Inauguration of John F. Kennedy
Today is the final day before the Trump 2.0 begins. I have no idea what is going to happen, but I’m sure it will be ugly and deeply embarrassing to our country.
Our so-called “president” will be a convicted felon, a rapist, a grifter, a fraudster, a common criminal.
So far, I don’t see any sign that Democrats will put up a serious challenge to what is coming. I hope I’m wrong.
Tomorrow Trump will be sworn in, and the inauguration is going to be very odd. At the last minute, he decided to hold the ceremony indoors in the Capital rotunda and cancel the parade, supposedly because the weather will be “dangerously cold.” I’m sorry, but 20 degrees is not “dangerous” weather. The more likely reason for the change is that Trump feared a small turnout.
Raw Story:
Donald Trump drastically scaled back plans for his inauguration as hotel occupancies stalled just days ahead of his return to the White House.
The president-elect was infamously touchy about the crowd size at his first inauguration in 2017, and hotel occupancy rates in Washington, D.C., are hovering just above 70 percent with three days until he takes the oath of office again and bitterly cold temperatures forecast for Monday, so Trump announced that he would instead move the ceremony indoors to the U.S. Capitol….
“It is my obligation to protect the People of our Country but, before we even begin, we have to think of the Inauguration itself,” Trump added. “The weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows. There is an Arctic blast sweeping the Country. I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way. It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th (In any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly!). Therefore, I have ordered the Inauguration Address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered in the United States Capitol Rotunda, as was used by Ronald Reagan in 1985, also because of very cold weather.” [….]
“The various Dignitaries and Guests will be brought into the Capitol,” Trump posted. “This will be a very beautiful experience for all, and especially for the large TV audience! We will open Capital One Arena on Monday for LIVE viewing of this Historic event, and to host the Presidential Parade. I will join the crowd at Capital One [Arena], after my Swearing In. All other events will remain the same, including the Victory Rally at Capital One Arena, on Sunday at 3 P.M. (Doors open at 1 P.M.—Please arrive early!), and all three Inaugural Balls on Monday evening. Everyone will be safe, everyone will be happy, and we will, together, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Also from Raw Story, on January 13:
Hotel bookings are way down ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration next week, and applications for protest permits are also off pace compared to the last time he took office.
The president-elect’s first inauguration sparked furious protests that led to violence and arrests in January 2017. This year the National Park Service has fielded far fewer requests for permits and law enforcement officials don’t anticipate trouble managing any crowds that do converge to oppose the incoming president, reported the Washington Post….
Hotel occupancy rates for next Sunday hovered at about 70 percent as of last week, according to Smith Travel Research. That’s compared to 95 percent the night before Trump’s first inauguration eight years ago and 97.2 percent for Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009. That rate plunged to 78 percent for his second inauguration in 2013.
Trump’s inaugural committee has raised a record $170 million to go toward a parade, swearing-in ceremony, a “victory rally” at Capital One Arena on Sunday and a national prayer service Tuesday at Washington National Cathedral. Information about other events are “forthcoming,” according to the inauguration website.
John F. Kennedy inauguration
Now all that is scaled back. I suppose it will mean that Trump gets to keep all that money. The MAGATs who elected him spent big bucks to come to DC and see their cult leader’s big moment. Now they’ve lost all that money and all they have are their tickets to the inauguration as souvenirs, but Trump couldn’t care less about them. They’ve served their purpose and now they can be discarded.
Jeff Tiedrich at “everyone is entitled to my own opinion”: elderly Florida resident too frail to be outdoors in the cold.
at noon on January 20, 1961, as John F. Kennedy prepared to take the oath of office, the temperature hovered around 22°F. the wind-chill made it seem more like 7°F. did JFK whine that it was too chilly, and insist on going inside? no, he did not. he stood there in the cold, and ask not what your country’d the shit out of his inauguration. he fucking nailed it.
Jimmy Carter shrugged off the 28°F temps at his inauguration. same deal with Bill Clinton — the Big Dog wasn’t about to let 28°F temps spoil his day.
Little Donny Convict, however, is a dotard of a different stripe. the frail old fuck took one look at tomorrow’s forecast of 23°F temps and pulled the plug on the whole enchilada.
In a statement posted to his Truth Social social media platform, Trump said that he does not “want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way” amid the freezing temperatures.
“It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of law enforcement, first responders, police K9s and even horses” as well as “hundreds of thousands” of supporters.
ohhhh, it’s too cold. oh, boo fucking hoo. cry me a river with this ‘dangerous conditions’ nonsense. maybe Florida Man should have holed up in his golf motel instead of running for president. he doesn’t seem up to the rigors of the job.
how fucking hilarious is it that this self-styled “tough guy” who sells AI-generated pics of himself tarted up as Superman falls to pieces and hide out the second the thermometer drops?
you want to talk about cold? yesterday, Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans played a football game. it was 25°F in Kansas City — but Arrowhead Stadium was packed to the rafters. no one complained about how dangerous the conditions were.
but sure, tell me again how Donny the Great Humanitarian cares about the safety of the cultists. it’s such a great story. but where was this concern a year ago, when he made the faithful wait for hours outside in -17°F temps in Iowa?
Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter walk in the Inaugural parade.
But Trump will still surround himself with autocrats from around the world.
Matt Laslo Nicolae Viorel Butler at Raw Story:
In a historic first, President-elect Donald Trump is bucking centuries of American tradition by welcoming an array of foreign leaders to his second inauguration.
The parade is about as far-right as they come, including many who — whether in policy or bombast — have been compared to Trump himself….
Below is a partial list of the Trump-like leaders coming to kiss the ring….
Trumplike European leaders
Nigel Farage — Brexit salesman. He is known for his anti-EU and anti-immigrant stances and accused of inciting xenophobia throughout his Brexit campaign.
