Plan to survive the worst
SCOTUS is down to the wire for this session (Politico):
As the Supreme Court rushes to deliver the final decisions of its current term, the justices face a pile-up of cases that are sure to shape the presidential campaign — and could upend the legal landscape in areas from abortion to air pollution to free speech on the internet.
The court is scheduled to issue opinions Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. By far the biggest pending decision is Donald Trump’s bid to be declared immune from federal criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Other cases still left on the court’s docket could curtail access to emergency abortions, shrink the power of federal agencies and boost conservative voices on social media.
I’m passed believing that common sense will prevail. Foreign leaders are worried too, but not so much about SCOTUS:
Days before Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, a conservative foreign affairs analyst told me to ignore the president-elect’s tweets. They won’t represent the incoming president’s foreign policy, he insisted, dismissing my astonishment in an exchange that went viral.
That was then. This is now:
But foreign officials are now intimately familiar with the whole taking Trump “seriously versus literally” debate, and they’re preparing for the worst-case scenario. That’s because nearly a decade after he broke onto the political scene, they see a Trump more angry than before, more bent on retribution, more surrounded by sycophants, and less encumbered by traditions or political considerations that may once have held him back.
If anything, one foreign diplomat said, it’s best to expect for Trump’s words to quickly lead to drastic policy changes.
“Rhetoric has real world implications,” the diplomat said, having been granted anonymity, like others, to be candid. “It moves the Overton window of what is acceptable to propose. Once it is said, it becomes a possibility. Then people support that possibility and it becomes a demand on the politicians.”
Just not when it comes to voting rights or single-payer health care.
“I’m not a determinist when it comes to Trump. His policy is totally dependent on who he surrounds himself with and the last adviser he talks to,” said one former Trump administration official who hopes to work under him again.
These assurances do not comfort America’s closest friends, who have often been the targets of Trump’s threats.
Plus, Project 2025 means to control with whom Trump surrounds himself.
Get busy.
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