<A month after former President Donald Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents, the judge presiding over the case is set to take on a more visible role as she weighs competing requests on a trial date and hears arguments this week on a procedural, but potentially crucial, area of the law.

A pretrial conference Tuesday to discuss procedures for handling classified information will represent the first courtroom arguments in the case before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon since Trump was indicted five weeks ago. The arguments could provide insight into how Cannon intends to preside over the case while she also confronts the unresolved question of how to schedule Trump's trial as he campaigns for president.

Those issues would be closely watched in any trial involving a former president. But Cannon could face additional scrutiny in light of a much-dissected ruling she issued last year that granted the Trump team’s request for a special master to conduct an independent review of the reams of classified records removed by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate. A three-judge federal appeals panel reversed her order, rebuking Cannon for a ruling it said she lacked the legal authority to make in the first place.

Cannon's ruling, in a lawsuit Trump brought against the Justice Department, elicited criticism from legal experts who saw her as overly preferential to the former president. It also focused public attention on her limited experience as a judge, particularly in hugely sensitive national security matters, given that she was appointed to the bench just three years ago by Trump.

“She is not going to want to do anything but go by the book. The challenge is there has never been a book like this," said Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. Attorney in Miami who served on the advisory committee that reviewed Cannon’s judicial application. He said he was impressed with her credentials and felt confident she would be able to oversee the case fairly.

“I think she is going to want to be very well-regarded for her judicial leadership of this case,” Coffey said.

Jeffrey Garland, a criminal defense lawyer in Fort Pierce, Florida — where Cannon's courtroom is based — praised Cannon for her handling of a trial he had before her last year in which he represented a “quite difficult” defendant who'd been charged with throwing a chair at a federal prosecutor.

“She was able to maintain the dignity of the court and courtroom composure, and she was able to express control in ways that were not threatening,” Garland said, adding that he assumed Cannon would be able to do the same in the Trump case. “I think she understands that's what a federal judge has to do in a case like this. It's true in any case, but especially in this case.”

Cannon — a Duke University graduate and Colombian-born daughter of a Cuban immigrant — clerked for a U.S. Circuit Court judge and worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida, prosecuting several dozen cases as part of her office's Major Crimes Division and later handling appeals of convictions and sentences, before being nominated by Trump in 2020. She's also been a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization.

Her ruling in the Trump lawsuit last September catapulted her into the spotlight since it effectively halted core aspects of the Justice Department's investigation into the hoarding of classified documents. In overturning the order, the appeals court said that letting it stand would have allowed a “radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations.”

As the judge assigned to Trump’s criminal prosecution, she’ll be empowered to issue rulings that could shape the trajectory of the case, including about what evidence can and can’t be admitted and whether to proceed swiftly toward trial or grant the Trump team's request for a delay....>

<....There have been few matters of substance for Cannon to decide in the month since Trump's indictment, though she did set a tentative August trial date — a formality under the Speedy Trial Act — in Fort Pierce and rebuffed a Justice Department request to file under seal a list of witness who prosecutors want Trump to be prohibited from discussing the case with.

But major issues lie ahead.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers are at odds over the trial date, a question with significant legal and political implications. The Justice Department has proposed a Dec. 11 trial, while defense lawyers have suggested that it should be put off until after the 2024 presidential election, citing the challenges of scheduling a date while Trump pursues the Republican nomination and legal issues that they say are “extraordinary” and complex.

It is not clear when that issue will be resolved.

Tuesday's status conference centers on the Classified Information Procedures Act, a 1980 law that governs how classified information is handled in a criminal prosecution and that will likely provide an essential roadmap in this case. The law is meant to balance a defendant's right to access evidence prosecutors intend to use at trial with the government's desire to safeguard sensitive, classified information.

Richard Serafini, a Florida criminal defense lawyer and former senior Justice Department official, said he did not necessarily believe Cannon's lack of experience in that area would be detrimental given the case law and past precedent she and the attorneys can turn to for consultation.

“These things aren’t novel. They’re not everyday occurrences, but it’s not like, 'Oh, my goodness, there’s no precedent on any of these things,” he said.

Whatever happens, said Coffey, "the eyes of the world are on her. She is in the middle of writing a chapter in history.">

It is my belief that the consequences for CG would be calamitous; his heavy hand would soon be exercised, at great cost to certain members. In my opinion, he could not maintain even a pretence of fairness in exercising his duties.

<....Of course, you're well aware that the cyber bully volunteer perfidious does not begin to follow the forum posting guidelines as has been expressed countless, countless times. That's a routine case of multiple violations on a daily basis. What a massive anger management problem that one; full of hatred. Monitors just turn a blind eye to the forum posting violations and allow it to go on and on and on for decades. His caustic forum is ALWAYS VISIBLE to the public....>

Y'all want to send me to iggydumb, nothing to stop ya; have a go. No bother to me one way or t'other.

<....My mostly-closed forum is absolutely nothing like the above. If you want to clean up abusive forums, don't start with my new little puddle of piss....>

Keep lying; you used the banner as a vehicle of direct attack against <zed> and myself till you were forced to shut down your evil content, <filth merchant>.

As to your 'new little puddle', your rationalisation is typical bully tactics; y'all need to do better, kid.

You profess libertarianism, yet live by the precept: do unto other before they do unto you.

Know that commandment, <fredfradiavolo>?

Granting you admin privileges would be the equivalent of appointing Aileen the Asinine in The Trial--not even a pretence of fairness.

G'ahead: start whingeing cos you don't like inconvenient truths.

Another bit from your favourite reading for moralistic prigs:

<Love the sin, hate the sinner>

<Georgia’s highest court Monday rejected a request by former President Donald Trump to block a district attorney from prosecuting him for his actions in wake of the 2020 election.

