Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Dan Pfeiffer on the Supremes’ decision to help Trump’s delaying tactics:

Thanks to the shenanigans of Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, the MAGA justices thanked Trump by giving him a massive, possibly campaign-altering gift. On Wednesday afternoon, the Supreme Court agreed to take on Trump’s claim that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for acts that occurred while they were in office. The icing on the cake is that the Supreme Court scheduled the hearing on an “expedited basis” for April 22nd, further delaying Trump’s trial. Thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court, the most important of Trump’s four (yes, four!) criminal trials may not be finished before Americans cast their ballots in November.

There is no reason for the court to wait six weeks before holding the hearings. On a matter this urgent, they could have moved much faster. Every day of delay helps Trump avoid accountability. If Trump wins in November, he could preemptively pardon himself or have his Department of Justice drop the charges. In addition to being a travesty for the rule of law, there are also significant political implications.

This may be the most blatant Supreme Court intervention in a campaign since Bush v. Gore — with the same result. Disregarding that three of the nine justices were appointed by Trump; Clarence Thomas also has a massive conflict of interest because his wife was involved in the insurrection for which Trump seeks immunity.

Polls have shown that a conviction could cost Trump the election. In the February NBC News poll, Trump led Biden 47-42, but when voters were asked how they would vote if Trump were found guilty and convicted of a felony, Biden led 45-43. Exit polls in the GOP primaries indicate that 30 to 40% of Republican primary voters wouldn’t view Trump as fit for the presidency.

Democrats in my text chains and on social media are equal parts enraged and despondent over the news. I share the rage but not the despondency (yet). Here are some quick thoughts on what it means.

Pfeiffer says that the trial still might happen before the election but I think we all know that’s probably a long shot. Had they had any desire for that to happen they could have taken the case back in December when both Trump and Smith asked them to. Instead they waited for the appeals court, which also took its time, and then sat on that for a couple of weeks before agreeing to take it, scheduling arguments sex weeks later. As Luttig said yesterday, it’s clear there are dissents from the appeals court decision and that means they will almost certainly drag it out to the end of the term at the end of June.

Pfeiffer mentions the New York case which is looking more and more like the only one that’s going to have Trump facing a jury before the election.

Trump is still on the hook for his crimes and election interference. The Supreme Court stay means that the trial in Manhattan over Trump’s use of campaign funds to pay hush money to cover up an affair will begin before too long. That case will almost certainly finish well before the election. Voters might actually determine whether they are willing to send a convicted felon to the White House. Because it is not a federal case, newly elected Trump cannot pardon himself or commute his own sentence.

There are two downsides to the Manhattan case. One, polls show that of all of Trump’s crimes, violating campaign finance laws to cover up an affair is not as concerning to voters as illegally hoarding classified documents or fomenting an insurrection. Two, these sorts of crimes rarely end in jail time for first-time offenders. So, our dreams of watching Trump frogmarched into prison may have to wait for another day.

Not only that, there’s actually a good chance that Trump will be found not guilty in that case in which case he will emerge once more as Teflon Don, spurring some of the bandwagon types to rally around him because he’s so untouchable. That was always the risk of any trials before the election but in the other cases the issues are so important, it might have been offset by the outrage that he got away with it. If gets off on this case it won’t have that effect.

The polls say that a good number of people wouldn’t vote for a convicted felon so people have been counting on that to turn the tide. I never thought that was anything we should count on. people have a way of rationalizing anything to support their decisions.

Pfeiffer writes:

Some worried Democrats comforted themselves by believing that Trump’s chances to return to the White House would end with a conviction. No trial before the election means no conviction.

Trump may avoid facing a jury before he faces the voters because of blatantly partisan shenanigans. This will further besmirch Chief Justice John Roberts’ already abysmal legacy. It’s an attempt at election inference from the highest court in the land.

Would it be easier to beat Trump if he were convicted of a crime before the election? Absolutely!

Does Joe Biden need Donald Trump to be convicted to win? Absolutely not!

This is a close race. Biden has a very good argument for reelection. He — and every Democrat — should make some chicken salad out of this chicken shit. Let’s fire up our base by calling out the Supreme Court, which has its lowest approval rating in history, for trying to rig the election. And then let’s make an argument against Trump that will ring true to the voters we need:

Donald Trump is running for President for one reason and one reason only — to avoid accountability for crimes he committed. He’s not thinking about you or your family. He only cares about himself. If elected, his first act will be to pardon himself because he believes that rich and powerful people don’t have to play by the same rules as the rest of us.

