said Trump’s 2016 platform appealed to the party in part by focusing on appointing conservative judges and cutting taxes.
Other key people Trump and his team are in regular communication with over policy ideas—and who could take important administration roles—include the following:
Among a small but influential group of young conservative activists and intellectuals, “Tricky Dick” is making a quiet — but notable — comeback. Long condemned by both Democrats and Republicans as the “crook” that he infamously swore not to be, Nixon is reemerging in some conservative circles as a paragon of populist power, a noble warrior who was unjustly consigned to the black list of American history.
Across the right-of-center media sphere, examples of Nixonmania abound. Online, popular conservative activists are studying the history of Nixon’s presidency as a “blueprint for counter-revolution” in the 21st century. In the pages of small conservative magazines, readers can meet the “New Nixonians” who are studying up on Nixon’s foreign policy prowess. On TikTok, users can scroll through meme-ified homages to Nixon. And in the weirdest (and most irony laden) corners of the internet, Nixon stans are even swooning over the former president’s swarthy good looks.
“I’ve always been pretty fascinated with him,” said Curt Mills, a conservative journalist and self-professed Nixon fan. (Mills has contributed to POLITICO Magazine.) “I think the Nixon story is really an American story. He really is this guy who is from nowhere, and he’s just absolutely reviled … [but] I do think he has this charisma that’s sort of underrated.”
The Nixon renaissance is being driven in part by young conservatives’ genuine interest in Nixon, whom Mills colorfully described as “our Shakespearean president.” But when pressed about their pro-Nixon views, even his most sincere supporters readily admit that the Nixon-mania isn’t being driven solely — or even primarily — by academic interest in Nixon. Instead, the populist right’s ongoing effort to rehabilitate Nixon, which is unfolding against the backdrop of the 2024 Republican primary, is really about another divisive former Republican president: Donald Trump.
In the topsy-turvy historical tableau of 2023, to defend Nixon is to back Trump — and to rescue the former from historical ignominy is, according to the thinking of some young conservatives, to save the latter from the same fate.
“If we can rehabilitate Richard Nixon in a balanced and fair manner — or even if we can just create questions in the public discourse about Nixon and about Nixon’s presidency — then I think, by way of analogy, it will provoke similar questions about Donald Trump,” said the conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who published a lengthy defense of Nixon earlier this year for City Journal. “It will give us the kind of template, it will give us the precedents, it will give us the skills, where we can more effectively defend a conservative president against these kinds of attacks.”
Read the rest at Politico, if you can handle it.
Time Magazine has a piece about Texas abortion laws and Kate Cox, the woman who fled the state in order to get abortion care after learning she was carrying a non-viable fetus and faced the prospect of losing her ability to have children in the future: That Texas Abortion Case Is Even Worse Than You Think.
So much of the national conversation this week has been about Kate Cox, the 31-year-old mom who had to flee Texas to have an abortion to end a doomed pregnancy as the state’s Supreme Court slowly decided to substitute its judgment for her doctor’s advice.
But what’s been missing from most of the talk about this case is this reality: Texas has at least three separate laws on the books designed to make getting an abortion nearly impossible. Those overlapping, vague statutes not only create one of the most restrictive environments in the country for reproductive rights, but shaped Cox’s case in ways that many following her ordeal likely missed. It also shows how even minor details can matter, especially when judges have political bents and time is an urgent component.
To understand the lay of the land that Cox, her family, and her doctor were facing, we need to look at what Texas lawmakers put in place before Dobbs, the 2022 case that invalidated a half-century of protections enshrined in Roe v. Wade. A year earlier, Texas passed a so-called “trigger ban” that would outlaw abortions should the Supreme Court overturn Roe. We’ll call this Ban A. It serves up a felony life sentence for health care providers who perform abortions and a $100,000 fine.
A second 2021 law—let’s call it Ban B—was a novel attempt at effectively banning most abortions in Texas without waiting for the Supreme Court to give permission, and it largely succeeded. That law runs along civil lines by deputizing neighbors and strangers to enforce it through lawsuits. Under Ban B (also known as S.B. 8), even an Uber driver who ferries a customer to a place where abortions are performed can be civilly charged. Critics have labeled it a Bounty Law. Yet unlike Ban A, Ban B isn’t a complete ban, though it functions as one in practice. It blocks most pregnant individuals from seeking an abortion after about six weeks, or when lawmakers decided there exists a beating “fetal heart”—a term doctors do not use, because a fetus at that point does not yet have a heart. (What abortion opponents describe as a heartbeat at that stage is actually the electrical impulses developing cells start to emit.)
Finally, there is Ban C, which are the pre-Roelaws in Texas, dating back to the state’s first criminal code of 1857. At that time, the state had a ban on abortion—including the funding of it—except in cases when the pregnant person’s life was at risk. The penalty? Five years in prison for those providing the care. Texas officials have asserted that those laws snapped back into effect when Roe fell.
All three abortion bans include language that provides exceptions when the health of the pregnant person is in question, although the specific definitions and conditions are different and vague. (None, it also should be noted, holds the pregnant party criminally liable.)
This all created a legal and medical minefield for Kate Cox, the Dallas-area mother of two who has been public about wanting, in her words, “a large family.” When Cox and her family learned the fetus she was carrying had tested positive for a genetic condition that almost always results in a miscarriage or stillbirth, she took action. She had already been to the hospital four times in two weeks seeking emergency attention and worried what this troubled pregnancy would mean for her future potential; her doctor agreed that an abortion would leave her with the greatest potential for a pregnancy at a future date.
The killing of the three men – who were kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October during its assault on southern Israel – has triggered widespread anger and incredulity in Israel amid a mounting sense of anxiety over the safety of the remaining hostages in Gaza.
According to reports of the IDF probe in the Israeli media, the three men Yotam Haim, Samer El-Talalka and Alon Shamriz – all in their 20s – had somehow escaped their captors and were approaching an IDF position in the Shejaiya area of Gaza City where there has been heavy fighting.
