A federal court struck down Alabama’s congressional map on Tuesday, after GOP state lawmakers refused the court’s mandate to draw a second majority-Black district.
The three-judge panel wrote that it was “deeply troubled” that the state legislature declined to draw two majority-Black districts. The same court ruled last year that it should draw a second majority-Black district to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court affirmed the ruling from the lower court earlier this year.
We do not take lightly federal intrusion into a process ordinarily reserved for the State Legislature. But we have now said twice that this Voting Rights Act case is not close. And we are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires.
We are disturbed by the evidence that the State delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.
A court-appointed special master has about three weeks to submit proposals for a new Alabama congressional map after a panel of federal judges Tuesday struck down the district lines drawn by state lawmakers, finding that the plan didn’t fix a likely violation of civil rights law.
The ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama directed the special master to file three proposed remedial maps by Sept. 25.
The decision by the three-judge panel comes months after the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s previous district lines likely diluted the electoral power of Black voters in the state. The panel included one circuit judge and two district judges.
Alabama, a state with a Black population of more than 25 percent, has one district represented by a Black Democrat and six districts where white voters predominantly elect Republicans.
And now drawing the maps is out of the GOP’s hands. Alabama fought the law and the law won. Except Alabama will of course appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court hoping for a Trump judge to tip the court in its favor.
Special master? North Carolina’s been there, done that.
This is Republicans’ game. How many times have I said it? Ten years or more? This is the Republican M.O.: Find the line. Step over it. Dare someone to push them back. No pushback? New line. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Even then? Elections run on regular cycles. Delay long enough in court and eventually their illegal districts survive another election. There are no longer permanent, 10-year districts. The permanent campaign meets permanent redistricting.
He loved to dress up. Now he’ll be wearing a different costume:
Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, former leader of the right-wing extremist group Proud Boys, was sentenced on Wednesday to 22 years in prison for his role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
Why it matters: Tarrio’s sentencing caps one of the highest-profile prosecutions related to the Capitol riot, and his isthe longest sentence handed down in the Jan. 6 cases.
The previous highest sentencing record related to Jan. 6 was held by Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May.
However, prosecutors have argued that Tarrio maintained command over Proud Boys members after his arrest and cheered on the group as its members stormed the Capitol.
Prosecutors also noted Tarrio took credit for the riot on behalf of the group.
Zoom out: The Justice Department said in the spring that more than 1,030 people have been charged in connection to Jan. 6 in the roughly two years since the attack, and around 570 have pleaded guilty.
The big picture: Two other former Proud Boy leaders also received lengthy sentences last week for their actions on and around Jan. 6.
Joseph Biggs was sentenced to 17 years in prison last week, while Zachary Rehl received 15 years in prison.
Andrew Weissman points out that the judges who’ve been hearing these cases have been seeing Jan 6th cases now for years and they are not inclined to go easy on the “generals” who coordinated and incited this event. It’s hard to imagine they will go easy on the Commander in Chief of the Insurrection.
BTW:
“Biden Regime” lol? The *judge* who sentenced Tarrio is Timothy J. Kelly, a Trump appointee, former counsel to Chuck Grassley, and member of the Federalist Society. https://t.co/lvUfpVInvg
People are talking about whether, if McConnell resigns, Beshear would try to fill the vacancy with a Dem, despite a KY law saying he'd have to pick from 3 Republicans. What if he just doesn't appoint anyone, like McConnell kept the vacant SCt seat open?https://t.co/AvHO9IWwWX
McConnell and his Kentucky cronies tried to game the system and there’s no reason why Beshear shouldn’t turn Mitch’s clever little gambit right back on him.
After Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) experienced his second freezing episode in five weeks, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) is decliningto say whether he would follow a state law requiring him to appoint a Republican in the event of a Senate vacancy.
A reporter asked Beshear on Thursday whether, if McConnell were to step down, he would choose a replacement from one of three nominees selected by the state Republican Party, as the statute requires.
“There is no Senate vacancy,” Beshear responded at the news conference. “Senator McConnell has said he’s going to serve out his term, and I believe him, so I’m not going to speculate about something that hasn’t happened and isn’t going to happen.”
