Biden’s numbers bad for Biden, but Trump’s indictments are not for Trump? CNN broke news Tuesday night that federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against New York Rep. George Santos (R). Coverage for now is informed speculation at best. The charges won’t be unsealed until later today when Santos is expected to appear in court in the eastern district of New York. “When someone has committed as much apparent fraud as Santos has,” Marcy Wheeler notes, “there’s no telling what the real story behind all that fraud is.” So we wait. Also in New York, a civil trial jury found Donald J. Trump guilty on Tuesday of sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. The six men and three women voted unanimously. Also in New York, Trump still faces state charges of 34 counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree. Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis have yet to file federal and state charges against Trump for as much apparent criminality as Trump has committed. So we wait. As Trump continues to run for president again in 2024, we wait.
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Better woke than the alternative Donald Trump’s believers, Sarah Longwell finds, are as committed as ever to their man-boy-love-god despite standing indictments and indictments yet to come: “As far as a mug shot goes, he’s going to market the hell out of that,” said Chris, a two-time Trump voter from Illinois, imagining a future arrest. “Every one of us is going to buy one of those shirts.” Most hands went up when I asked who would buy one. Republicans “are in a trap of their own making,” Longwell writes in The Atlantic: They thought that by covering for Trump they were tapping into his power, but they were actually giving away their own—mortgaging themselves and their reputations to Trump’s lies and depravities. By defending him then, they have made it impossible to credibly accuse him of anything now. This problem is compounded by the deep relationship that Trump has cultivated with Republican voters. He’s been a constant presence in their lives for eight years—or, for Apprentice fans, much longer. They defended him on Facebook and argued about him over Thanksgiving dinners.
Culture wars are real ones We should have taken her more seriously. It was the summer of 2018 when a Twitter user named Amanda Blount inadvertantly launched a viral meme mocking Alex Jones’ claim that Democrats were planning to launch a second civil war over the July 4th holiday to unseat President Trump. Mimicking the Ken Burns miniseries, lefties had a field day with #secondcivilwarletters. Since then, “every accusation is a confession” has gained traction on the left. What conservatives accuse the left of doing is often what the extremist right is actually doing. A second civil war by “patriots” could look like the scattered, low-grade terrorism actually playing out across the country every day. Jeff Sharlet’s “January 6 Was Only the Beginning” appeared in the July/August 2022 issue of Vanity Fair. But hearing his audiobook reading in “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War” delivers more punch. He lived it. He was there. At a Sacramento rally for MAGA martyr Ashli Babbitt.
Don’t repeat the mistakes of 2016 Yes, it’s Mike Allen. But remember how wrong we were in 2016. No way was America crazy enough to elect Donald Trump as president: Call it the Trump Law of Inverse Reactions: Everything that would seem to hurt the former president only makes him stronger. Why it matters: Trump’s grip over Republicans seems stronger than ever — and chances of beating President Biden are as high as ever. Allen checks off the Trump investigations, the 34 felony indictments, the expected indictments, the rape trial and the rest, like he’s Arlo Guthrie ticking off the 24-8×10 color glossy pictures, etc. And that’s not to mention the two impeachments. (Allen doesn’t.) And still Trump is the frontrunner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. The 18% have gone down the rabbit hole, turned the hole inside out, flattened reality and formed it into a Möbius strip. They are beyond saving. What of the rest of us? “Trump far surpasses Biden in being seen as having the mental sharpness and the physical health it takes to serve effectively as president,” reports ABC News.
One of the Georgia fake electors says he was just doing what Trump’s lawyers told him to do: Lawyers representing David Shafer, the embattled chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, are arguing their client should not be charged with any crimes for his actions following the 2020 election because he was following advice provided by attorneys working for former President Donald Trump, according to a letter sent to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week. Specifically, Shafer’s attorneys say their client was relying on “repeated and detailed advice of legal counsel” when he organized a group of “contingent” electors from Georgia and served as one himself, thus “eliminating any possibility of criminal intent or liability,” according to a copy of the May 5 letter. The letter, which was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, comes as Willis and her team of prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are planning to make an announcement on possible charges against Trump or his allies later this summer.
This piece by Dan Pfeiffer in the NY Times makes the case. This has got to stop: After months of unity, some Democrats, reverting to their natural state of disarray, are breaking ranks to pressure the president to the table. A poll from Echelon Insights showed that voters support the idea of negotiating over the debt limit. Mr. Biden’s strategy is undoubtedly risky. But from the perspective of someone who had a front-row seat inside the White House to the last two debt-limit standoffs between a Democratic president and a Republican House, Mr. Biden’s refusal to negotiate on the debt ceiling is the best strategy. Facing an urgent deadline and a daunting political context — with the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, joined to an unstable, far-right bloc of Republican representatives who limit his maneuverability — the president can ideally find a way to extend discussions around the debt ceiling and fiscal issues. Otherwise, he will have to find a way around the House. The president must know that Mr. McCarthy is not a negotiating partner who can be trusted to deliver.
The verdict found him guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll to the tune of over 5 millions dollars. The verdict was unanimous (which it does not have to be in a civil trial) and the jury included at least one MAGA wingnut who admitted that a far right youtuber was his main source of news, which says something. Trump was not found guilty of rape, however. According to legal commentary on MSNBC, it was probably because while she clearly knew he penetrated her with his fingers, she felt something else but she couldn’t see if it was his penis. (Fingers don’t count in a rape charge, I guess.) He has been found guilty by a jury of sexual battery and defaming his victim. This is how the right is dealing with it: Trump hasn’t gotten the memo: Here’s how Trump’s Christian followers are dealing with it:
I think we’ve all probably pored over Timothy Snyder’s little booklet “On Tyranny: 20 lessons for democracy” more than a few times over the past few years. (If you haven’t, get it. It’s worth it.) Anyway, I was intrigued by this piece by William Saletan for the same reason: This is part of Saletan’s super interesting deep dive into what happened to Lindsey Graham. It’s not about what a servile fool he is — he is used as a representative for the entire Republican party: Many other journalists have written about Graham and Trump. Most of them have focused on the personal relationship between the two men. They examine the ways in which Graham’s evolution was distinctive. I’m not interested in what’s distinctive about Graham. I’m interested in what isn’t. How does his story illuminate what happened to the whole Republican party? How did the poison work? We need to answer these questions because the authoritarian threat is bigger than one man. Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency destroyed the myth that the United States was immune to despotism.
Every single day he rolls out another one. Here’s the latest: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Tuesday that he signed a major piece of legislation aimed at weakening public sector unions by making it harder for them to collect dues from members. Senate Bill 256 forbids most unions representing government employees from having dues deducted directly from workers’ paychecks. It also requires that affected unions maintain at least 60% membership in their bargaining units, or else they could face decertification and lose their contracts. The new law will force public sector unions to develop new ways of getting dues from members — such as setting up electronic bank transfers — and will also imperil the existence of those unions that don’t meet the 60% threshold. Although DeSantis and other Republicans have cast the bill as “paycheck protection” for workers, they excluded unions representing police, firefighters and corrections officers — i.e., the unions that are typically more likely to support Republicans. The unions that are subject to the law tend to represent teachers, sanitation workers and other government employees.