“If you tune into the alien drone invasion, it is possible to prognosticate.” John (repeat1968) Buss @johnbuss.bsky.social
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The Felon, Adjudicated Rapist, and Traitor (FARTUS) has secured a Get out of Jail Free Card. This morning, Justice Juan Merchan went through the motions of affirming the 34 Felony criminal counts as affirmed by a Jury, but that was the extent of the punishment. This Politico headline says it all. “Trump receives no punishment for hush money conviction. A New York judge declined to impose a penalty for the president-elect at his long-awaited sentencing hearing.”
Donald Trump was not punished for his criminal conviction in the Manhattan hush-money case, bringing a lackluster end to the legal saga that will make him the country’s first felon-turned-president.
At a sentencing hearing on Friday, a New York judge declined to sentence the president-elect to prison time or impose fines after a jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts of business fraud in connection with a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential election.
“This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of judgment of conviction without encroachment on the highest office of the land is a sentence of unconditional discharge,” Justice Juan Merchan told Trump.
While acknowledging the “extraordinary legal protections” Trump is set to enjoy as president, Merchan emphasized that “they do not reduce the seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way.”
Friday’s sentencing, however inconsequential in terms of punishment, caps a remarkable chapter in Trump’s tangles with the justice system. At one point battling four simultaneous criminal indictments, he emerged with a single conviction last May that didn’t obstruct his path to reelection and will likely linger as little more than a stigma.
Though Trump’s felony conviction allowed Justice Juan Merchan to send Trump to prison for up to four years or impose other penalties, the judge said in court papers prior to the sentencing that he wouldn’t do so, writing that incarceration was not “practicable” given Trump’s imminent return to the White House.
Instead, Merchan imposed the sentence of “unconditional discharge” on Trump, which carries no punishment. The president-elect appeared virtually from Florida, his image presented via a video feed on large monitors in the Manhattan courtroom as the judge announced his decision. Prosecutors from the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, as well as Bragg himself, attended in person.
Trump displayed his typical scowl throughout the proceedings, defending himself by saying he’s “totally innocent.”
U. S. President Donald Trump is depicted beheading the Statue of Liberty in this illustration on the cover of a 2017 issue of German news magazine Der Spiegel. Spiegel/Handout via REUTERS
Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen were the only ones punished for this. The third would be the U.S. system of Justice. I just hope Stormy is some place safe right now.
In remarks to the court before Merchan delivered the sentence, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said his office endorsed the sentence of unconditional discharge because of the circumstances of the case. But he warned that Trump has been a destructive force toward law enforcement.
“Put simply, this defendant has caused enduring damage to public perception of the criminal justice system and has placed officers of the court in harm’s way,” Steinglass said.
Steinglass also disclosed that Trump’s probation report noted that he “sees himself as above the law and won’t accept responsibility for his actions.”
After the sentencing, Trump posted on social media that he will appeal. “Today’s event was a despicable charade, and now that it is over, we will appeal this Hoax, which has no merit, and restore the trust of Americans in our once great System of Justice,” he wrote on Truth Social.
A sentence of “unconditional discharge,” though not uncommon in low-level cases, is rare in felony cases, according to legal experts.
This still means he’s considered a convicted Felon, so he wants to appeal again. It certainly didn’t hurt his brand during the election, seeing that his cult could care less about any behaviors as long as they are accompanied by a spoonful of vitriol and bigotry that justifies their pitiful existence.
While we heard this week about his plans for Panama, Greenland, and Canada, we’ve not heard much about how he plans to improve the economy. It’s likely because, in the case of his first term, the economy is just fucking fine. It’s his to wreck again. The price of eggs is likely to rise, though, because of the Bird Flu. Fortunately, Trump picked someone who knows his business to head the FDA. There’s also a vaccine for humans for this flu if RFK, Jr. doesn’t tank it somehow, or Elonia and Viv don’t go after the FDA or the CDC.
So, there are a lot of headlines and links in that paragraph. Let’s start at the very beginning. I’ve heard it’s a very fine place to start.
CNBC has this headline on the stellar job market performance at the end of last year. “U.S. payrolls grew by 256,000 in December, much more than expected; unemployment rate falls to 4.1%.” This is reported by Jeff Cox. Any president in the 70s or 80s would’ve been a hero if they found a way to reach these numbers.
Nonfarm payrolls surged by 256,000 for the month, up from 212,000 in November and above the 155,000 forecast.
The unemployment rate edged down to 4.1%, one-tenth of a point below expectations. A broader jobless measure moved down to 7.5%, a decrease of 0.2 percentage point and the lowest since June 2024.
Average hourly earnings increased 0.3% on the month, which was in line with forecasts, but the 12-month gain of 3.9% was slightly below the outlook.
Stock market futures plunged after the report while Treasury yields soared as traders price in a lower probability of Fed rate cuts this year.
Job growth was much stronger than expected in December, likely providing the Federal Reserve less incentive to cut interest rates this year
The current egg shortage is likely to get worse. So, if we’re speaking in terms of getting a guy who everyone thought would lower their egg prices, entire villages of idiots are about to get a surprise. This is from ABC News. “What experts want shoppers to know about egg prices amid new bird flu implications. Shoppers have flocked to social media showing stores in short supply.” Kelly McCarthy has the story.
Rising cases of avian influenza — commonly referred to as bird flu — have continued to impact egg laying flocks in the U.S. forcing egg suppliers to cut production and in turn causing shortages nationwide, skyrocketing prices.
Almost all confirmed cases in humans involve direct contact with infected cattle or infected livestock and the CDC says there is currently no evidence of human-to-human transmission and the risk to the general public is low.
Brooke Jones, who first shared her own experience on TikTok, told “Good Morning America” that she visited three grocery stores in the Dallas area in search of eggs recently.
“We decided to go out and actually check some different egg sections at stores. And so that’s how we came across empty shells, high prices, sign,” she said of the placard on the refrigerated case.
According to the latest USDA market data, egg prices are up nearly 38% in the past year with prices spiking 8% just in November due to the high-demand of holiday baking season.
On average, a dozen eggs will cost people $3.65 right now, compared to $2.14 one year ago. Prices have been the cheapest in the south averaging $3.40 per carton and most expensive on the West Coast at $4.20 per carton.
And at the wholesale side of the equation, retailers are buying eggs in California for nearly $9 per carton, according to the USDA report.
CDC has sequenced the influenza viruses in specimens collected from the patient in Louisiana who was infected with, and became severely ill from HPAI A(H5N1) virus. The genomic sequences were compared to other HPAI A(H5N1) sequences from dairy cows, wild birds and poultry, as well as previous human cases and were identified as the D1.1 genotype. The analysis identified low frequency mutations in the hemagglutinin gene of a sample sequenced from the patient, which were not found in virus sequences from poultry samples collected on the patient’s property, suggesting the changes emerged in the patient after infection.
I’m not sure why, but FARTUS has picked a John Hopkins Doctor to head the FDA that criticized his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and believes in vaccines. Let’s just hope that no one crazy notices him. RFK, jr comes to mind there. This is from HealthCare Dive. He was actually picked around Thanksgiving last year. “Johns Hopkins surgeon Makary is Trump’s pick to lead FDA. A prolific medical researcher and author, Marty Makary criticized the FDA and CDC for their decision-making during the pandemic, although he describes himself as pro-vaccine.” But there’s a bit more to that story.
President-elect Donald Trump on Friday named Johns Hopkins University surgeon Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration, choosing a prolific medical researcher who bucked consensus on the necessity of frequent vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As FDA commissioner, Makary would oversee an agency of some 18,000 employees who assess new drugs and devices, review the performance of approved medicines and monitor food quality and safety. The agency typically evaluates and makes decisions on more than 50 new drug and biological products each year. The FDA also regulates medication abortion, including mifepristone, which was at the center of a U.S. Supreme Court case earlier this year. In June, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously to preserve access to the medication.
Makary, whose specialty is pancreatic surgery, is something of a more traditional health nominee than Trump’s controversial picks of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and Mehmet Oz to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Both the FDA and the CMS are overseen by HHS, giving Kennedy, who has alarmed many in the medical community with his views on vaccines, substantial power over the two agencies and Trump’s healthcare agenda. And in naming all three, Trump emphasized their willingness to take on industry and shake up the agencies he’s selected them to lead.
A man who fired a gun inside a restaurant in the nation’s capital after a fake online conspiracy theory called “Pizzagate” motivated him to do so nearly a decade ago was shot and killed by North Carolina police during a weekend traffic stop.
Edgar Maddison Welch was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by officers in Kannapolis on Saturday night, according to a Kannapolis Police Department news release. One of the officers recognized the SUV as one he’d seen Welch drive before, police said. The officer had arrested Welch before and knew he had an outstanding warrant for a felony probation violation at the time, according to authorities.
When the officers approached the vehicle to arrest Welch, police said the man pulled out a handgun and pointed it at one of the officers. After he was instructed to drop the weapon but didn’t, two officers shot Welch, authorities said.
Emergency responders took Welch to the hospital and he died from his injuries two days later, according to the release. None of the officers, nor the driver and another passenger, were injured.
In 2016, authorities said, Welch drove from North Carolina with an assault rifle to Comet Ping Pong restaurant in Washington after believing an unfounded conspiracy theory that prominent Democrats were operating a child sex trafficking ring out of the pizzeria. The fake theory, dubbed “Pizzagate,” began circulating online during the 2016 presidential election.
Suicide by Cops? Who knows. We might find out more, but it seems to be the season of the more domestic terrorists.
One last Felonius Trump item.
As of 12:02 am, DOJ has advised the 11th Cir of its appeal of Judge Cannon's order in the So. District of Florida & restated its intention of releasing the J6 volume of the report & sharing the classified documents volume with Congressional leaders.
It’s going to be a long fucked-up four years. Oh, another one of my candidates for grave dancing has exited the Earthly Door. We will not miss you, Anita Byrant.