One of the men was carrying a stick with a white cloth tied to it and all had removed their shirts. Spotting the three, an Israeli soldier on a rooftop, however, opened fire on the men, shouting “Terrorists!”.
While two of the hostages fell to the ground immediately, the third fled into a nearby building. When a commander arrived on the scene, the unit was ordered into the building where it killed the third hostage despite his pleas for help in Hebrew.
It emerged too that the IDF had identified a nearby building marked with “SOS” and “Help! Three hostages” two days earlier but had believed it might be a trap.
As the first details of the killing were released by the IDF on Friday night, after most Israelis had begun to mark Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, a hastily called demonstration converged on the Kirya, Israel’s sprawling military headquarters compound in Tel Aviv.
Chanting “Shame”, “There’s no time” and “Deal now!” – the last a demand for a new ceasefire agreement with Hamas and a hostage exchange – the protesters represent a growing thread of anger in Israel at the way in which the war is being prosecuted, as the situation of the remaining hostages in Gaza has taken a series of dark of turns in the past week.
There’s much more at the link.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all have a terrific weekend!
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There are some surprising and unsurprising headlines today as we find out precisely how undemocratic and undedicated to the U.S. Constitutional some certain officials are. There’s one headline that has surprised and given me some relief that shining light on the Courts can bring about some positive results. Let’s start with that!
The judge overseeing the criminal case against former president Donald Trump in the Southern District of Florida has rejected the ex-president’s most recent attempt to delay his trial on charges that he violated the Espionage Act and obstructed a probe into how he still had classified documents at his home long after his presidency had ended.
In an order issued on Friday, Judge Aileen Cannon rejected Mr Trump’s request to delay the trial that she scheduled for 20 May 2024 earlier this year.
Judge Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Mr Trump and confirmed just weeks before he left office, left open the possibility that she would step in to aid his efforts to push any trial back until after next year’s presidential election in hopes that he will win and be able to order prosecutors to drop the charges after he is sworn in for a second term.
She wrote in her order that she would consider more requests to delay Mr Trump’s trial during a scheduling conference on 1 March.
Mr Trump’s attorneys had asked her to grand an extension of several months in the trial schedule, citing what they described as delays in accessing evidence the government has turned over as part of the pre-trial discovery process.
The decision from Cannon is notable given that she had signaled during a hearing this month that she was open to pushing back the trial date, pointing to the other trials Trump faces as well as the mounds of evidence that defense lawyers need to review. Trump’s lawyers had complained about the burden of scouring more than 1 million pages of evidence that prosecutors have produced. Prosecutors had resisted any effort to delay, saying they’d already taken steps to make the evidence easier for the defense to review.
Trump is currently set for trial on March 4, 2024, in Washington on federal charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. He also faces charges in Georgia accusing him of trying to subvert that state’s vote, as well as another state case in New York accusing him of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.
In addition, Trump has been sued in a business fraud case in New York, where a trial is taking place. Trump has denied wrongdoing in all of the cases, claiming without evidence that they are part of a politically motivated effort to prevent him from returning to the White House.
Sit for a minute with these comments the GOP frontrunner for president has made on national television in recent days. “They’ve released the genie out of the box,” Donald Trump said in a Univision interview aired Thursday, referring to the four indictments he faces that he insists are attempts to interfere with his 2024 campaign. “If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’”
“Now that he indicted me,” Trump said at a rally a day earlier of Joe Biden, who did not indict him, “we’re allowed to look at him…He did real bad things. We will restore law and order to our communities. And I will direct a completely overhauled [Department of Justice] to investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America for their illegal, racist-in-reverse enforcement of the law.”
It is easy to overlook these kinds of pronouncements from the former president, given the frequency with which he makes them. But it’s also important to really take them in—to listen to his threats with fresh ears, as if you haven’t heard him say some version of them a thousand times before. Here is the frontrunner for the Republican nod—and possibly the presidency—vowing to use the government to go after political opponents. A second Trump term “would be the end of our country as we know it,” Hillary Clintonwarned in an appearance on the View Thursday, “and I don’t say that lightly.”
Clinton, of course, has long been the subject of Trump’s threats of political prosecution. “Lock her up!” was something of an unofficial slogan of his 2016 campaign—a rally refrain as ubiquitous as “Build the wall!” and “Drain the swamp!” and “Make America Great Again!” But it was never just about his 2016 opponent; “lock her up,” like other Trump catchphrases, was really more of a mnemonic—one he has repurposed in attacks on Biden, Anthony Fauci, and others who have been cast as villains in the MAGAverse. These authoritarian threats are not tit-for-tat responses to his own indictments, as he suggested this week. They’ve always been a central tenet of his movement.
Sit for a minute with these comments the GOP frontrunner for president has made on national television in recent days. “They’ve released the genie out of the box,” Donald Trump said in a Univision interview aired Thursday, referring to the four indictments he faces that he insists are attempts to interfere with his 2024 campaign. “If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’”
“Now that he indicted me,” Trump said at a rally a day earlier of Joe Biden, who did not indict him, “we’re allowed to look at him…He did real bad things. We will restore law and order to our communities. And I will direct a completely overhauled [Department of Justice] to investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America for their illegal, racist-in-reverse enforcement of the law.”
It is easy to overlook these kinds of pronouncements from the former president, given the frequency with which he makes them. But it’s also important to really take them in—to listen to his threats with fresh ears, as if you haven’t heard him say some version of them a thousand times before. Here is the frontrunner for the Republican nod—and possibly the presidency—vowing to use the government to go after political opponents. A second Trump term “would be the end of our country as we know it,” Hillary Clintonwarned in an appearance on the View Thursday, “and I don’t say that lightly.”
Clinton, of course, has long been the subject of Trump’s threats of political prosecution. “Lock her up!” was something of an unofficial slogan of his 2016 campaign—a rally refrain as ubiquitous as “Build the wall!” and “Drain the swamp!” and “Make America Great Again!” But it was never just about his 2016 opponent; “lock her up,” like other Trump catchphrases, was really more of a mnemonic—one he has repurposed in attacks on Biden, Anthony Fauci, and others who have been cast as villains in the MAGAverse. These authoritarian threats are not tit-for-tat responses to his own indictments, as he suggested this week. They’ve always been a central tenet of his movement.