Giorgia Meloni — Italy’s first female prime minister. Leader of the Brothers of Italy, a far-right party with post-fascist roots. Advocate for strict immigration controls and preservation of Italy’s ‘Christian’ identity. She’s alarmed critics for declaring herself a defender of “God, homeland and family,” echoing nationalist slogans from the past (think Mussolini).
Rewriting Nazi atrocities
Tino Chrupalla — Co-leader of Alternative for Germany Party (AfD). Known for nationalist and Eurosceptic stances. Advocate for ending Russian sanctions and Trump fanboy. In a televised debate, Chrupalla once drew outrage for questioning Germany’s responsibility for World War II atrocities.
Mateusz Morawiecki — Former Polish prime minister. Member of the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS). A staunch conservative who regularly deploys anti-LGBTQ and anti-EU rhetoric. Once claimed Poland shouldn’t be blamed for Nazi atrocities during World War II.
Persecuting ethnic minorities now en vogue
Tom Van Grieken — Leader of Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang Party, which advocates for Flemish independence and stringent immigration policies. Has labeled refugees “fortune seekers” and likened multiculturalism to “the destruction of Europe.”
André Ventura — Leader of Portugal’s right-wing populist Chega Party. Anti-migrant and anti-Roma, a minority community of asylum seekers fleeing persecution back in India. Controversially called Roma communities a “state-sponsored gang” and proposed DNA testing for welfare applicants to prove their identity.
Xenophobia in the House (Senate too)!
Éric Zemmour — French far-right commentator, author and politician. Anti-immigrant, Eurosceptic. He claims France’s decline is due to immigration and liberal policies in his book, The French Suicide. Sparked outrage for accusing Muslim asylum seekers of being focused on the “colonization” of France.
Santiago Abascal — Leader of Spain’s far-right Vox Party. A vocal critic of multiculturalism and immigration. Calls for building Trump-like walls along Spain’s borders to deter migrants. Calls Islam a “threat to European civilization.” Once claimed feminists were part of “gender totalitarianism” at a political rally.
Mixing religion and politics
Javier Milei — Newly elected president of Argentina. A Trump-like populist. Called Pope Francis a “communist” and “representative of the evil left.”
Election denier’s request to attend inauguration denied
Jair Bolsonaro — Former President of Brazil. Bombastic right-wing populist. Facing charges for allegedly trying to overturn Brazil’s 2022 election. He had his passport confiscated, and on Thursday, the Brazilian Supreme Court denied his request to travel to Washington for Trump’s second inaugural.
No Orban? No Putin?
What does Trump have planned for day 1? Reportedly, there will be ICE raids on undocumented immigrants in blue cities. According to the Wall Street Journal, Chicago will be first.
Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti at The Washington Post: Trump officials haven’t decided on post-inauguration Chicago raids, Homan says.
President-elect Donald Trump’s handpicked “border czar” Tom Homan said in an interview Saturday that the incoming administration is reconsidering whether to launch immigration raids in Chicago next week after preliminary details leaked out in news reports.
ICE has been planning a large operation in the Chicago area for next week that would start after Inauguration Day and would bring in additional officers to ramp up arrests, according to two current federal officials and a former official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal law enforcement planning.
Homan said he did not know why Chicago “became a focus of attention” and said the incoming administration’s enforcement goals are much broader than one city.
“ICE will start arresting public safety threats and national security threats on day one,” he said. “We’ll be arresting people across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines. Why Chicago was mentioned specifically, I don’t know.”
“This is nationwide thing,” he added. “We’re not sweeping neighborhoods. We have a targeted enforcement plan.”
The seesawing reports of possible raids in Chicago can stir up fears that advance the administration’s broader enforcement goals, even if operations are postponed or shifted to other cities. Homan and other Trump aides say they want immigrants living in the United States illegally to once more fear arrest and choose to leave the country on their own, or “self-deport.”
According to the conservative Boston Herald, Trump administration set to conduct ICE raids in Boston after Chicago, New York.
Sources told the Herald on Saturday that the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement will conduct its first raid under the Trump administration in Chicago on Tuesday. New York and Miami will follow soon after, according to multiple news reports.
Boston and other Massachusetts sanctuary cities are expected to be a top-five target for the Trump administration to conduct mass arrests of illegal immigrants, sources said, depending on how the rollout progresses.
Trump has promised tackling illegal immigration will be a top priority when he regains office on Monday, pledging to oversee the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.
“There’s going to be a big raid all across the country,” incoming border czar Tom Homan said on Fox News Friday night. “Chicago is just one of many places.”
“ICE is finally going to go out and do their job,” he added. “We’re going to take the handcuffs off ICE and let them go arrest criminal aliens. That’s what’s going to happen.”
Politico reports that some National Guard troops are anxious about what they will be asked to do: National Guard troops worry Trump will deploy them for mass deportations.
National Guard members fear landing in the center of a political tussle between red state governors and blue state attorneys general over Donald Trump’s expected crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
The large-scale deportation effort could begin as soon as Monday with Republican governors vowing to deploy the Guard if Trump asks and officials in Democratic states readying quick legal pushback. Some of the 435,000 troops worry they’ll get pulled into a legally murky mission rooting out people in communities where they have day jobs such as sheriffs, cops or firefighters.
Bill Clinton taking the oath of office.
“Our North Star is how lawful is it?” said Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, in an interview about the incoming president deploying the Guard. “If they are operating lawfully, there’s nothing for us to do, and the president is allowed to do that. If he’s acting unlawfully, as he did many times under Trump 1.0, we sued him over 120 times.”
Trump has said he would bring in the military to help with mass deportations, but he has not specified whether he means state-based National Guard members or active duty troops.
“I don’t want to be seen as a Gestapo,” said one former senior military official who is in close contact with current Guard members and was granted anonymity to speak about a legally precarious situation. “It’s important that everybody understands who they are and what they’re doing.”
