The Conversation -- August 20, 2023

Katelyn Polantz of CNN: “Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows has asked a federal court to order all charges against him brought by Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutors last week to be dismissed, since he says the charges relate to his then-role in the federal government. In a weekend filing, Meadows argues he should have immunity from the state's 2020 election interference criminal case because he was carrying out his duties as a federal official working for ... Donald Trump. The filing argues that his actions arose only because he was serving Trump as a close White House adviser." MB: I doubt this motion will succeed. And personally, I think it's a bad "loo" for Meadows to formally declare he should not be held responsible for his actions.

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post explains several reasons that efforts of various Georgia defendants, including Donald Trump & Mark Meadows, should not be successful in their attempts to remove the cases against them from state to federal court. (Meadows has already filed to remove the case.) For one thing, "Neither Trump nor Meadows ... had any constitutional duties regarding state certification of Georgia's own election. The Framers parceled out election duties to the states, the electoral college and Congress, but not the president. Moreover, in seeking removal, a defendant must also show that he has a 'colorable' defense under federal law, such as immunity. [That is, they must have a federal defense against the charges, which they don't.]... Federal Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington, D.C., held last November, 'If Former President Trump disrupted the certification of the electoral vote count..., such actions would not constitute executive action in defense of the Constitution.'" Thanks to Ken W. for the link.

Katherine Faulders, et al., of ABC News: "Appearing to contradict ... Donald Trump's primary public defense in the classified documents case, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has told special counsel Jack Smith's investigators that he could not recall Trump ever ordering, or even discussing, declassifying broad sets of classified materials before leaving the White House, nor was he aware of any 'standing order' from Trump authorizing the automatic declassification of materials taken out of the Oval Office, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.... ABC News has also reviewed an early draft of the prologue to Meadows' book ... about his time serving as Trump's chief of staff..., which includes a description of Trump having a classified war plan 'on the couch' at his office in Bedminster, New Jersey, at a meeting attended by Meadows' ghostwriter and publicist, but not by Meadows himself. The reference to that document being in Trump's possession was removed before the book was published. Multiple sources tell ABC News Meadows acknowledged to investigators that he asked that the paragraph be changed, and that it would be 'problematic' had Trump had such a document in his possession. Sources tell ABC News that Meadows told special counsel investigators that he did not discuss making those edits with Trump." ~~~

~~~ Jamie Gangel, et al., of CNN (Aug. 18): "In the days since the FBI seized classified and top secret documents from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, the former President and his allies have claimed that Trump had a 'standing order' to declassify documents he took from the Oval Office to the White House residence. But 18 former top Trump administration officials tell CNN they never heard any such order issued during their time working for Trump, and that they believe the claim to be patently false.... 'Nothing approaching an order that foolish was ever given,' said John Kelly, who served as Trump's chief of staff for 17 months from 2017 to 2019. 'And I can't imagine anyone that worked at the White House after me that would have simply shrugged their shoulders and allowed that order to go forward without dying in the ditch trying to stop it.' Mick Mulvaney, who succeeded Kelly as acting White House chief of staff, also dismissed the idea and told CNN he was 'not aware of a general standing order' during his tenure." ~~~

~~~ Summer Concepcion of NBC News: "Former Vice President Mike Pence ... said Sunday he did not know of any 'broad-based effort' by ... Donald Trump to declassify documents before he left the White House.... '... I don't have any knowledge of any broad-based directive from the president,' he [said]. 'But that doesn't mean it didn't occur, I just -- it's just not something that I ever heard about.'" MB: This "secret declassification" defense has never made sense. Everyone who has access to government documents has to know the current classification status of each document. Unless there was a general government-wide email announcement every day like, "Okay, the Prez took today's Presidential Daily Briefing to his residence so you can post it on your Facebook page and talk about it with Putin," then the PDB remained, as it should be, classified.

Arlette Saenz of CNN: "President Joe Biden is preparing to blanket the airwaves with a $25 million television and digital ad campaign in battleground states this month as Republicans are set to face off in their first presidential primary debate. The first minute-long ad, titled 'Fought Back,' which was first obtained by CNN, has an economic focus, marking the campaign's latest effort to improve voter perceptions about Biden's handling of the economy. It also makes explicit reference to ... Donald Trump, as Democrats attempt to tie GOP candidates at this week's debate to Trump's 'MAGA agenda.'"

