Wednesday Reads

Posted: June 12, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, abortion rights, birth control, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, War on Women | Tags: Department of Justice, Hunter Biden, Merrick Garland, Project 2025, Reproductive Health Care, Ryan Hamilton, Texas | 7 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

There are lots of important stories today; it’s difficult to decide which of them is most important, so I’ll just begin with another reproductive health care horror story out of Texas. I don’t know if you’ve been following this one, but a few days ago, a man from Texas posted on Twitter about what happened to his wife when she sought help for a failing pregnancy. He expressed so poignantly what so many couples have been dealing with after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

Here is a portion of his first post about it. Read the whole thing at the link.

My heart is broken: As friends & family know, my wife was pregnant with our 2nd child, & about to begin her 2nd trimester. A few days ago she had severe pains, & bleeding, and had to go to the emergency room. There, it was discovered that our baby no longer had a heartbeat. Devastated doesn’t come close to what that feels like. Unfortunately for people like us, because of the current laws in the state of Texas, that was only the beginning of this nightmare. Jess (my wife) had an “incomplete miscarriage”, and what needed to happen, what was best for HER, and her health, was to terminate the pregnancy, and get the baby out.

Radio DJ Ryan Hamilton

The doctor gave her a medication that would move this process along, and sent her home. Where, apparently we would be handling it ourselves. We were told it might take a couple of attempts before it worked….

After a long, painful night of the equivalent of early labor, the baby was still with her. So, we went back to the Emergency Center to get the 2nd dose. A new doctor was on call. He was an older man. You could hear him in the hallway as he said, “I’m not giving her a pill so she can go home and have an ab*rtion!”. Being well aware that our baby no longer had a heartbeat. Then, he came into the room to say, and I quote: “Considering the current stance. I’m not going to prescribe you this pill”. Then, just sent us on our way.

The “CURRENT STANCE”?! Did he really just say that?! No one should ever have to hear their wife say: “Get this dead baby out of me!”.

Can you even imagine how that must feel?

The pain, and the bleeding continued. So, we decided to go to another hospital, about an hour away. There was a female doctor on call there, and we thought we might have better luck.

I should probably mention, the procedure to get the baby out is called a D & C. It’s scary, & traumatizing, but sometimes necessary in situations like ours. Especially in emergency circumstances.

So we get to the next hospital. They take Jess in, ask her a bunch of questions, do a new scan… confirm that the baby is still there, with no heartbeat, and then disappear… for hours. Only to come back in and keep asking the same questions over and over. It’s becoming clear that they’re primary concern is NOT my wife’s health. Instead, they seem to be worried about the legalities involved.

So, they decide it is not “enough of an emergency” to perform the D & C. They do, however, prescribe another, stronger, final dose of the medication for us to try again… at home.

So, we go home to try again. Another long day/night of early labor pains. Only to discover my wife UNCONSCIOUS in the bathroom. Having to pick my wife’s cold, limp body off of that bathroom floor, not sure if I was about to lose her, is something I will NEVER forget. She had to be rushed to the hospital.

By this point she had lost so much blood, and bodily fluid, her body gave out. They were able to stabilize her, give her the fluids she needed, and we came back home yesterday afternoon. We were also able to confirm that our baby was no longer with her.

Now, not only do we have to live with the loss of our baby… we have to live with the nightmare of what we just experienced because of political and religious beliefs. MY WIFE’S HEALTH SHOULD HAVE COME FIRST. PERIOD! God knows what mental and emotional damage this has done. If you consider yourself a staunch “pro-lifer” … 1) You’ve never been through what we just went through, and 2) You should take a long, hard look in the mirror and reevaluate your reasons for supporting such a cold, barbaric, ignorant point of view. It’s not that black & white, and it’s never going to be. If you think your “Pray To End Ab*rtion” sign in your yard is “Christian”, I suggest you revisit the teachings of Jesus and try again. If you support these laws that make ab*rtion illegal, and result in people being put through what we just were, you should be ashamed of yourself. I’ve never been so angry, or heartbroken… and the devastation I’m feeling must pale in comparison to what my poor wife is feeling.

If you go to Hamilton’s feed, you can read much more. Now here is a portion of his latest post from yesterday:

How is my wife? Lots of folks asking (thank you)….It’s been a little over 2 weeks since it happened, & we were told it would be a minimum of 6 weeks before her body recovered from all the blood she lost.

Ryan and Jess Hamilton

Because of the amount of blood loss, she still gets light headed & has dizzy spells. But those are getting less frequent. We are monitoring her HCG levels at home. As of now, she is still getting a positive pregnancy test. This is where it gets scary. If those levels don’t go down soon there is serious risk of infection, which can lead to a world of other very scary problems. Including sepsis. So, she’s not out of the woods yet, physically… and her incomplete miscarriage, is STILL potentially incomplete.

The likelihood of her still needing a D&C is looking increasingly likely. Which, if they would have just DONE THE PROCEDURE IN THE FIRST PLACE, WE WOULDN’T BE HERE! The barbaric way she was treated will forever infuriate me. We have no faith in the doctors, or the medical system here in Texas….So seeking care here is not something we are interested in. However, there are physicians in other states who have reached out. They have been caring, & kind, & very generous in their offers to get us the help we need, if we need it.

This is real life here in Texas. Denying my wife the care she needed. Sending her home on 3 different occasions to almost bleed out on our bathroom floor. Texas Abortion Law did that. My wife is strong. I am in awe of her strength as she recovers. I know she’s going to be ok. But, here we are, weeks later, and we STILL may have to leave the state to get the care she needs….

How many women in Texas and other red states have experienced these nightmarish results since the end of Roe? We know there are many. As we all know, women are once again second class citizens or worse. Right wing Republicans are calling stories like this “fear-mongering.” One anti-abortion site actually claimed that he is lying.

They say the same things about Republicans’ efforts to ban birth control. Anyone who votes for Republican this year is supporting their war on women.

Yesterday’s news was dominated by another family tragedy, the felony conviction of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Republicans seem almost disappointed in the outcome of the trial; they apparently hoped that President Biden would interfere to protect his son.

From Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice: Hunter Biden’s conviction destroys key MAGA conspiracy theory.

Yesterday, Hunter Biden, son of the president, was convicted on three charges of lying about narcotics use on a gun-purchase form.

In a sane world, this would not be great news for former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, who has been arguing for a year that President Joe Biden has subverted and weaponized the Justice Department. Are we to believe that Biden weaponized the the DOJ to prosecute his own son?

Apparently we are. Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt popped up gamely on Newsmax to insist that the Hunter conviction is just a “distraction from the real crimes of the corrupt Biden family crime family.” (RNC co-chair Lara Trump used the same talking point on Hannity as this newsletter was being finalized.) Trump advisor and right-hand ghoul Stephen Miller similarly tried to keep the conspiracies spinning; he insisted that the DOJ should have prosecuted Hunter not on gun charges, but for more serious crimes.

The hapless James Comer also got in on the act, tweeting that Hunter’s conviction is somehow evidence that the DOJ “continue[s] to cover for the Big Guy, Joe Biden.”

Of course, if Hunter had been exonerated, Comer and company would be insisting the verdict was rigged. You can’t shame conspiracy theorists. But for anyone who’s not inside the MAGA bubble, the verdict shows pretty clearly that Biden is doing anything but weaponizing the rule of law — even if the law in this case is neither thoughtful nor just.

What result did Republicans want? According to Berlansky:

The GOP hoped for grand conspiracies and all they got was this lousy conviction.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has been convicted in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump is slated to be sentenced next month. He’s also facing a slew of other charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified material after he left the White House.

Hunter Biden leaves court after conviction, holding hands with Jill Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden

Republicans have worked themselves into a rabid lather in defense of Trump’s rampant criminality. Shortly after Republicans took control of the House last year, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan created a Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government specifically to push false claims that Biden’s DOJ is engaged in political prosecutions of conservative figures, especially Trump.

Trump recently made the ludicrous claim that the DOJ is trying to kill him. Ultra MAGA Rep. Matt Gaetz floated another conspiracy theory in a hearing this month, charging Attorney General Merrick Garland with “dispatching” a former senior official at DOJ to work in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and push through a Trump conviction. This claim is, of course, baseless.

In this climate, a Hunter Biden exoneration would be red meat. The right was already gearing up to spew gleeful conspiracy theories and blame the president if Hunter was not convicted. Just last week, Fox News host Jesse Watters pushed a racist conspiracy theory in which he claimed the trial had been stacked with Black jurors who would refuse to vote to convict.

With Hunter’s conviction, though, MAGA is facing the sad demise of their conspiratorial hopes. Gaetz, for instance, tweeted, “The Hunter Biden gun conviction is kinda dumb tbh.” But if Hunter had beaten the charges, you can bet everyone from Gaetz to Miller to Trump to Jordan to rabid MAGA twitter blue checks would all be on the same message. And it wouldn’t be that the charges are underwhelming.

Instead of attacking the judge, jury, and prosecution in his son’s case, President Biden made a graceful public statement:

“As I said last week, I am the President, but I am also a Dad,” Biden said. “Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery.”

“As I also said last week, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal,” the president added. “Jill and I will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.”

Biden also changed his plans for the afternoon to head home to Delaware to be with his son.

Jill Lawrence at The Bulwark: Joe Biden Won’t Give Up on Hunter or America. Who is the real tough guy in this race? It’s not Donald Trump.

WE GET IT, AMERICA. You think Donald Trump is tough and Joe Biden is compassionate, and therefore not tough enough. But you’ve got it exactly backwards. Trump whines so constantly about “what I’ve been through” that he should adopt “Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me” as his campaign song.

Don’t mistake Biden’s empathy for weakness. The major challenges he has confronted in his first term have required focus, discipline, and strength—from the death, destruction, and global destabilization of two raging wars to his own son’s prosecution on gun charges and the jury’s guilty verdict Tuesday.

Persistence, restraint, forcefulness, forbearance—these qualities speak to an underlying toughness, and Biden has demonstrated them all during his presidency. The Hunter Biden saga is no exception.

Here’s what I mean:

When he took office, Joe Biden retained Delaware’s Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, David Weiss, to finish an investigation into whether Hunter Biden falsified a gun form and evaded taxes while he was addicted to drugs. Joe Biden did not attack the justice system when a Trump-appointed judge—Maryellen Noreika—questioned Hunter’s plea agreement, which ultimately fell apart. Joe Biden didn’t comment or intervene when Attorney General Merrick Garland—his own appointee—elevated Weiss to special counsel status, allowing him broader authority to investigate and bring charges.

President Biden hugging Hunter after his conviction. The President traveled to Delaware to be with his son.

When his son went on trial in Wilmington, again in Noreika’s courtroom, Joe Biden did not attack the judge. He also said he would not pardon Hunter if he were convicted. After the guilty verdict Tuesday, the president said he was proud of “the man he is today” and added: “As I also said last week, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.”

