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SCOTUS Expected To Rule On Trump Ballot Case

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 4, 2024

Don’t hold your breath

Credit: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States. (Public domain)

One day ahead of Super Tuesday, the speculation is that shortly after this posts we may see the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Donald “91 Counts” Trump’s Colorado ballot access case. Anyone who listened to the oral arguments knows not to hold their breath for the court to agree with the Colorado supremes (and others) that he’s committed crimes (Washington Post):

The high court took the unusual step Sunday of scheduling an opinion announcement for a day when it is not in session. The justices typically issue rulings from the bench, with the author of the majority opinion presenting a summary of the court’s decision. Instead, the court said opinions could be posted on its website Monday at 10 a.m.

Colorado’s top court ordered Trump, the Republican front-runner, off the ballot in December after finding that he engaged in insurrection around the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. The state court put its ruling on hold while litigation continued, and the former president’s name will appear on the state’s primary ballot. (If he was ultimately ruled ineligible, the votes for him would not count.)

Trump appealed as Trump does. But he’s on the Colorado ballot tomorrow. Should he lose his SCOTUS appeal, his votes would not count.

Democrats are always “maximally crimey”

Ian Bassin and Dahlia Lithwick suggest that what the court does not say in its ruling is likely as important as what it does. The court is unlikely to render an opinion on whether Trump engaged in an insurrection, as Colorado found, nor on the presidential immunity appeal still outstanding. That does not mean the justices won’t be speaking volumes. “The real question is whether our media will be savvy enough to hear it,” the pair explain.

Consider how the press reported the Robert Mueller findings on Hillary Clinton’s email server or Special Counsel Robert Hur’s decision not to indict Joe Biden for his handling of classified documents (Slate).:

One might wonder why it is that when it’s Donald Trump openly committing crimes and evading responsibility, the default media narrative is that he didn’t commit crimes, yet when Democrats are found to have committed no crimes, the story becomes that they are still sufficiently crime-adjacent to be maximally crimey, The coverage of the Comey and Hur reports focused orders of magnitude more on their non-conclusion details than the decision not to press charges. Whereas our press largely fell for Attorney General Bill Barr and Donald Trump’s efforts to spin the Mueller report into an “exoneration” at the expense of the damning facts about obstruction of justice that were laid out in its pages.

The press casts doubt on the Democrat, perhaps to elide legal technical jargon that is less digestible, just not when it is the Republican. The simplified storylines became “But Her Emails” and “Biden So Old!”

Maybe this is all unfair. Maybe we can expect better. Maybe if the Supreme Court issues an opinion ruling for Trump on technicalities while still remaining silent on the lower court’s finding that he engaged in insurrection, we’ll see headlines and reporting capturing the dual nature of such a ruling, and the momentous implications of a court that seems to accept that he did what we know he did. But we’re not holding our breath.

Curated for your protection

Bassin, Lithwick and the rest of us saw what Trump did. The House Select Committee investigated Jan. 6 exhaustively and broadcast its findings to the world. “Hundreds of participants have been sentenced for participating in it,” many admitting they attacked the Capitol and police at Trump’s behest. “The only material question for the high court is whether he will be allowed to get away with it.”

Yet the Roberts Court’s conservative majority seems determined not just to let Trump get away with it, but to let themselves get away with not upholding their judicial oaths to “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.” MAGA Republicans elsewhere across the U.S. are working to ensure that, when we hold “free and fair” elections, Americans are merely going through the motions. Watch this morning to see if the U.S. Supreme Court has elected to do the same.

In a digital age when our attention is curated for us, don’t hold your breath for the press to make much of it if it does.

UPDATE: Court rules 9-0 that the 14th Amendment’s Section 3 is not self-executing (quick skim and reporting). Congress alone is the primary enforcement mechanism. Trump may stay on the Colorado and other state ballots. Court does not exonerate Trump for insurrection.

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The Colorado Case Thuds

Published by digby on February 8, 2024

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:

Two things were obvious Thursday morning in the Supreme Court, where the justices pondered whether former President Donald Trump is disqualified from seeking the presidency because of his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

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.