Shawna Mizelle of CNN: "Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy described the case against ... Donald Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents as 'almost a slam dunk' and said he thinks Trump should drop out of the 2024 presidential race. '... He will lose to Joe Biden, if you look at the current polls,' he told CNN's Kasie Hunt on 'State of the Union.' 'I think any Republican on that stage in Milwaukee will do a better job than Joe Biden. And so I want one of them to win...," the Louisiana senator said. The comments from Cassidy, who was one of seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in 2021 at his second impeachment trial, mark some of his strongest criticism of Trump to date. They come as the various charges against Trump continue to dominate the GOP primary, with the former president widely viewed as the party's front-runner."

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Amy Wang & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump intends to skip the first Republican presidential primary debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday and instead plans to post a prerecorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that will be released that night, according to a person briefed on the matter. Trump advisers said the interview had already been recorded. It is not yet clear where the interview will appear. Carlson has started a show on X, formerly called Twitter, but Trump sees the platform as a rival to Truth Social, which he helped create." MB: "Create"? How about "copy from Twitter"?

Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that ... Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result. The latest salvo came Saturday in The Atlantic magazine, from liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig, the former federal appellate judge and a prominent conservative who's become a strong critic of Trump's actions after the election. Not all in the legal community agree -- and what the scholars are proposing would need to be tested in court.... They and others base their arguments on a reading of part of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War provision that excludes from future office anyone who, previously, as a sworn-in public official, 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion ... or [had] given aid or comfort to the enemies' of the government.' The pair write: '... both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The former president's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the [14th Amendment's] disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Gerard Magliocca in the Washington Monthly: "To address this pressing problem, at least one secretary of state with the authority to make candidate eligibility rulings under state law must declare that Trump cannot appear on that state's presidential primary ballot.... A swift declaration by a secretary of state ... will get the eligibility litigation started sooner and give the [Supreme Court] Justices more time to consider the matter before voters in Iowa and New Hampshire go to the polls. This would be a non-partisan act to ensure an orderly election. When the Justices hear the Trump challenge, they must rule on the merits. Any attempt to dodge the heart of Section Three by dismissing a proper case as non-justiciable or on some tangential ground would be disastrous." ~~~

~~~ Ned Foley on Election Law Blog: "The new essay in The Atlantic by Judge Luttig and Larry Tribe significantly raises the risk, in my judgment, that Democrats in Congress will attempt to prevent Trump from being inaugurated on January 20, 2025 if he wins the election in November 2024." Foley suggests Congress pass legislation to avert the likelihood of "Constitutional Armageddon." MB: Good luck with that.

More on Rudy's desperate pleas to the Biggest Deadbeat: ~~~

~~~ Maggie Haberman & Ben Protess of the New York Times: "Rudolph W. Giuliani is running out of money and looking to collect from a longtime client who has yet to pay: ... Donald J. Trump. To recover the millions of dollars he believes he is owed for his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, Mr. Giuliani first deferred to his lawyer, who pressed anyone in Mr. Trump's circle who would listen. When that fizzled out, Mr. Giuliani and his lawyer made personal appeals to the former president over a two-hour dinner in April at his Mar-a-Lago estate.... When those entreaties largely failed as well, Mr. Giuliani's son, Andrew, who has an independent relationship with the former president, visited Mr. Trump at his club in New Jersey this month, with what people briefed on the meeting said was the hope of getting his father's huge legal bills covered.... For the better part of a year, as Mr. Giuliani has racked up the bills battling an array of criminal investigations, private lawsuits and legal disciplinary proceedings stemming from his bid to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election, his team has repeatedly sought a lifeline from the former president.... And even as the bills have pushed Mr. Giuliani close to a financial breaking point, the former president has largely demurred...." (Also linked yesterday.)

Tobi Raji of the Washington Post: "Law enforcement authorities were searching this weekend for a Proud Boys member who had been scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Friday for sentencing after he was convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.... An FBI wanted poster says Christopher Worrell, 52, of Naples, Fla., violated 'conditions of release pending sentencing on federal charges.' The bureau asked anyone with information about Worrell's whereabouts to contact their local FBI office or the nearest American embassy or consulate." MB: Naples, huh? Maybe he took a swamp boat into the Everglades & an alligator jumped up & et him.

Presidential Race 2024. Andrew Zhang of Politico: "The Trump campaign and MAGA world on Saturday blasted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for remarks appearing to label some of the former president's supporters 'listless vessels.'... 'A movement can't be about the personality of one individual,' DeSantis said [in an interview]. 'If all we are is listless vessels that's just supposed to follow, you know, whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that's not going to be a durable movement.'" MB: Calling Trumpbots listless vessels is deplorable. They're more like "selfish, aggrieved losers."