Although prosecutions in gun cases like Hunter’s are rare, as even some conservatives have noted, Biden did not call the system “rigged.” He did not howl about the unfairness of it all. And he left it to others to make a point that should be obvious: Trump’s convictions last month are not the same as Hunter’s. As filmmaker/TV producer Morgan J. Freeman joked shortly after the verdict, “How will this affect Hunter Biden’s campaign?” Exactly.

Patti Davis, a president’s daughter and a self-described former speed and cocaine addict, wrote this week that Hunter’s actions and illness forced Joe Biden “into a choice between the primal urge to protect a child and the public responsibility to uphold the law. That is a terrible place to be.”

BIDEN WAS STRONG ENOUGH AND TOUGH ENOUGH to choose upholding the law. He was also tough enough to keep a speaking engagement with gun-safety advocates, many of whom have experienced personal tragedy involving guns, a few hours after his son was convicted on all three gun charges. And he was tough enough to weather what happened at that event.

“Never give up on hope,” Biden told the audience at the conference hosted by the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Then a protester began shouting at him about “genocide,” upset about deaths in Gaza amid Israel’s fierce response to last fall’s Hamas attack. The Biden-friendly crowd erupted into chants of “four more years,” drowning out the heckler. Biden’s response was remarkable: “No, no, no, no,” he said. “Folks, folks, it’s okay. Look, they care. Innocent children have been lost. They make a point.”

Read the rest at the Bulwark link.

Republicans repeatedly accuse President Biden and Democrats of “weaponizing” the DOJ and the justice system, but Donald Trump has made clear that he is the one who hopes to do that in another term as “president.”

Yesterday, Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to those accusations in The Washington Post: Merrick Garland: Unfounded attacks on the Justice Department must end.

Last week, a California man was convicted of threatening to bomb an FBI field office where hundreds of agents and other employees work. In one of his threats to the FBI, the man wrote: “I can go on a mass murder spree. In fact, it would be very explainable by your actions.”

These heinous threats of violence have become routine in an environment in which the Justice Department is under attack like never before.

In recent weeks, we have seen an escalation of attacks that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work. They are baseless, personal and dangerous.

These attacks come in the form of threats to defund particular department investigations, most recently the special counsel’s prosecution of the former president.

Merrick Garland

They come in the form of conspiracy theories crafted and spread for the purpose of undermining public trust in the judicial process itself. Those include false claims that a case brought by a local district attorney and resolved by a jury verdict in a state trial was somehow controlled by the Justice Department.

They come in the form of dangerous falsehoods about the FBI’s law enforcement operations that increase the risks faced by our agents.

They come in the form of efforts to bully and intimidate our career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out.

They come in the form of false claims that the department is politicizing its work to somehow influence the outcome of an election. Such claims are often made by those who are themselves attempting to politicize the department’s work to influence the outcome of an election.

And media reports indicate there is an ongoing effort to ramp up these attacks against the Justice Department, its work and its employees.

We will not be intimidated by these attacks. But it is absurd and dangerous that public servants, many of whom risk their lives every day, are being threatened for simply doing their jobs and adhering to the principles that have long guided the Justice Department’s work.

Read the rest at the WaPo.

Finally, here’s a powerful piece at Slate by Dahlia Lithwick and Norman Ornstein: The Biggest Lie Trump–Biden 2024 Rematch Voters Are Telling Themselves. The system will not inevitably “hold.”

Most would-be dictators run for office downplaying or sugarcoating their intentions, trying to lure voters with a vanilla appeal. But once elected, the autocratic elements take over, either immediately or gradually: The destruction of free elections, undermining the press, co-opting the judiciary, turning the military into instruments of the dictatorship, installing puppets in the bureaucracy, making sure the legislature reinforces rather than challenges lawless or unconstitutional actions, using violence and threats of violence to cow critics and adversaries, rewarding allies with government contracts, and ensuring that the dictator and family can secrete billions from government resources and bribes. This was the game plan for Putin, Sisi, Orbán, and many others. It’s hardly unfamiliar.

Donald Trump is rather different in one respect. He has not softened his spoken intentions to get elected. While Trump is a congenital liar—witness his recent claim that he, not Joe Biden, got $35 insulin for diabetics—when it comes to how he would act if elected again to the presidency, he has been brutally honest, as have his closest advisers and campaign allies. His presidency would feature retribution against his enemies, weaponizing and politicizing the Justice Department to arrest and detain them whether there were valid charges or not. He has pledged to pardon the Jan. 6 violent insurrectionist rioters, who could constitute a personal vigilante army for President Donald Trump, presumably alongside the official one.

Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, home of Project 2025

He has openly said he would be a dictator on Day One, reimplementing a Muslim ban, purging the bureaucracy of professional civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, invoking the Insurrection Act to quash protests and take on opponents while replacing military leaders who would resist turning the military into a presidential militia with pliant generals. He would begin immediately to put the 12 million undocumented people in America into detention camps before moving to deport them all. His Republican convention policy director, Russell Vought, has laid out many of these plans as have his closest advisers, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Michael Flynn, among others. Free elections would be a thing of the past, with more radical partisan judges turning a blind eye to attempts to protect elections and voting rights. He has openly flirted with the idea that he would ignore the 22^nd Amendment and stay beyond his term of office.

The battle plan of his allies in the Heritage Foundation, working closely with his campaign via Project 2025, includes many of the aims above, and more; it would also tighten the screws on abortion after Dobbs, move against contraception, reinstate criminal sanctions against gay sex while overturning the right to same-sex marriage, among other things. His top foreign policy adviser, Richard Grenell, has reiterated what Trump has said about his isolationist-in-the-extreme foreign policy—jettison NATO, abandon support for Ukraine and give Putin a green light to go after Poland and other NATO countries, and reorient American alliances to create one of strongmen dictators including Kim Jong-un. Shockingly, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson violated sacred norms and endangered security by bypassing qualified lawmakers and appointing to the House Intelligence Committee two dangerous and manifestly unqualified members—one insurrectionist sympathizer, Rep. Scott Perry, who has sued the FBI, and one extremist demoted by the military for drunkenness, pill pushing, and other offenses, Rep. Ronny Jackson—simply because Donald Trump demanded it. They will have access to America’s most critical secrets and will likely share them with Trump if his status as a convicted felon denies him access to top secret information during the campaign. This is part of a broader pattern in which GOP lawmakers do what Trump wants, no matter how extreme or reckless.

In general, the mainstream media have shrugged at these overt plans and troubling actions, and most voters either have not focused on them or have dismissed them as exaggerations or impossibilities. After all, our constitutional system has endured for almost 250 years, and the web of checks and balances is strong. There is evidence to support that optimism. We have just seen a historic moment in the rule of law: A unanimous jury of his peers found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying financial documents to influence the outcome of the 2016 election….

But conviction notwithstanding, there is reason to be alarmed—deeply alarmed. This one felony conviction was hardly a vindication of the American justice system. The system “held” only insofar as it was capable of somewhat muzzling the ongoing threats leveled by the defendant against the presiding judge and his family, the jurors and the witnesses, and the team of prosecutors who brought the case. The system held only insofar as efforts to bully and terrorize and bribe witnesses who have helped Donald Trump commit crimes with impunity for decades didn’t quite manage to silence all of those witnesses.

And, depressingly, the system only “held” insofar as it doesn’t collapse upon appeal, say if a someday–Supreme Court, summoned by Speaker Mike Johnson, decides, for no reason law would ever permit or condone, to step in and somehow scupper the whole conviction while giving Trump free rein to act with impunity.

We live in scary times. Anyone who isn’t voting for President Biden is voting for the 2025 Plan and a U.S. dictatorship.

But, as Biden said about gun laws, we can’t give up hope. It’s not over yet, and I do believe Biden can and will win. Then we will have to deal with whatever comes when Trump and his MAGA goons refuse to accept the outcome of another election.

Take care, and hang in there Sky Dancers.

Wednesday Reads

Posted: February 21, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, religion, Russia | Tags: Alexander Smirnov, Christian nationalism, FBI, Hunter Biden, Judge Aileen Cannon, Russian intelligence, Save America PAC, Special Counsel David Weiss, Special Counsel Jack Smith, stolen documents case | 13 Comments

Good Day!!

Portrait of Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold, by Pytr Konchalovsk, 1938

Today’s big political story: House Republicans’ efforts to impeach President Biden for supposed corruption involving his son Hunter is in deep trouble. You probably heard that their star witness has been indicted and arrested for lying to the FBI. On top of that, his “evidence” came from the Kremlin. Republicans are the Putin Party. Here’s the latest:

Hannah Rabinowitz and Cheri Mossburg at CNN: Indicted ex-FBI informant told investigators he got Hunter Biden dirt from Russian intelligence officials.

The former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine told investigators after his arrest that Russian intelligence officials were involved in passing information to him about Hunter Biden, prosecutors said Tuesday in a new court filing, noting that the information was false.

Prosecutors also said Alexander Smirnov has been “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections” after meeting with Russian spies late last year and that the fallout from his previous false bribery accusations about the Bidens “continue[s] to be felt to this day.”

Smirnov claims to have “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intelligence officials, prosecutors said in the filing. They said he previously told the FBI that he has longstanding and extensive contacts with Russian spies, including individuals he said were high-level intelligence officers or command Russian assassins abroad.

Prosecutors with special counsel David Weiss’ team said Tuesday that Smirnov has maintained those ties and noted that, in a post-arrest interview last week, “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” referring to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

The revelations about Smirnov’s alleged foreign contacts were disclosed as part of prosecutors’ arguments to keep him jailed ahead of trial – though a federal judge later granted Smirnov’s release with several conditions, including GPS monitoring and the surrender of his two passports. Smirnov declined to answer questions as he left the courthouse Tuesday evening.

Prosecutors alleged that Smirnov “claims to have contacts with multiple foreign intelligence agencies,” including in Russia, and that he could use those contacts to flee the United States.

The explosive revelation comes amid backlash over how Smirnov’s now-debunked allegations played into House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president.

The latest legal and political Trump news

Roger Sollenberger at The Daily Beast: Donald Trump’s Cash Crunch Just Got Much, Much Worse.

As Donald Trump’s legal troubles consume more and more of his time, they’re also consuming more of his donors’ money—and there’s a huge hole in the bucket.

On Tuesday, Trump’s “Save America” leadership political action committee reported raising just $8,508 from donors in the entire month of January, while spending about $3.9 million, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission.

Nearly $3 million of that overall spending total was used for one purpose: to pay lawyers.

At the same time, the Trump campaign itself reported a net loss of more than $2.6 million for the month of January. It raised about $8.8 million while spending around $11.5 million, according to a separate filing made public on Tuesday.

The filings reveal that Trump is continuing to burn through his donors’ funds as he struggles to feed two massive cash drains—astronomical legal bills stemming from numerous civil cases and four criminal indictments, plus the costs of a national presidential campaign….