The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously shot down a petition that Trump’s attorneys filed last week asking the court to intervene. Trump's legal team argued that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office should be barred from seeking charges and that a special grand jury report that is part of the inquiry should be thrown out.

Willis has been investigating since early 2021 whether Trump and his allies broke any laws as they tried to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. She has suggested she is likely to seek charges in the case from a grand jury next month.

The state Supreme Court noted in its five-page ruling Monday that Trump has a similar petition pending in Fulton County Superior Court. The justices unanimously declined to overstep the lower court, writing that Trump “makes no showing that he has been prevented fair access to the ordinary channels.”

Regarding Trump's attempt to block the prosecutors, the justices said his legal filing lacked “the facts or the law necessary to mandate Willis’s disqualification by this Court at this time on this record.”

Trump’s legal team previously acknowledged that the dual filings were unusual, but said they were necessary given the tight time frame. Two new regular grand juries were seated last week, and one is likely to hear the case.

Trump's attorneys made similar requests in a previous filing in March in Fulton County Superior Court. They asked Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury, to step aside and let another judge hear the Trump team's claims. McBurney kept the case and has yet to rule.

In their legal petition to the state Supreme Court, Trump's lawyers argued they were “stranded between the Supervising Judge’s protracted passivity and the District Attorney’s looming indictment” with no choice other than to ask the high court to intervene.

Willis opened her investigation shortly after Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 and suggested the state’s top elections official could help him “find” the votes needed to overturn his election loss in the state.

The special grand jury, which did not have the power to issue indictments, was seated last May and dissolved in January after hearing from 75 witnesses and submitting a report with recommendations for Willis. Though most of that report remains under wraps for now, the panel’s foreperson has said without naming names that the special grand jury recommended charging multiple people.>

<House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was blasted by a member of the New York Times editorial board Monday for letting a bunch of “maniacs” threaten to grind Congress to a halt – and throw away the GOP's control.

Michelle Cottle wrote that, not only has McCarthy allowed the right-wing of his party to hold the House hostage, they also seem willing to give it away.

“Some days, Speaker Kevin McCarthy must look out over this House conference in awe and think: Are you maniacs trying to lose us the majority?”

Her column was reacting to Thursday’s National Defense Authorization Act which she said was packed full of “divisive, culture-warring amendments taking aim at abortion access, transgender medical care and diversity training.”

“The House Freedom Caucus and its allies labored to insert more poison pills into the package than a back-alley fentanyl mill,” she wrote.

It followed the caucus effectively shutting down Congress as members protested McCarthy’s negotiation of the debt-ceiling deal in May.

And Cottle warned: "Rest assured, the spectacle is far from over.”

“His hard-liners raged that he had sold them out and promptly committed to making the House as dysfunctional as possible,” she wrote.

“Even if it meant bogging down their own team’s policy goals. Their hostage-taking and acting-out have been a warning to Mr. McCarthy: Fool us once, and we’ll turn this chamber into a do-nothing freak show just to teach you a lesson. Try to fool us twice, and things will get really dark and weird.”

And that stance is going to hurt the GOP at the polls, she warned.

“This may play well in deep-MAGA districts, but not so much in battleground areas. Those are, admittedly, increasingly rare. But with a majority this scrawny, House conservatives are playing with fire.”

She added, “Time and again, Mr. McCarthy’s troops seem dead set on signaling that the G.O.P. is a pack of bomb-throwing fringe-dwellers actively trying not to govern. Swing voters aren’t generally all that keen on posturing, do-nothing Congresses, either.”>

<What happened to you, Vermont? You used to be cool. You were America’s DMV, handling vehicle registrations nationwide without regard for pesky things like “titles” or “really any sufficient proof of ownership, honestly.” You let folks ignore inspections, pay reasonable fees, and slap extremely cool green plates on their motor vehicles — but now, all those memories will be lost.

The Vermont registration loophole, allowing non-residents to register vehicles by mail, has finally shut. The state now requires a “legitimate connection to the state of Vermont” — your out-of-state residency will no longer get you those sweet sweet green and white license plates.

Jalop alum Mercedes Streeter has the full story over on The Autopian, detailing what changed in Vermont and why. It seems the state was simply dealing with too many third-party providers, taking out-of-state money to process in-state registrations in bulk:

The short version of the story is that along with people circumventing their states’ rules and fees regarding vehicle registration, there appears to have been some shady business going on. Some people, as I predicted long ago, were using Vermont to register stolen cars. It seems some people were also registering vehicles in Vermont to avoid having car insurance and to avoid having a driver’s license. I wasn’t even aware Vermont was sending plates out to unlicensed drivers. Overall, it sounds like a lot of people were causing the state a lot of headaches.

It’s a shame to see the Vermont loophole close, but it’s also understandable from the state’s point of view — being known for easy access to vehicle registrations is one thing, being known for stolen cars and sketchy business practices is another. Fortunately, existing registrations are safe, but it seems your next car will have to be registered in your state — dumb, non-green plates and all.>

<Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) squeaked out a razor-thin victory during the 2022 midterm elections, but that hasn't led her to reconsider he brash and confrontational approach to politics.

NBC News reports that some Republicans are concerned about Boebert heading into 2024, with Democratic rival Adam Frisch seeking a rematch after losing last year by fewer than 600 votes.

One Republican lawmaker tells NBC that Boebert needs to stop acting like herself in order to ensure she gets reelected next year.

"Her ass needs to get home to go campaign," the lawmaker said. "Cut ribbons, go to bar mitzvahs and take credit for stuff she had absolutely nothing to do with."

Dick Wadhams, the former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, tells NBC that many Republicans in Colorado are "bewildered" by her approach of maximizing controversy on culture-war issues and picking fights with fellow Republicans, despite the fact that voters in her district have signaled that they are growing tired of that approach.

