The Conversation -- June 25, 2024
Hillary Clinton, in a New York Times op-ed, has some advice for President Biden: "I am the only person to have debated both [Joe Biden and Donald Trump].... It is a waste of time to try to refute Mr. Trump's arguments like in a normal debate. It's nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are. He starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather. This has gotten only worse in the years since we debated [in 2016].... Mr. Trump may rant and rave in part because he wants to avoid giving straight answers about his unpopular positions, like restrictions on abortion, giving tax breaks to billionaires and selling out our planet to big oil companies in return for campaign donations. He interrupts and bullies -- he even stalked me around the stage at one point -- because he wants to appear dominant and throw his opponent off balance. These ploys will fall flat if Mr. Biden is as direct and forceful as he was when engaging Republican hecklers at the State of the Union address in March." Read on. ~~~
~~~ BTW, see Akhilleus' commentary on both-siderism in today's thread.
Perry Stein & Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon signaled Friday that Donald Trump's legal team had not convinced her FBI agents offered false information to justify searching Mar-a-Lago -- a potential blow to the former president's efforts to disqualify key evidence in the classified documents case against him.... The session capped three days of hearings in Cannon's courtroom. In the morning, she held a closed-door hearing on Trump's efforts to bar at trial the audio notes that investigators got from one of Trump's former attorneys, Evan Corcoran.... She did not issue rulings from the bench on any of the motions...."
Judge Partially Lifts Gag Order Against 34-Time Felon. Dareh Gregorian of NBC News: "The judge who presided over Donald Trump's hush money trial on Tuesday lifted some of the restrictions from his gag order. The ruling by Judge Juan Merchan comes two days before Trump is set to debate President Joe Biden.... Merchan's ruling lifted restrictions on Trump's ability to comment on the witnesses who testified against him during his trial, as well as a part of the order barring him from discussing the jury that convicted him -- essentially finding the witnesses' and the jury's work had concluded so there was no fear of impacting the proceedings. The ruling left in place a part of the order barring Trump from going after court staff, individual prosecutors and 'family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney.'... While the ruling now allows Trump to mention the jury broadly, he is still prevented from talking about jurors by name or divulging their personal information under the terms of a separate protective order that is still in place."
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Marie: Starting now, I will be mostly unavailable until quite late Tuesday. I may -- or may not -- be able to post some links early today, but I won't be doing much.
Alice Ollstein of Politico: "A new coalition of abortion-rights groups is marking the second anniversary of the fall of Roe v. Wade with a pledge to spend $100 million to restore federal protections for the procedure and make it more accessible than ever before.... Groups including Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and Reproductive Freedom for All are banding together to form Abortion Access Now -- a national, 10-year campaign that will both prepare policies for the next time Democrats control the House, Senate and White House, and build support for those policies among lawmakers and the public."
Nicole Narea of Vox: "... Dobbs has ... had a devastating effect on pregnant people in huge swaths of the country. While the number of abortions across the country actually increased last year -- thanks in large part to increasingly cheap and accessible medication abortion -- that has not changed the fundamental realities of post-Dobbs America. Large reproductive care deserts have emerged in which there are no abortion providers for hundreds of miles. Pregnant people are being denied necessary medical care as their doctors fear the legal repercussions of providing it. All of this has exacerbated long-standing inequities."
Presidential Race
There are lotsa stories about the Biden-Trump debate, to be held Thursday night. Here's one by Michael Scherer & Marianne LeVine of the Washington Post that's probably not much less worse than the rest. And here's Stephen Collinson of CNN: "... the policy meat of a presidential debate has rarely been so important as in this neck-and-neck White House race."
Isabella Ramirez of Politico: "A Donald Trump spokesperson got into a tense exchange with CNN's Kasie Hunt over debate hosts Dana Bash and Jake Tapper on Monday morning -- just days before the former president is set to face off against President Joe Biden on the cable network this week. Hunt cut Karoline Leavitt's mic after an interview with the national press secretary on 'This Morning' about Trump's prep for Thursday's debate spiraled into an argument.... Leavitt called Bash and Tapper 'biased' and said Trump is 'knowingly going into a hostile environment.'... 'Ma'am, we're going to stop this interview if you're going to keep attacking my colleagues,' Hunt replied as the two spoke over each other." (Also linked yesterday.)
Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo caught up on a few of Trump's latest deranged musings. Thanks to RAS for the link. (Also linked yesterday.)
Lisa Mascaro of the AP: "Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security. They're relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers. In a move that alarms some, they're preparing to publish the findings online. With a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda -- and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings.... The effort, focused on top career government officials who aren't appointees within the political structure, has stunned democracy experts and shocked the civil service community in what they compare with the red scare of McCarthyism." (Also linked yesterday.)
National Crime Blotter
Devlin Barrett & Perry Stein of the Washington Post: "U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon dived into the minutiae of the Justice Department budget at a morning hearing about ... Donald Trump's indictment for allegedly mishandling classified documents.... Cannon showed a particular interest in how much special counsel appointments cost the government, at one point calling it a 'significant' amount of money, even though the totals represent a drop in the bucket of Justice Department spending.... Trump lawyer Emil Bove decried the proposal to limit Trump's ability to make such allegations, calling it 'a truly extraordinary effort to gag his ability to speak at a debate' and on the campaign trail.... Bove argued that the Justice Department had fundamentally erred by running a stand-alone special counsel investigation without sufficient oversight.... Cannon has shown an eagerness to delve into a host of legal issues raised by the defense, including some that are more commonly raised on appeal in other cases." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Cannon's inquiry into DOJ finances is preposterous. It's as if the Supremes heard a ridiculous claim of presidential immunity in a specific case that could be easily dismissed -- and instead pulled their chinny-chin-chins & opined that their decision would be so far-reaching and consequential it would be "a rule for the ages." Oh, wait. ~~~
~~~ Alan Feuer & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: “At a contentious hearing in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla..., [Judge] Aileen M. Cannon seemed disinclined to impose new conditions on Mr. Trump that would limit what he could say about the F.B.I.... The judge ... questioned whether they could show there was a 'reasonable necessity' to impose the measures in order to protect the safety of the agents.... Judge Cannon ... seemed to have a hard time discerning a direct connection between Mr. Trump's messages ... claiming that federal agents were 'locked & loaded ready to take me out' ... and any palpable threats to agents working on the documents case." MB: I don't suppose Judge Aileen would be so cavalier about the safety of her own family, but I reckon her calculation is that if the agents had been as nice as she was to Donald Trump, he wouldn't sic his insane followers on them. ~~~
~~~ ** That Time Trump Sneaked down to Mar-a-Lago. Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "A trip to Mar-a-Lago taken by ... Donald Trump that aides allegedly 'kept quiet' just weeks before FBI agents searched the property for classified materials in his possession raised suspicions among special counsel Jack Smith's team as a potential additional effort to obstruct the government's classified documents investigation, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. The previously unreported visit, which allegedly took place July 10-12 in the summer of 2022, was raised in several interviews with witnesses..., as investigators sought to determine whether it was part of Trump's broader alleged effort to withhold the documents after receiving a subpoena demanding their return. At least one witness who worked closely with the former president recalled being told at the time of the trip that Trump was there 'checking on the boxes,' according to sources familiar with what the witness told investigators." (Also linked yesterday.)
Tracey Tully & Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times report on developments in the corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) Odd secrets, mysterious contacts and camel rides.
MEANWHILE, on an Island Far, Far Away.... The Strange End of a Strange Saga. Glenn Thrush & Megan Specia of the New York Times: "Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, agreed to plead guilty on Monday to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material in exchange for his release from a British prison, ending his long and bitter standoff with the United States. Mr. Assange, 52, was granted his request to appear before a federal judge at one of the more remote outposts of the federal judiciary, the courthouse in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands.... He is expected to be sentenced to about five years, the equivalent of the time he has already served in Britain, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the terms of the agreement.
"It was a fitting final twist in the case against Mr. Assange, who doggedly opposed extradition to the U.S. mainland. The islands are a United States commonwealth in the middle of the Pacific Ocean -- and much closer to Mr. Assange's native Australia, where he is a citizen, than courts in the continental United States or Hawaii. Shortly after the deal was disclosed, WikiLeaks said that Mr. Assange had left London. Mr. Assange is scheduled to appear in Saipan at 9 a.m. local time on Wednesday and is expected to fly back to Australia 'at the conclusion of the proceedings,' ... an official in the Justice Department's counterterrorism division, wrote in a letter to the judge in the case." The AP's report is here.
