Month: August 2023

What in the hell are we going to do about this? It represents tens of millions of fellow Americans.

A constitutional crisis in progress

Legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen argued a few weeks ago that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment means “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.”

No “legislation, criminal conviction, or other judicial action” is necessary to invoke the post-Civil War amendment. It is not a dead letter. What is required of citizens at any level of government who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution is to declare Trump ineligible when the matter of his eligibility presents itself to them.

What made the Baude-Paulsen analysis more impactful was that it came from scholars associated with the conservative Federalist Society.

Now, J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe, a respected conservative former federal appeals judge and an emeritus Harvard constitutional law professor, concur in The Atlantic:

Having thought long and deeply about the text, history, and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause for much of our professional careers, both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation. The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.

The former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again. The most pressing constitutional question facing our country at this moment, then, is whether we will abide by this clear command of the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause.

Any attempt to disqualify Trump or others associated with the plot to overturn the 2020 election will face not only the famously litigious Trump in court but also his violence-prone supporters in the streets.

This is a constitutional crisis in progress. Or it may be.

As a practical matter, the processes of adversary hearing and appeal will be invoked almost immediately upon the execution and enforcement of Section 3 by a responsible election officer—or, for that matter, upon the failure to enforce Section 3 as required. When a secretary of state or other state official charged with the responsibility of approving the placement of a candidate’s name on an official ballot either disqualifies Trump from appearing on a ballot or declares him eligible, that determination will assuredly be challenged in court by someone with the standing to do so, whether another candidate or an eligible voter in the relevant jurisdiction. Given the urgent importance of the question, such a case will inevitably land before the Supreme Court, where it will in turn test the judiciary’s ability to disentangle constitutional interpretation from political temptation. (Additionally, with or without court action, the second sentence of Section 3 contains a protection against abuse of this extraordinary power by these elections officers: Congress’s ability to remove an egregious disqualification by a supermajority of each House.)

The entire process, with all its sometimes frail but thus far essentially effective constitutional guardrails, will frame the effort to determine whether the threshold of “insurrection” or “rebellion” was reached and which officials, executive or legislative, were responsible for the January 6 insurrection and the broader efforts to reverse the election’s results.

The process that will play out over the coming year could give rise to momentary social unrest and even violence. But so could the failure to engage in this constitutionally mandated process. For our part, we would pray for neither unrest nor violence from the American people during a process of faithful application and enforcement of their Constitution.

May whatever being(s) has the power to answer such a prayer be responsive.

This is a constitutional crisis in progress. Or it will be if any official empowered to declare Trump ineligible has the spine to say so.

Luttig and Tribe observe, “As recently as last December, the former president posted on Truth Social his persistent view that the last presidential election was a ‘Massive Fraud,’ one that ‘allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.’” They ask, “How could any citizen trust that [Trump] would uphold the oath of office he would take upon his inauguration?”

A little late for that question, isn’t it? I wrote in March 2016, “Next January, if Trump raises his right hand and swears to defend the Constitution, how can his left hand go on the Bible with his fingers crossed behind his back?”

The world has since seen what anyone paying attention then already knew: Trump is an inveterate liar, cheat, and criminal devoid of morals or character. He was then and is now unfit to “hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State.” Even without Section 3.

I wish I had faith that someone in authority has strength of their own character to declare Trump ineligible outside the pages of a newspaper or magazine, but in an elections office where it counts.

Update: Missed this segment on Saturday.

Hate speech has consequences

After months of Republicans vilifying gay and transgender people, and after they pass laws in multiple states targeting them, teachers, and drag queens, guess what?

Shop owner shot, killed over rainbow flag outside clothing store near Lake Arrowhead

San Bernardino Sun:

The owner of a clothing shop in Cedar Glen was shot and killed Friday night, Aug. 18, after a person made several disparaging comments about a rainbow flag displayed outside the store, authorities said.

The suspect was found nearby by arriving deputies, who shot and killed him, San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials said.

Deputies responded to the Magpi clothing store on Hook Creek Road around 5 p.m. and found the victim, identified as Laura Ann Carleton, 66, outside the store suffering from a gunshot wound.

Carleton was pronounced dead at the scene.

