If you want analysis of today’s Supreme Court arguments in the Colorado Ballot case, just turn on any cable news show and you’ll get a snoot-full. They all pretty much come to the same conclusion: Trump will win this one, the only question is whether it will be unanimous or near unanimous. The justices were all “skeptical” apparently.
Here’s Ian Millhiser at Vox which I think represents the overall view. But he makes the case that Trump’s lawyer was absolutely terrible and it won’t make any difference:
One is that Jonathan Mitchell, the lawyer representing Trump, was in way over his head. During Mitchell’s time at the podium, the justices took turns ripping apart his arguments — or even criticizing him for abandoning stronger legal arguments in favor of weaker ones. Mitchell also made embarrassing concessions, admitting that he had no historical evidence to support some of his key claims.
The other obvious thing is that it didn’t matter: Trump is going to win. After Mitchell stepped down from the podium, after emphasizing two arguments that nearly all the justices appeared to view as weak, most of the Court spent the rest of the argument trying to come up with a better reason to rule in favor of Trump.
The Court appears likely to rule that this decision was wrong because state courts, as opposed to federal courts or Congress, may not determine that a presidential candidate is ineligible. As Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, said at one point, the question of who can seek the highest federal office “sounds awfully national to me,” and thus should be resolved in a federal forum.
Most of the justices piled on with similar arguments. One leading concern, raised by several justices, is that there could be competing decisions reaching competing conclusions if each state is allowed to determine whether a candidate is ineligible for the presidency.
There’s much more at the link if you’re looking for detail. I think it very effectively lays out the case for why the Supremes aren’t going to let this happen.
So that’s that. I don’t think anyone thought this court was going to go along with this. It’s is a Pandora’s Box of legal complications. The big case is the immunity case and we’re still waiting to see if Trump will appeal it to the High Court by Monday — and if they’ll take it. A whole lot hinges on that one since a criminal president with a radical faction in the Senate behind him could effectively end our democracy. Stay tuned.
Due largely to an unexpected surge in immigration, the U.S. economy will be about $7 trillion larger – & federal revenues about $1T bigger – the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday
That impact is over 10 years, to be clear. It does not take into account any legislation that Congress may or may not approve
CBO Director Phillip Swagel: “More workers means more output, and that in turn leads to additional tax revenue”
Who knew that immigrants during full employment would be so good for the country? Why, these people are paying taxes and everything!
I’m sure you have noticed that none of the objections to “the invasion” include the usual lament of “they’re stealing out jobs!” because even they know how fatuous that is in this situation. They have exposed their true reason: they aren’t white. The anti-immigrant fervor is all about allowing people who don’t look like them to come into the country and put taco trucks on every corner. This is what they hate. And it’s obvious.
I have always wondered how these people planned to fill all the jobs that immigrants are currently doing, We’ve had an answer recently. Child laborPrisoners too. And some of them are even touting how beneficial slavery was to the enslaved so I’m guessing that’s probably on the agenda too. Anything but foreigners. You know, people like our ancestors.
Trump keeps saying he’ll be a dictator for one day so that he can close the border and “drill, drill, drill” which, as Philip Bump points out in the Washington Post, he came up with on the fly during a Sean Hannity interview. Apparently the cult just loves it:
On Wednesday, UMass Amherst released the results of a poll conducted by YouGov in which respondents were asked about the concept. The framing of the comment was stark, excluding Trump’s specific plans for using his theoretical dictatorial power. It was just, “Trump recently said that if elected, he would be a dictator only on the first day of his second term. Do you think that this is a good or bad idea for the country?”
A plurality of respondents said this was “definitely bad” with 6 in 10 saying it was “definitely” or “probably” bad. Among Republicans, though, a third said it was “definitely good” with three-quarters saying it was at least “probably” good.
Again, this isn’t “Trump wants temporary absolute powers to build a wall on the border.” It is “is it good or bad if Trump has absolute powers for a fixed time period.” And three-quarters of Republicans responded that this was probably a good idea.
