Restricting pronouns...

Florida House passes parental rights bill restricting pronouns in schools

‘This bill does nothing but tell certain parts of our community in Florida that they don’t exist,’ says one Democrat.

By ANDREW ATTERBURY

House Republicans in Florida passed a wide-ranging education bill Friday targeting how teachers and students can use their pronouns in schools, building on the state’s parental rights law that critics call “Don’t Say Gay.”

The proposal tightens restrictions on school lessons about sexual identity and gender orientation, which lawmakers say should happen at home. It also would require libraries pull books from shelves within five days if someone objects to the content in a change opponents contend amounts to censorship.

The measure is part of the push by Florida conservatives to uproot what they say is “indoctrination” in schools and is one of several bills taken up this session focusing on the LGBTQ community and transness.

With the 77-35 vote that saw House Democrats in opposition, the legislation is on the cusp of passing the Legislature but is awaiting a final committee hearing in the Senate. Two Republicans — State Rep. Demi Busatta Cabrera (R-Coral Gables) and Rep. Will Robinson (R-Bradenton) — crossed party lines and voted against the bill.

“For those who think our schools should be some sort of social justice experiment, I challenge you this: I don’t agree with any of it, but when 100 percent of our children are proficient in reading, and 100 percent of our children are proficient in math, then there is time for all of this silliness,” said state Rep. Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay). “You want to know what hurts children? It’s the fact that they can’t read, it’s the fact that they can’t do math.”

The bill, FL HB1069 (23R), would broaden the state’s prohibition on teaching about sexual identity and gender orientation from kindergarten through third grade to pre-K through eighth grade. This was a key piece in the Parental Rights in Education bill, known nationally as “Don’t Say Gay,” that was one of the more controversial policies passed by state lawmakers in 2022.

It also targets how school staff and students can use pronouns on K-12 campuses. Specifically, the legislation stipulates that school employees can’t ask students for their preferred pronouns and restricts school staff from sharing their pronouns with students if they “do not correspond” with their sex. Under the bill, it would be “false to ascribe” a person with a pronoun that “does not correspond to such person’s sex.”

As lawmakers voted on the bill, scores of LGBTQ advocates protested outside the House chamber, chanting in opposition of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who supports the parental rights expansions, and Republicans who passed it.

Most Florida Democrats have joined them in fighting the legislation, arguing the policies equate to sex discrimination and are disrespectful to LGBTQ students and families. They contend that the bill disregards the rights of parents who support their children being LGBTQ for the sake of others.

“In this body, our duty to our constituents is to make sure that every single constituent is seen and heard in our legislation,” said state Rep. Ashley Gantt (D-Miami). “And this bill does nothing but tell certain parts of our community in Florida that they don’t exist.”

Republican legislators, who hold a supermajority, maintain that expanding the parental rights law is necessary to ensure the state’s youngest students learn about adult topics like sexual orientation and gender identity from their parents instead of at school. Similar to last year when the parental rights bill was introduced, conservatives say the controversy over the proposal is a “manufactured narrative” and criticize advocacy groups and some school districts for politicizing the issue.

The legislation tackles an issue central to the parental rights polices lawmakers approved in 2022, which was inspired by a case in Leon County where parents claim that school officials helped their child transition to a different gender without informing them.

“I’m very concerned when I hear this bill being correlated with another bill, the Parental Rights in Education bill,” said state Rep. Fabián Basabe (R-Miami Beach). “And we’re still calling it the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill when I know we’ve all spoken … on how much work has been put into that bill to change any words that may be interpreted as targeting.”

HB 1069 also adds to legislation passed by Republicans last year to increase transparency about what books are available to students.

The bill aims to expand Florida law to require that books facing objections for being pornographic, harmful to minors, or describe or depict sexual activity must be pulled within five days and remain out of circulation for the duration of the challenge.

It also expands school board jurisdiction to classroom libraries. The bill would allow a parent who disagrees with a district’s ruling on a book challenge to appeal the state education commissioner to appoint a special magistrate to hear the dispute.

This comes as DeSantis, along with other Florida conservatives, seek to remove books with graphic content from schools, taking aim at specific titles such as “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, which depicts sex acts. Another measure in the bill stipulates that the Florida Department of Education must approve all materials for sex education classes, breaking from current policy of having local school boards pass them every year.

Democrats argue that the bill is too vague and could lead to parents challenging a large number of books that would then be kept off the shelves. They pointed to challenges to media that have played out across the state such as the Ruby Bridges movie being called out by a parent in Pinellas County, where it remains unavailable to other students in the district.

“This bill has given a ticket for racist, homophobic people — that this chamber does not support – to pull books that matter to our children,” said state Rep. Robin Bartleman (D-Weston).

The Senate parental rights bill, FL SB1320 (23R), is slated for a second and final hearing before the chamber’s Fiscal Policy committee, although no date has been set as of yet.

Weapons to Belarus.......

Russian plan to send nuclear weapons to Belarus proves Putin-Xi talks failed, Zelensky says

From CNN’s Allegra Goodwin

Russia’s stated plan to place nuclear weapons in Belarus is proof that talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping earlier this month failed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.

Though China had appeared to position itself as a peace broker between Russia and Ukraine in the weeks leading up to Xi’s three-day state visit to Moscow, the meetings between the two leaders did not yield a meaningful breakthrough on resolving the conflict.

“The signal that Russia wants to place their nuclear weapons in Belarus tells me that the meeting with China was unsuccessful, it’s failed,” Zelensky told reporters during a visit to Bucha.

The Ukrainian president also said Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko has “lost any importance,” claiming he “doesn’t decide anything about what kind of weapons are based in his country.”

Some background: Putin announced last week that Moscow will construct a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, completing it by the start of July. Lukashenko welcomed the move in a national address Friday, adding that Russia could also station strategic nuclear weapons in his country.

The mentioning of strategic nukes, which can decimate entire cities, is an escalation in rhetoric from Lukashenko. Russia has not publicly announced any plans to send strategic nuclear weapons to Belarus.

Global reaction: While there is no guarantee Putin will follow through on his plans for Belarus, any nuclear signaling by Putin causes concern in the West.

Ukraine, NATO and the European Union's top diplomat have condemned the plan. The US has downplayed the move, saying there are no indications Russia will use nuclear weapons.

The nuclear announcement comes as Putin faces mounting problems elsewhere.

Will go to trial next month....

Dominion defamation case against Fox News will go to trial next month, judge rules

By Marshall Cohen and Oliver Darcy

Dominion Voting Systems’ historic defamation case against Fox News will proceed to a high-stakes jury trial next month, a Delaware judge ruled Friday, declining to declare a pretrial winner.

The judge’s decision represents a major legal setback for Fox News and sets the stage for an agonizing weeks long trial in which some of the right-wing channel’s highest ranking executives and most prominent hosts could be called to the stand to testify about the 2020 election lies that were promoted on its air.

Both sides had asked Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis for a pretrial ruling in their favor, declaring them the winner at this stage. But after thousands of pages of filings and exhibits, and a series of courtroom clashes in Wilmington, Davis decided that the case should go to trial.

But in his Friday ruling, Davis said that the evidence Dominion presented shows Fox News aired falsehoods about the company.

“The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” Davis wrote.

While rejecting Dominion’s motion for a full-blown victory, the judge granted a partial win to Dominion on some key legal questions, which will give the company a boost at trial.

Davis determined that the Fox News on-air statements at the heart of the litigation were either factual assertions or “mixed opinion,” which might make it harder for Fox to defend itself in front of the jury. Fox had asked Davis to rule that the statements were “pure opinion,” and therefore couldn’t be defamatory under the First Amendment.

“The context supports the position that the statements were not pure opinion when they were made by newscasters holding themselves out to be sources of accurate information,” Davis wrong in his 130-page ruling.