In this case, Trump v. Anderson, the Colorado Supreme Court determined that Trump must be removed from its presidential ballot under a provision of the 14th Amendment that prohibits former high-ranking officials who engage in an “insurrection” from serving in office again.

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.

Stooge Scene

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 8, 2024

Where were you when?

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.

Enjoy this fiery celebration of book-burning from Valentina Gomez Noriega (funny, for some reason she’s going by Valentina Gomez), Republican candidate for Secretary of State in Missouri in the August 6 GOP primary. Missouri Democrats failed to field a candidate. Terrific.

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.

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And Water Is Wet

Published by Tom Sullivan on February 7, 2024

A republic imperiled

Elie Mystal captured the tenor of our times in a single Formerly Twitter post Monday afternoon:

On the first ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday thankfully and logically ruled unanimously that former U.S. presidents, Donald “91 Counts” Trump specifically, are not immune from criminal prosecution.

“SAVE PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY!” the would-be potentate declared immediately on his social network. You first have to have it to save it, Donald.

Yes, Trump will appeal to “his” justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, and must by Monday, the Appeals Court ruled.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write at Slate:

The justices must now decide whether to halt the new ruling—an act that seems likely to push Trump’s criminal trial past the 2024 election—or allow proceedings at the trial court to move forward at a pace that might affect the election’s outcome. In theory, this call is purely procedural; in reality, due to the compressed timeline here, it may well determine Trump’s fate. If the former president persuades the justices to freeze the case before Judge Tanya Chutkan for months, then wins the election, he will undoubtedly exploit his office to scrap the prosecution. Once again, SCOTUS holds his fate in its hands. It does so on the very same week it will hear a different case about his removal from the ballot.

Which references the second part of Mystal’s quip. But we’ll come back to that.

While it’s impossible to predict how the justices will handle what would otherwise be a straightforward case of Presidents Not Being Kings, there is reason to think a majority of the justices might kick the can down the road far enough to help Trump evade accountability before November. Such a move would be indefensible. The former president’s arguments are not just weak but trivial, and even this hard-right court should not debase itself by pretending to take them seriously. The question is not whether a majority will ultimately agree with Trump (it won’t) but whether a majority will abet Trump’s efforts to run out the clock (it might). The bench slap he received on Tuesday, however, makes that craven move harder to pull off with a straight face.

Indefensible? Yes. Gutless? Epically. A dereliction of duty to the citizens they serve (meaning in addition to Clarence Thomas’ billionaire benefactors). The drain around which their reputations swirl beckons. A “craven move harder to pull off with a straight face”? Perhaps. But then regular readers know that shamelessness is conservatives’ superpower.

Trump’s arguments before the D.C. court were facially farcical. But since that describes Trump’s morning makeup regime, unsurprising.

Lithwick and Stern continue:

The court’s reasoning boiled down to a simple proposition: “At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches.” This position was, you may recall, taken by Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, who was asked at oral argument in this appeal whether presidential immunity would prevent the prosecution of a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political opponent. Sauer was unable to explain why it would not.

Trump’s attorneys will offer nothing better behind which the Supreme Court’s conservative majority can hide. At best, SCOTUS might refuse the case and let the lower court ruling stand. Second. it might grant a stay. But that would imply the Supremes believe his case has merit, and/or signal the court’s sense that a lower panel should not have the last word on a ruling of such import. It would also serve Trump’s desire to put off special prosecutor Jack Smith’s prosecution in hopes that, should Trump win the presidency in the fall, he could simply abort the case from the Oval Office. Third, SCOTUS could affirm, “issuing a one-line decision that simply says the D.C. Circuit got it right, without holding oral arguments.”

What’s the betting line in London?

As for Thursday’s follies, a court will entertain whether or not the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump of Insurrection from ever again holding elected office. Trump’s attorneys offer more ludicrous arguments proving Trump is getting what he pays(?) for. Election Law Blog’s Richard Hasen has opinions, also at Slate:

Consider first Trump’s argument in the disqualification case that the Supreme Court will hear in oral argument on Thursday. That case concerns a Colorado Supreme Court decision keeping Trump off the ballot for the Republican presidential nomination on grounds that he engaged in insurrection in violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I’ve already noted here at Slate that Trump’s arguments in his Supreme Court opening brief against the Colorado decision spent an inordinate amount of time on a hypertechnical argument about whether the president is an “officer of the United States” and the presidency is an “office” of the United States for purposes of Section 3. The argument is exceptionally weak. As Marty Lederman writes, “If the presidency isn’t an office of the United States, of what sovereignty is it an office? Ohio? France?”