In ten days, we get Trumpapocalypse again. Fly your flags at half mast to remember Former President James Earl Carter. Find a good series to binge-watch and spoil yourself!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
One more gift for you. Is it appropriate for a President of the United States to say the Pledge of Allegiance with his hand on his stomach? What’s he protesting?
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Today Judge Juan Merchan will give instructions to the jury in the Trump hush money case and then they will begin deliberations. Some experts are predicting there will be a verdict today. I kind of doubt that, but what do know? A decision could certainly come this week.
Justice Merchan will describe the legal meaning of the word “intent” and the concept of the presumption of innocence. He will remind the jurors that they pledged to set any biases aside against the former president before they were sworn in, and that Mr. Trump’s decision not to testify cannot be held against him.
Then, according to a person with knowledge of the instructions that Justice Merchan plans to deliver, he will explain the 34 charges of falsifying business records that Mr. Trump faces. It will likely be the most important guidance that the judge offers during the trial. And it is no simple task.
Judge Merchan
In New York, falsifying records is a misdemeanor, unless the documents were faked to hide another crime. The other crime, prosecutors say, was Mr. Trump’s 2016 violation of state election law that prohibited conspiring to aid a political campaign using “unlawful means.”
Those means, prosecutors argue, could include any of a menu of other crimes. And so each individual false-records charge that Mr. Trump faces contains within it multiple possible crimes that jurors must strive to understand.
The moment that the jurors begin to deliberate will mark the first time that the complicated case will be assessed not by judges or a parade of commentators, but by everyday New Yorkers. The group may be aided by the two jurors who are also lawyers — though neither appears to have criminal experience, and one said during jury selection that he knew “virtually nothing about criminal law.”
Marc F. Scholl, who served nearly 40 years in the district attorney’s office, noted that jury instructions are often difficult to follow, particularly given that, in New York, jurors are barred from keeping a copy of the guidance as they deliberate. And he said that defendants are often charged with several different crimes, requiring even more elaborate instructions.
Still, Mr. Scholl said, one point of complexity stood out: “Usually you don’t have this layering of these other crimes,” he said.
Justice Merchan, according to the person with knowledge of his legal instructions, will proceed through each of the 34 charges count by count, explaining to jurors what each requires prosecutors to have proved.
The knotty legal instructions were the product of intense argument between the prosecution and the defense, culminating in a hearing last week in which each side sought to persuade the judge to make minor edits that could have had a major impact.
Read more details about those arguments at the NYT link.
People who have been covering the trial inside the courtroom, eg, Harry Litman, have expressed concerns about one juror who appears to be sympathetic to the defense. This is from Marc Caputo at The Bulwark: Trump Legal Team Pins Hopes on Hung Jury.
AS THE JURORS FILED into the Manhattan courtroom, day after day, almost none of them would look at Donald Trump. It’s one of those unsettling signs for defendants and their lawyers who worry about a guilty verdict.
Those worries have only grown in Trump’s orbit as allies have all but abandoned hope of acquittal. Even Trump, though he railed Monday on social media about the judge and the case, has privately sounded a note of resignation.
Trump sleeping in court
“Whatever happens happens,” Trump told one person recently. “I have no control.”
But there is one clear hope MAGAville clings to: a hung jury that results in a mistrial.
If that happens, Trump allies suspect that it will be chiefly due to the one juror who has made friendly eye contact with Trump from time to time as the jury enters the room and walks right past the defense table.
“There are eight people on that jury who definitely hate Trump. If there’s one person who doesn’t, it’s [this] juror,” said one court attendee who, like others for this story, relayed their observations on condition of anonymity to The Bulwark, which is also protecting the privacy and safety of the juror in question by not disclosing identifying details.
As the trial has progressed since April 15, these sources relate, this juror has appeared to nod along in seeming accordance with the defense at times. On other occasions, the juror has seemingly reacted favorably to and made eye contact with Trump’s congressional surrogates who began joining him in court in recent weeks.
I hope they’re mistaken. All we need it to have this end in a mistrial.
Donald Trump is not behaving like someone who expects to be found “not guilty.” In a series of posts over the Memorial Day weekend, the former president deviated from the norm of honoring soldiers who fought and died for the United States by instead posting on his website, Truth Social, about how unfair it is that standard courtroom procedures are not being bent in his favor.
Posting in all caps, Trump – facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush payment to an adult film star – on Monday raged against the order in which closing arguments will be made in his Manhattan trial. It is a “big advantage,” he said, and “very unfair” that the prosecution gets to go second. “Why can’t the defense go last?”
Whether he knows this and is just riling up gullible followers or if he simply never retained the information his defense counsel could surely provide, Politico’s Kyle Cheney noted that Trump is here complaining about a fact of life “in virtually every criminal court.” Per Cheney, “Prosecutors typically get a rebuttal during closings because [the] burden or proof lies with them, not [the] defense.”
Trump prosecutor Joshua Steinglass gives final arguments
Trump, then, is complaining about an order that exists because of the far higher standard that prosecutors must meet. The defense only needs to sow doubt about the government’s case, and it really only needs one juror to entertain the former president’s argument that the case is a “witch hunt”; the prosecution must show that its case is not just probable, but prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Trump is finally being treated like every other defendant,” said Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney who has been following his hush money trial. “[R]eally,” she argued, “that’s what he objects to.”
In another weekend rant about the case, Trump again opined that it was wrong to bring a case against him while he’s running for president. If there was evidence of a crime, he wrote, referring to himself in the third person, “it should have been brought seven years ago, not in the middle of his Campaign for President.” [….]
Since Trump is no longer president, and can no longer pick those charged with enforcing the law, he is now just another man who must stand before and be judged by it. For a man who has long enjoyed impunity, it is intolerable. And while he may be able to evade financial penalties, at least for a time, in this case his actual liberty is at stake: it is not inconceivable that, when closing arguments conclude this week, jurors return a guilty verdict and Judge Juan Merchan decides that this particular defendant deserves some time behind bars.
George Conway, a conservative attorney turned harsh critic of the former president, believes Trump is reacting to his loss of control. “The defendant,” he posted on Threads, “is clearly in full panic mode.”
A couple of articles about the stalled Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case:
In the up-is-down world of the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, prosecutors attempted to stanch Donald Trump’s vitriolic attacks on federal law enforcement – the kind of thing criminal defendants would not typically be allowed to engage in while on pre-trial release – and wound up themselves threatened with sanctions by the judge.
As Morning Memo recounted yesterday, the move by prosecutors to modify the terms of Trump’s pre-trial release came late Friday before the Memorial Day weekend and prompted a heated response from Trump.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon weighed in Monday, denying the prosecution motion, chastising them for playing loose with the local court rules, and threatening to impose sanctions on them in the future. On small bright spot, if you can call it that, is that she didn’t accede to Trump’s request to sanction the prosecution team immediately. Cannon’s denial was without prejudice, meaning prosecutors can refile their motion:
Cannon insisted that prosecutors had not sufficiently conferred with the defense team before filing and ordered that all future filings contain a statement of no more than 200 words by the opposing side of its position.
In a normal case, I’d applaud a judge keeping a tight leash on the prosecution team. But we’re in such uncharted territory here that you can’t attribute this to i-dotting or t-crossing by Cannon. Given any chance to chide the prosecution, she takes it. Given deplorable behavior by Trump that would normally never fly, she finds herself mute again and again.
The judge’s routine has become so predictable that even the analysis by legal observers bakes in a certain Cannon quotient: Anything that DOJ does that even arguably deviates from the rules leaves an opening that Cannon will take. So DOJ ends up graded on a weird Cannon curve while the Trump’s dangerous and unprecedented conduct gets set to the side.
One pattern emerging with Cannon is that when prosecutors implore her to assert herself and take more control over the case like so many judges do, she retreats to treating everything as an adversarial contest that she merely referees. But when it’s a matter of importance to Trump, she regularly asserts herself, going so far as to raise issues on her own. It’s another way in her handling of the case is imbalanced to Trump’s advantage.
…[A]t seven public hearings over more than 10 months, Judge Cannon has left an increasingly detailed record of her decision-making skills and judicial temperament.
The portrait that has emerged so far is that of an industrious but inexperienced and often insecure judge whose reluctance to rule decisively even on minor matters has permitted one of the country’s most important criminal cases to become bogged down in a logjam of unresolved issues.
She rarely issues rulings that explain her thinking in a way that might reveal her legal influences or any guiding philosophy. And that has made the hearings, which have taken place in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., all the more important in assessing her management of the case.
Aileen Cannon in court in stolen documents case
Regardless of her motives, Judge Cannon has effectively imperiled the future of a criminal prosecution that once seemed the most straightforward of the four Mr. Trump is facing.
She has largely accomplished this by granting a serious hearing to almost every issue — no matter how far-fetched — that Mr. Trump’s lawyers have raised, playing directly into the former president’s strategy of delaying the case from reaching trial.
It appears increasingly likely that the documents case will not go to a jury before Election Day, and that the only trial that Mr. Trump will face this year will be the one now ending in Manhattan, where jurors are expected to begin deliberating on Wednesday over whether he falsified business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn star.
Still, the next few weeks will bring Judge Cannon’s handling of the case in Florida into even sharper focus.
After a hearing in June, Judge Cannon will also have to make a significant decision on whether to give Mr. Trump’s lawyers access to communications between Mr. Smith’s team and top national security officials. The lawyers made that request hoping to bolster their contention that the so-called deep state colluded with the Biden administration to bring the charges.
The police in Fairfax County, Va., received an unusual phone call on Feb. 15, 2021. A young couple claimed they were being harassed by the wife of a Supreme Court justice.
“Somebody in a position of authority needs to talk to her and make her stop,” said the 36-year-old man making the complaint, according to a recording of the call reviewed by The New York Times. The officer on the line responded that there was little the police could do: Yelling was not a crime.