The on-air statements, from various Fox News hosts after the 2020 election, had accused Dominion of rigging the election by flipping millions of votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

“We are gratified by the Court’s thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox’s arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial,” a Dominion spokesperson said in a statement.

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news. FOX will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement.

Jury selection is scheduled for April 13.

It was always unlikely that either side would prevail at this stage of the proceedings.

Unless there is an out-of-court settlement – which is always possible – Davis’ ruling means jurors will have to decide whether Fox News defamed Dominion by repeatedly promoting false claims that the voting technology company rigged the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump.

Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, deny all wrongdoing and have argued that their conspiracy theory-filled broadcasts after the 2020 election were protected by the First Amendment, because they were merely reporting on “newsworthy allegations.”

Their legal liability will be decided at trial. But the case has already battered Fox’s reputation.

Incriminating texts and emails have shown how Fox executives, hosts and producers didn’t believe the claims the network was peddling about Dominion. These revelations drove a dagger through the idea that Fox News is anything but a partisan GOP operation focused on ratings – not journalism.

The lawsuit is seen as one of the most consequential defamation cases in recent memory. Fox has argued that a loss will eviscerate press freedoms, and some scholars agree that the bar should remain high to prove defamation. Other analysts have said holding Fox accountable for knowingly airing lies won’t pose a threat to objective journalists who would never do that in the first place.

The case has elicited a mountain of evidence exposing Fox News as a right-wing profit machine lacking the most basic journalistic ethics – and willing to promote unhinged election conspiracy theories to preserve its lucrative business.

Rupert Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chairman, conceded in his sworn deposition that several of his top hosts endorsed election lies on the air that he knew were false. And after the 2020 election, its most prominent stars and highest-ranking executives privately trashed the conspiracy theories that were being spread on-air, according to internal text messages and email exchanges that became public as part of the lawsuit.

The legal filings showed how worried Fox News executives and hosts were of losing viewership to Newsmax, a smaller right-wing talk channel that was saturating its airwaves with election denialism.

After the election, a furious Donald Trump attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax. And, in the days and weeks after the presidential contest had been called, they did just that. Fox News shed a chunk of its audience while Newsmax gained significant viewership, leading to panic inside the building and prompting network leadership to embrace the election denialism that enveloped a large part of the Republican Party.

In multiple instances, Fox News executives and hosts started to crack down on those at the network who fact-checked election lies, private messages revealed in court filings showed. In one case, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity exchanged messages about trying to get White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich fired for fact-checking a tweet about supposed voter fraud. In another case, when host Neil Cavuto cut away from a White House press briefing where election misinformation was being promoted, senior Fox News leadership were told such a move presented a “brand threat.”

Despite what appeared on air, Fox News executives and hosts privately criticized the Trump camp for pushing claims of election fraud. Hannity said Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s then-lawyer, was “acting like an insane person” and Ingraham described him as “an idiot.” Rupert Murdoch said it was “really bad” that Giuliani was advising Trump.

They are running to the orange turds defense.... Should I care?

They are not outraged by Neo-Nazi, xenophobic, homophobic, sexual harassment, assault, rape, bigoted anti Semitic, seditionist behavior... So FUCK THEM!

More to come...

A list of the other notable legal clouds that hang over Donald Trump in 2023

Dan Berman

he New York hush money payment investigation is not the only probe former President Donald Trump is facing.

Here’s an updated list of additional notable investigations, lawsuits and controversies:

Mar-a-Lago documents: Did Trump mishandle classified material?

Special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the Justice Department’s criminal investigations into the retention of national defense information at Trump’s resort and into parts of the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

The Justice Department investigation continues into whether documents from the Trump White House were illegally mishandled when they were taken to Mar-a-Lago in Florida after he left office. A federal grand jury has interviewed potential witnesses regarding how Trump handled the documents.

The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.

Any unauthorized retention or destruction of White House documents could violate a criminal law that prohibits the removal or destruction of official government records, legal experts told CNN.

2020 election and January 6: US Justice Department

Smith’s purview also includes the period after Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden and leading up to the insurrection at the US Capitol.

As part of its investigation, the special counsel’s office has sought testimony from a number of key White House insiders, including former Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Aspects of the Justice Department’s probe include the use of so-called fake electors from states that Trump falsely claimed he had won, such as Georgia and Arizona.

Trump has been fighting to keep former advisers from testifying about certain conversations, citing executive and attorney-client privileges to keep information confidential or slow down criminal investigators.

2020 election: Efforts to overturn Georgia results

Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis oversaw a special grand jury investigating what Trump or his allies may have done in their efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia.

Willis, a Democrat, is considering bringing conspiracy and racketeering charges, CNN’s Don Lemon reported Monday.

The probe was launched in 2021 following Trump’s call that January with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he pushed the Republican to “find” votes to overturn the election results.

The grand jury issued a report – which remains mostly under seal – that found there was no widespread voter fraud in the state and also suggested perjury charges be considered against some people who testified.

Overall, the grand jury recommended charges against more than a dozen people, the foreperson said in interviews last month.

Lock him up!

How the courts will deal with indicted Donald Trump

Opinion by Jennifer Rodgers

It finally happened. After multiple investigations over half a dozen years, former President Donald Trump has been indicted by a grand jury in New York, according to sources familiar with the matter. Trump fired back, calling the indictment “political persecution” and warned “this Witch-Hunt” will backfire.

Though we not yet know the details of the charges, we do know that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money cover-up scheme involving adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Not only is this the first time that Trump has been criminally charged, it is the first time any former president has been criminally charged. As such, we are entering uncharted territory.

It should be evident that no one is above the law, and that Trump should be held accountable for his actions in the way that any other citizen would be. These charges represent the first step toward accountability, but the journey will be long and winding.

A threshold question is whether this indictment will have any impact on Trump’s declared candidacy for the presidency in 2024. Legally, the answer is no.

Trump can continue as a presidential candidate while a criminal defendant, and even if the case results in conviction before the election, because the federal constitution sets the qualifications for the presidency – and it does not include anything about a criminal record or pending charges. At the Conservative Political Action Committee in March, Trump confirmed as much, saying he would stay in the race even if he were indicted by federal or state authorities while running again.

Of course, running a campaign while facing charges will be politically and logistically challenging, to say the least. Any requests for delays in the litigation schedule to accommodate campaigning, debates or other election-related events will be heard and decided by the assigned judge, who controls the case calendar, but it’s difficult to imagine a judge granting significant delays for this purpose.

And if Trump is convicted and sentenced to prison before the election (or after winning it but before he takes office), his inability to fulfill the duties of the office may prompt efforts to remove him. For the time being, however, Trump can continue as a candidate if he so chooses.

Now that he has been indicted, what should we expect in the coming months?

The first steps are for Trump to be formally arrested and brought to court to be arraigned on the indictment. During that hearing, the court will address issues like bail and the setting of a preliminary hearing date, if necessary, to determine whether prosecutors have amassed enough evidence to move forward to trial.

I expect that Trump’s lawyers will agree to a voluntary surrender in Manhattan, instead of forcing officials to coordinate an arrest with local law enforcement in Florida – and for Trump to be released pending trial. But this is where the agreements between prosecutors and the former president’s counsel likely end.

As Trump has demonstrated again and again, he is well versed in using the legal system to delay, and sometimes to evade, consequences. Given that the Manhattan indictment is one of the most perilous situations Trump has ever faced, we should anticipate that the former president will be aggressive in fighting these charges.

An early decision point for Trump and his lawyers is whether they will seek a preliminary hearing at which prosecutors would be required to present evidence establishing probable cause—namely, a reasonable basis to believe that a crime has been committed.

On the one hand, such a hearing forces the prosecutors to reveal some of their evidence, which can help the Trump team evaluate the case and make a plan for how to defend it. On the other hand, the benefit of that sneak peek is limited, because prosecutors must only present enough evidence to meet the relatively low legal threshold, which they can likely do without revealing much of the non-public evidence that has been collected.

