Posted: April 3, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, just because | Tags: 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza hunger, Israel-Hamas war, Jose Andres, Judge Aileen Cannon, Judge Juan Merchan, Ruby Garcia, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Tom Fitton, World Central Kitchen |
Good Afternoon!!
It’s spring, but here in New England, we are awaiting a winter storm–a Nor’easter with high winds, torrential rains, and even snow in some areas. The storm is expected to last from this afternoon into Friday. It’s supposed to get stormy later this afternoon, but I can see outside my window that it is already raining. It’s a good day to read book and maybe take a nap.
The world news is awful. Benjamin Netanyhu is a monster. Yesterday, we learned that 7 workers for José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen were killed in 3 Israeli strikes in Gaza that sound targeted. The charity said they had coordinated with the IDF and had large signs on the roofs of their vehicles identifying them as aid workers.
David Graham at The Atlantic: A Deadly Strike in Gaza.
Seven people working for a humanitarian aid group led by the chef José Andrés were killed in an Israeli air strike in the central Gaza Strip today. The strike is a black mark for the Israel Defense Forces, and likely to turn world opinion further against the Gaza campaign. But more than its geopolitical significance, the strike is a horrifying moment on a human level. Innocent people, doing good work to feed a starving population, have died for no reason at all.
The group, World Central Kitchen, has been engaged for months in efforts to feed severely malnourished Palestinians in Gaza. WCK said the workers were “traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle,” and that the strike happened despite the group coordinating its movements with the Israel Defense Forces. Footage shows a puncture directly through the WCK emblem prominently displayed atop a vehicle.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the strike, which he described as an accident. “Unfortunately, there was a tragic incident in which our forces unintentionally hit innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “As it happens in war, we are investigating the matter fully, we are in contact with the governments, and we will do everything possible to prevent this from happening again.”
When Netanyau made this statement, there was an obvious smirk on his face.
Back to the Atlantic:
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the trucks were traveling along a route approved by the IDF when they were struck by an Israeli drone. Security forces believed that there was an armed Hamas member in the convoy, but the target was not actually traveling in any of the vehicles at the time of the strike. After each of the first two vehicles was struck, the passengers moved the wounded to a third, before another strike hit that one, killing the seven people. A Haaretz source inside the defense establishment blamed units in the field for acting rashly.
Writing on X, Andrés mourned the deaths: “The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.” [….]
The deaths are the latest senseless act of violence in a cycle that began with Hamas’s October 7 attacks, which killed more than 1,000 Israelis. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have died in Israel’s campaign in Gaza since. Netanyahu says the operation will destroy Hamas, though many commentators inside and outside of Israel find that goal unrealistic. The IDF has blamed civilian casualties on Hamas, which has intertwined its operations with noncombatants. Many aid workers have died, as well as nearly 100 members of the media, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The New York Times: José Andrés: Let People Eat.
In the worst conditions you can imagine — after hurricanes, earthquakes, bombs and gunfire — the best of humanity shows up. Not once or twice but always.
The seven people killed on a World Central Kitchen mission in Gaza on Monday were the best of humanity. They are not faceless or nameless. They are not generic aid workers or collateral damage in war.
People gather around the carcass of a car used by US-based aid group World Central Kitchen, that was hit by an Israeli strike the previous day in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on April 2, 2024. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)
Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, John Chapman, Jacob Flickinger, Zomi Frankcom, James Henderson, James Kirby and Damian Sobol risked everything for the most fundamentally human activity: to share our food with others.
These are people I served alongside in Ukraine, Turkey, Morocco, the Bahamas, Indonesia, Mexico, Gaza and Israel. They were far more than heroes.
Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right. It is not conditional on being good or bad, rich or poor, left or right. We do not ask what religion you belong to. We just ask how many meals you need.
From Day 1, we have fed Israelis as well as Palestinians. Across Israel, we have served more than 1.75 million hot meals. We have fed families displaced by Hezbollah rockets in the north. We have fed grieving families from the south. We delivered meals to the hospitals where hostages were reunited with their families. We have called consistently, repeatedly and passionately for the release of all the hostages.
All the while, we have communicated extensively with Israeli military and civilian officials. At the same time, we have worked closely with community leaders in Gaza, as well as Arab nations in the region. There is no way to bring a ship full of food to Gaza without doing so.
That’s how we served more than 43 million meals in Gaza, preparing hot food in 68 community kitchens where Palestinians are feeding Palestinians.
We know Israelis. Israelis, in their heart of hearts, know that food is not a weapon of war.
Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces.
The World Central Kitchen has pulled out of Gaza for now, and without them Palestinians will starve.
Reuters: Biden ‘outraged’ by Israeli airstrike that killed aid workers in Gaza.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he was “outraged and heartbroken” by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza that killed seven people working for World Central Kitchen (WCK) and he called on Israel to do more to protect aid workers.
Israel’s investigation of the incident “must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public,” Biden said in a statement.
“Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident,” he said. “This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.” [….]
Biden said Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers or civilians in Gaza.
“The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to deconflict their military operations against Hamas with humanitarian operations, in order to avoid civilian casualties,” he said.
Biden also spoke to Chef Andres by phone. Read about it at Axios. That’s a start, but Biden needs to do more. I think he should cut off military aid to Israel.
As usual, there is lots of Trump news.
First, late last night Special Prosecutor Jack Smith filed a response to Judge Aileen Cannon’s order that both sides submit jury instructions based on her faulty interpretation of the Presidential Records Act.
Hannah Rabinowitz and Tierney Sneed at CNN: Special counsel blasts judge’s jury instruction request in Trump documents case.
In perhaps prosecutors’ strongest rebuke yet to how Judge Aileen Cannon has handled the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith said in court filings late Tuesday evening that the judge had ordered briefings based on a “fundamentally flawed” understanding of the case that has “no basis in law or fact.”
Smith’s team harshly critiqued Cannon’s request for jury instructions that embraced Trump’s claims that he had broad authority to take classified government documents and said it would seek an appeals court review if she accepted the former president’s arguments about his record-retention powers.
In an unusual order last month, Cannon asked attorneys on the classified documents case to submit briefs on potential jury instructions defining terms of the Espionage Act, under which Trump is charged over mishandling 32 classified records. Specifically, Cannon asked the special counsel and defense attorneys to write two versions of proposed jury instructions.
The first scenario would instruct a jury to assess whether each of the records that Trump is accused of retaining fell into the categories of “personal” or “presidential” as laid out by the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law that governs how White House records belonging to the government are to be handled at the end of a presidency.
The second version Cannon asked for assumes that as president, Trump had complete authority to take records he wanted from the White House, which would make it nearly impossible for prosecutors to secure a conviction. If she were to institute this sort of instruction, Smith’s team said, “the Government must be provided with an opportunity to seek prompt appellate review.”
“Both scenarios rest on an unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise — namely, that the Presidential Records Act and in particular its distinction between ‘personal’ and ‘Presidential’ records, determines whether a former President is ‘authorized,’ under the Espionage Act, to possess highly classified documents and store them in an unsecure facility,” the special counsel’s team wrote.
If allowed to be presented to a jury, prosecutors said, “that premise would distort the trial.” [….]
Prosecutors have repeatedly said that PRA is not relevant to the charges against Trump, as the conduct he is accused of happened after his term as president ended. Trump’s claim that he deemed the records personal are “pure fiction,” invented once the National Archives had retrieved boxes with classified information from Mar-a-Lago two years after he left office, they wrote Tuesday.
Their new filing sheds light on some of the evidence that investigators have collected about Trump’s record-keeping habits during his presidency. According to the prosecutors’ account, there is no evidence that Trump designated the relevant classified records as personal when he left the White House, and the prosecutors said he got the idea that he did have such power many months later, from the leader of a conservative legal organization.
That leader is Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. Fitton is not an attorney.
Alan Feuer at The New York Times: Frustrated Prosecutors Ask Trump Documents Judge to Act on Key Claim.
In an open display of frustration, federal prosecutors on Tuesday night told the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case that a “fundamentally flawed” order she had issued was causing delays and asked her to quickly resolve a critical dispute about one of Mr. Trump’s defenses — leaving them time to appeal if needed.