The couple placed the call after a series of encounters with Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., that had gone from uneasy to ugly. That day, Emily Baden, whose boyfriend (now husband) contacted the police, had traded accusations with Mrs. Alito, who lived down the street. In a recent interview, Ms. Baden admitted to calling her a lewd epithet.
The clash between the wife of a conservative Supreme Court justice and the couple, who were in their 30s, liberal and proud of it, played out over months on a bucolic block in Alexandria. It was the kind of shouting match among private citizens, at the height of tensions over the 2020 election, that might have happened in any mixed political community in America. But three years later, that neighborhood spat — which both sides said began over an anti-Trump sign — has taken on far greater proportions.
Interview with Ms. Baden:
Amid the controversy, Ms. Baden said she was surprised to find herself playing a central role in Justice Alito’s account about a war of words, political signsand a flag. “I never saw the upside-down flag, never heard about it,” she said.
The Alitos
To better understand the clash, The Times interviewed Ms. Baden, her mother and her husband, as well as other neighbors, and reviewed the texts that Ms. Baden and her husband sent to friends after the episodes. Justice Alito, who did not respond to questions for this article,has in recent weeks given his own explanation of what happened.
There are some differences: For instance, the justice told Fox News that his wife hoisted the flag in response to Ms. Baden’s vulgar insult. A text message and the police call — corroborated by Fairfax County authorities — indicate, however, that the name-calling took place on Feb. 15, weeks after the inverted flag was taken down….
The justice later elaborated in an interview with Fox News, saying that in January 2021 a neighbor on the block displayed a vulgar anti-Trump sign, near where children wait for the school bus. Mrs. Alito complained to the neighbor. “Things escalated and the neighbor put up a sign personally addressing Mrs. Alito and blaming her for the Jan 6th attacks,” tweeted the Fox News reporter who interviewed the justice.
While the Alitos were on a neighborhood walk, “there were words between Mrs. Alito and a male at the home with the sign,” the network reported. The justice said the man used “vulgar language, ‘including the C-word,’” After that exchange, “Mrs. Alito was distraught and hung the flag upside-down,” the Fox reporter relayed.
But in the Baden family’s version, the justice’s wife initiated the conflict. “Aside from putting up a sign, we did not begin or instigate any of these confrontations,” Ms. Baden said later.
During the Covid crisis, Baden moved in with Baden’s mother Barbara, who lives in the Alito’s neighborhood. Her boyfriend, who grew up in the area also moved back home.
The couple participated in Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, propped up Biden-Harris signs, and on the Saturday in November when the election was called, whooped and danced in the streets of the nation’s capital. When they got home, they displayed a political sign they had made from torn-up Amazon boxes, saying “BYE DON” on one side and “Fuck Trump” on the other….
Shortly after Christmas, as Emily Baden was with her dog in her front yard, an older woman approached and thanked her for taking down the sign, which had merely blown down. Ms. Baden realized that the woman was Martha-Ann Alito. The sign was offensive, Mrs. Alito said, according to both the justice’s account and a text message from Ms. Baden to her boyfriend.
Martha-Ann Alito and Emily Baden
Ms. Baden told her the sign would stay up, she recalled in the interview. The family was taken aback: Though the Badens and the Alitos lived just a short distance apart, Barbara Baden couldn’t recall ever communicating with the justice’s wife beyond a neighborly wave. In the interview, Emily Baden could not remember whether she put the signs up again.
Then came Jan. 6. Rocked by the violence and threat to democracy, the couple soon put up new signs in their yard, saying “Trump Is a Fascist” and “You Are Complicit.” Emily Baden said in interviews that the second sign was not directed at the Alitos, but at Republicans generally, especially those who weren’t condemning the Capitol attack.
Soon afterward, her mother took them down, out of safety concerns. “Look what these people can do,” she said in an interview, recalling her fears at the time about the mob that had stormed the Capitol. “I do not want to mark my house.”
It’s not clear whether Mrs. Alito saw those signs, but the day after the Capitol riot, as the couple parked in front of their home, she pulled up in her car, they said. She lingered there, glaring, for a long moment, recalled the couple, who texted their friends about the encounter.
In another incident, the young couple drove by the Alito’s house.
Mrs. Alito happened to be standing outside. According to interviews with Ms. Baden and her husband, as well as messages they sent to friends at the time, Mrs. Alito ran toward their car and yelled something they did not understand. The couple continued driving, they said, and as they passed the Alito home again to exit the cul-de-sac, Mrs. Alito appeared to spit toward the vehicle.
The couple, still shaken by the Capitol riot, said the encounter left them feeling uneasy and outmatched by the wife of someone so powerful.
When Donald Trump met some of the country’s top donors at a luxurious New York hotel earlier this month, he told the group that a businessman had recently offered $1 million to his presidential effort and wanted to have lunch.
“I’m not having lunch,” Trump said he responded, according to donors who attended. “You’ve got to make it $25 million.”
Another businessman, he said, had traditionally given $2 million to $3 million to Republicans. Instead, he said he told the donor that he wanted a $25 million or $50 million contribution or he would not be “very happy.”
As he closed his pitch at the Pierre Hotel, Trump explained to the group why it was in their interest to cut large checks. If he was not put back in office, taxes would go up for them under President Biden, who vows to let Trump-era tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations expire at the end of 2025.
“The tax cuts all expire for wealthy and poor and middle-income and everything else, but they expire in another seven months and he’s not going to renew them, which means taxes are going to go up by four times,” Trump said, exaggerating the size of the cuts. “You’re going to have the biggest tax increase in history.”
Seconds after promising the tax cuts, Trump made his pitch explicit. “So whatever you guys can do, I appreciate it,” he said.
The remarks are just one example of a series of audacious requests by Trump for big-money contributions in recent months, according to 11 donors, advisers and others close to the former president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe his fundraising. The pleas for millions in donations come as the presumptive Republican nominee seeks to close a cash gap with Biden and to pay for costly legal bills in his four criminal indictments.
Trump is completely corrupt. So what else is new? Read the whole thing at the WaPo.
That’s it for me today. I hope I’ve given you something worth reading while we wait for the verdict.
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Yesterday was the second day of Trump’s Manhattan trial for a plot to interfere with the 2016 election by covering up payoffs to extramarital sexual partners and planting fake stories in the National Enquirer.
It was also the second day of testimony by David Pecker, former CEO of American Media, which owned the Enquirer and many other publications. Pecker, Trump, and his lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen orchestrated the fake news operation.
Before the trial resumed, Judge Juan Merchan held a hearing about whether Trump had already violated the terms of his gag order.
Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was repeatedly aided by the National Enquirer, which squelched potentially damaging stories about him and pumped out articles pummeling his rivals, the former boss of the supermarket tabloid testified Tuesday during the ex-president’s trial on charges of falsifying business records.
Trump, the first former U.S. president to face a criminal trial, spent his day in the Manhattan courtroom fighting two pitched battles — one against the testimony of former tabloid executive David Pecker, his longtime friend, and another against the increasingly likely prospect that he will be punished by the trial judge for allegedly violating a gag order.
On both fronts, prosecutors seemed to inflict significant damage. At one point, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan warned Trump lawyer Todd Blanche that he was “losing all credibility.” At another, Trump grimaced and shook his head as Pecker described how he helped kill an allegation — ultimately found to be false — that Trump had a child with a maid at his building.
The busy court day was punctuated by prosecutors detailing the full factual and legal foundation of their case against Trump, one built around a misdemeanor state charge of trying to illegally influence an election.
Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc., the company that once ran the Enquirer and other celebrity gossip publications, said he met with Trump and Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen in 2015 to discuss how the tabloid, which had a long relationship with the real estate mogul and reality TV star, could help Trump’s bid for president.
“I said what I would do is I would run or publish positive stories about Mr. Trump, and I would publish negative stories about his opponents,” Pecker testified.
That wasn’t all he pledged to do.
Pecker said he told Trump: “I would be your eyes and ears. … If I hear anything negative about yourself, or if I hear anything about women selling stories, I would notify Michael Cohen as I did over the last several years.”
The deal Pecker described was a mutual back-scratching arrangement in which Cohen would feed stories to the tabloid about Republican rivals like Ted Cruz, and the paper would publish glowing stories about Trump. Pecker said he had a “great relationship” with Trump dating to the late 1980s, but that didn’t seem to be his primary motivation. Stories about the brash celebrity businessman helped sell copies of the tabloid.
David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, testified at Donald Trump’s trial Tuesday that the tabloid completely manufactured a negative story in 2016 about the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, who was then Trump’s rival for the GOP presidential nomination.
By Anna Billing
The paper had published a photo allegedly showing Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963, not long before Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
“I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump said in an interview with Fox News in May 2016. “It’s horrible.”
Manhattan prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Pecker about the story’s origins during the trial Tuesday in Manhattan. Pecker said that then-National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard and the tabloid’s research department got involved, and Pecker indicated that they faked the photo that was the foundation for the story.
“We mashed the photos and the different picture with Lee Harvey Oswald. And mashed the two together. And that’s how that story was prepared — created I would say,” Pecker said on the witness stand.
Asked by Steinglass whether Cruz had gained popularity in the presidential race at the time, Pecker said, “I believe so.”
The revelation came up as the prosecution focused on negative articles that were published by the tabloid about Trump’s Republican opponents at the time. Pecker explained that it was Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, who would orchestrate the planting of these stories.
Pecker said Cohen would call and say they’d like his publication to run an article on a certain candidate, adding that Cohen would then send him a piece about Cruz, for example, and the National Enquirer “would embellish it from there.”
The Enquirer also ran negative stories about other Trump opponents in the 2016 Republican primaries and about Hillary Clinton.
Judge Merchan hasn’t yet made a decision on whether Trump violated his gag order, but his decision could be released today.
Donald Trump’s alleged violations of a gag order restricting him from attacking witnesses, jurors, prosecutors, and court staff during his ongoing criminal hush money trial got their own day in court on Tuesday.
During a tense hearing, Judge Juan Merchan heard arguments from Manhattan prosecutors requesting that Trump be sanctioned for “willful” violations of the gag order — and sparred with Trump’s attorneys over claims of ignorance by the president. No decision was handed down Tuesday, but prosecutors have requested that Trump be fined $1,000 for each violation, and reminded that future violations of the order “can be punished not only with additional fines but also with a term of incarceration of up to 30 days.” [….]
Trump’s attorneys argued that, as a political candidate, the former president needed the freedom to respond to attacks by his critics. Merchan grilled this defense, pressing Trump’s team to back up their argument that witnesses in the case had directly attacked Trump. “I keep asking you over and over again for a specific answer, and I’m not getting an answer,” Merchan said to Trump attorney Todd Blanche.
Merchan also threw out the defense’s argument that Trump’s reposts on Truth Social did not constitute violations of the gag order, as the former president had several people helping run his account. “Your client can wash your hands of it,” Merchan said of reposts, telling Blanche that content doesn’t just “magically” appear on Trump’s account. “It’s not passive […] someone had to do something.”
Blanche at one point insisted to Merchan that Trump was aware of the gag order and trying to comply with it. Merchan wasn’t having it. “You’re losing all credibility,” Merchan responded. “I have to tell you right now, you’re losing all credibility with the court.”
Edvard Munch, Man in the Cabbage Field
It’s highly unlikely that the judge will decide to incarcerate Trump for gag order violations, but the Secret Service prepared, just in case.
The U.S. Secret Service held meetings and started planning for what to do if former President Donald Trump were to be held in contempt in his criminal hush money trial and Judge Juan Merchan opted to send him to short-term confinement, officials familiar with the situation told ABC News.
Merchan on Tuesday reserved decision on the matter after a contentious hearing. Prosecutors said at this point they are seeking a fine.
“We are not yet seeking an incarceratory penalty,” assistant district attorney Chris Conroy said, “But the defendant seems to be angling for that.”
Officials do not necessarily believe Merchan would put Trump in a holding cell in the courthouse but they are planning for contingencies, the officials said.
There have not been discussions yet about what to do if Trump is convicted and sentenced to prison….
“Under federal law, the United States Secret Service must provide protection for current government leaders, former Presidents and First Ladies, visiting heads of state and other individuals designated by the President of the United States,” the agency said in a statement. “For all settings around the world, we study locations and develop comprehensive and layered protective models that incorporate state of the art technology, protective intelligence and advanced security tactics to safeguard our protectees. Beyond that, we do not comment on specific protective operations.”
I doubt if that will ever happen, much as I’d like it to. It’s much more likely Trump would be confined to his home with an ankle bracelet.
Yesterday, Trump claimed that thousands of his supporters who wanted to protest his trial outside the courthouse were turned away by police. That just didn’t happen, and he’s frustrated about it.
Donald Trump can’t decide how he wants his supporters to feel about the scene outside of the Manhattan courtroom where he’s being tried on 34 felony indictments for election interference and business fraud. He repeatedly argues that the city he travels through in a daily motorcade to his trial is a war zone. “Violent criminals that are murdering people, killing people” are free to “do whatever they want,” he’s falsely claimed, blasting District Attorney Alvin Bragg as “lazy on violent crime” because he’s supposedly too focused on prosecuting Trump.
By Gary Kim
It’s all a lie — crime is way down from the pandemic-related spikes — but it’s one Trump repeats ad nauseam. And it’s constantly reinforced by Fox News, which pushes out a series of misleading stories and images meant to scare their elderly suburbanite audiences into believing that going into the nation’s largest city results in instant murder. Nonetheless, Trump keeps pleading with his followers to run through what they’ve been told is a “bloodbath” in order to, you know, persuade Bragg and presiding Judge Juan Merchan to just give up on this whole trial nonsense.
On Monday, Trump begged his followers on Truth Social to “RALLY BEHIND MAGA” at courthouses, unsubtly suggesting that they model themselves after the mostly imaginary leftist rioters who “scream, shout, sit, block traffic, enter buildings, not get permits, and basically do whatever they want.” When the MAGA hats failed to show, Trump tried to inspire them with a post complaining that it’s “SO UNFAIR!!!” that he doesn’t get throngs of people like the kind seen at the antiwar protest a few miles north at Columbia University. Other than a few scattered people with pro-Trump signs, the mob he longed for never showed. So he took his pleas to the cameras outside the courthouse Tuesday morning:
WordPress won’t let me post the video, but you can see it at the Salon link.
What’s especially funny about all this is that Trump can’t quite admit that his people just aren’t showing up, and keeps on blaming the barricades and the cops. His lies got to the level of childish make-believe on Tuesday afternoon, as he falsely claimed on Truth Social that “Thousands of people were turned away from the Courthouse” while denying that he was “disappointed by the crowds.” Of course, by fantasizing about a massive caravan rallied to his defense, he proved he is not satisfied with reality.
As the New York Times reported, “A day after Trump issued a call for more supporters to gather outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, the number reached its nadir. The number of identifiable Trump fans across the street in Collect Pond Park on Tuesday sank to the mid-single digits, after hovering at about a dozen for a week”
How can this childish man actually have a chance to be POTUS again?
About a year ago, when Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, indicted former President Donald Trump, I was critical of the case and called it an embarrassment. I thought an array of legal problems would and should lead to long delays in federal courts.
After listening to Monday’s opening statement by prosecutors, I still think the Manhattan D.A. has made a historic mistake. Their vague allegation about “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” has me more concerned than ever about their unprecedented use of state law and their persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud.
To recap: Mr. Trump is accused in the case of falsifying business records. Those are misdemeanor charges. To elevate it to a criminal case, Mr. Bragg and his team have pointed to potential violations of federal election law and state tax fraud. They also cite state election law, but state statutory definitions of “public office” seem to limit those statutes to state and local races.
Both the misdemeanor and felony charges require that the defendant made the false record with “intent to defraud.” A year ago, I wondered how entirely internal business records (the daily ledger, pay stubs and invoices) could be the basis of any fraud if they are not shared with anyone outside the business. I suggested that the real fraud was Mr. Trump’s filing an (allegedly) false report to the Federal Election Commission, and only federal prosecutors had jurisdiction over that filing.
A recent conversation with Jeffrey Cohen, a friend, Boston College law professor and former prosecutor, made me think that the case could turn out to be more legitimate than I had originally thought. The reason has to do with those allegedly falsified business records: Most of them were entered in early 2017, generally before Mr. Trump filed his Federal Election Commission report that summer. Mr. Trump may have foreseen an investigation into his campaign, leading to its financial records. Mr. Trump may have falsely recorded these internal records before the F.E.C. filing as consciously part of the same fraud: to create a consistent paper trail and to hide intent to violate federal election laws, or defraud the F.E.C.
In short: It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up.
Looking at the case in this way might address concerns about state jurisdiction. In this scenario, Mr. Trump arguably intended to deceive state investigators, too. State investigators could find these inconsistencies and alert federal agencies. Prosecutors could argue that New York State agencies have an interest in detecting conspiracies to defraud federal entities; they might also have a plausible answer to significant questions about whether New York State has jurisdiction or whether this stretch of a state business filing law is pre-empted by federal law.
Shugerman didn’t address the fake news operation with the Enquirer.
Henry Woods, El velo de la primera comunión (1893)
In other news, the Senate passed the bill with aid to Ukraine, and Biden will sign it today.
President Biden was set to sign a $95.3 billion package of aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on Wednesday, reaffirming U.S. support for Kyiv in the fight against Russia’s military assault after months of congressional gridlock put the centerpiece of the White House’s foreign policy in jeopardy.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the package on Tuesday night, a sign of bipartisan support after increasingly divisive politics raised questions on Capitol Hill and among U.S. allies over whether the United States would continue to back Kyiv. The 79-to-18 vote provided Mr. Biden another legislative accomplishment to point to, even in the face of an obstructionist House.
“Congress has passed my legislation to strengthen our national security and send a message to the world about the power of American leadership: We stand resolutely for democracy and freedom, and against tyranny and oppression,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday evening, just minutes after the Senate vote.
He said he would sign the bill into law and address the American people on Wednesday “so we can begin sending weapons and equipment to Ukraine this week.”
The White House first sent a request for the security package in October, and officials have bluntly acknowledged that the six-month delay put Ukraine at a disadvantage in its fight against Russia.
“The Russians have slowly but successfully taken more ground from the Ukrainians and pushed them back against their first, second and, in some places, their third line of defense,” John F. Kirby, a spokesman for Mr. Biden’s National Security Council, said on Tuesday on Air Force One. “The short answer is: Yes, there absolutely has been damage in the last several months.”
The Senate’s vote on Tuesday to approve new aid for Ukraine capped off six months of public pressure and private overtures by the White House to build support, including the not-insignificant task of winning over House Speaker Mike Johnson.
For months, President Joe Biden and his team pressed the case for additional aid both publicly and privately, leaning into courting Johnson – whose young speakership was under pressure from his right flank – behind the scenes through White House meetings, phone calls and detailed briefings on the battlefield impacts, administration officials said.
Grappling with the leadership dynamics in a House GOP conference increasingly resistant to more aid, Biden directed his team to use every opportunity possible to lay out the consequences of inaction directly to Johnson. That included warnings of what it would mean not just for Ukraine, but also Europe and the US, if Russian President Vladimir Putin were to succeed, administration officials said.