~~~ Mikhail Klimentov of the Washington Post has a timeline of key moments in Julian Assange's life.
Tara Bernard & Zach Montague of the New York Times: "Two federal judges in Kansas and Missouri temporarily blocked pieces of the Biden administration's new student loan repayment plan on Monday in rulings that will have implications for millions of federal borrowers. Borrowers enrolled in the income-driven repayment plan, known as SAVE, are expected to continue to make payments. But those with undergraduate debt will no longer see their payments cut in half starting on July 1, a huge disappointment for borrowers who may have been counting on that relief. The separate preliminary injunctions on Monday are tied to lawsuits filed this year by two groups of Republican-led states seeking to upend the SAVE program, a centerpiece of President Biden's agenda to provide relief to student borrowers." Politico's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: This would all be part of the GOP Anti-American Dream Plan, where they lay obstacles in front of young people who want to educate themselves, improve their lives, contribute to their communities and boost the U.S. economy. The entire GOP project is to Make America Suck Again.
Abbie VanSickle of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider a Tennessee law that bans certain medical treatments for transgender minors, the first time the justices will decide on the constitutionality of such statewide bans. The move could have broad ramifications for about 25 states that have enacted similar measures. Republican-led state legislatures have pushed to curtail transgender rights in recent years, with laws that target gender-transition care and that regulate other parts of life, including which bathrooms students and others can use and which sports teams they can play on."
Dave Collins of the AP: “A U.S. bankruptcy court trustee is planning to shut down conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars media platform and liquidate its assets to help pay the $1.5 billion in lawsuit judgments Jones owes for repeatedly calling the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax. In an 'emergency' motion filed Sunday in Houston, trustee Christopher Murray indicated publicly for the first time that he intends to 'conduct an orderly wind-down' of the operations of Infowars' parent company and 'liquidate its inventory.'" Thanks to RAS for the link.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Jo Becker & Justin Scheck of the New York Times: "For years, reporters at News Corporation's best-selling British tabloid had landed scoops by paying public officials and illegally listening to the voice mail messages of royals, politicians, celebrities and even a murdered girl. [In 2011, Will] Lewis[, now the publisher of the Washington Post], was supposed to cooperate with the police, identify wrongdoing and help steer the company through the crisis. But confidential documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with people involved in the criminal investigation show that, almost from the beginning, investigators with London's Metropolitan Police were suspicious of News Corporation's intentions, and came to view Mr. Lewis as an impediment.... Scotland Yard detectives were shocked to learn that the company had deleted millions of internal emails, despite notices from a lawyer for an alleged phone hacking victim and the police explicitly asking that any documents related to the investigation be preserved...."
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Louisiana. Rick Rojas of the New York Times: "A group of parents in Louisiana filed a federal lawsuit on Monday seeking to block a new state law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom.... The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, one of the organizations representing the parents, has condemned the legislation as 'blatantly unconstitutional.'" The AP's story is here.
Maryland. Michael Laris of the Washington Post: "The Dali container ship departed Baltimore with a mostly new crew and eased under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge on Monday, sailing on its own power toward Norfolk three months after it veered off course and left a path of destruction that will take years to recover from."
New York Congressional Race. Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times has some thoughts about the most expensive House primary race in U.S. history. Today's election pits Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D) against challenger George Latimer. Both candidates are flawed.
** Texas. Kaitlin Sullivan & Jason Kane of NBC News: "A Texas law that banned abortions in early pregnancy is associated with a stark increase in infant and newborn deaths, a study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics found.... Infant deaths in Texas rose by nearly 13% the year after SB8 was passed, from 1,985 in 2021 to 2,240 in 2022. During that same period, infant deaths rose by about 2% nationwide. Babies born with congenital anomalies also increased in Texas, by nearly 23%, but decreased by about 3% nationwide. 'This is pointing to a causal effect of the policy; we didn't see this increase in infant deaths in other states,' said Alison Gemmill ... of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who led the research." (Also linked yesterday.)
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Israel/Palestine, et al.
The New York Times' live updates of develoments Tuesday in the Israel/Hamas war are here.