But the confusion within the Guard hasn’t stopped Republican governors from pledging quick support to Trump’s immigration plans. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said earlier this month he would use the National Guard to assist with deportations if asked by the incoming U.S. administration….
But certain legal guardrails exist. Red states can activate the National Guard to help with immigration enforcement — possibly to assist federal agents — but blue states with control of their own Guard could simply refuse to go along.
Trump has a range of options. He could leave the National Guard under state control but give troops federal funding to tackle the deportation mission, although that would allow individual governors to retain authority over their troops. Trump also could call the Guard up to active-duty status, which would give him greater ability to control troops in blue states and order them across state lines.
Read more at the Politico link.
Trump will also have to deal with the TikTok situation right away.
The New York Times: TikTok Goes Dark in the U.S.
“Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now,” the message read.
Hours before a federal law banning TikTok from the United States took effect on Sunday, the Chinese-owned social media app went dark, and U.S. users could no longer access videos on the platform. Instead, the app greeted them with a message that said “a law banning TikTok has been enacted.”
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution,” the message said. “Please stay tuned!”
In addition, TikTok’s sister app, Lemon8, stopped working and showed U.S. users a message saying that it “isn’t available right now.” Both TikTok and Lemon8 are owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet giant. CapCut, a popular video-editing app from ByteDance, was also unavailable.
Apple said it had removed TikTok and other ByteDance apps, including Lemon8, from its app store, and users said that Google’s U.S. app store had also removed TikTok. Searching for the apps on Apple’s app store on Sunday yielded a new message: “TikTok and other ByteDance apps are not available in the country or region you’re in.”
TikTok became unavailable after the Supreme Court decision on Friday upholding the law, which calls for ByteDance to sell the app by Sunday or otherwise face a ban. The law was passed overwhelmingly by Congress last year and signed by President Biden. TikTok, which has faced national security concerns for its Chinese ties, had believed it could win its legal challenge to the law, but failed.
The blackout capped a chaotic stretch for TikTok, which had made last-minute pleas to both the Biden administration and President-elect Donald J. Trump for a way out of the law. Until Saturday night, no one — including the U.S. government — was entirely sure what would happen to it when the law took effect. The United States has never blocked an app used by tens of millions of Americans essentially overnight.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: Why Trump’s new love of TikTok is dangerous.
Not too long ago, Donald Trump was a big fan of banning TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media app that went offline in the U.S. early Sunday under a controversial ban. On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the law, passed by bipartisan majorities last April, largely due to concerns that the Chinese government used the platform to spy on Americans. President Joe Biden signed that law, but only four years after Trump, while still president, tried and failed to ban the app through executive order. TikTok allows “the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage,” Trump said in the 2020 order.
Barak Obama being sworn in.
There’s good reason to believe Trump’s personal reasons weren’t so noble. For one thing, he’s racist against Chinese people and apparently believes COVID-19 was somehow their fault, instead of seeing them as the first victims of a mutated virus. However, while U.S. intelligence services are frustratingly tight-lipped about the specific evidence, both common sense and the testimony of more trustworthy politicians who have seen the intel — including Biden — suggest that the accusation of foreign spying is almost certainly true. Nor is this a “free speech” issue. The right to speak out, even online, has not changed. The government’s authority here is to determine what foreign companies are allowed to operate within our borders, a nearly ironclad power.
Trump, meanwhile, has changed his tune about TikTok, but not because he disbelieves the intelligence reports or because he is a free trade absolutist. (Hardly that, as his love of tariffs demonstrates.) No, it’s because he’s learned in the past four years that TikTok is a shockingly efficient disseminator of disinformation, which is Trump’s main stock-in-trade. “I’m now a big star on TikTok,” he bragged in September, vowing to protect the site from being banned. He’s also buddied up with the chief executive of the American division of TikTok, Shou Chew, inviting him to join the murder’s row of tech billionaires attending the inauguration.
“It’s been a great platform for him and his campaign to get his America first message out,” Mike Waltz, an incoming national security advisor to Trump, said Thursday. “We will put measures in place to keep TikTok from going dark.” Chew then took to TikTok to publicly credit Trump with working to save the platform.
On Sunday, Tik Tok rewarded Trump for his support with blatant propaganda. The app went dark, as expected, but when users tried to open it, they got this message: “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.”
TikTok is good for Trump, and for one simple reason: It is a maelstrom of disinformation so gargantuan that even Elon Musk-controlled Twitter fails to compete. It’s a train wreck of B.S., from people claiming sunscreen and vaccines don’t work to bizarre videos claiming demons infect everything to old-fashioned authoritarian lies. The company claims to stand for “free speech,” but the Chinese government censors information that doesn’t serve its political goals. The algorithm is hidden from public view, but it’s easy to see it favors divisive, emotionally manipulative and misleading information. It ratchets up culture war tensions and stokes arguments while undermining people’s mental ability to focus on developing solutions. Hundreds of millions of people willingly plug into an app that feeds them the demoralizing propaganda authoritarians have been trying to shove down our throats forever. It’s a fascist’s dream.
Read the rest at Salon.
A few more stories to check out:
Anne Applebaum at The Atlantic: Trump Triggers a Crisis in Denmark—And Europe.
Reuters: Exclusive: German ambassador warns of Trump plan to redefine constitutional order, document shows.
Politico: Trump launches crypto meme coin, ballooning net worth ahead of inauguration.
The New York Times: As Polio Survivors Watch Kennedy Confirmation, All Eyes Are on McConnell.
David A. Graham at The Atlantic: The Tragedy of the Classified Documents Case.
That’s it for me today. Take care everyone; enjoy the final hours before the horror begins.