The president specifically urged his team to lean into providing a full intelligence picture of Ukraine’s battlefield situation in their conversations with the speaker and his staff as well as discussing the national security implications for the US, officials said. That push played out over the next six months – starting with a Situation Room briefing one day after Johnson became speaker.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young briefed the speaker and other key lawmakers on how aid for Ukraine was running out, putting the country’s efforts to fight off Russia in jeopardy. Biden stopped by the meeting and met with Johnson on the side to convey a similar message. Sullivan followed up four days later with a call to Johnson to highlight the measures in place to track aid in Ukraine.
But Johnson quickly made clear aid for Ukraine and Israel would need to be separated – an approach the White House opposed and one that would be tested time and time again in the coming months.
The ordeal ended on Tuesday when the Senate passed the $95 billion foreign aid package, with nearly $61 billion for Ukraine, marking a long-sought foreign policy win for Biden, who has spent the past two years rallying Western support for the war-torn country in its fight against Russia. At the same time, the president has been grappling with his own battle back home to get more aid approved amid resistance from some Republicans. The White House has said he will sign that legislation – which also provides over $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian assistance and more than $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan – as soon as possible.
Read more details at CNN.
While Trump has been dozing off in court in New York, President Biden has been campaigning, most recently in Florida.
President Joe Biden swooped into Florida Tuesday, hoping to parlay the state’s new restrictive abortion law — as well as a ballot initiative that could undo it — into a campaign issue that could give him the state’s trove of electoral votes come November, effectively locking up his reelection.
“There’s one person responsible for this nightmare, and he acknowledges it and he brags about it: Donald Trump,” Biden told a boisterous crowd in a gym at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa.
He attacked Florida’s six-week abortion ban — approved in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and ending a national right to abortion — and reminded voters that it was the coup-attempting former president’s three appointees to the high court that paved the way.
“It was Donald Trump who ripped away the rights and freedom of women in America,” he said. “We’ll teach Donald Trump and extreme MAGA Republicans a valuable lesson: Don’t mess with the women of America.”
Political consultants from both parties, while skeptical that Biden will actually win Florida, agree that forcing Trump on the defensive in a state he cannot afford to lose and which he only won by three percentage points in 2020 is a smart move.
“I don’t think he’d be in Tampa today if they didn’t see it as good place to make a contrast,” said Steve Schale, who ran former President Barack Obama’s successful Florida campaign operation in both 2008 and 2012. “There’s nothing more valuable, particularly for an incumbent, than a candidate’s time.”
David Hockney, NIchols Canyon, Hollywood HIlls
Just one more story–an op-ed by Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissmann in The New York Times on the Supreme Court’s upcoming hearing on Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity.”
The Supreme Court’s decision to hear oral arguments in Donald Trump’s immunity-appeal case on Thursday may appear to advance the rule of law. After all, few, if anyone, thinks that a majority of the court will conclude that a former president is completely immune from federal criminal liability.
But the court’s decision to review the immunity case actually undermines core democratic values.
The Supreme Court often has an institutional interest in cases of presidential power. But the court’s insistence on putting its own stamp on this case — despite the widespread assumption that it will not change the application of immunity to this case and the sluggish pace chosen to hear it — means that it will have needlessly delayed legal accountability for no justifiable reason. Even if the Supreme Court eventually does affirm that no person, not even a president, is above the law and immune from criminal liability, its actions will not amount to a victory for the rule of law and may be corrosive to the democratic values for which the United States should be known.
That is because the court’s delay may have stripped citizens of the criminal justice system’s most effective mechanism for determining disputed facts: a trial before a judge and a jury, where the law and the facts can be weighed and resolved.
It is this forum — and the resolution it provides — that Mr. Trump seeks, at all costs, to avoid. It is not surprising that he loudly proclaims his innocence in the court of public opinion. What is surprising is that the nation’s highest court has interjected itself in a way that facilitates his efforts to avoid a legal reckoning.
Looking at the experience of other countries is instructive. In Brazil, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, after baselessly claiming fraud before an election, was successfully prosecuted in a court and barred from running for office for years. In France, the former president Jacques Chirac was successfully prosecuted for illegal diversion of public funds during his time as mayor of Paris. Likewise, Argentina, Italy, Japan and South Korea have relied on the courts to hold corrupt leaders to account for their misconduct….
Consider India, Bolivia, Hungary and Venezuela, where the erosion of judicial independence of the courts has been accompanied by a rise in all-consuming power for an individual leader.
Within our constitutional system, the U.S. Supreme Court can still act effectively and quickly to preserve the judiciary’s role in a constitutional democracy. If the court is truly concerned about the rule of law and ensuring that these disputed facts are resolved in a trial, it could issue a ruling quickly after the oral argument.
It would then fall to the special counsel Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan to ensure that this case gets to a jury. Obviously, fidelity to due process and careful attention to the rights of the accused are critical. To get to a trial and avoid any further potential delay, Mr. Smith may decide to limit the government’s case to its bare essentials — what is often called the “slim to win” strategy. And Judge Chutkan has already warned Mr. Trump that his pretrial unruly statements with respect to witnesses and others may result in her moving up the start of the trial to protect the judicial process.
Read the rest at the NYT.
That’s it for me today. What do you think? Are there other stories that interest you?
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It’s spring, but here in New England, we are awaiting a winter storm–a Nor’easter with high winds, torrential rains, and even snow in some areas. The storm is expected to last from this afternoon into Friday. It’s supposed to get stormy later this afternoon, but I can see outside my window that it is already raining. It’s a good day to read book and maybe take a nap.
The world news is awful. Benjamin Netanyhu is a monster. Yesterday, we learned that 7 workers for José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen were killed in 3 Israeli strikes in Gaza that sound targeted. The charity said they had coordinated with the IDF and had large signs on the roofs of their vehicles identifying them as aid workers.
Seven people working for a humanitarian aid group led by the chef José Andrés were killed in an Israeli air strike in the central Gaza Strip today. The strike is a black mark for the Israel Defense Forces, and likely to turn world opinion further against the Gaza campaign. But more than its geopolitical significance, the strike is a horrifying moment on a human level. Innocent people, doing good work to feed a starving population, have died for no reason at all.
The group, World Central Kitchen, has been engaged for months in efforts to feed severely malnourished Palestinians in Gaza. WCK said the workers were “traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle,” and that the strike happened despite the group coordinating its movements with the Israel Defense Forces. Footage shows a puncture directly through the WCK emblem prominently displayed atop a vehicle.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged the strike, which he described as an accident. “Unfortunately, there was a tragic incident in which our forces unintentionally hit innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “As it happens in war, we are investigating the matter fully, we are in contact with the governments, and we will do everything possible to prevent this from happening again.”
When Netanyau made this statement, there was an obvious smirk on his face.
💥Netanyahu: Shit happens.
"Unfortunately, a tragic instance of our forces unintentionally harming innocent people in the Gaza Strip. It happens in war. We'll investigate it. We're in contact with the governments, and we will do everything so that it doesn't happen again." pic.twitter.com/52zuojncbj
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the trucks were traveling along a route approved by the IDF when they were struck by an Israeli drone. Security forces believed that there was an armed Hamas member in the convoy, but the target was not actually traveling in any of the vehicles at the time of the strike. After each of the first two vehicles was struck, the passengers moved the wounded to a third, before another strike hit that one, killing the seven people. A Haaretz source inside the defense establishment blamed units in the field for acting rashly.
Writing on X, Andrés mourned the deaths: “The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.” [….]
The deaths are the latest senseless act of violence in a cycle that began with Hamas’s October 7 attacks, which killed more than 1,000 Israelis. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have died in Israel’s campaign in Gaza since. Netanyahu says the operation will destroy Hamas, though many commentators inside and outside of Israel find that goal unrealistic. The IDF has blamed civilian casualties on Hamas, which has intertwined its operations with noncombatants. Many aid workers have died, as well as nearly 100 members of the media, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In the worst conditions you can imagine — after hurricanes, earthquakes, bombs and gunfire — the best of humanity shows up. Not once or twice but always.
The seven people killed on a World Central Kitchen mission in Gaza on Monday were the best of humanity. They are not faceless or nameless. They are not generic aid workers or collateral damage in war.
People gather around the carcass of a car used by US-based aid group World Central Kitchen, that was hit by an Israeli strike the previous day in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on April 2, 2024. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)
Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, John Chapman, Jacob Flickinger, Zomi Frankcom, James Henderson, James Kirby and Damian Sobol risked everything for the most fundamentally human activity: to share our food with others.
These are people I served alongside in Ukraine, Turkey, Morocco, the Bahamas, Indonesia, Mexico, Gaza and Israel. They were far more than heroes.
Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right. It is not conditional on being good or bad, rich or poor, left or right. We do not ask what religion you belong to. We just ask how many meals you need.
From Day 1, we have fed Israelis as well as Palestinians. Across Israel, we have served more than 1.75 million hot meals. We have fed families displaced by Hezbollah rockets in the north. We have fed grieving families from the south. We delivered meals to the hospitals where hostages were reunited with their families. We have called consistently, repeatedly and passionately for the release of all the hostages.
All the while, we have communicated extensively with Israeli military and civilian officials. At the same time, we have worked closely with community leaders in Gaza, as well as Arab nations in the region. There is no way to bring a ship full of food to Gaza without doing so.
That’s how we served more than 43 million meals in Gaza, preparing hot food in 68 community kitchens where Palestinians are feeding Palestinians.
We know Israelis. Israelis, in their heart of hearts, know that food is not a weapon of war.
Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces.
The World Central Kitchen has pulled out of Gaza for now, and without them Palestinians will starve.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he was “outraged and heartbroken” by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza that killed seven people working for World Central Kitchen (WCK) and he called on Israel to do more to protect aid workers.
Israel’s investigation of the incident “must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public,” Biden said in a statement.
“Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident,” he said. “This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.” [….]
Biden said Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers or civilians in Gaza.
“The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to deconflict their military operations against Hamas with humanitarian operations, in order to avoid civilian casualties,” he said.