As Marty helpfully explains, there are really two related hypertechnical arguments here. First, because the presidency is not an “office” of the United States, the disqualification provision of Section 3 does not disqualify anyone who engaged in insurrection from serving as president. The second argument is that disqualification does not apply to a former president who has violated his oath, because the president is not an “officer of the United States” and Section 3 applies only to someone who has “previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States.” Trump has focused on this second argument.

Trumpish BS gets piled higher and deeper, of course. What the republic faces is Americans’ freedoms hanging beneath a Damoclean sword held in place by the thinnest of judicial threads. The Supreme Court has to know its already battered reputation is also on the line:

The Supreme Court now faces what are potentially two outcome-determinative questions on the presidential election, and it will likely make one or both decisions in a matter of weeks. If the court disqualifies Trump, that should be the end of his candidacy. If the court finds one way or the other not to disqualify Trump (and there are many ways the court can do so aside from embracing the hypertechnical argument), then the decision on timing on the immunity question becomes crucial.

If the court lets the election subversion case go to trial after holding there is no immunity, there’s a real chance Trump is convicted, and that conviction could be enough to swing the election away from Trump. Indeed, if it happens before the Republican National Convention, there’s a real chance the delegates could choose someone other than Trump for the general election.

Whatever the court does, it needs to be guided by the principle that like cases should be treated alike, and no person is above the law. The surest way for the court to lose more respect in the public’s eye is if it creates a rule that helps Donald Trump and only Donald Trump.

“People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook,” Richard Nixon famously said as he faced the Watergate investigation. What Trump insists is that they not know until after he’s been reelected and declares himself sovereign.

Mystal’s tweet suddenly doesn’t look very funny.

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Immunity For Dummies

Published by digby on January 9, 2024

“A president has to have immunity. And the other thing was, I did nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong.”

The argument before the panel on the DC circuit was held this morning and it doesn’t sound like they were buying it:

Former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Agnifilo took to CNN Tuesday to discuss a moment in Trump’s presidential immunity hearing when his trial lawyers were confronted with past statements made in his impeachment hearings in January 2021.

“Clearly, Trump’s arguments in other forums are coming back to haunt him,” Agnifilo said. “You cannot be inconsistent and disingenuous when you are speaking to the court.”

Agnifilo was responding to a question from host Kaitlan Collins, who noted Trump’s impeachment lawyers said presidents could be criminally prosecuted.Skip Ad

The former prosecutor then argued that the three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit would take into account past legal forums before they ruled on the two protections Trump wants to claim.

The first being that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution and the second that a former impeachment triggers double jeopardy, the rule that says a person can’t be tried twice for a single crime.

“What I thought that the appellate court did a really excellent job here was narrowing the issues down,” Agnifilo said. “At the end Judge [Florence] Pan got Mr. [Dean John] Sauer, who represents Trump, to concede there is no absolute immunity here.”

It will go to the Supremes of course. But according to some of the brighter legal eagles, if the DC Circuit rules against Trump it’s a real possibility that they might just let it stand. Boy will Trump be mad if that happens. But they would be wise to do it.

If the high court wants to maintain even a shred of credibility, they will rule against this immunity claim. But that might make them also rule against the 14th Amendment claim. They are a political entity even if they pretend not to be.

They can say those two decisions split the difference. It won’t make anyone happy but there’s nothing they can do about that. They’re playing for history.

If you want to go deep on this, this analysis of potential timelines from Just Security is very helpful.

By the way, here’s Trump vowing revenge if he wins the election:

Trump in the dock

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 9, 2024

Sort of

And how did theatergoers respond?

Lawyers are right this minute arguing that Donald “91 felony indictments” Trump should be immune from criminal prosecution for acts he took during his White House tenure.