Jean-François Millet, Shepherdess and Her Flock (1862–63).

Despite reporting almost no donations in January, the Save America PAC—a group Trump launched days after the 2020 election, ostensibly to fund legal challenges—actually increased its bottom line by more than $1 million, ending the month with nearly $6.3 million on hand.

However, that increase can’t be chalked up to new donations. It’s entirely due to a $5 million transfer from a different pro-Trump super PAC, which is still in the process of refunding $60 million that the former president demanded back last year, as his legal bills threatened to put Save America, his legal slush fund, into bankruptcy.

Despite reporting almost no donations in January, the Save America PAC—a group Trump launched days after the 2020 election, ostensibly to fund legal challenges—actually increased its bottom line by more than $1 million, ending the month with nearly $6.3 million on hand.

However, that increase can’t be chalked up to new donations. It’s entirely due to a $5 million transfer from a different pro-Trump super PAC, which is still in the process of refunding $60 million that the former president demanded back last year, as his legal bills threatened to put Save America, his legal slush fund, into bankruptcy.

Read more bad news for Trump at the link above.

At Slate, Norman Eisen and Joshua Kolb speculation on the possibility that: Aileen Cannon Might Actually Get Herself Kicked Off the Trump Classified Docs Case.

The recent news about possible Russian space nukes reminds us that we live in a very insecure world. That is why perhaps none of Donald Trump’s four criminal cases is more troubling than the federal prosecution brought by special counsel Jack Smith for mishandling classified documents. Unfortunately, the judge handling the case, Aileen Cannon—a last-minute appointment rushed through in the waning days of the Trump administration—has proved herself to be by far the worst of the jurists overseeing these momentous cases. Her decisions during the investigative phase of the case strayed wildly from precedent, leading to brutal reversals by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit. Now Smith appears to be preparing to ask that body to overturn at least one and possibly two of her decisions. In our view, while he is there on those other issues, he should also petition them to remove her from the case.

Why do we think Smith might be headed to the court of appeals? In part because he has already sought reconsideration for the latest of Cannon’s unlawful orders. This is a step that is warranted only in rare circumstances, including when a judge has made a “clear error” that led to “manifest injustice.” In this instance, at Trump’s behest, Cannon has decided to unseal the identities of two dozen potential witnesses, along with sensitive information they provided to the government. The “clear error” Smith identifies is striking: He alleges that Cannon applied the wrong legal standard in making this decision, requiring him to make a far more stringent showing than should be needed to protect these names. In his motion for reconsideration, Smith shows that the case law—including the very cases Cannon herself cited in her order—does not establish the unreasonable hurdles she wants him to clear.

The recent news about possible Russian space nukes reminds us that we live in a very insecure world. That is why perhaps none of Donald Trump’s four criminal cases is more troubling than the federal prosecution brought by special counsel Jack Smith for mishandling classified documents. Unfortunately, the judge handling the case, Aileen Cannon—a last-minute appointment rushed through in the waning days of the Trump administration—has proved herself to be by far the worst of the jurists overseeing these momentous cases. Her decisions during the investigative phase of the case strayed wildly from precedent, leading to brutal reversals by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit. Now Smith appears to be preparing to ask that body to overturn at least one and possibly two of her decisions. In our view, while he is there on those other issues, he should also petition them to remove her from the case.

Why do we think Smith might be headed to the court of appeals? In part because he has already sought reconsideration for the latest of Cannon’s unlawful orders. This is a step that is warranted only in rare circumstances, including when a judge has made a “clear error” that led to “manifest injustice.” In this instance, at Trump’s behest, Cannon has decided to unseal the identities of two dozen potential witnesses, along with sensitive information they provided to the government. The “clear error” Smith identifies is striking: He alleges that Cannon applied the wrong legal standard in making this decision, requiring him to make a far more stringent showing than should be needed to protect these names. In his motion for reconsideration, Smith shows that the case law—including the very cases Cannon herself cited in her order—does not establish the unreasonable hurdles she wants him to clear.

Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (1878).

In his motion for reconsideration, Smith also argues that Cannon minimizes the risk of real-world harm and witness intimidation these individuals would face. He notes that there is a “well-documented pattern in which judges, agents, prosecutors, and witnesses involved in cases involving Trump have been subject to threats, harassment, and intimidation.” Cannon’s cavalier attitude is dangerous for the potential witnesses whose identities could be revealed. As Smith asserts in his brief, “a court’s duty is to prevent harms to the witnesses or the judicial process ‘at their inception.’ ” Cannon appears willing to abdicate that duty.

In response to Smith’s reconsideration motion, Cannon ordered Trump to respond by Friday. That will set up a dramatic ruling by Cannon: Either she reverses her position—which would be an admission that she was fundamentally mistaken about the law in a way that caused “manifest injustice”—or she leaves her ruling in place, putting individuals in jeopardy and twisting the law to help Trump. At that point, Smith may have enough ammunition to seek her reassignment from the 11^th Circuit.

Beyond that contretemps, there is a second possible dispute that may be headed to the court of appeals shortly. Earlier this month saw two days of hearings on whether the defendants in the case will get access to highly classified documents under the Classified Information Procedures Act. That statute allows the government to petition the court to redact, summarize, or even withhold classified information in a criminal case. Notably, the CIPA provides the government with the ability to immediately and swiftly appeal. Thus, even if Smith loses a ruling related only to a single document, the statute allows him to go straight to the 11^th Circuit.

Some stories out today provide details on Trump’s plans for the U.S. if he somehow gets back into the White House.

Politico’s Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybyla on Trump’s plans for our country: Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration.

An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.

Christian nationalists in America believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life. As the country has become less religious and more diverse, Vought has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.

One document drafted by CRA staff and fellows includes a list of top priorities for CRA in a second Trump term. “Christian nationalism” is one of the bullet points. Others include invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests and refusing to spend authorized congressional funds on unwanted projects, a practice banned by lawmakers in the Nixon era.

CRA’s work fits into a broader effort by conservative, MAGA-leaning organizations to influence a future Trump White House. Two people familiar with the plans, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, said that Vought hopes his proximity and regular contact with the former president — he and Trump speak at least once a month, according to one of the people — will elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term.

The documents obtained by POLITICO do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies. But Vought has promoted a restrictionist immigration agenda, saying a person’s background doesn’t define who can enter the U.S., but rather, citing Biblical teachings, whether that person “accept[ed] Israel’s God, laws and understanding of history.”

Read the rest at Politico, if you can stomach it.

At Salon, Amanda Marcotte has some thoughts on the Politico story: Donald Trump may not believe in God, but he still plans to turn America into a Christian theocracy.

If there were only some way to prove it, I would happily bet everything I own that Donald Trump does not believe in God. Not because he’s carefully engaged the many philosophical proofs for atheism that are out there, of course. He’s simply too much of a sociopathic narcissist to believe in anything higher than himself. He also, as recent court verdicts regarding sexual assault and massive fraud demonstrate, has no moral compass. He’s only too happy to be party to attempted murder, in fact, as long as it’s someone else who takes the risk of prison for it.

Alas, there’s no way to force Trump to tell the truth about his lack of belief in God, but there are plenty of signs of his deep contempt for religion. Multiple witnesses have described how he laughs at Christians behind their backs, calling their faith “bullshit.” When he play-acts belief in public, he struggles to hide his scorn, failing to acknowledge basic precepts of Christianity that even most non-believers understand.

I suspect most Americans, even Republican voters, understand that Trump is not a believer. (He does seem to think he’s a god himself, a view his voters are all too willing to endorse.) Unfortunately, this can incline folks to feel that, if re-elected, Trump will govern as a secularist. Focus groups, for instance, regularly show that voters disregard the threat Trump poses to legal abortion, even though he’s the reason Roe v. Wade was overturned. They correctly surmise that Trump would be fine with any woman he has sex with aborting an inconvenient pregnancy, but forget that, for Trump, rules are for other people. He’d only be too happy to send every woman who got an abortion to prison, so long as he personally is off the hook.

The grim reality, however, is that should Trump win (or steal) the White House this November, he will govern as a theocrat. There’s a reason that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has attached himself like a suckerfish to Trump’s rear end. Johnson wants the U.S. to abandon freedom of religion, and instead run it according to his far-right view of a “biblically sanctioned government.” He sees Trump as the single best route to turning the country into a Christian dictatorship.

On Tuesday, Politico published an exposé of the secret plans of The Center for Renewing America think tank, described as “a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.” Led by Russell Vought, who once worked as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, the group has drafted a blueprint to turn the U.S. into a “Christian nationalist” country. The group argues that “freedom is defined by God, not man,” which is a fancy way of saying that they oppose most human rights. Subsequently, they are calling for an end to free speech, by using the Insurrection Act to quell protests. The coalition also expressed support for “overturning same-sex marriage, ending abortion and reducing access to contraceptives.”

One more outrageous/WTF Trump story before I bring this post to a close. Politico: Trump calls his civil fraud verdict a ‘form of Navalny.’

Former President Donald Trump likened the $355 million judgment against him in a New York civil trial to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a Fox News town hall on Tuesday evening.

“It is a form of Navalny. It is a form of communism or fascism,” he said, before going on to attack the judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, who he called a “nut job.”

Trump compared himself to Navalny, the outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who died in prison on Friday, on several occasions during the event. Earlier in the town hall, Trump praised Navalny as a “very brave guy” because he chose to return to Russia, where he had been jailed since 2021, though Trump said he “probably would have been a lot better off staying away and talking from outside.”

“People thought that could happen and it did happen,” Trump said, referring to Navalny’s death. “And it’s a horrible thing.”

Asked about outrage over Navalny’s death, Trump said, “It’s happening here.” He said his indictments are “all because of the fact that I’m in politics.”

Trump refrained from blaming Putin for the death, as President Joe Biden and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump’s sole remaining credible primary opponent, have done.

Trump’s remarks amounted to a doubling down on his controversial post on Truth Social on Monday that “the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country.”

Lock him up.

That’s all the news I have for you today. What are your thoughts? What other stories are you interested in?

Wednesday Reads

Posted: January 31, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump | Tags: Blue voters in red states, David Weiss, Hunter Biden, MAGA conspiracy theories, Mike Johnson, presidential immunity, Rick Perlstein, Taylor Swift, Texas border standoff, Travis Kelce, Trump legal expenses | 7 Comments

Good Morning!!

taylor-cover I’m an old lady now, and I haven’t followed popular culture for years. For example, I’ve never watched a reality TV show or any recent situation comedies. I don’t have that much time left on earth; and I’d rather focus on things I care about, like reading good books and following politics.

Obviously, I’ve heard of Taylor Swift, I know what she looks like, but I’ve never heard her music. It would be difficult not to know that she’s dating a member of the Kansas City Chiefs, Travis Kelce. But now I’m learning more about her, because she has become the focus of the latest insane MAGA conspiracy theories.

