<Liberals who gained majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court this week voted Friday to reduce powers of the conservative chief justice and make a series of other changes to how the court operates, moves that the chief justice derided as an overreach by “rogue justices.”

It marked the second time in three days that Chief Justice Annette Ziegler accused her liberal colleagues of a “raw exercise of overreaching power.” Liberal Justice Rebecca Dallet said their moves were designed to make the court "more accessible and more accountable to the people of Wisconsin.”

The public airing of conflicts on the court set the stage for deep divisions in the battleground state on major cases that could determine the legality of abortions and voting rules, as well as legislative boundary lines.

Conservatives controlled the court for 15 years until Tuesday. Liberals will have the majority for at least the next two years.

Under conservative control, the court upheld Republican-drawn legislative maps in 2011 that helped the GOP increase its majorities, affirmed a state law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers, and declared absentee ballot drop boxes illegal.

Deep partisan divisions on the court aren't new. Tensions were so high in 2011 as the court considered a case about collective bargaining rights that a liberal justice accused one of her conservative colleagues of trying to choke her.

On Friday, liberal justices voted to make a wide array of changes to how the court operates, including reducing powers of the chief justice, making its administrative meetings open to the public and forming a committee to study when justices should recuse themselves from cases.

The court's administrative conferences had been open since 1999 until conservatives closed them in 2012. Justices don't discuss cases in public, but the meetings are used to talk about budgets, court policies and other issues.

Ziegler accused “four rogue members of the court” of meeting in a “secret, unscheduled, illegitimate closed meeting in an attempt to gut the Chief Justice’s constitutional authority as administrator of the court.” She said any such action is “illegitimate and unenforceable.”

Dallet responded to Ziegler with a statement accusing her of publicly litigating issues typically discussed privately, calling it “deeply inappropriate.” She also accused Ziegler of declining to agree to holding a meeting in August. Dallet said all justices were notified of Friday’s meeting, but some which she did not name did not attend.

“There appears to be no interest in reaching compromise,” Dallet said.

Ziegler first made the accusation when the four justices voted to fire the state court director, Randy Koschnick. He was a judge for 18 years before he served six years overseeing Wisconsin's court system. Koschnick ran for the state Supreme Court as a conservative in 2009 and lost.

Republican legislative leaders sent the court a letter Friday saying the appointment of a Milwaukee County judge to serve as interim court director was unconstitutional. They argue that the Wisconsin Constitution prohibits Judge Audrey Skwierawski from holding any office besides judge during her term. The lawmakers demanded that her appointment be rescinded.

But if a lawsuit is brought over that, its final stop would be the state Supreme Court controlled by the very justices who fired Koschnick....>

<.....That fight, and others, expected to come before the court include:

REDISTRICTING

Two lawsuits were filed this week asking the court this week to throw out Republican-drawn legislative maps, arguing they are an unconstitutional gerrymander. The court must first agree to take the case, which seems all but certain given the 4-3 liberal majority, and then rule on whether the current maps are constitutional. If it tosses them, the court will then have to determine a remedy, which could lead to the enactment of more Democratic-friendly maps before the 2024 election. Republicans have held a majority in the Legislature since 2011, the year they drew the maps that are in place now and were largely unchanged after the last round of redistricting.

ABORTION

Wisconsin clinics stopped performing abortions last year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, citing an 1849 state law banning abortion. A lawsuit seeking to undo the state ban is currently in county circuit court and could get before the state Supreme Court later this year.

2024 VOTING RULES

National Democrats filed a lawsuit last month trying to undo the court's ruling disallowing absentee ballot drop boxes so they can be used in the 2024 presidential election. Other lawsuits could be forthcoming that target the state's voting rules, including a voter ID requirement in place since 2011. A fight also looms over the state’s top elections administrator. The rules of elections are particularly critical in Wisconsin, a state where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point. The state Supreme Court came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden's win in 2020, with a conservative swing justice siding with the then-minority liberal justices to reject Donald Trump's arguments.

CHIEF JUSTICE

And anger among Republicans over longtime Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson led to the Legislature putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2015 that gives justices on the court the ability to choose who serves as chief instead of going to the most tenured member. It passed, and the court’s conservative majority immediately ousted Abrahamson. She sued in federal court to retain her title, but lost. The constitution requires the chief justice to be elected to a two-year term. The current chief justice, Ziegler, was first elected in 2021 and then again for another two-year term that began in May. Liberals on Friday voted to give the chief justice's powers to an administrative committee made up of two majority-appointed justices and the chief justice.

UNION RIGHTS

The fight over union rights defined Republican Scott Walker's time as governor, fueling massive protests in 2011, a failed attempt to recall him from office in 2012 and his subsequent run for president in 2015. Democrats and unions sued numerous times to regain rights lost during Walker's eight years in office. More challenges are expected.

VETO POWER

Wisconsin governors have wide veto power, which has drawn bipartisan complaints and constitutional amendments to reduce the breadth of what they can do. But when Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in June used his veto to enact a school funding increase for 400 years, Republicans promised to sue.

SCHOOL CHOICE

Democrats, including the current governor, have long opposed Wisconsin's school choice program, which allows students to attend private schools using taxpayer-funded vouchers. Liberals have been talking about bringing lawsuits to scale back the program, which was the nation's first when enacted in Milwaukee in 1990. It has since grown statewide.>

<In the two-and-a-half years since the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Congress passed a bipartisan law closing loopholes in the complex process of choosing a new president that Donald Trump tried to exploit in his push to stay in office after losing the 2020 election.

Candidates for crucial swing-state election posts who backed Trump's push to overturn the 2020 election all lost their bids in last year's elections. And, this week, federal prosecutors filed four felony charges against the former president for his role in the scheme to overturn President Joe Biden's win.

But while those avenues for electoral mischief may be blocked or severely constrained in 2024, the prosecution — along with another federal indictment accusing Trump of mishandling classified information after leaving office — is providing additional urgency among conservatives for a plan to make over the U.S. Department of Justice.

That's a step democracy advocates warn could mark a new assault on the U.S. system should Trump win the presidency a second time.

“The incentives for him to move in that direction will be even stronger, and we should worry even more about the degree of control he'll attempt to wield over federal law enforcement,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College and co-director of Bright Line Watch, an academic group that monitors democracy in the U.S. “We have many examples from other countries demonstrating the dangers of a political takeover of law enforcement.”

To be sure, other risks for American democracy beyond a takeover of federal law enforcement remain. The myth that Trump won the 2020 election has taken firm hold in the Republican electorate, with nearly 60% of GOP voters saying in an Associated Press poll last fall that Biden was not legitimately elected. The belief has led millions to distrust voting machines, mail balloting and vote counting while leading to death threats against election officials.

Numerous rural counties have seen election conspiracy theorists take control of elections and vote-counting, raising worries of more election chaos next year. Certification of election results remains a potential pressure point for delaying or undermining a final outcome in the next election — whether by local commissions, state certification boards, legislatures or even Congress.

Despite those potential risks, the accelerating GOP primary has highlighted a new worry for some — calls by Trump and his allies for more control of federal prosecutions. Several legal experts highlighted this as perhaps the most troubling threat to the country's democratic institutions should Trump — or another Republican — win the White House next year.

Currently, the president can appoint the attorney general and other top Department of Justice officials, subject to Senate confirmation, but has more limited tools to change the behavior of career prosecutors.

“Doing away with or diminishing the independence of the Justice Department would be a huge mistake,” said Paul Coggins, past president of the National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys. “We can’t afford for people to lose more faith in the system than they have now.”

He said federal prosecutors have been paying attention to Trump's recent vows to seize greater control of the system.

“I think the fact that Trump has raised this idea sent shock waves through prosecutors everywhere,” Coggins said.

Trump and other conservatives have argued that such a takeover is overdue, especially because they see the prosecutions against him as the 2024 campaign is heating up as nakedly political. Indeed, after his previous indictment, Trump vowed to pursue Biden and his family should he return to the White House.....>

<....“This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot,” Trump told reporters after his most recent arraignment. “So if you can’t beat ’em, you persecute ’em or you prosecute ’em.”

At a Republican Party dinner Friday night in Alabama, Trump repeated his claims that the latest criminal case he faces is an “outrageous criminalization of political speech,” and said his “enemies” were trying to stop him and his political movement with “an army of rabid, left-wing lawyers, corrupt and really corrupt Marxist prosecutors,” “deranged government agents and rogue intelligence officers.”

He called the indictment “an act of desperation by a failed and disgraced, crooked Joe Biden and his radical left thugs to preserve their grip on power."

Allies of Trump’s, including his former budget office head Russell Vought and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who was involved enough in the push to overturn the election that he is referred to in the indictment as “Co-Conspirator 4,” are working on a plan to increase control of the federal bureaucracy the next time a Republican is in the White House. That would include at the Department of Justice, where internal regulations limit the influence of the president and other political actors.

Vought and the organization he helps run to map out future control of the bureaucracy, the Center for Renewing America, did not respond to requests for comment.

The push does not only come from Trump, suggesting how his contentious views toward federal law enforcement have shaped a party that has long promoted itself as the protector of law-and-order. On the day the most recent indictment was released this week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called for a new FBI director and the right for defendants to choose not to be prosecuted in Washington, D.C., a primarily Democratic city. House Republicans have empaneled a committee to investigate what they call the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement. FBI director Christopher Wray, a Republican nominated to the position by Trump, has become a frequent target of Republican attacks.

Some longtime conservatives say they've become disillusioned with the agency's conduct, especially in recent years as they see it pursuing Trump with more vigor than Democrats such as Biden's son Hunter.

“The Justice Department has become more politicized and leaned more and more to the left as the years have gone on,” said Mark Corallo, who was communications director for the department under President George W. Bush.

Corallo, who described his politics as “Never-Again Trump,” said career lawyers in the agency are reliably Democratic. But he also scoffed at the notion of being able to more tightly control them, absent reform of the civil service system that protects their jobs.

“I think there is a zero chance that the career people at the Justice Department will ever bend to his will,” Corallo said.

Trump tried to enlist the agency in his fight to stay in office. Election conspiracy theorists urged him to use the Department of Justice to seize voting machines to highlight the search for fraud. Trump tried to get the agency to announce probes of some of his supporters' more paranoid theories of how the election was stolen, even after his own attorney general, William Barr, told him there was no indication of widespread fraud.

Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice, said Justice Department attorneys helped stop Trump's attempt to stay in office, and worried that, if he becomes president again, there may not be similar safeguards the next time.

“Had the department not resisted the attempts to enlist it in this conspiracy, it could have actually led to a sabotaged election,” she said.

What happens in future elections, voting officials said, is up to the voters themselves.

“Every American needs to consider what role are they going to play in this moment,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said in an interview. “Are they going to potentially support candidates who would enable -- not just an obstruction -- but an elimination of justice? Or are they going to consider that when weighing their decisions at the ballot box next year?”>

<Former President Donald Trump, fresh off his third appearance in court as a criminal defendant, delivered a speech full of defiance and bluster on Friday night, insulting prosecutors and declaring that the charges he faces only help his 2024 presidential campaign.

“Any time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls," Trump said at a Republican Party dinner in Alabama. "We need one more indictment to close out this election. One more indictment, and this election is closed out. Nobody has even a chance.”

Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday to crimes related to his efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss. Although it's his third criminal indictment this year, this case is the most serious, with the federal government he once ran charging him with orchestrating a scheme to block the peaceful transfer of power.

But Trump was characteristically unapologetic as he took the stage Friday night to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” flashing a thumbs-up at the crowd, raising his fist and taking in a standing ovation of nearly three minutes.

“We’re gonna be here for a little while,” he joked, asking the crowd to take a seat.

The latest set of charges focuses on the two months between his November 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump has denied wrongdoing and has wedded his 2024 presidential campaign to his legal defense and his false claims of 2020 election fraud.

In a sign of that defiance, his campaign released an online ad Friday attacking Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who led the investigation that resulted in Trump’s latest charges and a separate case where he’s charged with mishandling classified documents.

The ad, which is expected to start airing on television next week, also attacks Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has charged Trump in a hush money case, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is believed to be close to filing charges in her investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

A Trump aide said the ad will start airing Monday and Tuesday in Washington, D.C., New York, Atlanta and on national cable. The ad was also shown to the crowd at the Alabama dinner Friday night.

Trump has continued to receive endorsements from GOP elected officials throughout the investigations and criminal cases, including on Friday from all six of the state's Republican U.S. House members.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who is waging an unprecedented campaign to try to change Pentagon abortion policy by holding up hundreds of military nominations and promotions, introduced Trump at the dinner on Friday night.

“He’s had a tough week. We need to stand behind him," Tuberville said. “He needs encouragement. They’re after him.” Repeating Trump's frequent refrain, he added, "They’re after you.”

Among the opening acts of the dinner were Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, who produced the movie “2000 Mules,” which made various debunked claims about mail ballots, drop boxes and ballot collection in the 2020 presidential election.

Trump praised the pair in his remarks and said: “Get ready. Get those votes ready. Just get them ready. Keep those tapes handy because you're going to need them."....>

<.....The crowd of 2,700 began arriving several hours early for the dinner, a $250-per-ticket fundraiser for the Alabama Republican Party.

“They are excited,” Alabama Republican Party Chair John Wahl said. “There is so much passion from Trump supporters and voters across the state."

Trump’s mounting legal troubles do not seem to be dampening his support in the Deep South state that is among more than a dozen that will hold primary contests on Super Tuesday. The March 5 slate of elections is increasingly seen as one of the last chances for any other GOP presidential candidate to try to make inroads in Trump’s front-runner status.

Trump’s closest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been making a play for Super Tuesday states. In Alabama, though, one gauge of interest doesn’t bode well for the governor: The state GOP sold about 1,000 fewer tickets for a similar dinner in March when DeSantis spoke.

Robin Rowan, the owner of a financial company, wore a button and sash with Trump’s image and “NOT GUILTY” emblazoned in sequins as she waited Friday to hear Trump speak.

Rowan, who does not believe the criminal accusations against Trump, said the charges have galvanized support for Trump rather than making voters doubt him.

“We know the truth. They are trying to wear us down. They are not going to wear us down,” Rowan said.

Rich Foster, a retired police officer wearing a black “Bikers for Trump” T-shirt, said he believes some crimes were committed on Jan. 6, such as the attacks on police officers defending the Capitol, but does not consider Trump responsible for the violence that happened.

“I don’t think Trump committed a crime that day,” Foster said. He said he believed that Trump, as president, had a right to speak out about the election.

Trump has not been charged with inciting the attack, but prosecutors accused him of exploiting the violence and chaos at the Capitol to continue making false claims of election fraud and trying to halt the certification of the election results.

Foster said he and other Trump supporters viewed the charges as an attempt to keep Trump from winning in 2024. He said he would write in the former president's name if he had to.

“If they get him off the ballot somehow," he said, “I know how to write Donald J. Trump on the ballot.”>

<The independent financial monitor for the Trump Organization told a New York judge she identified issues of incompleteness and inconsistency in certain disclosures to lenders and others by the company owned by former president Donald Trump.

Barbara Jones, the monitor, told New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron that Trump and his company defended the Trump Organization's disclosure practices in the areas she had flagged, but will change how they disclose information in light of her claims.

"In the interest of cooperation and transparency, Defendants have agreed to address in future disclosures to lenders the items I have identified and otherwise adjust their practices based upon my observations," Jones wrote in a letter filed in court Friday.

CNBC has reached out to lawyers and representatives of the Trump Organization requesting comment about Jones' claims.

The former federal judge was appointed in November as a financial monitor as part of a case where the company, Trump and several of his children are being sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged widespread fraud related to financial statements.

The trial in the case is set for Oct. 2.

James, last year, requested an outside monitor after becoming concerned that Trump was trying to move the legal structure of his companies out of New York to avoid her jurisdiction.

Engoron wrote that James' request was justified given the "persistent misrepresentations throughout every one of Mr. Trump's [Statements of Financial Condition] between 2011 and 2021."

Jones, in her letter to the judge, noted that the Trump Organization is comprised of assets held by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which acts as a guarantor for loans and owns commercial and residential real estate, hotels, golf courses and licensing ventures, among other things.

During her review of nine loan agreements, more than 75 financial disclosures and thousands of supporting documents, Jones said she observed that "information regarding certain material liabilities provided to lenders … has been incomplete."

Those liabilities, she noted, included "intercompany loans between or among Truth entities and Donald J. Trump, certain of the Trust's contingent liabilities, as well as refundable golf club membership deposits."

Jones wrote that "the Trust also has not consistently provided all required annual and quarterly certifications attesting to the accuracy of certain financial statements."

She noted that the company's annual audited financial statements for certain entities, which are prepared by an outside accounting firm, "list depreciation expenses."

"However," Jones added, interim financial statements given to third parties, which are prepared internally by the Trump Organization about the same entities, "inconsistently report depreciation expenses."

The attorney general, in her lawsuit, alleges the defendants committed widespread fraud involving years' worth of false financial statements related to the company's business.

James is seeking $250 million and a bar on the Trump Organization from doing business in New York.

James alleges that Trump massively overstated the values of assets in statements to banks, insurance companies and the IRS to obtain more favorable loan and insurance terms for his company, and to lower its tax obligations.>

<A federal judge ordered Rudy Giuliani on Friday to clarify his "puzzling" concession that his conspiracy theories about Georgia election workers were false.

On July 26, the Donald Trump attorney and former New York City mayor admitted that he made "false" statements about mother Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea "Shaye" Moss. Giuliani also acknowledged that he "published those statements to third parties" and that "the statements carry meaning that is defamatory per se."

Giuliani falsely claimed that surveillance footage caught Freeman and Moss engaging in election fraud by carrying boxes of phony ballots. He also claimed that footage showed Moss handing Freeman a "USB drive" full of votes.

In fact, Moss testified that the object she passed to her mom was a "ginger mint," in emotional testimony before the House Select Committee that investigated the insurrection on Jan. 6.

Federal and local authorities cleared the Georgia public servants of all wrongdoing.

The pair testified that Giuliani's lies unleashed a cascade of threats against them, and they later sued him in a federal court in Washington, D.C., where the former mayor filed the July 26 stipulation admitting to some of the allegations against him. He also reserved the right to claim his statements were protected under the First Amendment.

Unimpressed with the "unsworn" statement, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered Giuliani, in effect, to strip it of "caveats," "limitations" and other layers of legalese.

"Given the seemingly incongruous and certainly puzzling caveats contained in the Giuliani Stipulation, plaintiffs' counsel recounts efforts to obtain clarification from defendant Giuliani's counsel," Howell noted in docket entry reviewed by The Messenger.

By Tuesday, Giuliani must submit another stipulation conceding "all factual allegations" of the lawsuit against him "as to his liability for plaintiffs' defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy claims, and his liability as to plaintiffs' claim for punitive damages."

Alternatively, the judge allowed Giuliani to concede that "entry of default judgment on liability is appropriate in this case" or provided an explanation for declining to submit a new stipulation.

If Giuliani doesn't file a stipulation, he must appear in court on Aug. 15 at 11 a.m. ET.>

Dang, Giuliani is lower than whale shyte.

<Tuesday’s indictment of former President Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election overshadowed the announcement of a related indictment that same day in Michigan. Both cases are incredibly important, and Michigan case’s under-the-radar significance should not be overlooked.

A grand jury there charged Matthew DePerno, the November 2022 Republican candidate for state attorney general, with four criminal charges: undue possession of and willfully damaging a voting machine, both five-year felonies, and conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine and false pretenses. In September 2021, Trump endorsed DePerno for attorney general, the state’s top law enforcement position.

The grand jury in Michigan also charged Daire Rendon, a former Republican state representative, with “conspiracy to unlawfully possess a voting machine and using false pretenses ... in unlawfully acquiring one of the machines.”

(Both DePerno and Rendon are of course innocent until proven guilty. DePerno’s attorney told the Detroit News his client “categorically denies any wrongdoing and firmly asserts that these charges are unfounded and lack merit.”)

But this prosecution has implications far beyond Michigan, for three primary reasons.

First, DePerno and Rendon, both vocal 2020 “election deniers,” are alleged to have illegally obtained a voting machine in a wildly ill-advised attempt to prove election fraud that, despite Trump and his allies’ pronouncements, did not exist. A nation that holds secure elections cannot allow self-deputized vigilantes improperly seizing possession of voting machines under false pretenses.

Second, Trump’s false claims about fraud would not have had the “destabilizing” effect alleged by Jack Smith this week without the complicity of a MAGA network of Republicans around the country.

Third, and closely related to that point, the facts alleged in the Michigan indictment — which prosecutors would not have included unless they could prove them — demonstrate the depth of America’s current Trumpian infection. Clearly, this is truly a national problem. And Trumpism will outlive Trump unless the law holds its violators accountable.

Accountability is the foundation of the rule of law, in principle and in practice. Michigan’s special prosecutor has just affirmed that principle.

Federal prosecutors can’t do everything, as Michigan’s attorney general understands. And make no mistake, culpable state and local officials must also be held to account. Otherwise they could distort elections in 2024 and the future — no matter how Trump’s presidential campaign fares. Indeed, Michigan is also looking into how and why voting machines were handed over to private individuals for "testing." A Michigan judge has already ruled that it is illegal for unauthorized individuals to take possession of voting machines, whether clerks gave them the machines or not....>

<....So far, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has taken an impressively proactive approach. On July 18, a grand jury under her oversight indicted 16 fake electors in the state. That fraudulent elector scheme, as well as the plot to seize voting machines, are two strands of the larger conspiracy.

Five days earlier, on July 13, Arizona’s Attorney General Kris Mayes announced a parallel investigation in her state. And Georgia’s fake electors appear to be in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ sights as well. The grand jury Willis oversees is in the final stages of a probe considering criminal charges in connection with the 2020 election.

As for the election machine branch of the Trump campaign operation, recall that Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, reportedly “co-conspirator No. 1” in Tuesday’s federal indictment, peddled wild claims of votes being switched from Trump to Biden by Dominion Voting Systems machines, as well as by Smartmatic, another voting machine manufacturer. Onetime Trump apologist and Attorney General William P. Barr called those claims “idiotic.”

Fox News has already settled its case against Dominion, to the tune of $787 million, for defaming the company.

It’s also important to emphasize how apolitical the Matthew DePerno prosecution is. Nessel has been very careful to avoid the perception of partisan bias, going as far as to disqualify herself from overseeing the grand jury investigation because she had been DePerno’s opponent in the 2020 election.

The investigation into DePerno and Rendon was ultimately led by special prosecutor D.J. Hilson. He is ordinarily the Muskegan County prosecutor and was appointed special prosecutor by the state’s independent prosecuting attorneys coordinating council.

And the grand jury made its own determination to indict based on facts. Hilson announced Tuesday that his office “made no recommendations as to whether an indictment should be issued or not.”

These 23 citizens considered all of the evidence and seemed to have come to decision that reaffirms how accountability, our elections and our freedom are bound together. Whether at the state or federal level, that kind of citizen commitment to the rule of law represents our democracy’s best hope.>

<Since April the state legislature in North Carolina, which has a Republican supermajority, has passed a flood of extreme legislation that includes restricting women’s access to reproductive health care, targeting trans students and prohibiting the discussion of race during hiring decisions for state jobs.

All the above can be considered culture-war legislation designed to distract North Carolinians from lawmakers’ refusal to pass a living wage for the nearly 50% of the state’s workforce paid less than $15 an hour, their refusal to expand Medicaid for more than the half a million people who would benefit, their threats of massive education cuts and their threats of more voter suppression legislation, despite their previous efforts being overturned in the courts.

We have this deluge of Republican-sponsored bills because the dam that was Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto was breached by state Rep. Tricia Cotham, who was elected last year as a Democrat in a solidly Democratic district and then switched to the Republican Party after she was elected.

The New York Times reports that Cotham was encouraged to run by North Carolina’s Republican speaker of the House and the state’s Republican majority leader and that she was backed by groups that almost exclusively support Republican candidates. The New York Times, citing interviews with Cotham’s allies and former allies, says she had felt alienated from the Democratic Party and didn’t feel sufficiently supported. Whatever her reasons for flip-flopping, Cotham’s decision has affected millions of North Carolinians. But she would never have had the power to make such a consequential decision if it were not for the much bigger betrayal of representative democracy in North Carolina.

The extremists who currently control the Republican Party were able to win a supermajority in North Carolina because of a gerrymander of state House and Senate districts that, disappointedly, was approved by a Department of Justice run by then-Attorney General Eric Holder. Republicans took control of all three branches of government in North Carolina and used that power to block Medicaid expansion, deny North Carolinians unemployment insurance, and pass another flood of extreme bills, including an omnibus voter suppression bill....>

<....As the president of the state’s NAACP, I helped launch Moral Mondays in North Carolina and invited Democrats, Republicans and independents to come together to challenge this abuse of power. We won in court, and the gerrymandered maps that Republicans used to gain power have been repeatedly struck down. Maps that were in place in 2022 were, according to Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project, relatively fair. And, at least temporarily, it allowed Democrats to prevent the supermajority by one seat, but there’s power in incumbency, and, thus, the election also demonstrated the long-term effect of efforts to undermine democracy.

There was an even split in the state’s congressional elections: seven Democrats and seven Republicans were elected. Cooper won re-election as governor, but Republicans held onto large majorities in both the state House and Senate. And then Cotham switched parties.

After a decade of politics played on a field tilted against their best interests, it appears that it’s hard for many communities in North Carolina to imagine better. Fewer than 52% of registered Democrats voted statewide in North Carolina in November 2022. Among independents, turnout was less than 45%. Only 24% of registered voters under 25 showed up at the polls. Clearly, many people — especially younger and unaffiliated voters — have been convinced their vote wouldn’t make a difference. Maybe because for so many years it didn’t make as much of a difference as it should have?

A decade of extremists abusing power has taken its toll, but Democrats also have to take responsibility for not offering a powerful alternative to the culture-war narrative the Republicans are putting forth and take responsibility for not investing in candidates who could speak to issues that would motivate inactive voters to turn out.

In the 2016 election after our Moral Mondays activities help brand Pat McCrory as an extremist, he became the only Republican governor in the country to lose his re-election bid. Republicans also lost control of the state Supreme Court and the attorney general’s office. A new majority emerged in North Carolina when a movement gave people a clear narrative and a reason to show up on Election Day. If we are to turn the tide, not just in North Carolina but across the United States in 2024, we cannot be satisfied with narratives that blame extremism on the decisions of a single individual like Tricia Cotham.

In politics, there will always be people who will flip-flop and betray the voters who vested them with power. But transformative change is possible when moral fusion movements clarify what’s at stake for all of us and elect governing majorities that are committed to the policies most people want. We must never forget that, frustrating as they may be, we are not captive to the compromises of elites. We the people have the power to come together, change the conversation, and re-order the calculus of what is possible in our public life.>

<I was dying…It was just a matter of time. Lying behind the wheel of the airplane, bleeding out of the right side of my devastated body, I waited for the rapid shooting to stop.

—Former Representative Jackie Speier in her memoir Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back recounting her experience after being shot five times during an ambush during her fact-finding visit to Jonestown, Guyana where Jim Jones and his cult, Peoples Temple, had built a compound.

It, combined with everything else that was going on, made it difficult to breathe…Being crushed by the shield and the people behind it … leaving me defenseless, injured.

—Metropolitan police officer, Daniel Hodges, describing being crushed in a doorway during the January 6, 2021, attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol

In both of the examples above, the individual speaking was the victim of extreme violence perpetrated by followers of a single person whose influence had spread to hundreds of people (in the January 6th case, thousands of people). In fact, Speier’s experience with the Jim Jones followers was part of the single greatest loss of American life (918 people) prior to 9/11/2001. These followings have been given an umbrella name, cult, and have involved what has been traditionally called “brainwashing.” The cult leader receives seemingly undying support as the Dear Leader or Savior. However, the term brainwashing suggests that indoctrinated members are robots without free will – behavioral scientists argue that this is not the case. It’s an oversimplification.

Rather than being seen as passive victims to an irresistible force, psychiatrist Robert Lifton argues that there is “voluntary self-surrender” in one’s entrance into a cult. Further, the decision to give up control as part of the cult process may actually be part of the reason why people join. Research and experience tell us that those who are “cult vulnerable” may have a sense of confusion or separation from society or seek the same sort of highly controlled environment that was part of their childhood. It has also been suggested that those who are at risk for cult membership feel an enormous lack of control in the face of uncertainty (i.e., economic, occupational, academic, social, familial) and will gravitate more towards a cult as their distress increases. I would argue that many of these factors are at play when we see the ongoing support of Trumpism and MAGA “theology.”

Psychologist Leon Festinger described the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance in which there is a disconnect between one’s feelings, beliefs, and convictions and their observable actions. This dissonance is distressing and, in order to relieve the anxiety, people may become more invested in the cult or belief system that goes against who they are individually. As such, cult members become more “dug-in” and will cling to thoughts and beliefs that contradict available evidence. In other words, they are no longer able to find a middle ground or compromise.

How does this apply to today’s politics?

There was a time when the two major political parties in America could exhibit bipartisanship by moving across the aisle to compromise on the issues on which they were legislating. Tried and true Republicans who favored small government, lower taxes, and national security could find a middle ground with Democrats who pushed for things like universal healthcare, higher minimum wages, and progressive tax reform. The abortion issue in America has been an area of debate between the parties as they debated elements like when life begins, is a heartbeat a heartbeat, and what to do about post-birth abortions (which is murder and not actually a thing). There were largely two sides of the issue and some areas for compromise.

This is no longer possible in today’s sociopolitical climate. Although members of the GOP still refer to themselves as a political party with principled stances, the reality is they have now morphed into a domestic terror organization and to use the umbrella term, a cult – the largest and most dangerous cult in American history.

Cult thinking includes ardent adherence to group thinking such as – clinically speaking, in the face of distorted thinking we ask about one’s strength of conviction by querying, ”Can you think of other ways of seeing this?” Sadly, what we are seeing publicly is ‘No’ from those who still subscribe to Trumpism/MAGA....>

<....Here are a few examples in today’s socio-political environment in which cultism has contributed to a lack of middle ground.

There is no middle ground on treasonous, conspiratorial, fraudulent behavior – these are crimes and, arguably, the worst crimes one could commit against their own country.

There is no middle ground on slavery.

There is no middle ground on allowing Americans to die through inaction in response to natural disasters and global health crises.

There is no middle ground on gunning down school children or wearing an AR-15 rifle pin and throwing away a pin to remember a Uvalde victim.

There is no middle ground on jeopardizing national security and retaining and sharing classified documents.

There is no middle ground on breaking campaign finance (i.e., hush money schemes) laws.