Section 60, Arlington National Cemetery
Every day I wonder why any American would support Donald Trump. His first term as “president” was a disaster. Among other horrors, he mismanaged the Covid-19 pandemic and allowed hundreds of thousands of our citizens to die unnecessarily. He alienated our allies and sucked up to Vladimir Putin and other dictators like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, China’s Xi jinping, and Turkey’s Tayip Erdogan. He frequently demonstrated his lack of respect for members of our military who risk their lives to protect their country. And of course he brazenly committed numerous crimes as “president.” How can anyone vote for this man for any public office?
Yesterday Trump once again demonstrated his contempt for U.S. military members who sacrificed their lives in service to their country.
Two members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation Monday with an official at Arlington National Cemetery, where the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony, NPR has learned.
A source with knowledge of the incident said the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump staffers from filming and photographing in a section where recent U.S. casualties are buried. The source said Arlington officials had made clear that only cemetery staff members would be authorized to take photographs or film in the area, known as Section 60.
When the cemetery official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering Section 60, campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside, according to the source.
Trump participated in an event to mark the third anniversary of a deadly attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan as U.S. forces withdrew from the country; 13 U.S. service members were killed in the attack. The Trump campaign has blamed President Biden and Vice President Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee, for the chaotic withdrawal.
In a statement to NPR, Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s spokesman, strongly rejected the notion of a physical altercation, adding: “We are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made.
“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” Cheung said in the statement.
A “mental health issue?” Why on earth was Trump participating in this event? He doesn’t hold any federal office. Apparently some relatives of fallen soldiers invited him.
More reporting from Richard Luscombe at The Guardian: Trump staffers reported over altercation at Arlington cemetery during photo op.
Officials at Arlington national cemetery have filed a report over the behavior of members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff who reportedly shoved and verbally abused an employee during a “crass” photo opportunity for the Republican presidential candidate.
The officials confirmed that a confrontation took place at the Virginia cemetery on Monday after the former president participated in a wreath-laying ceremony for 13 US servicemen and -women killed in a 2021 suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan.
In a statement, Arlington acknowledged one of its representatives became involved in the altercation with two Trump staffers, telling them that only cemetery representatives were allowed to take video and photographs in Section 60, an area where recent US casualties mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried….
The staffers “verbally abused and pushed the official aside” as the person attempted to prevent them accompanying Trump into the section, according to NPR, which first published the allegation on Tuesday night.
Following the wreath-laying, photographs from his visit showed Trump grinning and flashing a thumbs-up sign as he stood at the graves of several of the fallen military members, imagery that drew swift rebuke.
“The hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery are the final resting place of our American heroes. Trump defiled Arlington National Cemetery by doing a crass campaign stunt over the grave of a dead hero. And his campaign staff acted like bullies,” the Democratic California congressman Ted Lieu posted to X.
Trump couldn’t care less about the men and women buried in Arlington Cemetery.
In other news from yesterday, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment of Trump in the January 6 case in the DC Circuit. As Andrew Weissmann pointed out last night on MSNBC, Trump has now been criminally indicted by 5 grand juries.
SV Date at HuffPost: Trump Reindicted On Coup Attempt Charges To Honor Supreme Court Immunity Ruling.
Special counsel Jack Smith Tuesday announced that a grand jury had reindicted former President Donald Trump on four charges related to his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt to honor the direction given by the U.S. Supreme Court in its July ruling holding that Trump was immune from criminal prosecution for “official acts.”
“Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment,” Smith wrote in a separate filing to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is handling the case. “The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings.”
Trump’s first public reaction to the new indictment was to repost a message on Truth Social by Mike Davis, a former Senate lawyer who supports him, that ends with: “Bottom Line: There’s no chance this case goes to trial before the election. Trump wins. Jack Smith fired. Case closed.”
About an hour later, Trump personally responded with a five-post screed on his social media platform in which he called Smith “deranged” and claimed, without any evidence, that the prosecution was being directed by President Joe Biden’s White House. He also repeated his lie that Democrats had cheated to win the 2020 election.
He ended with: “PERSECUTION OF A POLITICAL OPPONENT!”
More on the indictment:
The “superseding” indictment, as it is known, charges Trump with the same four counts as in the original indictment that was filed a year ago: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to deprive millions of Americans of their right to have their votes counted.
It follows the same narrative structure, laying out how Trump spent months after losing his 2020 reelection bid laying the groundwork for the violent assault on the Capitol by his mob of followers.
“Despite having lost, the defendant ― who was also the incumbent president ― was determined to remain in power,” Smith wrote. “So, for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election [that] he had actually won. These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false.”
But Smith’s new indictment does not reference Trump’s efforts to enlist federal government employees in the executive branch — who all technically report to him. For instance, the original indictment had mentioned a Department of Justice official whom Trump considered making his attorney general because of his willingness to tell state officials that voter fraud had occurred. The new indictment does not include the official as a co-conspirator, but does still include the other five individuals who were not in government.
The Supreme Court ruled in July that Trump had immunity from prosecution for “official” acts, and specifically cited the ability to hire and fire executive branch employees to carry out his wishes.
The revised indictment, now at 36 pages compared to the 45-page original, still centers on Trump’s scheme to have allies in key states won by Biden create fake Electoral College slates and send them to the Senate. The plan was for then-Vice President Mike Pence to use the fake Trump slates instead of the legitimate slates for Democrat Joe Biden and declare Trump the winner.
Stephen Collinson at CNN: Trump’s new indictment rocks his newly reshaped race against Kamala Harris.
Special counsel Jack Smith defiantly re-injected the question of Donald Trump’s bid to steal the 2020 election into the intensifying end game of this year’s White House race.
By trying to rescue his case after his initial indictment was gutted by the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, Smith signaled that he is determined to bring the former president to justice — even though there will be no trial before Election Day.
“I think this is basically Jack Smith saying, ‘I still got this’” former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, a CNN legal and national security commentator, said after the special counsel on Tuesday filed a modified indictment endorsed by a new grand jury.
