Finally Friday Reads: Jack is Back

“Jack Smith returns to Washington to testify publicly in front of Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Yesterday, the entire news cycle was dedicated to the testimony of former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who prosecuted the rotter in the White House for his election interference scheme. Many of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee were far from up to the task of diminishing Smith’s appearance and the merits of the case. At one point, Democratic Ranking Member Jamie Raskin and Republican Darrel Issa got into a shouting match.

PBS had this headline yesterday, along with a tick-tock of the day’s events. It was a strange thing to see that Republicans were part of what was a look at Trump’s Election crimes, which appeared to be less daunting to them than dealing with the Epstein Files. Anyone paying attention surely took the event and the testimony as yet another way Trump defies our Constitutionally defined form of government.

Jack Smith is set to testify in a House Judiciary hearing Thursday. It’s an opportunity for the career prosecutor to offer his inside perspective on the investigations into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The president was indicted in two federal cases, but both were scuttled once it was clear that Trump would return to the Oval Office, due to DOJ policy that prevents prosecution of a sitting president.

One of the things we learned is that the manner in which the case was dismissed lets a future Congress and DOJ go after him again. This was yesterday’s New York Times’ conclusion. “In Testimony, Jack Smith Defends Decision to Prosecute Trump. The former special prosecutor argued a case he was never allowed to in court: that President Trump “engaged in criminal activity” that undermined democracy.”  The leded is shared by
By Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer.

But the hearing also provided Mr. Smith with what was likely to be his best opportunity to challenge, in an official forum, Mr. Trump’s justification for ordering the Justice Department to pursue his enemies: that he was persecuted for his politics, not prosecuted for his alleged misdeeds.

“Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,” Mr. Smith said, sitting alone at the witness table with a water bottle, legal pad and white ballpoint pen.

He appeared wan and tired, speaking so softly at times his voice did not register with voice transcription apps. Before sitting at the witness table, Mr. Smith greeted four law enforcement officers who were attacked by the pro-Trump mob at the Capitol — Michael Fanone, Daniel Hodges, Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn.

Republicans repeatedly accused Mr. Smith of participating in a Democratic conspiracy to destroy Mr. Trump by investigating his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as his handling of classified documents after he left office.

Mr. Smith and his team interfered in the “democratic process by seeking to muzzle a candidate for a high office,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement, quoting from an editorial in The Washington Post.

But Republican lawmakers offered no new evidence to support that claim, and spent much of their time rehashing political arguments and grilling Mr. Smith about his decision to seek a court order for metadata about phone calls Mr. Trump and his allies made to nine Republican lawmakers as they sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

This may seem like more rehashing of old news, but remember, Trump is angling to interfere with the 2026 midterms. It’s a good refresher as to the criminal lengths he will go to retain power. The news today still reflects the regime’s abuse of constitutional rights. ICE is still in the headlines. The abuse is on full display in Minneapolis. This analysis of the last Constitutional Crisis nightmare can be found on Joy Vance’s SubStack, Civil Discourse. “Breaking the Fourth Amendment.”

Last night, we learned from a report in the Associated Press that ICE, contrary to longstanding Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, is taking the position that it can enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant. Instead, they believe that an administrative warrant suffices. An administrative warrant is a form signed by an “authorized immigration official,” which means an executive branch employee who can be fired if they displease the president. It’s not difficult to see the problem here.

The Fourth Amendment provides that: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” It’s the reason your home can’t be searched by the police without a search warrant that has been supported with probable cause to believe that evidence or fruits of a crime will be found there.

ICE seems to be arguing that if they think a non-citizen for whom there is a final order of deportation is in a house, they can blow right past the Fourth Amendment, take the doors off the house if they aren’t admitted voluntarily, and go right in. But the Fourth Amendment doesn’t change just because ICE says so.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that a search warrant must be signed by a “judicial officer” or a “magistrate.” Their signature on the warrant says that they have reviewed the evidence that the agents believe constitutes probable cause to justify a search, and they agree that it is sufficient to breach the wall otherwise established by the Fourth Amendment and allow law enforcement into a private home (or car, or private areas of a business, etc.). The idea is that a detached, neutral judge—not someone involved in investigating a case or “on the same side” as law enforcement—should evaluate the evidence before a search warrant or an arrest warrant is issued.

As the Supreme Court explained in Johnson v. U.S., in 1948: “The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.”

This report by The Washington Post shows how utterly evil, cruel, and lawless the agency has become. “ICE detains four children from Minnesota school district, including 5-year-old. Columbia Heights Public Schools district officials accused ICE officers of using the 5-year-old “as bait.” A 10-year-old and her mother were also detained.” Andrew Jeong provides the report.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota have detained at least four children from the same school district this month, including a 5-year-old boy, school officials in a Minneapolis suburb said Wednesday.

The events have inflamed tensions between residents and ICE officers, sparked by the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renée Good by an ICE officer this month. The Trump administration has sought to justify the presence of ICE personnel by saying that the officers are detaining immigrants convicted of violent crimes.

“Why detain a 5-year-old?” Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public Schools district, located just north of Minneapolis, said at a news conference. “You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, whom the Department of Homeland Security identified as Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias in an emailed statement, were detained in their driveway Tuesday afternoon, just as they were returning from the child’s school, according to a news release from Columbia Heights Public Schools.

The father fled on foot when ICE officers approached him, DHS said. “For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias,” it added.

After detaining the father, ICE officers then asked Liam to knock on the door to see if any other people were inside the home, “using a 5-year-old as bait,” according to the school district.

Another adult living in the home, who was outside at the time, “begged the agents” to leave the child with them, the school district said. ICE agents refused.

Liam’s middle-school-age brother returned home 20 minutes later to find that his younger brother and father had been taken away.

Liam and his father are now in San Antonio in the custody of Homeland Security authorities, the family’s lawyer, Marc Prokosch, said in an email. They are not U.S. citizens but “have been following the legal process perfectly, from presenting themselves at the border to applying for asylum and waiting for the process to go through,” he said.

The Substack Strength in Numbers of G. Elliott Morris has this true and frightening headline. “The consent of the governed has been withdrawn. One year into his second term, Trump has suffered the largest approval collapse of any modern president (except the one who resigned in disgrace). He is underwater on every major policy area.”  He’s so underwater that the numbers are worse than during the worst of the COVID pandemic.

One year ago this week, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. He entered office with a net approval rating of +5 in the FiftyPlusOne.news approval rating aggregate. Despite a tumultuous first term — which ended with the president posting his worst-ever numbers after the January 6 insurrection — voters, it seemed, were willing to give him another shot.

They are no longer willing to give him that chance. Trump sits at an -16 net job approval on average today, down from +5 on his first day in office. His 21-point drop is the worst first-year performance, in the eyes of public opinion, of any president’s first term going back to at least 1948. If you compare the last year to other second-term presidencies, Trump’s is still the worst first-year performance of any president in the modern polling, with one exception: Richard Nixon (who was consumed by Watergate and other national crises at this point in his term).

Either way, Trump is in historically bad company.

As The New York Times reported this week, Trump’s support among key groups he persuaded to vote for him in 2024 — notably, young, Black, and Latino voters — has now sunk below levels measured in the run-up to the 2020 election (which Trump lost to Joe Biden by 4.5 points in the national popular vote)

Let’s hope that turns into some momentum to get rid of Republicans in Congress. As noted before, the Trump Regime, plus many Republican Congress Critters, are truly afraid of what’s coming for them. Don Moynihan has this to say at his Substack. “Can We Still Govern? Past the breaking point. The violent occupation of an American city is more than a warning.”

We use words like “police state.” Then we see it happen. To watch is not the same as to experience it, of course. Of being afraid to leave your house. Or having a classmate, co-worker, or family member disappear. But the images make it more real. It removes any illusion that it could not happen here. It is happening here. We see it happening here, if we are willing to look.

In recent weeks, the paramilitary occupation of the Twin Cities has moved us past some invisible breaking points. About how we expect our government to treat us. And about what might be done about the government agencies that fail those expectations.

Lets step back: the primary purpose of this occupation is the selective use of government power to establish federal dominance over blue states or cities that President Trump dislikes. Thats it. Trump thinks Minnesota is the enemy, and so he unleashed an armed and masked paramilitary upon its people. There is no serious case that this is about the number of immigrants, or some level of violent crime not seen elsewhere. It is about the Department of Homeland Security, in the form of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Patrol, developing their skills as the President’s stormtroopers. It is about making an example of a community.

To make matters worse, Congress did not defund ICE thanks to a handful of turncoat Democrats. This is from Newsweek. “Seven Democrats Just Voted to Approve ICE Funding: Full List.”  This news is reported by Gabe Whisnant.

Seven House Democrats broke with much of their party to vote in favor of funding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), helping advance a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending measure in committee despite strong opposition from progressives.

The votes came during a markup of the DHS appropriations bill, with Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky casting the lone Republican vote against the funding, which passed 220-207 and will fund ICE as well as FEMA through September 30.

“Right now we are about to take a vote and that vote is on DHS and whether or not we will give more funding to ICE. Right now I am willing to shut it down. I am going to do what it takes instead of just kind of being a go-along to get-along lawmaker,” Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, told Newsweek ahead of the vote.

The seven Democratic representatives who voted yes to approve ICE funding were:

• Tom Suozzi (New York)
• Henry Cuellar (Texas)
• Don Davis (North Carolina)
• Laura Gillen (New York)
• Jared Golden (Maine)
• Vicente Gonzalez (Texas)
• Marie Glusenkamp Perez (Washington)

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?