“The perception, whether it’s fair or not, is that Congresswoman Boebert has paid more attention to fighting these battles within the Republican Party than she has paid attention to the district,” he said. “Now, I’m sure her office would refute that. The trouble is it gets obscured by how she conducts herself. And that’s what she’s battling right now.”

Democrat Frisch zeroed in on such criticisms of Boebert during an interview with NBC.

“People want the circus to stop,” he said. “She’s one of these people that continues to love to get on Twitter and cable news networks and yell and scream.”>

<In seeking to regain the White House, former President Donald Trump is playing defense over his longtime target of "the swamp," a nickname he has used to allege a so-called "rigged" system in Washington.

Trump acknowledged over the weekend he made mistakes with personnel appointments during his term in office, saying they were insufficiently loyal to him. GOP primary opponents and commentators, meanwhile, said he simply failed to follow through on his pledge to "drain the swamp" of the federal bureaucracy.

"The mistake would be people," Trump told host Maria Bartiromo during an interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures."

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

While Trump bragged about firing FBI Director James Comey in 2017, he said others served for too long. His list of mistakes included his first two attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. The officials all defied Trump's wishes on certain contentious issues.

While Trump described some of his his hires as "weak," "pathetic," and "incompetent," Bartiromo asked why he hired these people in the first place.

Trump said he lacked Washington experience when he was elected in 2016 and did not know how the government worked.

This time around, he said: "I know the people now better than anybody's ever known the people. I know the good ones, the bad ones, the dumb ones, the smart ones, I think the loyal ones."

Bartiromo pressed Trump by saying: "Well, you didn't drain the swamp, like you said you would. You didn't drain the swamp."

His reply: "I did. I fired Comey. I fired a lot of people."

Opponents like Florida Gov Ron DeSantis say Trump failed to control the federal bureaucracy seeking to thwart Republican proposals.

"He promised to drain the swamp," DeSantis said in an interview with the Fox News program "MediaBuzz" broadcast Sunday. "It got worse.">

<House Republicans in swing districts appear less than happy to be forced into votes on hotly contested amendments in the National Defense Authorization Act and other pieces of legislation ahead of a pivotal election in 2024.

The amendments in the NDAA, which range from the Department of Defense's abortion policy to DEI initiatives, have been offered up by several members of the House Freedom Caucus, leaving centrist Republicans in a precarious position.

Rep. Anthony D'Esposito (R-NY), who represents a district that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, told Punchbowl News that members of Congress need to "be careful of the votes they make."

"Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by close to 80,[000]-85,000, so we're not getting sent to Washington, D.C., to represent the people because we're only being supported by conservative Republicans. Anybody in elected office needs to be careful of the votes they make," D'Esposito said.

Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA), who represents a district rated as Republican +3 per the Cook Political Report's partisan voting index, slammed the House Freedom Caucus members offering these amendments as being more interested in their identity rather than working for their constituents.

"Those folks are more interested about their own personal identity than they are about doing work for their district," Nunn said.

The NDAA narrowly passed on party lines in the House last week and faces an uphill battle to pass in the Senate with the current amendments.

Republicans in 2024 will be on defense in the House elections, hoping to maintain and expand their majority in the lower chamber of Congress. In 2022, the GOP was widely expected to take the House with a significant majority, but Republicans in nearly every state underperformed, and the GOP only won a narrow majority in the House.

The Cook Political Report rated 14 races in which the incumbent is a Republican as a "toss-up," along with 11 races in which a Democrat is the incumbent. It has also rated the race in New York's 3rd Congressional District as "lean Democratic," with Rep. George Santos (R-NY) as the incumbent in that seat.

The GOP currently has a narrow 222-212 majority in the House, meaning House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Republican leadership must balance the needs of centrists and more conservative members to get legislation passed.>

<Billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow's lavish yacht trips with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may have been facilitated by questionable tax practices, according to a new report.

Crow's relationship with Thomas has been scrutinized since ProPublica reported that Crow funded years of vacations for Thomas, who failed to disclose the outings. Some of those were trips aboard Crow's yacht, the Michaela Rose, and were organized through Rochelle Charter, a company registered to charter the yacht.

But the trips on the yacht — registered as a charter vessel — were actually limited to Crow's inner circle, according to ProPublica. Crow paid his own company for private trips on the yacht and was able to secure tax breaks and lower his tax bill, according to tax data from 2003 through 2015 reviewed by ProPublica.

Tax experts and politicians who spoke to the outlet said that such a practice could amount to gaming the system and should be audited.

"Based on what information is available, this has the look of a textbook billionaire tax scam," Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden told ProPublica.

A representative for Crow did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

But it points out that Crow recorded $8 million in losses for the family company Rochelle Charter, saving on taxes as a result between 2003 and 2015. The megadonor purported to charter the boat for profit and instead took friends like Thomas for cruises, per the report.

Thomas did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

In April, Crow and Thomas first faced scrutiny related to the 20 years worth of undisclosed trips Crow is accused of gifting to Thomas, per ProPublica. The outlet later reported that Crow purchased Thomas' mother's house and allowed her to live there without paying rent.

In response, Thomas — who asked for an extension to file his financial disclosure forms this year — said that at the time he wasn't aware that he was meant to disclose the trips with Crow.

Crow claimed to the Dallas Morning News that the revelations about his relationship with Thomas were a "political hit job."

Congress has probed Crow's and Thomas's relationship, asking for a detailed disclosure of the gifts that Crow has bestowed to Supreme Court justices.

As it stands, a group of judges, the Committee on Financial Disclosure, is investigating Thomas and disclosure rules, while Senate Democrats have mounted a separate attempt to investigate Thomas and other justices.>

<In 1943, as the end of World War II was nowhere in sight and when patriotic national unity around the defeat of fascist aggression from Germany and Japan was at its height, the US Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that the free speech rights contained in the First Amendment barred public schools from forcing students to salute the American flag at assembly every morning. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” wrote Justice Robert Jackson for the court.