His move underscored the huge personal investment Trump has in winning the presidency in November: He not only would return to the nation’s top office, but would also gain the authority to halt this and another federal case against him and head off any sentences that could include jail time if he is convicted.
“This is a very big year, it is a very important election,” former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori told CNN’s Alex Marquardt on Tuesday. “This case is at stake in the election, because if Trump wins, it is going away. If Trump loses to Harris, this case is going to proceed to some sort of conclusion.”
The conservative majority’s ruling earlier this summer that Trump could be covered by immunity from criminal prosecution for some of his actions as president represented one of the most consequential moments in Supreme Court history and has massive implications for the US system of government. Many mainstream scholars blasted the decision as contrary to the spirit of the country’s founders in that it appeared to hand significant unchecked powers to the presidency.
The decision also sent shockwaves through an already tumultuous presidential race, since it appeared to offer an ex-president who already believed he was all powerful the chance to pursue strongman rule if he wins November’s election. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris criticized the decision in her convention speech last week: “Consider, the power he will have … Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails, and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States.”
Smith’s move also creates other profound political, legal, and constitutional overtones at a critical national moment, 10 weeks from an election that could profoundly reshape the country and that may again test its institutions to the limit.
Read more about the indictment at CNN.
Marcy Wheeler posted about the new indictment at Emptywheel this morning: The Superseding Indictment Is About Obstruction As Much As Immunity.
In this Xitter thread, I went through everything that had been added or removed from the superseding indictment against Trump, based on this redline. The changes include the following:
- Removal of everything having to do with Jeffrey Clark
- Removal of everything describing government officials telling Trump he was nuts (such as Bill Barr explaining that he had lost Michigan in Kent County, not Wayne, where he was complaining)
- Removal of things (including Tweets and Trump’s failure to do anything as the Capitol was attacked) that took place in the Oval Office
- Addition of language clarifying that all the remaining co-conspirators (Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and — probably — Boris Epshteyn) were private lawyers, not government lawyers
- Tweaked descriptions of Trump and Mike Pence to emphasize they were candidates who happened to be the incumbent
- New language about the treatment of the electoral certificates
Altogether, the changes incorporate not just SCOTUS’ immunity decision, but also the DC Circuit’s Blassingame decision deeming actions taken as a candidate for office are private acts, and SCOTUS’ Fischer decision limiting the use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2) to evidentiary issues.
The logic of Blassingame is why Jack Smith included these paragraphs describing that Trump and Pence were acting as candidates.
1. The Defendant, DONALD J. TRUMP, was a candidate for President of the United States in 2020. He lost the 2020 presidential election.
[snip]
5. In furtherance of these conspiracies, the Defendant tried–but failed–to enlist the Vice President, who was also the Defendant’s running mate and, by virtue of the Constitution, the President of the Senate, who plays a ceremonial role in the January 6 certification proceeding.
As I’ve said repeatedly, it’s not clear that adopting the Blassingame rubric will work for SCOTUS, even though they did nothing to contest this rubric.
That’s because Chief Justice Roberts used Pence’s role as President of the Senate to deem his role in certification an official responsibility, thereby deeming Trump’s pressure of Pence an official act. Smith will need to rebut the presumption of immunity but also argue that using these conversations between Trump and Pence will not chill the President’s authority.
Read the rest at Emptywheel.
Another big story from yesterday: New video came out about Nancy Pelosi’s role on January 6.
Kyle Cheney at Politico: ‘He’s got to pay a price’: Unaired footage reveals Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 fury.
Nancy Pelosi spent the duration of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack focused on ensuring Joe Biden would be certified president as soon as possible. Then she turned her attention to Donald Trump.
“I just feel sick about what he did to the Capitol and the country today,” Pelosi said as she slumped, visibly exhausted, in the back of her SUV in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 7. “He’s got to pay a price for that.”
Pelosi’s comment was included in about 50 minutes of unaired footage captured by her daughter, filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, who was at the former speaker’s side at key moments on Jan. 5, 6 and 7 in 2021. POLITICO has reviewed the footage, which HBO turned over this week to the Republican-led House Committee on Administration.
Pelosi’s office on January 6
The panel is conducting an investigation aimed at undermining the findings of the Jan. 6 select committee, which found Trump singularly responsible for the havoc his supporters unleashed on the Capitol, and spotlighting the security failures that exacerbated the violence. The panel has reviewed video from various sources, including security footage and the clips from HBO.
It’s the most detailed glimpse yet of Pelosi’s rushed evacuation from the Capitol, showcasing her deep discomfort at being forced to flee from the rioters — who she feared would see the evacuation as a twisted victory — and her insistence that Congress return to finish certifying the election. It also showed how her focus quickly shifted to impeaching Trump for a second time, an effort that was ultimately successful, as well as preparing to fire Capitol security officials who she believed mismanaged the threats to the building….
As she moved, Pelosi immediately inquired as to whether then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had approved a request for the National Guard. Her chief of staff, Terri McCullough, responded that he had. Moments later, a security official at Pelosi’s side informed her the pro-Trump mob had “already breached the Capitol.”
At first, Pelosi scolded security officials for forcing her evacuation. “I did not appreciate this,” she said. “I do not support this.”
“If they stop the proceedings, they will have succeeded in stopping the validation of the presidency of the United States,” she added. Pelosi then lit into Capitol security officials for failing to anticipate the attack.
“How many times did the members ask, ‘Are we prepared? Are we prepared?’ We’re not prepared for the worst,” Pelosi continued. “We’re calling the National Guard, now? It should’ve been here to start out. I just don’t understand it. Why do we empower people this way by not being ready?”
Of course we now know that Trump loyalists prevented the National Guard from being deployed for several hours. There’s much more at the link.
NBC News: New video shows Nancy Pelosi calling Trump a ‘domestic enemy’ shortly after Jan. 6 attack.