Though this bluster is nothing new, it has taken on an even more menacing overtone recently: Trump, who is leading Biden in some recent polls, is running for a second term on an explicitly authoritarian platform—and allies like Stephen Miller are already plotting to clear the way for him to make good on his threats, to remove the roadblocks that kept his autocratic fantasies from being fully realized in his first term.
It’s possible to forget just how close he did come that first time around and to get desensitized to his repeated threats, praise for dictators, and other outrages. Which is why it’s so important to remain clear-eyed about the danger he represents. As Clinton warned, “Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word.”
On Monday, Donald Trump took the witness stand in his civil fraud trial in New York and proved once again that there is a “two-tiered justice system” in this country … just not in the way that he thinks. In fact, he’s treated far better than most criminal defendants, and has gotten away with behavior which would have gotten anyone not named Donald Trump held in contempt of court.
…
On top of the abuse, Trump spewed preposterous lies under oath. For instance, he’s still insisting that Mar-a-Lago is worth upwards of one billion dollars, despite having agreed to massive encumbrances on its future development which decrease its value. As the New Republic notes, Trump signed a deed of development with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2002 stating that “the Club and Trump intend to forever extinguish their right to develop or use the Property for any purpose other than club use.”
But on the witness stand Trump was adamant that he still retains the right to subdivide and develop the property.
“‘Intend’ doesn’t mean we will do it,” he smirked.
Later he was confronted with evidence from Forbes Magazine that his former CFO Allen Weisselberg had lied on the witness stand. Trump sidestepped the question, saying, “I have very little respect for Forbes. I haven’t dealt with them for years. I believe they are out of business actually.” In fact, he screamed at Forbes reporter Dan Alexander on Truth Social just a month ago when the magazine dropped him from its Forbes 400 list.
Trump’s lies on Monday included his constant refrain that he has an “IRONCLAD DISCLAIMER CLAUSE!” which immunizes him from consequences for overestimating his net worth by a billion dollars in an effort to get banks to lend him money. The judge already rejected this get-out-of-jail-free card on September 26, noting that New York law places the “onus for accuracy squarely on defendants’ shoulders” as the party in the transaction with more complete knowledge.
“If you want to know about the disclaimer clause, read my opinion again. Or for the first time, perhaps,” the court reminded Trump when he trotted out the disclaimer.
“You’re wrong in the opinion,” Trump retorted, showing once again that he wasn’t going to be bound by any normal standard of behavior. And then he pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket with the rejected disclaimer language on it, saying “I’d love to read this, your honor, if I could, if I’m allowed to do that.”
To be clear, witnesses simply cannot introduce uncorroborated evidence on the stand under direct examination. Trump knows this perfectly well, and so do his lawyers, so it was no surprise that Justice Engoron put the kibosh on this little stunt.
“Shocker. I’m shocked,” Trump muttered sarcastically, affecting to be once again oppressed by a manifestly unfair legal system, stacked against the poor, defenseless former president.
Speaker Mike Johnson is learning quickly that, although he may have received unanimous support to get the gavel, the sharp divisions among House Republicans over spending bills remain.
Two times this week, Johnson, R-La., was forced to pull federal budget bills from the floor after it became clear that Republican opposition meant they would fail to pass.
Now, there are just seven days left before the federal government is due to shutdown at the end of the day on November 17, not enough time to pass the full suite of annual budget bills.
Despite the time crunch, Speaker Johnson has not announced the details of his plan for a stopgap funding measure, which would temporarily extend government funding in order to allow lawmakers to sort out their disagreements on the full budget.
The Transportation and Housing funding bill, which leaders pulled from the floor late Tuesday, ran into problems when a group of Republicans from the Northeast opposed the bill’s funding cuts to Amtrak. Conservatives insisted they remain in the bill.
Johnson pulled the Financial Services and General Government funding measure on Thursday, after moderate members of his conference opposed a provision in the bill that would have overruled Washington, D.C.’s abortion law.
One of the members opposed to the bill, Rep. John Duarte of California, pointed to Tuesday’s election results in several states showing voter pushback to Republican efforts to restrict abortion rights.
“The American people are telling us very clearly they don’t want Washington, D.C., meddling in their abortion rights,” Duarte said. “That’s clear and we’re trying to make sure we can deliver on that.”
The Financial Services bill also faced opposition over funding for a new FBI headquarters, which the government announced this week would be built D.C.’s Maryland suburbs.
After a proposed amendment to bar any funding for the building failed, conservatives including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan threatened to vote against final passage of the bill.
Another government funding bill from Republicans was pulled on Thursday morning after many leaders refused to back several pieces of the bill, including one aimed at overturning a law that barred companies from discriminating against employees who use birth control.
The birth control plank was just one of dozens of amendments that were added to the bill from Republican lawmakers, as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) pledged to pass the budget by the Nov. 17 shutdown deadline.
According to Politico, there were more than 100 amendments proposed in all, including some that drew rebukes from swing-district Republicans.
Rep. Max Miller (R- OH) called it “embarrassing” and “incredibly upsetting” that House GOP leadership had to pull the final passage of the funding bill, reported CNN’s Annie Grayer. He went on to bash his colleagues for hyper-partisan amendments to bills that must pass to keep the government open.
The law being targeted by the House GOP is a local Washington, D.C. ordinance that prevents any employer from discriminating against a worker who seeks contraception or family planning services. The GOP bill would block that from taking effect.
In an interview Sunday, Johnson was asked by Fox’s Shannon Bream about some of his extreme opinions and bills regarding birth control.
“I really don’t remember any of those measures,” he told her.
After Ohio’s vote Tuesday to protect abortion rights, Democrats are rushing to get similar measures on the ballot next year in key states such as Arizona, Nevada and Florida — partly to boost President Biden and down-ballot Democrats.