Sounds good to me. I would add that he’s also running for president to exact revenge because he’s the greatest sore loser in world history but that’s just me…

It takes true Michiganders like @MichaelKosta and @JordanKlepper to decipher what just happened at the Democratic primary there pic.twitter.com/6n6cNeyOEi

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 29, 2024

That’s pretty subtle… and funny.

Stephen Moore, formerly of the Club For Growth, is on board Project 2025. That’s not good news.

The Guardian reports:

Stephen Moore, a conservative economist whose controversial remarks about women cost him a seat on the Federal Reserve board in 2019, is now co-author of a plan to radically reform the US treasury as part of Project 2025, a vast rightwing effort to advance radical policy proposals for Donald Trump’s possible White House return.

“Project 2025 is all about forcing a far-right agenda on to everyday Americans,” said Tony Carrk, the executive director of the progressive watchdog Accountable.US, which produced an extensive report on Moore’s views and positions.

“So it’s no wonder they tapped a notorious social security opponent like Stephen Moore to help write their policy schemes.”

Moore, Carrk said, had “dedicated his career to slashing social security benefits and taxes for billionaires”.

Trump always says he will protect SS and medicare but it’s just a campaign promise. He doesn’t give a daman about any of that, he just knows that it’s popular and wants to pretend that he will erase all national debt through his silly tariff schemes and “growth” to appease the rubes. The Big Money Boyz are fine with that as long as they get their tax cuts.

But people like Moore really, really want to do it and it Trump isn’t running again he’ll probably let them do whatever they want:

Moore remains loyal to Trump but in the past has advocated for privatising social security, which he has called a “Ponzi scheme”, and told students they should march on the Capitol and burn their social security cards…

Moore’s co-authors are William L Walton, a private equity investor, and David R Burton, an economic policy expert. The three authors identify social security as a program relevant to treasury reform, including it in “issues of concern” that “cut across multiple parts of treasury or other governmental agencies”.

Elsewhere, Jonathan Berry, who was chief counsel to the Trump transition in 2016-17 and led the regulatory section of the Department of Labor in the Trump administration, notes the potential for privatisation of social security, writing: “Existing statutory language in the Social Security Act does not prohibit non-public organisations from administering the programme.”

Moore is now being bankrolled by Leonard Leo:

Moore went on to advise Trump during the Covid pandemic. Now, as well as writing books and providing analysis for Fox News, he is attached to a range of rightwing groups – he is a Heritage Foundation fellow; the senior economist at FreedomWorks; and chair of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CUP).

Moore co-founded CUP in 2015 with the billionaire Steve Forbes, the economist Larry Kudlow (later Trump’s chief economic adviser) and Arthur Laffer, an economist and pundit who advised Ronald Reagan and Trump and to whom Trump gave the presidential medal of freedom.

The Accountable.US report details donations of at least $1.77m to CUP from DonorsTrust, a rightwing group not required to reveal the names of its donors.

“A principled philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors” in its own words, but “the right’s dark-money ATM” in the words of Mother Jones magazine, DonorsTrust has links to the Koch network and Leonard Leo, two dominant figures in rightwing political funding.

All those people are staunch opponents of social security and medicare. If they can finally get their hands on all that money for their rich benefactors to play with in the markets, you can believe they will do it. Privatization has always been their goal and we’re far enough from the calamity of 2008 now (and the markets are booming) so they almost surely think people have forgotten what can happen when your entire nest egg is in the market. I could happen.

It’s been a nightmare and it just got worse. Today’s horror, in which starving Palestinians rushed a rare humanitarian aid station, trampling each other out of desperation when IDF soldiers fired into the crowd resulting in over a hundred dead and 800 injured is one of the worst yet. There can’t be any more vivid example of just how out of control the war has become or a greater necessity for Israel to put an end to this nightmare right now. They are not going to “eliminate Hamas” through attrition and creating a more and more desperate population is only going to radicalize even more of them. They have more than made their point and have, in the process, revealed themselves to be ruthless and brutal, giving up much of whatever moral authority they had left. This is indefensible, even in light of the terrorist attack on October 7th.

The Biden administration said they had been on the verge of a ceasefire agreement and this may have thrown a monkey wrench into it. It seems logical, but some observers are saying that this incident may illustrate just how extreme the humanitarian crisis is and may propel the US and its allies to change the policy of public support while privately pressuring the Israeli government while trying to keep a lid on the region. The US can’t stand by as Gaza is being designated as one step away from famine by the World Health Organization and dropping food supplies by air, which they are now proposing, isn’t going to solve the larger problem.