Hours after a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and assaulted dozens of police officers in an attempt to reach members of Congress, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., then the House speaker, referred to the then-president as “a domestic enemy.”
The comments came in video shot by documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, Pelosi’s daughter, that HBO recently turned over to Congress. NBC News on Tuesday reviewed more than 30 minutes of video from the roughly 48 hours surrounding the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, including video that showed Pelosi being led away from the building by her security detail as she pressed her staff members to get the National Guard to respond to the Capitol.
The newly surfaced remarks go further than the public ones she made on Jan. 7, when she said Trump had “incited an armed insurrection against America” and “instigated” an attack that would “forever stain our nation’s history.”
The same day, the HBO video shows, Pelosi spoke to her staff while she was sitting under an ornate mirror that had been smashed when the pro-Trump mob ransacked her office hours earlier.
“We take an oath to protect our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” she said. “There is a domestic enemy in the White House. And let’s not mince words about this.”
The previously unaired video also shows Pelosi taking responsibility for not pressing law enforcement officials harder about their preparations ahead of the attack.
“Why weren’t the National Guard there to begin with?” Pelosi asked. “They clearly didn’t know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepared for more,” she said as she was being escorted away by security on Jan. 6. “It’s stupid that we should be in a situation like this.”
Pelosi would not have had independent authority to summon the National Guard, and the Capitol Police Board is in charge of security for the U.S. Capitol. The head of the Capitol Police resigned shortly after the riot, as did the House sergeant-at-arms, and the video shows Pelosi in discussions with her staff about getting resignations from both officials.
“They thought these people would act civilized? They thought these people gave a damn? What is it that is missing here in terms of anticipation?” she added….
The comments also indicate that Pelosi was skeptical about the motivations of the law enforcement community, which is generally conservative-leaning. (A high-ranking FBI official, for example, was warned in the hours after the attack that many within the bureau were “sympathetic” to the Capitol rioters.)
“Shame on us,” Pelosi said as her security unit whisked her off to nearby Fort McNair, where several congressional leaders ended up on the night of Jan. 6 when the facility turned into a command center for those in the order of presidential succession. “Shame on us. I’m suspicious of them and their motivations, tell you the truth.”
That’s three big stories to chew on. What do you think?
MIchelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi-George are running for Mayor of Boston.
Today is election day in states across the country. The is the deadlocked race between gubernatorial candidates Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin is getting the most attention, but there’s also a historic election in Massachusetts, where a woman of color most likely will be elected Mayor of Boston today. 7News Boston: Boston voters heading to the polls for historic mayor’s race.
BOSTON (AP) — Boston voters are heading to the polls Tuesday not only to choose between Democrats Michelle Wu and Annissa Essaibi George for mayor, but to mark a turning point in the city’s history, for the first time electing a woman and person of color to helm Boston.
The choice of Wu and Essaibi George for the top political post is just the latest marker of how much the Boston of not-so-long-ago — known for its ethnic neighborhoods, glad-handing politicians and mayors with Irish surnames — is giving way to a new Boston.
Throughout its long history, Boston has previously only elected white men as mayor.
Despite the groundbreaking nature of the candidates, the campaign has turned on familiar themes for the city’s 675,000 residents, including public education, policing, public transportation and the skyrocketing cost of housing.
Among the newer issues facing Boston residents is the effect of climate change on the costal metropolis.
One of the thorniest issues in the campaign is whether Boston should pursue a form of rent control or rent stabilization, something supported by Wu and opposed by Essaibi George. In 1994, Massachusetts voters narrowly approved a 1994 ballot question banning rent control statewide.
Both candidates have spent the final hours of the campaign urging their voters to get to the polls.
Nearly 40,000 ballots have already been cast in early voting. Democratic Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin told reporters Monday he estimates about 135,000 ballots will be cast in Boston — about 30% of the city’s 442,000 registered voters.
Both candidates are children of immigrants.
The 36-year-old Wu, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan, grew up in Chicago and moved to Boston to attend Harvard University and Harvard Law School.
Essaibi George, 47, a lifelong Boston resident and former public school teacher, describes herself as a first-generation Arab-Polish American. Her father was a Muslim immigrant from Tunisia. Her mother, a Catholic, immigrated from Poland.
The contest could also be a test of whether voters in a city long dominated by parochial neighborhood politics are ready to tap someone not born and raised in the city like Wu, who grew up in Chicago.
In Virginia, McAuliffe and Youngkin are running neck and neck, and observers are speculating about how the result with impact the midterm elections in 2022. Bloomberg: Virginia Race Offers Hint of 2022 Fight to Control Congress.
Virginia’s gubernatorial contest Tuesday between Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin will offer the clearest picture yet of how much momentum Republicans have heading into 2022 elections that will decide control of Congress, while President Joe Biden struggles to advance his agenda in Washington.
Polls show the Virginia race essentially deadlocked as Democrat McAuliffe’s lead during the summer evaporated along with Biden’s approval ratings. In the final weeks of the campaign, Republican Youngkin, the former co-chief executive officer of the Carlyle Group Inc., has capitalized on voter frustration with national Democrats and local education issues.
The election comes a day after Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, slammed the door on Biden’s wish for Congress to take quick action on his $1.75 trillion tax and spending package, the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Virginia, a state Biden won by 10 percentage points a year ago, is a bellwether for the Congressional midterms. A McAuliffe loss would be the biggest omen for Democratic prospects to hold onto their slim majority in Congress.
Longtime Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson said that Virginia is often an “early-warning system” for the party in power as to how it will do in the midterms, especially because of the diversity of the state, which includes rural, suburban and urban areas; military, farming and technology workers; and White, Hispanic and Black voters.
“Virginia allows you for a dry run of the arguments you’re going to make in the midterms, to see how different parts of the electorate respond,” Ferguson said.
Read more at the link.