Asked whether voters deserve to know his stance on the issue, Beshear said he would not “sensationalize” McConnell’s health.
Heh. Good one.
Beshear, who took office in 2019, is running for reelection this fall against Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R), a protégé of McConnell who has also been touted as a possible Senate successor should McConnell retire.
McConnell, the longest-serving Senate GOP leader in history, has insisted he has no imminent plans to leave the Senate.
Republican senators and other allies rallied around him after he froze for more than 20 seconds while speaking to reporters Wednesday in an incident similar to one in July. McConnell’s office attributed the freezing to him feeling “momentarily lightheaded,” and the attending physician of Congress said the senator was cleared to continue working.
Beshear’s remarks raise questions about whether the governor might challenge the 2021 law and seek to appoint a Democratic senator. He vetoed the statute after the state’s Republican legislature passed it, calling the bill “unconstitutional.” The legislature overrode Beshear’s veto.
The law, backed by McConnell, requires a governor to select within 21 days one of three nominees chosen by the state-level party apparatus of the departing senator. A special election must then be held to select a more permanent replacement. The timing would depend on when the vacancy occurred.
In his veto message, Beshear said the law violates the 17th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which gives voters the right to directly cast ballots for senators, rather than state legislatures filling the seats. The amendment also says a state legislature can empower a governor to temporarily fill a vacancy until an election can be held.
“The bill therefore upends a century of precedent by delegating the power to select the representative of all Kentuckians to an unelected, unaccountable committee of an organization that represents only a fraction of Kentuckians,” Beshear wrote in the veto message.
The governor also argued that the law violates a provision of the Kentucky Constitution that says state-level vacancies “shall be filled by appointment of the Governor.”
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“No conditions, qualifications, or limits are placed on that appointment power,” Beshear wrote.
I like Charlie Savage’s idea. Just don’t appoint anyone. Leave the position open until an election. As McConnell said when he did this after Scalia’s death:
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
Shouldn’t the people of Kentucky have a voice in who their Senator should be?
The truth is that the law should allow the Governor to choose anyone he deems fit until an election. They changed it because they have a Democratic Gov. and I’m sure they’ll change it back if a Republican wins the Governor’s race this fall. That’s how transparently corrupt they are. In the meantime, should Mitch go down, Beshear should just sit on it. Let the people decide.
Last Sunday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy went on Fox News to preview the launch of an inquiry. Here’s what he told Maria Bartiromo:
If you look at all the information we have been able to gather so far, it is a natural step forward that you would have to go to an impeachment inquiry.
Neither McCarthy nor the other MAGA Republicans chomping at the bit on impeachment can point to a single piece of evidence that President Biden had any involvement in Hunter Biden’s business dealings. This lack of evidence comes after a five-year Justice Department investigation by a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney and 18 months of investigation by the Republican House.
For some reason, this story has been getting limited attention from the political media. An impeachment inquiry into Biden is significant both in terms of the current politics and historical precedent. Biden would be the Xth President in U.S. history to face an impeachment inquiry, but the first to suffer through the process absent a modicum of evidence of wrongdoing.
This potential impeachment inquiry is a direct result of Kevin McCarthy’s weakness, cowardice, and strategic idiocy. In the long history of dumb things done by Republicans, this might be the dumbest.
1. The Dumbest of Dumb Reasons
But this impeachment inquiry has nothing to do with evidence or accountability. McCarthy wants to embark on a politically perilous and damaging impeachment because he needs to bribe the Right Wing members of his caucus into keeping the government open when funding expires at the end of the month. As an example, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a speech last week and laid out the following demands in exchange for voting to keep the government open:
-Impeachment inquiry vote on Joe Biden
– Defund Biden’s weaponization of government
– Eliminate all COVID vaccine mandates
– No funding for the war in Ukraine
Other members of the Freedom Caucus have refused to support the spending levels included in the debt ceiling deal if it passes this spring as well as supporting a short-term extension to keep the government funded at current levels while negotiations between the House, Senate, and White House proceed. The Republican House is barrelling towards an unnecessary, politically damaging shutdown. McCarthy has little leverage, so he concocted the most galaxy brain idea imaginable. He is arguing to the “Impeach Biden” crowd that a government shutdown would prevent such an inquiry from proceeding. As the Speaker explained:
If we shut down, all the government shuts it down — investigation and everything else. It hurts the American public.