This may be a watershed moment that changes the trajectory of this entire crisis. I understand Israel’s angst and fear after October 7th. But just as the US overreacted to Sept. 11th, they too have overreacted and it’s led them down the same path. The US may have been trying to pressure the Israelis privately but the results so far have not been promising. It’s time for a change in course.

Do not underestimate Gen Z

Let’s push back on the narrative that young people are not excited about their likely choice of two old men for president in 2024. They are. But that’s not the end of the story.

The Independent interviewed young voters at the North Carolina Young Democrats’ annual convention in Durham earlier this month. (Full disclosure: I attended and was one of the event’s sponsors.) Granted, it was a biased crowd:

“The thing that I think people miss the most right now about what’s happening is there’s this narrative that young people are not engaged in politics,” North Carolina Democratic State Party Chair, Anderson Clayton, said. “[People say that] they don’t care. They’re not going to vote this year. And I’m like, ‘No, they are.’ Because young people are not stupid. They are a lot smarter than people give them credit for.”

Maxwell Frost (D-FL), the youngest member of Congress, pointed to young voters’ support of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign as evidence of their voting behavior.

“A lot of young people really loved Bernie Sanders, right? He’s also old. So it’s not really about age, but it’s about policies,” Frost said.

Senator Sanders, who was 78 during his presidential run, obtained nearly half of the youth vote in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries before suspending his campaign.

“The highest youth voter turnout we’ve ever had in our country’s history was in 2020. Who did they vote for? Joe Biden,” Frost added.

Clayton makes the point even more strongly in a related video.

Ariana Baio (The Independent): Are people excited to vote?

Clayton (bluntly): No. I mean, I’m not going to lie to anybody, right, and I shouldn’t.

But she asks a followup question the press is not asking.

Clayton: I went to UNC Charlotte’s campus the other day and I asked every single one of those students, raise your hand if you are excited to vote for the 80 year old president? Not saying which 80 year old, because Donald Trump might as well be up there too. Nobody in that class raised their hand. But how many of you are still going to vote? Every single one of them raised their hand, except for one.

Clayton: And the thing that I think people miss the most right now about what’s happening is, like, there’s this narrative that young people are not engaged with politics, they don’t care, they’re not going to vote this year. And I’m like, no, they are. The narrative around young folks don’t want to vote for Joe Biden because he’s old? I wish people would dig a little bit deeper into that narrative. To me, young people look at Joe Biden and they say you’re not as progressive, maybe, as we need you to be right now. But we can push him. We can’t push a Donald Trump who doesn’t want young people to have the right to vote right now. We can’t push a Donald Trump who doesn’t want people to have the right to abortion. We cannot push that type of president. We can push a president, though, that believes and cares about young people.

Eve Levenson, Director of Youth Engagement for the Biden-Harris campaign, attended the Durham convention. It is the earliest a presidential campaign has placed a youth organizer in the field, she said.

Ken Martin, Democratic National Committee vice chairman Ken Martin, also chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), was in North Carolina last weekend in a sign that Biden-Harris and the national party believes North Carolina is flippable this year, and that Clayton could make that happen.

Young voters, as Frost said, may have posted the “highest youth voter turnout we’ve ever had in our country’s history” in 2020. But even if they turn out strongly this fall, they’ll have a way to go to catch up with the turnout rates of the oldsters over 45. But Clayton is pushing them hard, not just in this state, but around the country.

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MAGA wanted a second Civil War? They wish.

Once again the majority-conservative U.S. Supreme Court has put its thumb on the scales of justice to preserve minority dominance and elite impunity. In what once seemed a stable democratic republic, the equal justice to which it once aspired, at least on parchment, hangs by slender threads. On Wednesday, the court announced in a one-page proclamation that it would review the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that, no, presidents may not assassinate political rivals (or commit other crimes) without legal sanction.

Mark Joseph Stern at Slate:

The Supreme Court has all but guaranteed that Donald Trump will not face trial for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election before this November’s presidential election. On Wednesday, after more than two weeks’ delay, the court issued an order refusing to lift the stay that’s preventing the Jan. 6 trial, prosecuted by Special Counsel Jack Smith, from moving forward. Instead, the court took up the case, scheduling oral arguments for the week of April 22—nearly two months from now. On this timeline, the justices will probably issue a decision near the end of June. That punt gives Trump exactly what he wanted: an extended pause that will make it impossible for Judge Tanya Chutkan to hold a trial in time for the upcoming election.

