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Month: June 2023

Trump couldn’t help macking on daddy’s little girl

Published by digby on June 28, 2023

Even in the White House

I’m sure you remember that and cringe whenever you think of it. Apparently, he kept this creepy stuff up in the White House:

Donald Trump’s “naked sexism,” including toward his own daughter, is described in a new book by Miles Taylor, the former Trump administration official who famously wrote a scathing op-ed about the former president under the pen name “Anonymous.”

Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, describes several incidents that made women in the Trump administration uncomfortable in his upcoming book Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, an extract of which was obtained exclusively by Newsweek.

These incidents included, the book says, claims by aides that Trump made lewd comments about his daughter Ivanka’s appearance and talked about “what it might be like to have sex with her.” This prompted a rebuke from his chief of staff, the book says.

It comes after several former staffers last month spoke about Trump’s pattern of behaving inappropriately with women while president, after a New York jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming journalist E. Jean Carroll. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and is appealing the Carroll judgment, but his alleged behavior toward women may impact his chances of securing another term in the White House in 2024.

“There still are quite a few female leaders from the Trump administration who have held their tongues about the unequal treatment they faced in the administration at best, and the absolute naked sexism they experienced with the hands of Donald Trump at worst,” Taylor told Newsweek.

In his book, Taylor describes Trump’s “undisguised sexism” toward the women in his administration, from relatively low-level aides to cabinet secretaries.

He recalls witnessing such behavior first-hand in meetings with Trump and Kirstjen Nielsen, who was secretary of homeland security from 2017 to 2019.

“When we were with him, Kirstjen did her best to ignore the president’s inappropriate behavior,” Taylor writes in his book. “He called her ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey,’ and critiqued her makeup and outfits.”

After a crass comment from Trump, he recalls Nielsen whispering to him: “Trust me, this is not a healthy workplace for women.” Nielsen has been contacted for comment.

He also recalled that Kellyanne Conway, who served as senior counselor, had once referred to Trump as a “misogynistic bully” after a meeting during which he had “berated” several female leaders in the administration.

Trump had lashed out at Nielsen and other White House staff about the border during that March 2019 meeting, according to a source familiar with the incident.

A source in Conway’s office denied she made the comment. “That is a lie,” the source told Newsweek. “Despite trying to resuscitate the 15 minutes of fame, Miles Taylor should have stayed ‘Anonymous.'”

Taylor also recalled how during one Oval Office meeting, Trump thought he saw Sarah Huckabee Sanders, then White House press secretary, in the room outside it.

It turned out to be one of his personal assistants, not Sanders. “Whoops,” Trump responded, according to Taylor. “I was going to say, ‘Man, Sarah, you’ve lost a lot of weight!'”

Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, has been contacted for comment.

According to Taylor’s book, the worst of the behavior was Trump’s lewd comments about his own daughter.

“Aides said he talked about Ivanka Trump‘s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her, remarks that once led John Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter,” Taylor writes.

“Afterward, Kelly retold that story to me in visible disgust. Trump, he said, was ‘a very, very evil man.'”

Trump’s spokesperson has been contacted for comment. Kelly, who was White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019, has been contacted for comment.

Taylor says he believes Trump remains unchanged as he leads the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and fears a second Trump term could be far worse.

“He’s a pervert, he’s difficult to deal with,” the source told Newsweek. “This is still the same man and, incredibly, we’re considering electing him to the presidency again.”

And all these right wing culture warriors who are freaking out about cat boxes in the classroom and calling Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden pedophiles just love this guy.

Look at that video again.

Update: And this one.

The Commie threat

Published by digby on June 28, 2023

A clever way to taint the Florida jury pool

Conservatives have been screaming about socialists scheming to destroy everything Real Americans hold dear for as long as anyone alive can remember. Going back more than a hundred years to the first Red Scare in 1919, when the government rounded up thousands of socialists, anarchists and communists during the Palmer raids, there have been periodic paroxysms of outrage aimed at this perennial boogeyman.

In the 1920s and 30s it was evoked to oppose the labor movement and the policies of President Roosevelt as he tried to bring the country back from the Great Depression. After World War II anti-Communism became the official foreign policy of both parties and the Republicans began to use it as a cudgel to beat the Democratic party politically. Throughout the 1940s and 50s they focused as much on “the enemy within” as America’s cold war adversaries.