Peter Saul, Donald Trump in Florida, 2017.
At The Atlantic, Virginia resident Michael Tolhurst writes that a Youngkin win in Virginia could lead to a Constitutional crisis. That’s because governors control the National Guard. I can only provide a brief excerpt, so I hope you’ll read the entire article at The Atlantic.
…[i]n addition to the substantive policy disagreements or politics as pastime, people across America should be monitoring the outcome of this race for another reason: Governors command the National Guard, and after the January 6 riot, the country saw the National Guard defend our constitutional order.
at the outbreak of the Civil War, the prompt arrival of the 6th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Militia in Washington, D.C., in April 1861 helped secure a capital precariously close to the battlefront. Later forces arrived, building up the defenses around the city in the Northern Virginia towns of Arlington and Alexandria. This included, a century and a half before I came to live in the area, Connecticut’s 22nd Regiment in which my many-greats-grandfather Edwin Tolhurst served. (His military experience was unromantic—he dug ditches in the red mud of Northern Virginia for nine months, caught consumption, and died shortly after he was discharged.)
We’re not, of course, in a civil war. But law professors and public intellectuals have seriously discussed the possibility of secession or a “national divorce.” A recent University of Virginia study revealed that 41 percent of people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and 52 percent of Donald Trump voters “at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country.” The same study revealed that significant numbers on both sides wish their preferred president wouldn’t have to be constrained by Congress or the courts.
Given this tinderbox, we unfortunately have to revisit the question of what role the present-day state militias—the National Guard—and the governors who command them might play in a constitutional crisis. As the writer Andrew Sullivan put it, there is an “increasingly nihilist cult on the right among the GOP” that has shown an “increasingly menacing contempt for electoral integrity and a stable democracy.” Will all elected governors rush to the defense of the constitutional order when necessary, as did the 6th Massachusetts and the 22nd Connecticut? Or will they fight for a separatist movement? This is not a happy thought, but as even previously respectable institutions are being coy about the possibility of such a conflict, it must be considered.
It’s difficult to accept that the situation is getting that serious, but you just have to look at how completely the Republican Party has been captured by the Trump/Q-Anon cults to understand that we need to be prepared for the worst. I still need to finish reading the powerful Washington Post series on the January 6 insurrection, but I hope to do so this afternoon.
The Barbarians by Max Ernst, 1937
Harking back to the 2020 presidential election, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffenspurger has written a book. AP: Georgia official: Trump call to ‘find’ votes was a threat.
Donald Trump was threatening Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when he asked him to help “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in Georgia to Democratic President Joe Biden, Raffensperger writes in a new book.
The book, “Integrity Counts,” was released Tuesday. In it, Raffensperger depicts a man who defied pressure from Trump to alter election results, but also reveals a public official settling political scores as he seeks to survive a hostile Republican primary environment and win reelection in 2022.
An engineer who grew wealthy before running for office, Raffensperger recounts in his book the struggle in Georgia that followed Biden’s narrow victory, including death threats texted to his wife, an encounter with men who he says may have been staking out his suburban Atlanta home, and being escorted out of the Georgia capitol on Jan. 6 as a handful of right-wing protesters entered the building on the same day many more protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
The book climaxes with the phone call, which was recorded and then given to multiple news organizations. Raffensperger — known as a conservative Republican before Trump targeted him — writes that he perceived Trump as threatening him multiple times during the phone call.
“I felt then — and still believe today — that this was a threat,” Raffensperger writes. “Others obviously thought so, too, because some of Trump’s more radical followers have responded as if it was their duty to carry out this threat.”
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is investigating potential attempts to improperly influence Georgia’s 2020 election. Raffensperger said in an interview with The Associated Press that Willis’ investigators have talked to some employees in his office, but that he hasn’t been interviewed.
Read more about the book at USA today: Brad Raffensperger, GOP target of Trump ire in Georgia, warns of potential for more election violence.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by Bijou Karman
Another extremely important issue we face is that “conservatives” have taken over the Supreme Court. Linda Greenhouse at The Atlantic: What Can Liberals on the Supreme Court Do Now? They’re outnumbered, but they’re not powerless.
By the time the Supreme Court started its new term on the first Monday of October, a tumultuous summer of midnight orders and unsigned opinions had left no doubt about who was in charge. A five-member conservative bloc, anchored by three Trump-appointed justices, had largely stripped Chief Justice John Roberts of leverage and the three remaining liberals of any hope of striking a meaningful alliance with him. The best the liberals can hope for now, even with the chief justice on their side, is a 5–4 loss.
What path is open to them? Can they play a weak hand in a way that can make a difference? Is building bridges worthwhile, or has the time come to burn them all down? These are the questions hovering over the opening of a term that is likely to produce major decisions on abortion, religion, and the Second Amendment.
Perhaps some answers can be found in the memory of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September 2020 and was replaced with astonishing speed by Amy Coney Barrett. Powerless in her later years to change minds on the increasingly conservative Court, Ginsburg used the tool at her disposal: her voice. The purpose of her blunt and quotable dissenting opinions was not only to call out the majority when she believed it was wrong but to shape how the public understood the Court’s actions.
It’s easy to forget that this was not always Ginsburg’s way. For most of her years on the public stage, there was nothing flamboyant about her. Quite the opposite: A woman of few, precisely chosen words, she seemed content to fade into the background. During her years on the federal appeals court in Washington, she was so well known for her friendship with that court’s conservatives, particularly Antonin Scalia, who moved up to the Supreme Court in 1986, that many leaders of the women’s movement didn’t quite trust her when Bill Clinton chose her to fill his first Supreme Court vacancy, in 1993. In a lecture Ginsburg delivered months before her nomination, she emphasized the importance of dialogue and said that the “effective judge … strives to persuade, and not to pontificate,” and “speaks in a moderate and restrained voice.”
