Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted President-elect Donald J. Trump on charges of seeking to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early Tuesday morning that he believed the evidence was sufficient to convict Mr. Trump in a trial if his success in the 2024 election had not made it impossible for the prosecution to continue.
“The department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind,” Mr. Smith wrote.
He continued: “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”
The Justice Department delivered the 137-page volume — representing half of Mr. Smith’s overall final report, with the volume about the classified documents case still confidential — to Congress just after midnight Tuesday morning.
The report, obtained by The New York Times, amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a president-elect, capping a momentous legal saga that saw the man now poised to regain the powers of the nation’s highest office charged with crimes that struck at the heart of American democracy. And although Mr. Smith resigned as special counsel late last week, his recounting of the case also served as a reminder of the vast array of evidence and detailed accounting of Mr. Trump’s actions that he had marshaled.
I read it. (Being on the West Coast made it easier) It’s what we know but with all the legal analysis that led them to conclude that Trump had committed crimes — even after the Supremes dropped their ridiculous immunity bomb.
It’s pretty clear from the report, although he doesn’t say it, that he believes the Supreme Court decision was an abomination, not least because it left so many loose ends that it would have taken years to unravel (which I assume was a feature not a bug.) I’d guess that was all for the purpose of protecting Dear Leader had he lost the election. They were never going to let him be tried. I think they would have dragged it out until he was in his grave if need be.
I have not read all the footnotes where I assume any juicy tidbits are. I’ll try to take a closer look later but I would guess that Emptywheel is already on it anyway. Just reading the summary recounting once again what a lying, corrupt cretin he is is overwhelmingly depressing. More people voted for this criminal pig than didn’t because the price of eggs was too high and a bunch of others stayed home because they just didn’t give a shit.
Here we go. It looks like Trump and the boys have found an excellent way to get those tax cuts for the wealthy:
House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed to reporters Monday there’s “been some discussion” of tying California wildfire aid to a debt limit increase, after GOP members raised the issue with Donald Trump in several meetings at the President-elect’s Florida resort this weekend.
The notion that Congress could make the release of disaster relief dollars conditional upon also agreeing to raise the debt ceiling is already facing pushback from some Democrats.
But many California Republicans, including Rep. Doug LaMalfa, said in a brief interview Monday they may have no choice but to pursue that option given the potential urgency around addressing the Los Angles fires, paired with the reality that the nation could default on its borrowing authority in a matter of months.
Linking the two issues together could bring a larger coalition of support to the table from both sides of the aisle and allow Johnson (R-La.) to deliver Trump a debt ceiling increase sooner rather than later.
It looks like all those California Republicans who went to Mar a Lago to kiss the ring over the weekend while their state burned made a deal. Gosh, I sure hope Dear Leader gave them an excellent treat for that. Maybe one of those signed Bibles.
One of the unwritten rules of American politics is that it’s OK to sneer at and smear our big cities and the people who live in them, while it’s an outrageous act of disrespect to suggest that there’s anything wrong with the Heartland. And many people believe the smears; visitors to New York are often shocked to find that one of the safest places in America isn’t the hellscape they were told to expect.
These delusions of dystopia are sometimes funny, but they can have real consequences. As you read this, much of America’s second-largest city is an actual hellscape. But many politicians, from the president-elect on down, are showing zero sympathy, insisting that California — which in its own way gets trash-talked as much as New York —somehow brought this disaster on itself by being too liberal, too woke, or something. And this lack of sympathy may translate into refusal to provide adequate disaster aid.
Somehow I doubt that Florida will get the same treatment when (not if) it has its next big natural disaster. (The Biden administration responded with complete, unconditional support to regions hit by Hurricane Helene and other storms, although that hasn’t stopped Republican politicians, like Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee, from lying and claiming that aid was delayed.)
At a fundamental level the case for helping California get through this is moral: Americans should help Americans in their hour of need. But this also seems like a good time to remind people just how much the Golden State contributes to American greatness.