The House UnAmerican Activities Committee “investigated” anyone who had once been associated with the American Communist Party gradually expanding their probe into anyone they suspected of being insufficiently patriotic or those whose political influence they believed was harmful to American culture. Then along came Joseph McCarthy who waved around supposed lists of names of Soviet spies or “fellow travelers” he said had infiltrated the US Government and the military. This went on for years and years, ruining the lives of untold numbers of people.

The fever finally broke after more than a decade of non-stop Communist witch-hunting and the “Communist” accusation fell out of favor even as anti-Communism remained very potent politically among hawks of both parties. But the bipartisan consensus broke around the Vietnam war which finally shook the nation’s belief in the existential struggle. Nixon went to China and it was only a few years later that the Berlin Wall came down.

But none of that stopped the Republicans from hurling the “S” word at every program the Democrats supported, from voting rights to Medicare to affirmative action to tax policy, it was all socialism, socialism, socialism. As historian Kevin Kruse pointed out, they even deployed it against the distribution of the polio vaccine (sound familiar?) and the interstate highway system. Even up through the 1990s you had presidential candidates like Bob Dole of Kansas proclaiming that “public housing is one of the last bastions of socialism in the world.”

This was all nonsense. The Democratic Party was not socialist and neither were its members. There are a few who call themselves Democratic socialists, which in America is really social liberalism or what we think of as progressivism. (Political labels get weedy very quickly.) But that has never stopped the Republicans from complaining that Democratic policies are socialistic.

For instance, just last year when the Democrats were hammering out the details of President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, the GOP caterwauled constantly about it. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham wailed that it was “paving a path to socialism” while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) whined: “The American people didn’t vote for a massive socialist transformation.” This guy couldn’t shut up about it:

Suffice to say that the old cudgel is still in use.

A recent Pew Poll surveyed Americans’ views on the subject:

Today, 36% of U.S. adults say they view socialism somewhat (30%) or very (6%) positively, down from 42% who viewed the term positively in May 2019. Six-in-ten today say they view socialism negatively, including one-third who view it very negatively.

And while a majority of the public (57%) continues to view capitalism favorably, that is 8 percentage points lower than in 2019 (65%), according to a national survey from Pew Research Center conducted Aug. 1-14 among 7,647 adults.

Much of the decline in positive views of both socialism and capitalism has been driven by shifts in views among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.

Republicans’ views haven’t changed. They are against socialism and they love capitalism. In theory anyway:

But for all this ongoing talk about socialism over the years, they had more or less stopped hurling the “Commie” tag at their political adversaries. After all, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and China’s entry into the capitalist marketplace it sounds weird. Whatever the erstwhile threat of Communism it certainly doesn’t make much sense in 2023.

And yet it’s suddenly become commonplace. You have GOP Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene appearing at White Nationalist conventions referring to the “Democrats, who are the Communist Party of the United States of America.” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem wrote an oped in which she said, “the idea that Georgia, of all places, could elect two communists to the United States Senate was ridiculous.”

And there’s Trump, of course, who told his ecstatic followers at a rally in Ohio in 2020:

“The choice in November is going to be very simple. There’s never been a time when there’s been such a difference. One is probably communism. I don’t know. They keep saying socialism. I think they’ve gone over that one. That one’s passed already.”

The Guardian’s Richard Seymour called this “anti-communism-without-communism” writing:

[E]verything that is perceived as threatening can be compressed into a single, treasonous, diabolical enemy: just different tentacles of the same communist kraken. Rather like a racial stereotype, “communism” figuratively represents systemic crises as something external, a demonic plot.

Trump is a baby boomer who grew up during a time when calling anyone you disagree with a Commie was common on the right so it’s not surprising he would see the utility of using it as a convenient “demonic plot.” So naturally he’s taking it to new levels during this campaign by proclaiming that we are in “the final battle” as he promises to cast out the communists, marxists and fascists” and liberate America from these “villains.” If they are predicting Armageddon the socialist devil is just a little bit too fey to be truly menacing.

But there are more practical, prosaic reasons for this escalation in Commie cat-calling. The most obvious is that older voters tend to vote Republican and they have a visceral reaction to the “C” word. They react with reflexive hostility and are the most likely to think such a preposterous claim makes sense. The constant references to the “Chinese Communist Party” as the great enemy also hits home with those people. And there is some evidence that Republicans have made some inroads with certain Hispanic and Asian immigrant groups who are deeply hostile to the communist regimes from which they emigrated.