She didn’t become the “Notorious RBG” until much later; the bestselling biography Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg came out in 2015. By then, Ginsburg had been on the Court for 22 years. It wasn’t so much that Ginsburg had changed as that the Court and the culture had changed around her.
Read the rest at The Atlantic.
Today will be a busy news day. What stories are you following? Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread below.
Ambrosius Benson, Portrait of a Woman and cat
Yesterday after the Trump lawyers in the impeachment trial presented their pathetic defense of Trump’s January 6, 2020 coup attempt, details about a phone call between Trump and GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy began getting a lot of attention. The facts had actually been available for some time in the Longview, Washington Daily News, but hadn’t broken through in major media outlets until CNN broke this story yesterday: New details about Trump-McCarthy shouting match show Trump refused to call off the rioters.
In an expletive-laced phone call with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy while the Capitol was under attack, then-President Donald Trump said the rioters cared more about the election results than McCarthy did.
“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump said, according to lawmakers who were briefed on the call afterward by McCarthy.
McCarthy insisted that the rioters were Trump’s supporters and begged Trump to call them off.
Judith Leyster, Two Children with a Cat
Trump’s comment set off what Republican lawmakers familiar with the call described as a shouting match between the two men. A furious McCarthy told the then-President the rioters were breaking into his office through the windows, and asked Trump, “Who the f–k do you think you are talking to?” according to a Republican lawmaker familiar with the call.
The newly revealed details of the call, described to CNN by multiple Republicans briefed on it, provide critical insight into the President’s state of mind as rioters were overrunning the Capitol. The existence of the call and some of its details were first reported by Punchbowl News and discussed publicly by McCarthy.
The Republican members of Congress said the exchange showed Trump had no intention of calling off the rioters even as lawmakers were pleading with him to intervene. Several said it amounted to a dereliction of his presidential duty.
Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler was one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, based on what she had learned about the phone call. From the Longview Daily News story linked above:
In a Friday interview with The Daily News, she said the events of Jan. 6 determined her course of action for the following week. Hiding with colleagues from the violent mob that was ransacking the U.S. Capitol on that day, she told how she was flooded with emotions.
“I was heartbroken. I was aghast. I was in disbelief,” she recalled. “I was praying. I was like, ‘We’ve got some pretty big angels, a couple of big angels, and we’re fine.’ Just knowing how badly outnumbered everybody was at that point, and how beaten everybody was, the fact that there wasn’t a mass casualty event to me just demonstrates, I feel like, I do think God, I do think God intervened.”
“When I look at the picture of the Capitol police officer on his face, with the crowd standing over him, or of someone being bludgeoned to death, I cannot express to you the feeling inside that says, ‘I will stand up to that any day of the week and twice on Sunday,’ ” she said.
Woman with a cat, Il Bacchiacca
“To me that’s what my vote represents. I will not tolerate that and nor will, I believe, a majority of the good people in my district, in our state and in our country.” [….]
On the House floor Jan. 13, Herrera Beutler said:
“I’m not afraid of losing my job, but I am afraid that my country will fail. I’m afraid that patriots of this country have died in vain. I’m afraid that my children won’t grow up in a free country. I’m afraid injustice will prevail.
“My vote to impeach our sitting president is not a fear-based decision. I am not choosing a side – I am choosing truth, she said. “It’s the only way to defeat fear.”
Trump’s lawyers are still claiming he didn’t know that Pence’s life was in danger, but he had to know, even before his phone call with Tommy Tuberville. USA Today: Sen. Tommy Tuberville stands by account of Jan. 6 Trump phone call after lawyers say it’s ‘hearsay.’
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., stood by his account of former President Donald Trump’s phone call to him during Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol despite Trump’s lawyers calling the account “hearsay.”
Tuberville’s account would mean Trump was aware of the danger Vice President Mike Pence faced before he tweeted an attack on Pence. Asked about the allegation by reporters, Tuberville said he was not sure exactly what time Trump called, but reiterated he had talked to Trump by phone on Jan. 6 and had told the president Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber.
Tuberville recounted answering the phone, talking briefly to Trump, and then telling him, “Mr. President, they’ve taken the vice president out. They want me to get off the phone, I gotta go.” [….]
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., asked Trump’s lawyers for greater clarity on the call but said Trump’s lawyers had “not really” answered his question.
Trump’s attorney Michael van der Veen had responded to Cassidy’s question by saying he disputed the “premise” of Cassidy’s question and called Tuberville’s account “hearsay.”
But the Secret Service would have informed Trump.
This is from yesterday’s Washington Post: Six hours of paralysis: Inside Trump’s failure to act after a mob stormed the Capitol.
It’s absolutely clear at this point that Trump deliberately aided the insurrectionists and knowingly put his own Vice President and members of Congress and their staffs in danger. Now House managers are face pressure to call witnesses in the trial, which they still can do. Greg Sargent writes:
Today’s session of the Trump trial should be interesting.
More relevant reads:
Jan Steen, Children teaching a cat to dance
The Bulwark: The 10 Worst Moments from Trump’s “Defense”
The New York Times: For the Defense: Twisted Facts and Other Staples of the Trump Playbook
David Frum at The Atlantic: The Incompetence Lasted to the Very End.
The New York Times: For the Defense: Twisted Facts and Other Staples of the Trump Playbook
George Conway III at The Washington Post: Opinion: Trump’s lawyers offered an attack on everything but the evidence
Aaron Rupar at Vox: Trump lawyers keep accusing Democrats of manipulating evidence. But they’re doing that themselves.
Politico: House Republican pleads for Pence, Trump aides to speak out on Jan. 6 insurrection
PBS: Sen. Patty Murray recounts her narrow escape from a violent mob inside the U.S. Capitol\
Yahoo News: Trump lawyer struggles to answer key questions from Republican senators
That’s all I have for you today. Have a terrific long weekend, Sky Dancers!
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