He further points out that there are other studies that show this authoritarian strain in American culture but that groups seems to be larger than we might have thought.
And it’s mostly white men. Surprise.
Being dictator for a day makes no sense of course and Trump doesn’t have a clue what he means by that. It’s just an applause line. But the agenda his henchmen are working on will require dictatorial powers and I’m quite sure that he’ll be more than willing to use them.
Still image from “Pardon My Backfire” (The Three Stooges, 1948)
It’s tiresome by now, these “where were you when” events. The JFK assassination (or MLK’s or RFK’s) or the first moon landing or the Challenger disaster or September 11 were days you never forgot. Nowadays it’s U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Dobbs. If you are reading this between 10 a.m. and noonish EST, you may be missing today’s “where were you when” event at the U.S. Supreme Court (Washington Post):
The Supreme Court on Thursday will confront the critical question of Donald Trump’s eligibility to return to the White House, hearing arguments in an unprecedented case that gives the justices a central role in charting the course of a presidential election for the first time in nearly a quarter-century.
The justices will decide whetherColorado’s top court was correctto apply a post-Civil War provisionof the Constitution to order Trump off the ballot after concluding his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol amounted to insurrection.Primary voting is already underway in some states. Colorado’s ballots for the March 5 primary were printed last week and include Trump’s name. But his status as a candidate will depend on what the Supreme Court decides.
Zero hour is approaching, so I’m cutting this short. Oral arguments available live here.
The entire Republican Party has devolved into a Stooge scene. I gotta go see if Trump’s Supreme Court picks are going to set fire to the 14th Amendment.
.@ElieNYC : “Tomorrow we will see the level of intellectual gymnastics from the conservatives that I swear, Simone Biles will copy in Paris this summer. That's how much twisting and turning they're going to have to do to keep trump on the ballot.” pic.twitter.com/B7yIDpouqF
With the 2022 Dobbs decision abolishing womens’s federal right to an abortion, Republicans lost a campaign issue they’d campaigned on reliably for decades. It was like the Pentagon’s identity crisis after the Cold War ended. The Pentagon spent the 1990s not knowing who it should be planning to fight.
Republicans have failed again and again since 2022 to block abortion protection amendments in the states, even as fringe right legislators all but lock women with doomed pregnancies into iron maidens as they bleed out. Abortion is on its way to being a third rail in Republican politics. The issue is now a political loser.
"We don't want to solve the problem because then we can't run an election campaign around the urgent need to solve that problem" is, I think, a whole new level of Republican Congressional dysfunction
To replace abortion, the GOP settled on Great Replacement theory, an isotopic variant of the Southern Strategy. Republicans stoke fears of brown-skinned hordes of immigrants pouring across the U.S. southern border to knock white Americans off the top of the social ladder. It’s not about race as much as power and status. Race is just the icing.
Do all the white-knuckle right wing guys demanding mass deportations of immigrants not know whose labor fuels our economy?
Not just Christmas trees in WNC. Also nearly every major farm. Poultry plants. Meatpacking. Home construction. It goes on. https://t.co/kl5WXRO4Ne
Speaking with Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Greg Sargent reflects on the irony that in 2013 Republicans felt they could never win another presidential election if they did not fix the immigration system. Then they elected the most anti-immigrant president in history who now demands they not fix it after they spent months in negotiations with Democrats to arrive at the bill they killed this week at Donald “91 Counts” Trump’s bidding.
In 2006, Dems endorsed a bipartisan immigration/border bill, which Republicans rejected. In 2014, it happened again. In 2018, it happened again. In 2024, it happened again.
The senators who spent four months negotiating a bipartisan compromise on border policy and security aid probably didn’t see the political freight train coming. Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who took the lead in the talks on behalf of his party, predicted last month that the bill could garner up to 70 votes in the chamber, but within hours of unveiling the legislation, it was obvious that far-right opposition was simply too great.