Instead, the former president may prefer to go on the offensive right away in an effort to gain strategic advantages and shape the narrative of the case. For example, Trump could assert a long list of arguments and substantive defenses as the litigation proceeds that may extend the runway to trial.

Some claims, like the suggestion recently made by Trump’s lawyer that the then-presidential candidate paid Daniels not to benefit his campaign, but to avoid personal embarrassment, are questions of fact for the jury and can be resolved at trial without the need for pretrial litigation.

But some issues may generate the need for judicial scrutiny, like Trump’s expected allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and selective prosecution, Trump’s possible reliance on an advice of counsel defense and Trump’s likely legal challenges to the prosecutor’s theory of the case.

Our legal system is governed by precedent and replete with opportunities for defendants to litigate and appeal many of the issues that Trump will surely advance. In particular, Trump’s likely claims relying on his status as the former president mean that the New York judges involved will be considering matters that are as yet unresolved by courts. Taken together, all of this will stretch out the time it takes for courts to deliberate and rule on these claims.

Trump’s scorched-earth approach very well may involve filing separate legal challenges, as happened when the Justice Department conducted its search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents last year and Trump asked for a special master to screen any seized documents.

That move ultimately failed, but it set back the investigation for months while a special master conducted an entirely unnecessary review of documents before the appellate court reversed Judge Aileen Cannon’s legally problematic ruling.

What will also factor in is Trump’s practice of litigating and appealing everything as far as he can, in order to delay and, if possible, derail, the proceedings. For example, Trump eventually lost his bid to stop his accounting firm from turning over financial records to the Manhattan District Attorney as part of a separate criminal probe, but the litigation, which Trump appealed to the US Supreme Court, cost investigators 18 months.

If Trump’s delay tactics succeed in pushing the trial into 2025 and, in the meantime, he manages to win the 2024 election, expect him to argue that the case against him must be dismissed as unconstitutional based on the Justice Department’s 2000 guidance that a president cannot be indicted “or tried” while in office.

When you put these factors all together, it’s a recipe for significantly protracted, and legally challenging, proceedings. That’s not to say that these charges will not eventually result in a trial of Trump. But while accountability may be coming, it will neither be swift nor easy.

Rallying around the criminal....

The indictment adds to a long list of times Republicans have backed Trump

It’s the latest of example of the GOP rallying around the former president.

By Li Zhou

Following the announcement that former President Donald Trump has officially been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, Republican lawmakers are finding themselves in an all-too-familiar position: rallying to defend him.

On Thursday, the grand jury announced that it would indict Trump for charges related to hush money payments made to porn performer Stormy Daniels, making him the first former president to be the subject of a criminal case. Since the news broke of the charges against Trump, congressional Republicans have broadly come to his defense, framing the indictment as an instance of political persecution.

Previously, House Republicans announced that they’d like to bring in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — the prosecutor who pursued charges against Trump — for testimony in order to raise questions about the case. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reiterated those plans Thursday evening, arguing on Twitter that Bragg “weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump” and promising “the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account.”

Arguing that Trump is innocent and being unfairly targeted by Democrats is one of two strategies Republicans routinely employ when Trump is in trouble, the other being to avoid the subject when the former president has done something incredibly difficult to defend. This playbook has been apparent following a federal raid at his residence in Mar-a-Lago, during his impeachment trials, and even during his first presidential campaign. It’s also one Trump has used prominently himself, dubbing his second impeachment a “witch hunt,” for instance.

For some Republicans, Trump’s indictment raises the question of just how much baggage the party should put up with. As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a likely presidential competitor — noted in remarks responding to the expected indictment earlier this month, there are other candidates who don’t have quite so many issues weighing them down. “I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” DeSantis quipped in a news conference. “I just, I can’t speak to that.”

Republicans’ willingness to continue shielding Trump amid the indictment drama, however, suggests that a large segment of the party is still very much supportive of the former president.

A non-exhaustive list of times Republicans have defended — or condoned — Trump

A review of Republicans’ long history of rushing to Trump’s defense — or refusing to condemn his actions — suggests this support is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Other instances include GOP responses to everything from his policy decisions, like the implementation of a travel ban, to his personal misconduct, including more than 20 allegations of sexual misconduct:

January 6: Though some Republicans initially criticized Trump for his role in inciting the riot at the Capitol in 2021, in the end, most returned to the president’s side, with some even minimizing the insurrection. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), for instance, said that it “didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me” in February 2021. Similarly, most Republicans balked at supporting the January 6 committee in the House, which was tasked with investigating the insurrection and Trump’s responsibility in it.

Covid-19: Since the start of the pandemic, Trump has downplayed the severity of the virus and framed public policy responses around masking and testing as oppressive. According to a study from the medical journal The Lancet, 40 percent of the Covid-19 deaths in the US in the first year were avoidable; the researchers blamed Trump’s approach for some of those deaths, as well as the US’s poor public health infrastructure. Congressional Republicans were slow to break from Trump on the issue, though some eventually did. “I think he’s done a good job, I do,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Politico in May 2020.

Ukraine quid pro quo: The first impeachment of Trump centered on his conditioning of aid to Ukraine in exchange for dirt on President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Sen. Mitt Romney was the only Republican to vote for his conviction, while Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican turned independent, was the only one to cross party lines in the House. At the time, most in the party argued that Trump’s actions were not an impeachable offense and that Democrats were overreaching.

Controversial immigration policies, including a travel ban: Multiple Trump immigration policies also split Republicans, with many openly condemning his actions. One proposal was the travel ban, which barred travel by citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries.

In this case, a number of top Republicans spoke out against the policies, while a handful of conservative lawmakers aligned themselves with Trump. “It’s very prudent to say, ‘Let’s be careful about who comes into our country to make sure that they’re not terrorists,’” Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said of the travel ban in 2017.

Racist comments: There have been numerous instances of Trump making racist remarks, which have prompted muted Republican response. As president, Trump targeted the four women lawmakers of color in “the Squad” and said they should “go back” to where they’re from, prompting attendees at a rally to chat “send her back” regarding Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). In 2020, Trump also made racist comments about Black Lives Matter protesters, calling them “thugs” and tweeting, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

Though many Republicans stopped short of supporting Trump’s remarks, few expressly condemned them, either. In the case of Trump’s tweets about the Squad, for example, the House voted to condemn Trump’s statement with only four Republicans supporting the rebuke.

Alleged sexual misconduct: At least 26 women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct including forcible kissing, groping, and rape. Trump has denied these allegations, and Republicans have broadly accepted his position. “All I would say: We live in an environment where people can come forward. That’s good. But allegations like this have to be cautiously reviewed,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told Politico in 2019 in response to rape allegations made by journalist E. Jean Carroll.

If you think OJ was innocent and Manson was framed, then you are a republican...

Trump’s indictment has united the Republican Party in apocalyptic rage

Even Trump’s Republican skeptics are apoplectic about his indictment.

By Ben Jacobs

Thursday night was the most cringe moment in American politics since the high times of the #resistance in the early Trump administration. After news broke that Donald Trump had become the first president in US history to be charged with a crime, there were labored, overwrought historical analogies (the number of times Fox News personalities mentioned that the Rubicon had been crossed would have allowed Caesar’s entire legion to go back and forth across the ancient Roman river a dozen times). There was ample partisan wish-casting, as right-wingers shared their fantasies of President Joe Biden condemning the prosecution of Trump in New York in order to bring our country together. And, of course, there were dark anxieties that this would spell the end of American democracy and represented what Donald Trump Jr. simply called “Communist level shit.”

These takes united the Republican Party — figures from Trump-cautious politicians like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) to ardent MAGA die-hards like Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) joined in condemning the indictment of Trump by a Manhattan grand jury, which is reportedly over allegations that he had illegally covered up hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election (although the indictment has still not been released). Among Republicans, there was a consensus that this prosecution was entirely political and a threat to the rule of law. Youngkin insisted on Twitter that “Arresting a presidential candidate on a manufactured basis should not happen in America,” while Gosar called the indictment “a clear and brazen political persecution.”