The unusual and risky move by the prosecutors, contained in a 24-page filing, signaled their mounting impatience with the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who has allowed the case to become bogged down in a logjam of unresolved issues and curious procedural requests. It was the most directly prosecutors have confronted Judge Cannon’s legal reasoning and unhurried pace, which have called into question whether a trial will take place before the election in November even though both sides say they could be ready for one by summer.
In their filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, all but begged Judge Cannon to move the case along and make a binding decision about one of Mr. Trump’s most brazen claims: that he cannot be prosecuted for having taken home a trove of national security documents after leaving office because he transformed them into his own personal property under a law known as the Presidential Records Act.
The prosecutors derided that assertion as one “not based on any facts,” adding that it was a “justification that was concocted more than a year after” Mr. Trump left the White House.
“It would be pure fiction,” the prosecutors wrote, “to suggest that highly classified documents created by members of the intelligence community and military and presented to the president of the United States during his term in office were ‘purely private.’” [….]
Mr. Smith’s prosecutors told Judge Cannon in their filing on Tuesday that the Presidential Records Act had nothing to do with the case and that the entire notion of submitting jury instructions based on it rested on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”
Instead, they asked her to decide the validity of the Presidential Records Act defense in a different way: by rejecting Mr. Trump’s motion to dismiss the case based on the same argument. That motion has been sitting on her desk for almost six weeks.
The prosecutors want Judge Cannon to take that course of action, because any decision she makes on the motion to dismiss can be challenged in an appeals court. But if the case is allowed to reach the jury, any ruling she might make acquitting Mr. Trump cannot be appealed.
Read the rest at the NYT.
Marcy Wheeler puts it in plain language: Jack Smith to Aileen Cannon: Treating Non-Lawyer Tom Fitton’s Theories as Law Will Lead to Mandamus.
Both Trump and Jack Smith have responded to Aileen Cannon’s whack order to write proposed jury instructions as if the Presidential Records Act says something it doesn’t. Neither are all that happy about it.
Trump used his response to claim that having the jury assess whether Trump really did make these documents personal records rather than simply steal them would put them in the role that, he’s arguing, only a (former) President can be in.
Smith — as many predicted — spent much of the filing arguing that Cannon cannot leave this issue until jury instructions because it must have an opportunity to seek mandamus for such a clear legal error; they cite the 11th Circuit slapdown of Cannon’s last attempt to entertain this fantasy in support.
Along the way, though, Smith also did something I had hoped he would do: explain where, and when, Trump’s own whack theory came from in the first place.
It came from Tom Fitton’s Xitter propaganda in response to the public report, in February 2022, that Trump had returned documents, including classified ones. But even after Fitton first intervened, Trump’s handlers continued to treat any remaining classified documents as presidential records for months.
Read about Fitton’s half-baked “theory” at the link. As I understand it, madamus means that Smith would ask the appeals court to remove Cannon from the case and replace her.
Earlier yesterday, the Judge Juan Merchan, who is in charge of the New York criminal case against Trump for interfering in the 2016 election by paying off women he was sexually involved with, added family members to his gag order. The Guardian: Trump faces an expanded gag order. It won’t stop the death threats.
When Judge Juan Merchan issued a gag order last week to bar former president Donald Trump from attacking potential witnesses and others involved in his pending hush-money trial in New York, he left open a loophole that Trump jumped to exploit.
The former president immediately went on the attack against Merchan’s own daughter, falsely accusing her of posting social media content that called for Trump to be jailed.
Merchan’s original gag order had covered potential trial witnesses, jurors, district attorney Alvin Bragg’s staff and Merchan’s staff while excluding the prosecutor and the judge – but hadn’t explicitly included Merchan’s and Bragg’s family members.
Merchan responded by expanding the gag order on Monday to cover their families, writing that Trump’s attacks on his daughter were part of a broader pattern of attacking family members of the judges and attorneys involved in his cases that “serves no legitimate purpose. It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game’ for Defendant’s vitriol.”
Judge Juan Merchan
That pattern has played out in case after case – and if the past is prologue, his supporters will take it one step further. When Trump attacks those involved in his cases, death threats soon follow.
Bragg, whom Trump has called an “animal” and “degenerate psychopath”, and Merchan, who he’s claimed “HATES ME”, have received death threats ever since the case began.
Read more at The Guardian.
Erica Orden and Meredith McGraw at Politico: ‘It’s clearly strategic’: Why Trump kept attacking judges’ families.
Every time prosecutors and judges tried to muzzle Donald Trump, he lashed out at their families.
In three different court cases over the past six months, judges imposed gag orders that restrained the former president from vilifying witnesses, court employees and others involved in the proceedings against him. In each case, Trump responded by verbally attacking not only the prosecutors and judges themselves, but also their family members.
“It’s clearly strategic,” said Ty Cobb, who served as a White House lawyer under Trump but has become a frequent critic of the former president.
“His attacks are designed around his traditional approach to delegitimizing the proceedings.” [….]
After Trump spent several days denigrating the adult daughter of Justice Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Trump’s Manhattan criminal case, Merchan issued an expanded gag order barring Trump from attacking the judge’s own family. Merchan also expanded the gag to cover the family of the lead prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“The average observer, must now, after hearing Defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves, but for their loved ones as well,” Merchan wrote. “Such concerns will undoubtedly interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitutes a direct attack on the Rule of Law itself.”
It’s not just the rule of law that’s under threat. Outside the courtroom, Trump’s judges have faced persistent threats to their personal safety, including “swatting” calls directed at their homes and a racist voicemail threatening murder.
In his latest fusillade on social media, unleashed within days of Merchan’s original gag order, Trump called Merchan’s daughter a “Rabid Trump Hater” due to her work at a digital marketing agency that has Democratic clients. And he claimed that she had used an image of Trump behind bars as a profile picture for a social media account, although a court official said she had abandoned and deleted that account, and that it had been taken over by someone else.
How can this horrible person actually have been president? And how can he be permitted to run again? And if he is elected in November the plan is for him to run again in 2028 (if we still have election then).
Lisa Needham at Public Notice: Project 2025 reveals its goal: Trump as president for life.
Project 2025, the Republican plan to functionally annihilate not just the federal government but democracy as well if Trump wins in November, is an unceasing parade of horrors.
Kristen Eichamer holds a Project 2025 fan in the group’s tent at the Iowa State Fair, Aug. 14, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa….AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Banning the abortion pill nationwide? Check. Rolling back protections for LGBTQ people? Check. Deporting literally millions of undocumented immigrants? Check. But amid each objectively horrible aim is an even more more insidious one: abolishing the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms. It’s an unvarnished, right-out-in-the-open plan to keep Trump in office well past 2028.
It’s not as if this is genuinely unexpected. By July 2019, Trump had “joked” at least six times about being president for life. Floating that as a possibility, as Peter Tonguette did last week over at The American Conservative, is a great opportunity to show fealty to a candidate who values loyalty over all else.
The American Conservative is a “partner” of Project 2025, along with such luminaries as Stephen Miller’s America First Legal law firm (currently suing everyone over the mildest of diversity efforts) and the Claremont Institute, which gave us Christopher Rufo and Moms for Liberty.
As Media Matters notes, the reasoning in Tonguette’s piece is dubious at best, but that doesn’t really matter. Project 2025 doesn’t rest on solid law, respect for democracy, or an understanding of history. It rests only on the notion that Trump should be allowed to exhibit raw, vicious, and unchecked power.
Read the rest at the link.
At least one family pushed back on Trump’s lies yesterday. In a speech in Michigan yesterday, Trump talked about Ruby Garcia, a woman who was murdered allegedly by an undocumented immigrant.
The Washington Post: Trump said he spoke to murder victim’s family. The victim’s sister said it never happened.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Donald Trump used his campaign event in Michigan on Tuesday to denounce what he called “Biden’s border bloodbath,” zeroing in on the case of a young woman killed by someone immigration officials say had entered the country illegally.
“She lit up that room, and I’ve heard that from so many people,” Trump said at a news conference in the hometown of the 25-year-old victim, Ruby Garcia. “I spoke to some of her family.”
But Garcia’s sister, acting as a family spokeswoman, said Tuesday that Trump and his campaign have not contacted her or other immediate relatives — and rebuked the GOP presidential nominee’s effort to make the case part of his calls for a border crackdown.
“It’s always been about illegal immigrants,” the victim’s sister, Mavi Garcia, told local news station Target 8. “Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like that?”
The Trump campaign did not comment Tuesday, andTrump did not mention speaking with Garcia’s family at a Wisconsin rally later Tuesday. Mavi Garcia confirmed to The Washington Post that Trump and his campaign never spoke with the family.
That’s all the news I have for you today. What do you think? What other stories have captured your interest?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: March 30, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Joe Biden | Tags: Former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, Judge Reggie Walton, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, Judge Thomas F. HOgan, judges speak out, Rule of Law, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Secret Service, Trump's violent threats |
Good Afternoon!!
By Erica Oller
For the past couple of days, social media has been focused on a shocking video that Trump posted on Truth Social, in which President Biden was depicted in the back of a pickup truck with his hands and feet bound as if he had been kidnapped.
This is nothing new for Trump. He routinely threatens judges and their families, immigrants, Democrats, even fellow Republicans who dare to cross him. This man is out on bail in four separate cases. Why is he permitted to keep issuing threats against anyone he perceives as an enemy?
Imagine if you were a witness in one the cases against him. How would you feel about testifying when you know that Trump can and will get his followers to threaten you and perhaps even hurt or kill you? After all, he instigated an attack on the U.S. Capitol during which police officers were killed and badly injured.
Joyce Vance says it better than I can. From Civil Discourse: We Need to Talk About This.
Today’s widely discussed Trump post on Truth Social isn’t just another instance of bad behavior. It’s not just a shrug of the shoulders and a resigned sigh of, “What are you going to do?” Far too often, people resignedly accept Trump’s behavior because they believe there’s no alternative. The zeitgeist is: We can’t make him stop, can we?
Here’s Trump’s Truth Social post. It’s a video, and although I hate to send you to Truth Social, you can watch the whole thing here. Or read on for my description. What you need to know is that this is unprecedented and out of bounds. If you or I did this, the Secret Service would be on our doorstep within hours.
Donald Trump, by the way, is out on bond ahead of trial in four separate criminal cases. Today, he threatened the President of the United States. It’s time for the people with authority to do so to deal with him. Sure, he’s the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, but they won’t reign him in. And someone is going to get hurt if he isn’t….
I know from experience as a prosecutor how seriously the Secret Service takes every single threat, or anything close to a threat, made against the President of the United States. They take it seriously even when it looks like the person making it lacks any capacity to carry it out. They always check. They always have the talk.
Donald Trump is different from the person who makes a bad joke or an evil suggestion they don’t have the power to follow through on. We know, and more importantly, he knows, how his followers react when he suggests violence. It’s unthinkable, unconscionable for a former president to even intimate that violence against the current president is acceptable. I cannot imagine George W. Bush even joking about something like this when Barack Obama was in the White House, or Obama suggesting Trump should be kidnapped and trussed up in the back of a truck.
Trump is totally, and uniquely among our former presidents, out of bounds. It’s time to stop letting him break the rules. We’re entitled to more, not less, accountability from our presidents than from average citizens.
No one is saying Trump can’t campaign or that he can’t criticize Biden. What he can’t do is suggest he should be kidnapped, knocked out, and bound in the back of a pickup truck. I can’t believe that I have to write that out—there is no universe in which that’s acceptable.
As Vance writes, the justice system has ways to deal with this kind of behavior, so why is Trump still free to threaten his “enemies?” He should be in jail right now.
By Leny_art at Deviant Art
The Washington Post published a somewhat mealy-mouthed piece about this by Azi Paybarah that includes Trump’s excuses: Donald Trump shares image of Joe Biden with hands and feet tied.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, sent a lengthy statement distancing the campaign from the image, and accusing Democrats of using violent rhetoric against Trump.
“That picture was on the back of a pick up truck that was traveling down the highway,” Cheung said in the statement. “Democrats and crazed lunatics have not only called for despicable violence against President Trump and his family, they are actually weaponizing the justice system against him.”
The message remained live on Trump’s feed late Friday night.
Among the examples Cheung cited in his statement were Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) saying in 2017 “What we’ve got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box …” Cheung also cited Biden’s 2018 comment, when he said, “If we were in high school, I’d take him [Trump] behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”
Paybarah also includes other examples of Trump attacking Biden and others with violent imagery:
In October, Trump shared a doctored video of him hitting a golf ball that hits Biden and knocks him down. (It was similar to a doctored video he shared in 2017, hitting a golf ball into the back of Hillary Clinton, who falls down as a result.) In April 2023, a judge issued a warning to Trump after an image of him holding a bat next to an image of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) was shared from one of the former president’s verified accounts.
In July 2017, Trump shared a video of himself at a professional wrestling match, beating up a man whose face is covered with the CNN logo. The verified account for CNN’s communication team responded to the video with a quote from Trump’s White House spokeswoman at the time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, falsely claiming Trump “in no way form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence.”
Earlier this month, Trump told supporters in Ohio that some immigrants who are accused of crimes are “not people,” and warned it will be a “bloodbath for the country” if he is not elected.
The latest episode has coincided with Trump’s increasing use of violent and hostile rhetoric as he seeks to return to the White House. In December, he told people in New Hampshire that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” — a phrase that immigrant groups and civil rights advocates condemned and said was reminiscent of Hitler telling Germans, in his book “Mein Kampf,” to “care for the purity of their own blood” by eliminating Jews.
On Thursday night, Reggie Walton, a sitting federal judge, appeared on CNN to denounce Trump’s violent threats. Shania Shelton and Rachard Rose at CNN: Federal judge warns of Trump’s attacks in extraordinary rebuke.
US District Judge Reggie Walton spoke with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” in the wake of Trump’s attacks on Judge Juan Merchan, which helped prompt the New York judge to issue a gag order on the former president earlier this week. It is unusual for federal judges to speak publicly, especially about specific political or legal situations.
By Adrie Martens
“It’s very disconcerting to have someone making comments about a judge, and it’s particularly problematic when those comments are in the form of a threat, especially if they’re directed at one’s family,” said Walton, who has also faced threats, as has his daughter. “We do these jobs because we’re committed to the rule of law and we believe in the rule of law, and the rule of law can only function effectively when we have judges who are prepared to carry out their duties without the threat of potential physical harm.”
“I think it’s important in order to preserve our democracy that we maintain the rule of law,” Walton said in the interview. “And the rule of law can only be maintained if we have independent judicial officers who are able to do their job and ensure that the laws are, in fact, enforced and that the laws are applied equally to everybody who appears in our courthouse.”
“I think it’s important that, as judges, we speak out and say things in reference to things that conceivably are going to impact on the process, because if we don’t have a viable court system that’s able to function efficiently, then we have tyranny. And I don’t think that would be good for the future of our country, and the future of democracy in our country,” he continued.
This is by Spencer S. Hsu at The Washington Post: Republican-appointed judges raise alarm over Trump attacks on law.
A Republican-appointed judge denounced Donald Trump’s social media attacks against the judge presiding over the former president’s hush money trial in Manhattan and his daughter, calling them assaults on the rule of law that could lead to violence and tyranny.
“When judges are threatened, and particularly when their family is threatened, it’s something that’s wrong and should not happen,” U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in a live interview Thursday. He added, “It is very troubling because I think it is an attack on the rule of law.”
The unusual media statement by a sitting federal judge came after Trump blasted New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan and his daughter, Loren Merchan, criticizing her affiliation with a digital marketing company that works with Democratic candidates and erroneously attributing to her a social media post showing Trump behind bars.
Walton, who was appointed by presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to courts in Washington in 1981 and 1991, said “any reasonable, thinking person” would appreciate the impact of Trump’s rhetoric on some followers, intentional or not. The judge recalled how a disgruntled litigant killed the son and wounded the husband of New Jersey federal Judge Esther Salas at her home in a 2020 shooting.