Why it matters: In the face of bleak polling on the economy, abortion continues to be a winning issue for Democrats — one that could motivate otherwise uninspired voters to turn out and keep the White House in the party’s hands.
Voters now have explicitly endorsed abortion rights via ballot initiatives in seven states since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year — in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Vermont and now Ohio.
The wins are boosting confidence among Democrats that similar ballot measures — and candidates who cast the high court’s Dobbs ruling as a government assault on individual rights — can help the party ride the backlash in the 2024 elections.
In private and with a group of abortion-rights organizers in Miami last month, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff has described Democrats’ path to victory in 2024 as “Dobbs and Democracy,” according to two people familiar with his comments.
A White House spokesperson said that Emhoff’s “public comments speak for themselves.”
What to watch: There’s now added urgency to efforts to get abortion-rights initiatives on 2024 ballots in battleground states of Arizona, Nevada and Florida as well as Republican-dominated Nebraska and South Dakota, advocates tell Axios.
Groups also are working to enshrine abortion access in Colorado’s state constitution, while ending restrictions on the use of public funds to pay for abortions. Biden won Colorado in 2020.
Zoom in: Florida has the earliest deadline for voter signatures to get a measure on the 2024 ballot — Feb. 1 — and organizers have been trying to get national Democrats more involved in their efforts.
“If you’re really interested in affecting turnout in Florida in 2024, then the place to put your money is in this ballot initiative because it’s going to pay off all the way down the ballot,” said Anna Hochkammer, executive director of Florida Women’s Freedom Coalition.
Reality check: Florida has one of the nation’s most difficult processes for getting a state constitutional amendment initiative on the ballot, and some national Democrats believe proponents there began organizing too late.
Any ballot initiative requires more than 890,000 signatures with at least half of the state’s 28 congressional districts represented — and the conservative state Supreme Court could still throw it off the ballot, as Florida’s attorney general is already arguing they should.
Florida has veered to the right in recent years, but Biden lost to former President Trump by just 3 percentage points in 2020.
The coalition of advocacy groups behind the effort, called Floridians Protecting Freedom, is nearing 500,000 signatures. It launched the campaign in May.
Meanwhile, presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) has leaned into the issue in the other direction, signing a six-week abortion ban into law earlier this year.
Zoom out: The Dobbs decision ignited an active network of fundraising and spending in support of abortion-rights initiatives that hasn’t been matched by anti-abortion groups.
Imagine a country where abortion rights are the primary turn-out reason! Or birth control! Mike Johnson is like the poster child for white Christian nationalism’s oppression of everyone! “The Key to Mike Johnson’s Christian Extremism Hangs Outside His Office. The newly elected House Speaker has ties to the far-right New Apostolic Reformation — which is hell-bent on turning America into a religious state. ” This is from The Rolling Stone, written by Bradley Onishi and Mattew D. Taylor.
THE AMERICAN PUBLIC has had much to learn about Mike Johnson over the past two weeks. Until his surprise elevation to House Speaker, the Louisiana representative was an obscure, mild-mannered, and bookish four-term back-bencher. He is a former constitutional lawyer and hardly the type of political figure who jeers during a State of the Union address, or gets caught in a Beetlejuice groping scandal, or shows up on cable news to take a victory lap after ousting the leader of his own party. Johnson is focused, methodical, and up until now was happy to operate behind the scenes.
He’s also a dyed in the wool Christian conservative, and there’s a flag hanging outside his office that leads into a universe of right-wing religious extremism as unknown to most Americans as Johnson was before he ascended to the speakership.
Johnson was also integral to Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. As The New York Times has reported, he collected signatures for a brief supporting a Texas lawsuit alleging, without evidence, irregularities in election results; served a key role in the GOP’s attempts to prevent the certification of Biden’s election; and touted Trump’s conspiracy theories about election fraud, even saying, “You know the allegations about these voting machines, some of them being rigged with this software by Dominion, there’s a lot of merit to that.”
If this was all we knew about Mike Johnson, we could accurately say that he is a full-bore, right-wing Christian and an election denier who dabbles in conspiracy theories — qualities that might give one pause before putting him second in line to the presidency. But there is another angle to Johnson’s extremism that has received less scrutiny, and it brings us back to that flag outside his office.
To understand the contemporary meaning of the Appeal to Heaven flag, it’s necessary to enter a world of Christian extremism animated by modern-day apostles, prophets, and apocalyptic visions of Christian triumph that was central to the chaos and violence of January 6. Earlier this year we released an audio-documentary series, rooted in deep historical research and ethnographic interviews, on this sector of Christianity, which is known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The flag hanging outside Johnson’s office is a key part of its symbology.
On 20 January, 1994, a group of 120 churchgoers at Toronto Airport Vineyard Church fell to the floor in hysterical laughter, some of them barking like dogs and roaring like lions.
Randy Clark, the visiting preacher from St. Louis who sparked the outburst, proudly described them as “drunk” on the Holy Spirit. But that raucous week sparked what’s come to be known as the Toronto Blessing, a twelve-and-a-half-year revival that attracted visitors from scores of countries to a crusade that, 30 years later, has transformed into what might be the most influential force in Christianity today: the New Apostolic Reformation. And they have one clear goal in mind—ruling over the United States and, eventually, the world.
Yet, if Johnson is a mystery man to the world at large, to the power brokers of the religious right his new role is no surprise. They’ve been grooming Johnson for this position for many years.
In a deeply researched article in The Washington Spectator, journalist Anne Nelson documents how Johnson’s path to power was facilitated by the Council for National Policy (CNP), an outfit founded in 1981 “by a group of right-wing fundamentalists and oil barons” that works “largely behind the scenes, to reshape America into a country that protects gun rights, counters federal regulation, favors plutocrats, and rolls back the social progress wrought by the New Deal and the Great Society.”