But Trump has a special reason for hitting that note right now. He’s facing a trial in Florida and the speech he gave on the evening of his arraignment made clear who the enemy is:

“If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me. They will not hesitate to ramp up their persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attending school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates. I am the only one that can save this nation.”

He is speaking directly to potential jurors in Florida proclaiming that his indictment is the result of a communist conspiracy. According to Politico,  “Harvard professor Steven Levitsky argues, for many Americans, Trump’s anti-communist rhetoric “just sounds silly… But (for) people who are either descendants of Cuban exiles or actual Venezuelan exiles — that actually struck some chord.”

Silly isn’t the word I’d use but it will suffice. I’d expect to hear a whole lot more Commie talk before this is through.

Salon

Good evolutionary advice

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 28, 2023

“The kindest person in the room is often the smartest”

Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker advised Northwestern University graduates this month to pursue kindness. Our more primitive impulses demand we be suspicious of the unfamiliar, including people unlike ourselves. It’s an evolutionary survival instinct.

To be kind, Pritzker says, “we have to shut down that animal insinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway. Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges.”

The alternative approach taken by some of our neighbors is to embrace “weaponized cruelty” (as in Adam Serwer’s famous coinage).

“I’m here to tell you,” Pritzker continues, “that when someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty they have failed the first test of an advanced society.”

Moreover (and this is not Pritzker), what paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey theorized is that compassion carries a more an advanced survival advantage that turned primitive Man into modern Man:

Bipedalism carried with it an enormous price, where compassion was what you paid your ticket with. You simply can’t abandon somebody who’s incapacitated because the rest will abandon you next time it comes to be your turn.

As I wrote, pre-Trump, “In fact, it would seem that a movement that sneers at being your brother’s keeper in organizing human society is hardly an accomplishment, cultural, political, or evolutionary.”

Kindness, Pritzker adds, is a mark of creativity and problem-solving ability. He punctuates that observation with another.

“Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true, the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.”

“They’re at DEFCON 1”

What is it like to have to scan every room for people for whom empathy and compassion are highly selective, people who may consider you prey? George Hahn can tell you.

“Don’t get cocky”

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 28, 2023

Poison pill concerns about Moore v. Harper

We all breathed sighs of relief over Tuesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision smacking down the independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper. But as it does regularly, what comes to mind is Han Solo’s advice to young Luke Skywalker not to get cocky.

Court observer Dahlia Lithwick pointed this morning to “poison pill concerns” about the ruling from a New York Times opinion. The notion that the courts have no role in reviewing state legislatures’ rules for federal elections is not entirely dead and buried. As Solo also cautions, “We’re not out of this yet.”

Richard H. Pildes of NYU’s law school, author of “The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process,” notes the wiggle room the court majority left in the decision’s wording:

The decision merely says that “state courts do not have free rein” and that they may not “transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”

The court offers no concrete understanding nor any example of what that means. It’s clear that a majority was cobbled together among conservative and liberal justices by agreeing to decide this part of the case in the narrowest terms. Indeed, the court announced this constitutional constraint but avoided telling us even whether the North Carolina Supreme Court — in the decision the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed — had violated this vague limitation.

North Carolina’s constitution, unlike that of some other states, does not expressly ban partisan gerrymandering. But the state court interpreted general provisions in the state constitution — such as that requiring elections to be “free and fair” — to in effect ban partisan gerrymandering. Whether this decision transgresses ordinary judicial review or exemplifies it remains a mystery. Had the court resolved that question, it would have provided much-needed guidance for 2024. But the majority might well be divided on that question, with the opinion papering over that division rather than confronting it.

The public benefits, Pildes, observes, from “clear rules laid out well in advance of Election Day.” North Carolina Republicans’ rejiggering election rules year after year in search of electoral advantage leaves even election veterans such as myself scrambling to keep up. Shifting sands add to campaigns’ confusion and to the lack of voter confidence in elections about which Republicans claim to care while systematically undermining.

The Moore decision’s vague wording “has ensured that legal uncertainty on this remaining constitutional front might roil the 2024 elections — and it has opened a different, if less expansive, set of problems” for Pildes.

For illustrative purposes, let’s say in 2024 the Wisconsin state legislature passes a law establishing deadlines for requesting or returning absentee ballots, but a state court rules those deadlines unconstitutional because they contradict the state constitution’s guarantee of the right to vote. The losing party will now turn to the federal courts and argue that the state court has gone “too far” in its interpretation of the state constitution.