Before I get there: Yes, California has problems, some of them big. There are pockets of social disorder, although the fact that so many luxury homes are burning tells us that many people who could live anywhere find greater Los Angeles a highly desirable place to be. More important, California suffers terribly from NIMBYism, which has led to grossly inadequate home construction, crippling housing costs and a lot of homelessness.
But California is nonetheless an economic and technological powerhouse; without it America would be a lot poorer and weaker than it is.
Most narrowly, at a time when Donald Trump is making nonsensical claims that America is subsidizing Canada via our bilateral trade deficit, California is literally subsidizing the rest of the United States, red states in particular, through the federal budget.
The Rockefeller Institute regularly calculates states’ balance of payments — the difference between the amount the federal government spends in a state and the amount the state pays in federal taxes. Here’s what per capita balances looked like in 2022, the most recent year available (blue means a state receives more than it gives, orange the reverse):
California paid in a lot more than it got back — $83 billion in total. So did Washington state and much of the Northeast. Most red states were in the reverse position, getting much more from DC than they paid in return. And yes, it’s ironic that states that are so dependent on transfers from other states — if West Virginia were a country, it would in effect be receiving foreign aid equal to more than 20 percent of its GDP — vote overwhelmingly for politicians trying to eviscerate the programs they depend on. […]
High productivity in California (and New York, also included) plays a significant role in making America richer; the nation excluding these powerhouses would have about 6 percent lower GDP per capita.
California makes an especially large contribution to U.S. technological dominance. As I noted a month ago, 8 of America’s top 9 technology companies — all of them if you count pre-Cybertruck Tesla — are based either in Silicon Valley or in Seattle. And while Hollywood doesn’t dominate films and TV the way it once did, Los Angeles still plays a major role in America’s cultural influence (and still generates a lot of income.)
As Krugman says, no state should have to earn empathy and support from the rest of the country in a time of great need:
As it happens, however, California — a major driver of U.S. prosperity and power — definitely has earned the right to receive help during a crisis.
Unfortunately, it looks all too possible that essential aid will be held up or come with onerous strings attached. If so, shame on everyone responsible.
Yeah well, they’re shameless so that means nothing.
There’s been a lot of loose talk since the election about California (and possibly the whole west coast) seceding from the union. It’s just talk, I know. But I have to say that as I listen to right wing politicians demean us and treat us like a colony or a vassal state, it sure feels as if America has seceded from us.
I have long said that shamelessness is the GOP’s superpower. They simply no longer care about honesty and integrity so their supporters no longer care about hypocrisy or accountability.
The New York Times published an analysis noting that a rap sheet “was once a pretty-much-guaranteed disqualifier for the presidency,” which was true. In the not-too-distant past, there was a spirited public discussion about whether a divorced candidate could prevail in a national election; the idea that voters would elect a criminal was too ridiculous to even contemplate.
Indeed, in the wake of Friday’s sentencing, it was hard not to think of something former Ambassador Nikki Haley told NBC News last February, at the height of the fight for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
“I know the American people are not going to vote for a convicted criminal,” the South Carolinian said. There was simply “no way” this could happen, Haley added.
The assessment might’ve seemed compelling at the time, but GOP primary and caucus voters rallied behind Trump — seemingly indifferent to his laundry list of scandals, controversies, civil disputes and criminal indictments — and just under half of the electorate endorsed the party’s nominee soon after.
When you consider the rogues gallery he’s nominated for his cabinet and ambassadorships, which includes other convicted felons, it’s not just about Trump anymore:
A few days before the president-elect’s sentencing, former Rep. Matt Gaetz told The Tampa Bay Times that he’s “starting to think about” running for governor in 2026, which followed weeks of related comments about his electoral ambitions. At face value, that seemed patently absurd given the devastating recent findings of the House Ethics Committee, which accused the Florida Republican of “regularly” paying women for sex during his tenure on Capitol Hill, using or possessing illegal drugs, accepting improper gifts, and even helping a woman he was having sex with obtain an expedited passport. (Gaetz has long denied any wrongdoing and was never charged.)