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Russia's Luna Lander Crash-Lands on the Moon. Kenneth Change & Anton Troianovski of the New York Times: "A Russian robotic spacecraft that was headed to the lunar surface has crashed into the moon, Russia's space agency said on Sunday, citing the results of a preliminary investigation a day after it lost contact with the vehicle."

News Lede

AP: "Hurricane Hilary roared toward Mexico's Baja California peninsula early Sunday as a weakened but still dangerous Category 1 hurricane likely to bring 'catastrophic and life-threatening' flooding to the region and cross into the southwestern U.S. as a tropical storm, the National Weather Service said."

The Conversation -- August 19, 2023

Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that ... Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result. The latest salvo came Saturday in The Atlantic magazine, from liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig, the former federal appellate judge and a prominent conservative who's become a strong critic of Trump's actions after the election. Not all in the legal community agree -- and what the scholars are proposing would need to be tested in court.... They and others base their arguments on a reading of part of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War provision that excludes from future office anyone who, previously, as a sworn-in public official, 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion ... or [had] given aid or comfort to the enemies' of the government.' The pair write: '... both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The former president's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the [the] disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again.'"

More on Rudy's desperate pleas to the Biggest Deadbeat: ~~~

~~~ Maggie Haberman & Ben Protess of the New York Times: "Rudolph W. Giuliani is running out of money and looking to collect from a longtime client who has yet to pay: ... Donald J. Trump. To recover the millions of dollars he believes he is owed for his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, Mr. Giuliani first deferred to his lawyer, who pressed anyone in Mr. Trump's circle who would listen. When that fizzled out, Mr. Giuliani and his lawyer made personal appeals to the former president over a two-hour dinner in April at his Mar-a-Lago estate and in a private meeting at his golf club in West Palm Beach. When those entreaties largely failed as well, Mr. Giuliani's son, Andrew, who has an independent relationship with the former president, visited Mr. Trump at his club in New Jersey this month, with what people briefed on the meeting said was the hope of getting his father's huge legal bills covered.... For the better part of a year, as Mr. Giuliani has racked up the bills battling an array of criminal investigations, private lawsuits and legal disciplinary proceedings stemming from his bid to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election, his team has repeatedly sought a lifeline from the former president.... And even as the bills have pushed Mr. Giuliani close to a financial breaking point, the former president has largely demurred...."

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What Real Presidents Do

Toluse Olorunnipa & Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "President Biden sought to mark a 'new era' for one of the United States' most high-profile trilateral partnerships Friday, using a first-of-its-kind summit with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts at Camp David to announce new measures on defense, technology, education and other key areas of cooperation. 'This is the first summit I've hosted at Camp David, and I can think of no more fitting location to begin the next era of cooperation,' Biden said at a joint news conference, standing between Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at his presidential retreat in Maryland and pledging that the commitments the leaders agreed to will stand the test of time. 'This is about decades and decades.' The summit was the culmination of what White House aides have described as a two-year effort to assist in a rapprochement between South Korea and Japan after decades of frosty relations. It also marked the beginning of what the White House hopes will be an extended stretch of three-way engagement, designed in part to counter China's military aggression and economic coercion and North Korea's growing nuclear weapons program." ~~~

~~~ Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Biden welcomed his counterparts from Japan and South Korea to Camp David on Friday morning as he seeks to cement a newly fortified three-way alliance, bridging generations of friction between the two Asian powers to forge mutual security arrangements in the face of an increasingly assertive China. Mr. Biden greeted Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea at the presidential retreat in Maryland, the first time he has invited foreign leaders there and the first time the leaders of the three countries will have met in a stand-alone session rather than on the sidelines of larger international gatherings.... Biden administration officials said the leaders would sign off on a formal 'commitment to consult,' an understanding that the three nations would treat any security threat to one of them as a threat to all, requiring mutual discussion about how to respond. The pledge would not go as far as the NATO treaty's Article 5, which obligates allies to 'take action' in the event of an attack on any member, but it would reinforce the expectation that the three would act in tandem." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ The White House has published the Camp David Principles here.

MEANWHILE, What Anti-Americans Do

Peter Baker & Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "While [Donald Trump]'s name appeared nowhere in the 'Camp David Principles' that the leaders issued at the presidential retreat, one of the subtexts was the possibility that he could return to power in next year's election and disrupt ties with America's two closest allies in the Indo-Pacific region. Both Japan and South Korea struggled for four years as Mr. Trump threatened to scale back longstanding U.S. security and economic commitments while wooing China, North Korea and Russia. In formalizing a three-way alliance that had long eluded the United States, [President] Biden and his counterparts hoped to lock in a strategic architecture that will endure regardless of who is in the White House next." MB: So, in a way, Trump -- or the Trump threat -- has improved Indo-Pacific relations.