Tia Goldenberg & Samy Magdy of the AP: "The viability of a U.S.-backed proposal to wind down the 8-month-long war in Gaza has been cast into doubt after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would only be willing to agree to a 'partial' cease-fire deal that would not end the war, comments that sparked an uproar from families of hostages held by Hamas."
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Reader Comments (7)
That JAMA study caught my eye. Seems unsurprising, and I wonder if it constitutes evidence that those forced birth Texans are murderers?
And I wonder if some enterprising lawyer is already working on the case....
@Ken Winkes: Okay, Ken, think this through. Who would you prosecute? The legislators who voted for the bill? Gov. Greggers who signed it? The courts that upheld the law? All of the above?
I'm pretty sure all of them have immunity to protect them from stupid; that is (for instance), a legislator isn't liable for supporting a law that leads to fatalities. If that were the case, most elected officials would be in jail. Not that it wouldn't be a good idea to see the lot of those Texas miscreants in the clink.
@ Marie
Agreed. I was just a dreamin'.
But it sure would provide a nice precedent for all those other stupid decisions politicians make that kill people (anti-vaxx, anti-mask, unregulated pollution, silly wars)....that demonstrably kill people by the thousands.
The role of the moderator
"The role of a moderator is often in dispute, and David Chalian, CNN’s political director, said that Thursday’s live debate “is not the ideal arena for live fact-checking.” Instead, Ms. Bash and Mr. Tapper would focus on “facilitating the debate between these candidates, not being a participant in that debate,” he said, noting that CNN analysts would assess the veracity of the candidates’ comments immediately after the telecast."
This is how it could be done by journalist Kyle Clark in Colorado.
The gag order inTrump’s election interference/fraud trial has been partially lifted allowing Fat Fascist to now attack jurors.
Those people should be very worried. Fatty and his violent mob of brownshirts will be after them.
The Problem.
Ed Kilgore, in a piece on the NY Mag website, rehashes the usual Both Sides bullshit and does some Granny Pearl Clutching using words like “murky”, “immovable”, “panic”, “implode”, and “calamitous misstep” when referring to the upcoming “debate”.
He also helpfully includes this execrable piece of Both Sides bilge, from the AP:
“Both men have glaring flaws that present their opponent with tremendous opportunity and risk. They will face a huge national audience that will include many people tuning into their 2020 rematch for the first time and who won’t see another debate until September, magnifying each success or mistake.”
That first sentence fragment: “Both men have glaring faults that blah, blah, blah…”
NO! Full stop!
This bullshit is the height of lazy, yawningly cliched journalisticism.
This is like saying a cheeseburger, perhaps not done up exactly the way you like it, is as problematic as a plate of unidentified animal entrails dipped in radioactive mung and slathered in anthrax.
What the actual fuck?!
Kilgore goes on to listlessly recite the standard crap about how everyone this and everyone that, and we want excitement in this race, without ever once mentioning the existential black hole opening up under our feet because of JUST THIS EXACT SORT OF HORSE RACE NONSENSE.
Jesus fucking Christ.
If people are boooored, it’s because this is what they’re fed.
You want excitement? How about concentration camps and boxcars filled with immigrants rounded up by Trump thugs? How about democracy in the waste basket and a government filled with fascist lackeys? How about courts that make decisions based on what’s best for Trump?
We don’t need horse race analysis or both sides bullshit. The clock is ticking and too many people are navel gazing and rehashing the same bullshit we’ve been fed for years. This is August of 1914, 9-10, September of 1939, December 6, 1941, and these fuckers are talking like they’re waiting for the final odds on the Kentucky Derby.
This is the problem.
It appears that DiJiT's gag order (34 Felonies trial) does not allow him to identify or criticize the jury, but to "address" them ... whatever that means.
"... The partial lift will allow Trump to address the jury that convicted him last month on 34 criminal charges, though the former president remains under a separate protective order that prohibits him from publicly disclosing their identities. " (Politico, from above)
So, let's see, he can say:
"... I just want to tell the jury that they are a bunch of Manhattan lefty pinko comnists who were out to get me from day one, and I hope that they realize that they have hurt not just me, but themselves, by convicting a totally innocent man, and whatever happens to them is their own fault."
Or something like that.