She was in charge of the Mayorkas impeachment. It’s shocking that it failed.
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This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nations. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever close the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost. It certainly wasn’t Donald Trump, we know that. But it also wasn’t JFK or LBJ or FDR or even Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. That was Ronald Reagan and such rhetoric used to be an anodyne sentiment among politicians of all stripes in the late 20th century.
In his newsletter today, Dan Pfeiffer discusses the political ramifications of the DC Circuit’s ruling yesterday that Trump is not entitled to immunity for his crimes. (You can subscribe at the link.) An excerpt: If there is one thing we know about Donald Trump it’s that he never lets anything go. He still takes time at his rallies to complain about the Mueller investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia. I know our collective sense of time might be warped, but that investigation began SEVEN years ago. Even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump or refuses to take up his appeal, he is never going to stop talking about why he should be immune from prosecution. Each missive is more unhinged than the last. Here’s what he posted on Truth Social (via an account that reposts his “Truths” to Twitter): This reads like a bomb threat from a particularly illiterate person at the end of a coke binge. As a general rule, we should amend the Constitution to bar people who communicate in all caps from the presidency. It’s truly disqualifying.
I don’t think he’s going to survive this: He doesn’t seem to know which party he’s in. And they don’t want this. They want Emperor Donald Trump.
It’s happening folks. Isn’t it obvious?
I’m sure you recall a few years ago when the right wing had one of their perennial meltdowns over the supposed plan to put conservatives in “FEMA camps.” I case you don’t here’s a brief recap: The FEMA camps conspiracy theory is a belief, particularly within the American Patriot movement, that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to imprison US citizens in concentration camps, following the imposition of martial law in the United States after a major disaster or crisis. In some versions of the theory, only suspected dissidents will be imprisoned. In more extreme versions, large numbers of US citizens will be imprisoned for the purposes of extermination as a New World Order is established. The theory has existed since the late 1970s, but its circulation has increased with the advent of the internet and social media platforms. The US government previously interned US citizens in concentration camps during WWII and developed, but did not implement, contingency plans for mass internment of US citizens in the 1980s.
What a mess. The border bill is dead, Mike Johnson’s proposal for a stand-alone Israel bill will be vetoed by the president (if it even gets out of the House), and the fate of Ukraine and potentially Europe, as well as humanitarian aid for Gaza, hangs in the balance. These people are unrepentant chaos agents. Here’s a report from Manu Raju of CNN from the smoldering ruins of the GOP Senate caucus: McConnell, Cornyn and other top Rs say now the Senate should move ahead with the other aspects of the emergency aid package — Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan funding — and leave border provisions behind given deep divisions in the ranks. Schumer wouldn’t say how he would proceed after tomorrow’s failed vote. McConnell on his handling of talks: “I followed the instructions of my conference who were insisting that we tackle this in October. I mean, it’s actually our side that wanted to tackle the border issue. We started it.” Even he admits that his senate Republicans are perfidious liars. Will they end up passing those foreign aid bills? Who knows?
Remember how Republicans used to spend lavishly at the Trump Hotel when he owned it while he was in office. For some reason they aren’t doing that anymore now that the hotel isn’t owned by Trump anymore: [S]ince becoming a Waldorf Astoria in 2022, GOP spending at the largely unchanged luxury hotel in the Old Post Office building has all but disappeared. This directly conflicts with how Republicans explained their choice of venue at the time. When questions arose about their patronage of the then-president’s business, Republicans brushed off concerns of corruption saying that Trump’s DC hotel was simply a convenient location near Capitol Hill for lawmakers and political operatives to socialize, that they would be there regardless of who owned it. As such, it would be reasonable to expect that Republicans would continue to frequent the hotel after Trump sold it and it rebranded as a Waldorf Astoria in June 2022, leaving many of the building’s luxury public spaces largely unchanged from its time as a Trump property.
And it’s probably going to cost him Trump’s former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, has been caught committing perjury in the earlier Trump Organization trial and is negotiating a plea deal with Manhattan prosecutors. The Judge in Trump’s fraud trial wants to know the details because Weisselberg was a major witness on the same topic in the civil fraud trial over which he presides. He does not seem happy: In an email on Monday sent to attorneys for Trump, Weisselberg, the Trump Organization, as well as counsel for New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office, New York Justice Arthur Engoron explained he wanted answers before issuing his verdict. “As the presiding magistrate, the trier of fact, and the judge of credibility, I of course want to know whether Mr. Weisselberg is now changing his tune, and whether he is admitting he lied under oath in my courtroom at this trial,” Engoron wrote. “I do not want to ignore anything in a case of this magnitude,” Engoron added. Engoron has asked the legal teams to respond by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
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.