If Trump wins that election, of course, he will ensure that his Justice Department halts the prosecution and dissolves the charges against him. Which means that SCOTUS has awarded him a powerful incentive to beat Joe Biden by any means necessary, and a good reason to hope that he can evade accountability for Jan. 6.

At least in federal courts. TheTrumpian high from evading federal prosecution will spur his drive to short-circuit remaining state prosecutory efforts, again, by any means necessary. Cultists will cheer on their sovereign.

For the moneyed elite behind Trump, further padding their accounts is a goal, certainly. But for them, for MAGA foot soldiers, for QAnon conspiracists, and Christian nationalists desirous of monarchy in democracy’s clothing, dominance is the real opiate. Or at the least, a return to the strict-father hierarchy George Lakoff mapped out. Put one way, “For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” Put another, “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Trump’s case is frivoulous, Stern and others rightly note. Unless the high court means to strip itself of its remaining legitimacy, already in shreds, it will uphold the lower court’s ruling. Eventually. Just not in time for a decision in Jack Smith’s insurrection case before Americans cast their fall ballots. Their actions will reinforce what equal justice has always meant in America: one gets just as much process as one can afford. Including justice denied.

The alarm among MSNBC panelists Thursday evening was palpable, save for Lawrence O’Donnell, convinced more than ever that Trump cannot win another term and make the federal government a Trump-branded fiefdom. I wish I shared his confidence. I shared it in 2016. Briefly.

In calling for revolution in the 1960s, yippie leader Jerry Rubin declared there “one word which Amerika hasn’t destroyed.” Four letters beginning with “F.” The American right has certainly destroyed another with seven letters beginning with “F”: freedom. Their conception is freedom from, not freedom for, someone reiterated recently.

There remains one guardrail left to check the conservative goal of restoring rich, white-Christian hegemony and the destruction of America’s pluralistic, multicultural democracy: Voters.

Chris Hayes said it bluntly Thursday evening. It’s on you, on us, to preserve the republic this fall. I hesitate to use “us or them,” but that’s how the Roberts Court has teed up the 2024 elections.

Your freedoms are on the line. Not abstractions like democracy and the rule of law. Your freedom. Freedom for everyone or for an elite few. This is serious.

.@chrislhayes: Trump's efforts to wriggle out of accountability seem to be working. But remember: the only thing that has ever worked to stop Trump is voters showing up at the polls and in the streets—the democracy that he wants so badly to destroy. pic.twitter.com/a23fTSP5LD

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) February 29, 2024

You say you want a revolution

The fringiest of the fringe, some even among the Christian right, imagine waging a second Civil War, AR-15s a-blazing, to restore the old times they’ve never forgotten. Their conception: God in his heaven, every man master of his domain, women and children obedient, and non-whites (and non-Christians) subservient and docile.

What’s really at hand is a second Revolution to overthrow the zombie monarchy that two and a half centuries after the first remains shambling and undead. This revolution will be fought with votes.

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Also, this happened:

Republicans block a bill by Democrats that would protect IVF access after Alabama Supreme Court ruling pic.twitter.com/xbHNklklDq

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 28, 2024

We can’t let these people take power. We just can’t.

They decided to take the immunity case so they’ll hear oral arguments two months from now despite what everyone believes is a bulletproof appellate decision. They didn’t need to hear it and if they did, they sure as hell could have made that decision weeks ago. It’s pretty clear they’re going to slow walk this thing so there’s little chance of a trial before the election.

Former Judge Michael Luttig happened to be on MSNBC when this came down and he said that the fact that they’ve decided to hear this case indicates that there are dissents from the appellate decision. (Gee, I wonder who that could be?) As a result, there is every likelihood that if their ultimate decision is that a president can’t be a blatant criminal with total immunity, there will be dissents and they will take their sweet time.

Recall, it didn’t used to be that way:

It was on [July 24] in 1974 that the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a fatal blow to President Richard Nixon’s presidency, in a decision that led to the release of the Watergate tapes.

The case of United States v. Nixon reached the Court on July 8, 1974, after it had concluded its prior term. The Justices found themselves in new territory as the Court had to deal with an executive privilege claim filed by President Nixon’s attorneys.

A grand jury had returned indictments against seven Nixon aides, including former Attorney General John Mitchell, as part of the Watergate investigation. Leon Jaworski, a special prosecutor appointed by President Nixon, and the seven defendants wanted access to audio tapes of conversations recorded by President Nixon in the White House.