“Circuit judge Florence Pan is putting Trump lawyer John Sauer in a tough spot,” writes The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell.

Sauer is still arguing that Trump is not an “officer” of the U.S.

You can listen along to the arguments here.

On the SEAL Team Six scenario above, Brian Beutler takes on the argument that Trump should be held to a special standard. We all know how special he is, don’t we?

Beutler’s “We Can’t Afford Weak-Kneed Liberalism In The Trump Era” refers specifically to objections to disqualifying Trump from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment. Just to get you started:

Boiled down, the argument is this: Donald Trump should be held to a special standard, not written into the Constitution, because applying the law to him faithfully is unfair to Republicans, and may allow them to engage in tit-for-tat retribution. 

Both of these objections are easily refuted.

Consider Jonathan Chait’s most recent piece, restating his opposition to the disqualification effort, which he describes as a “gambit.”

Chait maintains his objection is political, not legal, but it is actually both—he’s making a case for the Supreme Court to invent new law to reach what he believes would be a politically expedient outcome. 

The legal aspect of his reasoning centers on standards of evidence: The allegation that Trump “engaged in insurrection” is contestable, and since Trump contests it, the public will never fully accept his disqualification. The Supreme Court should thus reverse state-level decisions disqualifying him on what are ultimately due-process grounds. 

Politics may be animating this argument, but it is an argument about the law and how it should be applied. The legal question of whether Trump’s conduct matches the meaning of “engaged in insurrection” is at the heart of all academic and judicial opinions supporting his removal from the ballot. Chait appears driven by fear of the consequences of applying the law to Trump, so he’s adopted the legal view that the 14th amendment shouldn’t be applied to Trump without the strictest possible scrutiny. That’s a legal mechanism—it just happens to be an atextual one. 

THE FAFO DOCTRINE

The unfairness point is easiest to rebut. Chait argues Trump should be held to this invented standard under the law because, “the timing and political stakes of this case require incontestable certainty.” It’d be wrong to apply the law as written (no criminal conviction required!) because it’d be unfair to Republicans. “If the Court were contemplating a Trump disqualification a year or two ago, when the Republicans had more time to organize their alternatives, it might have allowed a more forgiving threshold of truth,” he argues.

The glaring weakness here is that Republicans are real adults, making decisions for themselves, with a mix of real and fake information, and the fact that their leader engaged in insurrection and might thus be disqualified from office was not hidden from them at any point. They called it an insurrection. They acknowledged Trump’s culpability. Then they decided to reanoint him as their leader. This strikes me as Their Problem, not Our Problem.

And, oh-my-god, there is the risk of tit-for-tat by Republicans!

When playing procedural or constitutional hardball, be sure not to create new norms that sunder the whole constitutional order. Fortunately that is not a major concern here. It’s more an indication that Republican mind games are having their intended effect of making liberals doubt themselves. 

I’ve watched Democrats cringe like abused spouses since at least the GOP sweep of 1994. “But what will Republicans do?” (To us.) They pull their punches. They often don’t throw any. What if they call us bullies?

Who wants to vote for that?

Update:

What if we don’t win by being blandly palatable but rather by saying what we’re for?

3 Years Ago Today

Published by digby on January 6, 2024

“Coming for you Pelosi, you socialist c**t!” “We know where you live!” “Antifa’s a bunch of p*ssies!” “If we’re got to hang a bunch of crooked congressmen, we’ll do that, okay?”

That’s just a small sample of the patriotic rhetoric heard from these patriots that day. Watch the whole Youtube if you have the stomach for it. It’s about 8 minutes. It’s so easy to forget just how violent these feral criminals were that day.

And by the way, Roy Nehls, the congressman attempting to talk to the protesters, wrote this before he voted against certifying the election:

Here he is today:

Nehls announced Tuesday that he will be serving as a witness for Trump’s defense in the 14th Amendment case that argues the former president should be barred from running for office under the Constitution’s disqualification clause. Calling the civil trial a “sham” and “clear election interference,” Nehls said, “I was at the doors on January 6, face to face with protestors, and I know firsthand there was NO INSURRECTION.”

“I look forward to providing my eyewitness account of that,” Nehls wrote in a post on X.