The question is whether that consensus will also apply to whether Trump should be the Republican nominee for president. In the short term, there was no doubt that the indictment will offer a surge of momentum to Trump’s presidential campaign — his rivals almost uniformly came out in support, and this can only juice the small-dollar base that Trump relies on. But it’s still more than 10 months until the scheduled date of the Iowa caucuses. The underlying argument for any serious challenge to the former president is that, while Republican voters think Trump was a good president who delivered a strong economy and steady foreign policy, there is a majority that is tired of the drama. And, if there’s anything that a criminal trial over hush money payments to a porn star will have, it’s drama.

For all the vitriolic tweets on Thursday night, it’s unclear if that rhetoric can be kept up over the weeks and months ahead. It’s not just that Trump is facing other prosecutions in far more serious matters, like his treatment of classified documents and his conduct around the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but that any trial will be fundamentally absurd and the facts of the case are lurid. They involve Trump allegedly having a brief sexual liaison with a prominent actress in pornographic movies, followed by a platonic meeting where the two watched Shark Week together where Trump expressed his fundamental loathing of sharks. Daniels told 60 Minutes in 2018 that Trump had said “I hope all the sharks die” while the two watched a nature documentary together. He then had Michael Cohen, his since criminally convicted attorney and fixer, pay off Daniels to avoid her from coming forward in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election.

None of this may matter for Trump’s hardcore base, which will comprise a significant fraction of the Republican electorate under any circumstance. But the question is whether it matters to the GOP voters who are up for grabs — those who are not enamored of the former president but care more about owning the libs than about the constitutional niceties implicated in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. It will certainly lead to those Republicans rallying around the flag in the days and weeks to come. After all, based on the reported allegations, it may be a strained legal case based on a novel argument that is offered by a prosecutor who otherwise has been notable for his comparative reluctance to press charges against first-time, nonviolent offenders.

In a Republican primary electorate where Trump fatigue has been creeping in, the charges serve as amphetamines that provide the stimulation of outrage to those Republican primary voters who might otherwise be weary of constant drama. But every high is eventually followed by a crash, and the question is whether Trump can keep the outrage pumping for the next two years — then again, he has done it for the past seven.

Just crazy....

Oklahoma Lawmakers Are Watering Down a Bill That’s Supposed to Help Domestic Violence Survivors

They had a big, bipartisan plan to get survivors out of prison. Why backtrack now?

SAMANTHA MICHAELS

Oklahoma incarcerates more women per capita than nearly any other state, and many of them are survivors of domestic violence.

Last year, I wrote about April Wilkens, who’s serving a life sentence in McLoud, Oklahoma, for killing her ex-fiancé, Terry Carlton, in 1998. Carlton, the wealthy son of a car dealership owner, repeatedly abused Wilkens during their relationship, according to court records. She shot him eight times one night after he allegedly held a gun to her head, raped her, and then handcuffed her at his house; she said it was self-defense, and a medical exam documented vaginal abrasions and tears. But a prosecutor claimed she was “cry[ing] rape,” and a jury convicted her of first-degree murder. 

As I reported last year, Wilkens eventually became eligible for parole but was struggling to convince Oklahoma’s parole board to release her from Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, even though she’d stayed out of trouble in prison. She suspected they kept rejecting her bids for freedom because Carlton’s family wanted her to remain incarcerated.

Then came some hopeful news. In February, Republican state Rep. Toni Hasenbeck wrote the Domestic Abuse Survivorship Act, a bill that would let judges retroactively resentence incarcerated survivors like Wilkens. More specifically, the bill would cap prison terms at 10 years for prisoners who committed a crime against their abusive romantic partner in a situation where they could have at least claimed self-defense. The bill would also apply to future cases.

Not many states have laws that allow survivors to retroactively seek shortened sentences—and those that do, such as New York, California, and Illinois, are more liberal than Oklahoma. So I was initially surprised last week to read that Oklahoma’s House unanimously passed the bill, sending it on to the state Senate. “This is a momentous day for domestic abuse survivors in Oklahoma,” Alexandra Bailey, a campaign strategist at the Sentencing Project, a national criminal justice reform group, wrote in a statement after the vote. “Rigid and extreme sentencing laws have devastated far too many women and children in the Sooner State.”

But there was a big catch: To make the bill more palatable to other Republicans, Rep. Hasenbeck watered it down—significantly—before the House vote. Instead of limiting prison terms, the new bill simply requires courts to consider a person’s history of abuse as a mitigating factor, and it gives judges the option “to depart from the applicable sentence” and offer a shorter prison term. In the end, however, judges would still have the power to punish as they see fit.

And crucially, the amended legislation would no longer apply retroactively—doing nothing for Wilkens and other survivors who are currently in prison. “To allow prospective relief while sacrificing survivors who have already been sentenced to prison is a half measure,” Colleen McCarty, an attorney at the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, a justice reform group, wrote in a statement after the House vote, “one intended to help us all feel good about our progress at the expense of our forgotten daughters.”(McCarty recently helped launch the podcast Panic Button to spread the word about Wilkens’ case.)

The bill will also leave out other types of survivors who commit crimes that stem from their domestic abuse. Unlike New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, which passed in 2019, Oklahoma’s bill would not assist survivors who, for example, are convicted for taking illicit drugs to cope with their abuse, or selling drugs at their abusers’ demand, or stealing money or food while trying to escape. And that’s likely a lot of people. While good national data is hard to come by, a study in New York found that 94 percent of incarcerated women had experienced physical or sexual violence before landing behind bars, and the vast majority of them were victims of intimate partner violence. In Oklahoma, McCarty estimates that anywhere from 100 to 500 Oklahoma women are now locked up for crimes stemming from domestic abuse. Some of them were convicted under the state’s controversial “failure to protect” law, the subject of a recent Mother Jones investigation. The law criminalizes parents who do not protect their children from another adult’s harm, but it often punishes mothers who simply could not fight back against their violent boyfriends.

Given the Oklahoma House’s unanimous support for the Domestic Abuse Survivorship Act, McCarty and other activists are now trying to convince state Senators to revert back to the original language allowing for retroactive resentencing, to help Wilkens and others like her. It’s unclear what success they might have: The Oklahoma District Attorneys Council, a powerful lobbying group of local prosecutors, reportedly opposes retroactive relief. (The DA Council did not respond to my requests for comment, and Rep. Hasenbeck agreed to an interview but did not answer my calls.)

At the very least, survivor advocates I spoke with hope Oklahoma senators don’t water down the bill even more. “It’s a narrower impact,” Tracey Lyall, who leads the nonprofit Domestic Violence Intervention Services in Tulsa, says of the amended bill, “but it will still have an impact on some survivors.”

Time to Celebrate!!

This Is No Time to Celebrate. The System Is About to Be Tested Like Never Before.

JAMES WEST

This evening, when the historic news broke that a Manhattan grand jury had voted to indict the former president (and leading GOP 2024 contender) Donald Trump in a hush-money scandal, our Washington D.C. bureau chief David Corn quickly sat down to issue this video warning: This is no time to celebrate; we are at a dangerous and uncertain moment.

“There’s going to be a lot of information, misinformation, and maybe some disinformation out there in the tsunami of response and reaction,” Corn says. “And I don’t think people should be celebratory of this: It’s a sad day if a presidential candidate… is accused of a crime.”

Corn says now is the time to respect the rule of law, as the legal system is about to encounter an unprecedented test from a man capable of unleashing extreme chaos. “It will be very, very ugly, and I think in the midst of all that, what we need to remember is he is presumed innocent, and that is a good thing,” Corn remarks. “We have to say, ‘This is an indictment. We will let the system work.’”

Arrested in the Coming Days...

This Is What Will Happen When Trump Is Arrested in the Coming Days

William K. Rashbaum

He will be fingerprinted. He will be photographed. He may even be handcuffed.

If he surrenders Tuesday, Donald Trump is expected to walk through the routine steps of felony arrest processing in New York now that a grand jury has indicted him in connection with his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star. But the unprecedented arrest of a former commander in chief will be anything but routine.

Accommodations may be made for Trump. While it is standard for defendants arrested on felony charges to be handcuffed, it is unclear whether an exception will be made for a former president. Most defendants are cuffed behind their backs, but some white-collar defendants deemed to pose less danger have their hands secured in front of them.

Trump will almost certainly be accompanied at every step — from the moment he is taken into custody until his appearance before a judge in lower Manhattan’s imposing Criminal Courts Building — by armed agents of the U.S. Secret Service. They are required by law to protect him at all times.

Security in the courthouse is provided by state court officers, with whom the Secret Service has worked in the past. But the chief spokesperson for the federal agency, Anthony Guglielmi, said he could not comment on measures that would be put in place for Trump.

It may take several days for Trump to appear at the courthouse. Now that the grand jury has voted to indict him — meaning to charge him with felony crimes — the indictment will remain sealed until his expected arraignment Tuesday, when the charges will be formally revealed.

After the indictment, prosecutors contacted Trump’s defense lawyers and negotiated the terms of his surrender, a common practice in white-collar investigations.

Lawyers for Trump, who is running for president a third time, said late Thursday that he will surrender and he is expected to be arraigned Tuesday.

After he is arraigned, he is almost certain to be released on his own recognizance, because the indictment will likely contain only nonviolent felony charges; under New York law, prosecutors cannot request that a defendant be held on bail in such cases.

The former president is already using the charges as part of a campaign strategy to energize his base.

Surrender is not in the confrontational former president’s DNA, and he often seems to relish antagonizing and attacking prosecutors who have investigated him, such as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who secured Thursday’s indictment. He has called Bragg, who is Black, “a racist” and an “animal” and said that his investigation was politically motivated.

In the unlikely event that the former president refuses to surrender, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has already said that his state “will not assist in an extradition request,” should one come from New York authorities. Still, if the New York prosecutors were to actually seek Trump’s extradition, and DeSantis attempted to protect his Republican rival, he could possibly face legal action himself.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Fux propaganda fucks themselves...

Fox News react in real time to Trump's reported indictment

Alec Regimbal

As news of former President Donald Trump's reported indictment broke on Fox News on Thursday, it seems audible gasps could be heard in the studio as reporter Sandra Smith read the report on air. 

"We have just gotten word former President Donald Trump has been indicted by a grand jury in New York," she said, as others in the room gasped. "Trump was under investigation by the DA's office for his alleged hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign."

Other Fox News hosts, including Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld, each took turns ranting about the announcement. At points, Watters appeared close to tears.

"It's the stupidest thing I've ever seen, and I feel bad for the guy," he said. "He didn't even really have to be president, he had a lot of money, he had a great life, and he decided to run. He won, he got in, they took him down, and now they're trying to nickel-and-dime him for a private agreement he made with a woman, what, eight years ago? ... This is a disgrace." 

He then went on to talk about the potential arrest process, saying Trump will be fingerprinted and have his mug shot taken. 

"They'll plaster that mug shot all over the country for the next two years and run against a criminal," he said. "And that's what this is all about." 

His tone then turned angry, and he seemed to imply that the decision to indict Trump could result in violence. 

"There's going to be a major rally-around-the-flag feeling. I'm starting to feel it right now," he said. "I'm angry about it, I don't like it, the country's not going to stand for it, and people better be careful. And that's all I'll say about that."

At one point, he even said Trump's alleged payments to Daniels were analogous to getting a haircut. 

"If you get a haircut a couple weeks before an election, and you pay for it out of your own pocket, not campaign funds, how is that a campaign finance felony?" he said. "If you were going to get a haircut anyway, you wanted to look good anyway, just like he would have paid off this woman anyway whether he was running for president or not." 

Contrary to Watters' claims about the case, the Manhattan district attorney's investigation actually revolved around how the $130,000 payment to Daniels — allegedly made to keep her from speaking about a purported affair the two had — was recorded by the Trump campaign. Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made the payment to Daniels and was reimbursed by Trump's campaign, which recorded it as a legal expense. Falsifying business records is normally considered a misdemeanor in New York, but the charge can be elevated to a felony if it is shown that records were falsified to cover up a crime. 

Trump, for his part, has denied all wrongdoing. 

Many in the right-wing orbit have argued that Trump's being arrested would actually guarantee that he'll win the Republican nomination for president, which he's seeking, in next year's contest. That's the route host Greg Gutfeld took when speaking about the indictment on Fox on Thursday. 

"He is an [original gangster], right? He's a badass. ... The thing is, his poll numbers have gone up with this," Gutfeld said. "I just think this is going to make sure he is gonna be on the ticket."  

Z 229-15

This luminous image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows Z 229-15, a celestial object that lies about 390 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. Z 229-15 is one of those interesting celestial objects defined as several different things: sometimes as an active galactic nucleus (an AGN); sometimes as a quasar; and sometimes as a Seyfert galaxy. Which of these is Z 229-15 really? The answer is that it is all these things all at once, because these three definitions have significant overlap.

An AGN is a small region at the heart of certain galaxies (called active galaxies) that is far brighter than just the galaxy’s stars would be. The extra luminosity is due to the presence of a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core. Material sucked into a black hole doesn’t fall directly into it, but instead is drawn into a swirling disk, from where it is inexorably tugged towards the black hole. This disk of matter gets so hot that it releases a large amount of energy across the electromagnetic spectrum, and that’s what makes AGNs appear so bright.

Quasars are a particular type of AGN; they are typically both extremely bright and extremely distant from Earth – several hundred million light-years is considered nearby for a quasar, making Z 229-15 positively local. Often an AGN is so bright that the rest of the galaxy cannot be seen, but Seyfert galaxies are active galaxies that host very bright AGNs (quasars) while the rest of the galaxy is still observable. So Z 229-15 is a Seyfert galaxy that contains a quasar, and that, by definition, hosts an AGN. Classification in astronomy can be a challenge!

Not funny

 

Actually kind of dumb....

How Trump Can Squash DeSantis Once and For All

Here’s a 2024 strategy for a still-vulnerable GOP frontrunner.

By JACK SHAFER

Donald Trump can’t think he needs any help repelling Ron DeSantis’ gestating presidential ambitions, now entering their third trimester. I’ve got this, Trump must be musing, having just posted three new videos ripping the Florida governor as “disloyal,” a “Mitt Romney lover” and, narrowcasting to Iowa caucus voters, an enemy of ethanol.

Checking the fresh Fox News poll, which expands Trump’s lead over the unannounced 2024 hopeful (now 54 percent to 24 percent), he seems ready to coast on his tested campaign strategy of insults, rallies, anti-establishment rhetoric, political transgression and wild social media rumpusing.

Voters like hearing the oldies as much as music fans do, but 2024 isn’t 2016. Trump fatigue is real. He isn’t the insurgent he once was. He’s lost two midterms as well as a reelection bid against an aging exemplar of the progressive faith. Plus, he has all those legal problems, including, you know, his indictment. But it’s still the early innings of the campaign with plenty of ball left to play. So, seeing as this column extended advice to DeSantis earlier this week on how to beat Trump, it seems only kosher to grant the former president the same favor.

The advice-to-DeSantis column urged him to ignore Trump’s weaknesses — his porn-star hush money liability, his vulgarity and cruelty, his serial lies. Instead, DeSantis should take aim at Trump’s strengths, such as his border wall vows, his North Korea diplomacy, his so-called populism and so on. Savaging Trump’s positives might not alone turn the election, but playing offense instead of defense would give DeSantis the agency he needs to win.

