The Trumpers have already “won” the immunity case: Donald Trump‘s inner circle doesn’t expect the Supreme Court to go along with his extreme arguments about executive power in the immunity case before the justices. But what the high court does now is almost beside the point: Trump already won. Three people with direct knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that many of the former president’s lawyers and political advisers have already accepted that the justices will likely rule against him, and reject his claims to expansive presidential immunity in perpetuity. Bringing the case before the court — after a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., shut down their arguments on executive power — was a delaying tactic designed to push Trump’s criminal election subversion trial past Election Day this fall. The strategy paid off so much more than MAGAworld anticipated. “We already pulled off the heist,” says a source close to Trump, noting it doesn’t matter to them what the Supreme Court decides now.
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Are armbands coming? Two things, both from The Atlantic. If you are one of those people who cannot look at Stephen Miller without seeing him in a black uniform with a red armband, consider, he’ll have company if things ever come to that. Adam Serwer on Wednesday pointedly called out wannabe goose-steppers in the U.S. Senate, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, both Republicans, of course. “Tom Cotton has never seen a left-wing protest he didn’t want crushed at gunpoint,” Serwer begins: On Monday, the Arkansas senator demanded that President Joe Biden send in the National Guard to clear out the student protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which he described as “the nascent pogroms at Columbia.” Last week, Cotton posted on X, “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.” He later deleted the post and reworded it so that it did not sound quite so explicitly like a demand for aspiring vigilantes to lynch protesters.
Still more charges for Trump confederates Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) is still investigating the 2020 fake electors scheme “to keep Unindicted Coconspirator 1 in office.” But as of Wednesday, she’s charged 18 people associated with the plot with felony counts of conspiracy, fraud and forgery. The indictment caps off a year-long investigation into the fraudulent slate of Donald Trump electors sent to Congress after Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. Similar schemes played out in Michigan, Georgia and Nevada. Redacted in the indictment are seven names of individuals living outside Arizona. The Washington Post, however, identifies them as some of Trump’s closest allies and advisers: Those indicted include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn and former campaign aide Mike Roman. They are accused of allegedly aiding an unsuccessful strategy to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden after the 2020 election.
The archaic, undemocratic electoral college stakes are very high Josh Marshall notes that 538 has finally put up their polling average and then takes a look at the state of the electoral college strategy: The headline here is Trump and Biden tied at the national level and Trump holding what they call a “tenuous” lead in the swing states. But the breakdown of their averages shows something more specific. The two candidates also basically tied in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The precise averages are actually Trump +1.1 (Michigan), Biden +.1 (Wisconsin) and Trump +0.9 (Pennsylvania). But those datasets are still weighted toward GOP-leaning polls at the moment. In any case, those are basically ties and I’m fairly confident Biden wins those. It’s the Southern-tier states of Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Arizona which each have Trump leads of around 5 points, give or take. Here’s the key. If Biden holds the Blue Wall states and wins that single electoral vote in Nebraska he gets to 270 votes. Literally the absolute minimum to win. That’s if he loses Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada. So 270 to 268.
He actually doubled down on his stupidity.
This conversation was posted on January 17th 2020,It remains one of the best discussions I’ve come across on this subject: After a harrowing discussion about humanity’s undeniable march towards a dystopian future, world-renowned thinker Noam Chomsky and Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer move on to other pressing topics related to current events. Beginning with the issue that inspired the two-part interview, Scheer explains that an episode of his podcast “Scheer Intelligence” which featured Susie Linfield discussing her book “The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky” led to an ongoing exchange with Chomsky.
He’s very desperate right now Trump issued that call for his cult to protest at the courthouse last night. It’s not surprising. They haven’t shown up to protest for him on the courthouse steps or anywhere else. This was from day 1. There weren’t any more today after he made that call. So he lied: He’s only been able to get a ragtag handful of weirdos to show up at the courthouse and it’s freaking him out. His rallies aren’t drawing like they used to but it’s early in the campaign. The people who come to them at the moment are hard core cultists who love the ritual the same way Grateful dead fans used to follow them all over the world. I know people who follow Bruce Springsteen the same way. But there are no crowds coming to his trial and I would guess it’s because the rallies are a very specific kind of fun get together for the true believers. This isn’t that.
Let me count the ways Good heavens, this garbled mess from RNC co-chair Lara Trump. “We now have the ability at the RNC not just to have poll watchers… but people who can physically handle the ballots… So there was a moratorium for about 40 years on the RNC actually training people to work in these polling locations and the tabulation centers where the mail-in ballots come in. And last year, the judge who implemented that passed away, so that was lifted.” “Poll observers are NEVER permitted to touch ballots,” tweets exasperated Democratic election protection attorney Marc Elias. “She is suggesting the RNC will infiltrate election offices.” Observers physically handling ballots is BS, as Elias points out. But she’s just getting started on the wrongness. First, some terminology. Poll watchers or observers are citizens pre-approved to be present inside a polling location as observers during voting. At most (at least in my state), they may bring to the attention of the chief judge any observed infractions or misapplication of voting rules, and that’s all. They are to sit quietly.
Think about this: In his first questions of the day, Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch asked Turner to parse exactly how close a patient needs to be to death under Idaho’s law. He asked whether the law would permit an abortion in the case of a molar or ectopic pregnancy — both of which are nonviable and can be life-threatening — but deny one in a case where a patient would probably die at some point, but not imminently. “It doesn’t matter whether it happens tomorrow or next week or a month from now?” Gorsuch asked. “There is no imminence requirement,” Turner said. “This whole notion of delayed care is just not consistent with the Idaho Supreme Court’s reading of the statute and what the statute says.” This is what these monsters are discussing in the Supreme Court today. They are actually turning over in their minds when it’s acceptable to let women die for their grotesque ideology. This whole argument is just horrifying. From what we have learned, it appears that the Supreme Court majority believes that states have the right to completely deny health care to pregnant women, even if it means they will die.
Except for the police unions, the unions are putting some real muscle behind Biden in this election: