Donald Trump is expected to launch a new legal battle to suppress any damaging evidence from his 2020 election-subversion case from becoming public before the 2024 election, preparing to shut down the potency of any “mini-trials” where high-profile officials could testify against him.
The plans come after the US supreme court last week in its ruling that broadly conferred immunity on former presidents opened the door for the US district judge Tanya Chutkan to hold evidentiary hearings – potentially with witnesses – to determine what acts in the indictment can survive.
In the coming months, Trump’s lawyers are expected to argue that the judge can decide whether the conduct is immune based on legal arguments alone, negating the need for witnesses or multiple evidentiary hearings, the people said.
If prosecutors with the special counsel Jack Smith press for witnesses such as former vice-president Mike Pence or White House officials to testify, Trump’s lawyers are expected to launch a flurry of executive privilege and other measures to block their appearances, the people said.
The plans, which have not been previously reported, are aimed at having the triple effect of burying damaging testimony, making it harder for prosecutors to overcome the presumptive immunity for official acts, and injecting new delay into the case through protracted legal fights.
Cute that they would argue there’s no need for evidentiary hearings when they are demanding — and getting — them for every little thing in the Florida trial. But I guess that’s to be expected as are the claims of executive privilege, which is a convenient catch-22 sinc e the whole point is to determine if the behavior was an official or unofficial act.
The idea of this “mini-trial” si great. But I have to admit that I wondered if they would be able to pull it off. The courts seem unable to act in haste when it comes to Trump’s criminality in this election year. The closer we get to the election the less it seems likely.
It’s possible for two conflicting ideas to be true at once.
And so it is with the mainstream media’s unrelenting focus on Joe Biden’s mental acuity, following his terrible debate performance earlier this month.
First truth: the president’s stumble and the political fallout that followed is a huge, consequential news story that deserves a lot of coverage.
Second truth: the media coverage is overkill – not only too much in quantity and too breathless in tone, but also taking up so much oxygen that a story even more important is shoved to the back burner.
That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term. Trump’s disavowal is a ridiculous lie, but I doubt most members of the public know anything about it, nor do they likely know much – if anything – about Project 2025.
But anyone following mainstream media coverage could not miss knowing about the latest polls on whether Biden should step aside, how Kamala Harris would fare in a head-to-head competition with Trump, and which members of Congress have called for a new Democratic nominee.
And those are just the news stories – not to mention the nonstop punditry on cable news and the near takeover of the opinion sections of major publications.
Meanwhile, what of Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, his endless lies, his shocking plans to imprison his political enemies and to deport millions of people he calls “animals”, his relationship with the late accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein?
“Sure, you can say, we’ve covered those things,” commented Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a longtime observer of media and politics. But, Ornstein pushed back: “Where? On the front page above the fold? As one-offs before moving on? In a fashion comparable to the Defcon 1 coverage of Biden’s age and acuity?”
There really is no comparison in the amount or intensity of coverage. One journalist, Jennifer Schulze, counted New York Times stories related to Biden’s age in the week following the debate; she counted a staggering 192 news and opinion pieces, compared to 92 stories on Trump – and that was in a week when the US supreme court had ruled he has immunity for official acts.
Nor is there much self-scrutiny or effort to course-correct. Only self-satisfaction and an apparent commitment to more of the same.
Erik Wemple of the Washington Post queried the Times about any pushback, specifically from the White House. “Have you gotten any complaints about age coverage since the debate?” Wemple asked top Times editor Joe Kahn, who recently praised the paper’s coverage in a note to staff. Kahn said no.
[…]
Where does that leave us?
All of these disturbing elements – the Democrats’ dilemma, the media’s failures, and the cult-like, unquestioning support of Trump – could add up to one likelihood in November.
A win for Trump, and a terrible loss for democracy.
Biden’s debate performance made discussions of his age big news. Nobody can suggest otherwise. But if someone was looking for him to bow out, this aggressive, petty, non-stop frenzied media pile-on made it less likely. On a human level, nobody would want to be chased down and beaten up in front of the whole world. On a political level it’s not unlikely that a lot of Democratic voters don’t like the idea of their candidate being beaten up like this either, especially by media elites.
Meanwhile, Orange Hitler is waiting in the wings and these people yawn and say it’s old news. And the freakout is damaging Biden and the Democrats every day it continues.
Chris Hayes’ show has been the best during this Biden crisis in my opinion. Measured, fair and insightful.
"I don't think the polls are all wrong. But we have no idea what the future will bring. And as France just showed the world, there is still time to do the hard work necessary to beat back the right-wing authoritarians again," says @chrislhayes on lessons from France's elections. pic.twitter.com/jUpkPwrydK
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) July 10, 2024
“There are a few areas where it’s just so starkly clear what the choices are in November. Climate is one of them—as we watch the world cook.” —@Chrislhayes with a warning about Republicans' Project 2025pic.twitter.com/ff8TSzIq05
I can’t find a video of the interview with Dave Roberts and Jamelle Bouie but if you happen to record his show and haven’t watched it yet I urge you to do it. It’s the most thoughtful discussion I’ve heard since this crisis began. We need more of this.
There’s a new USA Today poll that show Harris beating Trump by one point and Trump beating Biden by one point. (They also polled Hillary Clinton for some reason and she beats Trump by two points.) In other words, it tells us nothing.
Then there’s this:
I don't think of Emerson as the best pollster but on its face this isn't terribly good data for the switch scenario. pic.twitter.com/ZUu5MYYDlZ
As you can see, Biden does best against Trump but they all lose.
If we were to take all this at face value we’d say that this is a party problem more than a Biden problem. And I’m not sure it’s any more of a problem than it’s been through this whole cycle so far.
And then there’s this:
The most important result in our new national poll of registered voters is that a majority of 53% of all voters believe that Donald Trump and his administration would represent “a grave danger to democracy continuing in the United States,” if he wins the election.👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/G8zIAegVoR
Today it does look as if Biden is staying in. And as I’ve been writing since this crisis began, (and even before, to tell you the truth) this isn’t about the candidates as much as it’s about a worldview that’s clashing all over the world. It would be very helpful if we had a president who was vital and exciting but we don’t. And the other side may have someone who’s exciting but he’s also an imbecile who is loathed by half the country.
It’s been close all year and nothing has changed. Yet. Gird yourself.
Public Notice sees fallout from the SCOTUS decision to overturn the Chevron deference doctrine. It’s already heading to courts:
It’s been barely a week since conservatives on the US Supreme Court radically upended the balance of power between the branches of government, giving the federal courts the exclusive power to interpret statutes rather than deferring to agency experts. And we’re already seeing impacts on the ground.
Right-wingers have been in the habit of running to their preferred courts to get regulations overturned, but the decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which officially destroyed agency deference, will make it easier — even routine — to block every Biden administration rule they don’t like.
Lawsuits to invalidate specific rules had been proceeding through the federal courts before Loper Bright, generally arguing that agencies exceeded their authority in promulgating a rule. These lawsuits exist in no small part because the Supreme Court made it clear they would destroy Chevron deference for years now, with Justice Neil Gorsuch having led the way well before his appointment to the Court.
Trump appointee Sean Jordan, who sits in the reliably hard-right Eastern District of Texas, was so eager to block a Biden administration’s overtime rule that he dropped his decision the same day Loper Bright came out. It runs 36 pages and mentions Loper Bright multiple times, which means either Jordan was so confident of the Supreme Court decision that he either wrote it in advance or he hurried to stuff Loper Bright into his already-written opinion.
Jordan’s opinion also rests heavily on dictionary definitions rather than expertise from the Department of Labor, which issued the rule. So now, the rule that would have made 4 million more Texas workers eligible for overtime, and thus more pay, is blocked thanks to a hurried read of a SCOTUS opinion and Webster’s Dictionary.
What this mean is that anytime a business doesn’t like a federal rule, it can just sue. It promises to be a free-for-all. Three hospitals in New Jersey sued HHS the day Loper Bright came down, saying the agency’s interpretation of a statute governing Medicare reimbursement is unlawful.
In another case, filed before Loper Bright, a trucking company challenging the Biden administration’s rule that addressed misclassification of independent contractors filed a memorandum on July 2 arguing that Loper Bright means the court should not defer to the Department of Labor’s interpretation of the law. The next day, Trump appointee Ada Brown of the Northern District of Texas enjoined enforcement of the Biden administration’s rule prohibiting non-compete agreements but limited the injunction to the plaintiffs, which are various pro-business groups like the Chamber of Commerce.
Taken together, it’s evident that any moves the administration makes to tilt the playing field even slightly in favor of workers are designed to fail once they reach a conservative federal judge. And thanks to right-wing judge shopping, plaintiffs are often able to get their case in front of an anti-regulation judge they know will be favorable to their challenges.
You know, if we were not citizens of this country but merely renters, under standing property law we would at least be entitled to the quiet enjoyment of this country. The ownership class might actually respect that. But I wouldn’t count on it even then in the United States of MAGA. There’s no quiet enjoyment in our futures for some time.
It’s that much harder to enjoy the protection of the law when the law is whatever some reactionary judge decides it is today.