By Rita Cardelli
Since late 2020, as Trump began escalating his attacks on the judiciary, serious investigated threats against federal judges have more than doubled, from 224 in 2021 to 457 in 2023, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, as first reported by Reuters. Federal judges in Washington say at least half of trial judges handling cases arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have received a surge in threats and harassment, including death threats to their homes, with Trump’s election obstruction trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, placed under 24-hour protection.
“The rule of rule of law can only be maintained if we have independent judicial officers who are able to do their job and ensure that the laws are in fact enforced and that the laws are applied equally to everybody who appears in our courthouse,” Walton told CNN. He was prompted to speak out of concern for the “future of our country and the future of democracy in our country,” Walton said, “because if we don’t have a viable court system that’s able to function efficiently, then we have tyranny.”
Other judges have also spoken out.
Walton’s remarks came as several federal judges in Washington appointed by Republican presidents have spoken with increasing urgency about Trump’s disregard for historical facts and alarmed at his increasingly graphic and at times violent description of defendants prosecuted in the Jan. 6 riot as “political prisoners” and “hostages” who did nothing wrong….
“In my 37 years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream,” U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said in a January sentencing. “I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness.”
U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan similarly told a group of Georgetown Law School students in January that false claims that riot defendants were acting like tourists or patriots were destructive rewriting of reality. “There’s a danger that is embedded now in our communities across the country,” Hogan said.
“And we have to wonder where this is going to end up if that’s part of our history, this fraudulent story” by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen. Hogan spoke shortly after his retirement after completing 40 years on the bench and sentencing 26 Jan. 6 riot defendants.
Hogan and Lamberth were both appointed by Reagan, and both served as chief judges of the U.S. District Court in Washington, where judges have presided over more than 1,350 prosecutions for the riot that resulted after Trump urged his supporters to march to the Capitol where Congress was certifying the results of the 2020 election.
From HuffPost: Ex-Federal Judge Blasts Judiciary And Entire Nation For Not Calling Out Trump More.
Former federal judge J. Michael Luttig on Friday blasted former President Donald Trump for his repeated attacks on the nation’s judicial system, calling on leaders in both the state and federal courts — alongside all Americans — to do more about it.
By Irina Babichenko
“Never in American history has any person, let alone a President of the United States, leveled such threatening attacks against the federal and state courts and federal and state judicial officers of the kind the former president has leveled continually now for years,” Luttig said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“But suffice it to say, never in history has any person leveled such attacks and been met with such passivity, acquiescence, and submissiveness by the nation,” he continued.
Luttig, a Republican, was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, and he served until 2006, when he left for a higher-paid position with Boeing. He currently works for Coca-Cola.
He said in the post that it is the Supreme Court’s “responsibility” to “protect the federal courts, the federal judges, and all participants in the justice system,” adding that the same was true for the state courts.
Luttig praised U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton for going to CNN with his concerns this week. Walton, whose court is in the District of Columbia, criticized Trump in an interview Thursday. Sitting judges typically do not grant interviews to the media.
Trump’s attacks, Luttig said, amounted to a “reprehensible spectacle.”
“Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of the entire nation to protect its courts and judges, its Constitution, its Rule of Law, and America’s Democracy from vicious attack, threat, undermine, and deliberate delegitimization at the hands of anyone so determined,” he concluded.
This from a tweet by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on authoritarian leaders and author of the book, “Strongmen.”
Wake up people. This is an emergency. This is what authoritarian thugs and terrorists do. Trump is targeting the President of the United States.
Something has to be done.
I’m going to end there. What do you think about all this? What other stories have captured your interest?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: March 27, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Joe Biden | Tags: Biden campaign strategy, Francis Scott Key Bridge accident, Judge Juan Merchan, NBC, Ronna McDaniel, Trump bible |
Good Day!!
I hardly know where to begin these days. Every day I’m aware of the specter of Trump as dictator hanging over our heads. If only we could know what is going to happen. But we can’t. We can only hang in there until November to learn whether our country will remain a democracy or begin turning into a fascist state.
It seems so obvious that a man like Trump should not be permitted to run for any office, much less president. But somehow he’s doing it, and the media often treat him as a credible candidate. It’s mind-boggling to me. And we are learning that the courts and the “justice” system are not going to save us. Judges just keep giving Trump special treatment. And the Supreme Court is working to take away our individual rights and freedom. What will happen? We can’t know.
Collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge and cargo ship
Today’s top news story is about the terrible disaster in Baltimore–the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Here’s the latest from the CNN live blog: More than 24 hours after the Key Bridge collapse, recovery operations continue. Here’s what we know.
More than a day after the Dali cargo ship crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, authorities are still searching for the six people missing in the crash. Cold water temperatures and choppy waters are affecting divers’ attempts to find the bodies of those missing, who are presumed dead.
Here’s the latest:
- The investigation: A team from with the National Transportation Safety Board went aboard the ship late Tuesday night to gather evidence for their investigation, agency Chair Jennifer Homendy told CNN on Wednesday. There, they obtained the ship’s data recorder, or black box.
- No timeline for channel reopening: There is no specific timeline for when ships may be able to move in and out of the channel into the Port of Baltimore, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore says, but he reiterated that it is a priority to get it reopened.
- “Long road to recovery”: US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg predicted the restoration effort for the city and port won’t be quick. He also warned of supply chain disruptions, saying, “The impact of this incident is going to be felt throughout the region and really throughout our supply chains.”
- Coast Guard assessing hazmat threat: The US Coast Guard is examining damaged shipping containers, some containing potentially hazardous materials, from the crashed vessel, according to a US government document obtained by CNN and a US official familiar with the matter.
- Overnight search deemed unsafe: Search and recovery operations were halted overnight due to dangerous conditions, including “very unstable” sections of the steel bridge and shipping containers hanging from the cargo ship, Baltimore City Fire Chief James Wallace told CNN.
- Details emerge on those missing: Local authorities have yet to confirm the identities of those missing but have said they include construction workers who were on the bridge at the time of the collapse. Here’s what we know about the six people presumed dead.
- Ship blacked out before crash: Just minutes before impact, there was a “total blackout” of engine and electrical power on the ship, according to Clay Diamond, executive director of the American Pilots Association.
- City remains in state of emergency: As the search operations continue for the missing, Baltimore remains in a state of emergency, Mayor Brandon Scott told CNN. He says he expects it to remain in place for the “foreseeable future.”
Read more of the key details about the crash here.
Yahoo News: NTSB recovers ship’s ‘black box,’ 6 presumed dead after Francis Scott Key Bridge collapses in Baltimore: Here’s what we know.
The National Transportation Safety Board chair told CNN Wednesday morning that the cargo ship’s data recorder, or black box, was recovered by investigators overnight after they were able to board the ship. More information will reportedly be shared with the public today….
Shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the Dali, a massive cargo ship under a Singaporean flag that was bound from Baltimore to Sri Lanka, apparently lost power shortly before crashing into a pillar that helped stabilize the 1.6-mile-long bridge. The crew sent out a Mayday signal that allowed officials to stop traffic before more cars entered the bridge.
“We’re thankful that between the Mayday and collapse that we had officials who were able to begin to stop the flow of traffic so more cars were not up on the bridge,” Gov. Wes Moore said at a news conference Tuesday.
A view of the Dali cargo vessel which crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge causing it to collapse in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., March 26, 2024. REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said in a statement that the ship, which is as long as three football fields, lost propulsion prior to the crash, and followed emergency protocols by dropping anchor. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating those claims.
The loss of power, however, came as the Dali was traveling at a speed of 8 knots, roughly 9 mph, and left the ship “unable to maintain the desired heading,” the statement read.
“What I do know is that the force of this ship is almost unimaginable,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told ABC’s Good Morning America. “This is a vessel that was about 100,000 tons carrying its load. So 200 million pounds went into this bridge all at once, which is why you had that almost-instant catastrophic result.”