Biden also spoke to Chef Andres by phone. Read about it at Axios. That’s a start, but Biden needs to do more. I think he should cut off military aid to Israel.
As usual, there is lots of Trump news.
First, late last night Special Prosecutor Jack Smith filed a response to Judge Aileen Cannon’s order that both sides submit jury instructions based on her faulty interpretation of the Presidential Records Act.
In perhaps prosecutors’ strongest rebuke yet to how Judge Aileen Cannon has handled the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith said in court filings late Tuesday evening that the judge had ordered briefings based on a “fundamentally flawed” understanding of the case that has “no basis in law or fact.”
Smith’s team harshly critiqued Cannon’s request for jury instructions that embraced Trump’s claims that he had broad authority to take classified government documents and said it would seek an appeals court review if she accepted the former president’s arguments about his record-retention powers.
In an unusual order last month, Cannon asked attorneys on the classified documents case to submit briefs on potential jury instructions defining terms of the Espionage Act, under which Trump is charged over mishandling 32 classified records. Specifically, Cannon asked the special counsel and defense attorneys to write two versions of proposed jury instructions.
The first scenario would instruct a jury to assess whether each of the records that Trump is accused of retaining fell into the categories of “personal” or “presidential” as laid out by the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law that governs how White House records belonging to the government are to be handled at the end of a presidency.
The second version Cannon asked for assumes that as president, Trump had complete authority to take records he wanted from the White House, which would make it nearly impossible for prosecutors to secure a conviction. If she were to institute this sort of instruction, Smith’s team said, “the Government must be provided with an opportunity to seek prompt appellate review.”
“Both scenarios rest on an unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise — namely, that the Presidential Records Act and in particular its distinction between ‘personal’ and ‘Presidential’ records, determines whether a former President is ‘authorized,’ under the Espionage Act, to possess highly classified documents and store them in an unsecure facility,” the special counsel’s team wrote.
If allowed to be presented to a jury, prosecutors said, “that premise would distort the trial.” [….]
Prosecutors have repeatedly said that PRA is not relevant to the charges against Trump, as the conduct he is accused of happened after his term as president ended. Trump’s claim that he deemed the records personal are “pure fiction,” invented once the National Archives had retrieved boxes with classified information from Mar-a-Lago two years after he left office, they wrote Tuesday.
Their new filing sheds light on some of the evidence that investigators have collected about Trump’s record-keeping habits during his presidency. According to the prosecutors’ account, there is no evidence that Trump designated the relevant classified records as personal when he left the White House, and the prosecutors said he got the idea that he did have such power many months later, from the leader of a conservative legal organization.
That leader is Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch. Fitton is not an attorney.
In an open display of frustration, federal prosecutors on Tuesday night told the judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case that a “fundamentally flawed” order she had issued was causing delays and asked her to quickly resolve a critical dispute about one of Mr. Trump’s defenses — leaving them time to appeal if needed.
The unusual and risky move by the prosecutors, contained in a 24-page filing, signaled their mounting impatience with the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who has allowed the case to become bogged down in a logjam of unresolved issues and curious procedural requests. It was the most directly prosecutors have confronted Judge Cannon’s legal reasoning and unhurried pace, which have called into question whether a trial will take place before the election in November even though both sides say they could be ready for one by summer.
In their filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, all but begged Judge Cannon to move the case along and make a binding decision about one of Mr. Trump’s most brazen claims: that he cannot be prosecuted for having taken home a trove of national security documents after leaving office because he transformed them into his own personal property under a law known as the Presidential Records Act.
The prosecutors derided that assertion as one “not based on any facts,” adding that it was a “justification that was concocted more than a year after” Mr. Trump left the White House.
“It would be pure fiction,” the prosecutors wrote, “to suggest that highly classified documents created by members of the intelligence community and military and presented to the president of the United States during his term in office were ‘purely private.’” [….]
Mr. Smith’s prosecutors told Judge Cannon in their filing on Tuesday that the Presidential Records Act had nothing to do with the case and that the entire notion of submitting jury instructions based on it rested on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise.”
Instead, they asked her to decide the validity of the Presidential Records Act defense in a different way: by rejecting Mr. Trump’s motion to dismiss the case based on the same argument. That motion has been sitting on her desk for almost six weeks.
The prosecutors want Judge Cannon to take that course of action, because any decision she makes on the motion to dismiss can be challenged in an appeals court. But if the case is allowed to reach the jury, any ruling she might make acquitting Mr. Trump cannot be appealed.
Both Trump and Jack Smith have responded to Aileen Cannon’s whack order to write proposed jury instructions as if the Presidential Records Act says something it doesn’t. Neither are all that happy about it.
Trump used his response to claim that having the jury assess whether Trump really did make these documents personal records rather than simply steal them would put them in the role that, he’s arguing, only a (former) President can be in.
Smith — as many predicted — spent much of the filing arguing that Cannon cannot leave this issue until jury instructions because it must have an opportunity to seek mandamus for such a clear legal error; they cite the 11th Circuit slapdown of Cannon’s last attempt to entertain this fantasy in support.
Along the way, though, Smith also did something I had hoped he would do: explain where, and when, Trump’s own whack theory came from in the first place.
It came from Tom Fitton’s Xitter propaganda in response to the public report, in February 2022, that Trump had returned documents, including classified ones. But even after Fitton first intervened, Trump’s handlers continued to treat any remaining classified documents as presidential records for months.
Read about Fitton’s half-baked “theory” at the link. As I understand it, madamus means that Smith would ask the appeals court to remove Cannon from the case and replace her.
Earlier yesterday, the Judge Juan Merchan, who is in charge of the New York criminal case against Trump for interfering in the 2016 election by paying off women he was sexually involved with, added family members to his gag order. The Guardian: Trump faces an expanded gag order. It won’t stop the death threats.
When Judge Juan Merchan issued a gag order last week to bar former president Donald Trump from attacking potential witnesses and others involved in his pending hush-money trial in New York, he left open a loophole that Trump jumped to exploit.
The former president immediately went on the attack against Merchan’s own daughter, falsely accusing her of posting social media content that called for Trump to be jailed.
Merchan’s original gag order had covered potential trial witnesses, jurors, district attorney Alvin Bragg’s staff and Merchan’s staff while excluding the prosecutor and the judge – but hadn’t explicitly included Merchan’s and Bragg’s family members.
Merchan responded by expanding the gag order on Monday to cover their families, writing that Trump’s attacks on his daughter were part of a broader pattern of attacking family members of the judges and attorneys involved in his cases that “serves no legitimate purpose. It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game’ for Defendant’s vitriol.”
Judge Juan Merchan
That pattern has played out in case after case – and if the past is prologue, his supporters will take it one step further. When Trump attacks those involved in his cases, death threats soon follow.
Every time prosecutors and judges tried to muzzle Donald Trump, he lashed out at their families.
In three different court cases over the past six months, judges imposed gag orders that restrained the former president from vilifying witnesses, court employees and others involved in the proceedings against him. In each case, Trump responded by verbally attacking not only the prosecutors and judges themselves, but also their family members.
“It’s clearly strategic,” said Ty Cobb, who served as a White House lawyer under Trump but has become a frequent critic of the former president.
“His attacks are designed around his traditional approach to delegitimizing the proceedings.” [….]
After Trump spent several days denigrating the adult daughter of Justice Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Trump’s Manhattan criminal case, Merchan issued an expanded gag order barring Trump from attacking the judge’s own family. Merchan also expanded the gag to cover the family of the lead prosecutor, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“The average observer, must now, after hearing Defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves, but for their loved ones as well,” Merchan wrote. “Such concerns will undoubtedly interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitutes a direct attack on the Rule of Law itself.”
In his latest fusillade on social media, unleashed within days of Merchan’s original gag order, Trump called Merchan’s daughter a “Rabid Trump Hater” due to her work at a digital marketing agency that has Democratic clients. And he claimed that she had used an image of Trump behind bars as a profile picture for a social media account, although a court official said she had abandoned and deleted that account, and that it had been taken over by someone else.
How can this horrible person actually have been president? And how can he be permitted to run again? And if he is elected in November the plan is for him to run again in 2028 (if we still have election then).
Project 2025, the Republican plan to functionally annihilate not just the federal government but democracy as well if Trump wins in November, is an unceasing parade of horrors.
Kristen Eichamer holds a Project 2025 fan in the group’s tent at the Iowa State Fair, Aug. 14, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa….AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Banning the abortion pill nationwide? Check. Rolling back protections for LGBTQ people? Check. Deporting literally millions of undocumented immigrants? Check. But amid each objectively horrible aim is an even more more insidious one: abolishing the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms. It’s an unvarnished, right-out-in-the-open plan to keep Trump in office well past 2028.
It’s not as if this is genuinely unexpected. By July 2019, Trump had “joked” at least six times about being president for life. Floating that as a possibility, as Peter Tonguette did last week over at The American Conservative, is a great opportunity to show fealty to a candidate who values loyalty over all else.
The American Conservative is a “partner” of Project 2025, along with such luminaries as Stephen Miller’s America First Legal law firm (currently suing everyone over the mildest of diversity efforts) and the Claremont Institute, which gave us Christopher Rufo and Moms for Liberty.
As Media Matters notes, the reasoning in Tonguette’s piece is dubious at best, but that doesn’t really matter. Project 2025 doesn’t rest on solid law, respect for democracy, or an understanding of history. It rests only on the notion that Trump should be allowed to exhibit raw, vicious, and unchecked power.
Read the rest at the link.
At least one family pushed back on Trump’s lies yesterday. In a speech in Michigan yesterday, Trump talked about Ruby Garcia, a woman who was murdered allegedly by an undocumented immigrant.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Donald Trump used his campaign event in Michigan on Tuesday to denounce what he called “Biden’s border bloodbath,” zeroing in on the case of a young woman killed by someone immigration officials say had entered the country illegally.