Lisa Needham concludes:
… rather than having a well-reasoned rule that applies uniformly across the country, courts will invalidate or uphold rules in a piecemeal fashion based on the whims of judges who are in no way qualified to interpret complex regulatory issues. Those judges, though, are extremely well-qualified to find a way to strike down regulations whenever conservatives demand it. The demise of the regulatory state is as grim as anyone could have possibly guessed, and absent court reform, there seems to be no way out.
How far might the fringe right take this? A gallon of milk or gas need no longer be a gallon. An inch is 2.54 centimeters. Or is it? How many eggs is a dozen? Depends now on how the judge feels today.
Running a presidential election is a specialized job. Among the details to manage is ensuring the candidate gets on the ballot in each state, no minor logistical task. There are filing dates and fees to get onto the state’s primary. There are other deadlines varying by state for when a major party must deliver the names of its presidential candidate (electors) to the state elections board/commission, often from late August to early September.
That is why I call it magical thinking to believe that Democrats can simply swap out their presidential ticket in July. It’s not that it cannot happen, but it is a logistical nightmare. It doesn’t matter that France and England can hold national elections in a couple of months, whatever Jon Stewart says. It doesn’t work that way here. Election laws in the 50 states and territories are not set up for it, and GOP-controlled legislatures will hardly be willing to accomodate rival Dermocrats.
Many voters are unhappy with a rerun of the 2020 contest. Yes, many want younger candidates. So do some reporters. Post debate, reporters for major news outlets want Joe Biden gone. They want the excitement of a major campaign shakeup, and damn the logistics. They want what they want.
Major outlets have yet to call for the insurrectionist, wannabe dictator with 34 felony convictions, more felony cases pending, and a history of sexual assault to step out of the race. They’re leaning hard into “Biden’s unfit,” as Marcy Wheeler picks out.
I should note that I'm seeing some configurations of NYT FP where they DO include comment on the GOP platform: Maggie's misleading spin that it moderates on abortion.
— emptywheel (checking account) (@emptywheel) July 9, 2024
A White House press briefing yesterday devolved into a shouting match. The New York Times declared that “press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, repeatedly dodged and refused to answer questions about the president’s health, and whether [8 visits last year] to the White House by a Parkinson’s doctor were about the president.”
If Biden stays in, the Dems & the media who are hugely invested in his withdrawal w/likely spend the next 4 months subtly undermining him to justify their position. Many won't know they're doing it but the need to say "I told you so" often subconsciously leads people to do that.
That turns out to be a gross mischaracterization (ABC News):
In a letter released late Monday night by the president’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, he confirmed that Dr. Kevin Cannard, the Parkinson’s expert who visited the White House eight times in an eight-month span, “was the neurological specialist that examined President Biden for each of his annual physicals.”
Canard’s visits to the White House don’t represent examinations of the president, according to O’Connor’s letter. Cannard is involved in a range of care for others beyond the president at the White House, O’Connor said in his note.
“Prior to the pandemic, and following its end, [Cannard] has held regular Neurology clinics at the White House Medical Clinic in support of the thousands of active-duty members assigned in support of White House operations,” his letter reads. “Many military personnel experience neurological issues related to their service, and Dr. Canard regularly visits the WHMU as part of this General Neurology Practice.”
On the subject of Biden’s physical, O’Connor noted that “President Biden has not seen a neurologist outside of his annual physical.”
O’Connor also stressed that Biden’s last physical found no signs of Parkinson’s, which he detailed in a Feb. 28 letter.
Reporters badgering Jean-Pierre had access to that publicly released letter.
As ABC News reported earlier on Monday, an expert in Parkinson’s disease visited the White House eight times over an eight-month span between last July and March of this year, including one visit with the president’s personal physician, according to White House visitor logs.
Asked repeatedly at Monday’s press briefing about Cannard, Jean-Pierre refused to say if the neurologist ever treated the president or consulted on his care, citing privacy concerns, but did say Biden was not being treated for Parkinson’s disease.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell took the reporters to task Monday night. The informtion they demanded was available to them in February.
Lawrence: If you saw any of The White House Press Briefing today, it was The White House Press Corps and many of them at their absolute worst.. pic.twitter.com/U5DflrETuA
Democrats in leadership are split. But now it seems members of The Squad, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Maxine Waters, and others are standing with Biden.
Rep. @AOC: President Biden has made clear that he is in this race. The matter is closed. Biden is our nominee. He is in this race and I support him. He is running against Donald Trump, who is a man with 34 felony convictions. Not a single Republican has asked for Donald Trump to… pic.twitter.com/MOvUu3VQU5
“We’re losing the plot,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) told a swarm of reporters at the Capitol on Monday. “We are not talking about what we need to be talking about.”