Agency is the very thing Trump must deny DeSantis. By continuing to attack DeSantis by name, Trump elevates him from wannabe to genuine contender. Blasting DeSantis with a hailstorm of criticism will only raise the governor’s name recognition and direct fatigued but curious Trump voters toward an alternative. Bad idea.

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If ever a presidential candidate needed to run a Rose Garden campaign in which the incumbent denies his opponent the attention he needs to gain voter share, it’s Trump. Trump’s not the incumbent, you say? That’s not the way he sees the “rigged” 2020 election. By running for the restoration of the crown, Trump can avail himself to a virtual Rose Garden campaign of proclamations, press conferences and media events. He might even think about skipping the primary debates as beneath him, though it might be too tempting for him to pass up a format in which he excels.

By making Joe Biden his 2024 opponent instead of Ron DeSantis, Trump would rob DeSantis the dignity of being a competitor. Added to that is the fact that attacking Biden every time he opens his mouth instead of DeSantis would play to Trump’s advantage by making 2024 be seen as a Trump-Biden rematch rather than a double-elimination tournament. There is so little policy difference between Trump and DeSantis that when Trump whacks him it’s almost as if he’s whacking himself. It leaves everybody, even pundits, a little confused. But when Trump whacks Biden, a slow-moving target if ever there was one, his supporters feel the full force of his rage. And they smile.

As the pseudo-incumbent president, Trump must never allow the DeSantis name to pass through his lips. By starving his opponent of equal billing, Trump could turn DeSantis into a no-name nobody unworthy of consideration. But that doesn’t mean Trump should ignore DeSantis. Just the opposite. This would only require a slight modification of Trump’s current strategy.

Instead of relying on lame nicknames like “Meatball Ron,” “Ron Desanctimonius,” and “Shutdown Ron,” Trump could disparage and diminish his opponent with a steady stream of oblique but stinging references. “There’s this kid from Florida…” Trump could say. “Have you heard about this Florida RINO who thinks he can be president?” “There’s this Jeb Bush Republican who wants to take your Social Security away.”

By taking advantage of DeSantis’ status as a relatively unknown nationally, Trump could portray him as an old school Republican who was for the Covid shutdown before he was against it, as a humorless whiner, as a paint-by-numbers, flip-flopping politician unworthy of graduation from governor to president, and just another palooka like the line-up Trump vanquished during the 2016 primaries.

Trump, who possesses the comic timing of a Vegas headliner, could make a running joke out of DeSantis, coloring him like a blank slate into whatever picture he wants. No offense meant to supermarket managers, but DeSantis looks like one, and Trump should capitalize on his lookist talents by ridiculing DeSantis’ very person — his whiny voice, his knickers-in-a-twist mien before the microphone and his dull rhetoric. Do we really need to remind Trump of his great skills as a political bully? As the original prophet who lived on locusts and wild honey in the desert, he should act like it!

DeSantis understands that voters crave fresh meat with their elections, hence his campaigns against DEI programs, critical race theory, LGBTQ issues, “woke” this and that, and his support for book bans and school choice. Trump’s policy shop has lagged in coming up with new issues upon which he can rage, which has made him a little bit of a copycat candidate. It might not be too late for Trump to carve a piece of this action out for himself, but surely the fellow who came up with the Wall and the Muslim ban can do better. His idea for futuristic “Freedom Cities” built on government land and sporting vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles is a good start. Who doesn’t want to live like the Jetsons? But one new idea he seems ready to advocate, the invasion of Mexico to destroy the drug cartels, might not be the ticket. For one thing, he can’t very well damage what wall he did build with an assault on our southern neighbor. Whatever he decides, he must stop resting on his demagogic laurels! A nation hungers for political entertainment!

Trump should remind voters that he was a president who kept America out of war, helped calm the Middle East, took on China, got Europe to pay its NATO bills, helped defeat ISIS, moved the embassy to Jerusalem and jawboned the Iranians. Trump can sketch DeSantis as a governor, a mere road-paver, and not a president you can go into war with. What, Trump might ask aloud, has the pudgy Tallahassee briefcase-toter accomplished? Fought Disney for months upon months and got beaten thanks to a legal loophole?

Treat DeSantis like a shadow. Invent some new issues to campaign on. Hammer Biden at every rally and TV appearance. And prepare for November 2024.

Guilty as all fuck!

Trump Seems to Be the Victim of a Witch Hunt. So What?

It’s hard to believe prosecutors would bring this case against anyone else. But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.

Opinion by ANKUSH KHARDORI

Sometimes even Donald Trump has a point. This time, it’s his claim that he has been singled out by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office for conduct that would probably not have been charged as a crime against anyone else.

The indictment of the former president in New York is an undeniably historic event — the first ever criminal prosecution of a former U.S. president — but it has also defied many people’s expectations that he would be arrested for a crime related to his time as president. The case, after all, is not about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election or his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, which are both under investigation by the Justice Department. The investigation by the Fulton County district attorney concerning Trump and his allies’ effort to manipulate the 2020 election results in Georgia also still remains underway, and people have been eagerly awaiting the results ever since a special grand jury completed its investigative work in February.

The case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, instead reportedly charges Trump for events that took place before he was president and uses a highly unusual legal theory based on a highly unusual set of facts — Trump’s payment of hush money to the adult film star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 election to cover up an alleged affair that the two had while he was married. At the time of this writing, the charge(s) in the indictment against Trump have not been publicly confirmed, but for weeks, media outlets have reported that the alleged crime at issue would be Trump’s participation in falsifying his company’s business records to obscure the reason for the payment, which was characterized within the company as a legal retainer for Michael Cohen — Trump’s onetime lawyer turned mortal enemy following his stint in prison.

The unusual charge from the Manhattan DA’s office that is apparently at issue has already prompted a broad consensus among conservative politicians and commentators that Trump is the victim of a political prosecution — a “witch hunt,” to use Trump’s preferred phrase. A Trump campaign email sent recently to supporters last week claimed that prosecutors in New York “chose their target first and have been hunting for a crime ever since.” Before the indictment came down, conservative legal commentator Andrew McCarthy, who is no fan of Trump as a political figure, argued that “it’s undeniable that no one who wasn’t Donald Trump would ever be charged for this.” Law professor Alan Dershowitz likewise said on Megyn Kelly’s show that “Nobody in their right mind would believe that Bragg would be going after John Smith or even John Edwards on a case like this. It’s obviously an example of ‘Get Trump’” — the name of Dershowitz’s latest book, in case you missed the promotional tie-in — “and it’s so, so dangerous.”

The claim is likely to be a central part of Trump’s defense, both in the public and legal arenas, and it is not likely to go away anytime soon — particularly since there is good reason to believe that it’s true.

The investigation by the DA’s office was reportedly spurred by news of the payment to Daniels all the way back in 2018 under Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance. According to a Supreme Court filing during the office’s fight to get Trump’s tax returns, the office put its investigation on hold at the request of the Justice Department around the time of Cohen’s guilty plea to a variety of federal charges, including campaign finance violations related to the payment to Daniels. Prosecutors in Manhattan picked the investigation back up in the summer of 2019 after they learned that the federal investigation had been closed without further charges.

In the intervening years, the office obtained Trump’s tax returns, charged and convicted both Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Organization on narrow tax-related fraud charges, and pursued a broader criminal case against the former president based on the alleged manipulation of the value of his assets in submissions to lenders, insurers and government authorities. Last year, Bragg declined to approve an indictment on those grounds, concluding that the proposed case was not strong enough. That led the two prosecutors leading the effort at the time to resign, and one of them, a lawyer named Mark Pomerantz, proceeded to launch a highly unusual media campaign — one that resulted in a book and an appearance on 60 Minutes last month — assailing Bragg for refusing to charge Trump.

That book provided a very incomplete and misleading account of the strength of Pomerantz’s proposed case, but setting that aside, pretty much everything about it seemed designed to shore up Trump’s claim that he was the victim of a legal vendetta by the office. Pomerantz, who was tasked with leading the investigation, comes off as singularly obsessed with charging Trump with anything that he can come up with — no matter how obscure or bizarre the legal theory — and heavily motivated by his belief that Trump is a uniquely dangerous political figure who has done tremendous damage to the country. It is no surprise that Trump’s lawyers and congressional Republicans have become fond of citing the book in his defense.

After Pomerantz and his colleague’s resignation early last year, Bragg was assailed by many Democrats and legal commentators. He insisted that the investigation would continue, which it evidently did, but apparently the only viable case that the office felt comfortable bringing after all that was based on the payment to Daniels.

We are likely to hear a lot of clichés from the legal commentariat in the coming days — about how Bragg and his prosecutors are simply following the facts and the law, about how no one is above the law, and so on. That is all well and good, but the reality is that this particular criminal case probably never would have been brought for anyone but Trump. In fact, the investigation probably would not have begun in the first place for anyone else, but at the time, Trump was still in office, and given the Justice Department’s policy against indicting a sitting president, the Manhattan DA’s office was a convenient outlet and prosecutorial avenue for people who wanted to see Trump criminally prosecuted.

There is also no indication at the moment that the case against Trump has any real precedent in New York or elsewhere. Perhaps prosecutors will demonstrate that that is wrong as they defend the case in court, but thus far, no one seems to be able to identify a comparable case brought by a local prosecutor’s office.

Trump, of course, is not the first president or presidential candidate to engage in an extramarital affair. Democrat John Edwards was indicted by federal prosecutors in connection with a scheme to obtain nearly $1 million in funds from donors to conceal a mistress and child while he ran for president in 2008, but the Justice Department was unable to convict him. Former president Bill Clinton famously had an affair while in the White House, but as a matter of realpolitik, it is hard to believe that he would be criminally charged by a local prosecutor for that conduct even if he were to have done it recently.

It is worth being honest about all this — particularly as the public begins to grapple with the momentous development of Trump’s indictment — even though it does not mean that the case against Trump should be thrown out or is somehow invalid. It is possible that Bragg’s team closely scrutinized all of the evidence that had been gathered along with the available charges against Trump and concluded that they had just one viable case, albeit a sufficiently compelling one as a matter of law, based on the payments to Daniels.

There is nothing inherently wrong about that. Luck, both good and bad, plays an undeniable role in who gets the attention of prosecutors and who gets charged in the criminal justice system. I once had a foreign national who was a subject in one of my fraud investigations arrested because she happened to travel to the U.S. for a birthday party, and she was eventually indicted, convicted and sentenced to prison.

Sometimes an unusual case emerges out of nowhere for reasons that prosecutors could not have anticipated, and they have to deal with it the best way they can, even if the result is relatively modest and not as explosive a charge as the defendant’s detractors would want to see. Likewise, sometimes prosecutors conduct expansive, wide-ranging investigations, but when all is said and done, they are not able to establish the most damning allegations and instead are left with a relatively small case.

It is not particularly surprising that something like this would happen to Trump of all people — a man who has spent much of his adult life flirting with the line between lawful and unlawful conduct in ways that would be inconceivable to pretty much anyone else. He also does awful things fairly regularly, so he hardly deserved the benefit of the doubt when news of the payment to Daniels first became public, which also happened to come in the context of a swarm of allegations concerning Trump’s mistreatment of other women.

Trump and his defenders may claim that the indictment should be dismissed because he is the victim of selective or malicious prosecution, but at the moment, a legal argument along those lines appears likely to fail. The reason is that the law generally requires robust evidence that the defendant has been singled out for an improper reason and that other, similarly situated people have not been criminally charged for similar conduct. Perhaps we will come to find out that plenty of other New Yorkers have allegedly paid off women they slept with to keep quiet, and that they did so in the middle of a federal election, but that seems unlikely — and that, in turn, is likely to doom any effort by Trump to get the case tossed on those grounds.

Finally, it is worth bearing in mind that although Trump is an undoubtedly high-profile defendant, this is a relatively modest prosecution as a legal matter, exposing Trump — if the reporting to date has been accurate — to a maximum four-year term of imprisonment and, perhaps, no time at all even if he is convicted. That would be up to the sentencing judge, and we are a long way off from that scenario.

In the meantime, Trump is likely to try to make this process as inflammatory and painful as possible for the country, but there is no need for us to indulge his endless grievance-mongering or his self-serving account of the case against him.

Running to suck his dick...

Hill Republicans sprint to Trump’s corner before indictment details are clear

It was the latest illustration of GOP fealty to the former president as he mounts his third White House bid.

By KYLE CHENEY

Congressional Republicans lined up to declare their fealty to Donald Trump on Thursday despite lacking details about his indictment by a New York grand jury, signaling that they would clamor to cast his forthcoming prosecution as politically motivated regardless of the substance.

“When Trump wins, THESE PEOPLE WILL PAY!!” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) said moments after the news broke that Trump would face an indictment on unspecified charges connected to hush money payments he made to a porn actress in 2016 to silence her claim of an extramarital affair.

Other congressional Republicans expressed varying degrees of rage at the indictment or alleged political motivations behind the case, led by District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said her party should retaliate by impeaching President Joe Biden because “the gloves are off.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) warned colleagues in Congress that they need to “think long and hard about their oath of office” and “step up … or get out of the way.” Speaker Kevin McCarthy made no promises of specific action but said the House would “hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account.”

“Alvin Bragg has irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election,” he said in a statement.

Though the precise details of the charges against Trump are unclear, the New York-based case centers on allegations that he bought the silence of Stormy Daniels, who sought to sell her story of an earlier affair with Trump in the closing weeks of the 2016 election. Bragg confirmed that he had contacted Trump’s lawyer to “coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office” but that the indictment remained sealed and an arraignment date had not yet been picked.

The hush money case percolated in New York and in the Justice Department for years but eventually went dormant. Bragg appeared to abandon it shortly after becoming district attorney last year but it surged back to life in recent weeks, with a cascade of witnesses — including Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen — returning to the grand jury. That timeline has led Trump to frame the probe as politically motivated, driven by Democratic-led prosecutors in New York City.

Republicans on Capitol Hill were eager to amplify those claims, often in starkly political terms, contending that the charges against Trump would motivate his supporters and boost his prospects for returning to the White House in 2024.

Even Senate Republicans, who have not leapt as readily as their House counterparts to defend Trump in the past, blasted out statements condemning the indictment.

“This is a politically-motivated prosecution by a far-left activist,” Senate GOP Conference Chair John Barrasso of Wyoming said in a statement. “If it was anyone other than President Trump, a case like this would never be brought.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) declared that the indictment “doesn’t pass the smell test.”

“Politics should never tip the scales of justice, and Congress has every right to investigate the conduct and decision-making of the Manhattan D.A.’s office,” he added.”

Democrats, on the other hand, made a concerted effort to present a measured response, suggesting that the legal process should play out and the indictment showed no one – not even a former president – was above the law.

“The indictment of a former president is unprecedented. But so are Trump’s alleged offenses,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of Trump’s longtime political nemeses. “If the rule of law is to be applied equally — and it must — it must apply to the powerful as it does to everyone else. Even presidents. Especially presidents. To do otherwise is not democracy.”

Others urged allies not to “celebrate” and emphasized the “somber” nature of the news, particularly amid concerns that a Trump indictment might be accompanied by security risks.

“As this case progress, let us neither celebrate nor destroy,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (R-Calif.) said in a statement.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) issued a quick rejoinder to McCarthy, emphasizing that his heated rebuke of Bragg came despite the complete absence of details about the evidence the district attorney had amassed.

“Dear @SpeakerMcCarthy: You don’t know the charges. You don’t know the evidence presented to the grand jury. You don’t know about other evidence the DA may have,” Lieu wrote. “What you are doing is attempted political interference in an ongoing local criminal prosecution and you need to stop.”

We are making America great by cleaning up the orange mess...