On Monday, the day after the text of the bill reached the public, GOP officials lined up to condemn the package in no uncertain terms. By most measures, the odds that the legislation would fail were roughly 99%.
A day later, they reached 100%. NBC News reported:
Republican senators made it clear Tuesday that they will kill the border security bill their party negotiated with Democrats, a stunning turnaround less than 48 hours after it was released by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., and blessed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell, R-Ky. — overruled by his Senate GOP members, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and former President Donald Trump — conceded it has no path to passage.
The “Gang of Eight” in the Senate negotiated an immigration bill weighted toward Republican priorities. But now they won’t take yes for an answer.
Lankford/Murphy/Sinema: As part of a radical hostage strategy, Republicans told Democrats to embrace a bipartisan compromise on immigration and border policy or the GOP would make it easier for Russia to take part of Eastern Europe by force. The resulting deal received strong Democratic support, before being rejected by Republicans in both chambers.
Republicans privately say they would not likely get a more restrictive bill than this one, Bennet tells Sargent. Republicans just trashed it. They want their new weapon.
Sargent asks why Democrats don’t make more of the fact that our booming economy is dependent on immigrant labor. Immigrants disproportionally work in “essential” economic sectors. What needs fixing is how we manage the flow. Trump wants none of it. And none of Them.
NEWS –> Numerous GOP senators admitted in private that the bill they ultimately killed was a serious effort to secure the border and said they'd never get a tougher one, Sen Michael Bennet told me.
Lankford: I had a popular commentator that told me flat out, if you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you. Because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election. pic.twitter.com/axg08BeCiG
My friend James Lankford, knowing that minutes later his entire party will vote against our bipartisan bill to fix the border, explaining what it means to be a United States Senator.
One of the most important speeches I've heard in 10 years in the Senate. Proud of you, friend. pic.twitter.com/yaufAmHQxb
In his newsletter today, Dan Pfeiffer discusses the political ramifications of the DC Circuit’s ruling yesterday that Trump is not entitled to immunity for his crimes. (You can subscribe at the link.) An excerpt:
If there is one thing we know about Donald Trump it’s that he never lets anything go. He still takes time at his rallies to complain about the Mueller investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. I know our collective sense of time might be warped, but that investigation began SEVEN years ago.
Even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump or refuses to take up his appeal, he is never going to stop talking about why he should be immune from prosecution. Each missive is more unhinged than the last. Here’s what he posted on Truth Social (via an account that reposts his “Truths” to Twitter):
This reads like a bomb threat from a particularly illiterate person at the end of a coke binge. As a general rule, we should amend the Constitution to bar people who communicate in all caps from the presidency. It’s truly disqualifying.
In terms of politics, Trump’s insistence on immunity is not only politically self-sabotaging but also contradicts public opinion. The vast majority of Americans believe Trump has committed a crime. According to a recentNavigator Research poll, 63 percent of Americans — including 30 percent of Republicans — believe Trump has committed a crime.
When you step back for a minute, this is a truly stunning stat. That poll paints a stark picture: a considerable portion of voters actually believe Trump has broken the law, yet they’re still considering casting their vote for him come November. It’s a puzzling contradiction. But here’s the kicker: when the majority already see you as a wrongdoer, trying to pitch the idea of immunity becomes a tough sell. .
Also, and I find this very reassuring as an American, most voters oppose the concept that a president should be immune from prosecution. APBS Newshour poll found that only 35% of voters support Trump having immunity from criminal prosecution from actions he took while in office.
We’re living in an era of extreme polarization where most issues tend to split the population right down the middle, with each side digging into their partisan trenches. It’s not often we come across an issue where the scales tip so heavily, with only 35% in favor and a significant 64% opposed. Trump’s staunch advocacy for the minority viewpoint presents us with a unique opportunity, and frankly, it’s one we shouldn’t pass up.