At a 2019 meeting of the CNP in New Orleans, Executive Director Bob McEwen singled out Johnson, expressing the group’s prophetic hope: “As we go through the success of this next election, we can then take the leadership that needs to be done. If we were to choose a person to represent our values, who would be skilled, likeable, loveable, loves his country and loves the Lord, it would be [Mike Johnson] our speaker tonight.”
Like Johnson himself, the CNP is shrouded in a protective obscurity. It doesn’t have the fame of such right-wing institutions as the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, or the Family Research Council. But the CNP gains its power by effectively networking between these institutions and elected Republicans. In particular, it was the CNP that officiated over the fateful marriage between the profane Donald Trump and the leaders of the religious rights.
As Nelson reports, in 2016 CNP strategists “rallied a thousand ‘Mega-Christian Leaders’ to New York City on behalf of Donald Trump’s struggling campaign. They had already defined the terms of the deal: the previous March, CNP Board of Governors member Leonard Leo had met with Trump to present him with a list of ultra-conservative candidates for the federal judiciary.”
Trump’s unshakable bond with the holy rollers who call themselves “Mega-Christian leaders” has puzzled many observers. After all, there has never been a major American political figure so starkly sacrilegious as Trump, so utterly bereft of any biblical knowledge (remember the “Two Corinthians” gaffe?), so purely committed to his own self-aggrandizement at the expense of any traditional values.
However, this will be interesting as Trump can read the writing on the wall in all these ballot initiatives. There’s a breach in the damn of ignorance. “The Pro-life Movement Is Fuming at Donald Trump. Should he care? Its supporters will vote for him anyway.” This is from The Atlantic. It’s reported by Elaine Godfrey.
A few weeks ago, the Texas anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson told me that he viewed Donald Trump as the Constantine of the anti-abortion movement: a man who, like the Roman emperor, had been converted to a righteous cause and become its champion.
“There are some who believe that Constantine was a sincere Christian and others who believe that he wasn’t,” Dickson said. Regardless of whether Trump is genuinely opposed to abortion rights, “he was good for Christianity and the pro-life movement.”
The Rolling Stone reports on a rally meant to make Trump Pro-life again. They’re just another bunch of suckers that Trump has thrown under the bus. Unfortuantely, he gave them a lot before we could stop him.
IN ANOTHER SIGN of the political havoc the Dobbs decision continues to wreak on the Republican party, protesters upset over Donald Trump’s stance on abortion gathered outside the former president’s rally in South Florida on Wednesday.
They weren’t pro-choice, though — they were anti-abortion activists upset that Trump, the one person most directly responsible for the end of Roe v. Wade, is in their view, caving on abortion.
In recent months, Trump has privately bemoaned the fact that the GOP is “getting killed on abortion” — even as he seeks to shore up support from the anti-abortion groups and religious figures who helped secure his victory in 2016.
A dozen members of the anti-abortion political action group Students for Life, which endorsed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, gathered outside the president’s rally in Hialeah on Wednesday holding signs that read “Make Trump Pro-Life Again.”
“We’re out here to send a message not only to Trump, but to the whole GOP party that we want our candidates to be unapologetically and fundamentally pro-life,” said Mary-Logan Miske, a campus organizer with Students for Life. Over the past year, Trump had failed that test, in her view. “He blamed pro-lifers for the loss of our midterms. He said that this issue, [abortion], isn’t a federal issue. And his latest thing was he basically said that DeSantis passing a heartbeat bill was a terrible, terrible thing.”
But don’t forget Ayatollah Mike! This is from The Guardian. ‘”Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, is a gender extremist.Gender conservatism does not tend to attract as much notice as the other pillars of the far-right ideology, but it is central to the Republican ideology ” This is written by Moira Donegan. And hands off my pants Mickie!
But the picture that has emerged instead of the once-obscure Louisiana congressmen has not been that of the typically cynical climber, maneuvering corporate heights in pursuit of their own ambition without regard to ethics. Instead, the revelations that have emerged about Mike Johnson since his ascent to the speakership paint a picture of a fevered zealot: in thrall of baroque and morbid religious fantasies; beholden to a regressive, bigoted and morbid worldview; and above all, obsessed – with a lurid and creepy enthusiasm – with sex, and how he thinks it should be done.
The enforcement of a Christian sexual morality and a strict gender hierarchy of men over women have not been incidental or minor themes of Johnson’s career: they have been its primary goal, one he pursued doggedly through his pre-congressional life. As a lawyer, he worked against gay marriage, and to uphold Louisiana’s criminal ban on gay sex, writing briefs that described homosexuality as “inherently unnatural” and “a dangerous lifestyle” which he compared to pedophilia and bestiality. He still opposes marriage equality, and led efforts to squash the speakership candidacy of Tom Emmer last month in part because of Emmer’s support for gay marriage rights. Along the way, Johnson has authored a national version of Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, which would outlaw mentions of homosexuality at schools, hospitals and other federally funded facilities. He opposes access to transition-related healthcare for adolescents and adults alike, and both he and his wife have worked to advance so-called “conversion therapy”, an abusive, homophobic practice that has been outlawed in several states.
It probably goes without saying that Johnson, like many Republicans and nearly all of the party’s luminaries, favors a national ban on abortion, which he calls a “holocaust.” While more savvy Republicans like Glenn Youngkin have attempted to frame themselves as “moderates” by placing their preferred abortion bans at supposedly more amenable points in pregnancy, like 15 weeks, Johnson has made no such effort: he has sponsored legislation that would ban abortion nationwide at all stages of pregnancy, establishing a “right to life” for fertilized eggs that supersedes women’s rights to dignity and self-determination.
His sweeping antagonism to abortion rights has extended to several kinds of birth control, such as IUDs, implants and many birth control pills. In his career as a lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom – a rightwing legal shop spearheading efforts to advance Christian gender conservatism through litigation – he argued that the most popular kinds of hormonal birth control, and those that are controlled by women, are equivalent to abortion and should therefore be banned. When the House advanced a bill to codify the right to contraception after the US supreme court’s Dobbs ruling in 2022, Johnson voted against it. He has since played dumb on the issue, claiming he does not remember his opposition to birth control in an interview with Shannon Bream of Fox News.