The Biden fans span the gamut from lefties such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to Democrats who’ve won in swing districts and states such as Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.). Members of the influential Congressional Black Caucus make up a sizable chunk of the defenders. Some have been loud and feisty in their counterarguments, mixing it up with other politicians and people onX and seem, in some cases, to be relishing the fight.
To be clear, I’m a pledged Biden delegate. He’s the candidate until he’s not.
Friends and family have asked if I’m worried about violence in Chicago because they remember the convention there in 1968. What they don’t remember is that the incumbent president (LBJ) stepped aside at the end of March, leading to a contested convention. In November that year, Democrats LOST.
They have brainwashed their audience. And they’ll keep doing it because when they took the tiniest step toward the truth after the 2020 election they all fled to OAN and Newsmax. They won’t make that mistake again.
Anat Shenker-Osorio is a political communications expert and she has some excellent advice for America’s center-left:
The French left just demonstrated precisely how to confront fascism: on offense. Le Pen tried to distance herself from…her own platform – sound familiar? – and the left gave her zero room. /1
— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) July 7, 2024
— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) July 7, 2024
To be sure, the french enjoy the dubious advantage of direct lived experience of confronting fascism. But, nevertheless, stories do not tell themselves:https://t.co/ie3Vby8uBX
— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) July 7, 2024
— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) July 7, 2024
We have a lot more time than they did. And we’re confronting a crisis within the coalition that may or may not be resolved quickly. But this offensive is happening here and needs to ramp up considerably. Trump and the Republicans are furiously trying to disavow Project 2025 and the job of all of us to make sure they cannot.
When Republicans learn more about Project 2025, they become greatly divided on support for it, with significant differences between those who associate with the MAGA movement vs those who do not.
— Navigator Research (@NavigatorSurvey) July 8, 2024
Read the full report by Bryan Bennett (@BryanBennett85) for more polling on Project 2025, and stay tuned as we release parts 2 and 3 of our Project 2025 series this week.https://t.co/R5gXRTFbVg
— Navigator Research (@NavigatorSurvey) July 8, 2024
The NY Times reports that the Biden administration has pulled off an amazing success in some places that will never reward him for it:
America’s so-called “left behind” counties — the once-great manufacturing centers and other distressed places that struggled mightily at the start of this century — have staged a remarkable comeback. In the last three years, they added jobs and new businesses at their fastest pace since Bill Clinton was president.
The turnaround has shocked experts. “This is the kind of thing that we couldn’t have even dreamed about five or six years ago,” said John Lettieri, the president of the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank that studies economic distress in the U.S. His group is releasing a report today that details the recovery of left-behind counties.
Those counties span the nation but are largely concentrated in the Southeast and Midwest. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how they defied recent trends — including a particularly grim stretch under Donald Trump — to rebound so strongly from the pandemic recession. I’ll also show the one indicator that helps explain why voters there might not reward President Biden for the good news that has happened on his watch.
These 1,000 or so “left-behind” counties suffered greatly over the past two decades under Bush, Obama and Trump, the latter of whom promised to help them and did absolutely nothing:
In 2018, a colleague and I noted that left-behind counties that voted for Trump had not seen any net job gains the previous year. The new Economic Innovation Group analysis shows that, in terms of job growth, left-behind counties experienced three of their four worst years since the Great Recession on Trump’s watch.
The pandemic recession hit those counties harder than the rest of the country, just as the Great Recession did. But their recovery has been much stronger this time. Left-behind counties added jobs five times faster in the first three years of the Biden administration than they did in the first three years of the Trump administration. The flow of residents leaving them for better opportunities slowed.
Perhaps most strikingly, they have shared in a new-business boom that has swept the country since the pandemic. That didn’t happen after the Great Recession. From 2009 to 2016, for example, Bay County, Mich., lost 8 percent of its business establishments. Since 2020, it has gained 12 percent.
According to all the economic determinists that should have sealed the deal for Joe Biden, right?
Wrong. Nobody knows exactly all the factors that have brought about this renaissance but Biden will get no credit in any case:
Whatever the explanation, though, Biden probably should not expect voters in those areas to reward him electorally. Many left-behind counties are solidly Republican, or have moved to the right since Trump first ran. And for all their job and business gains, left-behind counties were hurt by high inflation in the early Biden years. In 2021 and 2022, the typical household income in those counties fell, after adjusting for rising prices. Those price increases have left voters unhappy with Biden on the economy, no matter where they live.