If the government shuts down, so do national parks and infrastructure projects; most government services are restricted if not suspended, and most federal workers are furloughed without pay while Congress bickers.
Allow me to explain why, on every level, this is a dumb idea.
2. Everyone Sees Right Through it
The main problem with McCarthy’s “Keep the government open to impeach Biden” plan is that it’s false advertising.
When the government shuts down because Congress fails to pass a funding bill, it doesn’t completely cease running. Essential services remain in operation. The military stays on duty, Social Security checks continue to go out, and FEMA is prepared to respond to disasters. The workers who make those things happen are deemed “essential” and kept on the job. In the Executive Branch, the Office of Management and Budget is responsible for determining which services and personnel are “essential” and can, therefore, keep working despite no funding.
Congress, of course, can’t shut down because they need to be on the job to work on a deal to reopen the government. And guess who in the House of Representatives decides which duties are “essential?”
Yep, Kevin McCarthy.
The Right Wing already figured this out. Representative Ken Buck said as much to theNew York Times last week:
It’s not as if the investigators won’t be considered necessary or essential personnel. [McCarthy] is the one who decides how much of the House we shut down.”
McCarthy opened the door to impeachment as a way to avoid a shutdown, but he cannot meet all of the demands of the Freedom Caucus. He is now under pressure to deem the impeachment inquiry staff and others investigating Biden as essential, which will eliminate any of his existing leverage.
3. The Worst of Both Worlds
To the extent that Kevin McCarthy thought this through, his calculations show that a shutdown is more politically damaging than launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden. I am confident he is incorrect. But the way he has implemented this strategy increased the likelihood that the government will shut down and start impeachment proceedings. As noted above, the inquiry could be launched in September and then continue unfettered throughout a shutdown. Major parts of government being shut down by a Trumped-up investigation of President Biden would be terrible optics for the GOP. Even if McCarthy resists pressure to keep the investigation going throughout the shutdown, the Freedom Caucus will demand that it continue afterward.
On Fox and in subsequent interviews, McCarthy clarified that he thinks an impeachment inquiry is warranted. By conceding the legitimacy of this thoroughly illegitimate stunt, McCarthy makes it very hard to walk it back.
4. Impeachment Puts the Majority at Risk
McCarthy’s entire strategy for keeping his job is centered on appeasing the Right Wing members of the Freedom Caucus. They could push him out by calling for a motion to vacate. On paper, the more mainstream members of the caucus could easily threaten McCarthy’s job, but they don’t because they fear that the next Speaker could be even more MAGA than the MAGA-lite McCarthy.
However, pursuing impeachment could put the razor-thin GOP majority in even more danger. There are 19 Republican members who represent districts Biden won in 2020. Their path to victory depends on winning over some number of people who plan to vote for Biden. McCarthy has put them in a near-impossible situation — they can either support impeaching Biden and seem like the very MAGA Republicans that the voters plan to reject or oppose impeachment and inflame the GOP base whose votes they also need. According to a Wall Street Journal poll, 52% of voters oppose impeaching Biden, while only 41% support it. That’s bad news for those Republicans in Biden districts.
I can’t shake the sense McCarthy didn’t think this one through.
4. McCarthy’s Plan Will Likely Help Biden
In 2019, Democrats had a moral and constitutional responsibility to impeach Trump for trying to blackmail Volodymyr Zelensky for dirt on Hunter Biden’s business dealings. Impeachment was the right thing to do — politics be damned. Shirking their duty would have been deeply damaging and demobilizing. Unfortunately, impeachment was good for Trump. During the impeachment process, Trump’s poll numbers went up. In theNBC/Wall Street Journal poll, his approval rating among Republicans shot to 90% after being in the 80s for much of the last year. Among Independents, “Trump’s approval rating increased to 47% in Jan. 2020 and 51% in Feb. 2020 — after previously being in the 30s.”