With Tuesday’s ruling, candidates and political parties are going to constantly test the boundaries in 2024 in the effort to gain partisan advantage. And with at least some of these challenges, like the hypothetical one above, the Supreme Court might well be called on for an answer.

I promise you that North Carolina Republicans will try. They are relentless. On the other hand, I don’t see how this opening for parties challenging unfavorable state Supreme Court rulings to the U.S. Supreme Court changes the status quo. That is the status quo.

Ron touts Florida in New Hampshire

Published by digby on June 27, 2023

Every other state is a shithole

Where woke — and women —women go to die:

At his first town-hall event in New Hampshire, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida talked on Tuesday about illegal immigration in Texas, crime in Chicago, disorder on the streets of San Francisco and the wonders of nearly every aspect of Florida — a state he mentioned about 80 times.

Roughly an hour into the event, Mr. DeSantis finally got around to saying “New Hampshire.”

His relentless focus on Florida was at times well received in a state that will play a key role in deciding who leads the Republican Party in the 2024 election against President Biden. Mr. DeSantis’s comments seemed to especially resonate when he connected his actions at home to issues of importance to New Hampshire residents, like the flood of fentanyl and other deadly drugs into their communities.

Still, his self-confident lecture about his record as Florida’s governor left the distinct impression that he believes Republican voters need what he is offering them more than he is interested in what he could learn from their questions.

“Every year I’ve been governor, we’ve decreased the assumptions in our pension fund,” he boasted, digging deep into the Florida policy weeds. “In other words, you know, whatever it was when I came in was rosier. And we always reduced down to ensure that no matter what happens, our pension system is going to be funded. I think we’re like eighth-best in the country with that.”

Even his jokes were Florida-centric, sometimes to the point of obscurity to the crowd of roughly 250 people who packed a carpeted banquet hall in Hollis, a few miles from the Massachusetts border. The audience reaction was muted when he joked about property prices rising in Naples, Fla., to make a point about Chicago residents fleeing south to his state.

After taking criticism in recent weeks for not answering questions from voters at his rallies, Mr. DeSantis has held town hall-style events in South Carolina, Texas and now New Hampshire since Thursday. Although he has rarely faced tough questions, he has seemed relatively comfortable in these unscripted moments, asking voters their names, thanking military veterans for their service and occasionally cracking jokes.

Such casual interactions are especially important in New Hampshire — the first-in-the-nation primary state whose residents are accustomed to vetting presidential candidates over and over in intimate settings.

“It is a little different here than it is in any other state,” Jason Osborne, the Republican majority leader of the New Hampshire House, who has endorsed the Florida governor for president, said in a phone interview before the event on Tuesday. “We’re so small, we’re the first, so the most candidates are going to touch the state than any others.”

Mr. DeSantis, who has a reputation for being somewhat socially awkward, is working hard to overcome a deficit of roughly 30 percentage points in the Granite State against former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner. He spent more time answering questions from voters in Hollis than he has at any event since announcing his candidacy in May.

The audience, which included many out-of-staters who traveled hours to see Mr. DeSantis, seemed to appreciate that he had showed up. Several told him they admired his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in Florida. In a veterans-heavy state, he was also thanked for his military service and received applause when he said he was the only veteran running in the Republican field.

Mr. DeSantis ducked only one question. A teenage boy invited him to condemn Mr. Trump’s efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. DeSantis declined to do so. All he would say was that he did not “enjoy seeing, you know, what happened” that day, but that he had nothing to do with it and Republicans needed to look forward, not backward, because if they dwelled on the past they would lose elections.

Abortion is supposed to be his achilles heel in New Hampshire but the people in this crowd found ways to rationalize his draconian 6 week ban:

The main ideological skepticism in the audience concerned Mr. DeSantis’s hard-line stance against abortion — a position that is popular in heavily evangelical states like Iowa but less so in more secular New Hampshire.

Like several other Republican women in attendance, Jayne Beaton, 65, of Amherst, N.H., said she came with questions about the candidate’s position on abortion, and the six-week ban he signed in Florida.

“I predict it’s going to be an issue for him,” she said. “With everything else” in his platform, she added, “I’m onboard and excited, but I’m less sure about abortion, and the six-week ban.”