Roberto Leon, a Virginia Tech engineering professor, told the Associated Press that the bridge could not “absorb anywhere near the energy that this humongous ship is bringing. So it’s going to break.”
The Dali was also involved in a 2016 crash at a Belgium port, according to Business Insider.
Thanks to JJ for sending this Guardian article on the victims of the bridge collapse: Details emerge on likely Baltimore bridge collapse victims: ‘They were wonderful family people.’
The six likely victims of the Baltimore bridge collapse on Tuesday all appeared to be construction workers from Latin American countries, according to reports, including a father of three, Miguel Luna, from El Salvador, as authorities said they had recovered the black box recorder from the ship.
Since the container ship Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge after losing power early on Tuesday morning, six members of a construction crew filling potholes on the major bridge are now presumed to be dead, according to state officials.
The immigrant services non-profit We Are Casa confirmed that Luna, 49, had lived in Maryland for at least 19 years.
“He is a husband, a father of three, and has called Maryland his home for over 19 years,” its executive director, Gustavo Torres, said in a statement. Luna’s son Marvin told the Washington Post he knew his father was on the bridge but he had not heard of the tragedy until friends called him.
The foreign affairs ministry of Guatemala confirmed that two of the workers were nationals, though it did not name them. It said the Guatemalan consul general had spoken with family members.
The Associated Press also reported one of the men, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, was from Honduras.
A correspondent for Reforma reported that a Mexican embassy spokesperson in Washington said one of the victims was a Mexican national and that two others were from Guatemala and El Salvador.
Jesús Campos, a construction worker, said he knew the missing crew members and that they were all from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. “It’s a difficult situation,” he said, speaking through a translator. “My friends were working on that bridge.”
Campos said the men all worked for the construction company, Brawner Builders, where he himself had worked for eight months – including on the overnight shift, until he was transferred to daytime hours one month ago.
He said the workers were low-income immigrants who used their wages to support family members in the US and abroad.
All “low-income immigrants” repairing potholes in the middle of the night. Heartbreaking.
In other news, NBC was forced by in-house and public outrage to fire Ronna McDaniel after only a few days of employment.
Jeremy Barr at The Washington Post: NBC reverses decision to hire Ronna McDaniel after on-air backlash.
Amid a chorus of on-air protest from some of the network’s biggest stars, NBC announced Tuesday night that former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel will no longer be joining the network as a paid contributor.
In a memo, NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde told staff that he had listened to “the legitimate concerns” of many network employees. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” he wrote. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”
Ronna McDaniel
The network had only just announced four days earlier that they were bringing McDaniel on board to provide “expert insight and analysis” on politics. “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” one NBC News executive told staff at the time.
But the company’s on-air personalities — especially those on NBC’s liberal-leaning cable affiliate MSNBC — disagreed vehemently, saying that McDaniel’s promotion of former president Donald Trump’s media-bashing and false election-fraud claims disqualified her from a role in their news divisions.
And one by one, they took to the airwaves to deliver that message to their bosses in front of their live audiences Monday.
“Take a minute, acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right call,” MSNBC’s top-rated star Rachel Maddow said on her show that night. “It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you are wrong.”
NBC delivered the news of its course correction to its employees before informing McDaniel, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve confidence.
Maybe the bosses should have consulted with their employees before hiring a proven liar and insurrectionist.
Jim Rutenberg and Alexandra Berzon at The New York Times: How Ronna McDaniel Backed Trump’s Early Bid to Hold Power.
By the second week of December 2020, the presidential election was decided and heading to a formal vote at the Electoral College. Like President Trump, the Republican Party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, wasn’t ready to concede.
“Every illegal vote is stealing from a valid vote, and every state that conducted their election fraudulently is stealing from states that conducted their elections fairly,” Ms. McDaniel told Sean Hannity of Fox News on Dec. 8.
At the time, key campaign aides had already told Mr. Trump that he had lost. Advisers had found no credible evidence of fraud or irregularities that could have reversed the outcome. The Electoral College would confirm Joseph R. Biden was the winner six days later.
Yet, Ms. McDaniel’s appearance on Mr. Hannity’s program was part of her concerted efforts to help Mr. Trump dispute his election loss….
Ms. McDaniel had recently tried to downplay her role. But a review of her record shows she was, at times, closely involved in and supportive of Mr. Trump’s legal and political maneuvering ahead of the violent attempt to block Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6.
Ms. McDaniel was not the most aggressive or outlandish member of Mr. Trump’s team. Indeed, she fell short of Mr. Trump’s demands and expectations, former aides said, and faced calls from his allies and grass-roots activists to be far more aggressive. And her involvement appears to have fallen off substantially — at least publicly — in the days before Jan. 6, when the R.N.C. focused its efforts on the then-upcoming Senate runoff election in Georgia.
Later, after courts, Republican election officials and state investigations all dismissed Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud, Ms. McDaniel was viewed as insufficiently dedicated to the cause of overturning the election, particularly by the Trump supporters who still considered Mr. Trump the rightful winner.
But before then, Ms. McDaniel, who through intermediaries declined to comment for this article, had done more to dispute a legitimate election result than any other chair of a major American political party in modern history.
Ronna McDaniel with Trump
The authors break down McDaniel’s actions in detail. Some examples:
The party set up hotlines, collected accounts of supposed suspicious activities and held meetings at the White House with Mr. Trump’s legal team, Ms. McDaniel later testified to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
At a news conference in Michigan on Nov. 6, the day before news outlets declared Mr. Biden the winner, she announced that the R.N.C. was deploying legal teams in four states to investigate “irregularities.” She listed allegations in Michigan that she claimed were evidence of potential, widespread problems, including supposedly suspect election machine software. The allegations were disputed by election officials and later debunked.
Speaking on Fox on Nov. 10, Ms. McDaniel repeated unsubstantiated and soon-to-be debunked claims of “deceased voters” and “batches of votes that were invalidated,” declaring, “that is stealing.”
And on social media, Ms. McDaniel questioned “irregularities” about the election, posted fund-raising solicitations and promoted hearings in states where Mr. Trump’s allies presented bogus evidence of election malfeasance. She vowed that the R.N.C. would “pursue this process to the very end.”
After Mr. Trump switched his legal team, bringing in outside lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, the R.N.C. also shifted away from the legal involvement with the Trump team. Of the 65 lawsuits that Mr. Trump and his allies filed after the 2020 election, the R.N.C. attached its name only to four, according to Democracy Docket, which tracks the cases.
Still, on Nov. 19, Ms. McDaniel allowed Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell to hold a press briefing at R.N.C. headquarters. With dark liquid dripping down his face, Mr. Giuliani promoted wild theories about Dominion voting machines and the deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez….
After that news conference, party lawyers told Ms. McDaniel not to repeat the conspiracy theories about election machines, and urged R.N.C. aides to be careful when speaking about the election, suggesting they use phrases like “voting irregularities” rather than “voter fraud,” according to House committee testimony….
On Nov. 17, two Republican members of the canvassing board in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, initially voted against certifying the county’s results, deadlocking the board until they reversed themselves amid angry protest.
Immediately afterward, the Republican board members, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, received a phone call from Mr. Trump; Ms. McDaniel was also on the line.
Believe it or not, there are many more examples of McDaniel’s dishonest actions in the NYT story.
Trump has now taken over the Republican National Committee and is hiring staff who will support his big lie without question. Josh Dawsey at The Washington Post: Was the 2020 election stolen? Job interviews at RNC take an unusual turn.
Those seeking employment at the Republican National Committee after a Trump-backed purge of the committee this month have been asked in job interviews if they believe the 2020 election was stolen, according to people familiar with the interviews, making the false claim a litmus test of sorts for hiring.
In recent days, Trump advisers have quizzed multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states about their views on the last presidential election, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interviews and discussions. The interviews have been conducted mostly virtually, as the prospective future employees are based in key swing states.
“Was the 2020 election stolen?” one prospective employee recalled being asked in a room with two top Trump advisers.
The question about the 2020 election has startled some of the potential employees, who viewed it as questioning their loyalty to Trump and as an unusual job interview question, according to the people familiar with the interviews. A group of senior Trump advisers have been in the RNC building in recent days conducting the interviews.