Also, get a look at this, from yesterday:

It’s unthinkable that this monster ever comes close to power again. And even then I don’t know what we’re going to do about his cult.

Donald Trump Is A Criminal

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 6, 2024

Stop pretending he’s wearing clothes!

Friday afternoon the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case from Colorado that declared Donald J. Trump, Insurrectionist, ineligible to appear on that state’s 2024 primary ballot. And oh, the humanity!

The 14th Amendment, the Civil War, Maine, Colorado, a divided nation, MAGA death threats against lawmakers and judges, etc. Plus the kettles of limp-spaghetti arguments desperate Trump’s attorneys have thrown at courtroom walls hoping something, anything, will stick and save their client’s ass.

And then there’s the tarnished Roberts court itself (Washington Post):

The public already views the Supreme Court through a partisan lens, with Democrats expressing little confidence in the court and Republicans saying the opposite — and the question of whether Trump should be kept off the ballot has the potential to further polarize those views.

“It throws them right into the political thicket,” Stanford law professor Michael W. McConnell said of the court. “There is no way they can decide the case without having about half the country think they are being partisan hacks.”

Oh, but Team Trump thinks they have this in the bag:

“I think it should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court; I have faith in them,” [Trump attorney Alina] Habba said on Fox News.“You know, people like Kavanaugh who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up.”

Aaron Blake:

[D]espite Habba’s cleanup effort, she was clearly pointing in the direction of Kavanaugh (and potentially others) being beholden to Trump; there is no other reason to invoke the supposed favors Trump did for Kavanaugh. This adds to a volume of evidence that indicates that Trump does indeed expect loyalty from judges and justices — along with plenty of others in positions where that shouldn’t be a consideration.

That was before SCOTUS decided to accept the case it must take no matter how much it does not want to.

Trump sent the judges a message himself at a Friday rally in Iowa:

“All I want is fair; I fought really hard to get three very, very good people in,” he said, referring to his appointees. He added, “And I just hope that they’re going to be fair because, you know, the other side plays the ref.”

Also sprach MAGAthustra.

Translation: You owe me.

Implied threat: You’d better come through. Or else.

Oh, the democracy!

Constitutional scholars are divided on whether it would be good for democracy to bar Trump from the ballot, or whether such a move, even if legally sound, is politically too dangerous. Many of them say theyexpect the justices to try to find a way to decide the case without addressing the underlying question of whether Trump engaged in an insurrection.

Listen. Listen closely. Trump did this. That is the context no one in the press has the guts to talk about. All this hand-ringing over the Court’s dilemma, over a democracy in peril, and no mention that our democratic republic stands at this crossroads because Donald Trump is a career criminal! We’re here because of him.

Oh, but he’s not been adjudicated! they cry. Like the dozens of indicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists still awaiting trial while their accomplices sit rotting in jail? Poor babies, all!

“There’s no confusion about who Trump is,” Biden said on Friday. We know who Trump is. You don’t have to be Maya Angelou or Robert Zimmerman to know which way the wind blows.

Look, I don’t agree with everything Dan Froomkin writes here, but I share his frustration that the mainstream press refuses, refuses, to address any elephant in any room:

Our top newsrooms are too timid to go there, however. Racism, especially when it comes to calling specific people or practices racist, has long been the third rail of journalism. Newsroom leaders don’t want to be accused of stoking racial resentment, don’t want to alienate racist readers, and don’t want to have to defend their own insufficient attempts to diversify their newsrooms and sources. They just don’t want to go there.

Sadly, the fact that racism may be the key to understanding the current political climate hasn’t changed that aversion.

By the same token, Trump is a criminal. By temperament and by habit if not by judicial decree.

But God forbid anyone should speak bluntly about the personality cult that accuses Democrats of being baby-blood-drinking pedophiles.

Trump is not the the genetic progenitor of this movement. As a natural-born predator, he just exploits it more efficiently than his wannabes.

But the flood of 14th Amendment odds-making just sickens me. Because Trumpism, with its not-so-subliminal threats of violence has turned press watchdogs into lapdogs. The expert analysis we’ll be expected to swallow as SCOTUS deliberates Trump’s questionable standing as a candidate for dictator will focus on every legal and political consideration except the behaviors of the man who misled us here.