Justice Felix Frankfurter filed a passionate, and personal, dissent. As the court’s only Jewish member, he began his dissent with, “One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution.” This opening line set up a grave concern about the court’s majority opinion, elevating individual free speech rights over other fundamental constitutional rights, such as rights to property and due process. “The Constitution does not give us greater veto power when dealing with one phase of ‘liberty’ than with another.… Our power does not vary according to the particular provision of the Bill of Rights which is invoked,” wrote Frankfurter.

Justice Frankfurter warned 80 years ago that the Supreme Court was going down a bad path by getting into the business of ranking constitutional rights, protecting some at the expense of others, and today his dissent illuminates what has gone very wrong with our current Supreme Court. In a string of cases decided by an unchecked conservative super-majority, the court has established a tiering of constitutional rights, elevating rights to religious liberty (for some), free speech, and guns over and above other fundamental rights such as equality, public health and security, and bodily autonomy.

This new tiering of rights was fully solidified at the end of June in 303 Creative v. Elenis, the case brought by Lorie Smith, a Colorado wedding website designer, who wanted to be exempt from having to serve same-sex couples, even before she had opened up the business. She claimed that complying with Colorado’s law prohibiting businesses from discriminating against customers on the basis of their sexual orientation compelled her to express views she disagreed with, namely that same-sex couples had a right to marry. In essence, she was arguing that the state of Colorado’s requirement that a business treat all its customers equally was the same thing as West Virginia forcing elementary school kids to put their hands on their hearts and swear allegiance to the United States flag.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, agreed with Smith: “the government may not compel a person to speak its own preferred message.” In this case, that was a message relating to the equality rights of LGBTQ people. This new free speech rule extends exponentially further than earlier cases protecting the religious liberty rights of bakers who didn’t want to make wedding cakes for same-sex couples, the owners of chain stores who didn’t want to include contraceptive coverage in their employee health plans, or religious foster care agencies who didn’t want to place kids in families headed by anyone other than married, heterosexual adults. In those cases, the objectors had to show that the law substantially burdened a sincerely held religious belief. In the 303 Creative case, however, all Smith had to show was that her business had some plausible expressive or creative component to it (after all, the word “creative” is in the name of her business) and that she has an opinion that conflicts with laws that would regulate her business. Forcing her to comply with the law, ruled the court, thus amounted to a violation of her First Amendment right to present her message undiluted by views she does not share. In so ruling, Justice Gorsuch did not mention that the court had rejected a similar argument made by the owner of Ollie’s BBQ in 1964 whose personal convictions against integration precluded him from serving African American patrons onsite alongside white patrons, and as such laws prohibiting restaurants from segregating customers on the basis of their race infringed upon the “rights of persons in their personal convictions” to refuse service to Black customers....>

<....What shocked court watchers and constitutional law experts wasn’t that the court ruled in Smith’s favor—that was expected—rather, it was the breadth of the decision. Perhaps most worrisome is the fact that the court recognized that antidiscrimination laws impact businesses’ free speech rights, and that those free speech rights were virtually absolute. In this regard, the court abandoned its usual “strict scrutiny” analysis, requiring the state to show that it had a compelling interest in enforcing the antidiscrimination law and that it was doing so in a way that protected the speech rights at stake. Justice Gorsuch did none of this, but rather concluded that “when a state [antidiscrimination] law and the Constitution collide, there can be no question which must prevail”—Lorie Smith’s free speech rights. Thus, we see the elevation of speech rights over equality, without considering the weight or importance of the state’s interest in protecting equality rights.

What was also shocking about this decision was that the court put no limiting conditions on this new rule. What other businesses might be considered to have similar free speech rights? Wedding dress designers, florists, caterers, all the other parts of the wedding industrial complex? Or more broadly, many businesses curate a kind of experience for their customers and that curation involves some element of creativity. Might Applebee’s, a family-restaurant, have a right to exclude certain kinds of customers who “dilute” their idea of family? Could romantic-getaway hotels in the Poconos exclude same-sex or interracial or interfaith couples whose relationships conflict with the version of romance the owners have on offer? Could a plantation theme park exclude Black customers since the presence of free Black people would undermine the authentic historical experience they aim to provide? Could Holy Land Experience, a Christian amusement park in Florida, exclude Jews since it’s believed they killed Jesus?>

<....Sadly, we don’t need to conjure up hypotheticals about what kinds of businesses will argue that they now have a right to refuse services to certain members of the public. Only days after the decision, the owner of a hair salon in Traverse City, Mich., announced on Facebook that she would not do haircuts for trans and gender-nonconforming customers, “If a human identifies as anything other than a man/woman please seek services at a local pet groomer,” she posted.

Justice Gorsuch’s reasoning in 303 Creative is boundless in other ways as well. So long as the business has some creativity to it, the owner can’t be forced to comply with laws prohibiting workplace sex discrimination if they believe that men should be the top breadwinner in a household, or laws mandating energy efficiency if they believe climate change is a hoax, or laws protecting collective bargaining by employees if they oppose unions because of a viewpoint that they’re corrupt, communist enterprises, or undermine free-market capitalism.

The 303 Creative case reflects a Supreme Court willing to bend over backward to protect the rights of individual dissenters who want to opt out of laws they disagree with—a deeply antidemocratic turn in the court’s jurisprudence. The Covid cases moved the needle on this dial significantly, protecting the rights of religious dissenters to emergency policies implemented to make public health a priority during an unprecedented deadly pandemic. Read alongside the court’s affirmative-action decision this term and abortion ruling last term, we see a court that has rendered invisible structural forms of disadvantage in the context of reproductive rights, higher education, and voting rights, while it has a hair-trigger response to protecting the rights of faith-based objectors to laws designed to protect the equality rights of people of color, women, and LGBTQ communities.