[…]

When he was finally asked about Florida’s six-week abortion ban, Mr. DeSantis seemed comfortable answering the question and, unlike Mr. Trump, he made no effort to contort himself to appeal to more moderate voters. He said he believed that in America, “life is worth protecting,” and it was important to provide services to support low-income and single mothers.

Doreen Monahan, 65, of Spofford, N.H. — who asked Mr. DeSantis the question about abortion, and the burden placed on taxpayers when women who cannot get abortions bear unwanted children — said later that she had been reassured by his answer, including his mentions of beefed-up postnatal care and adoption programs.

“It’s nice that they have some options,” she said. “I have friends who waited years to adopt.”

Yes, it’s so nice they have some options — except the option of not being forced into childbirth against their will and even possibly die because Ron DeSantis and his party have decided their lives are worthless compared to a non-viable fetus. “Live free or die” is their motto with emphasis on the “die” part I guess.

Trump was in New Hampshire too. His crowd loved him:

By the way:

The Deep State missed the coup

Published by digby on June 27, 2023

Weaponization for dummies?

The Trump-hating deep state was asleep at the wheel. How weird:

A new Senate committee reportsharply criticizes the FBI and Department of Homeland Security for what it says were failures to believe the intelligence tips they were receiving in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — offering fresh examples, nearly 2½ years later, of warnings and information that went unheeded.

The report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s majority staff, titled “Planned in Plain Sight,” expands on previous findings, including reporting by The Washington Post, about red flags missed in the weeks leading up to the pro-Trump riot that delayed Joe Biden’s certification as president.

It also contains additional instances and context for what the authors describeas a failure by federal intelligence officials to believe the many warnings they received.

The 105-page report said the FBI and DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis “failed to fully and accurately assess the severity of the threat identified by that intelligence, and formally disseminate guidance to their law enforcement partners with sufficient urgency and alarm to enable those partners to prepare for the violence that ultimately occurred on January 6th.”

The document sheds new light on the many different types of warnings the FBI received — from nongovernmental organizations tracking extremism online, from the public, and from its own field offices. Days after the riot, The Post revealed the existence of a Jan. 5 report from the FBI’s Norfolk office warning of online discussion of attacking Congress. But the Senate report includes a similar, previously unknown written warning issued that same evening by the New Orleans FBI office.

That New Orleans warning noted that some participants in the planned “stop the steal” protest had decided to establish an armed, so-called Quick Reaction Force in Northern Virginia.

One person in an online discussion among militia members said “people should bring mace, flash lights, body armor, and head protection,” according to the report. “Participants were aware of the prohibition on firearms in Washington, District of Columbia, so they planned to establish an armed presence outside the city to respond to ‘calls for help.’”

That description matches actions taken by members of the Oath Keepers, a number of whom have since been found guilty of seditious conspiracy for their roles in preparing and planning for the Jan. 6 chaos.

The report by the New Orleans field office was sent to all FBI field offices, as well as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, DHS, Justice Department, National Security Agency and State Department. Still, the Senate committee criticized the FBI for what it said was a lack of urgency or alarm in its direct conversations with officials before Jan. 6, and said the written reports did not convey a sense of the overall volume of threat information agents were receiving at the time.

They blew it off. We don’t know why, maybe they just assumed they were a bunch of yahoos blowing off steam. Would they have done that if they happened to be Muslim?

But still, you would think that if they were so virulently anti-Trump that they would have rolled up this plot before they could do anything to help him stay in office, wouldn’t you? Where’s the weaponization?

It’s so unlike him

Published by digby on June 27, 2023

Rolling Stone reports:

STEPHEN MILLER, ONE of Donald Trump’s top immigration advisers, advocated using U.S. predator drones in 2018 to blow up migrant boats full of unarmed civilians, according to an upcoming book by a former administration official.

In a passage reviewed by Rolling Stone, former Trump Department of Homeland Security appointee Miles Taylor writes about an April 2018 conversation in which Miller allegedly advocated an attack on a migrant ship headed for the United States. Miller, Taylor writes, argued for the potential mass killing of civilians by suggesting they were not protected under the U.S. Constitution because they were in international waters.

He denies saying it … but of course he did.

Taylor’s book, Blowback, describes the alleged 2018 conversation in depth. The critical passage reads:

‘Admiral, the military has aerial drones, correct?’ Stephen inquired. 

‘Yes,’ Zukunft replied.