In light of his aggressively misogynist and anti-gay views on public policy, it is likely not surprising that Johnson also advances a disturbing and sexist view of the private sphere. He has condemned no-fault divorce, the liberalized regime of divorce law that was won by feminists in the 20th century, and which allowed women to initiate divorce and to exit marriages without having to prove either infidelity or abuse to a court. Johnson says that women’s freedom to leave marriages, along with their freedom to elect out of motherhood when they choose, is responsible for mass shootings.
We will get rid of your theocratic nonsense one ballot initiatve at a time if need be! Boo fucking who you fascists assholes! (I’m channelling my inner JJ!)
So, this is getting to be a high stakes election year with high stakes high jinx. Hang in there! We’re here for each other! VOTE BLUE!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today!
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As you know, the Georgia grand jury handed down multiple indictments of Trump and many of his cronies for a conspiracy to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election. He has now been indicted 4 times for a total of 91 criminal charges. I tried to stay up until the bitter end last night, but I fell asleep before Fani Willis finally made her announcement.
After a marathon session Monday, a Georgia grand jury returned a monster 41-felony-count, 97-page indictment against a total of 19 defendants, including former President Donald Trump; Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jenna Ellis; and Trump DOJ official Jeff Clark.
It was a strange day of uncertainty and expectation, with moment-by-moment reporting from the Fulton County courthouse. The duty judge would poke his head into the courtroom of waiting reporters to do check-ins. Grand jury witnesses scheduled to testify today made public that they had been called in a day early and offered regular updates as to where they stood in the line of witnesses paraded before the grand jury. The presentation of the indictment to the duty judge was televised live. Reporters were taking photographs from the inside of the clerk of court’s office as they waited an agonizing couple of hours for the paperwork to be processed and the indictment made public.
The day was punctuated by what appeared to be the accidental posting then quick takedown from the clerk’s website of a document seemingly related to the case that listed Trump as a defendant. That sparked an initial round of excitement and panic, then confusion. The clerk’s office later issued a statement calling the document “fictitious.” But it remained unclear exactly what had happened and why.
As the drama stretched deep into the evening, it became increasingly clear that District Attorney Fani Will was pushing to finish the indictment the same day. The duty judge kept the courtroom open late to accept the indictment, should it come. It finally did, just before 9 p.m. ET. The indictment became public just before 11 p.m. ET.
The latest Trump indictment is out, and it’s a blockbuster. Let’s start with the numbers, shall we? A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, returned an indictment that has:
19 defendants, including the former president of the United States and 6 lawyers in his orbit
41 criminal counts across all defendants
13 criminal counts against the former president himself
8 types of manners and methods used to further a criminal enterprise
161 overt acts of racketeering activity
Many of the defendants are already familiar. Rudy Guiliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Sidney Powell are all attorneys who are likely some of the unindicted co-conspirators in the federal January 6 case. Others are people whose names have surfaced repeatedly during the various 2020 election investigations, such as Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, and attorney Ken Chesebro, who wrote the first memo suggesting the fake elector scheme. Others, like fake electors Shawn Still and David Shafer, aren’t household names….
If you’ve ever watched a mob movie set after 1970, when the law was first passed, you’ve probably heard of the federal RICO Act. It was designed to charge people for acting in concert with one another in furtherance of a criminal act. This was a big breakthrough because in sprawling criminal enterprises, people at the top — gang leaders, mob capos, etc. — could insulate themselves from criminal liability by having other people do their dirty work. But the advent of RICO meant that if you helped mastermind the heist but didn’t do the burglary, for example, you could still be held liable. The law isn’t just used against the Mafia but has also formed the basis for prosecuting people who run Ponzi schemes and gangs, among other things….
According to the indictment, Trump and his co-defendants used at least eight methods to try to undermine the election: (1) Making false statements to members of state legislatures, including Florida, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia; (2) Making false statements to high-ranking state officials in Georgia, such as the secretary of state and the governor; (3) creating a slate of fake electoral voters; (4) harassing and intimidating a Fulton County election worker; (5) soliciting high-ranking members of the United States Department of Justice to make false statements to government officials in Georgia; (6) soliciting Mike Pence to reject electoral college votes properly cast by Georgia’s electors; (7) unlawfully accessing voter equipment and voter data; and (8) making false statements and committing perjury to cover up the conspiracy.
The first public act in furtherance of the conspiracy started the day after the election when Trump gave a speech falsely declaring victory. Trump had discussed a draft speech to that effect three days before the election, in which he planned to declare victory and claim voter fraud. In other words, Trump was already prepared to attempt to overturn the election before election night even happened.
Read the rest at Public Notice. It’s a very good summary of the case.
Fun Fact: If Donald Trump is convicted under Georgia's RICO law, he could not be pardoned by the Governor, and would have to serve a mandatory minimum five year sentence before qualifying for parole.
Mark Meadows, a Freedom Caucus conservative who rose to become Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, will face a criminal indictment in Georgia alongside former president.
Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis unveiled her sprawling indictment late Monday evening, ending Meadows’ run thus far of successfully ducking some of the legal serious legal liability that others in Trump’s orbit have faced stemming from their actions that took place during the waning weeks of his presidency.
It means Meadows may soon join HR Haldeman, Nixon’s self-dubbed “son of a bitch,” in infamy among those who held one of the most powerful posts in the federal government, Chief of Staff. Haldeman, of course, faced prison time over his role in trying to cover up the Watergate break-in.
According to the indictment, Meadows, like each one of his fellow co-defendants, is facing a violation of Georgia’s RICO law. He is also facing an additional count related to his participation in Trump’s January 2, 2021 call with George Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during which Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes so he could win.
Meadows’ other conduct is mentioned throughout the indictment. In particular, Willis zeroed in on Meadows’ efforts to reach state lawmakers in Pennsylvania. Willis later told reporters that the grand jury believed conduct outside of her jurisdiction helped furthered the conspiracy she alleged.