It’s important to recognize that the court’s willingness to elevate religious liberty rights over other fundamental has largely benefited the claims of evangelical Christians. When Muslims and people from other faith traditions seek respect for or accommodation of their religious practices, the court is nowhere near as deferential. In the end, the new muscular protections the court has granted right-wing Christians, a kind of “special right” to be exempt from laws of general applicability, will be bad for religious liberty and equality more generally, as we’ve seen numerous cases where businesses owned by evangelical Christians have asserted a religious-liberty right to deny services to Jews and people of other faith traditions.

If nothing else, this court will be remembered for its keen ability to manipulate its docket in ways that conceal structural racism, sexism, and homophobia in the name of coming to the rescue of citizens like Lorie Smith who, as the court describes them, hold unpopular opinions and are being persecuted by an overbearing, “woke” state. This is a dangerous direction for the idea of equal citizenship, and for the notion of “equal protection under the law.”>

<Back in the 1990s or 2000s, legal scholars were not using the term "major questions doctrine" in connection with the U.S. Supreme Court. But in recent years, the concept has had a strong influence on the decisions of the Roberts Court's radical-right supermajority.

The "major questions doctrine," a concept promoted by the right-wing Federalist Society, essentially argues that if a presidential administration or a government agency wants to decide something of national importance, there must be clear congressional authorization.

The New York Times' Adam Liptak examined the rise of the major questions doctrine in a report published on March 6. And journalist/author Ian Millhiser, in an article published by Vox on July 17, offers some examples of how the doctrine is being applied by the Roberts Court.

"In the less than three years since President Joe Biden took office," Millhister explains, "the Supreme Court has effectively seized control over federal housing policy, decided which workers must be vaccinated against COVID-19, stripped the EPA of much of its power to fight climate change, and rewritten a federal law permitting the secretary of education to modify or forgive student loans. In each of these decisions, the Court relied on something known as the 'major questions doctrine,' which allows the Court to effectively veto any action by a federal agency that five justices deem to be too economically significant or too politically controversial."

Millhiser adds, "This major questions doctrine, at least as it is understood by the Court's current majority, emerged almost from thin air in the past several years. And it has been wielded almost exclusively by Republican-appointed justices to invalidate policies created by a Democratic administration."

The journalist/author notes that the Roberts Court "did not invoke" the major questions doctrine once when Donald Trump was president but has used it "aggressively" during the Biden Administration.

"This doctrine is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution," Millhiser notes. "Nor is it mentioned in any federal statute. It appears to have been completely made up by justices who want to wield outsize control over federal policy. And the implications of this doctrine are breathtaking. In practice, the major questions doctrine makes the Supreme Court the final word on any policy question that Congress has delegated to an executive branch agency — effectively giving the unelected justices the power to override both elected branches of the federal government.">

<House Republicans are debating whether to focus impeachment efforts on Attorney General Merrick Garland after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested an inquiry against him, taking some members by surprise after much of the GOP impeachment furor had been directed at other Biden officials.

In a year where the GOP has been most steadily focused on possible impeachments of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas or President Biden, McCarthy often has been the voice urging the conference to move patiently and deliberately.

But he has shown more vigor when eyeing Garland, an official leading an agency often derided by the GOP but a figure less frequently cited by the party’s members who are most keen on impeachment.

McCarthy first elevated the topic with a tweet late last month touting testimony of an IRS whistleblower who has alleged mismanagement of the investigation into Hunter Biden, saying it could serve as “a significant part of a larger impeachment inquiry.”

But the conference — though eager to investigate — hasn’t rushed to back the idea, with some questioning whether there is a legal basis for impeaching Garland and others saying different Cabinet secretaries should be reviewed first.

“I don’t know of a chargeable crime,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Hill.

Issa said it’s up to the president to remove those who aren’t following orders or properly carrying out their jobs, with Congress only stepping in if a president fails to remove those who have committed crimes.

“It’s very, very popular with people in the hinterlands,” Issa said when asked about members of the Freedom Caucus and others who have backed the rarely used move of impeaching a Cabinet official.

“But the reality is that if someone is faithfully executing the desires and the orders of the president of the United States, then they’re within the bounds of what Cabinet officers do,” he added. “If they’re not faithfully executing the request of the president, then we don’t have to impeach him because they serve at the pleasure of the president.”

Some of the Republicans who have authored the more than a dozen impeachment resolutions filed this Congress were surprised the officials those documents had targeted haven’t taken center stage.

“I was one of the original co-sponsors of the Secretary Blinken impeachment,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said. “We ought to take that up first for the incredibly, horribly done withdrawal from Afghanistan.”

McCarthy doubled down on action against Garland last week in a Fox News op-ed.

“When a prosecutor shields his boss’s son from investigators, it smells like a cover-up. Garland’s DOJ did not aggressively follow the money. Why? Are they afraid where that trail ends?” he said.

“Clearly, someone is not telling the truth, and Congress has a duty to get answers,” McCarthy continued.

The Justice Department said Garland by design stayed out of the Biden investigation, leaving the inquiry in the hands of David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware who initiated it during the Trump administration.

Among other things, the whistleblower contends Weiss was blocked from getting authority to bring charges outside of Delaware. Every Justice Department official involved in the matter — including Weiss and Garland — has said otherwise, noting the prosecutor was assured he would receive special attorney status if he wished to file charges elsewhere.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee that serves as the clearinghouse for such inquiries, backed the idea, offering stronger support for impeaching Garland than some of the other secretaries floated as targets for his committee.

“I think he sees the facts now,” Jordan said of McCarthy. “So it’s quickly [becoming] who are you going to believe? … I’m with the speaker on we need to get to the facts. And if it warrants moving forward with an inquiry we got to do that.”