‘And some of those drones are equipped with missiles, correct?’

‘Sure,’ the commandant answered, clearly wondering where the line of questioning was going.

‘And when a boat full of migrants is in international waters, they aren’t protected by the U.S. Constitution, right?’

‘Technically, no, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at.’

‘Tell me why, then, can’t we use a Predator drone to obliterate that boat?’ 

Admiral Zukunft looked nonplussed. ‘Because, Stephen, it would be against international law.’ 

According to the book, Miller begins arguing with Zukunft:

[The] United States launched airstrikes on terrorists in disputed areas all the time, Miller said, or retaliated against pirates commandeering ships off the coast of Somalia. The Coast Guard chief calmly explained the difference. America attacked enemy forces when they were armed and posed an imminent threat. Seafaring migrants were generally unarmed civilians. They quarreled for a few minutes. Stephen wasn’t interested in the moral conflict of drone-bombing migrants. He wanted to know whether anyone could stop America from doing it.

The book continues:

‘Admiral,’ [Miller] said to the military chief nearly thirty years his senior, ‘I don’t think you understand the limitations of international law.’

The admiral says he doesn’t remember this. But let’s just say that Stephen Miller’s extreme xenophobia argues in favor of the idea that it did take place. He’s a sociopath.

The Supremes haven’t totally lost their minds.

Published by digby on June 27, 2023

Thank God they rejected that cockamamie Independent State Legislature Theory

Former President Obama said the Supreme Court rejected a “fringe” theory that threatened to “upend our democracy” in rejecting the independent state legislatures theory on Tuesday. 

The court ruled 6-3 against an effort by North Carolina Republican lawmakers to declare that courts did not have the authority to block congressional maps put forward by state legislatures. The lawmakers argued that the U.S. Constitution gave the authority to regulate federal elections in state legislatures exclusively, so courts could not strike down the map that the North Carolina legislature approved. 

But Chief Justice John Roberts disagreed, writing for the majority that the Constitution’s Elections Clause does not “insulate state legislatures from the ordinary exercise of state judicial review.” 

Obama praised the ruling and warned of the consequences if it had gone the other way in a tweet. 

“Today, the Supreme Court rejected the fringe independent state legislature theory that threatened to upend our democracy and dismantle our system of checks and balances,” he wrote, adding  “This ruling rejects the far-right theory that threatened to undermine our democracy, and makes clear that courts can continue defending voters’ rights—in North Carolina and in every state.”

The Biden administration opposed the effort to declare courts had no authority to review the maps, arguing it would “wreak havoc” on administering elections across the country. 

Roberts wrote that courts must still review legislatures’ actions within the “ordinary bounds” of judicial review.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the majority, arguing that the case should have been declared moot. 

Republicans retook control of the North Carolina Supreme Court and reversed the court’s decision throwing out the map, raising the possibility that the court could pass on ruling on the merits of the case. 

Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas’ dissent, and Justice Samuel Alito joined in part.

Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett haven’t completely lost their minds — at least when it comes to voting rights. I’m not sure why, exactly. You know they don’t believe in them. Perhaps the backlash against the Roe decision and the profound corruption has scared then just a little bit? Whatever it is, it’s welcome, even if it’s only temporary.

Somebody’s got some groveling to do

Published by digby on June 27, 2023

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Tuesday expressed some doubt that former President Donald Trump is the best GOP candidate to defeat President Joe Biden and win back the White House next year.

In an interview on CNBC, McCarthy initially said that the former president could beat Biden in November 2024.

“Yeah, he can beat Biden,” said McCarthy, who added that “Trump’s policies are better, straightforward than Biden’s policies.”

Asked if Trump can win the general election given two criminal cases in which he’s the defendant, McCarthy signaled that the former president may not be the strongest option.

“Can he win that election? Yeah, he can,” McCarthy said. “The question is, is he the strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer. But can somebody, can anybody beat Biden? Yeah, anybody can beat Biden.”

He’d better get his knee pads on. He’s going to have to start crawling. STAT.

Update — Kevin on his knees:

“As usual, the media is attempting to drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans as our committees are holding Biden’s DOJ accountable for their two-tiered levels of justice,” McCarthy said in a brief conversation with Breitbart News on Tuesday. “The only reason Biden is using his weaponized federal government to go after President Trump is because he is Biden’s strongest political opponent, as polling continues to show.”