But a wide variety of Florida Republicans and prominent MAGA voices shrugged off the findings and said Gaetz might still be a viable GOP candidate for statewide office in the Sunshine State.
Then there’s Hegseth, a man with an obvious drinking problem who has been accused of rape, (and defends war crimes) who appears to be on the cusp of becoming the Secretary of Defense.
Character and criminality clearly do not care anymore. Benen writes:
It is, however, time to reassess what constitutes “career-ending” developments as the Republican Party enters its post-scandal phase. Jonathan Bernstein published a smart piece on this a couple of weeks ago:
… I do not believe that Republicans or conservatives are any more prone to [scandals] than Democrats. What has changed, however, is the incentive structure. Once upon a time both parties were equally likely to rid themselves of bad actors; now Republicans are far more likely to tolerate, and in some cases even celebrate, behavior they once would have shunned.
[…]
…[I]t’s inconceivable that Democrats would consider a presidential candidate with Trump’s background, a gubernatorial candidate with Gaetz’s record, or a defense secretary nominee burdened by the kind of controversies surrounding Hegseth. But in 2025, as the GOP becomes a post-scandal party, the informal partisan rules that define our politics have changed.
I think it’s worse than that. Democrats are subject to massive pseudo-scandals (But Her Emails!) while Republicans are totally immune even from adjudicated criminality. Almost half of American voters have decided to cast off morality and principles, there’s just no other way to look at it.
Not just yet. But the politics of it aren’t very potent
Jonathan Chait takes a look (gift link)at the Democratic strategy which held that if only the party embraced economic populism, the voters would race back into the fold. This idea is still being pushed hard by the likes of James Carville and others who insist that the reason the Dems lost was a lack of attention to the kitchen table issues that Americans care about.
Chait specifically takes on the idea that it was the neoliberalism of the “uniparty” that caused the working class to abandon the Democratic party showing that the Biden administration took that critique seriously by initiating the most populist program since FDR. The progressive wing was passive during the Biden years and for good reason. He passed the kind of legislation they’d agitated for for years.
Unfortunately, that didn’t work out as well politically as we thought it would:
In reality, Biden presided over the most unpopular Democratic presidency since Jimmy Carter’s. In November, working-class voters of all races, the very constituency that Biden’s anti-neoliberal turn was supposed to court, deserted the party. Perhaps hoping for Roosevelt-size majorities was a bit ambitious, but Biden’s sweeping, historic changes ought to have had at least some positive directional impact for the party. Unless, that is, the post-neoliberal theory of politics was wrong all along.
He acknowledges many of the defenses of economic populism in the wake of the defeat and they’re worth looking at as well. They all have some merit, particularly those arguments that the results of Biden’s sweeping policies haven’t taken effect yet so people really had no idea what they would mean to them. Obviously, Biden and the Democrats believed that a second term would see those results and the public would appreciate their accomplishments. However, as he notes, some of them have come online and even if people knew they were a result of Biden’s policies, they just didn’t care. They voted for Trump anyway.
Then there was the problem of inflation which Chait blames on left economic dogmatic rigidity assuming that it wouldn’t be a big deal. (I would have argued that full employment should have been a salve to that problem too, but nobody cares about good high paying jobs when the price of eggs is high, apparently. Live and learn.)
He takes on the idea that it was Biden’s age and the unwillingness or inability of the administration to use the bully pulpit to make its case. He says it was not dispositive but I disagree with Chait here. Biden’s age was almost certainly a huge factor in his unpopularity. I heard it from everyone, people who aren’t engaged in politics and those who follow it as closely as we do. People were incredibly uncomfortable with a geriatric leader and I suspect it was the single most potent reason for his unpopularity.
Harris, of course, wasn’t old. But she was a Black woman who had never been particularly popular with the public and that was if people knew her at all. And she was closely associated with what people believed was a massive failure of the Biden administration.
These were hugely important factors in my opinion. In our fame and celebrity obsessed culture, which is overwhelmingly influenced by propaganda and disinformation, image and narrative are more important than ever. People just didn’t like Biden and Harris much and they inexplicably saw Trump as someone who knew what he was doing.
And I am convinced that the “vibes”narrative hurt Biden immeasurably since the mainstream media absolutely refused to accurately describe economic conditions, hooked as they were on the idea that everyone was suffering. It became a negative feedback loop.
Chait’s take against the anti-neoliberalism is well taken and deserves to be taken seriously. He’s Chait, and therefore annoying, but he’s not wrong. But I shudder to think about his follow up that lays out what he thinks the real reason is that working class Americans abandoned the Democrats and what to do about it. Let’s just say I’m fairly sure he’ll advise Democrats to abandon their values and beliefs about equality, tolerance, pluralism and freedom to accommodate the ignorant paranoia of people who are brainwashed by right wing propaganda.
That won’t work either, I’m afraid. But that’s the way the wind is blowing.
By the way, this is all about the politics. On the merits, economic populism of the sort Biden did was absolutely the right thing to do on the merits. The question is whether it’s enough to win elections and I think that this last election gives us some evidence that it isn’t, at least in this current political environment.
Here is the idea that came to me only as I was saying it, at the end of the discussion with John Heilemann.
Heilemann asked me, What is to be done on policy? And I told him I didn’t know.
And then I said something like: The hard truth is, maybe that’s not what will make a difference for the Democrats.
Maybe the only thing that matters is who presents the policies and ideas. It’s the candidate, rather than exactly what that candidate promises to do.
We didn’t have time to discuss it further at that moment, but here’s what I’ve been thinking since then:
Let’s look back on presidential elections over the past century. Here are the Democrats who became president largely because of their personal magic in the moment. Their personal stories, their bearing, their contrast with the opposing candidate—all of this as opposed to details of their policy platforms.
FDR in 1932—and then 1936, 1940, and 1944. He won in the first place because of the Great Depression, but also because of his jauntiness, his smile, his speeches, his magnetism, in contrast to the honorable but beleaguered Herbert Hoover. As political historians know, FDR ran in 1932 on a platform almost the complete opposite of the New Deal programs he enacted in office. It was the person, more than the policies.
JFK in 1960. The youngest-ever elected president, dashing and impossibly glamorous, after the heroic but aging Dwight Eisenhower, and against Richard Nixon.
Jimmy Carter in 1976. As argued above, he was the country-music-plus-rock-music, born- again Christian, rural South, Martin Luther King Sr-endorsed version of the excitement of JFK.
Bill Clinton in 1992. Yes, it was “the economy, stupid.” But mainly it was a young, energetic, rhetorically gifted, culturally hip new candidate who would look people straight in the eyes and make them feel as if they were the only person who mattered at that moment.
Barack Obama in 2008. See all of the examples above.
By contrast, here are three examples of Democrats who won mainly on “policy” or reasons other than personal magnetism: Harry Truman in 1948, with his “give ‘em hell” campaign. Lyndon Johnson in 1964, thanks to Barry Goldwater and in the wake of JFK’s death. Joe Biden in 2020, thanks to a party united in opposition to Donald Trump.
I think those three—Truman, Johnson, Biden—are exceptions illustrating the rule. Mostly Democrats have won only when their policy ideas, which of course are crucial, are embodied by a candidate who captures lightning at that time.
“Right policy” is necessary but not sufficient. Right person, right vibe, right time—that is how Democrats have mainly won. They had been lucky that the arcs of history and of personal ambition served up, at the appropriate times, FDR, JFK, Carter, Clinton, and Obama, notwithstanding the flaws and limits of each.
I realize that making this point—you need to find a great candidate—is similar to saying “buy low, sell high.” But it’s one more thing that Jimmy Carter’s passing has made me think about. And I’ll try to explore it and other steps in installments to come.
I’ve thought this for quite a while and I would say that it’s never been more important than it is now when it seems that most of politics is conveyed to the masses through memes, symbols and social media posts. I have wracked my brain to see who might fit the bill and I just don’t know. Maybe it’s someone who’s not on the radar just yet.
“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president,” the Republican said during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. If I win, when I’m president-elect and what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get them together.”
“I know Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship and they respect your president, O.K., they respect me, they don’t respect Biden.”
At a CNN town hall in May 2023, Trump said: “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”
We knew it was bullshit and his voters didn’t care. They’re fine with whatever Russia wants to do because he’s a strong white Christian man who makes them swoon. In any case, Trump will just say he actually did it and his followers will believe it so whatever.
Back here on planet Earth:
Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine/Russia on timetable for ending war: Let's set it at 100 days and move all the way back and figure a way we can do this in the near term to make sure that the solution is solid, it's sustainable, and that this war ends pic.twitter.com/GaAF6suOfC
I live in Santa Monica, California and as you can imagine, the last few days have been traumatic. We are lucky to live a couple of miles from the fire zone and are not currently in any danger. But I know many people who were evacuated and some are still waiting to go back to their homes because the danger is still acute. Everyone I know knows someone whose house has burned; one of my closest friends lost everything and literally escaped with just the clothes on his back. We’re all still on alert here waiting to see if the winds pick up as predicted next week, praying that the worst is behind us.
All natural disasters are frightening. I’ve been through a few earthquakes and one big hurricane. But I have to say that watching a firestorm threaten America’s second largest city right on my own doorstep is a particularly terrifying experience. These are the scenes we saw on every local television station in Los Angeles for the first 24 hours:
A friend of mine texted me asking what it was like to be in the middle of all this asking, “is it like 9/11?” I wrote that nothing can really compare to the shock of watching those two skyscrapers come down in the middle of America’s premiere city but I don’t think it’s entirely dissimilar. The difference is that the perpetrator of this particular horror isn’t a foreign terrorist — it’s us.
The existential threat of climate change has become very, very real — a slow-rolling “War of the Worlds,” relentless and seemingly unstoppable. We know what to do, but we just won’t do it and the consequences have arrived. Yes, these fires will eventually be tamed and people will pick up their lives and carry on just as New Yorkers did after the attacks. But this isn’t going to end with that. These extreme weather events are happening with increasing intensity and frequency not just here but all over the planet and anyone who pretends that this is normal is either fooling themselves or is lying to everyone else.
And when you’re sitting in front of your TV waiting to find out if you have to run for your life, once again realizing that we have just empowered an ignorant, mendacious cretin who’s planning to not just dismantle every attempt to mitigate the damage but actually exacerbate the threat, you just dissolve into despair — and anger. How can we just let this happen?
Californians are used to being bashed by Republican politicians and some of their supporters. It’s always popular to mock us and use us as the poster children for everything that’s wrong with America. I don’t think most of us really care much about that which is probably one reason they’re so frustrated with us. We know that despite our problems, as any place that has nearly 40 million people in it would have, it’s really pretty great and those who don’t care for us are welcome to their opinion.
But I confess that I am shocked at the monumental lack of grace, empathy and compassion coming from the right as this horrific emergency unfolded. I know that it’s human nature to point fingers and there are no doubt many mistakes that we will find as the city recovers. It is also natural in such fast moving emergencies that wrong information will be disseminated even by officials you rely on. (At one point an evacuation notice went out to all of LA County by mistake!) But no disaster operates perfectly and a thorough after-action investigation, reforms, accountability etc are all to be expected. If heads have to roll then they will, I’m sure. But the right wing media, influencers and Republican politicians have been stunningly callous about this ghastly event, even for them.
It’s way beyond the usual social media trolling, although that’s been relentless and cruel. And even the sexist and racist “DEI” catcalling, as my colleague Amanda Marcotte wrote about, isn’t the worst of it. It’s the misinformation and climate denialism that’s the most chilling. The consequences of this intentional crusade to mislead the public on this subject are going to have repercussions far beyond this one firestorm.