I’m reminded of the kids’ nonseense song about the hole at the botton of the sea. It all comes back to Trump. He’s the hole.

“…. Bastard”

Published by digby on January 5, 2024

I finished it for him.

This was the opening speech of Biden’s campaign and he is making it clear how he sees the stakes and he is 100% right.

Unfortunately, we are clearly going to have to fight much of the media at the same time we will have to fight Trump and the MAGA cult. CNN’s commentary after the speech was dismal. Gloria Borger complained that it was “very personal” ignoring the fact that it’s a presidential campaign and Biden is running against Trump! Of course it’s personal. And all he did was use Trump’s own words. (He didn’t even call him old or fat or make fun of him, which I think is the actual definition of “getting personal.”)

Then former Republican Charlie Dent said that people are sick of all the “extremistm” and are looking for something different than Trump who they think is crazy and Biden who is too old. Then he brought up No Labels at which point I changed the channel.

*sigh*

Some more highlights:

Some other highlights:

There’s a lot of work to do to get people to pay attention to what Trump has in store if he gets elected again. This was a good start.

Update –— I thought this piece in Politico Playbook framed the issue well:

BIDEN SETS THE STAKES — One way to think about the last three years of American politics is as an ongoing effort to hold DONALD TRUMP accountable for his actions on Jan. 6, 2021.

It started as a bipartisan effort that treated Trump as a pariah, but then it quickly polarized into just another red-blue issue, one that rehabilitated Trump among Republicans while generally benefitting Democrats electorally. Ever since, the accountability effort has pingponged through different branches of government, the states, and other legal and political institutions.

First up was Congress with Trump’s post-riot impeachment, which was ultimately rejected by Republican senators, including Leader MITCH McCONNELL, who argued that there were better ways in other parts of the government to seek accountability.

Next was the House Jan. 6 committee, which had no power over Trump but served as a catalyst for the next two forums of accountability: the 2022 midterms, where Republican candidates who supported election subversion were generally defeated, and the Justice Department, which indicted Trump.

Then came the GOP presidential primaries, the Republican Party’s internal system of candidate accountability. By then Jan. 6 had so fully matured into a partisan issue that trying to use it against Trump strengthened him and damaged the attacker. Trump will spend the anniversary on Saturday at two rallies in Iowa.

As the AP reminds, Trump “has called it ‘a beautiful day’ and described those imprisoned for the insurrection as ‘great, great patriots’ and ‘hostages.’ At some campaign rallies, he has played a recording of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ sung by jailed rioters — the anthem interspersed with his recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.”

The Jan. 6 accountability project will dominate 2024, as the issue is taken up by the states deciding whether Trump is an insurrectionist and should be allowed on the ballot, juries in Georgia and Washington, D.C., deciding two criminal cases, and the Supreme Court which seems poised to decide three major issues related to these efforts.

But all of these efforts — the GOP primaries, the 14th Amendment movement, the JACK SMITH and FANI WILLIS indictments — might sputter out, just as impeachment did three years ago.

That would leave President JOE BIDEN and his reelection campaign as the last tool of accountability.

So it is no surprise that Biden is kicking off the 2024 election today with a speech reminding voters of Jan. 6 and alerting them to the threat he believes Trump poses — one he prepped for by meeting with a group of historians at the White House.

“Using the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection to frame the stakes of the 2024 campaign, the president will draw upon the history of the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, setting Friday to argue that his likely rematch with Donald Trump will be a seismic test of the republic’s foundation,” Jonathan Lemire writes this morning, citing senior Biden advisers who offered a preview of the speech.

“‘Democracy is not a sideline issue: It is a sacred cause,’ said one of the advisers, granted anonymity as part of the ground rules during a call with reporters. ‘When major events occur, people render the judgments in national elections. Voters won’t forget Jan. 6.’”

The content of the speech will be studied carefully by Democratic strategists who are in the middle of the same electoral debate they had in 2022: Should the party emphasize Jan. 6 and the threat to democratic norms, or should it focus on traditional policy issues?

There was a cottage industry of pundits ahead of the midterms who argued Biden was making a mistake by emphasizing the former, which was allegedly not as important to voters, at the expense of the latter.