No one is above the law, not even a former president. When someone breaks the law, they should face repercussions. There shouldn’t be one justice system for everyday Americans and another for the rich and powerful where they pay no consequences for their crimes.
Pfeiffer adds:
Most of us aren’t crafting political ads; instead, we’re engaging in everyday conversations with friends and family to persuade them. That’s why it’s crucial to highlight Trump’s attorney’s admission about Trump’s belief that a president can’t be prosecuted for murder. This powerful example cuts through the noise and resonates with everyone—well, maybe except Trump himself.
In my personal experience, that argument is very effective. I had occasion to use it on a Trumper and he refused to believe it until I pulled it up on my phone. He was taken aback, to say the least. A lot of times these people just haven’t heard anything but Fox propaganda.
And I cannot help but note, once again, that for some reason we have never had this problem in our entire history until now. Nixon was a criminal and his successor pardoned him. Why would he have done that if a president has immunity? Bill Clinton was accused of committing perjury in a dismissed civil case and agreed to a plea deal with the special prosecutor one=ce he was out of office by giving up his law license. Why would he have done that if a president has immunity?
No, Trump is the biggest criminal we’ve ever had as president. He is totally corrupt, a disgusting adjudicated rapist, he stole classified documents and he tried to illegally overturn the election inciting an insurrection. Please. This is a first. And god help us, it had better be the last. If he isn’t held accountable I’m pretty sure it won’t be.
This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nations. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever close the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.
It certainly wasn’t Donald Trump, we know that. But it also wasn’t JFK or LBJ or FDR or even Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. That was Ronald Reagan and such rhetoric used to be an anodyne sentiment among politicians of all stripes in the late 20th century. Those times are over, of course, and we’ve gone back to the bad old days of the early 20th century when we blocked “undesirable” immigrants from poisoning the blood of our country for decades. You know, when America was great.
Reagan was right. America has benefited tremendously from its historical welcome of immigrants and it uniquely prepared us for the challenges of the 21 century. Unfortunately, we seem to have decided to retreat into xenophobic fascism. It’s one of the stupidest moves we’ve ever made.
Greene: When they came to Washington to protest, you called that an insurrection but when Biden was inaugurated and this Capitol was surrounded with National Guard troops, none of you stood there and called that an insurrection pic.twitter.com/1gI2vnmEqf
On Tuesday night, after a long day of very important legal developments for Donald Trump, the former president posted on his Truth Social feed ” ALL A PRESIDENT HAS TO DO IS SAY, “CLOSE THE BORDER” AND THE BORDER WILL BE CLOSED. A COSTLY NEW BILL IS NOT NECESSARY!” This was in response to the total collapse of the Senate border bill which had been painstakingly negotiated of over the last couple of months to meet the demands of the GOP which said they would not advance any funding for Ukraine, Israel or Gaza humanitarian aid unless immigration laws were changed to their specification.
President Biden and the Democrats called their bluff. They agreed to a set of cruel changes to the law and massive new funding for the border and the Republicans blinked, saying they now want to wait until the election to fix what they previously characterized as an existential crisis. All Trump and his MAGA sycophants are left with is this bizarre refrain that a president has magical powers to close the border and refuses to use it.
It never had much of a chance to begin with. A few of the far right crazies in the House thought they could force their own bill HR2 (a ghastly, punitive measure designed to cause as much suffering as possible) down the throats of the Senate and then make Joe Biden crawl on his belly begging for the privilege of signing it. That was never going to happen and in any case, the original MAGA plan was for Senate Democrats to refuse to pass the bill so they could continue to bludgeon them as being weak on immigration and deny Ukraine any more funding. Now they have everyone from the Wall St. Journal to the Chamber of Commerce to the Trump-loving Border Patrol Union begging them to take the deal but they’re hamstrung by their commitment to service their Dear Leader, who openly demanded that they kill the bill for his own purposes.