President Trump has said that we had no water because Gov. Newsom refuses to “turn on the water”, that the hydrants were all dry, there was no preparation and yes, that the whole fire department is a bunch of “DEI” hires who know nothing about firefighting. All of it is wrong. (Here’s thorough fact check from the Governor’s office.)
Newsom addressed some of the lies and delusions in this podcast:
”It‘s made up. It's delusional… And it's reinforced over and over and over within the right wing. And so it's become gospel. And it's so profoundly ignorant. And yet he absolutely believes it.” —Gov. @GavinNewsom on Trump’s fire disinfo campaign Get more Pod Save America on… pic.twitter.com/B5qK4r9a7A
Everyone who knows anything about California fire hazards and water (or even if you’ve ever seen the movie “Chinatown”) knows that there are issues in this drought prone area. We’ve been fighting over water for decades. But as Newsom says in that clip, Trump is convinced of some delusional nonsense. Just take a look at this “weave” from the last California GOP Convention. (Starts at about 19:03)
Where does this madness come from? As historian Rick Perlstein pointed out in this piece from back in 2016, he likely got it originally from conspiracist Alex Jones. More recently, as you can see from that speech it was former congressman and current CEO of Trump’s Truth Social media platform, Devin Nunes, who apparently filled his head with a simplistic tale about a big “valve” that Newsom (and Gov. Jerry Brown before him) refused to turn on to fill Southern California with all the water it could ever want because they want to save a “little fish.” (This piece at Vox lays out what this is really all about if you’re interested but suffice to say that nothing Trump, Jones or Nunes said applies to Los Angeles or these wildfires.)
There was enough water in the reservoirs but the system was overwhelmed by the sheer, unprecedented scale of the fire so they lost water pressure for a time. The air tankers (which can scoop water out of the nearby reservoir called “the Pacific Ocean”) couldn’t fly because of the hurricane level winds. One fire department chief told Katy Tur of MSNBC they could have had an army of firefighters and they wouldn’t have been able to stop those houses from burning because they were all going up at once from the flying embers in 80 mph winds. It was literally a perfect storm.
Yet, here’s a small example of the grotesque commentary spewing forth from Donald Trump’s social media feed as the crisis was unfolding:
Not one word of sympathy for the victims of the fire or any promise to follow through on federal help for the area. And one lie after another.
He’s already got Republican politicians vowing to demand that California follow Trump’s orders about how to deal with wildfires if we expect to get any help once Biden is gone.Sen. John Barasso of Wyoming had this to say on Sunday Morning:
BRENNAN: Do you expect though that Republicans will still help Californians in need even if they don't like their local politics and the party?
SEN. BARRASSO: I expect there will be strings attached to money that is ultimately approved … pic.twitter.com/oWM6hBflWK
Rep. Warren Davidson on CA disaster relief: "If they want the money, then there should be consequences where they have to change their policies … CA wants the money without changing the policies that are making the problem worse & I don't see how Rs could possibly support that" pic.twitter.com/zMrwCmiXEu
I presume that if they deign to help out we undeserving Un-Real Americans, we’ll all be out raking the forests and watching helplessly as they demand that we uselessly seed clouds when there is 5% humidity And they’ll turn that big valve on to release the 2% of water that’s not already diverted to the farmers and watch the Sacramento delta turn to salt water and destroy the entire ecosystem and the salmon fisheries. But that’s a small price to pay to prove that climate change doesn’t exist, own the libs and make sure the fossil fuel industry is well protected.
Meanwhile, there will be more and more extreme weather events. Here in America virtually every climate change mitigation program will be reversed. There will be more destruction and death increasing in frequency and intensity. Fingers shouldn’t be pointed at brave firefighters or political leaders in the trenches who are tasked with saving lives and helping people recover from catastrophes caused by an existential threat to the entire planet. They should be pointed at the people who refuse to do anything about the real crisis we’re facing.