Footwear News describes Carleton as “a fashion and footwear industry veteran“:

According to the Magpi website, Lauri Carleton’s career in fashion began early in her teens, working in the family business at Fred Segal Feet in Los Angeles while attending Art Center School of Design. From there, she oversaw the shoe floor at Joseph Magnin Century City. Carleton later joined Kenneth Cole. During her 15 years as an executive at the company, she worked with factories and design teams in Italy and Spain, and was often on the road for 200 days a year, according to the Magpi site.

Carleton was a beloved member of her California communities, and friends and partners mourned her death on Saturday.

Members from the Mountain Provisions Cooperative wrote on Instagram:

“Laura was a pillar in our community, an immovable force in her values for equality, love and justice. If you knew Lauri, you know she loved hard, laughed often, and nurtured and protected those who she cared about,” the post read. It went on to praise Lauri and her husband Bort for being pivotal in organizing the group’s “Free Store,” which provided free food and supplies for four months after a blizzard.

Donald Trump and his merry coupsters spend months baselessly alleging that massive fraud cost him the 2020 election and them their rightful king. He invites his overwrought subjects to a “wild” rally on Jan. 6. Some arrive with weapons, tactical and communications gear, and a plan. After Trump tells them they must “fight like hell” or “you’re not going to have a country anymore,” they storm and ransack the U.S. Capitol.

Donald Trump baselessly accuses the FBI of planting the documents he proudly declared his. A man who was present at the Capitol riot attempts to breach a Cincinnati FBI field office the next day and is shot and killed after a standoff with police.

Sometimes the effect is more delayed. Sometimes individual assaults and killings receive no press.

The Department of Homeland Security in May warned that threats of violence against the LGBTQIA+ community were on the rise and intensifying. saying, “These issues include actions linked to drag-themed events, gender-affirming care, and LGBTQIA+ curricula in schools.”

A report in June from the Anti-Defamation League cited “at least 356 anti-LGBTQ+ extremist and non-extremist incidents” in 46 states between June 2022 and April 2023.

“From demonstrations aiming to intimidate organizers and attendees at drag shows, to bomb threats against hospitals that offer health care for LGBTQ+ people to a mass shooting that took the lives of five people in Colorado, incidents of anti-LGBTQ+ hate and extremism are an important part of a larger story about the heightened threats facing the LGBTQ+ community in the United States today.”

The Human Rights Campaign reported last November at least “32 transgender and gender-nonconforming people” killed in the U.S. in 2022. Based on what little press there is about Carleton, she was neither, but an advocate.

Nobody is fooled by thinly disguised Trump threats and intimidation aimed at his perceived enemies. Nor by his social media tirades rendered in all-caps that he believes as immaturely as Bart Simpson provide him plausible deniability when followers act on them. His words have consequences. He bears responsibility, if not in this life perhaps in the next.

Nobody is fooled — I’m looking at you, Ron DeSantis, and at GOP state legislators — that hate speech and discriminatory legislation directed at LGBTQ+ Americans does not carry deadly consequences for them or, in Carleton’s case, for their allies.

Nobody is fooled by the smirking, social media celebrities who make their dirty livings peddling this shit.

You, all of you, know who you are.

America First is getting downright weird.

It’s the “stop grooming our children” sign next to the giant penis that really sells it…

Ron Hedlund displayed a massive penis sign with the words, “Biden Sucks” written across it at a youth baseball game at RF&P Park in Henrico County, Virginia. In a video captured at the event, Hedlund, who is listed as a Virginia GOP Central Committee Representative defended his sign after a community member said it was inappropriate because there were children present.

On social media, one user wrote that police came and made Hedlund put away his massive penis sign displayed directly across from children playing baseball at the park. However, Hedlund then reportedly displayed “fuck Biden” signs and the police refused to come back out.

Ron Hedlund posted video to YouTube describing the sign as 16 feet long and a caricature and linked it to his personal protests against school boards offering sex education and affirming transgender students. Hedlund said he only had “Fuck Biden” signs on Thursday at the park, but because people complained he would be deploying his penis sign on Friday during another youth baseball game. 

Ron Hedlund is a self described supporter of Donald Trump after initially supporting Ted Cruz in the 2016 primary. 