“She lit up that room, and I’ve heard that from so many people,” Trump said at a news conference in the hometown of the 25-year-old victim, Ruby Garcia. “I spoke to some of her family.”
But Garcia’s sister, acting as a family spokeswoman, said Tuesday that Trump and his campaign have not contacted her or other immediate relatives — and rebuked the GOP presidential nominee’s effort to make the case part of his calls for a border crackdown.
“It’s always been about illegal immigrants,” the victim’s sister, Mavi Garcia, told local news station Target 8. “Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like that?”
The Trump campaign did not comment Tuesday, andTrump did not mention speaking with Garcia’s family at a Wisconsin rally later Tuesday. Mavi Garcia confirmed to The Washington Post that Trump and his campaign never spoke with the family.
That’s all the news I have for you today. What do you think? What other stories have captured your interest?
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I hardly know where to begin these days. Every day I’m aware of the specter of Trump as dictator hanging over our heads. If only we could know what is going to happen. But we can’t. We can only hang in there until November to learn whether our country will remain a democracy or begin turning into a fascist state.
It seems so obvious that a man like Trump should not be permitted to run for any office, much less president. But somehow he’s doing it, and the media often treat him as a credible candidate. It’s mind-boggling to me. And we are learning that the courts and the “justice” system are not going to save us. Judges just keep giving Trump special treatment. And the Supreme Court is working to take away our individual rights and freedom. What will happen? We can’t know.
More than a day after the Dali cargo ship crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, authorities are still searching for the six people missing in the crash. Cold water temperatures and choppy waters are affecting divers’ attempts to find the bodies of those missing, who are presumed dead.
Here’s the latest:
The investigation: A team from with the National Transportation Safety Board went aboard the ship late Tuesday night to gather evidence for their investigation, agency Chair Jennifer Homendy told CNN on Wednesday. There, they obtained the ship’s data recorder, or black box.
No timeline for channel reopening: There is no specific timeline for when ships may be able to move in and out of the channel into the Port of Baltimore, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore says, but he reiterated that it is a priority to get it reopened.
“Long road to recovery”: US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg predicted the restoration effort for the city and port won’t be quick. He also warned of supply chain disruptions, saying, “The impact of this incident is going to be felt throughout the region and really throughout our supply chains.”
Coast Guard assessing hazmat threat: The US Coast Guard is examining damaged shipping containers, some containing potentially hazardous materials, from the crashed vessel, according to a US government document obtained by CNN and a US official familiar with the matter.
Overnight search deemed unsafe: Search and recovery operations were halted overnight due to dangerous conditions, including “very unstable” sections of the steel bridge and shipping containers hanging from the cargo ship, Baltimore City Fire Chief James Wallace told CNN.
Details emerge on those missing: Local authorities have yet to confirm the identities of those missing but have said they include construction workers who were on the bridge at the time of the collapse. Here’s what we know about the six people presumed dead.
Ship blacked out before crash: Just minutes before impact, there was a “total blackout” of engine and electrical power on the ship, according to Clay Diamond, executive director of the American Pilots Association.
City remains in state of emergency: As the search operations continue for the missing, Baltimore remains in a state of emergency, Mayor Brandon Scott told CNN. He says he expects it to remain in place for the “foreseeable future.”
The National Transportation Safety Board chair told CNN Wednesday morning that the cargo ship’s data recorder, or black box, was recovered by investigators overnight after they were able to board the ship. More information will reportedly be shared with the public today….
Shortly before 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the Dali, a massive cargo ship under a Singaporean flag that was bound from Baltimore to Sri Lanka, apparently lost power shortly before crashing into a pillar that helped stabilize the 1.6-mile-long bridge. The crew sent out a Mayday signal that allowed officials to stop traffic before more cars entered the bridge.
“We’re thankful that between the Mayday and collapse that we had officials who were able to begin to stop the flow of traffic so more cars were not up on the bridge,” Gov. Wes Moore said at a news conference Tuesday.
A view of the Dali cargo vessel which crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge causing it to collapse in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., March 26, 2024. REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson
The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said in a statement that the ship, which is as long as three football fields, lost propulsion prior to the crash, and followed emergency protocols by dropping anchor. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating those claims.
The loss of power, however, came as the Dali was traveling at a speed of 8 knots, roughly 9 mph, and left the ship “unable to maintain the desired heading,” the statement read.
“What I do know is that the force of this ship is almost unimaginable,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told ABC’s Good Morning America. “This is a vessel that was about 100,000 tons carrying its load. So 200 million pounds went into this bridge all at once, which is why you had that almost-instant catastrophic result.”
Roberto Leon, a Virginia Tech engineering professor, told the Associated Press that the bridge could not “absorb anywhere near the energy that this humongous ship is bringing. So it’s going to break.”
The six likely victims of the Baltimore bridge collapse on Tuesday all appeared to be construction workers from Latin American countries, according to reports, including a father of three, Miguel Luna, from El Salvador, as authorities said they had recovered the black box recorder from the ship.
Since the container ship Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge after losing power early on Tuesday morning, six members of a construction crew filling potholes on the major bridge are now presumed to be dead, according to state officials.
The immigrant services non-profit We Are Casa confirmed that Luna, 49, had lived in Maryland for at least 19 years.
“He is a husband, a father of three, and has called Maryland his home for over 19 years,” its executive director, Gustavo Torres, said in a statement. Luna’s son Marvin told the Washington Post he knew his father was on the bridge but he had not heard of the tragedy until friends called him.
The foreign affairs ministry of Guatemala confirmed that two of the workers were nationals, though it did not name them. It said the Guatemalan consul general had spoken with family members.
The Associated Press also reported one of the men, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, was from Honduras.
A correspondent for Reforma reported that a Mexican embassy spokesperson in Washington said one of the victims was a Mexican national and that two others were from Guatemala and El Salvador.
Jesús Campos, a construction worker, said he knew the missing crew members and that they were all from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico. “It’s a difficult situation,” he said, speaking through a translator. “My friends were working on that bridge.”
Campos said the men all worked for the construction company, Brawner Builders, where he himself had worked for eight months – including on the overnight shift, until he was transferred to daytime hours one month ago.
He said the workers were low-income immigrants who used their wages to support family members in the US and abroad.
All “low-income immigrants” repairing potholes in the middle of the night. Heartbreaking.
In other news, NBC was forced by in-house and public outrage to fire Ronna McDaniel after only a few days of employment.
In a memo, NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde told staff that he had listened to “the legitimate concerns” of many network employees. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” he wrote. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”
Ronna McDaniel
The network had only just announced four days earlier that they were bringing McDaniel on board to provide “expert insight and analysis” on politics. “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” one NBC News executive told staff at the time.
But the company’s on-air personalities — especially those on NBC’s liberal-leaning cable affiliate MSNBC — disagreed vehemently, saying that McDaniel’s promotion of former president Donald Trump’s media-bashing and false election-fraud claims disqualified her from a role in their news divisions.
And one by one, they took to the airwaves to deliver that message to their bosses in front of their live audiences Monday.
“Take a minute, acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right call,” MSNBC’s top-rated star Rachel Maddow said on her show that night. “It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you are wrong.”
NBC delivered the news of its course correction to its employees before informing McDaniel, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve confidence.
Maybe the bosses should have consulted with their employees before hiring a proven liar and insurrectionist.
By the second week of December 2020, the presidential election was decided and heading to a formal vote at the Electoral College. Like President Trump, the Republican Party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, wasn’t ready to concede.
“Every illegal vote is stealing from a valid vote, and every state that conducted their election fraudulently is stealing from states that conducted their elections fairly,” Ms. McDaniel told Sean Hannity of Fox News on Dec. 8.
At the time, key campaign aides had already told Mr. Trump that he had lost. Advisers had found no credible evidence of fraud or irregularities that could have reversed the outcome. The Electoral College would confirm Joseph R. Biden was the winner six days later.
Yet, Ms. McDaniel’s appearance on Mr. Hannity’s program was part of her concerted efforts to help Mr. Trump dispute his election loss….
Ms. McDaniel had recently tried to downplay her role. But a review of her record shows she was, at times, closely involved in and supportive of Mr. Trump’s legal and political maneuvering ahead of the violent attempt to block Congress from certifying Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6.
Ms. McDaniel was not the most aggressive or outlandish member of Mr. Trump’s team. Indeed, she fell short of Mr. Trump’s demands and expectations, former aides said, and faced calls from his allies and grass-roots activists to be far more aggressive. And her involvement appears to have fallen off substantially — at least publicly — in the days before Jan. 6, when the R.N.C. focused its efforts on the then-upcoming Senate runoff election in Georgia.
Later, after courts, Republican election officials and state investigations all dismissed Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud, Ms. McDaniel was viewed as insufficiently dedicated to the cause of overturning the election, particularly by the Trump supporters who still considered Mr. Trump the rightful winner.
But before then, Ms. McDaniel, who through intermediaries declined to comment for this article, had done more to dispute a legitimate election result than any other chair of a major American political party in modern history.
Ronna McDaniel with Trump
The authors break down McDaniel’s actions in detail. Some examples:
The party set up hotlines, collected accounts of supposed suspicious activities and held meetings at the White House with Mr. Trump’s legal team, Ms. McDaniel later testified to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
At a news conference in Michigan on Nov. 6, the day before news outlets declared Mr. Biden the winner, she announced that the R.N.C. was deploying legal teams in four states to investigate “irregularities.” She listed allegations in Michigan that she claimed were evidence of potential, widespread problems, including supposedly suspect election machine software. The allegations were disputed by election officials and later debunked.
Speaking on Fox on Nov. 10, Ms. McDaniel repeated unsubstantiated and soon-to-be debunked claims of “deceased voters” and “batches of votes that were invalidated,” declaring, “that is stealing.”