Biden could see a similar rise in the polls if the Republicans undertake impeachment. I recently analyzed the polling to see why the 2024 race is tied right now. Here’s what I found:
The primary reason for the statistical tie in the race is that Trump is holding onto more of his 2020 vote than Biden. In the NYT poll, 91% of Trump’s 2020 voters are supporting him again while only 87% percent of Biden’s voters plan to vote for him in 2024. Among Biden’s 2020 voters, 2% plan to vote for Trump, 4% claim they won’t if the race is between Biden and Trump, and 5% intend to vote for a candidate other than Biden or Trump.
An unpopular MAGA Republican House majority pursuing a partisan, unfounded impeachment is a textbook example of something that would cause Dems to come home to Biden.
I know Kevin McCarthy didn’t think through this cockamamie impeachment scam, because he doesn’t think anything through. The man has the foresight of a mole. McCarthy has had a lot of dumb and dangerous ideas in his time, but this might take the cake.
They’re going to do it, just watch. Let’s hope Pfeiffer is right about the outcome.
Trump is the top choice for his party’s nomination at the traditional Labor Day start to a more engaged campaign season, ahead of his nearest rival by more than 30 percentage points (52% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters support him, compared with 18% behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis). And Trump is broadly seen as best able to handle a wide range of issues.
More than 4 in 10 in the potential GOP primary electorate say they have definitely decided to support him for the nomination (43% are definite Trump backers, 20% are firmly behind another candidate, and 37% have no first choice or say they could change their minds). Nearly two-thirds consider him one of their top two choices, and 61% say they think he is extremely or very likely to become the party’s nominee, up from 52% at the start of the summer. Most feel the criminal charges Trump faces are not relevant to his ability to serve as president, and a majority of GOP-aligned voters are not seriously concerned about the impact the charges could have on Trump’s electability.
This is a very serious problem:
A minority, 44%, of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they are seriously concerned that the criminal charges Trump faces will negatively affect his ability to win the 2024 election if he becomes the Republican nominee, while 56% are not seriously concerned about that. A third of those who back Trump have those concerns (34%), rising to 54% among Republicans supporting another candidate.
Republican-aligned adults are less concerned, though, that Trump’s legal fights will negatively affect his ability to serve another full term as president if reelected (32% are seriously concerned about that) or to be an effective president if elected while facing criminal charges (35%).
Broadly speaking, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that, if true, the charges Trump faces across four criminal cases are not relevant to his fitness for the presidency (70% say so regarding the charges related to hush money payments to an adult film actress, and 64% each say the same about charges related to classified documents, efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and related to his role in January 6.)
And most, 61%, say that Trump faces so many criminal charges largely because of political abuse of the justice system (14% feel his situation is largely due to his own actions, while 25% say it’s hard to tell before trials are held).
It would be one thing if they all just said they want the system to play out, everyone is innocent until proven guilty, yadda, yadda. It’s clear that he did what he’s accused of but it’s fair for his partisans to say they want to see all the evidence in court. But that 61% just assume this is entirely political in the face of everything he says and does publicly means they are putting their heads in the sand. Worse, 68% believe that if the charges are true they don’t disqualify him for office. The man is accused of stealing classified information and attempting a coup and they still think he should be returned to the White House. My God.
This is all they have to say about him:
When asked to name their biggest concern about Trump as a candidate, Republican-aligned voters largely do not cite his legal woes. Just 6% name the indictments he’s facing or his legal situation, and 3% mention worry that he could be convicted or imprisoned. Overall, 18% say they have no concerns about Trump as a candidate or offer a positive comment about him. After that, 8% say their biggest worry is that his opponents will attack him or not work with him, 8% that they are concerned about “his mouth,” tact and abrasiveness, 7% that he’s too disliked and treated unfairly, and 6% name his ego or arrogance.
They are living in an alternate universe and I have a feeling a lot of brains are going to explode if he’s found guilty and/or loses the election. Then what happens?
