That’s pretty subtle… and funny.
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Dan Pfeiffer on the Supremes’ decision to help Trump’s delaying tactics: Thanks to the shenanigans of Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, the MAGA justices thanked Trump by giving him a massive, possibly campaign-altering gift. On Wednesday afternoon, the Supreme Court agreed to take on Trump’s claim that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for acts that occurred while they were in office. The icing on the cake is that the Supreme Court scheduled the hearing on an “expedited basis” for April 22nd, further delaying Trump’s trial. Thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court, the most important of Trump’s four (yes, four!) criminal trials may not be finished before Americans cast their ballots in November. There is no reason for the court to wait six weeks before holding the hearings. On a matter this urgent, they could have moved much faster. Every day of delay helps Trump avoid accountability. If Trump wins in November, he could preemptively pardon himself or have his Department of Justice drop the charges.
Is it just fear because of the Dominian lawsuit? Has Rupert sent down the word? I just don’t know. But there is a shift at Fox News: Doocy and Cavuto are among the few who are doing this. Hannity and In graham and the rest are still fervently licking Trump’s boots, including letting him and his allies flog the Big lie. But the network has obviously made a decision to allow these other views on the network which is new. And they cover Haley pretty thoroughly too. I don’t know that this will penetrate the cult but it’s worth noting.
Here we are again looking right down the barrel of a government shutdown because one half of one of the three branches of government is completely dysfunctional under GOP leadership. We’re talking about the Republican House of Representatives of course. They are simply incapable of passing legislation. In fact, 2023 was the least productive year since the Great Depression with congress passing just 27 bills that became law. (In 1948 President Harry Truman famously called the legislative branch the “do nothing congress” because they only managed to pass 511 bills.) This is the third time in six months that the country has been on the brink of a shutdown because the hard right in the House is holding their breath until they turn blue. It’s not clear what they want except perhaps to cause more chaos. The last time it cost Speaker Kevin McCarthy his job and the same fate may very await Speaker Mike Johnson as well. There’s nothing in his performance so far that suggests he has the skill or the desire to finesse this situation. There’s no need to reiterate the saga that continues over the Ukraine and border funding.
Bye Mitch: I don’t think anyone who reads this blog needs me to recite chapter and verse of what this man has done to America with his “ends justify the means” tactics. We all know what he’s done. But even he isn’t hardcore enough for the MAGAs. He says that he knows the politics of his party and he knows that they have become so extreme that they will no longer tolerate him. He’s lost control of them. God help us if Trump wins another term and gets a congressional majority.
Trump really did say his rambling is “total genius” and “if I were cognitively impaired, I think I’d know about it.” How about this? He has been addled for years. But whether it’s encroaching dementia of some kind or just his panic and distraction over the legal and financial problems he’s facing, he’s getting worse. I know I don’t have to point out what would happen if Joe Biden said anything like that.
Also, this happened: We can’t let these people take power. We just can’t.
They insisted that an embryo’s stem cells represented a human with full human rights. Of course IVF is on the chopping block This was the reason that those “fetal personhood”laws were all passed originally — to placate the extremists who would rather see actual people suffering and dying than allow embryos or fetal tissue to be used for life-saving research. Every time a Republican has been in the white house it’s been a huge controversy. IVF wasn’t discussed much on the right and when it was they turned to the far right Evangelicals who call the embryos “snowflake babies” and insist they should be adopted and implanted. (Considering how many of them there are it would obviously take a “Handmaids Tale” level of forced pregnancies to make that happen.) Now that they got Roe overturned, the chickens have come home to roost. Here’s Greg Sargent on the GOP’s dilemma on the IVF issue: When Donald Trump attacked the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos should be considered children, it was widely seen as a glaring indicator of a new political reality.
Even as the vast majority of Americans reject it Axios reports on the latest PRRI poll on Christian Nationalism. Surprise! Most Americans aren’t for it: This once-fringe ideology has become prevalent in some deeply red states at a time when the nation overall is increasingly diverse and less religious. The new data from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Atlas come days after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should receive legal protections as “unborn life” — and cited Christianity in its reasoning. 7 out of 10 Americans said they were rejecters (30%) or skeptics (37%) of Christian nationalism, the PRRI survey said. In California, New York and Virginia, more than 75% of respondents said they were rejecters or skeptics. In five deeply red states, at least 45% of respondents said they were adherents or sympathizers of Christian nationalism: North Dakota (50%), Mississippi (50%), Alabama (47%), West Virginia (47%) and Louisiana (46%).
They decided to take the immunity case so they’ll hear oral arguments two months from now despite what everyone believes is a bulletproof appellate decision. They didn’t need to hear it and if they did, they sure as hell could have made that decision weeks ago. It’s pretty clear they’re going to slow walk this thing so there’s little chance of a trial before the election. Former Judge Michael Luttig happened to be on MSNBC when this came down and he said that the fact that they’ve decided to hear this case indicates that there are dissents from the appellate decision. (Gee, I wonder who that could be?) As a result, there is every likelihood that if their ultimate decision is that a president can’t be a blatant criminal with total immunity, there will be dissents and they will take their sweet time. Recall, it didn’t used to be that way: It was on [July 24] in 1974 that the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a fatal blow to President Richard Nixon’s presidency, in a decision that led to the release of the Watergate tapes. The case of United States v.