Meadows was not one of the unindicted co-conspirators in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment related to conduct after the election, leading to speculation that the former chief of staff could be assisting the federal investigation.
Of course, Trump can’t keep his big mouth shut. He announced on Truth Social that he has proof of election fraud in Georgia which he will announce next Monday.
NEWS: Trump says he will hold a "major News Conference" next Monday at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, during which he will present a report from his team regarding his false claims that the presidential election results in Georgia were rife with fraud pic.twitter.com/eZi1Ud7Lks
One of the first big battles in the new racketeering case against Donald Trump is likely imminent: Should the former president face a jury in state or federal court?
Although the charges were filed in state court in Fulton County, Ga., Trump is sure to attempt to “remove” the case to federal court, where he would potentially have a friendlier jury pool and the chance of drawing a judge whom he appointed to the bench.
To try to get the case into federal court, Trump is expected to argue that much of the conduct he’s been charged with was undertaken in his capacity as an officer of the federal government, because he was still president during the critical period when he and his allies attempted to subvert the 2020 election results. A federal law, known as a “removal statute,” generally allows any “officer of the United States” who is prosecuted or sued in state court to transfer the case to federal court if the case stems from the officer’s governmental duties.
Trump has already attempted to make this move in New York, where he’s facing state charges for falsifying business records to cover up an affair with a porn star. A federal judge there rejected the effort and directed the case back to state court, noting that the charges there didn’t really implicate Trump’s powers as president.
“There is an ‘outer perimeter’ to a President’s authority and responsibilities beyond which he engages in private conduct,” U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled, sending the case back to New York state court. Trump is appealing the ruling.
But Georgia could be different: Most of the charges Trump is facing — sweeping allegations of using his office to corrupt the 2020 election — involve his presidential authorities and his efforts to manipulate the federal processes he was charged with overseeing. That makes removal a more viable option in Georgia than New York.
The judge in the case has even less experience than Aileen Cannon.
Those are the basics on the Georgia indictments. We will learn much more in the days ahead.
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Breaking News: Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to oversee the Hunter Biden investigation.
Garland is making David Weiss special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden. He says Weiss asked for this move on Tuesday. It means Weiss will write a report on his probe
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday he is appointing a special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe, deepening the investigation of the president’s son ahead of the 2024 election.
Garland said he is naming David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware who has been probing the financial and business dealings of the president’s son, as the special counsel.
Garland said on Tuesday that Weiss told him that “in his judgment, his investigation has reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a Special Counsel, and he asked to be appointed.”
“Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel,” Garland said.
The move is a momentous development from the typically cautious Garland and comes amid a pair of sweeping Justice Department probes into Donald Trump, the former president, and President Joe Biden’s chief rival in next year’s election. It comes as House Republicans are mounting their own investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
Jim Jordan must be celebrating.
BREAKING: Judge Chutkan just ruled that she will issue a protective order over the handling of evidence in trump's election interference case.
She also said trump does have a right to free speech, but it's "not absolute," as far as threats of harm to witnesses and others.
Also Breaking News: The hearing with Judge Tanya Chutkan on the prosecution’s request for a protective order in January 6 case has just wrapped up. Chutkan made it pretty clear that Trump had better not intimidate witnesses or pollute the jury pool, or he will be in big trouble. She alsBo told the defense to stop talking about politics. This is a criminal case, and she will not allow the politics to interfere with her decisions. Trump must follow the conditions he was given at his arraignment. If that causes him to have to keep his big fat mouth shut in some instances, that’s just too bad (my words). If you want a good, detailed thread on the hearing, I recommend this one by Brandi Buchman:
And away we go. Judge Tanya Chutkan is on the bench.
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan said that she plans to put serious limits over how sensitive evidence is handled in the Donald Trump 2020 election interference case, in a dramatic hearing Friday in Washington, DC, that could set the tone for the upcoming trial.
The former president has a right to free speech, but that right is “not absolute,” Chutkan said. “Mr. Trump, like every American, has a First Amendment right to free speech, but that right is not absolute. In a criminal case such as this one, the defendant’s free speech is subject to the rules.” [….]
Whether or not Trump’s public statements are covered by the protective order that’s issued, she said, if they result in the intimidation of a witness or the obstruction of justice, “I will be scrutinizing them very carefully.”
Trump’s lawyer John Lauro said: “President Trump will scrupulously abide by his conditions of release.”
Chutkan adopted restrictions proposed by prosecutors that would bar Trump from publicly disclosing information from interview transcripts and recordings from the investigation, including from witness interviews with investigators that took place outside of the grand jury….
Chutkan and Lauro had several pointed exchanges about what the 2024 presidential contender should be allowed to say about the evidence that is turned over to him in the case.
“No one disagrees that any speech that intimidates a witness would be prohibited, what we are talking about is fair use of information,” Lauro said at one point, putting forward a hypothetical that Trump is publicly remarking on something from his personal memory that is also evidence in the case.
“The fact that he is running a political campaign currently has to yield to the administration of justice,” the judge said. “And if that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say in a political speech, that is just how it’s going to have to be.”
Lauro put forward a hypothetical of Trump making a statement while debating his former Vice President Mike Pence – who is also running for the White House now and is a key witness in the criminal case – that overlapped with what’s in discovery.
The judge wasn’t sold.
“He is a criminal defendant. He is going to have constraints the same as any defendant. This case is going to proceed in a normal order,” Chutkan said.
New: US judge Tanya Chutkan appears to warn Trump at the end of the hearing: The more that a party makes inflammatory statements that could intimidate witnesses, the quicker she will want to go to trial to ensure an untainted jury pool
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office wants to put former President Donald Trump on trial for his attempted coup in January next year—a move that, if approved by a judge, could brand him a felon before the biggest GOP presidential primaries.
In a filing on Thursday, the special counsel’s office proposed a trial date of January 2, 2024, which they say would take “no longer than four to six weeks.”