I, Trumpius. Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump plans to upstage the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday by sitting for an online interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.... 'Reagan didn't do it, and neither did others. People know my Record, one of the BEST EVER, so why would I Debate?' [Trump wrote on his knock-off social media site.]... If [the interview] goes ahead as currently planned, the debate-night counterprogramming would serve as an act of open hostility .... to both the R.N.C. and Fox News, which is hosting the event." CNN's story is here. MB: No normal person would publicly describe himself as the BEST EVER, even if -- like the Evil Queen in "Snow White" -- that's what he told the mirror, mirror on the wall.

Chauncey DeVega of Salon: Donald "Trump has shown a wide range of pathological behavior over the past seven years or so. He has an unhealthy fascination with violence. He lacks impulse control and empathy. He revels in cruelty. He compulsively lies and exhibits traits of malignant narcissism. He is a confirmed sexual predator and misogynist. He has a tenuous relationship to reality, and increasingly retreats into victimology and a persecution complex. He believes himself to be almost literally superhuman and often behaves like a cult leader.... Trump's pathological behavior is in no way separate from his role as leader of the neofascist MAGA movement and larger white right.... Sick societies produce sick leaders; sick leaders have sick followers; in combination, those forces produce sick political movements.... Donald Trump's poor mental health and aberrant behavior amount to a political, social and legal crisis for America and the world." DeVega interviews some psychiatrists, who describe Trump as a crazy (layman's interpretation) Orwellian character.

** The Architect, There at the Insurrection. Andrew Kaczynski, et al., of CNN: "When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red 'Trump 2020' hat conspicuously tagged along.... The man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of ... Donald Trump's supporters eventually broke in... The man ... is attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme to subvert the 2020 Electoral College process by using fake GOP electors in multiple states. When asked by the House select committee where he was the first week of January 2021 and on January 6, Chesebro invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. But a CNN investigation has placed him outside of the Capitol at the same time as his alleged plot to keep Trump in office unraveled inside it. There is no indication Chesebro entered the Capitol Building or was violent. Jones did not enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or engage in violence, but he had warned of a coming battle the day before and urged his supporters to converge on the Capitol." The New York Times story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ The Strange Career of a Latter-Day Revolutionary. Ken Chesebro went from a long post-doctoral gig as liberal Harvard Law Prof. Lawrence Tribe's aide to hanging out at the insurrection with crazed right-wing provocateur & conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. According to this report by Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post, what seems to have flipped Chesebro's politics was making several million dollars in a cryptocurrency investment. MB: Now, Ken may go from crypto king to inmate in the Fulton County Jail. (Also linked yesterday.)

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "It is not hard to find commentators asking a simple question about the events of the past few years:... How did 'America's mayor' -- the man who rocketed to national fame after the Sept. 11 attacks -- come to disgrace and debase himself in defense of Donald Trump?... But ... the line from 'America's mayor' to indicted co-conspirator is a straight one.... He is the same man he's always been.... If we think of [Rudy] Giuliani as the scowling demagogue who stoked the flames of chauvinism and racial hatred against New York's first Black mayor [David Dinkins] for his own gain, then there's little other than his carefully crafted image in the press that separates the Giuliani of '92 from the Giuliani of '23.... It is easy to see that [Giuliani & Trump] are of a type. They share the same demagogic instincts, the same boundless resentment, the same authoritarian manner -- it is not for nothing that Giuliani reportedly tried to get the 2001 mayoral election canceled so that he could stay in office beyond the limit on his term -- and the same willingness to indulge in racism and use it for their own political purposes." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have long associated Giuliani with the racist police attack on Dinkins. But recently, when I looked for contemporaneous stories about the incident, I didn't find anything that mentioned Giuliani, so I thought I must have been mistaken. I was not. Bouie spells it out. The stories I read also hedged on the racism expressed during the police protest with language like, "reported to have used the N word." I lived in Manhattan then, and I saw the video on a local TV channel and the audio was replete with cops using the racial slur. It confused me for a moment because I had forgotten that Dinkins was Black. He never made his race a feature of his mayoralty and there was no reason for anyone else too, either.

On the Lam. Daniel Barnes & Ryan Reilly of NBC News: "Christopher Worrell, a Florida Proud Boy convicted on seven counts stemming from his actions during the Jan. 6 riot, was scheduled to be sentenced today in Washington, D.C, federal court but is now missing, according to a spokeswoman from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.... Worrell had been initially detained pre-trial following his arrest in March 2021. However, [Judge Royce] Lamberth ordered Worrell released to home detention in November 2021 after finding that DC jail officials had failed to provide Worrell with adequate treatment for his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and a broken hand that may have required surgery. As part of his conditions of release, Worrell surrendered his passport and was subject to GPS monitoring." (Also linked yesterday.)

Emily Davies of the Washington Post: "The U.S. Department of Justice has designated the death of D.C. police officer Jeffrey Smith -- who took his own life after helping defend the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot -- as having occurred in the line of duty, granting his widow access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal benefits, according to the family's attorney. The Justice Department revealed the determination to the family Thursday. It did so under a law amended last year to make it easier for families of officers who die by suicide to access death benefits, marking a shift in how the government treats first responders who suffer mental health crises arising from what they encounter on the job. 'I could have given up. But I did not want any future widow, or widower, to ever go through what I went through in the aftermath of Jeffrey's death,' said Erin Smith, Jeffrey Smith's widow, in a statement. She spent years pressing local and federal officials to honor officers who die by suicide in the same way as any others who die in the line of duty."

Holly Bailey & Hannah Allam of the Washington Post: "The FBI has joined an investigation into a barrage of threats against Fulton County officials in recent days, including members of the Atlanta-area grand jury that voted to indict ... Donald Trump and 18 of his allies in a sweeping criminal case focused on alleged 2020 election interference."

Kathryn Watson of ABC News: "Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes' office is conducting an ongoing investigation of an alleged attempt to use alternate electors after the 2020 presidential election to benefit ... Donald Trump, a spokesperson for the attorney general confirmed." ~~~

     ~~~ Gideon Rubin of the Raw Story: "Rolling Stone reported that, 'Investigators have started asking questions about any potential contacts between false electors such as [for Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward..., then-President Trump, and other out-of-state officials and lawyers working on his behalf to steal the election, one of the sources tells Rolling Stone. In recent discussions with possible witnesses and others, some investigators have asked or requested information related to a video -- tweeted by the Arizona GOP in December 2020 -- where Ward and other Trump allies sign documents falsely claiming to be the state's legitimate electors.'"