HuffPost: The Right’s Newest Conspiracy Is The Super Bowl-Taylor Swift-Joe Biden ‘Psyop.’

It’s a conspiracy involving the deepest of deep states: The world’s most popular entertainer, America’s most popular sporting event and the president of the United States. Its goal, according to theories circulating in the outskirts of MAGA world, is to covertly compel fans to throw the 2024 election to the Democrats.

Right-wing speculation reached a fever pitch this week around pop mega-star Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce after Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, qualified for Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, a victory the two celebrated with much-photographed postgame smooch. A day later, The New York Times ran a piece noting President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is hoping for Swift’s endorsement.

Those two seemingly unrelated events — and the possibility that Swift would use her massive star power and huge online reach to help Biden beat Donald Trump — are driving right-wing media into a meltdown. And that one of the country’s biggest celebrities will use her fanbase to help Biden is already being treated as inevitable by some of the right’s biggest influencers….

But there’s more to this than the possibility of a Swift nod swinging a close election. For years, right-wing conspiracists have pushed the notion that Swift, who began her career in the conservative world of country music and was once referred to as “Aryan goddess” by white supremacists, is somehow a Democratic “agent” because she endorsed Democrats in the 2018 midterms and Biden in the 2020 presidential election. (Swift has admitted she regrets not getting involved in 2016.)

“There have been have claims for several months that she’s a psyop, that she’s a Pentagon asset, that she’s a political weapon,” said Brennan Suen, the deputy director of external affairs for Media Matters, a left-leaning media watchdog. “The claims have gotten completely wild.” [….]

Kelce, for his part, appeared in a Pfizer commercial promoting the COVID vaccine. COVID shots have long been the subject of right-wing conspiracies, with adherents falsely believing the government is covering up adverse reactions or that the vaccines harbor microchips.

Now, high-profile conservative figures are promoting the unfounded idea that Swift, the NFL and the Democratic Party are together involved in a “psyop” campaign to deliver the election to Biden. Fox News host Jesse Watters recently suggested that Swift was a “front for a covert political agenda” and bizarrely called her a “Pentagon asset” — which, of course, the Pentagon denied….

By that logic, Swift’s appearances at Chiefs games isn’t to cheer on her boyfriend or even to promote her tour — it’s really to get the country to vote blue in November.

There’s more nutty nonsense at the HuffPost link.

Luckovich Rolling Stone: Trump Allies Pledge ‘Holy War’ Against Taylor Swift.

Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift hasn’t even endorsed President Joe Biden for reelection yet. That hasn’t stopped members of MAGAland’s upper crust from plotting to declare — as one source close to Donald Trump calls it — a “holy war” on the pop megastar, especially if she ends up publicly backing the Democrats in the 2024 election.

According to three people familiar with the matter, Trump loyalists working on or close to the former president’s campaign, longtime Trump allies in right-wing media, and an array of outside advisers to the ex-president have long taken it as a given that Swift will eventually endorse Biden (as she did in 2020). Indeed, several of these Republicans and conservative media figures have discussed the matter with Trump over the past few months, the sources say.

While Swift has not yet issued an endorsement in the 2024 race, The New York Times reported Monday that Swift is a key name on Biden aides’ “wish lists of potential surrogates.” A potential Swift appearance at Super Bowl LVIII alongside her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, has already prompted the MAGA right’s culture-war pugilists into a conspiracy-fueled froth about how this NFL season has been rigged to boost Biden.

Behind the scenes, Trump has reacted to the possibility of Biden and Swift teaming up against him this year not with alarm, but with an instant projection of ego. In recent weeks, the former president has told people in his orbit that no amount of A-list celebrity endorsements will save Biden. Trump has also privately claimed that he is “more popular” than Swift and that he has more committed fans than she does, a person close to Trump and another source with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone.

Last month, the source close to Trump adds, the ex-president commented to some confidants that it “obviously” made no sense that he was not named Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year — an honor that went to none other than Swift in December.

Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice: Why Trumpers are losing it over Taylor Swift.

Swift is not running for election and is not really a political figure. Thus targeting her seems at best pointless and at worst counterproductive for a political movement.

But the conservative media marketplace often has different incentives than the Republican Party — which is part of why the Republican Party is such a mess. Swift’s music now effectively functions as the soundtrack for the GOP crawling into a dumpster and setting itself on fire….

Why have Republicans chosen this moment for their much-more-than-two-minutes Swift hate? Well, this week Swift released a provocative album titled The GOP Sucks and So Does Donald Trump.

Ha ha. No, she didn’t do anything like that at all. Instead, her sin was … attending a football game. Last Sunday, she went to see the Kansas City Chiefs/Baltimore Ravens matchup because she’s dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — who has been reviled by the right for making ads for the Pfizer covid vaccine and (gulp) alleged woke beer brand Bud Light. The Chiefs won, giving them a berth in the Super Bowl and destroying right-wing talking points about Swift being the Chiefs’ Yoko Ono.

During the game, cameras kept panning to catch Swift’s reaction, which makes sense since she’s a massively famous pop star and her presence at NFL games this season is driving huge TV ratings.

Swift didn’t ham it up for the cameras to try to make herself a focus of attention. Nonetheless, her presence annoyed right-wing punditry, which saw Swift and collectively started gibbering and snorting like rabid warthogs.

“End Wokeness,” a large right-wing account that Elon Musk is fond of, tweeted that “What’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic and natural. It’s an op.” [….]

As this newsletter is being readied for publication late Tuesday, examples of right-wing figures revealing that Swift has given them a terminal case of brainworms are so plentiful that it would be impossible to cite them all.

Newsmax host Greg Kelly went as far Monday as to accuse Swifties of “elevating her to an idol … and you’re not supposed to do that. In fact, if you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin!” Another Newsmax host dismissed the Swift-Kelce relationship as “fake.”

Meanwhile, one of Fox News’ “hard news” shows devoted a segment to attacking Swift, her fans, and Kelce, who a commentator derisively referred to as “Mr. Pfizer.”

But that was nowhere near as wild as a segment earlier this month during which Fox News host Jesse Waters described Swift a “Pentagon asset” developed at a NATO meeting and deployed to help Democrats.

Where do they get this stuff? It’s so difficult for me to comprehend the way these people think.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that historian Rick Perlstein is now writing a column called “The Infernal Triangle” for The American Prospect. His focus is on the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. Today he quotes a letter he received from a reader in Arkansas:

Oh, Rick, you get it … My husband and I are old and sitting right slap dab in the middle of red Arkansas with MAGA friends and family all around. They try to pull us into their discussions but we change the subject. I stopped going to church because the churches no longer teach Christ’s message, but Trump’s message. We are too old to move but if I was young I’d get out … Even if Trump doesn’t win, his followers will take up arms (Our relatives love to show off their assault rifles) much worse than Jan. 6 so either way we are screwed … Will my son lose his job as a government inspector? Will my black, gay, openly political blue neighbors be imprisoned or simply lynched the way it was done here in the ’50s or ’60s? And if so, how do I stay neutral while horrible things are happening to good people? I have no fight left in me … Sorry to rant on so long so I’ll wrap this up now. I could use your help though. How do we prepare in a practical sense? How will this affect my everyday life? How do people in Russia go on about their lives and jobs? I assume I will have to kiss ass like in North Korea in order to live but then there are some things worse than death!

I won’t quote the rest of the piece–it’s about the need for fiction that spells out what could be coming if Trump wins and democracy dies. But this letter shows what it’s like for ordinary people in red states who can’t accept the MAGA brainwashing. Dakinikat and J.J. have a better idea what it’s like; here in blue Massachusetts, I have no direct contact with Trump crazies. Reading that letter from Arkansas brought home to me the danger we face.

More interesting reads from today’s news:

Elie Mystal at The Nation: Texas Is Spoiling for a Civil War.

Many Democrats treat the Empire of Texas as an alarming sideshow. Sure, the state executes the most people in the country, places bounties on those who smuggle pregnant people out of state to receive reproductive care, and uses migrants for target practice—but for many liberals Texas is just a sick joke that can be disregarded until Ted Cruz shows up for a football game. Even now, as the state openly repudiates federal laws, the most common refrain from the “always-online” liberal community is “Good: Give Texas back to Mexico.”

Razor wire at the Texas border

That is not the right answer. First of all, Texas doesn’t want to leave. It wants to invade the rest of the United States and remake the country in its own Christofascist image. Moreover, as is typical with these “states’ rights” types, the definition of “freedom” envisaged by the white guys running Texas is one where they are the only ones forever free—and they are allowed to subjugate women and people of color in their grabbable areas. But most important, allowing a state like Texas to thumb its nose at human rights and federal authority does nothing but give aid and comfort to other would-be rebel states to do the same.

Texas is not a sideshow; it is ground zero in the battle to reassert states’ rights over individual rights and the federal government. And, with the help of Republican judges and a Democratic administration that still seems bound by a rule book Texas is eager to torch, Texas is more or less winning the first battle in this Civil War reenactment.

The flash point for this crisis is, of course, the border. I have written before about Eagle Pass, Tex., as a place along the Rio Grande where it is popular for immigrants to make the crossing. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has erected a series of sadistic obstructions across this part of the river—including buoys ringed with razor wire and underwater traps—meant to maim and even drown people trying to swim across the river. Should people, and their children, survive Abbott’s gauntlet, Texas officials on the other side have been accused of pushing them back into the river, or denying the survivors medical aid or even water.

In response to this murder-barrier, which is in clear violation of both federal law and international human rights laws, US Attorney General Merrick Garland… filed a lawsuit. Because when a rebel force erects a literal death trap on federal lands, the right answer is to use the slow and plodding legal process instead of sending, I don’t know, a Zumwalt-class naval destroyer into the river to clear the obstructions. The lawsuit is still pending while people drown, of course.

Read the rest at The Nation.

Politico: As judges mull presidential immunity, Trump reaps the benefits of delay.

Whether Donald Trump faces a potential prison sentence in 2024 is at the mercy of a federal appeals court that’s operating on its own schedule — at a time when every day matters.

More than 50 days have elapsed since Trump’s criminal proceedings in a Washington, D.C., trial court — on charges for attempting to subvert the 2020 election — were paused indefinitely. They won’t resume until the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and, most likely, the Supreme Court resolve the question hanging over the entire case: whether Trump, as a former president, is immune from criminal prosecution.

Even if those courts ultimately reject Trump’s immunity arguments — an outcome that most legal experts expect — the protracted delays help the former president, whose strategy across his various trials has been to drag them out for as long as possible. Lengthy delays in his federal criminal cases create the possibility that, if he wins the presidency this November, Trump could avoid the charges altogether by having the Justice Department end the prosecutions or perhaps even by pardoning himself.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s federal election case, has tried to keep it on an expeditious track, and the trial is officially slated to begin on March 4. Chutkan, though, has strongly suggested she’ll push back that start date to account for each day of delay caused by Trump’s immunity appeal.