“That’ll be a decision that in the end will be made by the entire conference,” he added.....>

<....Until McCarthy’s comments, Mayorkas seemed like the likeliest target of any potential House GOP impeachment of a member of Biden’s Cabinet. Conservative members have been pushing to impeach him for nearly two years over policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, and McCarthy himself had said Mayorkas should resign or face an investigation that could lead to impeachment.

But asked on Fox Business last week about impeaching Mayorkas, McCarthy pointed to a border bill passed by the House GOP and noted the House Homeland Security Committee is investigating the issue, along with taking the lead on investigating Biden following a resolution from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) seeking to boot the president over his handling of the border.

The competing interests will be a struggle for McCarthy and Jordan.

“I think the chairman of Judiciary has a cat-herding issue that he’s got to deal with, probably,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), who serves on the panel and the House Homeland Security Committee, which plans to forward its oversight report on Mayorkas for use by Judiciary.

“I will say that I have a less fully formed case in my head in all its particulars about Merrick Garland than I do about the others,” Bishop added.

Some members told The Hill that McCarthy’s embrace of a potential impeachment inquiry against Garland, coming over a two-week Independence Day recess, caught them by surprise when they returned to Washington last week.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the highest-ranking member of leadership to say Mayorkas should be impeached if he does not step down, said he has not carefully studied the issues with Garland — but he welcomed investigation of a Department of Justice that “appears to” have “a double standard for how it approaches cases.”

House Republicans held a conference meeting Thursday morning in which Jordan and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) gave updates on their investigatory efforts into the Biden family, the Justice Department and beyond. Lawmakers said McCarthy urged Republicans to follow the evidence.

Some lawmakers are welcoming the probe into Garland even as it threatens to put other potential impeachment probes on the back burner.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), who sponsored the first resolution to be introduced this Congress to impeach Mayorkas, expressed support for a Garland impeachment.

“I think you can do both,” he said, adding later, “We need to have a vote on the House floor with Mayorkas because the border in and of itself is just a — isn’t even a catastrophe. It’s cataclysmic.”

Other members likewise said they weren’t concerned about the GOP balancing its many budding impeachment investigations.

“I wouldn’t mind if we had a new one every day,” Boebert said.

Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), however, urged a cautious approach.

“It’s a pretty serious issue. We’re doing a lot now with different Biden investigations. So I think if the committee believes there is a case with any of the executives that rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors then we will do that, but I don’t think that is something that we should take lightly,” she said.

Democrats dismissed the idea that there is any case to be made against Garland.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said although Republicans have claimed Garland may have lied to Congress, they’ve yet to offer anything to prove it.

“The Republicans need to recall that the constitutional standard for impeachment is high crimes and misdemeanors not doing stuff that Donald Trump disagrees with,” he said.

“Donald Trump’s U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania and [Trump Attorney General] William Barr found that there were no grounds for pursuing an investigation into allegations of corruption against Joe Biden,” he added.

“That would be a very strange reason to impeach Merrick Garland.”>

<Florida is hot.

It's currently experiencing the scorching heat impacting many US states and for years it's been among the hottest places to move.

But it's also become a hotspot for inflation.

Some areas of the Sunshine State face the highest inflation rates in the US, even more than twice as high as the national average, which hit 3% in June, the lowest since early 2021.

The Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area had a rate of 9% for the year that ended in April, according to the Consumer Price Index. It was the highest rate of any metro area with more than 2.5 million residents. The area's inflation rate was also high for the year that ended in June, at 6.9%. Another Florida metro area, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, had an inflation rate of 7.3% for the year that ended in May.

He has also bragged that leftist ideologies in other states have pushed people away and driven them to Florida, but the state in part has its recent transplants to thank for the rising prices.

Amanda Phalin, an economist at the University of Florida, told CBS Miami that the state's growing population and increased demand for housing have driven up prices. "A lot of people are still coming to Florida because the economy is really strong, and many like the fact that we don't have an income tax like in New York, for example," she said.

Florida was the fastest-growing state in 2022, but residents moving for perceived economic benefits may not realize the impact of higher prices. There's also another cost of moving to Florida that transplants may not anticipate: steep homeowners insurance.

The Guardian reported the state is facing a crisis thanks to skyrocketing premiums for hurricane coverage. A 68-year-old resident who has lived in Florida for 30 years told the outlet if her homeowner insurance premium rises any more she "may have to sell up and move to another state.">

<As the undeniable permanence of remote and hybrid work takes hold, the profound impact on the office sector is becoming increasingly clear. Vacancies are rising and values are falling, and it’s all happening in an era of higher interest rates and tightened credit. Banks are taking notice of the distress within commercial real estate, and in some cases, with their own office loan portfolios, they’re bracing for losses.

Morgan Stanley reported its financial results for the second quarter of 2023 this week, which stated: “increases in provisions for credit losses were primarily driven by credit deteriorations in the commercial real estate sector as well as modest growth across the portfolio.” Morgan Stanley’s provision for credit losses rose from $82 million in the second quarter of last year to $97 million, where it currently stands.

Bank of America also reported its earnings for the quarter, showing an increase in its allowance for credit losses. For commercial real estate, that rose from $1.2 billion in the first quarter of this year to $1.3 billion in the second quarter. Among its commercial real estate loans, 25% are in the office category, totaling to $18.3 billion. In a breakdown of Bank of America’s scheduled office loan maturities, we can see that $6.3 billion worth of loans are coming due in 2024.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo’s chief executive officer, Charlie Scharf, said the bank experienced “higher losses in commercial real estate, primarily in the office portfolio,” per its earnings report released last week.