Salon
They just can’t say it:
The folks at Fox News are so close to figuring out why parts of California are experiencing unprecedented wildfires. They won't use the words 'climate change' but they are right on the edge. pic.twitter.com/X6Vc565fY9
“These fires were unstoppable,” this fire chief said. The dry conditions, the 100 mph winds that grounded ALL air support the first 27 hrs, made these fires “unstoppable.” EVERY firefighter has said the same. You can choose to accept that hard truth or you can choose the easier… https://t.co/DzINZ1t03u
D.C. National Guard Military Police, Lafayette Park, Washington, D.C. on June 2, 2020. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Revé Van Croft, 715th PAD)
Donald Trump talks tough about deploying troops in the streets. Why? For the same reason he muses about “acquiring” Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Trump, Alex Shepard believes, “is driven almost entirely by his desire to appear strong—or, more to the point, his fear of looking weak. This is why he picks senseless fights with smaller allies while avoiding brawls with the strongmen he so greatly admires.”
Yes, Greenland may have significant resources, but as we pointed out last week, that’s not really why Trump wants it. That’s about Trump’s obsession with size (The New Republic):
As is almost always the case with Trump, though, the cleanest and perhaps most persuasive explanation is the simplest and dumbest: The territory, like Canada, looks really, really big on the commonly used (and widely distorted) Mercator projection. Adding it would be a huge ego boost for a man who, hours after planes hit the Twin Towers, boasted that he now owned the tallest building in New York City. (He didn’t, but that’s beside the point.)
Deploying shock troops in the streets is Trump’s idea of looking big and tough in front of real strongmen like Vladimir Putin. But America’s military doesn’t want the job (Politico):
According to nearly a dozen retired officers and current military lawyers, as well as scholars who teach at West Point and Annapolis, an intense if quiet debate is underway inside the U.S. military community about what orders it would be obliged to obey if President-elect Donald Trump decides to follow through on his previous warnings that he might deploy troops against what he deems domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants.
On Nov. 18, two weeks after the election, Trump confirmed he plans to declare a national emergency and use the military for the mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
One fear is that domestic deployment of active-duty troops could lead to bloodshed given that the regular military is mainly trained to shoot at and kill foreign enemies. The only way to prevent that is establishing clear “rules of engagement” for domestic deployments that outline how much force troops can use — especially considering constitutional restraints protecting U.S. citizens and residents — against what kinds of people in what kinds of situations. And establishing those new rules would require a lot more training, in the view of many in the military community.
“Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump asked former defense secretary, Mark Esper, according to Esper’s memoir.
Michael Hirsch writes that given Trump’s demonstrated procilivities and his intent to staff the Trump 2.0 administration with yes-men, Pentagon professionals worry that Trump might demand that soldiers be deployed to advance his political interests. Several retired military officers are discussing it with friends on active-duty.
Anthony Pfaff, a retired colonel who teaches military ethics at the U.S. Army War College, says that domestic crowd control “is not something for which we have any doctrine or other standard operating procedures. Without those, thresholds for force could be determined by individual commanders, leading to even more confusion.” Read: dead civilians.
Some lawyers and experts in military law say a great deal of confusion persists — even among serving officers — over how the military should behave, especially if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and calls up troops to crush domestic protests or round up millions of undocumented immigrants. In most cases, there is little that officers and enlisted personnel can do but obey such presidential orders, even if they oppose them ethically, or face dismissal or court-martial.
Trump has already pardoned soldiers convicted of war crimes. What might he do to soldiers who disobey when he issues a criminal order? How many enlisted personnel might not know the difference in the heat of the moment, especially when Trump gets to decide what’s legal under the Insurrection Act? And federal judges he appointed back him up?
“The basic reality is that the Insurrection Act gives the president dangerously broad discretion to use the military as a domestic police force,” says Joseph Nunn, an expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “It’s an extraordinarily broad law that has no meaningful criteria in it for determining when it’s appropriate for the president to deploy the military domestically.” Nothing in the text of the Insurrection Act says the president must cite insurrection, rebellion, or domestic violence to justify deployment; the language is so vague that Trump could potentially claim only that he perceives a “conspiracy.”