Inflation trumps everything else and Biden is blamed for it despite everything else. In fact, if Trump is elected in November, he will be given all the credit and there will be nothing Democrats can do about it. It’s built in.
But lets face facts. Economics are overrated as the top explanation for people’s voting habits. It’s just that there’s no comfortable vocabulary outside of economics they can use to explain why they love Trump and the fascist movement he represents. It’s tribal identity formed around opposition to liberals, urban dwellers, Black people, immigrants, feminazis etc. and there is great relief and joy for them in being part of that tribe. It’s not about suffering. It’s about grievance and blame and nobody has given those feelings more validation than Donald Trump.
It would be nice if the NY Times gave this story more that a few paragraphs buried deep in the paper but from what I understand that’s Biden’s fault for not making more of a big deal about it so never mind.
Following my posts below, I thought I’d post Timothy Snyder’s recent post on this:
Mainstream media have treated President Biden with prejudice and arrogance. Quite a few Democrats, reacting to this, treat any mention of President Biden’s fitness as disloyalty. This is mistaken, if understandable.
One source of the negative energy is Trump’s fascism. Focusing on it will not answer the question of what Democrats do, but will help us to understand the context in which the discussion is taking place. By fascism I just have in mind (1) the cult of personality of a Leader: (2) the party that becomes a single party; (3) the threat and use of violence; and (4) the big lie that must be accepted and used to reshape reality: in this case, that Trump can never lose an election.
Much more could be said (as I have done elsewhere), but it is the official big lie and the threats of violence that are dangerous to those whose job is to report truth. Trump is on the record as regarding reporters as enemies of the people. What should I make — a journalist might ask — of Trump’s talk of arresting journalists? When not confronted, such questions become self-realizing fears.
That’s the subtle version. Meanwhile, those higher up in corporations might like the ratings Trump brings, or like Trump himself. And so it is easiest to keep things personal — give Trump time, on the self-deluding logic that he will discredit himself, and focus on Biden’s age rather than his achievements. For reporters it can feel like the work is being done when only Biden is at the receiving end of criticism — whereas, in fact, the ground has been shifted by fascism, or by the inability to confront it.
And so fascism spreads and settles in our minds during this, the crucial period between Trump’s first coup attempt and his second. The Biden administration is being held to standards, while the previous Trump administration is not; and Biden personally is being held to standards, while Trump as a person is not.
This helps to generate a fascist aura. There must be something special about Trump such that he is different from others: a Leader beyond criticism rather than just an indebted hack or a felon from Queens or a client of a Russian dictator. [emphasis mine —d]
It should seem odd that media calls to step down were not first directed to Trump. If we are calling for Biden to step aside because someone must stop Trump from bringing down the republic, then surely it would have made more sense to first call for Trump to step aside? (The Philadelphia Inquirer did). I know the counter-arguments: his people wouldn’t have cared, and he wouldn’t have listened. The first misses an important point. There are quite a few Americans who have not made up their minds. The second amounts to obeying in advance. If you accept that a fascist is beyond your reach, you have normalized your submission.
When media folks describe discussions among Democrats as chaos and disarray, they are implicitly suggesting that it is better for a leader of a party to never be questioned. (Why, after all, is being part of an array a good thing?) An obvious point goes missed: Democrats can say what they want, because none of them is afraid. And that is good! Governor Maura Healey can express her dissent and Joe Biden can express his frustration with her — but no one is worried about her physical safety.
Trump, by contrast, controls his party through stochastic terror, threats issued through social media that his cult followers can be expected to realize. Republicans leave politics because they fear for themselves and their families. Those who remain all obey in advance. That is new, and it should not be normal, and it should not spread any further. But it becomes normal when we treat discussions, and not coercion, as abnormal.
If I am right that much of the energy behind the Biden pile-on is displaced fear of a regime change, much of the media will continue to generate fascist froth for Trump, whether or not Biden is the Democratic nominee — unless, of course, journalists confront their fears, and keep the issue of regime change inside the story, and provide a constructive alternative alongside personal criticism.
There are three tests of good faith for those who are proposing that President Biden step down. The first is recognition that Biden’s first term has been one of extraordinary achievement. The second is a plan for what the Democrats would do, should Biden withdraw, to select a nominee and win the election. The third is recognition that the threat of regime change is what might justify changing the nominee.
Trump has been given immunity by his cult, his party, the Supreme Court and, essentially, the media which has thrown up its hands because Trump’s voters don’t care. The media’s behavior isn’t exactly unprecedented but the stakes have never been higher and they are failing miserably.
Update: I wrote this before Nicole Wallaces show today which also featured it. I urge you to catch it at some point for more on this topic.