Even if the appeal were resolved this week against Trump, that calculation would put his earliest trial date in late April. But if the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court take additional weeks or months to deliver a final ruling, the opening days of Trump’s trial could be pushed to the summer or fall.

If, at that point, Trump retains his grip on the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, he and his allies are certain to exert intense pressure to postpone the trial until after the election. Chutkan, an Obama appointee, could plow forward with a trial anyway — and she’s repeatedly indicated that the campaign calendar has no bearing on her own.

The New York Times: Trump’s PACs Spent Roughly $50 Million on Legal Expenses in 2023.

Donald J. Trump piled up legal expenses in 2023 as he was indicted four times, spending approximately $50 million in donor money on legal bills and investigation-related expenses last year, according to two people briefed on the figure.

It is a staggering sum. His lone remaining rival in the 2024 Republican primary, Nikki Haley, raised roughly the same amount of money across all her committees in the last year as Mr. Trump’s political accounts spent paying the bills stemming from his various legal defenses, including lawyers for witnesses.

The exact figure spent on legal bills will be reported on Wednesday in new filings to the Federal Election Commission. But even those totals can be imprecise depending on how certain expense items are categorized by those doing the paperwork.

The broader picture expected to be outlined in the documents is one of a former president heading toward the Republican nomination while facing enormous financial strain….

Mr. Trump, who has long been loath to pay lawyers himself and has a history of stiffing those who represent him, has used funds in his political action committee, known as Save America, to underwrite his legal bills. The account was originally flooded with donations that were collected during the period immediately after the 2020 election when he was making widespread and false claims of voting fraud.

But with Save America’s coffers nearly drained last year, Mr. Trump sought to refill them through a highly unusual transaction: He asked for a refund of $60 million that he had initially transferred to a different group, a pro-Trump super PAC called MAGA Inc., to support his 2024 campaign.

In addition, Mr. Trump has been directing 10 percent of donations raised online to Save America, meaning 10 cents of every dollar he has received from supporters is going to a PAC that chiefly funds his lawyers.

Mr. Trump has paid legal expenses through both Save America and a second account, called the Make America Great Again PAC, which is an outgrowth of his 2020 re-election committee. In the first half of 2023, Save America transferred $5.85 million to the Make America Great Again PAC, which spent almost all of that sum on legal and investigation-related costs….

The net result was redirecting $42.5 million from a super PAC devoted to electing him as president to a committee now chiefly devoted to paying his lawyers. The refund was nearly equal to the $43.8 million the super PAC spent on so-called independent expenditures, such as television advertising, to shape the 2024 primary last year.

Raw Story: Trump pressured prosecutor to ‘blow up’ Hunter Biden’s gun plea deal: court filing.

Hunter Biden’s lawyers working to dismiss their client’s gun case argued Tuesday far-right extremists and former President Donald Trump unduly pressured prosecutors once willing to cut a deal.

A new filing in Delaware’s federal court — where Hunter Biden stands accused of lying about drug use to purchase a firearm he kept for fewer than two weeks — contends political motivations tainted special counsel David Weiss’ case after a plea deal was in the works last year.

“In response to that outcry from former President Trump, extremist House Republicans, and right-wing media looking to make Mr. Biden’s fate a political issue in the next presidential election, the prosecution blew up that deal,” his lawyers write.

“[Weiss] now has brought felony charges against Mr. Biden both here in Delaware and in California and is seeking a heavy prison sentence for charges the prosecution was willing to resolve for probation just months ago.”

The deal in question would have seen President Joe Biden’s 53-year-old son plead to two counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax and agree to certain legal stipulations, reports show.

After it fell apart in July, Weiss charged Biden with three gun charges in Delaware and nine tax charges in California.

Biden’s lawyers now say those charges would not have been brought had their client’s father not been Trump’s primary opponent in the 2024 presidential election.

Roger Sollenberger at The Daily Beast: The ‘Profound Influence’ of Christian Extremists on Mike Johnson.

A Daily Beast investigation of [Mike Johnson’s] affiliations, influences, and public statements shows that Johnson’s worldview was forged in a radical theological tradition—the leaders and adherents of which have disputed some of the country’s most important constitutional principles, including amendments that freed the slaves and extended basic rights to all citizens.

That may sound dramatic, but Johnson’s connections to one particular strain of Christian fundamentalism elicit legitimate questions about the speaker’s biblical and constitutional interpretations. Those questions are all the more pressing given how open leaders of this movement have been about using anti-democratic means to achieve their desired religious ends—and given Johnson’s own prominent role in the GOP effort to overturn the 2020 election.

While Johnson’s legal endeavors to keep Donald Trump in office have been well documented, so, too, have his ties to that fundamentalist strain, known loosely as Christian dominionism.

In a definitional sense, Christian dominionism is the belief that Christians should hold “dominion” over things like media, culture, and politics. In practice, it’s a radical theology—unifying a number of fundamentalist ideologies—advocating for biblical interpretations of law and society and hard-line views on issues like abortion and marriage.

More broadly, Christian dominionism seeks to establish the United States as a Christian nation governed by biblical law. And several leaders in the dominionist movement have had a profound impact on Johnson personally—by Johnson’s own admission.

In December 2021, for instance, Johnson publicly praised David Barton, a Christian nationalist whose historical studies have been rejected as wildly inaccurate. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s entry on Barton notes that he has repeatedly “demonized LGBTQ persons and communities, arguing that HIV and AIDS are god-given consequences for living out one’s LGBTQ life.”

And yet, Johnson said just two years ago that Barton has had “a profound influence on me, and my work, and my life, and everything I do.”

Those comments came at a national gathering of Christian lawmakers in North Texas, where Johnson said he was first introduced to Barton and his ministry “a quarter-century ago.”

Read the rest at The Daily Beast.

Those are my recommended reads for today. What stories are you following?

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: January 13, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Corrupt and Political SCOTUS, Donald Trump, SCOTUS, U.S. Politics | Tags: "Memphis Seven", abortion rights, Climate change, disappearing snowpack, EMTALA, homeless encampments, Hunter Biden, IRS, Labor Unions, snow, Trump legal news | 5 Comments

Happy Caturday!!

By Vanessa Stockard

Last year in Massachusetts we had a winter with almost no snow. Weather people quite often predicted it, but it never came. It really bothered me. I realized how much I love snowstorms and how much I miss snow when it doesn’t arrive. It looks like this year will be another mild winter with very little snow. We got a few inches recently, but mostly we’re getting rain.

I’m far from alone in missing snow. A few days ago, I came across two articles about what climate change is doing to our winters.

Zoë Schlanger at The Atlantic: The Threshold at Which Snow Starts Irreversibly Disappearing.

In January 1995, when The Atlantic published “In Praise of Snow,” Cullen Murphy’s opus to frozen precipitation, snow was still a mysterious substance, coming and going enigmatically, confounding forecasters’ attempts to make long-term predictions. Climate change registered to snow hydrologists as a future problem, but for the most part their job remained squarely hydrology: working out the ticktock of a highly variable yet presumably coherent water cycle. “We still don’t know many fundamental things about snow,” Murphy wrote. “Nor do we understand its relation to weather and to climate—the dynamics of climate being one of the perennials on the ‘must figure out’ list of science.”

In January 2024, at long last, someone has figured out a formula of sorts for how snow reacts to climate change, and the answer is: It reacts nonlinearly. Which is to say, if we think snow is getting scarce now, we ought to buckle up.

Nonlinear relationships indicate accelerated change; shifts are small for a while but then, past a certain threshold, escalate quickly. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, two Dartmouth researchers report finding a distinctly nonlinear relationship between increasing winter temperatures and declining snowpacks. And they identify a “snow loss cliff”—an average winter-temperature threshold below which snowpack is largely unaffected, but above which things begin to change fast.

That threshold is 17 degrees Fahrenheit. Remarkably, 80 percent of the Northern Hemisphere’s snowpack exists in far-northern, high-altitude places that, for now, on average, stay colder than that. There, the snowpack seems to be healthy and stable, or even increasing. But as a general rule, when the average winter temperature exceeds 17 degrees (–8 degrees Celsius), snowpack loss begins, and accelerates dramatically with each additional degree of warming.

Already, millions of people who rely on the snowpack for water live in places that have crossed that threshold and will only get hotter. “A degree beyond that might take away 5 to 10 percent of the snowpack, then the next degree might cut away 10 to 15 percent, then 15 to 20 percent,” Alexander Gottlieb, the first author on the paper, told me over the phone as I looked out my window in New York City, where it has rained several times over the past few days. “Once you get around the freezing point”—32 degrees Fahrenheit—“you can lose almost half of your snow from just an additional degree of warming,” he said. New York City, which was recently reclassified as a “humid subtropical” climate, has clocked nearly 700 consecutive days with less than an inch of snowfall. It’s definitely over the snow-loss cliff, and as global temperatures increase, more places will follow.

By Malysheva Nastenka

Gottlieb and his co-author, Justin Mankin, figured this out by looking at how changes in temperature and precipitation drove changes in snowpack in 169 river basins across the Northern Hemisphere from 1981 through 2020. Using machine learning, they found a clear signal that human-induced climate change was indeed forcing changes in the snowpack in the places where most people live. The sharpest declines were in the watersheds of the southwestern and northeastern United States, and in Central and Eastern Europe. “In places where we are able to identify this really clear signal that climate change has reduced spring snowpack, we expect that to really only accelerate in the near term,” he said. “Those are places where the train has already kind of left the station.” Indeed, the Hudson River watershed, in which New York City sits, experienced among the steepest declines over that period. In the Northeast, which is not as reliant on spring snowmelt for water, that loss is felt most keenly as a loss of recreation; whole economies in the Northeast are based on skiing.

In the Mountain West, the stakes are even higher. Hydrologists already worry about the future reliability of the region’s snow-fed water supply: Previous research found snowless winters in the Mountain West are likely to be a regular occurrence by mid-century. But crucially, Gottlieb doesn’t see any room for cheerfulness about individual years with off-the-charts snowfall, such as last year’s record snowpack in the Colorado River basin. “This work really shows that we can definitely still get these one-off anomaly years that are incredibly wet, incredibly snowy, but the long-term signal is incredibly clear,” he said. Once you’re over the cliff, there’s no going back. The snow will keep disappearing.

In this piece, Lora Kelley interviews Zoë Schlanger (author of the previous article) on “the sense of loss when climate change transforms winter”: The Feeling of Losing Snow. Kelley and Schlanger mostly rehash the information from the previous article, but they also discussed the feeling of losing snowy winters:

Zoe: One of the hydrologists I spoke with was a former ski-patrol person, and he was talking so beautifully about what it meant for him to ski on a cold, bright day high in the mountains in Utah with perfect powder. It was just so vital to his enjoyment of life. For future generations, snow could just become slush, or not be there at all.