It’s that time in the presidential campaign cycle again when Democrats feel the need to express their discontents with their choices and political journalists declare that the party is in a panic. It’s a tradition and it’s always most dramatic when they have an incumbent facing re-election.
I’m reminded of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne in September of 1995, who said, “there is little unity among Democrats or on the center-left on the desirability of reelecting President Clinton.” He was right. At the time there were pitched battles going on among the centrists and the progressives which made the prospect of solidarity in the party a distant dream. The huge Republican win in the mid-term election of 1994 as well as the non-stop scandal-mongering and investigations by the congressional Republicans had Democrats everywhere worrying if Clinton could possibly win re-election. The only thing that seemed to unite the party at the time was a mutual loathing of House speaker Newt Gingrich. 14 months later Clinton won a decisive victory.
Similarly, at the same time in 2012, there were rumblings from certain quarters that it might be wise to run a primary challenge against President Barack Obama as his approval numbers fell to the 30s in some polls. It had been a very rough three years trying to recover from the financial crisis, the rise of the tea party and a political massacre in the 2010 mid-terms. The New York Times reported in September of 2011 “Democrats Fret Aloud Over Obama’s Chances“:
[I]n a campaign cycle in which Democrats had entertained hopes of reversing losses from last year’s midterm elections, some in the party fear that Mr. Obama’s troubles could reverberate down the ballot into Congressional, state and local races. “In my district, the enthusiasm for him has mostly evaporated,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon. “There is tremendous discontent with his direction.”
The media was full of stories of unhappy centrists, moderates and progressives alike, all of whom were sure that Obama was in trouble. 14 months later he beat Mitt Romney in a romp.
It happens in midterm elections too. Just two years ago there were endless stories about Democratic hand wringing in advance of the 2022 midterms, mostly due to the off year win by Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia Governor’s race that supposedly portended a huge trend and the media’s assumption of a red wave like no other. In December of 2021, Thomas Edsall of the NY Times wrote a story headlined, Democrats Shouldn’t Panic. They Should Go Into Shock.
The rise of inflation, supply chain shortages, a surge in illegal border crossings, the persistence of Covid, mayhem in Afghanistan and the uproar over “critical race theory” — all of these developments, individually and collectively, have taken their toll on President Biden and Democratic candidates, so much so that Democrats are now the underdogs going into 2022 and possibly 2024.
I’m sure you will recall just how apoplectic everyone was all the way up until election day. And I’m sure you’ll also recall that that red tsunami turned out to be a tiny pink trickle.
Maybe we should call this the “Democratic panic syndrome” or simply chalk it up to a healthy regard for the vicissitudes of electoral politics. After all, the party in power often loses big in the midterms and after the horror of 2016, it’s surprising that Democrats allow themselves to feel any hope at all in presidential races. (That was the one time Democrats failed to anticipate the worst — and the worst happened.)
Over the Labor Day weekend, the Wall St. Journal released a poll that showed Donald Trump leading the GOP primary race 59% to his closest rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 13%. There’s nothing shocking there, he’s leading by a huge margin in all of them, and that poll was conducted by none other than Trump’s personal pollster, Tony Fabrizio, so one would expect no less. But what got every Democratic pundit gasping and every talking head salivating was the finding that 73% of Americans believe 80 year old Joe Biden is too old to be president while only 47% of voters believe the sprightly 77 year old Donald Trump is similarly unqualified by his age.
The assumption, of course, is that this means Biden is going to lose and Donald Trump will assume the presidency and wreak his revenge on his enemies with relish, which would make anyone panic. (Did I mention this poll was conducted by Trump’s personal pollster?) But it’s important to consider the reality of what is going to be a very bizarre election. Yes, I think we can all agree that Biden is old. Trump is arguably in worse physical shape than he is but he dyes his hair and wears a lot of makeup so he hides the fact that he is also an old man. But like Biden, regardless of the perception that he’s not, he looks perceptibly older these days.
In a perfect world we would not have a presidential election between two men who were born in the WWII era. It’s 2023 and it’s past time to pass the torch. But we are where we are and there are strong reasons to take a breath and realize that Joe Biden is going into this campaign with some serious advantages that would be stupid to toss aside.
First of all, the power of incumbency cannot be under-rated. In the past 11 presidential elections with incumbent candidates only 4 were unseated. Both the Clinton and Obama re-elections that everyone was so worried about were helped immensely by the fact that there was no primary and they already had fundraising bases and successful campaign experience.
It takes a while for people to catch up to economic good news and Biden has a good story to tell on that front. Reagan, for instance, was underwater in approval in August of 1983 before “Morning in America” and his 1984 landslide re-election. (I’m not suggesting that will happen with Biden — it’s a different world today —it’s just another illustration of how quickly things can improve.)
And there are some other issues in Biden’s favor that are extremely salient at this time such as abortion rights and the attack on democracy, which adds up to a powerful critique of Trump and the authoritarian assault by the Republican party. (Government shutdowns and idiotic impeachments will only help illuminate their extremism) After all, Biden is facing a man who is going to be on trial during most of the campaign next year and could be running as a convicted felon. Yes, his followers will stick with him through it all but the idea that Biden’s age will trump Trump’s criminal status is to suggest that otherwise normal people will prefer an old man who is also a criminal to an old man who has done a good job as president. It’s possible but I’m not convinced it’s likely.
It’s in the Democratic DNA to be nervous nellies. And maybe that’s a good thing. It means they won’t be complacent and will work hard to win the election. For the most part it’s paid off in presidential politics for the past 30 years. But it’s 14 months before the election. Nobody should be losing any sleep just yet.
Tennessee State Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) has announced a run to unseat Republican U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn in 2024. Johnson’s campaign launched Tuesday with a multicity tour around the Volunteer State.
The state representative is traveling around Tennessee on Tuesday, making a stop in Knoxville at Savage Gardens. She will be joined by Representative Justin Jones in Nashville, campaign Co-Chair Representative Justin J. Pearson in Memphis, and campaign Co-Chair Senator Charlane Oliver in all three cities.
“Gloria has dedicated her life to fighting for justice and standing tall for Tennesseans who have been left out, left behind, or left without a voice,” a press release announcing her campaign launch states. “She is challenging Marsha Blackburn because Tennessee deserves a Senator who will fight for working families not special interest donors and D.C. politicians.”
Best wishes, Gloria! It will be an uphill fight worth having.
AMAZING NEWS! Gloria Johnson, one of the Tennessee Three, just launched her campaign for US Senate against Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee! I can’t think of anyone better to take on & defeat Marsha than Gloria Johnson. Republicans & Marsha should be terrified. This is huge. pic.twitter.com/kAI7fqb3m3
Holding firm to one’s convictions and principles is easy when they are not being tested. Thomas Paine spoke of it eloquently in December of 1776:
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
We live in such times again. We’ve simply traded Redcoats for red hats. We watched the latter sack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, ,2021 in service to a man and a movement that rejects the principles for which Paine and the Continental Army fought. When times required them to put up or shut up on the principle of “created equal” spelled out in the document that launched the American Revolution, when the democracy the founders fought to establish failed to reelect their plus-sized, gilded princeling, they cut and ran.
So here we are, faced with whether or not to stand with language in the 14th Amendment that disqualifies any woman or man who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from elected office or, like the red hats, to cut and run.
Challenging Donald Trump’s eligibility, some suggest, “would be ‘naive’ and a ‘fantasy,’” Greg Sargent recounts this morning. “One commentator insisted that Americans should just ‘let it go.’”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Free Speech For People (FSFP) mean to stand with the Constitution on the matter. Sargent reminds readers that similar constitutional challenges to candidates’ eligibility are neither rare nor naive, but recent ones may have slipped down the memory hole.
“Birthers,” Trump most prominent among them, promoted lawsuits against Barack Obama’s candidacy. They leveraged state mechanisms in place for just such challenges:
In 2016, a voter challenged Sen. Ted Cruz’s candidacy in Pennsylvania, arguing that he was born in Canada, but the state supreme court ruled for Cruz.
In another example, eligible voters in Illinois and New Jersey can try to take action via an administrative agency process to prove a candidate is disqualified, according to CREW’s analysis. That agency’s ruling is subject to appeal in state court, likely heading to the state supreme court — and, possibly, the U.S. Supreme Court.
CREW and FSFP will file challenges to Trump this fall. In which states? Wait and see.
Here’s the rub: This only has to work in one state to advance to the Supreme Court. And that’s not wildly implausible.
Yes, many state supreme courts will uphold Trump’s eligibility. [Justin] Levitt, the Loyola Marymount expert, expects them to rule broadly that states don’t have the power to determine Trump’s qualification status under the 14th Amendment in the first place.
This is where things get complicated. State courts often make determinations on whether candidates are qualified (as with Cruz). But Levitt draws a distinction between straightforwardly factual requirements (the candidate must be a natural born U.S. citizen) and ones that demand interpretation (the candidate must not have committed insurrection as defined by the 14th Amendment).
State courts will likely rule that the latter “is not the sort of qualification that a state is free to make a determination on,” Levitt told me, because it’s more of a “political judgment” as opposed to a determination of “fact like age or citizenship.”
“The sky won’t fall if states follow their procedures and make a determination,” Indiana University law professor Gerard Magliocca told Sargent. “This has become serious enough that it must be addressed.”
The world was witness to the faithlessness of the Trump mob. Less visible are the daily actions in GOP-controlled legislatures to render elections pro forma, theater meant to keep nuevo royalists comfortably ensconced in power and as distant from the will of the people as the Atlantic Ocean kept George III.
Jesus was particularly harsh on the hypocrites of his day. In our day, hypocrisy is recorded digitally (and inconveniently), as MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan put on display recently. For Hasan’s targets, as our proprietress says, shamelessness is their superpower.
Fox once warned of a "constitutional crisis" if Hillary Clinton was elected president while under criminal investigation. But now that Donald Trump is running in 2024 amid multiple indictments and trials, they're singing quite a different tune.
If it’s to be a showdown with them, then as Jake (Kevin Costner) says in Silverado, “Come on, boys! Let’s start the ball!” Put up or shut up. Let’s have this out.
I’m not going to go into why that is a load of bullshit. The economy hummed along, no thanks to him but rather the recovery from 2008 finally reaching its stride. Our relationship with the world was nearing catastrophic. The border was a nightmare under him. We were still mired in Afghanistan and every day was some kind of chaotic catastrophe because this miscreant didn’t know what he was doing.
This really takes some chutzpah:
Not really. There are many more jobs now, manufacturing is coming back and the world is no longer terrified that the president is going to do something really stupid.
But really, let’s take a look at where we were exactly three years ago today, shall we? When the pandemic hit he and his band of losers couldn’t even get masks and gowns to NY City while the morgues were filling up because he put his son-in-law in charge of “logistics” and he was clueless. Trump, meanwhile, was saying it was no big deal and if we got it we should take snake oil cures and inject disinfectant. On September 3, 2020:
Trump’s answer to all that? On September 3, 2020 he had a rally in Pennsylvania. He said a lot of things, a lot, almost all of it lies as usual. Here’s a bit about the pandemic:
If I was a Democrat, a different president, and they did the same job, they’d say it was one of the greatest jobs they’ve ever seen. But take a look at what they say about the way they handled the Swine flu. It was a disaster. It was incompetent. They called themselves incompetent. They call, and now they’re coming in like, well, we would have done this and Biden by the way, was against, you remember, xenophobic, racist, because I closed down China.
Then two months later, two and a half, three, and Nancy Pelosi was having dances in Chinatown, right? A month later. No, no problem. I was way ahead. Then Biden comes out and he actually said that I was right, but they said, “Don’t say that, try doing it a little softer than that.” He did it a little bit softer, but we were right. They were wrong. They handled it so badly. Just take a look, because we, I said to my people, “We’ve got to fight this a little bit differently because we’re getting a lot of fake news, a lot of bad people saying things”, and you look at the stats and you look at how we’ve done compared to really much easier and much smaller countries, it’s amazing.
If you took New York out of it, which was a disaster by Cuomo, if you took New York out of those numbers, we would have numbers that would be even better than they are. I could read numbers that would be even much better, because a big percentage of the people that died in this country died because New York was incompetently run by Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo.
That’s assuming that you find many more deaths to be a negative health impact. According to the report, Trump’s policies or lack thereof contributed to the deaths of around 461,000 Americans in 2018. In 2019, about 22,000 deaths resulted from Trump’s dismantling of environmental protection measures alone, based on the Commission’s analyses. And of course, there was 2020, when the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic hit. Many have written about the Trump administration’s failure to mount a scientifically appropriate response to the pandemic. The Commission determined that 40% of Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented had the U.S. only had the same Covid-19 death rates as those of other Group of Seven (G7) nations, namely Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
It’s cute that he’s referencing 4 years ago now, before his biggest challenge hit and flopped miserably. Next year it’s the Democrats who will be asking the old perennial “are you better off now than you were four years ago” not Trump. And while 2019 was no picnic, 2020 was one of the worst years we’ve ever experienced. A look who was leading it.
There seems to be quite the competition developing between two of the worst Repub licans in the country for the exalted position of Trump’s VP:
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE and Kari Lake have been locked in what one source close to Donald Trump describes to Rolling Stone as a “death race” to become his 2024 vice presidential pick.
In public, the far-right congresswoman from Georgia and the failed Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate are happy to present an image of calm unity in their cause to return Trump to the White House. But behind the scenes, the two view one another with intense distrust and disdain, each seeing the other as direct competition for Trump’s political affections, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
Exacerbating the situation is the fact that Greene and Lake are the two leading contenders in a very narrow lane in the race to secure Trump’s VP slot, should he win the 2024 Republican nomination next year. It’s the lane of election-denying, shameless Trump diehard who has emerged as a conspiracy-theory-slinging star among the conservative base.
Greene, in particular, has gone beyond simple attempts to raise her own profile in the ongoing Trump veepstakes. In recent weeks, she has moved behind the scenes to tear down Lake, garrulously trash-talking her to others in the MAGA elite, political circles, and conservative media, multiple sources tell Rolling Stone.
In an ironic twist, one of the bigger complaints coming from Greene — who years ago cemented her public image as a QAnon-promoting, school-shooting-survivor-mocking, Jewish-Space-Laser-fearing activist — lately is that Lake is not a “serious” enough person to be Trump’s second-in-command.
“MTG thinks she’s a scammer and not even a conservative,” says one of the sources who’s spoken to Greene about this. The source adds that Greene has privately said that “Lake is a grifter and [is] trying to keep riding Trump’s coattails because she lost [in Arizona], so she’s cozying up on the election-integrity messaging.”
Similarly, according to a different source who personally knows and likes both Lake and Greene, in a conversation with the MAGA congresswoman within the past several weeks, “Kari did come up, and the term ‘grifter’ was used to describe her more than just once…[MTG] thinks it’s complete nonsense that anyone would think it’s a good idea for Donald Trump to consider [Kari] for VP.”
This year, when embarrassing stories have appeared in the news about the Arizona Republican, Lake has at times voiced her suspicions that Greene has been leaking negative information about her to the press, another source familiar with the matter says.
Tensions between Lake and Greene were visible during Trump’s speech at Mar-a-Lago after New York prosecutors indicted him on charges of falsifying business records earlier this year. According to one person in attendance, Greene’s demeanor turned icy after witnessing the loud applause and chants of “Kari won!” — a reference to her failed gubernatorial bid — for Lake.
Trump has from time to time quizzed confidants on who they think the best possible VP picks could be. Lake and Greene are indeed among the names the former president has repeatedly discussed, when discussing pros and cons with certain allies and senior staffers.
Lol! You love to see it.
Most people apparently don’t think he’ll pick either but it’s astonishing that they are even being discussed. Personally, I think this is the more likely pick:
Here’s Marge today:
Marjorie Taylor Greene: “You’re going to tell me that back in the Ice Age, how much taxes did people pay, and how many changes did governments make to melt the ice?” (@acyn) pic.twitter.com/5m8770qY26