But post-election analysis suggested that Democrats prevailed in places where they convinced voters to take “the MAGA threat” seriously, and suffered in places where that message didn’t break through. It’s not a strict binary choice, of course, but a question of emphasis. Biden will use the MAGA and Jan. 6 as an umbrella threat that affects numerous policies.

As Lemire writes, “Biden will extend the concept of freedom to other issue areas during his remarks on Friday, aides said. That includes access to vote, abortion rights and economic fairness.”

Trump’s Top Legal Adviser Puts “His” Supreme Court Justices On Notice

Published by digby on January 5, 2024

Yesterday I wrote about Trump’s right hand gal, Alina Habba saying she’d rather be pretty than smart because she can fake being smart.

She’s not faking it very well:

Aaron Blake writes:

There is saying the quiet part out loud, and then there’s what Trump lawyer Alina Habba just did.

Addressing the Supreme Court’s looming 14th Amendment decisions on whether Donald Trump can be disqualified from state ballots for engaging in insurrection, Habba decided it would be a good time to remind people of just how much Trump has done for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

“I think it should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court; I have faith in them,” Habba saidon Fox News.“You know, people like Kavanaugh who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up.”

She tried to clean it up but please. Let there be no doubt about what she was saying:

[D]espite Habba’s cleanup effort, she was clearly pointing in the direction of Kavanaugh (and potentially others) being beholden to Trump; there is no other reason to invoke the supposed favors Trump did for Kavanaugh. This adds to a volume of evidence that indicates that Trump does indeed expect loyalty from judges and justices — along with plenty of others in positions where that shouldn’t be a consideration.

The second point is that this is potentially counterproductive.

Trump’s record on such issues is unambiguous. He has made clear he expects judges to toe his line, and he looks for loyalty in all the wrong places — from officials who are supposed to be insulated from politics. That starts with but is hardly limited to an FBI director whose investigation threatened Trump, James B. Comey. “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” Comey testified that Trump told him in 2017 before Trump fired him.

The Washington Post has reported that, also in 2017, Trump considered pulling the nomination of now-Justice Neil M. Gorsuch because of a perceived lack of loyalty. Gorsuch had in a confirmation interview with a Democratic senator expressed displeasure with Trump’s attacks on judges, calling them “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”

As The Post’s Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Barnes reported:

The president worried that Gorsuch would not be “loyal,” one of the people said, and told aides that he was tempted to pull Gorsuch’s nomination — and that he knew plenty of other judges who would want the job.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly suggested that judges he nominated would rule in predictable ways, including on issues such as Roe v. Wade. “If it’s my judges, you know how they’re gonna decide,” he assured evangelicals at one point.

Trump in 2022 also bristled after the Supreme Court declined to help him shield his tax returns from the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Many Republican Judges go out of their way to show they are beyond reproach, & will come down hard on people before them in order to prove they cannot be ‘bought’ or in any way show favor to those who appointed them,” Trump said on Truth Social, adding: “As soon as they get appointed, they go ‘ROGUE!’”

Trump suggested that this was a contrast to judges appointed by Democrats, who were more apt to toe the party’s line.

But that last point also shows how Habba’s comment could be ill-advised, even beyond the ethics of it.

Whatever you think of Trump’s expressed sentiment about relative party loyalty, it’s true that judges are fiercely protective of the perception that they are independent. Yes, judges and even Supreme Court justices often rule in predictable ways that align with the party that appointed them. But crucial to the legitimacy of the court is the idea that they aren’t just political operatives doing the bidding of their allies.

Habba’s comments — and Trump’s past comments — basically set the narrative that Trump is working the justices. And any favorable decision for Trump could be viewed as bowing to that pressure. Whether it affects Kavanaugh’s thought process or not, it puts him in a box.

Normally, I would say that it’s very stupid to say something like this openly. But the Trump cult is all about intimidation and frankly it works very well on right wingers. They cower like beaten dogs whenever he looks at them sideways. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Kav and Barrett and Gorsuch all broke out into a cold sweat at the idea Trump might sic his red hats on them. They are Republicans, after all, first and foremost.

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