There should be no middle ground on tolerance of crime, period.

And so many know this. Tim Scott, Jim Jordan, and Marco Rubio (the last two having gone to law school), all know this and are smarter than they are acting – which takes us back to cult dynamics – if you are a dyed-in-the-wool cultist or pretending to be a cultist – but the outcome is the same – harm to the Country and its people – there is no difference. Whether you actually have a personality disorder or are pretending to be a sociopathically or psychopathically disordered person – if the result is the same – harm to your constituents and your country – what’s the difference? As noted in the opening paragraphs, there is a voluntary submission to cultism – Rubio, for example, identified all of the reasons why the 45th President was not qualified when he himself was running for President in 2016. However, perhaps due to his own intolerance of uncertainties in his life, volunteered for Trumpism.

What can be done?

There are exit strategies for people ensnared in a cult. One factor is accountability or repeatedly seeing the adverse consequences of the group’s behavior (e.g., indictment, incarceration, job loss) which we started to see even more of this week.

But until one party and its ardent followers can admit they are in a domestic terrorist cult and as Rep. Eric Swalwell said are “unserious” people, there is no hope of unification on the horizon. The first step is getting through to people who can’t or won’t see the truth.>

<DeSantis is piling up legal fees, but Republican lawmakers allegedly approved an additional $16 million for the Governor to “be in a comfortable position to speak his mind, and we’re going to support him on those things.”

DeSantis’ war on Disney is billed hourly

Business Insider reported that DeSantis’ team spends nearly $1,300 per hour in legal fees to investigate how Disney found a loophole in the Governor’s plan. But there is another significant, less talked about issue. When Disney pulled back from investing a billion into their new project in Florida, the actual cost was much higher.

One big new business opens doors for a bunch of smaller ones

The project near Lake Nona Town Center would bring in people who need cafes, furniture stores, and restaurants, and the campus would likely raise the prices of apartments in the vicinity. So, it was not just one billion, it was one small town with all its perks and benefits.

$17 million on the line

A report from the Miami Herald says DeSantis’s legal costs last December already added up to almost $17 million. And that was without notable companies who took issue with the Florida governor’s laws. Explaining the lawsuits to Floridians was never a question, but what will happen once the elections are in full swing?

DeSantis should know better

Democratic State Senator Lori Berman told The Guardian that DeSantis has a Harvard law degree, so he “should understand the constraints placed on him and the state by the United States Constitution and the Florida Constitution.” However, Berman said, “He knows those constraints, but he doesn’t care.”

Passing laws regardless of the cost

Berman continued, “His goal is to intentionally pass unconstitutional laws and set up legal challenges in order for the conservative supreme court to overturn long-held protections.” Bob Jarvis, a law professor from Nova Southeastern University, believes it is a game of “heads I win, tails you lose.”

The coin toss

Jarvis claims, “If he gets one of these crazy policies passed, and they’re challenged, and the court upholds him… he can say to the press and the public, ‘I was right, and the proof is in the pudding because the courts agreed with me.’”

Win-win for DeSantis

Even when he loses, “DeSantis can stand up and say, ‘These crazy judges want our children to watch drag shows, they want our children to be taught to be gay, they want Disney to be this terrible company. That’s why you need a strong governor and why you will benefit from having me as president because I will make sure to get rid of these judges and replace them with judges that have traditional American morals.’”

Republican lawmakers are enabling the Florida Governor

State House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell said the Republicans gave DeSantis “a carte blache [sic] to go and fight these wars in court.” Driskell explained, “It’s basically just saying that there are no checks and balances when it comes to the state government in Florida.”

What about the people?

Driskell concluded, “Most Floridians can’t afford rent, and property insurance rates are through the roof. We could have redirected that money towards affordable housing.” State Senate budget chair Doug Broxson told Tallahassee Democrat, “We want the governor to be in a comfortable position to speak his mind, and we’re going to support him on those things.”

The Governor is not interested in limitations

MSNBC correspondent Jen Psaki pointed out DeSantis’s statements about his plans to “leverage” Article II of the Constitution, which sets the powers and limitations of the executive branch. Psaki asserted, “Desantis has repeatedly made clear this week that he’s not actually interested in any limitations or guardrails at all,” adding. “He’s already forecasting that if elected, he’ll find ways to sidestep constitutional restraints on presidential power.”>

<So there is this funny thought rattling around GOP presidential primary candidate Ron DeSantis’ noggin, and the noggins of various right-wing pundit types, that “the left” – a blanket term for all liberals and members of the non-Fox-News media – has it out for the Florida governor.

The fear from "the left", apparently, is that DeSantis would be a stronger candidate against President Joe Biden than former President Donald Trump, so liberals like me are conspiratorially bending over backward to submarine DeSantis’ campaign.

There’s not enough space in this column for me to write the necessary number of HAHAHAAAs to respond to that idea, so I’ll share three quick thoughts:

DeSantis doesn’t need me or any other liberal to submarine his campaign. He’s doing a marvelous job of that all on his own. Based on current polling, it's Republicans who want nothing to do with him. The most recent polling average from Five Thirty Eight shows only about 14% of GOP voters want DeSantis as their presidential candidate. As far as I’m concerned, I’d take Biden vs. DeSantis over Biden vs. Trump any day of the week and twice on Sundays. DeSantis is running one of the worst presidential campaigns in recent memory Let’s start with DeSantis’ “they’re all out to get me” conspiracy.