Lawyer up
While some within the miltary community are urging troops to “lawyer up,” Politico reports, that’s no shield. “The fact is, if an order is legal then members of the armed forces have to obey it even if they find it morally reprehensible,” advises Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap (Ret.), presently of Duke Law School, of orders known as “lawful but awful.”
Again, all this is academic for an an elisted man, in the heat of the moment, standing in the street with an M4 and facing protesters or rioters.
This entire, hand-wringing debate would be academic had voters chosen wisely on Nov. 5 and not reelected an amoral horrorshow found guilty of 34 felonies and accused of more.
The New York Times is more specific about the death toll:
The Eaton fire has killed 16 people, making it one of the deadliest in California’s history, and at least eight people have died in the Palisades blaze. Another 16 people have been reported missing in the areas of the two fires, and officials have warned the number of fatalities is likely to rise.
An amputee and his son with cerebral palsy were among the 24 deaths in the fires raging around Los Angeles. The father was found at his son’s bedside.
One victim told a relative that he did not want to evacuate. He died trying to fight the blaze that consumed his home of more than 50 years.
Another victim, an 85-year-old woman, refused to leave her home as the fast-moving Palisades Fire approached, preferring instead to stay behind with her beloved pets. A former child star from Australia also was among those who died, as well as a Malibu resident and surfer who was called a “magnet for people.”
The piece goes on to provide details on half a dozen who died in the fire. It concludes ominously, “This is a developing story and will be updated.“
Hurricane Helene survivors know the drill too well. Over 100 died here in Western North Carolina last fall, over 40 in Buncombe County. Asheville Watchdog, “a free, local, not-for-profit” project of national journalists who retired here, published a long “Lives we lost” series.
Los Angeles news outlets are already preparing theirs and adding to them.
Two points.
A private drone flown in the vicinity of the Palisades Fire collided with one of two Canadian CL-415 Super Scooper firefighting planes, damaging its port wing and taking it out of action for repairs. CBS News reports:
California state officials said there have been at least 40 incidents where unauthorized drones have forced firefighters to pause air operations since the wildfires broke out last week. Crews battling the blazes have used air tankers to dump thousands of gallons of flame retardant, and super scoopers, as well as helicopters, to drop water over the blazes.
“When people fly drones near wildfires, fire response agencies often ground their aircraft to avoid the potential for a midair collision,” the FAA writes on its website. “Delaying airborne response poses a threat to firefighters on the ground, residents, and property in nearby communities, and it can allow wildfires to grow larger.”
Photo via FBI.
Don’t be an idiot. You’ll also go to jail for it.
Secondly, Angelenos have to be worries (as we are here) that under a Trump administration disaster relief funding will quickly dry up. The costs will be in the hundreds of billions. Trump and MAGA Republicans in Congress enjoy seeing perceived opponents suffer (Mother Jones):
In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Newsom told NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff that he is worried about Trump revoking the federal disaster aid that President Biden has promised California for the next 6 months—a threat that Trump, in fact, has made and carried out multiple times in the past.
So the GOP California House delegation hurried to Mar-a-Lago this weekend for an audience with Dear Leader while fellow Californians were trying to get through an epic firestorm. But why not? Their constituents won’t care. It’s just a bunch of Los Angelenos. Let ’em burn.
The rest of the world is not as callous:
Even after how America/Trump has treated Canada and Mexico, they have dispatched crews to help with the California fires. Showing how adults and allies truly act during a crisis. pic.twitter.com/6AoGUlmNdD
Firefighters from Mexico, Canada, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and New Mexico are here. Our local, regional, and state partners have all stepped up to help.
Here are some locals with more compassion than GOP leaders:
Hasan and Caroline Kwan are talking to the incarcerated firefighters while they are on their downtime. Prisoners who are risking their lives battling the fires for pennies on the dollar, sleeping on forest floors at night. Twitter hates outside links in posts, but he is currently… pic.twitter.com/ZYA2Ltdwht
Most of these guys are just grateful for the opportunity to get out and do something, despite the low pay they are earning "good time" credits pic.twitter.com/VliF2qt4VI
