That pretty much says it all about Trump’s cult. Sadly, that 30% includes most GOP elected officials.
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Another contender enters the VP ring: Donald Trump appears to have a few requirements for his running mate, including that whoever it is does what they are told and does not steal the spotlight. He would also prefer an Ivy League pedigree, according to The New York Times, which reported that Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a Harvard graduate, is now a “top contender.” According to three anonymous sources who have met with Trump, Cotton is a favorite, alongside North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and three of Cotton’s Senate colleagues: Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Tim Scott, R-S.C., and J.D. Vance, R-Ohio. According to the Times, Trump is also considering the five men for posts in his administration, should he win in November. Where Cotton is concerned, there are some issues to consider. Trump has privately expressed his admiration for Cotton’s reliability and abilities as an effective communicator, as well as praising the senator’s Army service and his elite education. But Cotton voted to certify the 2020 presidential election, which could be a dealbreaker for a man who refuses to acknowledge his defeat.
And yet I heard the CNN reporter on the ground talk about how big and diverse the crowd was and how the Biden campaign must be nervous about his appeal in this blue city. They interviewed the rallygoers (aka Trump fans) and earnestly listened as they complained about the economy without pushing back on their erroneous alternative facts. If you were just a casual viewer you would come away with the idea that Biden is in trouble in New York because tens of thousands of Democrats are abandoning Biden. The Trump people say 25,000 people showed up. It was actually more like 2500.
That’s from 2016. Look what he does to his female campaign employees who balk at his bullying behavior: Nearly eight years ago, convinced that she’d been treated unfairly, Jessica Denson sued Donald Trump’s campaign for workplace harassment. Then she discovered the lengths Trump’s attorneys would go to hit back — and their unwillingness to stop. Immediately, the campaign filed a counterclaim for $1.5 million. It won a $52,229 judgment, and the campaign froze her bank account and almost forced her into bankruptcy. She found it humiliating when the campaign lawyers branded her a “judgment debtor” in a subpoena. They monitored her Twitter account, which had 32 followers, and submitted hundreds of pages of printouts to a judge. They even deposed her mother, grilling her about the family’s religious practices. The judgment was ultimately thrown out by a judge, but her legal fight continues. The process has been “unbearable,” Denson said, describing the unrelenting pressure she felt from Trump campaign attorneys. “This had become my life. I had no income and had this lien against me.
The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is a public-private partnership of monumental scope that has leveraged the expertise and leadership of dozens of organizations and institutions to protect and restore wildlife habitats in Southern California. The crossing is currently in construction and is expected to be finished in 2026. In 2015, the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) and Caltrans proposed a massive corridor across the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills to provide wildlife with a safe place to cross into other habitats. At the time, the proposed plan was expected to take years to fund and even longer to build. Due to the bridge’s size and cost, its completion would be reliant on donations from the public. In 2016, Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation took up the call for funds and made a $1 million challenge grant to spur the community and local leaders to donate. The grant provided the necessary test assessments by Caltrans to ensure that the bridge would not cause any environmental impact to the surrounding area.
Think twice “No one insults the intelligence of Trump voters more than Donald Trump,” said MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Wednseday night. Nobody, that is, except Marjorie Taylor Greene and MAGA TV. Jimmy Kimmel assembled a MAGA TV gag reel: The Independent reported on MTG’s “wild claim”: Marjorie Taylor Greene has made the wild claim that the Justice Department had authorised the use of “deadly force” during an FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence as a plan to “assassinate” the former president. The FBI have denied the accusation, saying that “standard protocol” was followed. That raid on the former president’s Florida residence on 8 August 2022 ended with the FBI seizing hundreds of documents. On Tuesday, newly-unsealed court filings showed that four additional classified documents were discovered in Mr Trump’s bedroom in the months following the bureau’s search at Mar-a-Lago. Mr Trump faces 40 felony counts for allegedly mishandling top secret documents taken to his estate after he left office.
Tomorrow belongs to them CNN’s Abby Phillip ran through Donald Trump’s plans for his next administration. He may be a basket case, but he has a cadre of extremists ready to step up to help him implement his plans and theirs. Let’s talk about projection. What we see blossoming more boldly than ever among the authoritarianati is entitlement. Unspoken, mostly, but present. When the conservative elite speak derisively of the social safety net, they insist that entitlements must be cut. Just not theirs, naturally. An ‘us’ problem What we see displayed by Supreme Court Justices Thomas (with his undeclared gifts) and Alito (with his insurrectionist flags) is the sense that they are untouchable, writes Dahlia Lithwick. And their behaviors are not anything Chief Justice Roberts seems inclined to address by imposing a strict code of ethics. The justices stand imperial: We have a judicial enterprise that rules over us with absolutely no one ruling over them. Nobody should be all that surprised that Sen. Dick Durbin has announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee will not launch a probe into Alito’s recent conduct.
With Haley endorsing Trump it’s now up to Trump and his surrogates to follow up and convince her voters to do the same. Marge Green has a strategy to get that done: I’m sure that will persuade them.
Look for more of this. Using civil rights laws to crack down on diversity hiring is just *chefs kiss* Florida’s top legal officer on Wednesday said the state will investigate Starbucks, the multinational chain of coffeehouses, for its diversity, equity and inclusion practices. “So many of these DEI policies that have been pushed in corporate America that were meant to address and prevent discrimination are now pushing policies and programs and initiatives that may in fact be unlawful employment practices, in fact becoming discriminatory themselves,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said, while appearing on Sean Hannity’s radio show, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis guest hosted. Moody filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations, which she said would launch a “full investigation.” The decades-old commission is meant to enforce the Florida Civil Rights Act and address discrimination issues.
As you know, Leonard Leo is the mastermind of the right wing legal assault on democracy. And he and his good buddy Samuel Alito are obviously part of an insurrectionist cabal. Some might even call them traitors. As Tom discussed this morning, Dahlia Lithwick has a great piece today on this subject over at Slate and I want to highlight the same conclusion he did: No, I have come to conclude that this is an us problem. Because rather than hurling ourselves headlong into the “Alito Must Recuse” brick wall of “yeah, no,” we need to dedicate the upcoming election cycle, and the attendant election news cycle, to a discussion of the courts. Not just Alito or Thomas, who happen to go to work every day at the court, and not just Dobbs and gun control, which happen to have come out of the very same court, but the connection between those two tales: what it means to have a Supreme Court that is functionally immune from political pressure, from internal norms of behavior, from judicial ethics and disclosure constraints, and from congressional oversight, and why that is deeply dangerous.