Waiting for a man in a red fleece vest

Ed Kilgore on the yearning for Youngkin:

One of the best signs that Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential candidacy is circling the drain is the renewed enthusiasm some Republicans have for a late entry in the 2024 race who can save them from the Donald Trump and his unsatisfying rivals. This recent valentine to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin from the New York Post’s Miranda Devine is a good example of the longing for Mr. Right on the right:

The genial former private equity chief executive is living proof that “conservative common sense policies work,” in a state that he sees as a microcosm of America. …

A 6-foot-7 gentle giant with a perpetual smile, he already looks presidential, but says he is bemused by growing pressure to enter the presidential race, as Ron DeSantis falters and Trump is ensnared in Machiavellian Democratic lawfare. …

While not explicitly ruling out a late presidential entry, he says he is “laser-focused” on Virginia’s pivotal legislative election in November.

You get the sense that Devine still imagines that once Youngkin has saved his state for good this fall, he can turn his magnificent visage and towering figure toward the needs of his nation. It’s probably not coincidental that Devine’s boss is News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch, who in July was reported to have been shifting his affections to Youngkin from the disappointing DeSantis. Indeed, as Media Matters noted at about the same time, Fox News had taken up the banner of promoting Youngkin as a dark horse candidate for president:

Youngkin has been featured in at least 6 live interviews on Fox in the past month — one each on Fox & Friends, Fox & Friends Weekend, America’s Newsroom, and Fox News Tonight, and twice on Hannity.

Fox & Friends co-hosts Kayleigh McEnany and Steve Doocy pushed Youngkin to run in 2024, with Doocy noting that “powerful Republican donors … are encouraging you to jump into the race …”

The narrative seems to be emerging on Fox News that if Youngkin can flip control of the Virginia Senate to his party in November, he could roll right into a late presidential bid on the wings of this fresh demonstration of his blue state viability.

But how feasible is that sort of timetable? Not very.

Sure, in the years before the universal adoption of primaries and state party caucuses to choose presidential nominees in the early 1970s, late entries able to command support from favorite-son candidates and local party leaders could and sometimes did win. As late as 1968, Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination without entering a single primary, and the same year Ronald Reagan announced a credible (if not successful) presidential bid on the very eve of the GOP convention. In 1952 Democrats drafted Adlai Stevenson (who had never announced his candidacy) at their convention, and eight years later nearly did it again (John F. Kennedy held off a Stevenson effort that only emerged at the convention).

But in recent decades, successful candidacies have never been last-minute affairs, and they were invariably launched in time to compete in the early primaries and caucuses, as NPR reported in October of 2015 when Joe Biden was considering (and ultimately rejected) a late entry:

[F]rom 1996 onward the announcements came earlier. Almost all eventual nominees for both parties made official starts in the spring and early summer, between 500 and 650 days before that first Tuesday in November.

He goes on to note some recent attempts such as the late calls to draft Jeb! in 2012 and the Bloomberg entry in 2016 and asks:

Could electability-minded Republicans panic enough about Trump’s 2024 viability to need a sudden savior like Youngkin right before voters start voting early next year?

Anything’s possible, but the entire reason Murdoch and Devine and others are yearning for Youngkin is that Trump is crushing the current Republican field. Yes, he’s in ever-increasing legal peril, and sure, Trump could say or do anything at any moment. But at this point, the odds are much higher that Trump will have effectively nailed down the GOP nomination by late this fall than that an aggrieved Republican majority will be searching for an alternative having rejected DeSantis, Scott, Pence, Haley, Ramaswamy, Christie, Hutchinson, Suarez, and Hurd. Politicians tend to look for late-entry saviors precisely because they’ve already lost. If you hear more and more cries for Glenn Youngkin as the weeks go by, you can probably bet they are being voiced by losers as well.

The idea that a stiff like Youngkin is the ultimate Trump-slayer makes me laugh. And it shows just how futile these efforts to end the Trump nightmare really are. The GOP doesn’t have a great bench and they are shooting their entire wad on this quixotic attempt to dethrone the man they’ve all been protecting and enabling for the past 6 years. Unless he drops dead on Trump Force One sometime in the next year it’s done.

The Nation reported this week:

James O’Keefe, the founder and until this past February CEO of the right-wing nonprofit Project Veritas, is currently under investigation by the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office.

While the exact nature of the investigation is not yet public, the timing would suggest that it relates to O’Keefe’s alleged financial improprieties during his tenure as the group’s chairman and CEO. Back in February, O’Keefe was accused of spending “an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries” by the conservative nonprofit’s own board of directors, amid their very public feud over the management and future of Veritas. Westchester DA Miriam Rocah’s probe follows a raft of civil lawsuits, criminal investigations, and six-figure court losses that have trailed the group under O’Keefe’s leadership—including a still-active federal investigation into the theft of property belonging to President Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden.

“We don’t talk about how we start our investigations,” the Westchester County DA’s director of public affairs, Jin Whang, said when reached by phone. “But if you want confirmation that we were and are, then yes. We can confirm that.”

Attorneys for Project Veritas also filed a civil complaint against O’Keefe in federal court this past May, accusing the ostensible investigative reporting outfit’s original hidden-camera sting artist of breaching his contract and fiduciary duties to the group, among other counts. Despite that pending litigation, made public alongside a detailed new timeline reiterating the board’s own version of its disputes and grievances with O’Keefe, Veritas says that the organization did not prompt the Westchester DA’s investigation into its former leader via a formal criminal referral.

“Project Veritas did not initiate any potential investigation the Westchester DA’s office may be conducting with respect to James O’Keefe,” Hannah Giles, the newly appointed CEO of Project Veritas, responded via e-mail. “However, PV cooperates with the authorities as required by law.”

Giles’s assumption of leadership at Veritas reflects an attempt at continuity for the group, which was launched over a decade ago following the tactical successes of the infamous hidden camera stings against the liberal community-organizing group ACORN by her and O’Keefe. By April 2010, O’Keefe and Giles’s early one-off collaboration would result in the complete dissolution of ACORN’s network of local advocacy groups, whose “get out the vote” efforts had helped to enfranchise millions of low-income and minority voters in underserved communities.

The undercover videos, in which O’Keefe and Giles claimed to be a pimp and a prostitute seeking illicit financial advice from ACORN, ultimately crumbled under scrutiny from California’s attorney general and led to a six-figure settlement paid out to a former ACORN employee. But the viral heat generated by their stings within conservative media nevertheless skyrocketed both of them to a kind of partisan stardom, creating the conditions that allowed O’Keefe to incorporate Project Veritas as a tax-deductible 501(c)3 charity.

In the years since, O’Keefe has made a name for himself by attempting to unearth further supposed malfeasance by liberal activists, politicians, and institutions—as well as by his perceived foes in the establishment media and Big Tech. Multiple people caught up in O’Keefe’s investigations have lost their livelihoods in the frequently incoherent and often inaccurate publicity maelstroms that have followed the typical Project Veritas exposé: nonprofit workers, Obamacare navigators, NPR executives, public school teachers, and news media employees among them.

In October 2021, a federal judge finally stated the obvious about O’Keefe’s latter day Nixonian dirty tricksters, declaring that it was acceptable for litigants to refer to Project Veritas in open court as a “political spying operation.”

Though O’Keefe himself once betrayed his ambitions to make Veritas “the next great intelligence agency,” Veritas’s supposed charitable mission, as detailed annually in its nonprofit filings to the IRS, has consistently been to “investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions.” Better late than never: The group has finally uncovered all the above at the top of its own organization.

Following O’Keefe’s attempt to unilaterally fire Veritas Chief Financial Officer Tom O’Hara, in contravention of the 501(c)3’s bylaws, and O’Keefe’s own surprise resignation this past February, the Veritas board published a preliminary tally of its former leader’s financial misdeeds.

Pending a “third party investigative audit,” the board accused O’Keefe of spending “$14,000 on a charter flight to meet someone to fix his boat under the guise of meeting with a donor,” blowing over $150,000 on high-end limo services, and taking thousands of dollars more for personal DJ equipment. O’Keefe, they said, also requisitioned $60,000 for “dance events,” including the production of a semi-autobiographical pop music celebration of his life in muckraking: the Project Veritas Experience. Such self-indulgent expenditures would be what’s known within the Internal Revenue Code for tax-exempt 501(c)3s as “inurement.”

It’s worth noting that, by the end of the Trump years, Veritas’s cash flow offered ample opportunity for this kind of personal dipping: The group brought in over $22 million in 2020, an exponential swelling in revenue compared to the $396,450 in donations reported in its first year as a nonprofit. And O’Keefe was very much along for the ride, with his reported salary, $56,000 in 2012, growing ultimately to $430,920 by the time of his September 2022 at-will employment agreement.

