“A tricky approach” to avoiding conviction New information in the Trump stolen documents case surfaced over the weekend. ABC News had a scoop on former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows’ testimony to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators. Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) this morning summarizes key points: Meadows asked that the part about a classified Iran war plan sitting out in plain view be edited out of an early draft of Meadows’ book, “The Chief’s Chief,” ABC reports: Sources told ABC News that Meadows was questioned by Smith’s investigators about the changes made to the language in the draft, and Meadows claimed, according to the sources, that he personally edited it out because he didn’t believe at the time that Trump would have possessed a document like that at Bedminster. Meadows also said that if it were true Trump did indeed have such a document, it would be “problematic” and “concerning,” sources familiar with the exchange said.
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Over the weekend Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may have sealed his political fate with one recklessly dumb comment. Failing to learn the lesson that a Trump opponent can say a lot of things but he cannot ever insult Trump supporters he told The Florida Standard: “The movement has got to be about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people and that’s got to be based in principle, because if you’re not rooted in principle, if all we are is listless vessels that’s just supposed to follow … whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement.” The so-called “listless vessels” were not amused. DeSantis and his people scrambled to defend themselves, saying that he was referring to Trump’s congressional supporters not his Real American supporters but referring to members of congress as a “movement” was very sloppy even if he was actually whining about elected officials. He also said: “I think that we have a stream in our party that views supporting Trump as whether you are a Rino or not.
He can’t help himself Mediaite reported: According to a recent WalletHub report, Atlanta is ranked 11th in the nation for violent crime and has seen an increase in murder rates over the past few years. No doubt Atlanta is not the safest city in the nation, but its problems do not seem materially different than other urban areas in red and blue states. I wonder if at some point the GOP residents of Georgia will get tired of their state and its leaders being slagged by Donald Trump day in and day out. I suppose most of them are fine with it. He’s their god and can do no wrong. But there must be a few who still have a little pride in their own state. Aren’t there?
Here we have one of the supposedly great centrist unifiers promising to hand the election to Donald Trump: Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Sunday that No Labels will “very likely” launch a third-party “alternative” if former President Trump and President Biden win the nominations for their parties. “But if Trump and Biden are the nominees, it’s very likely that No Labels will get access to the ballot and offer an alternative,” Hogan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And if most of the voters don’t want A or B, we have an obligation to give them C, I mean, for the good of the country.” Hogan, who serves as the national co-chairman of No Labels — a political group that has been pushing for a third-party ticket — said two-thirds of the American people are “not interested” in voting for the Republican or Democratic nominee. “It’s an overwhelming majority of people who are completely fed up with politics,” Hogan said. “They think Washington is broken.
It’s not Donald Trump Ronan Farrow has a deep dive on Elon Musk: Initially, Musk showed unreserved support for the Ukrainian cause, responding encouragingly as Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian minister for digital transformation, tweeted pictures of equipment in the field. But, as the war ground on, SpaceX began to balk at the cost. “We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales told the Pentagon in a letter, last September. (CNBC recently valued SpaceX at nearly a hundred and fifty billion dollars. Forbes estimated Musk’s personal net worth at two hundred and twenty billion dollars, making him the world’s richest man.) Musk was also growing increasingly uneasy with the fact that his technology was being used for warfare. That month, at a conference in Aspen attended by business and political figures, Musk even appeared to express support for Vladimir Putin. “He was onstage, and he said, ‘We should be negotiating.
Hate speech has consequences After months of Republicans vilifying gay and transgender people, and after they pass laws in multiple states targeting them, teachers, and drag queens, guess what? Shop owner shot, killed over rainbow flag outside clothing store near Lake Arrowhead San Bernardino Sun: The owner of a clothing shop in Cedar Glen was shot and killed Friday night, Aug. 18, after a person made several disparaging comments about a rainbow flag displayed outside the store, authorities said. The suspect was found nearby by arriving deputies, who shot and killed him, San Bernardino County sheriff’s officials said. Deputies responded to the Magpi clothing store on Hook Creek Road around 5 p.m. and found the victim, identified as Laura Ann Carleton, 66, outside the store suffering from a gunshot wound. Carleton was pronounced dead at the scene. Footwear News describes Carleton as “a fashion and footwear industry veteran“: According to the Magpi website, Lauri Carleton’s career in fashion began early in her teens, working in the family business at Fred Segal Feet in Los Angeles while attending Art Center School of Design.
A constitutional crisis in progress Legal scholars William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen argued a few weeks ago that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment means “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.” No “legislation, criminal conviction, or other judicial action” is necessary to invoke the post-Civil War amendment. It is not a dead letter. What is required of citizens at any level of government who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution is to declare Trump ineligible when the matter of his eligibility presents itself to them. What made the Baude-Paulsen analysis more impactful was that it came from scholars associated with the conservative Federalist Society. Now, J. Michael Luttig and Laurence H.
What in the hell are we going to do about this? It represents tens of millions of fellow Americans.
And this time, it’s a fatal error: [A] key focus of the Trump campaign as it looks ahead to a possible rematch with Mr. Biden: getting both men onstage. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said publicly that he wants debates with Mr. Biden, and Mr. Trump’s advisers view face-offs with the incumbent president as vital to Mr. Trump’s chances of winning. They thought that last time too. It didn’t work out the way they thought it would: The third debate? President Donald Trump was rated the most improved performer at Thursday’s debate, but a panel of debate experts said Joe Biden was more effective with his arguments. The three experts all agreed that the faceoff was more informative than the chaotic first debate in Cleveland last month, but one noted, “That’s a very low bar.” While Trump’s strategy of interrupting less and letting Biden speak more in hopes of provoking a gaffe was sound strategy, the experts said Biden didn’t make the type of major mistake Trump probably needed to change the race. Here are their report cards.
And so right on Rosalie Silberman Abella is the Samuel and Judith Pisar visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School and is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. This op-ed is adapted from her speech upon receiving the 2023 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medal of Honor from the World Jurist Association. The incandescent Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a jurist, a woman and a Jew. It was a defining combination that shaped her vision and her passions, transforming her from distinguished U.S. Supreme Court justice to iconic global metaphor. When she pursued justice on the Supreme Court, she was a judicial juggernaut who was catapulted into international orbit by two forces: enthusiastic gratitude for her ever-bolder judgments, but also, as time went on, by the vituperative reaction of an increasingly regressive climate in which those progressive judgments were anathema. Regrettably, that regressive climate is where we find ourselves today, especially about the judiciary. Critics call the good news of an independent judiciary the bad news of judicial autocracy.