“But if you say the election wasn’t stolen, do you really think you’re going to get hired?” one former RNC employee asked.
Read more about the Trump RNC hiring process at the link.
More Trump news:
AP: Judge issues gag order barring Donald Trump from commenting on witnesses, others in hush money case.
A New York judge Tuesday issued a gag order barring Donald Trump from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors in his upcoming hush-money criminal trial, citing the former president’s history of “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about people involved in his legal cases.
Judge Juan Merchan
Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision, echoing a gag order in Trump’s Washington, D.C., election interference criminal case, came a day after he rejected the defense’s push to delay the Manhattan trial until summer and ordered it to begin April 15. If the date holds, it will be the first criminal trial of a former president.
“Given that the eve of trial is upon us, it is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount,” Merchan wrote in a four-page decision granting the prosecution’s request for what it deemed a “narrowly tailored” gag order.
The judge said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s statements have induced fear and necessitated added security measures to protect his targets and investigate threats.
Trump’s lawyers fought a gag order, warning it would amount to unconstitutional and unlawful prior restraint on his free speech rights. Merchan, who had long resisted imposing a gag order, said his obligation to ensuring the integrity of the trial outweighed First Amendment concerns.
You’ve probably heard that Trump has been hawking $60 Bibles. It turns out that he’s actually just endorsing a Bible that singer Lee Greenwood has been selling for years. But Trump must be getting a cut of the profits. I can’t imagine him doing this for nothing.
Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine: Trump Sells $59.99 Bible That Isn’t Even Gold.
It turns out Donald Trump’s Monday morning Truth Social post comparing himself to Jesus Christ (once again) wasn’t just inherently sacrilegious; in a way, it was also promotional content.
Trump launched a new career as a Bible salesman on Tuesday afternoon, posting a video to Truth Social in which he urged supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible.”
Trump with Lee Greenwood
“I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible,” Trump says in the three-minute ad. “We must Make America Pray Again.”
Trump added: “All Americans need a Bible in their home and I have many. It’s my favorite book. It’s a lot of people’s favorite book.”
Many people find the idea of any presidential candidate selling religious texts to their supporters totally appalling. And the Donald Trump of it all makes matters even worse. The former president famously named the Bible as his favorite book on the 2016 campaign trail, but was unable to name his favorite verse. During his administration he cited “Two Corinthians” (not Second Corinthians) and had peaceful protesters forcibly removed from a park near the White House so he could stand in front of a church and brandish a Bible. Plus, Trump is hawking the Good Book as he finds himself in huge financial trouble due to his multiple criminal trials, one of which involves hush-money payments to a porn star.
These are all valid concerns. But as a connoisseur of ridiculous Trump money-making schemes, my main issue is that this isn’t a clever scam or an original product: He’s just endorsing a Bible the singer Lee Greenwood released about three years ago.
The Lee Greenwood Bible was controversial even before it came out, as Slate explained back in 2021:
The $60 Bible, which was originally set to ship early this month to commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, was “inspired by” the country musician Lee Greenwood’s 1980s patriotic anthem “God Bless the USA” and packages Scripture with the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the handwritten chorus to Greenwood’s song. The ensuing uproar shows the challenges facing publishers in the lucrative Bible-printing business and the growing discomfort with Christian nationalism, the ideology that asserts the United States should be an explicitly Christian country.
The only difference the the Bible Trump is selling is that there is a note in the FAQ saying that Donald Trump has endorsed the book.
AP: Trump slow to invest in states that could decide election as some in GOP fear ‘skeleton’ campaign.
In his bid to retake the White House, few states hold as much promise for Donald Trump as Michigan.
The former president has already won the state once and President Joe Biden, who reclaimed it for Democrats in 2020, is confronting vulnerabilities there as he seeks reelection. Trump’s campaign promises an aggressive play for Michigan as part of a robust swing-state strategy.
But, at least for now, those promises appear to be mostly talk. The Trump campaign and its partners at the Republican National Committee haven’t yet made significant general election investments in the state, according to Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra. The national committee, he said, hasn’t transferred any money to the state party to help bolster its operations heading into the general election. There are no specific programs in place to court voters of color. And there’s no general election field staff in place.
“We’ve got the skeleton right now,” Hoekstra said. “We’re going to have to put more meat on it.”
It’s much the same in presidential battleground states across the country, according to Republican operatives and party officials involved in campaign planning elsewhere.
Widely praised for its professionalism and effectiveness throughout the primary phase of the 2024 election, Trump’s political operation has been slow to pivot toward the general election in the weeks after executing a hostile takeover of the Republican Party’s national political machinery. In fact, the former president’s team has rolled back plans under previous leaders to add hundreds of staff and dozens of new minority-outreach centers in key states without offering a clear alternative.
Read the rest at the AP.
At The Daily Beast, Jake Lahut writes about Joe Biden’s developing plans for Trump: The Biden Campaign Is Quietly Preparing a Trump Ambush.
The president began the election year with his approval rating at historic lows. He was trailing Donald Trump in almost all of the key battleground states, as well as in national polling averages. Influential liberals were so concerned that the octogenarian incumbent did not have another campaign in him that some were openly calling for him to be replaced as the nominee.
As the general election kicks off this spring, however, those calls have quieted—because Biden’s resurgence is coming into focus. While the president still faces serious obstacles to a second term, several important data points are lining up to demonstrate he is picking up badly needed momentum.
For the first time in a long time, there’s good news for Biden on the polling front. Gradual improvements in the battleground states along with an uptick in his approval rating led one Democratic strategist, Simon Rosenberg, to declare “the Biden bump.”
The boost is at the very least correlated with Biden’s fiery State of the Union address on March 7, when he repeatedly went after his “predecessor” and made sure to mix it up with Republicans in the chamber on a few occasions.
Since then, Biden’s team has continued the punchy, combative tone on display that night, using press releases to cheekily slam their legally challenged opponent as “Broke Don.”
On top of that, the Biden campaign has continued to flex what has always been its core strength: fundraising.
With a $53 million haul in February, the Biden campaign built on their already impressive financial advantage over Trump, who brought in only $20 million over the same period. The Biden campaign has $71 million in cash on hand, compared to just $33.5 million for Trump.
The tide is turning, a Biden adviser argued to The Daily Beast, and although they aren’t putting too much stock into any recent polling upticks, the president’s team is ready to seize upon April and May as a crucial time to ambush a wounded Trump campaign.
I really like the way Biden’s campaign has been making fun of Trump on social media. One of the things Trump fears most is people laughing at him.
I know I should be writing about the Supreme Court today, but it’s just too painful. I do want to recommend an excellent article by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate (h/t Daknikat): The Current Attack on Abortion Pills Will Fail. The Next One Will Be So Much Worse.
Another good article to check out is this interview with former Justice Stephen Breyer at Politico Magazine: A Supreme Court Justice Sounds a Warning. In Breyer’s new book, he writes that his former colleagues are in danger of having “a Constitution no one wants.”
What are your thoughts on all this? What other stories are you following?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: March 16, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, Cats, caturday, Donald Trump | Tags: "absolute immunity", Alvin Bragg, Benjamin Netanyahu, Chuck Schumer, E. Jean Carroll, Elon Musk, Fani Willis, Gaza, israel, Jared Kushner, Judge Scott McAfee, Letitia James, Mike Pence, SpaceX, Stormy Daniels, Supreme Court, Tommy Tuberville |
Good Afternoon!!
Walter Chandoha plays with one of his subjects at his home studio in 1955.
Today I’m featuring cat photos by Walter Chandoha. Chandoha was a famous photographer of animals–mostly cats. You can read about him and see more photos in this 2019 New York Times obituary by Richard Sandomir: Walter Chandoha, Photographer Whose Specialty Was Cats, Dies at 98.
Taking pictures of cats soon began to look like a more fulfilling career path than the one in advertising that Mr. Chandoha had planned while attending New York University, after serving in World War II. So, after graduating, he turned to freelance photography for a living — and, by the mid-1950s, he had begun a long period as the dominant commercial cat photographer of his era.