Trump lashes out at ‘radical left monsters’ after grand jury indictment

The former president accused “Radical Left Democrats” of a “Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement.”

By CRAIG HOWIE

Donald Trump on Thursday called the grand jury indictment over his alleged role in a hush money payment to a porn star “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

The statement, issued shortly after news of the former president’s indictment broke, echoed his previous attempts to tie Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s investigation to Democrats and political actors.

Trump accused “Radical Left Democrats” of a “Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement” in the statement, which was also posted to his Truth Social network.

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable - indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” Trump continued.

The only former president to have been indicted, Trump sought to tie the recent investigation to the 2016 campaign and the events of his subsequent presidency.

“You remember it just like I do: Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid; and now this,” Trump said.

Trump repeated, without evidence, another frequent refrain about the “weaponization” of the justice system and continued his verbal assault on Bragg, accusing the district attorney of “doing Joe Biden’s dirty work.”

He finished with a rallying call to MAGA voters amid his campaign for the presidency in 2024.

“So our Movement, and our Party - united and strong - will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he said.

In a follow-up post on Truth Social, Trump lashed out at “Thugs and Radical Left Monsters.” In all caps, he further called the indictment an attack on “our once free and fair elections” and the U.S. a “third world nation.”

In a further post, the former president said he “cannot get a fair trial in New York.”

Bullshit... Hook him up!

Manhattan’s DA wanted a Friday Trump arrest. Trump’s team said no.

Secret Service needed more time to prepare, according to the ex-president’s legal team.

By ERICA ORDEN

The Manhattan district attorney’s office asked for Donald Trump to surrender on Friday following a grand jury’s vote to indict the former president.

But lawyers for Trump rebuffed the request saying that the Secret Service, which provides security detail for the former president, needed more time to prepare.

The exchange, which was relayed to POLITICO by a law-enforcement source and confirmed by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for the former president, underscores the extremely delicate, unprecedented nature of the indictment. Until Thursday, no ex-president in history had been criminally charged. And both the charges itself and the application of them have placed the country on uncharted legal and political terrain.

A spokesperson for the D.A.’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump is expected to surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s office, but Tacopina said that no precise date had been set for it. Ultimately the Secret Service will have to coordinate the conditions of the surrender with court officials and the New York Police Department.

Though it is not believed that Trump will resist arrest, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a likely 2024 primary opponent to Trump — said on Twitter Thursday that his state would “not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue” with Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan D.A.

DeSantis’ tweet came hours after the Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Trump in a case related to his hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels has alleged that the two had an affair which Trump sought to keep private during the 2016 campaign.

First ex-president in history to be indicted... He's #1...

The same forces that made Trump who he is just got him indicted

Those who followed his career recognize the elements that made him the first ex-president in history to be indicted.

By JONATHAN LEMIRE

It was, to a degree, inevitable.

Donald Trump’s story was curated by the New York City tabloids, the newspapers that magnified his wealth and his tawdry exploits while catapulting him to a type of celebrity that he eventually wielded to capture the highest office in the land.

But on Thursday, March 30, those same forces that turned Trump into a mix of caricature and fame resulted in him becoming the first ex-president in the history of the United States to be charged with a crime. The charges in the indictment set to be unsealed by the Manhattan district attorney — crimes connected to the accusation of using a fixer to pay hush money to a porn star over an affair — felt ripped straight from the pages of the 1980s New York Post and New York Daily News. Trump, as always, was the character at which to marvel or gawk.

The salacious spectacle will immediately become a defining one for the 2024 campaign. For Trump, it presents a chance to play victim again. For the current president, Joe Biden, it creates a favorable split screen: hosting policy events and demanding action on gun violence while scandal engulfs his predecessor. For Republicans, it foreshadows an early test on whether to rally behind the former president’s defense and unleash a wave of attacks on the prosecutor bringing the historic charges.

It also serves as a reminder. Despite Trump’s move to Florida and his efforts to return to Washington, he has never truly left New York.

Trump is a creature of the city, and spent years using its ravenous and hyper-competitive media market to propel himself from an unknown outer-borough developer into Manhattan’s glitzy high-society scene. He struggled gaining acceptance with the city’s blue-blooded elite. He was deemed too loud, too gauche. He bristled at the criticisms but ultimately didn’t care to change; or maybe he just couldn’t.

Trump liked being in the news pages. But he loved being in the gossip pages.

It was there he built his reputation as a rising force on Manhattan’s real estate scene, a budding celebrity who dated only the most beautiful women. He was obsessed with appearing in the papers, believing that all publicity was good publicity, certain that New Yorkers would want to buy one of his apartments in an effort to steal a piece of the life he was leading.

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado: I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do,” Trump wrote in his 1987 best-selling book, “The Art of the Deal.” “That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts.”

It was more than a little hyperbole. Convinced that his personal stardom was the best way to advertise his buildings, Trump began to sell his sex life, even if little of it was true. And to promote it, he’d at times shamelessly pretend to be his own spokesperson, calling reporters on the phone as a pretend publicist — just one who sounded an awful lot like Trump — to plug The Donald’s latest romantic interest.

He was willing to manipulate the media, pay for silence and court tawdry headlines with salacious behavior.

And then he met Stormy Daniels, a porn star, at a 2006 golf tournament.

By that point, Trump had enjoyed a resurgence of fame thanks to the success of his reality TV show, “The Apprentice.” Daniels alleges the two had an affair and that, during the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid her $130,000 in “hush money” to keep her quiet about it.

Trump has denied the tryst but acknowledged personally reimbursing the Daniels payment. It’s a playbook that rings familiar for those who have followed his career in full: money and sex and the use of influence to squash unflattering stories. Only this time, the spectacle wasn’t just one for the tabloids but for the courts too. Two people familiar with the matter confirmed on Thursday that a charge was coming, the specifics of which were set to be revealed by the Manhattan district attorney in the coming days.

Like most Trump stories, this one has now reached a recognizable chapter: where the audience wonders how the protagonist escapes. Trump has faced plenty of doomsday moments before — bankruptcies, the Access Hollywood tape, impeachment and Jan. 6.

But the indictment against him is only just the beginning of his legal troubles. He faces a probe in Georgia over possible election interference, as well as investigations into his mishandling of classified documents and his role in inciting that Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump has called for protests and his aides have demanded fealty from his rivals. Already, many Republicans in leadership positions in the House have pledged to use their positions of power to investigate the investigators. The other prospective members of the Republican field have slammed the probe and party insiders believe that Trump could get a bump in GOP primary polls.

But privately, Republicans are also fearful that Trump’s legal woes won’t just curtail his ability to campaign next year but impact the party too. It’s a view shared by those watching closely from inside the White House, too.

In a series of discussions, senior White House aides have debated how to respond to a possible charge. The answer never changed: say nothing. Avoid being accused of trying to influence a criminal justice matter. And why get in the way if an opponent might be self-destructing?

Shortly after the news broke Thursday, the White House said it would not be commenting.

Plans could end up changing. If Trump’s followers heed his calls for violence, the White House would condemn such a behavior. And aides acknowledge that Biden has the tendency to go off script and may say something if asked by a reporter.

But for now, they’re happy to be the PBS equivalent to Trump’s tabloid fodder.

As news aired last week about Trump calling for protests over his impending indictment, Biden held an award ceremony honoring beloved Americans like Bruce Springsteen, Gladys Knight and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and a mental health event featuring the stars of the earnest, feel-good show, “Ted Lasso.” His schedule in the days ahead of the indictment focused on policy announcements, and mourning the victims of a mass shooting in Nashville.

White House aides continue to believe that Trump is their most likely November 2024 matchup, assuming Biden follows through on his expected re-election bid. They also believe he would be the easiest Republican to beat. But most of all, the aides believe that Trump has already permanently lost a huge swatch of the independent and swing voters needed to win a general election. Trump may not grow tired of the spotlight. But a good chunk of voters have grown tired of him being in it.