Marie: It strikes me that if the United States is headed for civil war -- and we may be -- the Supreme Court might be, if not the catalyst, at least a central player in the crisis. If no one institution is "the decider," then there is no rule of law and everyone is a decider. We would be living in a Rand Paulish dystopian/everyone-for-himself world. ~~~

~~~ Weekend Read. Garrett Epps in the Washington Monthly: "The precedent-smashing, highly political Roberts Court is likely to trigger outright defiance by the left and right. Just look at Alabama's failure to comply with a recent Court ruling.... By balking at producing a redistricting plan that can pass judicial muster, [Alabama's] legislature has refused to comply with a district court order and a Supreme Court Voting Rights Act decision in what may be a foretaste of future crises on the left and right. States on both sides of the red-blue divide are growing querulous about Supreme Court rulings. Even though it is now dominated by a radical-right majority, resistance to its precedent-shattering decisions seems at least as likely to come from the right as from the left.... The Court may even face something not seen since the Civil War -- defiance of a President of the United States.... [The Supreme Court] is not acting like a court; it will not be treated indefinitely by friend or foe as if it were one." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: In his analysis of Alabama's definance of a Supreme Court decision, Epps concludes that "The question seems to be whether the Supreme Court will let Alabama back it off. The answer is by no means clear." You'll have to read the analysis to see why. But let's say the Supremes do not back off. It strikes me that a president could once again enforce a federal court order on the state, just as occurred when Gov. George Wallace infamously stood at the University of Alabama door to block Black students from entering, only to step aside when J.F.K.'s federalized National Guard confronted him. But that assumes a reasonable court order and a reasonable president. On the other hand ~~~

     ~~~ Here's Epps' example of defiance from the left: "The next debt-ceiling crisis is scheduled for January 1, 2025, or shortly thereafter. Imagine a re-elected Biden facing a Republican House that will not listen to reason this time. I have argued since 2011 that a President would have the constitutional duty to set aside the debt-ceiling statute and pay the nation's debt. Now imagine the Supreme Court telling him to stop paying it -- in effect, ordering him to preside over the economy's collapse. Honestly, reader, if you were President, what would you do?"

Kasha Patel of the Washington Post: "The richest 10 percent of U.S. households are responsible for 40 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study released Thursday in PLOS Climate. The study, which looked at how a household's income generated emissions, underlines the stark divide between those who benefit most from fossil fuels and those who are most burdened by its effects.... Many of the ways people earn money are also linked to carbon pollution, including from how and where they earn their wages to where they invest parts of their income. These investments, especially if linked with fossil fuel-related industries, can seriously tip who is most responsible for the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, said ... Jared Starr, lead author of the study. 'It just seems morally and politically problematic to have one group of people reaping so much benefit from emissions while the poorer groups in society are asked to disproportionately deal with the harms of those emissions,' Starr, a sustainability scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said." The Raw Story's report is here. Thanks to RAS for the link.

Robert McFadden of the New York Times: "James L. Buckley, a conservative recruit from Connecticut who invaded the New York strongholds of Democrats and liberal Republicans in 1970 and against the odds won a United States Senate seat on the Conservative Party line, died early Friday in Washington. He was 100." (Also linked yesterday.)

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Kansas. Bill Chappell of NPR: "...Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, who signed the search warrant allowing police to seize the equipment [of the Marion County Record], was arrested at least twice for driving under the influence. Those 2012 arrests came months apart in two counties -- and it's not clear how much information was shared between officials at the time, The Wichita Eagle reports.... It was a confidential tip to the Record about the DUI history of Kari Newell, a local restaurant and catering company owner, that set incidents in motion." The city police chief Gideon Cody, who initiated the warrant request, previously had threatened to sue the newspaper because it had looked into disciplinary action taken against him in his previous job. MB: So small-town politics as usual.

News Ledes

New York Times: "As Hurricane Hilary heads north, Southern California and Mexico are bracing for a rare and powerful storm that could produce dangerous flash flooding and sustained winds that have not been seen for decades.... The Category 4 hurricane is so unusual that it has prompted the National Hurricane Center to issue a tropical storm watch for California for the first time in its history. Hilary is currently projected to make landfall in Baja California on Sunday and move northward as a tropical storm near San Diego and across the deserts and mountains east of Los Angeles -- though its path could still veer elsewhere."

Washington Post: "Dueling heat waves -- across Texas and the South, and in the Pacific Northwest to northern Plains -- are joining forces to deliver the hottest stretch of weather this year to the central Plains and parts of the Midwest." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Weirdly, I have run my A/C a total of no more than 36 hours this summer, not at all in August -- so far. As I write, the outside temp in lower New Hampshire is 58 degrees.

The Conversation -- August 18, 2023

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Biden welcomed his counterparts from Japan and South Korea to Camp David on Friday morning as he seeks to cement a newly fortified three-way alliance, bridging generations of friction between the two Asian powers to forge mutual security arrangements in the face of an increasingly assertive China. Mr. Biden greeted Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea at the presidential retreat in Maryland, the first time he has invited foreign leaders there and the first time the leaders of the three countries will have met in a stand-alone session rather than on the sidelines of larger international gatherings.... Biden administration officials said the leaders would sign off on a formal 'commitment to consult,' an understanding that the three nations would treat any security threat to one of them as a threat to all, requiring mutual discussion about how to respond. The pledge would not go as far as the NATO treaty's Article 5, which obligates allies to 'take action' in the event of an attack on any member, but it would reinforce the expectation that the three would act in tandem."