Scharf continued: “We had a $949 million increase in the allowance for credit losses, primarily for commercial real estate office loans, as well as for higher credit card loan balances. While we haven’t seen significant losses in our office portfolio to-date, we are reserving for the weakness that we expect to play out in that market over time.”

Further down in the earnings report, that $949 million increase in the allowance for credit losses was labeled as primarily for commercial real estate office loans. Still Wells Fargo’s commercial real estate revenue increased to $1.33 billion, up 2% from the previous quarter and 26% from the previous year. Whether that positive trend will continue, we’ll have to wait and see, given the bank attributed the increase to “higher interest rates and higher loan balances.”

Wells Fargo had $154.3 billion worth of commercial real estate loans outstanding at the end of the second quarter, with $33.1 billion worth of office loans—that’s 3% of its total outstanding loans. How much of that will be (maturing) in the next year or so, we don’t know. When an analyst asked the bank’s chief financial officer during its earnings call, he responded that they don’t disclose that information, but that we should assume the bank’s loans are three to five years as that’s the standard, according to a transcript of the call.

Regarding JPMorgan, which announced its second-quarter earnings last week, the company reported a provision for credit losses amounting to $1.1 billion. This provision included a reserve of $608 million specifically established for the First Republic portfolio, which JPMorgan acquired in May subsequent to the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

“Excluding First Republic, the provision [for credit losses] was $489 million, reflecting a net reserve build of $389 million, driven by updates to certain assumptions related to office real estate, as well as net downgrade activity in Middle Market. Net charge-offs of $100 million were predominantly driven by office real estate,” according to the release.

However, JPMorgan’s commercial real estate revenue increased to $806 million in the second quarter, from $642 million the previous quarter. In JPMorgan’s earnings call, its chief financial officer told investors and analysts that the bank’s office portfolio is “quite small and our exposure to sort of so-called urban dense office is even smaller. The vast majority of our overall portfolio is multifamily lending,” according to a transcript of the call.>

<In the preface to his classic book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis discussed how the word “gentleman” had evolved in meaning. It had gone from describing a set of facts about a person to a shorthand for complimenting him as a good person. Lewis feared the word “Christian” might make the same linguistic journey. The term would go from describing a fact about a person in relation to God to marking them as a good (or bad) person in the minds of others.

Ryan Burge recently did a deep dive into statistics in America that says we have moved closer to that reality that Lewis feared. He shows from polling of how people self-identify that more persons simultaneously identify as “evangelicals,” find religion important to themselves, but rarely if ever go to church. Burge shows how this trend has set in most among Republicans and conservatives. The rate at which they regularly attend church has declined significantly faster than the number who no longer think religion is important for themselves.

Burge concludes, “Evangelicalism has become a cultural and political marker.” It designates a set of cultural assumptions and life choices, as well as political partisanship, he says. In so doing, it fulfills Lewis’s fear since those using the designation mean it to mark good or bad persons within our society.

Christians should take pause at these findings. They display a disordered relationship within many persons’ souls regarding the shaping of their identity. One’s identity usually combines a number of affiliations that include family, geography, athletic teams, and, of course, political and religious beliefs. Christianity claims primary and ordering status among these identities. No relationship occupies a more central or eternal place than our relationship with God in Jesus Christ. St. Paul’s epistles emphasize the unity believers possess with Christ and, through that union, with each other. This identity orders our other relationships, including our political affiliations, because it is through Christian doctrine that we best understand justice and the proper purposes of human life, individually and corporately.

One might correctly see a particular political party or ideology as best furthering Christian beliefs and practices. On abortion, for instance, Christians see the biblical witness that life in the womb is precious and seek the protection of such children by the law. In that case, political stances or cultural choices flow from one’s religious faith.

However, Burge’s research points to an inverse relationship. Too many see their religious beliefs as an application of their cultural or political values. They identify as a Republican or as conservative with a set of principles and lifestyles attending that alignment. They then see “evangelical” as another way to describe the same set of values, importing the meaning of the other terms into this one. How else could one hardly attend church, the actual body of believers, and still claim great importance for one’s religious beliefs and identity?

The result of such RINOs (Religious in Name Only) will lead to distortions of Christianity and the weakening of our society. Democrats or progressives who no longer identify as religious or no longer find it as important might seek to undermine Christianity. But for those who identify without really participating, Christian belief might increasingly conform to a partisan agenda, downplaying if not denying basic doctrines of the trinity, of human sin, and of salvation in Christ by grace through faith. Persons supposed to see their ultimate unity as brothers and sisters in the faith might fight bitterly, seeing their more essential family as one grounded in party affiliation.

These trends have already weakened our society and will only continue to. Christians should engage with society and politics, not run from it and hide. But their engagement must seek the good as their faith informs it, a perspective not entirely Republican or Democratic, right or left, that has historically helped Americans reform toward a more just society. We risk losing that call to be better. Our society loses much more besides.

Let us seek to restore terms such as “evangelical” and “Christian” to their place as markers of people of genuine, engaged faith. And let us continue to order our lives by that faith so as to make our political and cultural values better. That would be good for the church, yes. But it also would be good for America.>

<The U.S. Supreme Court has a clear intellectual liability in Justice Brett Kavanaugh, according to a legal analyst, and the other justices are sick of "lightweight" opinions.

Patience is wearing thin for the Donald Trump appointee, who rarely writes important or noteworthy opinions – in fact, he wrote the fewer [sic] words than any justice in the most recent term -- and his colleagues keep calling out his lack of rigor in their own opinions, reported Slate.