“Walter Chandoha’s cat models, shown on this page, must be alert, graceful and beautiful,” read a newspaper ad in 1956 for a cat food brand that featured his photos. “To keep them that way, Mr. Chandoha feeds them Puss ‘n Boots because Puss ‘n Boots is good nutrition.”
On a winter’s evening in 1949, Walter Chandoha was walking to his three-room apartment in Astoria, Queens, when he spotted an abandoned gray kitten shivering in the snow. He put it in a pocket of his Army coat and brought it home to his wife, Maria.
The kitten’s antics — racing through the apartment each night as if possessed, shadowboxing with his image in a mirror — inspired the couple to name him Loco. Mr. Chandoha (pronounced shan-DOE-uh) was moved to photograph Loco and quickly sold the pictures to newspapers and magazines around the world.
By the time he died, on Jan. 11, Mr. Chandoha had taken some 90,000 cat photos, nearly all before cats had become viral darlings of social media. He was 98.
Now, on to the day’s news:
It’s becoming very clear that the courts are not going to protect us from a possible Trump dictatorship. Thank goodness for E. Jean Carroll and NY AG Letitia James. At least two New York courts have hit Trump where it hurts–his finances. But the two federal cases seem stalled and the Georgia case just took a bit hit. Those three prosecutions of Trump are unlikely to take place before the election now. We are going to have to defeat him at the ballot box.
At The New Republic, Michael Tomasky writes: We Have to Beat Donald Trump. Clearly, the Broken Legal System Won’t.
Judge Scott McAfee has ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on the case against Donald Trump in that jurisdiction, provided that Nathan Wade, the prosecutor on the case with whom she had a relationship, withdraws. I guess we count that a win, although to be honest, Willis has so damaged herself by her colossally terrible judgment that it probably would have been better if she were out of the picture.
Cats play together in 1962.
The other problem with Willis’s scandal is how it slowed the case down, giving Trump’s lawyers a chance to make this not about the defendant but about her—and another chance to delay, delay, delay.
Meanwhile, Thursday, down in Florida, we saw Trumpy Judge Aileen Cannon issue yet another ruling in the classified documents case that helps Trump. She didn’t support Trump’s lawyers’ motion to dismiss the case, but she kicked the can down the road in a way that’s very helpful to Trump. MSNBC analyst Andrew Weissmann even called it the “worst possible outcome” for the government. “If the judge had simply said, ‘I agree with Donald Trump, and I find that this is vague, and I’m dismissing it,’ the government could have appealed it to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, as they have done twice before and won twice before,” Weissmann said. “But she also did not want to rule in favor of the government. So what she did is said, ‘Why don’t you bring this up later? I think there’s some real issues here.’”
Also this week, in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case against Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg shocked us all by asking for a 30-day delay in the trial, which was scheduled to start March 25. Trump’s lawyers had requested a 90-day delay. Bragg conceded that some delay was appropriate.
Why? It looks like it’s the fault of federal prosecutors. Bragg’s office requested certain documents a while ago from the Southern District of New York, and it shared them with Trump’s lawyers during the discovery process. Trump’s lawyers suspected there was more, especially relating to Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, so they subpoenaed the SDNY. That happened in January. It was only earlier this month that the Southern District turned over all the documents….
It’s more than fair to ask: Why did the Southern District take so long to produce these documents? And we must also ask this: Did Merrick Garland know his prosecutors were taking so long to hand over documents, and thus playing into Trump’s hands? And if he knew, did he do anything about it?
And then there’s the most significant case of all–the one about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Finally, let’s recall the status of the fourth criminal case against Trump, the biggest one, at least to my mind—the January 6 insurrection case. On that one, we’re basically waiting on the Supreme Court, which announced on February 28 that it would hear arguments in Trump’s claim of complete immunity but set the argument date for April 25. The high court could easily take another month—or even two—to hand down its decision after that, meaning that this crucial trial, about whether a sitting president initiated an insurrection against the government of the United States, may not happen before Election Day.
How in the world did all this happen? A few weeks ago, it looked like the wheels of justice were finally turning, catching up on a man who has flouted and broken laws not only during his presidency but for his entire adult life,
going back to when he and his father wouldn’t rent apartments to Black people in Queens. There was the judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case. And then the whopping penalty in the New York attorney general’s case against the Trump Organization.
But this week, it looks like everything is falling apart.
An American shorthair in 1966.
We can’t count on the courts. They move slowly and they favor the rich and powerful. We can’t count on the media either. They seem to favor another Trump presidency because the bosses believe the insanity and chaos would be good for their bottom line.
CNN on the Fani Willis case:
Another problem comes from MAGA threats. MSBNC’s Kyle Griffin wrote on Twitter that
“Judge Scott McAfee had written his order on Willis and Wade early last week, according to NBC News, but because he had been receiving threats, he waited until today to make it public in order to allow for proper security to be in place for him and his family.”
At NBC, Rebecca Shabad, Adam Reiss and Tom Winter write about the status of the Stormy Daniels election interference case: Trump hush money trial postponed until mid-April, judge rules.
The trial in the New York hush money case against former President Donald Trump has been delayed until the middle of April, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday.
Merchan said the trial — originally scheduled to begin March 25 — would be pushed back 30 days from Friday.
He also scheduled a hearing for the trial’s initial start date, to discuss a motion filed by Trump’s attorneys regarding document production in the case.
Merchan said he will set a new trial date “if necessary” when he rules on that motion, meaning it’s possible the trial proceedings could be delayed beyond the middle of next month.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had previously said he would support the trial being delayed at least 30 days, into late April. Trump’s legal team requested that it be postponed 90 days.
Bragg said Thursday that Trump’s request to delay the trial was the result of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan providing over 100,000 pages of discovery, which Bragg said were “largely irrelevant to the subject matter of this case.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office provided an additional 15,000 pages of discovery on Friday, which Bragg’s office said were also “likely to be unrelated to the subject matter of this case.”
The documents relate to Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in 2018 to numerous criminal charges, including making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings with Russia and failing to report millions of dollars in income.
Echoing MIchael Tomasky, WTF is going on with the Southern District and the DOJ. Are there MAGA people still in place that are helping Trump delay justice?
This 1955 photo is one of Walter Chandoha’s most famous shots. “My daughter Paula and the kitten both ‘smiled’ for the camera at the same time. … But the cat’s not smiling, he’s meowing.”
Speaking of the rich and powerful, why is Elon Musk still getting federal contracts after his support for Nazis and white supremacists and his support for Russia’s war against Ukraine?
Joey Roulette and Marisa Taylor at Reuters: Exclusive: Musk’s SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say.
SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.
The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.
The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.
If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.
The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.
The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.
Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits, and that the spy agency that Musk’s company is working with is the NRO.
Will Musk have access to this program, as he does with Starlink? How do we know he won’t share information with Russia? Am I an idiot to ask that?
Chandoha’s backlighting technique dramatizes the defensive posture of a kitten seeing a dog in 1957.
Another tale of the rich and powerful from Eric Lipton, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman at The New York Times: Kushner Developing Deals Overseas Even as His Father-in-Law Runs for President.
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald J. Trump, confirmed on Friday that he was closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, the latest example of the former president’s family doing business abroad even as Mr. Trump seeks to return to the White House.
Mr. Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Mr. Trump was in office. Mr. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with Richard Grenell, who served briefly as acting director of national intelligence under Mr. Trump and also as ambassador to Germany and special envoy to the Balkans.
One of the proposed projects would be the development of an island off the coast of Albania into a luxury tourist destination.
A second — with a planned luxury hotel and 1,500 residential units and a museum — is in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, at the site of the long-vacant former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army destroyed in 1999 by the NATO bombings, according to a member of Parliament in Serbia and Mr. Kushner’s company.
These first two projects both involve land now controlled by the governments, meaning a deal would have to be finalized with foreign governments.
A third project, also in Albania, would be built on the Zvërnec peninsula, a 1,000-acre coastal area in the south of Albania that is part of the resort community known as Vlorë, where several hotels and hundreds of villas would be built, according to the plan.