** The Architect, There at the Insurrection. Andrew Kaczynski, et al., of CNN: "When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red 'Trump 2020' hat conspicuously tagged along.... The man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of ... Donald Trump's supporters eventually broke in... The man ... is attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme to subvert the 2020 Electoral College process by using fake GOP electors in multiple states. When asked by the House select committee where he was the first week of January 2021 and on January 6, Chesebro invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. But a CNN investigation has placed him outside of the Capitol at the same time as his alleged plot to keep Trump in office unraveled inside it. There is no indication Chesebro entered the Capitol Building or was violent. Jones did not enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or engage in violence, but he had warned of a coming battle the day before and urged his supporters to converge on the Capitol." The New York Times story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ The Strange Career of a Latter-Day Revolutionary. Ken Chesebro went from a long post-doctoral gig as liberal Harvard Law Prof. Lawrence Tribe's aide to hanging out at the insurrection with crazed right-wing provocateur & conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. According to this report by Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post, what seems to have flipped Chesebro's politics was making several million dollars in a cryptocurrency investment. MB: Now, Ken may go from crypto king to inmate in the Fulton County Jail.

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "It is not hard to find commentators asking a simple question about the events of the past few years:... How did 'America's mayor' -- the man who rocketed to national fame after the Sept. 11 attacks -- come to disgrace and debase himself in defense of Donald Trump?... But ... the line from 'America's mayor' to indicted co-conspirator is a straight one.... He is the same man he's always been.... If we think of Giuliani as the scowling demagogue who stoked the flames of chauvinism and racial hatred against New York's first Black mayor [David Dinkins] for his own gain, then there's little other than his carefully crafted image in the press that separates the Giuliani of '92 from the Giuliani of '23.... It is easy to see that [Giuliani & Trump] are of a type. They share the same demagogic instincts, the same boundless resentment, the same authoritarian manner -- it is not for nothing that Giuliani reportedly tried to get the 2001 mayoral election canceled so that he could stay in office beyond the limit on his term -- and the same willingness to indulge in racism and use it for their own political purposes." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have long associated Giuliani with the racist police attack on Dinkins. But recently, when I looked for contemporaneous stories about the incident, I didn't find anything that mentioned Giuliani, so I thought I must have been mistaken. I was not. Bouie spells it out. The stories I read also hedged on the racism expressed during the police protest with language like, "reported to have used the N word." I lived in Manhattan then, and I saw the video on a local TV channel and the audio was replete with cops using the racial slur. It confused me for a moment because I had forgotten that Dinkins was Black. He never made his race a feature of his mayoralty and there was no reason for anyone else too, either.

On the Lam. Daniel Barnes & Ryan Reilly of NBC News: "Christopher Worrell, a Florida Proud Boy convicted on seven counts stemming from his actions during the Jan. 6 riot, was scheduled to be sentenced today in Washington, D.C, federal court but is now missing, according to a spokeswoman from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.... Worrell had been initially detained pre-trial following his arrest in March 2021. However, [Judge Royce] Lamberth ordered Worrell released to home detention in November 2021 after finding that DC jail officials had failed to provide Worrell with adequate treatment for his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and a broken hand that may have required surgery. As part of his conditions of release, Worrell surrendered his passport and was subject to GPS monitoring."

Robert McFadden of the New York Times: "James L. Buckley, a conservative recruit from Connecticut who invaded the New York strongholds of Democrats and liberal Republicans in 1970 and against the odds won a United States Senate seat on the Conservative Party line, died early Friday in Washington. He was 100."

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Trump Family Crime Blotter

Seems Reasonable. Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Donald Trump says he'll be ready to go on trial on federal charges over his bid to subvert the last election ... in April 2026. Citing extraordinary amounts of evidence -- including a tranche of 11.5 million pages that prosecutors handed over earlier this month -- Trump lawyers John Lauro and Todd Blanche said in court papers filed Thursday that a 2.5-year delay before picking a jury would properly factor in the complexity of the case. The proposal stands in almost absurd contrast to prosecutors' call for a trial to begin on Jan. 2, 2024, a highly ambitious timeline.... [In their own filing last week, prosecutors] noted that Trump [has had access to and] is privy to large swaths of evidence arrayed against him as a result of the House Jan. 6 select committee's hearings and trove of public documents. And he also has access to millions of pages of records that overlap with the materials the government is producing to him -- such as documents from his White House, his campaign and his PAC." The New York Times story is here.

Katherine Faulders & Jonathan Karl of ABC News: "... Donald Trump's promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County District Attorney's Office is now very much in doubt.... Sources tell ABC News that Trump's legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it." MB: Darn, because I thought telling more of the same lies that led to federal and state indictments was a brilliant idea. Trump should fire his lawyers for taking away his First Amendment rights. And election interference! And whatever! (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Soo Rin Kim & Lalee Ibssa of ABC News: "... Donald Trump says his press conference previously scheduled for Monday regarding Georgia's 2020 election results ... was canceled because his lawyers would prefer putting his allegations 'in formal Legal Filings.... Therefore, the News Conference is no longer necessary!' he wrote [on his social media platform]. MB: So even his reason for cancelling a presser is a lie: his lawyers are not planning to put his false charges in legal filings; they're trying to bury Trump's lies so nobody ever see them again.

Spirit Animals Are Attacking Jeff Clark. Josephine Harvey of the Huffington Post: "Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official under Donald Trump, is posting online about supernatural beings in the wake of his racketeering indictment in Georgia.... 'Today witches, spiritists, mediums, those with spirit animals, and Ukrainian NPCs resumed their attacks on me,' Clark wrote on X-...Twitter, on Wednesday." MB: Do you suppose Clark is working up an insanity defense? (Also linked yesterday.)

Anna Betts, et al., of the New York Times: "The Fulton County Sheriff's Office said Thursday that it was investigating online threats against the grand jurors who voted this week to indict ... Donald J. Trump and 18 others, accusing them of conspiring to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results. The jurors' names are listed early in the sprawling 98-page indictment, as required in Georgia, making the state an outlier among federal and state court systems. [Facebook took down a post that purported to reveal personal info about some of the grand jurors.] On Truth Social, the social media platform founded by Mr. Trump -- who has himself lashed out at prosecutors, judges and private citizens who have sued him -- many users reposted the names. In one response to a list of several jurors, a user urged others to make them 'infamous' and to 'make sure they can't walk down the street.'"

Jesus Jiménez of the New York Times: "A woman was sentenced on Thursday to more than 21 years in prison for mailing letters containing the lethal substance ricin to ... Donald J. Trump and eight Texas law enforcement officials in 2020, the Justice Department said. The woman, Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier, 55, of Quebec was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After she completes her prison term, she will be on supervised release for the rest of her life, the Justice Department said in a statement." CNN's report is here.

There's excellent commentary in yesterday's thread on a Fifth Circuit decision to limit access to the abortion drug mifepristone. Commentary centers of Judge James Ho's notion that a central purpose of procreation is to satisfy doctors' right to look at pictures of fetuses and babies. ~~~

Love to hear it explained yet again that men’s emotions matter more than women’s safety and dignity. https://t.co/6aSTvegEsf

— Moira Donegan (@MoiraDonegan) August 16, 2023

     ~~~ Adorable ultrasound photos & baby pictures aside, you may best recall Judge Ho from this photo of his swearing-in in Harlan Crow's palatial library. The swearer-inner? "Justice" Clarence Thomas, who flew down to Dallas for the occasion in Crow's private jet.

Presidential Race 2024

Jonathan Swan, et al., of the New York Times: "Ron DeSantis needs 'to take a sledgehammer' to Vivek Ramaswamy, the political newcomer who is rising in the polls. He should 'defend Donald Trump' when Chris Christie inevitably attacks the former president. And he needs to 'attack Joe Biden and the media' no less than three to five times. A firm associated with the super PAC that has effectively taken over Mr. DeSantis's presidential campaign posted online hundreds of pages of blunt advice, research memos and internal polling in early nominating states to guide the Florida governor ahead of the high-stakes Republican presidential debate next Wednesday in Milwaukee.... Super PACs are barred by law from strategizing in private with political campaigns. To avoid running afoul of those rules, it is not unusual for the outside groups to post polling documents in the open, albeit in an obscure corner of the internet where insiders know to look.... But it is unusual, as appears to be the case, for a super PAC, or a consulting firm working for it, to post documents on its own website...." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Religious Freedom for Me but Not for Thee. Jonathan Swan, et al., of the New York Times: An opposition research memo about the Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy that was written by the super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida invokes the entrepreneur's Hindu faith and family visits to India. The document's first paragraph, addressing Mr. Ramaswamy's past support for inheritance taxes, draws a link between that policy position and his Hindu upbringing as the son of Indian immigrants. 'Ramaswamy -- a Hindu who grew up visiting relatives in India and was very much ingrained in India's caste system -- supports this as a mechanism to preserve a meritocracy in America and ensure everyone starts on a level playing field,' the document states. Mr. Ramaswamy is the only candidate joining Mr. DeSantis on the debate stage whose national or religious backgrounds were mentioned in any of the documents posted on the Axiom Strategies website." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The underlying irony of this criticism is that DeSantis' backers seem to present as a bad thing a religion-based policy position -- ensuring a level playing field -- that is a democratic ideal. Uh, unless you're a Republican. So bigotry AND anti-democratic values.

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Arkansas. Dana Goldstein of the New York Times: "The Little Rock School District in Arkansas said on Wednesday that it would continue to offer Advanced Placement African American studies, over the objections of the administration of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican who has limited instruction on race. The decision comes after the State Department of Education announced on Monday that the course's content might violate a new law banning 'indoctrination' in schools.... 'A.P. African American Studies will allow students to explore the complexities, contributions and narratives that have shaped the African American experience throughout history, including Central High School's integral connection,' the district said.... In 1957, a group of nine Black teenagers, escorted by the U.S. National Guard, integrated Little Rock Central High School as white protesters spit and jeered."