I don’t ski. I don’t live in the mountains. But even for me, there’s a sense of loss. It makes me think of a word that an Australian philosopher coined a number of years ago: solastalgia, which is essentially the sense of homesickness for an environment that you never left, but is leaving without you in some way. I feel like we’re all experiencing that when there are these touchstones of the year that seem to not be there anymore. It’s a strange sense of in-place homesickness.

Lora: This strikes me as a really stark example of climate change affecting how people experience nature. How do you think about these more obvious losses versus less visible, more incremental changes to the environment?

Zoë: Snow is a reminder that, actually, a lot of the changes we’re dealing with aren’t that incremental. We may not be able to see rising temperatures in quite the same way. But in many cases, those changes are just as sudden and dramatic and are happening faster than people thought they were. The wildfires we saw last year, for example, were wildly out of proportion from anything we’ve seen before. Records aren’t getting broken by small degrees now. They’re getting broken by leaps and bounds.

Climate change is real, it’s happening quickly, and it affects our lives in so many ways.

In the news, the Supreme Court will hear a case about whether hospitals can be required to treat pregnant women who will likely die without abortion care. Rolling Stone: The Supreme Court Will Decide if States Can Force Hospitals to Let Women Die.

The Supreme Court will decide this term whether states can force doctors to turn away patients suffering serious, life-threatening medical complications, or if doctors will be allowed to provide standard medical care to those patients: abortions. The court announced last week it will hear arguments over the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, in April.

By Vicky Mount

EMTALA is a more than three-decade-old federal law that says hospitals that accept Medicare (most hospitals in this country) cannot turn away anyone with an emergency medical condition; they are required to provide stabilizing treatment to prevent that person from suffering serious medical complications. After Roe v. Wade was overruled in 2022, the Biden administration issued guidance clarifying that if a pregnant patient arrives at a hospital with an emergency condition that could only be stabilized with an abortion, the hospital is required to provide that care — regardless of state law.

To the Supreme Court, Idaho has argued that states — not doctors, and not the federal government — should be permitted to decide what kind of emergency medical care women can receive. “The federal government cannot use EMTALA to override in the emergency room state laws about abortion any more than it can use it to override state law on organ transplants or marijuana use,” the state’s attorney general wrote in its petition to the high court.

Lawyers for the Department of Justice sued the state of Idaho last year over the criminal abortion ban passed by the GOP-controlled legislature, which only allows for abortions to prevent a patient’s death — language one Idaho doctor said “is not useful to medical providers because this is not a dichotomous variable.”

The Biden administration argued the Idaho law violates care requirements mandated by EMTALA, and a lower court agreed, blocking the law as it applied to medical emergencies. But on Jan. 5, the Supreme Court lifted the lower court injunction, reinstating the ban and sending the chilling message to Idaho doctors that they cannot offer the care they have been trained to provide to pregnant patients without fear of criminal prosecution.

Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, called the Supreme Court’s intervention in the case “deeply troubling.”

“EMTALA is currently the only federal protection for patients who need emergency abortions. If the Supreme Court eviscerates that, there is no doubt that people will die,” Northup said in a statement.

More SCOTUS news from The Washington Post: Supreme Court to review restrictions on homeless encampments.

The Supreme Court said Friday it will consider whether state and local officials can punish homeless individuals for camping and sleeping in public spaces when shelter beds are unavailable.

The justices will review a lower court decision that declared it unconstitutional to enforce anti-camping laws against homeless individuals when they have nowhere else to sleep.

Photo by Frank Herfort

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which covers Western states, including California, Oregon and Washington, first held in 2018 that the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment prohibits cities from criminalizing public camping when shelter is unavailable.

The city of Grants Pass, Ore., asked the justices to overturn a similar recent decision involving civil fines and warned that the ruling would paralyze cities across the West from addressing safety and public health risks created by tents and makeshift structures. The 9th Circuit’s decision, the officials said, is standing in the way of a comprehensive response to the growth of public encampments.

“The consequences of inaction are dire for those living both in and near encampments: crime, fires, the reemergence of medieval diseases, environmental harm and record levels of drug overdoses and deaths on public streets,” lawyers for the city told the high court.

News on one more SCOTUS case from The Hill: Supreme Court steps into Starbucks union fight.

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear Starbucks’s appeal of a decision ordering the coffee chain to reinstate seven terminated employees, who were part of a high-profile union drive and became known as the “Memphis Seven.”

With implications for labor organizing more broadly, the justices will take up the case to decide the proper standard for court injunctions requested by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as they battle against employers in administrative proceedings.

The injunctions, aimed at keeping the status quo, have forced companies to reinstate employees, keep facilities open and pause corporate policy changes as the NLRB adjudicates alleged unfair labor practices.

Federal appeals courts have been split on what test the NLRB must clear to receive such an order, however.

Starbucks, backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business interests, argues that some courts — like the one that ordered the Memphis Seven be reinstated — have been too lenient, emboldening the NLRB to interfere with employers without due cause.

“That split carries enormous consequences for employers nationwide and unacceptably threatens the uniformity of federal labor law,” Starbucks’s attorneys wrote to the justices.

Hunter Biden has reversed course and offered to testify behind closed doors in the House. The Guardian: Hunter Biden offers to testify privately if House Republicans issue new subpoena.

Hunter Biden offered on Friday to comply with any new subpoena and testify in private before House Republicans seeking to impeach his father over alleged but unproven corruption, an attorney for Joe Biden’s son said.

By Troy Brooks

“If you issue a new proper subpoena, now that there is a duly authorised impeachment inquiry, Mr Biden will comply for a hearing or deposition,” Abbe Lowell wrote to James Comer and Jim Jordan, the Republican chairs of the oversight and judiciary committees.

“We will accept such a subpoena on Mr Biden’s behalf.”

Republicans are interested in Hunter Biden’s business dealings and struggles with addiction. Outside Congress, he faces criminal charges over a gun purchase and his tax affairs that carry maximum prison sentences of 25 and 17 years. In Los Angeles on Thursday, he added a not guilty plea in the tax case to the same plea in the gun case.

Biden previously refused to comply with a congressional subpoena for testimony in private, giving a press conference on Capitol Hill to say he would talk if the session were public.

On Wednesday, Comer held a hearing to consider a resolution to hold Biden in contempt of Congress, a charge that can result in a fine and jail time.

The hearing descended into chaos with Biden and Lowell making a surprise appearance, sitting in the audience while Republicans and Democrats traded partisan barbs. The resolution was sent to the full House for a vote. The White House said Joe Biden had not been told of his son’s plan to attend the oversight hearing.

Congressional Republicans are dead set on taking more funding away from the IRS, even though–or maybe because–the extra money has resulted in millions more income for the government. Raw Story: Funding GOP wants to cut helped IRS collect $500 million from rich tax cheats.

The Internal Revenue Service said Friday that it has collected more than $500 million from wealthy tax dodgers since 2022, thanks to a funding boost that is now in jeopardy as Republican lawmakers work to claw back tens of billions of dollars from the agency.

The IRS has used a budget increase approved under the Inflation Reduction Act to ramp up enforcement efforts, targeting millionaires over significant sums of unpaid taxes. The agency announced Friday that it has retrieved $520 million through its new initiatives.

“This is why we fought for a fully funded IRS, and why it’s so reckless for Republicans to try to slash its budget again,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) wrote in response to the agency’s announcement.

The congressional GOP, which has long worked to starve the IRS of funding in service to rich tax cheats, is aiming to more quickly implement $20 billion in cuts that they secured as part of last year’s bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling, potentially compromising tax enforcement. The $20 billion represents a quarter of the $80 billion IRS funding boost in the Inflation Reduction Act, which Republicans unanimously opposed.

Under a spending tentative agreement that congressional leaders announced this past weekend, the $20 billion in IRS cuts would be frontloaded to 2024 instead of being spread out over two years. The deal still must pass Congress—hardly a forgone conclusion as far-right Republicans push House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to back out of the agreement, complaining that government spending is too high overall.

Johnson is also aiming to slash an additional $10 billion from the tax agency’s 2025 funding.

A couple of 2024 campaign stories:

CNN: Biden campaign grapples with undecided voters who don’t yet believe Trump could be the nominee.

Even as the Biden reelection campaign forges ahead with preparations for another potential general election match-up between Biden and his predecessor, it is grappling with a stubborn reality: The majority of undecided voters simply do not seem to believe – at least not yet – that Donald Trump is likely to be the Republican presidential nominee.

According to the campaign’s internal research, this is the case for most of the undecided voters that the campaign is targeting – nearly three-in-four of them, senior Biden campaign officials told CNN. Those officials said one of the biggest reasons driving this is the simple fact that many voters are not paying close attention to the election, including the ins and outs of the GOP nomination process.

“You can’t conceive of how tuned out these folks are,” one senior campaign official said.

To that end, Biden campaign officials see the task of helping voters recognize that Trump is a strong frontrunner as one of their most important and urgent challenges, with the first GOP caucus in Iowa now just days away. A key part of that work is painting a vivid picture of what a second term of a Trump White House would look like.

At some point in the near future, Biden campaign officials say they expect that a switch will turn on for many of these voters who are not yet convinced that Trump is likely to be on the ballot in the fall. As one senior official put it, a realization will hit: “Oh s—, it is an election between that guy and that guy.”

But what’s impossible for the campaign to predict at this point in the election cycle is when exactly it will click for voters that “that guy” – Trump – is poised to be the GOP presidential nominee. Just 20% of the public has been paying a lot of attention to the 2024 presidential campaign, according to an AP-NORC poll from the end of last year; meanwhile, 47% said they have paid little or no attention.

Lisa Lerer at The New York Times: On the Ballot in Iowa: Fear. Anxiety. Hopelessness.

Across Iowa, as the first nominating contest approaches on Monday, voters plow through snowy streets to hear from candidates, mingle at campaign events and casually talk of the prospect of World War III, civil unrest and a nation coming apart at the seams.

Four years ago, voters worried about a spiraling pandemic, economic uncertainty and national protests. Now, in the first presidential election since the siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, those anxieties have metastasized into a grimmer, more existential dread about the very foundations of the American experiment.

“You get the feeling in Iowa right now that we’re sleepwalking into a nightmare and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Doug Gross, a Republican lawyer who has been involved in Iowa politics for nearly four decades, ran for governor in 2002 and plans to support Nikki Haley in the state’s caucuses on Monday. “In Iowa, life isn’t lived in extremes, except the weather, and yet they still feel this dramatic sense of inevitable doom.”

Donald J. Trump, the dominant front-runner in the Republican primary race, bounces from courtroom to campaign trail, lacing his rhetoric with ominous threats of retribution and suggestions of dictatorial tendencies. President Biden condemns political violence and argues that if he loses, democracy itself could falter.