Trump has been pushing this “the president can just order it done” line for some time, usually when he says that he wants to be a dictator “just for one day.” And it raises the question, obviously, of why in the hell didn’t Donald Trump do that when he was president then? Well, we all know why, and so does he. It’s because the idea that the president can unilaterally “close the border” is complete nonsense.
There was a time when he would commonly exhort to congress to pass border legislation:
…Congress must immediately pass Border Legislation, use Nuclear Option if necessary, to stop the massive inflow of Drugs and People. Border Patrol Agents (and ICE) are GREAT, but the weak Dem laws don’t allow them to do their job. Act now Congress, our country is being stolen!
In fact, for the first two years of Trump’s presidency he even had total control over the government and should have been able to pass the kind of legislation they demanded and they did zilch. Immigration actually soared in 2019 to historic highs that were only curbed when the whole world locked down because of COVID. Didn’t anyone tell the president that he could have just “closed the border” with a wave of his tiny regal hand?
In fairness, while it sounds as though he’s exhorting Joe Biden to seize those imaginary powers to close the border, he really isn’t. He reserves that privilege for himself. He’s been much more explicit about what he really wants, telling everyone who will listen that the reason to reject the bill is because it would be a “gift to the Democrats.” In other words, he thinks it will help him win the election to keep the crisis going.
In fact, the opposite is true. The GOP’s antics this week are the real gift to the Democrats. They made utter fools of themselves — again — proving once more that they are inept and dysfunctional. Not only did the Senate Republicans abruptly decide not to vote for the GOP Holy Grail of a bill on Donald Trump’s orders, the House produced one of the biggest clown shows they’ve staged since they won the majority (and that’s saying something.) Speaker Mike Johnson put the vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the floor … and he didn’t have the votes. How incompetent can you get?
Evidently, they didn’t anticipate this:
Greene: Democrats hid one of their members trying to throw us off on the numbers pic.twitter.com/8Da16eNJcj
That’s the designated “manager” of the Mayorkas impeachment complaining that the dastardly Democrats didn’t tell the Republicans that Congressman Al Green, D-Tx., who was in the hospital, was planning to attend the vote. When he turned up at the last minute to cast his vote her plan was ruined. But it wasn’t her fault! The Democrats cheated by having enough votes!
President Biden gave a speech earlier in the day after the Senate border bill went down in flames and he made it clear that he was going to make sure the American people know exactly who is to blame for this debacle. He said, “every day between now and November, the American people are gonna know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”
I happen to think that this border bill is a draconian nightmare and I can’t say that I’m sorry to see it fail. I understand that the Republicans were holding the fate of Europe hostage with their need to appease Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin by abandoning Ukraine, so I can see why the Democrats were willing to negotiate as they did. But giving in to hostage demands is never a good idea and it wasn’t this time either.
But I do have to wonder if Joe Biden has some preternatural gift for seeing through GOP posturing in these situations. As I’ve noted before, back in 2011 he inserted himself into a negotiation with the Republicans by giving in to their demands for cuts to Social Security and they ended up walking away from that deal in similar fashion to this refusal to take yes for an answer on this border bill. Is it possible that Dark Brandon saw this one coming too?
It doesn’t appear that the economy is going to be the winning issue the Republicans hoped it would be and they certainly can’t rely on abortion or the Supreme Court to motivate their voters anymore. Trump’s favorite campaign strategy is immigrant bashing and they hoped it would be their ace in the hole. I guess we’ll see how that shakes out but it certainly doesn’t look as promising as it did last week. They’ve proved themselves to be incompetent about the issue they want the country to take most seriously.
Republicans aren’t the only ones who can use a wedge issue to hammer the opposition.
I would expect to see the president take this whole fiasco right to them at the State of the Union address in a couple of weeks. They will almost certainly act like the hooligans they are and show the American people exactly what they’re being asked to vote for.