Should U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya approve that date, Trump’s trial could be done and dusted before the GOP’s primaries in South Carolina and Michigan, with plenty of time before the delegate-rich slate of Super Tuesday states in March.
Trump already faces two other separate criminal trials in March and May in New York and Florida, respectively. However, those trials have been delayed enough that Trump still managed to snag key elections before risking the embarrassing reality of being convicted of felonies while asking voters to make him the Republican nominee.
Prosecutors working on these different cases all wanted earlier dates, but judges gave into Trump’s demands for more time. While his lawyers cited the sheer amount of overwhelming work required to sort through millions of pages of evidence, the former president has used political rallies and online posts to accuse prosecutors of trying to derail his re-election campaign. In the end, judges gave Trump a little extra time.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, whose pro-Trump bias and head-turning errors have raised questions about whether she should be overseeing former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Florida, made what appears to be another surprising mistake last year.
Now, a defense lawyer is seizing on her misstep to try freeing his client from prison—even though he was caught on tape violently throwing a courtroom chair at a prosecutor and threatening to kill him.
The blunder was simple and entirely avoidable. The federal judge told jurors they could find the man, Christopher Wilkins, “guilty or not guilty.” But then she handed jurors a verdict form that didn’t even have those options.
“How far does somebody have to go to school to say that a verdict form is supposed to say guilty and not guilty?” asked defense lawyer Jeffrey Garland. “That would be one of the more egregious versions of jury instruction error… it’s such a rare error.”
Garland formally filed an appeal on Thursday and hopes to overturn a case that’s as black-and-white as they come—on a technicality.
“This is the judge’s deal. This is nobody else’s deal. I’m gonna tell ya, I’ve done a lot of appeals, and I’ve got a pretty good winning record. This is a great issue,” he said. “For a guy who’s on tape throwing a chair in court, it’s pretty ‘not good’ behavior. It would have been simple. You have a trial, properly instruct a jury, give them a form, and the jury’s gonna do what the jury’s gonna do.”
Cannon’s short and controversial history on the bench is under a microscope, given that she is presiding over such an historic criminal trial: that of a former president facing prison time for mishandling classified records at Mar-a-Lago and lying to the feds in a coverup. Trump himself appointed her in his final months in office, yet she has not recused herself from the case.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell on the expected Georgia indictments:
NEW: Fulton County DA Fani Willis has evidence to charge multiple Trump allies involved in the breach of voting machines in Coffee County with computer trespass felonies, per ppl familiar. @guardian exclusive + explainer https://t.co/APPck5113z
The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia has evidence to charge multiple allies of the former president involved in breaching voting machines in the state, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The potential charges at issue are computer trespass felonies, the people said, though the final list of defendants and whether they will be brought as part of a racketeering case when prosecutors are expected to present evidence to the grand jury next week remain unclear.
To bring a racketeering case under Georgia state law, prosecutors need to show the existence of an “enterprise” predicated on at least two “qualifying” crimes, of which computer trespass is one. The Guardian has reported that prosecutors believe they have sufficient evidence for a racketeering case.
The statute itself prohibits the intentional use of a computer or computer network without authorization in order to remove data, either temporarily or permanently. It also prohibits interrupting or interfering with the use of a computer, as well as altering or damaging a computer.
Prosecutors have taken a special interest in the breach of voting machines in Coffee county, Georgia, by Trump allies because of the brazen nature of the operation and the possibility that Trump was aware that his allies intended to covertly gain access to the machines.
In a series of particularly notable incidents, forensics experts hired by Trump allies copied data from virtually every part of the voting system, which is used statewide in Georgia, before uploading them to a password-protected website that could be accessed by 2020 election deniers.
Read the rest at the link above.
I’m going to end there. This post is mostly breaking news. I’ll update in the comments if I hear more about these stories.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
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But the British government had a far more limited view of what constitutes actual representation than the Colonists did. Parliament asserted that it represented the people in Britain’s American colonies even if they had no role in electing it.
The jury awarded Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss a combined $75 million in punitive damages. It also ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay compensatory damages of $16.2 million to Ms. Freeman and $16.9 million to Ms. Moss, as well as $20 million to each of them for emotional suffering.
From CBS News: 
Trump’s former trade representative and White House budget director, respectively, are part of a cadre of allies helping him shape policy proposals across a range of topics, laying the groundwork for what would be an 
“He’s been pretty clear in saying he will use the levers of government to go after his political opponents, which is anathema to conservatives,” said Marc Short, who served in the Trump administration and was a top adviser to former Vice President 
The Nixon renaissance is being driven in part by young conservatives’ genuine interest in Nixon, whom Mills colorfully described as “our Shakespearean president.” But when pressed about their pro-Nixon views, even his most sincere supporters readily admit that the Nixon-mania isn’t being driven solely — or even primarily — by academic interest in Nixon. Instead, the populist right’s ongoing effort to rehabilitate Nixon, which is unfolding against the backdrop of the 2024 Republican primary, is really about another divisive former Republican president: Donald Trump.
To understand the lay of the land that Cox, her family, and her doctor were facing, we need to look at what Texas lawmakers put in place before Dobbs, the 2022 case that 
PBS has further information. 
Vanity Fair continues to spotlight Trump’s plan to replace our democratic republic with an autocratic one. This is written by Eric Lutz. 
Read more at the link. Liz Dye from Public Notice has a good reminder for us, too.
The Republicans have no clear plan on how to avoid the government shutdown. Mike Johnson and his clan of incompetence and theocracy is a disaster happening in prime time. This is from NPR. 
Yes. You read that right. This is from Raw Story. 
This is the discussion as voters from deep red states continue to enshrine Roe v. Wade in state constitutions via ballot measures. Even Nebraska is getting a ballot measure to its voters. Republicans are entirely hogtied from their previous positions as voters dump their ideas against reproductive freedom. 
Read up on NAR. They’re a frightening bunch of inquisitors who are hell-bent on turning us into their ‘Christian’ idea of the Taliban states. Y
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