Nixon argued that  the concept of executive privilege gave him the power to withhold sensitive information, such as the tapes, from other government branches in order to maintain confidential communications within the executive branch and to secure the national interest.

On July 24, 1974, a unanimous Court (with Justice Rehnquist not taking part due to a prior role in the Nixon administration) ruled against the President. Chief Justice Warren Burger said that the President didn’t have an absolute, unqualified privilege to withhold information.

“We conclude that when the ground for asserting privilege as to subpoenaed materials sought for use in a criminal trial is based only on the generalized interest in confidentiality, it cannot prevail over the fundamental demands of due process of law in the fair administration of criminal justice. The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial,” Burger said.

I lost all respect for the Court when they took Bush v Gore and then decided it on the most fatuous logic ever with a 5-4 partisan decision. I have had little faith in the institution ever since then. By the way, the Bush campaign filed for a stay of the recount on December 8, 2000, the court granted it immediately and agreed to take up the case and then released their decision on December 12. As you can see with US v. Nixon and Bush v. Gore, it doesn’t have to take this long.

I suppose there might be a silver lining in this, but only if the court ultimately decides that a president isn’t immune from the rule of law. If that happens then the election campaign becomes electrified, probably on both sides. We know that if he’s re-elected, on January 20th he will immediately order the DOJ to drop the case or give himself a pardon. If that doesn’t sober up anyone who cares about our country, nothing will.

If the court decides that a president has immunity from prosecution we are not longer a democracy. Even if Trump subsequently loses the election, this will almost certainly end up with a Republican president in the not so distant future who will test this in ways even Trump hasn’t thought of.

Judge Luttig on #DeadlineWH says there is no reason for #SCOTUS to take the Trump immunity claim, " Look, this is a momentous decision, just to hear this case. There was no reason in this world for the Supreme Court to take this case." pic.twitter.com/daOG14pxxG

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) February 28, 2024

Trump really did say his rambling is “total genius” and “if I were cognitively impaired, I think I’d know about it.”

How about this?

“In some states, the law allows a baby to be born from its mother’s womb in the ninth month. This has to change.” – Donald Trump

pic.twitter.com/tZgUQnFflm

— Christine (@guelphgirlchris) February 27, 2024

He has been addled for years. But whether it’s encroaching dementia of some kind or just his panic and distraction over the legal and financial problems he’s facing, he’s getting worse.

I know I don’t have to point out what would happen if Joe Biden said anything like that.

Even as the vast majority of Americans reject it

Axios reports on the latest PRRI poll on Christian Nationalism. Surprise! Most Americans aren’t for it:

This once-fringe ideology has become prevalent in some deeply red states at a time when the nation overall is increasingly diverse and less religious.

The new data from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Atlas come days after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should receive legal protections as “unborn life” — and cited Christianity in its reasoning.

7 out of 10 Americans said they were rejecters (30%) or skeptics (37%) of Christian nationalism, the PRRI survey said.

In California, New York and Virginia, more than 75% of respondents said they were rejecters or skeptics.

 In five deeply red states, at least 45% of respondents said they were adherents or sympathizers of Christian nationalism: North Dakota (50%), Mississippi (50%), Alabama (47%), West Virginia (47%) and Louisiana (46%).

States with the highest levels of support for Christian nationalism form a horseshoe shape, starting in the upper Midwest, dipping down into the deep South, and then through the Appalachian Mountains.

Republicans (55%) are more than twice as likely as independents (25%) and three times more likely than Democrats (16%) to hold Christian nationalist views, the survey found.

Majorities of two religious groups hold Christian nationalist beliefs: white evangelicals (66%) and Hispanic evangelicals (55%). Both groups are strong supporters of former President Trump, other polls have indicated.

 This ideology is mainstream in the Republican party. This is the crisis of democracy as much as anything.

Christian nationalism is a set of beliefs centered around white American Christianity’s dominance in most aspects of life in the United States.

Many Christian nationalists believe the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation.

Many also believe U.S. laws should be based on Christian values and that God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

“It’s really a claim for an ethno-religious state, and so there’s nothing democratic about that worldview,” Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI, tells Axios. Jones said some Christian nationalists view political foes as evil or demonic rather than as fellow citizens with different opinions, and see them as needing to be conquered.

We may think this is just another group of fringe wingnuts and GOP opportunists angling for power. But the reality is that our democratic system favors minoritarian government (largely due to the necessity of appeasing the slave holders) and this is not something anyone should dismiss out of hand. There is a lot of money and power pushing this stuff for their own reasons. And these people are very serious.