And on social media, Ms. McDaniel questioned “irregularities” about the election, posted fund-raising solicitations and promoted hearings in states where Mr. Trump’s allies presented bogus evidence of election malfeasance. She vowed that the R.N.C. would “pursue this process to the very end.”
After Mr. Trump switched his legal team, bringing in outside lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, the R.N.C. also shifted away from the legal involvement with the Trump team. Of the 65 lawsuits that Mr. Trump and his allies filed after the 2020 election, the R.N.C. attached its name only to four, according to Democracy Docket, which tracks the cases.
Still, on Nov. 19, Ms. McDaniel allowed Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell to hold a press briefing at R.N.C. headquarters. With dark liquid dripping down his face, Mr. Giuliani promoted wild theories about Dominion voting machines and the deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez….
After that news conference, party lawyers told Ms. McDaniel not to repeat the conspiracy theories about election machines, and urged R.N.C. aides to be careful when speaking about the election, suggesting they use phrases like “voting irregularities” rather than “voter fraud,” according to House committee testimony….
On Nov. 17, two Republican members of the canvassing board in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, initially voted against certifying the county’s results, deadlocking the board until they reversed themselves amid angry protest.
Immediately afterward, the Republican board members, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, received a phone call from Mr. Trump; Ms. McDaniel was also on the line.
Believe it or not, there are many more examples of McDaniel’s dishonest actions in the NYT story.
Those seeking employment at the Republican National Committee after a Trump-backed purge of the committee this month have been asked in job interviews if they believe the 2020 election was stolen, according to people familiar with the interviews, making the false claim a litmus test of sorts for hiring.
In recent days, Trump advisers have quizzed multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states about their views on the last presidential election, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interviews and discussions. The interviews have been conducted mostly virtually, as the prospective future employees are based in key swing states.
“Was the 2020 election stolen?” one prospective employee recalled being asked in a room with two top Trump advisers.
The question about the 2020 election has startled some of the potential employees, who viewed it as questioning their loyalty to Trump and as an unusual job interview question, according to the people familiar with the interviews. A group of senior Trump advisers have been in the RNC building in recent days conducting the interviews.
“But if you say the election wasn’t stolen, do you really think you’re going to get hired?” one former RNC employee asked.
Read more about the Trump RNC hiring process at the link.
A New York judge Tuesday issued a gag order barring Donald Trump from commenting publicly about witnesses, prosecutors, court staff and jurors in his upcoming hush-money criminal trial, citing the former president’s history of “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about people involved in his legal cases.
Judge Juan Merchan
Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision, echoing a gag order in Trump’s Washington, D.C., election interference criminal case, came a day after he rejected the defense’s push to delay the Manhattan trial until summer and ordered it to begin April 15. If the date holds, it will be the first criminal trial of a former president.
“Given that the eve of trial is upon us, it is without question that the imminency of the risk of harm is now paramount,” Merchan wrote in a four-page decision granting the prosecution’s request for what it deemed a “narrowly tailored” gag order.
The judge said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s statements have induced fear and necessitated added security measures to protect his targets and investigate threats.
Trump’s lawyers fought a gag order, warning it would amount to unconstitutional and unlawful prior restraint on his free speech rights. Merchan, who had long resisted imposing a gag order, said his obligation to ensuring the integrity of the trial outweighed First Amendment concerns.
You’ve probably heard that Trump has been hawking $60 Bibles. It turns out that he’s actually just endorsing a Bible that singer Lee Greenwood has been selling for years. But Trump must be getting a cut of the profits. I can’t imagine him doing this for nothing.
It turns out Donald Trump’s Monday morning Truth Socialpost comparing himself to Jesus Christ (once again) wasn’t just inherently sacrilegious; in a way, it was also promotional content.
Trump launched a new career as a Bible salesman on Tuesday afternoon, posting a video to Truth Social in which he urged supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible.”
Trump with Lee Greenwood
“I’m proud to endorse and encourage you to get this Bible,” Trump says in the three-minute ad. “We must Make America Pray Again.”
Trump added: “All Americans need a Bible in their home and I have many. It’s my favorite book. It’s a lot of people’s favorite book.”
Many people find the idea of any presidential candidate selling religious texts to their supporters totally appalling. And the Donald Trump of it all makes matters even worse. The former president famously named the Bible as his favorite book on the 2016 campaign trail, but was unable to name his favorite verse. During his administration he cited “Two Corinthians” (not Second Corinthians) and had peaceful protesters forcibly removed from a park near the White House so he could stand in front of a church and brandish a Bible. Plus, Trump is hawking the Good Book as he finds himself in huge financial trouble due to his multiple criminal trials, one of which involves hush-money payments to a porn star.
These are all valid concerns. But as a connoisseur of ridiculous Trump money-making schemes, my main issue is that this isn’t a clever scam or an original product: He’s just endorsing a Bible the singer Lee Greenwood released about three years ago.
The $60 Bible, which was originally set to ship early this month to commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, was “inspired by” the country musician Lee Greenwood’s 1980s patriotic anthem “God Bless the USA” and packages Scripture with the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the handwritten chorus to Greenwood’s song. The ensuing uproar shows the challenges facing publishers in the lucrative Bible-printing business and the growing discomfort with Christian nationalism, the ideology that asserts the United States should be an explicitly Christian country.
The only difference the the Bible Trump is selling is that there is a note in the FAQ saying that Donald Trump has endorsed the book.
In his bid to retake the White House, few states hold as much promise for Donald Trump as Michigan.
The former president has already won the state once and President Joe Biden, who reclaimed it for Democrats in 2020, is confronting vulnerabilities there as he seeks reelection. Trump’s campaign promises an aggressive play for Michigan as part of a robust swing-state strategy.
But, at least for now, those promises appear to be mostly talk. The Trump campaign and its partners at the Republican National Committee haven’t yet made significant general election investments in the state, according to Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra. The national committee, he said, hasn’t transferred any money to the state party to help bolster its operations heading into the general election. There are no specific programs in place to court voters of color. And there’s no general election field staff in place.
“We’ve got the skeleton right now,” Hoekstra said. “We’re going to have to put more meat on it.”
It’s much the same in presidential battleground states across the country, according to Republican operatives and party officials involved in campaign planning elsewhere.
Widely praised for its professionalism and effectiveness throughout the primary phase of the 2024 election, Trump’s political operation has been slow to pivot toward the general election in the weeks after executing a hostile takeover of the Republican Party’s national political machinery. In fact, the former president’s team has rolled back plans under previous leaders to add hundreds of staff and dozens of new minority-outreach centers in key states without offering a clear alternative.
As the general election kicks off this spring, however, those calls have quieted—because Biden’s resurgence is coming into focus. While the president still faces serious obstacles to a second term, several important data points are lining up to demonstrate he is picking up badly needed momentum.
For the first time in a long time, there’s good news for Biden on the polling front. Gradual improvements in the battleground states along with an uptick in his approval rating led one Democratic strategist, Simon Rosenberg, to declare “the Biden bump.”
The boost is at the very least correlated with Biden’s fiery State of the Union address on March 7, when he repeatedly went after his “predecessor” and made sure to mix it up with Republicans in the chamber on a few occasions.
Since then, Biden’s team has continued the punchy, combative tone on display that night, using press releases to cheekily slam their legally challenged opponent as “Broke Don.”
On top of that, the Biden campaign has continued to flex what has always been its core strength: fundraising.
With a $53 million haul in February, the Biden campaign built on their already impressive financial advantage over Trump, who brought in only $20 million over the same period. The Biden campaign has $71 million in cash on hand, compared to just $33.5 million for Trump.
The tide is turning, a Biden adviser argued to The Daily Beast, and although they aren’t putting too much stock into any recent polling upticks, the president’s team is ready to seize upon April and May as a crucial time to ambush a wounded Trump campaign.
I really like the way Biden’s campaign has been making fun of Trump on social media. One of the things Trump fears most is people laughing at him.
Another good article to check out is this interview with former Justice Stephen Breyer at Politico Magazine: A Supreme Court Justice Sounds a Warning. In Breyer’s new book, he writes that his former colleagues are in danger of having “a Constitution no one wants.”
What are your thoughts on all this? What other stories are you following?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
CNBC has this headline on the stellar job market performance at the end of last year. “U.S. payrolls grew by 256,000 in December, much more than expected; unemployment rate falls to 4.1%.” This is reported by Jeff Cox. Any president in the 70s or 80s would’ve been a hero if they found a way to reach these numbers.
The current egg shortage is likely to get worse. So, if we’re speaking in terms of getting a guy who everyone thought would lower their egg prices, entire villages of idiots are about to get a surprise. This is from ABC News. “What experts want shoppers to know about egg prices amid new bird flu implications. Shoppers have flocked to social media showing stores in short supply.” Kelly McCarthy has the story.
This link to the CDC has information on the vaccine and includes one Louisiana family where the flu jumped from animals to people. “Genetic Sequences of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Viruses Identified in a Person in Louisiana.”
This last story I want to look at takes us back to the loon in the Pizza Gate shooting. I wonder if Hillary can sleep better now. This is from the AP. “‘Pizzagate’ gunman killed by police in North Carolina after traffic stop, authorities say.” 
The first scenario would instruct a jury to assess whether each of the records that Trump is accused of retaining fell into the categories of “personal” or “presidential” as laid out by the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law that governs how White House records belonging to the government are to be handled at the end of a presidency.
In their filing, prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, all but begged Judge Cannon to move the case along and make a binding decision about one of Mr. Trump’s most brazen claims: that he cannot be prosecuted for having taken home a trove of national security documents after leaving office because he transformed them into his own personal property under a law known as the Presidential Records Act.
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As the general election kicks off this spring, however, those calls have quieted—because Biden’s resurgence is coming into focus. While the president still faces serious obstacles to a second term, several important data points are lining up to demonstrate he is picking up badly needed momentum.
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