Mr. Kushner’s participation would be through his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which has $2 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, among other foreign investors. In a statement, an official with Affinity Partners said it had not been determined whether the Saudi funds might be a part of any project Mr. Kushner is considering in the Balkans.
How does Kushner get away with this? Why aren’t Congressional Democrats investigating him, even if the DOJ is too busy or corrupt? I don’t get it.
Commentary from Carl Gibson at Raw Story: ‘Corrupt’: Jared Kushner’s overseas business deals under fire as Trump runs for president.
Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (who was also a senior adviser in his White House) has been ramping up his overseas business dealings undeterred by the optics of doing so in the midst of his father-in-law’s presidential campaign.
A Friday report in the New York Times scrutinized Kushner’s real estate deals in Balkan countries of Albania and Serbia, in which he stands to reap significant financial benefits once they’re completed. The Times reported that Kushner has been working with Richard Grenell, who was Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence who also served as German ambassador and a special envoy to the Balkans.
An American shorthair squeezes into a glass in 1960.
Notably, two of the three projects Kushner is aiming to finalize this year involve the transfer of land currently owned by Albania and Serbia, meaning a member of the president’s immediate family (Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka) stands to receive money directly from foreign governments. According to the Times, the first project involves redeveloping an island off the Albanian coast into a high-end luxury resort, and the second would be a 1,500-unit apartment building, museum and luxury hotel in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade. The third — which doesn’t involve a direct land acquisition from a foreign government — is a planned resort development in coastal southern Albania.
Kushner has been capitalizing on his foreign connections since leaving the White House. After Kushner’s departure became official, he launched his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as well as from other foreign business interests in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
The former president’s son-in-law worked closely with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman while he was in the White House, as Trump frequently put him in the driver’s seat in negotiations with Middle Eastern countries. In 2018, bin-Salman was accused of playing a direct role in the dismemberment and murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (President Joe Biden made it clear in 2022 that the Saudi crown prince was immune from any legal action in relation to Khashoggi’s assassination)….
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, for his own foreign business deals even as Kushner plows ahead in the Balkans. House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) both maintain that the president improperly influenced foreign governments in his son’s favor, though their respective investigations have yet to yield any smoking gun evidence.
In Israel-Hamas war news, Senator Chuck Schumer spoke out this week about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Jonathan Weisman at The New York Times: A Watershed Moment for the Politics of Israel, Courtesy of Chuck Schumer.
Over 44 painstakingly scripted minutes on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, spoke of his Jewish identity, his love for the State of Israel, his horror at the wanton slaughter of Israelis on Oct. 7 and his views on the apportionment of blame for the carnage in Gaza, saying that it first and foremost lay with the terrorists of Hamas.
Then Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat and the highest-ranking elected Jew in American history, said Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was an impediment to peace, and called for new elections in the world’s only Jewish state.
The opposition was not nearly so painstaking.
Within minutes, the House Republican leadership demanded an apology. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, declared: “Make no mistake — the Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem. It has an anti-Israel problem.” And the Republican Jewish Coalition proclaimed that “the most powerful Democrat in Congress knifed the Jewish state in the back.”
Walter Chandoha, 1962
The months that have followed the slaughter of Oct. 7 and the ensuing, calamitously deadly war in Gaza have been excruciating for American Jews, caught between a tradition of liberalism that has dominated much of Jewish politics and an anti-Israel response from the political left that has left many feeling isolated and, at times, persecuted.
But Mr. Schumer’s speech was potentially a watershed moment in a much longer political process, pursued initially by Republicans but joined recently by left-wing Democrats — to turn Israel into a partisan issue. Republicans, as they see it, would be the party of Israeli supporters. Democrats, as the rising left would have it, would be the party of Palestine
At the root of that divide is a fundamental question: Is support for the Jewish State separable from the support of Israel’s democratically elected government? For years, Republicans have said no. Increasingly, the Democratic left agrees but from a different perspective: Israel is bad, regardless of who governs it.
“The pressure — electoral, social, cultural — on American Jews right now to declare themselves” on the justice of the war in Gaza and on the legitimacy of the Israeli prime minister has been “unrelenting, unforgiving and sometimes downright vicious,” said David Wolpe, a prominent rabbi in Los Angeles and a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.
Mr. Schumer’s speech and the ensuing partisan response have made that pressure even more intense.
“It’s impossible to understate the seismic event this was,” said Matthew Brooks, the longtime chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who made it clear that the group would use the speech to drive Jewish voters to the G.O.P.
Read more at the NYT.
A couple more stories of note:
This should be shocking news, but the NYT didn’t even run a story on it. CNN: Pence says he ‘cannot in good conscience’ endorse Trump.
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday said he “cannot in good conscience” endorse presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, a stunning repudiation of his former running mate and the president he served with.
“Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years. That’s why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign,” Pence said on Fox News.
A cat cozies up to a dog, 1968
The former vice president, after ending his own presidential bid in October, withheld an endorsement in the 2024 Republican primary, but he previously vowed to back the eventual GOP nominee. Trump had said after Pence dropped out that his former vice president should endorse him, saying, “I chose him, made him vice president. But … people in politics can be very disloyal.”
While he said he is “incredibly proud” of the record of the Trump-Pence administration, Pence argued that the former president has walked away from conservative issues, pointing to Trump’s stance on abortion and US national debt and his reversal on TikTok.
“During my presidential campaign, I made it clear there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues. And not just our difference on my constitutional duties that I exercised January 6th,” Pence said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
“As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt. I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life. And this last week, his reversal on getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s efforts to force a sale of ByteDance’s TikTok,” he added.
Many other former members of Trump’s administration have also said they won’t vote for him. Yesterday Ron Filipkowski posted this list on Twitter:
The Republican 43rd President won’t endorse Trump.
His VP won’t endorse Trump.
The 2012 Republican nominee won’t endorse Trump.
His running mate won’t endorse Trump.
Trump’s own VP won’t endorse him.
His last AG won’t.
His last Sec Defense won’t.
Wake up, America!
One more from Brian Schott at The Salt Lake Tribune: ‘We are losing our kids to a satanic cult,’ Sen. Tommy Tuberville warns during Utah campaign stop.
Alabama Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville had a stark warning for the approximately 100 Utah GOP delegates who crowded into a Bluffdale warehouse to hear him speak on Friday afternoon: Malevolent supernatural forces are working to undermine America.
“I’ve traveled all over the country — all 50 states — I’ve been in good places and bad places. The one thing I saw, we are losing our kids to a satanic cult,” Tuberville, who traveled to Utah to campaign for GOP U.S. Senate candidate Trent Staggs, warned.
The former college football coach and ardent Donald Trump supporter gave his full endorsement to Staggs, one of 11 Republicans vying for the GOP nomination to succeed Sen. Mitt Romney in Washington.
Brandishing an upside-down pocket Constitution, Tuberville said the 2024 election wasn’t Republican vs. Democrat but “anti-American vs. American.”
“We’ve lost our moral values across the country. We’ve got to get back to the Constitution, and we have got to get back to the Bible. We’ve got to get God back in our country,” Tuberville said. “There’s not one Democrat that can tell you they stand up for God.”
What exactly is he talking about? Is he saying the Democratic Party is a satanic cult or is he referring to the Mormon Church? Probably the former, I know.
Republican delegates ate it up as he careened from anti-transgender statements to discussion of immigration and chaos at the border to a prediction left-wing mobs are set to wreak chaos across the country this summer to help Joe Biden win reelection.
Tuberville even went so far as to claim the federal government has been corrupted to go after conservatives instead of criminals, which was seemingly an indirect reference to the hundreds of Trump supporters who were charged after attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We’ve lost our Department of Justice. In most of the country, we don’t have a criminal justice system anymore. Nobody goes to jail, unless you’re an innocent person that really loves this country, then they’ll put you in jail,” Tuberville said. “We have never overcome a cult like we’re dealing with right now.”
The loudest boos from the GOP delegates on hand came when Tuberville and Staggs took swipes at Sen. Mitt Romney, who was the party’s presidential nominee just a dozen years ago.
What a wacko.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all are having a nice weekend!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments