The DC Appeals Court is not insane Finally we have some clarity on a subject that anyone with common sense could have said was obvious since the moment the constitution was ratified: A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he was immune to charges of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election, ruling that he must go to trial on a criminal indictment accusing him of seeking to overturn his loss to President Biden. The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit handed Mr. Trump a significant defeat, but was unlikely to be the final word on his claims of executive immunity. Mr. Trump, who is on a path to locking up the Republican presidential nomination, is expected to continue his appeal to the Supreme Court. Still, the panel’s 57-page ruling signaled an important moment in American jurisprudence, answering a question that had never been addressed by an appeals court: Can former presidents escape being held accountable by the criminal justice system for things they did while in office?
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You’ve read about how the Trump White House was basically a pill mill, dispensing uppers and downers like candy and even handing out fentanyl for reasons no one has been able to explain. Right. Perfectly normal. Look what’s been happening at Tesla, the company owned by the other Very Stable Genius, Elon Musk. The Wall Street Journal reports: Several current or former directors at Tesla and SpaceX attend parties with him, go on exotic vacations and hang out at Burning Man, the Nevada arts and music festival. Musk and these directors, including venture capitalists Gracias and Ira Ehrenpreis, tech mogul Larry Ellison, former media executive James Murdoch, as well as Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, have invested tens of millions of dollars in each other’s companies—Ellison held billions of dollars in Tesla shares with about a 1.5% holding in 2022. Some also received career support and help from Elon Musk.
Leading horses to water again “Ya’ll got the secret sauce,” the neighboring congressional district chair said in a call after the 2014 midterm elections. Could I bottle it and send her counties a case? November 2014 was not as bad for Democrats as 2010, the REDMAP election in which Republicans flipped 20 state houses across the country. But 2014 wasn’t good either. Still, North Carolina was the only state across the South where Democrats picked up state legislative seats. We netted three, two in my county. Betsy wanted to know our secret. Listen. Political campaigns are not just contests of ideas. They are contests of skills. No matter how much people believe money, ideas and policies win them, at some point you have to play the game and put points on the scoreboard. Once polls close, we don’t count policies or ideologies. We count votes. State parties are like little armies. Each year, veterans retire, and new volunteers arrive. Parties run recruits through basic training. This is a precinct; here’s how you organize it. Here are our charter and bylaws.
Choose not to ride Dan Pfeiffer of Crooked Media attempts to coax readers of presidential polls off the ledge. His team has dubbed the stomach-churn the Pollercoaster. Biden is up. Biden is down. Biden is tied. Trump is ahead by three, Biden is by six. Take a breath, Pfeiffer advises: The 2024 election will be unprecedented, Pfeiffer explains, as was the COVID-19 election of 2020. “For the first time in the modern era, a former president is running to reclaim his job. There is a historic level of dissatisfaction with both candidates,” Pfeiffer explains. “A record number of voters are expressing interest in voting for a third-party candidate. Finally, one of the candidates is facing the prospect of being convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison before the election.” Poll that one, pilgrim, and I’ll get you another! Regarding those third-party efforts, Pfeiffer adds: First, every pollster is treating the No Labels candidacy differently. Some use possible candidates like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin or former Republican Governor Larry Hogan. Others describe No Labels as a bipartisan organization.
The House is only getting started As usual these days, the GOP congress is a burbling cauldron of chaos and dysfunction with wild hearings, inexplicable strategy and internal strife. They are all fighting among themselves trying to curry favor with their party’s leader, Donald Trump, and jockeying for power. And it’s an election year, which even in placid times turns politicians into preening posers desperate for money and attention. It is a combustible situation. The budget is still not settled although they managed to extend the deadlines for a short while as they try to hammer out deals on taxes, national security and the border. And they have a lot of work to do on all the investigations they are currently pursuing, which to this point are utter embarrassments. The big show was supposed to be the impeachment of Joe Biden, promised to Donald Trump as payback for the two impeachments he endured. That one’s not looking good at the moment. The House oversight committee chairman. James Comer, who is running the Hunter Biden investigation keeps punching holes in his own narrative every time he interviews another witness.
Trump will be very busy exacting revenge on his enemies so he won’t even know what’s going on elsewhere in his administration. Also he’s learned that he can just lie and say up is down and black is white and tens of millions of people will believe him so he can do whatever he wants without ever having to be accountable for the horrors he inflicts. You can bet this will happen if he wins. It’s been one of the fundamental goals of the Republican Party for decades and they will shove the sharpie in his hand and he will sign it: LAST YEAR, FOR the first time ever, a majority of Americans eligible for Medicare were on privatized Medicare Advantage plans. If Republicans win the presidential race this year, the push to fully privatize Medicare, the government health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities, will only intensify. Conservative operatives have already sketched out what the GOP’s policy agenda would look like in the early days of a new Donald Trump presidency. As Rolling Stone has detailed, the proposed Project 2025 agenda is radically right-wing.
People would like to know if a jury of Trump’s peers find that he has committed crimes before they vote next November. It’s not too much to ask: Most Americans want to see a verdict on the federal charges former President Donald Trump faces related to election subversion in 2020 before this year’s presidential election, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. And looking ahead, most expect Trump to pardon himself of any federal crimes he’s convicted of if he wins the presidency – or to refuse to concede if he loses in November. About half of Americans, 48%, say it’s essential that a verdict is reached before the 2024 presidential election, and another 16% that they’d prefer to see one. Just 11% say that a trial on the charges should be postponed until following the election, with another quarter saying the trial’s timing doesn’t matter to them. A 72% majority of Democrats and 52% of independents say it’s essential that a verdict is reached pre-election. Republicans are more split.
Joe Biden dominates South Carolina Democratic primary With over 95 percent of the vote counted in Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina, President Joe Biden swept every county, garnering 96 percent of the vote overall and 95 percent or better in every county. As The New York Times put it, “There was not much drama Saturday night.” Biden himself was in Southern California, reports Politico. At the watch party at the state fairgounds in Columbia, people were headed for the doors less than an hour after poll closing. Self-help author Marianne Williamson edged out Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.), with the pair earning a combined 2 percent of the vote. With the Biden vote so dominant, the race so uncompetitive, and the vote count so low (a mere 131 thousand), the Times attempts to draw comparisons to past primaries, but comparables are slim: The last time an incumbent Democratic president sought re-election, in 2012, President Barack Obama went unchallenged in South Carolina — and the state did not hold a primary.
Tell ya what I’m gonna do School voucher salesmen. This is getting to be like an old “I Love Lucy” episode. The facts don’t matter. Taxpayers are lining up to be sheared. Friends like Jeff Byant (N.C.) and acquaintances like Jess Piper (Mo.) have hammered on efforts to privatize public schools for years. No matter what they’re called — school vouchers, charter schools, opportunity scholarships — they are schemes for separating public funding from public education and resegregating schools under the rubric of “choice.” For investors and wealthy parents, it’s about the money, either in profits or in tax breaks. Piper is right, BTW: So is Bryant. Charters that were once local and parent-organized are being squeezed out by the big-money boyz: The aim is to bust school budgets and, in the words of Grover Norquist, drown public education in the bathtub so the mandated not-for-profit spending can wind up in the for-profit world.
JD Vance on This Week, calmly demonstrating his revolutionary MAGA zeal: As you can see, this man is unhinged. But the confident glibness of the slick liar is always unnerving. He’s dangerous.