Bill Bradley, 80, who served for 18 years as a New Jersey senator, remembered when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000, spending more than 75 days in Iowa during his bid. “We debated health care and taxes, which is reasonable,” he said, adding, “Civil war? No. World War III? No, no, no.”

This presidential race, he said, is “a moment that is different than any election in my lifetime.”

Wednesday Reads

Posted: January 10, 2024 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: abortion rights, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: abortion, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, E. Jean Carroll, Glenn Kirschner, House Judiciary Committee, House Oversight Committee, Hunter Biden, John Sauer, Judge Florence Y. Pan, Judge Lewis Kaplan, Margery Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, post-Dobbs cruelty to pregnant women, Rep Jim Jordan, Rep. James Comer, Special Counsel James I. Pearce, Trump's presidential immunity appeal | 9 Comments

Good Day!!

Peder Mørk Mønsted, Sunny winter landscape with a road, 1907

I was just about to get going on my post when I glanced at the TV screen (sound muted) and noticed a wild scene in the House Oversight Committee hearing. The Republicans scheduled the meeting today to hold Hunter Biden in contempt for ignoring their subpoena to appear for a secret deposition.

You’ll recall that Rep. James Comer originally said that Hunter could testify either in a public hearing or behind closed doors with committee staff. Hunter offered to testify publicly under oath but Comer freaked out and said it would have to be in a closed deposition. Obviously, they have no evidence of wrongdoing and Comer wanted to be able to lie about what happened in a closed hearing.

Anyway, Hunter showed up at the hearing today with two of his attorneys and sat in the audience. The media was all a-flutter.

Republicans were outraged. Nancy Mace yelled at Hunter and accused him of not having the “balls” to respond to the subpoena. After a long, idiotic rant by Mace, it was Margery Taylor Greene’s turn. Unfortunately for her, Hunter and his attorneys left the meeting as she began to speak, and all of the press followed them out the door, leaving Greene with no one to record whatever stupid things she planned to say.

Here’s the report from NBC News: Hunter Biden makes surprise appearance at House committee hearing to hold him in contempt.

The son of the president arrived on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning to attend in person congressional committee meetings called to hold him in contempt of Congress — setting up an unprecedented standoff on live television between Hunter Biden and House Republicans who have long sought his testimony as part of their impeachment inquiry into his father.

Hunter Biden was accompanied by his attorneys Abbe Lowell and Kevin Morris. He did not initially respond to questions.

House Republicans on the Oversight and Judiciary Committees are holding separate committee votes on Wednesday recommending that Hunter Biden be charged with contempt of Congress.

Hunter Biden is at odds with Republicans over their demand that he testify behind closed doors. The president’s son, who is facing two separate criminal indictments, has agreed to testify publicly, an offer Republicans have refused, continuing to insist that the testimony be given behind closed doors.

During the Oversight Committee’s markup Wednesday morning, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., called for Hunter Biden’s arrest on the spot for defying the congressional subpoena.

“Hunter Biden you are too afraid for a deposition, and I still think you are today,” she said.

“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” she added.

Outside the chamber, Lowell said committee Republicans were motived by “improper partisan motives.” He said he and his client had offered to work with Republicans on the committees on a half dozen occasions since February of last year to see “how relevant information to any legitimate inquiry could be provided,” but their first five offers were ignored. He called the subsequent GOP subpoena for a closed-door deposition “a tactic that the Republicans have repeatedly misused in their political crusade to selectively leak and mischaracterize what witnesses have said.”

Asked by NBC News shortly after leaving the Oversight hearing whether he would testify today if asked, Hunter Biden replied “yes.” He and his team left the building afterwards.

This is interesting. It appears that Chairman Comer has a hypocrisy issue as he accuses Joe and Hunter Biden of “corruption.” Roger Sollenberger at The Daily Beast: Oversight Chairman James Comer’s ‘Legitimate’ Shell Company Was Shut Down—Twice.

As Rep. James Comer (R-KY) plows ahead with his sensationalized impeachment inquiry premised on Hunter Biden’s business dealings, the Oversight Chairman has alleged that Biden’s opaque financial operations merit investigation, and that people who own corporations have a “responsibility” to maintain proper “books and records.”

But a review of dozens of tax, real estate, and business filings in Kentucky and Tennessee indicate that Comer’s own personal “books and records” are opaque at best—and improper at worst.

Jef Bourgeau (American, b.1950), The Gloaming, 2024

Those records include the dealings of Comer’s shell company, Farm Team Properties LLC, which the state of Kentucky has dissolved twice for failure to file annual reports—first in 2020, then again in 2022.

Kentucky law states that an administratively dissolved business “continues its existence but shall not carry on any business except that necessary to wind up and liquidate its business and affairs.” An official with the Kentucky Department of Revenue told The Daily Beast that a company in administrative dissolution may not legally conduct business in the state—such as executing deals and leases, securing loans, or collecting rent as an LLC.

But in response to questions about the shell company last month, Comer told Fox Business that Farm Team Properties not only holds properties, it also “manages” them, “leases hunting on my 1,600 acres of farmland,” and generates “lots of revenue, legitimate revenue.” (The previous month, he denied having an LLC during a committee hearing.)

While Comer and his wife rectified the first dissolution within a few weeks, they allowed the October 2022 dissolution to languish for more than a year, only reinstating the entity last month, after The Daily Beast first reported on the company and flagged the dissolution on social media. It’s not clear from Comer’s filings whether Farm Team Properties ceased business activity for those 14 months.

The “books and records” questions also run to Comer’s real estate holdings, which directly contradict his recent public statements about his LLC. For one, Comer reports rental income from all of his farmland holdings, but it’s not clear whether that income derives from Farm Team’s alleged hunting leases. If so, experts told The Daily Beast, his records should reflect that, and they do not.

The opacity of Comer’s disclosures—along with his contradictory defenses of the shell company—mean the public still doesn’t have a clear picture of his finances. And Comer’s broadsides targeting Hunter Biden’s cloudy corporate entities would seem to invite parallel scrutiny into the similar haze that has settled over his own business dealings….

On personal financial disclosures starting from 2017—the year Comer’s wife created Farm Team Properties—and continuing through his most recent statement covering 2022, Comer has listed the income from the company as “none.” But after recent reports from The Daily Beast and the Associated Press raised questions about the shell company, Comer has called into question whether he’s really making no money from the entity.

House ethics rules state that members who “own an interest in a partnership or limited liability company established for the purpose of holding real estate,” must describe “each individual property held by the company.” Members also “must disclose each asset held by the company in which your interest (or that of your spouse or dependent child) had a period-end value of more than $1,000” or had recorded “more than $200 in income during the reporting period.”

Brendan Fischer, an ethics expert and deputy director of watchdog Documented, told The Daily Beast that it seems as if Comer should disclose more information.

“For a company created to hold investment properties—which sounds like Farm Team Properties, LLC—a Congressperson not only must disclose the company, they must also provide details about the properties it owns, and the amount of any income (such as rental income) from those properties,” Fischer said, noting that the rules apply “regardless of whether the entity is taxed as a partnership or corporation.”

Comer’s disclosures list his FTP ownership as a business interest, not as investment or real estate, despite the fact that it owns properties and is engaged in “real estate speculation.” This was true in 2017, when Farm Team Properties was created to hold property and obscure Comer’s co-ownership with a campaign donor, the Associated Press reported last month.

Sollenberger notes that Comer is a millionaire, because his father handed over two valuable properties for $10 apiece. Read much more about Comer’s shady dealings at The Daily Beast link.

The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jim Jordan (who refused to honor a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee) is also meeting today in order to decide whether to hold Hunter Biden in contempt.

Winter Trees, by Egon Schiele

CNN on the Judiciary Committee hearing:

In a different committee room, Jordan gaveled in the Judiciary panel’s meeting.

“Rather than come before us and answering questions about these and other concurring instances of the Biden family trading cash for influence, Hunter Biden held a press conference a few hundred yards from here, a press conference where he said I’m happy to answer questions in public but when he finished his statement he abruptly left, taking no questions from the press,” Jordan said.

“We have no choice but to hold Mr. Biden in contempt,” he added.

The pair of markups on Wednesday kick off a lengthy process and underscore that the Republican effort to obtain testimony from the president’s son will remain difficult. If the contempt resolution passes out of committee, it is referred to the full House for a contempt vote.

If an eventual House floor vote succeeds, the Department of Justice, which is already pursuing two criminal cases against the president’s son, would have to determine whether to prosecute the president’s son for evading a congressional subpoena.

Yesterday, Trump showed up in person for the hearing on his appeal of Judge Tanya Chutkan’s denial of his claim of “absolute presidential immunity” from criminal prosecution. The hearing didn’t go well for him. Joyce Vance wrote about it at Civil Discourse: Trump’s Bad Day in Court. The first of many to come.

Following Tuesday morning’s oral argument in the District of Columbia, Donald Trump made some predictable comments to the press from a Washington, D.C., hotel. As he finished, a reporter shouted out a request that he use the moment to tell his followers, “No violence.” The former president walked out of the room without responding.

The Judges came prepared for oral argument on Trump’s immunity motion. Let’s start with the key figures in the argument:

Judges: Bush appointee Karen LeCraft Henderson. Biden appointees Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs.

Lawyer for Trump: Former Missouri Solicitor General John Sauer.

Lawyer for the Special Counsel: James I. Pearce, a career federal prosecutor who has worked in both DOJ’s public integrity section, which Jack Smith previously led, and in the Criminal Division’s appellate section.

The top line from the argument: a broad consensus among observers that the panel didn’t buy Trump’s immunity argument. None of the Judges seemed to believe Trump should be immune from prosecution. But each Judge came at it from a different vantage point. While they may end up agreeing on a single rationale for their decision, it’s also possible we could have an opinion with concurrences by one or more of the Judges, using different reasoning.

Mr. Sauer argued first because Trump is the petitioner—he lost in the trial court and is asking the Court of Appeals to reverse Judge Chutkan’s decision. Mr. Pearce, who argued second, began by telling the court that no other president in history claimed his immunity from prosecution extended beyond his time in office. A president’s role is unique, Pearce said, “but not above the law.”

The most telling points in the oral argument centered on hypotheticals offered by Judge Pan. Judges frequently use hypotheticals to help them understand what a ruling would mean both for the case at hand and in future cases. Judge Pan posed three to Sauer, asking whether, under his view of immunity, a president could:

order Seal Team 6 to execute a political rival, and get away with it

accept a payment for issuing a pardon, and get away with it

sell nuclear secrets to a foreign power, and get away with it

Landscape with Snow, Vincent Van Gogh

Sauer argued that presidents can only be prosecuted if they are first impeached and convicted by the Senate. He, of course, has to argue this because otherwise, his client Donald Trump is in trouble.

It’s an unappetizing position. Sauer ran into still more trouble as the hypothetical was played out with both lawyers in turn, exploring the ways a president could avoid being impeached and convicted. They ranged from a president who resigns to avoid conviction, succeeds in concealing criminal conduct until he leaves office so he is never impeached, or even one who orders the deaths of his opponents in the Senate to prevent conviction. Under Trump’s theory of immunity, no prosecution would be available in these cases.

You don’t have to be a high-end appellate lawyer to understand that this argument is a stone-cold loser. At least in a democracy.

Read the rest of Vance’s analysis at the link above.

HuffPost recaps an interview from last night’s Lawrence O’Donnell show on MSNBC: Ex-Prosecutor Surprised By ‘Jarring’ Aspect To Trump Court Appearance.

Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on Tuesday said Donald Trump’s demeanor as he appeared before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — while his attorneys argued his “absolute immunity” for acts he committed during his presidency ― was “kind of jarring.”

The former president and Republican 2024 front-runner behaved “entirely like a defendant, not like a politician,” Kirschner told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.

It was in stark contrast to Trump’s usual bluster.

“I think I know what retail politics means,” said Kirschner. “He didn’t look anybody in the eye, he didn’t take an interest in anyone around, he kept his head down. He sort of lumbered forward to counsel table and plopped down.”

Trump “seemed like a defeated defendant who was kind of resigned to his fate,” he added.

Kirschner later described the argument being put forward by Trump’s legal team as “harebrained.”

From Raw Story: ‘Dead man walking’: Legal expert explains the moment Trump lost immunity appeal.

Former President Donald Trump’s attorney John Sauer failed catastrophically in selling an absolute immunity argument the appellate judges considering whether special counsel Jack Smith’s election conspiracy prosecution can move forward, argued former federal prosecutor Harry Litman on MSNBC Tuesday.

In particular, he said, it was over as soon as Sauer seemed to concede their position would imply Trump can assassinate his opponents with no recourse.

Edvard Munch, Winter Landscape

“He basically threatened some sort of unrest or bedlam if things didn’t go his way,” said anchor Chris Hayes. “He didn’t take any questions … and the headline comes from a hypothetical that appears in Jack Smith’s own briefs, which is to say the argument that Trump and his lawyers are making proves too much, obviously goes too far. It cannot be the case. Under the Constitution and under the rule of law, in a democracy and such as ours, it would allow it to be possible to order Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival and not face accountability but for some impeachment and conviction.”

“Cannot be, that is the headline, all three judges will reject that proposition,” agreed Litman. “Basically after Judge Pan asked that hypo about Seal Team Six, Sauer … was a dead man walking. He will lose. He should lose. Legally, historically, logically, et cetera. So in that sense there is the satisfaction that this vampire will have a stake in its heart.”

“But below the headline, Chris, there’s more drama, I would say, because this is one of the cases in which the three judges were kind of probing different theories, and one at one stage Judge Henderson said maybe we need to remand, to Judge Chutkan, this. They were probing different ideas, none of which was in lockstep with what Chutkan said. There are two reasons it matters. Depending on how they decide, even if they were unanimous, and you could see it concurring with Judge Henderson, if they were unanimous it could affect the prospects for a remand, and remand might entail a subsequent round of appeals under the remanded standard by Trump and a little bit more delay. And also could affect whether the Supreme Court takes review. So that lower level, there was some drama.”

George Conway wrote a long piece about yesterday’s hearing at The Atlantic: Trump’s Lawyer Walked Into a Trap. It’s pretty entertaining, if you can get through the paywall. They usually allow one free article, before they cut you off.

The second E. Jean Carroll case is also coming up soon. From Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Judge Signals Trump Is Doomed in New E. Jean Carroll Trial.

With Donald Trump’s second rape defamation trial only one week away, a federal judge has rewarded the billionaire’s unceasing legal insolence and delusional defense strategy with a brutal order laying out just how punishing the court battle is going to be.

Until recently, the former president’s lawyers had been preparing for the upcoming defamation trial as if the first one never happened—seeing it as a chance to rewrite history and try to clear Trump’s name after a jury last year concluded he sexually assaulted the journalist E. Jean Carroll decades ago.

But on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan made it clear that Trump is not getting another go at whether he raped Carroll.

“In other words, the material facts concerning the alleged sexual assault already have been determined, and this trial will not be a ‘do over’ of the previous trial,” Kaplan wrote in an order.

In the 27-page order, the federal judge reiterated that the jury will merely be deciding how badly to reprimand Trump for dragging Carroll’s name through the mud while he was at the White House in 2019—when he denied a coercive sexual encounter that did, according to a jury last year, occur.

This new jury will see the most damning evidence of Trump’s misogyny, from the Access Hollywood tape in which he gloats about how he can “grab them by the pussy” to the videotaped deposition where he remarks that stars get away with sexual assault “unfortunately—or fortunately.”

The previous iteration of this case dealt with the defamatory denials Trump made after leaving office, a trial that cost him $5 million in damages (which he apparently paid).

The second defamation trial, which begins next week, deals with the denials Trump made as U.S. president, with all the additional attention and gravitas his former position of power bestowed upon him at the time he made those comments.

Kaplan’s order on Tuesday clarified that Trump will have the obligation—but not the right—to remain silent about nearly everything the billionaire intended to say in court.

“Mr. Trump and his counsel are precluded, in the presence of the jury, from claiming that Mr. Trump did not sexually abuse (“rape”) Ms. Carroll, that Mdid not make his… 2019 statements concerning Ms. Carroll with actual malice… or that Ms. Carroll fabricated her account,” he wrote.

In other (not new) news, Republican politicians are showing themselves to be sadistic psychopaths when it comes to women’s abilities to make choices about their bodies and health care. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: Republican Officials Openly Insult Women Nearly Killed by Abortion Bans.

For many years before S.B. 8 passed in Texas and was then swept into existence by the Supreme Court, and before Dobbs ushered in a more formal regime of forced childbirth six months later, the groups leading the charge against reproductive rights liked to claim that they loved pregnant women and only wanted them to be safe and cozy, stuffed chock-full of good advice and carted around through extra-wide hallways for safe, sterile procedures in operating rooms with only the best HVAC systems. Then Dobbs came down and within minutes it became manifestly clear that these advocates actually viewed pregnant people as the problem standing in the way of imaginary, healthy babies—and that states willing to privilege fetal life would go to any and all lengths to ensure that actual patients’ care, comfort, informed consent, and very survival would be subordinate.

We are only beginning to understand the extent to which pregnant women are dying and will continue to die due to denials of basic maternal health care, candid medical advice, and adequate treatment. The issue of emergency abortions, though, has already rocketed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed on Friday to decide whether federal law compels hospitals to terminate dangerous pregnancies regardless of state bans. No matter how SCOTUS rules, the fallout is already all around us. The stories of Kate Cox in Texas, devastated would-be mothers in Tennessee, and a horrifying prosecution of a mother who miscarried in Ohio all surface the brutal reality of the post-Dobbs zeitgeist: Any woman who seeks to terminate a pregnancy is wicked, any woman who miscarries is evil, and any woman who—for reasons of failing health, circumstance, or simple bad luck—does not prove to be an adequate incubator deserves whatever she gets. Every unborn fetus is the priority over the pregnant person carrying it and must be carried to term at all costs. So goes the moral calculus of the death-panel judges who now determine how to weigh the competing interests between real, existing human life and a state’s dogmatic fixation with a fetus that, by definition, must be seraphically innocent.

Frosted Evening, by Paul Evans

One need only look at red states’ scramble to defend their draconian abortion bans to witness this perverse moral hierarchy in action. In the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, the victims of these laws are no longer hypothetical: They are flesh-and-blood women, directly and viscerally injured by the denial of basic health care, and some of them have even had the gall to fight for their rights. Republican attorneys general have responded with furious indignation, openly demeaning these women as liars, wimps, partisans, and baby killers.

A recent filing by the office of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan T. Skrmetti, a Republican, captures the dynamic all too well. Skrmetti has been fighting a lawsuit filed by a group of Tennessee women denied emergency abortions under the ultranarrow medical exception to that state’s ban. The women plaintiffs suffered an appalling range of trauma, including sepsis and hemorrhaging, because they could not terminate their pregnancies. The attorney general’s response to their complaint is a scathing, shockingly personal broadside against the victims of the ban. He accused them of attempting to draw “lines about which unborn lives are worth protecting” by imposing a medical exception “of their own liking.” He mocked them for asserting that ostensibly minor conditions like “sickle cell disease” might justify an abortion. And he insisted that the lead plaintiff, Nicole Blackmon, lacks standing, because she underwent sterilization after the state forced her to carry a nonviable pregnancy and deliver a stillborn baby. The attorney general viciously suggested that, if Blackmon really wanted to fight Tennessee’s ban, she could have tried for another doomed pregnancy.

Perhaps Skrmetti deserves half credit for candor, because he did not even pretend to treat these plaintiffs like compelling moral human beings. Instead, he wrote that Tennessee may allow different standards of care for pregnant and nonpregnant women. A pregnant woman, the attorney general averred, may be refused a treatment if it “has the potential to harm unborn lives—an issue not implicated” when treating nonpregnant women. “No equal-protection rule,” he concluded, “bars lawmakers from acting on that difference to protect unborn babies.” In other words, once a woman is pregnant, she becomes a vessel for “unborn babies,” giving the state authority to cut off her access to urgently necessary health care. Since nonpregnant women don’t immediately suffer the consequences of abortion bans, those bans don’t discriminate on the basis of sex.

There’s much more at the link.

One more story before I wrap this up. I’m sure you’ve heard that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was was treated for prostate cancer in December and was hospitalized with complications from surgery on Jan. 1. The problem is that President Biden and other top officials had no clue this was happening. From BBC News: President Joe Biden was only told that US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin was being treated for cancer on Tuesday, the White House has said.

Mr Austin, 70, was admitted to hospital on 1 January and then to the intensive care unit for complications following surgery in December.

He has faced criticism for not telling senior officials about it for days.

He has since apologised for not “ensuring the public was appropriately informed”.

The lag in notifying the White House raised potential national security concerns and issues of transparency within the Biden administration.

The defence secretary sits just below the president in the chain of command for the US military, and is one of the most important members of the president’s Cabinet.

The Pentagon confirmed Mr Austin remained hospitalised on Tuesday.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that President Biden was only informed that day about the diagnosis of prostate cancer.

“Nobody at the White House knew that Secretary Austin had prostate cancer until this morning,” he said.

While he emphasised the president’s initial reaction was concern for the secretary’s health, Mr Kirby acknowledged the communications were “not optimal.”

“This is not the way it is supposed to go,” Mr Kirby said.

Mr Biden and Sec Austin have not spoken since their last interaction over the weekend, according to Mr Kirby.

Mr Austin’s deputy, Kathleen Hicks, was not informed of his hospital stay despite being asked to assume some of his responsibilities.

This seems pretty odd. It’s not clear what is going to happen to Austin yet.That’s it for me today. What stories have you been following?

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