In private, however, past and present Veritas executives have groused to us for much longer about O’Keefe’s dubiously charitable expenditures outside that reported compensation, including the construction of a recording studio for his high school music buddy Anthony Dini and tens of thousands of dollars in “investigating reporting” and “consulting” fees paid to O’Keefe’s pass-thru NJ S-corp, Veritas Inc.

There’s more, a lot more. James O’Keefe is Roger Stone without the survival instinct. It looks like he might be in very serious trouble and could even see the inside of a jail cell. Even better, Project Veritas itself might be over and done with … finally:

A mass ouster of employees from right-wing media group Project Veritas this week has left the company’s future in question, with a threadbare staff and serious fundraising concerns, say newly laid-off employees…

But employees who remained at Project Veritas said the company’s post-O’Keefe era wasn’t so great either. Staffers who were terminated this week complained that Project Veritas’ new CEO, Hannah Giles, struggled to fundraise and to articulate a clear mission for the company.

“The story of the James O’Keefe debacle was coherent,” one long-time Project Veritas employee, who was laid off Thursday, told The Daily Beast. “It was ‘power corrupts.’ It was a CEO who was drunk on power and loses control.”

But during Giles’ short tenure as CEO, “I don’t know what the fuck happened here,” the former staffer said.

Hannah Giles is as awful as O’Keefe so it’s no surprise that she wasn’t capable of handling the organization. They are all terrible people. Those who were laid off should take a good hard look at themselves and try to find redemption.

How would you know what’s in the backpack? Does this mean anyone with a backpack is shot on sight? Or is it that if the border patrol seizes someone with a backpack and finds fentanyl that they summarily execute them?

This is psycho talk and its common in this Republican primary campaign. The people cheer and shout with unbridled glee at the notion of killing immigrants and invading Mexico.

Former President Donald Trump, who has previously called for building a wall along the southern border and giving drug dealers the death penalty, has also proposed creating a naval blockade of Mexico to prevent drugs like illicit fentanyl from entering the U.S. His leading opponent in the 2024 GOP nomination race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, promised last week to use “deadly force” against anyone caught smuggling drugs across the border.

On Capitol Hill, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and John Kennedy (R., La.) have both voiced support for military operations in Mexico. Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio) said in a recent interview on NBC that cartels should be considered terrorist organizations, meriting a military response. And Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) and Mike Waltz (R., Fla.) have sponsored a bill that would formally declare war on the cartels—meaning the military would be authorized to drop bombs on cartel targets.

 In an NBC poll taken in late June, sending troops to the border to stop drugs was the single best-liked of 11 GOP proposals tested with Republican primary voters.

There’s just one little problem:

Doris Meissner, who served as the top immigration official under the Clinton administration, said the Republican proposals are problematic because deploying the U.S. military on domestic soil to perform law-enforcement functions is illegal, and performing military operations in Mexico without the explicit cooperation of the Mexican government would be an act of war against a sovereign country.

I’m pretty sure that if the Republicans win back the White House we are going to see the limits of their alleged pacifism. It’s unnatural for them. They are positively yearning for a war.

A scourge on democracy

Seems as if our northern neighbors are better prepared. We’re still hoping for the best in November 2024.

Global News:

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says Canada has been considering a “game plan” for how it would respond if the United States takes a far-right, authoritarian shift after next year’s presidential elections.

“We are certainly working on scenarios,” Joly said in French during an interview with a Montreal radio station Wednesday.

Joly added that Ottawa’s close political and economic ties to the U.S. means that “we must certainly prepare several scenarios.”

She suggested Canada has a game plan in mind but wouldn’t get into details.

I wouldn’t. But it’s nice to know someone in charge is thinking ahead. Too bad it’s not happening south of the 49th parallel. Just warning speeches from scholars but no preparations.

The U.S. embassy in Ottawa declined comment.

“What would have been extremely far-fetched scenarios maybe 10 years ago, today are not impossible anymore,” Thomas Juneau, a national security professor at the University of Ottawa, said in an understatement.

NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson said it’s only logical that Ottawa plan for an aggressive Washington. She said Canada would benefit from stronger ties with other allies, even if it ends up remaining on good terms with the U.S.

“Donald Trump is a scourge on democracy across the world,” she said. “Frankly, Canada better have a plan for a decline in American democracy.”

Trump 2024: A Scourge on Democracy

Fitting campaign slogan. If only it fit on a ball cap.

Joe Biden has hosted two Summit for Democracy meetings with leaders from other nations. Maybe he should be meeting with Democratic governors.