"[Clarence] Thomas, [Amy Coney] Barrett, and [Neil] Gorsuch aren’t the only members of the court who are losing patience with Kavanaugh," wrote senior writer Mark Joseph Stern. "Justice Elena Kagan memorably castigated him for treating 'judging as scorekeeping,' whining about 'how unfair it is' when he loses, and repeating the same bad arguments 'at a higher volume.' Justice Sonia Sotomayor has repeatedly accused him of outright dishonesty by misrepresenting precedent and dangling false promises. In a fed-up dissent in just her first term, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson compared a Kavanaugh majority opinion to the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. [Samul] Alito’s rebuttal to Kavanaugh’s dissent in Sackett v. EPA consisted of exactly one sentence: Kavanaugh’s argument, Alito wrote, 'cannot be taken seriously.'"

The only justice who hasn't blasted his opinions is chief Justice John Roberts, with whom Kavanaugh has voted the same in 98 percent of cases, but Stern found the few opinions he does author tend to sound more like backlash management than legal analysis.

"It wasn’t supposed to be like this," Stern wrote. "During his 12 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Kavanaugh styled himself as a brainy operator who combined intellectual firepower with affable moderation, in rhetoric if not in substance. He wanted to be the conservative whom liberals could respect — Justice Antonin Scalia without the volcanic temper — and the high-minded jurist who could sell right-wing legal theories to the public as common-sense constitutional principles."

"Over the past five years, that version of Brett Kavanaugh has receded from view," Stern added. "In its place has emerged a man with seemingly few fixed convictions and even fewer interesting things to say. To the extent that his colleagues think about him at all, they seem to view him as a fixer who can cobble together five votes for a diaphanous majority opinion that decides almost nothing.">

<Judge Aileen Cannon has denied the Special Counsel’s request for a protective order in the Dept. of Justice’s prosecution of Donald Trump under the Espionage Act.

The Dept. of Justice had requested a protective order surrounding discovery related to classified documents, which will be a key challenge in this case that deals with top government secrets.

Judge Cannon claimed a “lack of meaningful conferral,” meaning the prosecutors and defense attorneys for Donald Trump and Walt Nauta, his co-defendant, the judge says, have not sufficiently discussed the matter. DOJ can refile.

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell notes, “we had expected Trump to appeal the Section 3 P/O [protective order] and add to delay but the Judge denying the P/O is unusual.”

“Sure they can refile but it seems unusual for judge to straight up deny a section 3 p/o as opposed to asking defense to make objections,” Lowell also wrote. “Is there another instance where that’s happened? All these small delays will start to add up.”

“Also govt have indicated that they made efforts to confer last week and Trump team wasn’t interested,” he added.

Former U.S. Dept. of Justice national security official Brandon Van Grack explains that it is the Trump defense team that is causing what Cannon called a “lack of meaningful conferral.”

“Very odd to deny the motion vs requiring defense counsel to articulate objections,” Van Grack writes. “On Monday, DOJ explained it had reached out to defense counsel on Friday, who did not wish to confer that day or over the weekend. Defense counsel cant get classified docs w/o a protective order.”

On Tuesday, CNN had reported: “On Monday, prosecutors said in a court filing that the defendants were stonewalling on explaining why they opposed Smith’s proposal for a protective order to be issued before the classified discovery is turned over to the defendants.”

Responding to Van Grack’s observation, civil liberties and national security journalist Marcy Wheeler points out that Cannon appears to be pushing boundaries – in a legal area where she is not the decision maker.

“And as DOJ noted in their motion, CIPA [the Classified Information Procedures Act] says the judge SHALL impose a protective order,” Wheeler writes. “This is another Cannon procedural issue, not (yet) the glaring siren of concern. But WHETHER to impose a protective order is not up to her.”

Andrew Weissmann, the popular MSNBC commentator who spent 20 years at DOJ, including as the FBI General Counsel, exclaimed: “Oy.”

He added, “When one side does not meet, it is hard to confer. This legitimizes defense delay tactic.”>

<Despite a series of embarrassments over the ongoing investigations of Hunter Biden, Republicans are continuing their push to find politically damaging information about the president’s son, Vanity Fair reports.

Molly Jong-Fast writes for Vanity Fair that “You’d think that House Republicans might have slowed their roll after the man they pushed as their star whistleblower against Hunter Biden, Gal Luft—an Israeli-American dual citizen who claimed to have compromising information on President Joe Biden and his son—was charged with serious crimes last November."

"Or especially when, per the recently unsealed indictment, it became clear that those crimes included being an unregistered foreign agent for China, trafficking arms, breaking international sanctions, and making false statements to federal officials.”

But Jong-Fast writes that House Republicans are doing the exact opposite “Instead, charging full speed ahead in defense of their missing whistleblower during last week’s ultra-mortifying House Judiciary Oversight hearing.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) told Jong-Fast that the GOP’s obsession with culture wars has injected “stupidity” into today’s Republican party, warning that this development could have consequences.

“No one or nothing in America is safe from the sheer stupidity of modern Republican politics,” Torres said, adding that the GOP have “become monomaniacally anti-woke culture warriors whose ever-lengthening list of targets include acronyms like DEI and ESG, Barbie, gas stoves, Hunter Biden, trans people.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Ca.) said the dynamics of today’s GOP politics has turned the traditional structure of governance on its head.

“Typically the Speaker of the House sets a party’s agenda in Congress. But there is no functional leader of the House Republican Party,” Swalwell told Jong-Fast.

“Instead, it’s made up of an ensemble cast of chaos agents providing a comedy of errors each week Congress is in session.”

But whether Democrats can take advantage of GOP stupidity is an open question, Jong-Fast writes, noting that Rep. Ro Khanna said in an emailed statement to Vanity Fair that, “From attacking the Trump-appointment head of the FBI to jamming through amendments restricting abortion access and targeting transgender service members in the defense bill, last week was a reminder of growing extremism in the House.”

“Democrats need to do more to call this out and highlight how out of touch the current agenda is with what Americans actually care about. There should be less time spent on conspiracy theories and regressive, unpopular policies and more time spent on bringing back manufacturing and lowering the cost of gas and food.”>