In a July interview on Fox News, DeSantis said of “the corporate press”: “They don't want somebody like me to come in and dismantle the administrative state. Both from an electoral perspective and a substantive perspective they view me as the most significant threat to their agenda.”

That’s very stupid, of course. It presupposes that all journalists get together for weekly “Liberal Agenda Meetings” (we don’t, we hate meetings). And it overlooks the fact that the only thing DeSantis poses a “significant threat” to right now are the claims past GOP presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Scott Walker have to the title of “Most Disastrous Presidential Campaign.”

Believing the DOJ is angling to keep DeSantis off the ballot is upper-level loopy

Conservative columnist Rich Lowry suggested recently in the New York Post that the federal indictments against Trump are part of some nefarious game of three-dimensional chess going on at the Department of Justice, which I guess in this scenario is packed with raging liberal prosecutors. The gist is that indicting Trump helps the former president and makes it harder for DeSantis to get attention:

“Consider this thought experiment: If the Justice Department and the other prosecutors knew that the indictments guaranteed a Ron DeSantis or Tim Scott nomination, would they still go through with them?”

To which I respond: Yes! Because unless you spend all your time snorkeling the murky fever swamps of right-wing paranoia, you understand that the Justice Department is going to prosecute whoever it needs to prosecute whenever it has the evidence to prosecute them. Life isn’t a grand, multi-agency conspiracy. It’s actually quite boring.

Defrauding the US? Trump's third indictment may be his best one yet.

If liberals are afraid of anyone beating Joe Biden, it ain't Ron DeSantis

So DeSantis and Co. believe some grand liberal cabal is terrified of the Florida governor because, as he said in his Fox News interview, “they know that I would beat Biden and beat him soundly.”

For starters, I don’t know with any certainty who can or can’t beat Biden. We’ve got a long way to go before the 2024 election.

I also don’t particularly care who can or can’t beat Biden, because my job, contrary to DeSantis’ belief, is not to help any Democratic candidate or destroy any Republican candidate. My job is to share my opinion on the things I see happening in the world, and if that opinion is sometimes “Ron DeSantis is doing very bad and unlikable things,” then it is what it is.

That said, if I was worrying about which GOP presidential primary candidate poses the biggest threat to President Biden’s reelection, I assure you the candidate I’d be focusing on would not be Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis has the retail political skills of an alien trying to mimic human behavior

As a native of Florida, I’ve paid attention to DeSantis longer than most, and since the earliest mention of his presidential aspirations, I thought: “Nope. This guy is unlikable, un-engaging and painfully awkward. You put him on a national stage, regardless of what conservatives think about his draconian right-wing policies in Florida, and he will turn people off.”....>

<....That has proven accurate, and it’s part of why he’s getting his keister handed to him in the primary by a man who can’t stop losing elections or getting indicted.

A six-week abortion ban and fights over slavery? That spells trouble

The other part, beyond the empty space where DeSantis’ personality should reside, is that much of what he has done in Florida runs afoul of the way most Americans, and particularly younger voters, view the world.

The six-week abortion ban he signed into law is broadly unpopular and will box him in badly on the wrong side of an issue that drives voters to the polls.

He’s on the record previously supporting cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and while he has tried to backpedal, it leaves him open to heavy attacks on two federal programs voters covet.

His attacks on diversity in education had him recently defending a curriculum requiring teachers to note that some slaves “developed skills” that could be used for “personal benefit,” outraging people on both sides of the aisle.

DeSantis seems to think he can out-cruel Donald Trump

Just last week, the College Board said Florida laws banning topics related to gender and sexuality have “effectively banned AP Psychology” classes in the state, upending the schedules of thousands of students just as classes are about to start.

DeSantis capped off last week by infuriating the two largest federal worker unions by saying at a campaign event: “On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on Day One and be ready to go.” -

American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley responded in a statement, saying “violent anti-government rhetoric from politicians has deadly consequences. Any candidate who positions themselves within that shameful tradition has no place in public office.”

Trump has a stranglehold on the GOP base. DeSantis very much does not Trump, for all his upcoming court dates and failures and general horribleness, has a following so loyal his presidential primary numbers INCREASED the first two times he was indicted. He’s a bucket of Kool-Aid shy of a cult leader.

DeSantis, on the other hand, is a stumbling mess who’s about as affable as an aggrieved porcupine, and the policies he has embraced – along with his comical repetition of the word “WOKE!” – are things that anger liberal and many independent voters.

So if you think I, as a devious liberal fellow, fear DeSantis becoming the GOP presidential nominee and am thus conspiring to bring him down, you need to lay off the legal marijuana (thanks, Democrats!) and take a breath.

Not everything is a conspiracy.

Sometimes politicians are ridiculed simply because they stink.>

<Chances are good you pay for your own health insurance coverage each month — but should you be covering the coverage of service workers too?

A photo of a restaurant bill with a 4% service charge added to cover “health insurance for staff” went viral on X (formerly Twitter) recently and it has social media users talking about what’s fair to put on customers.

“This is absurd,” one person posted on Reddit. Other online commentators called on the restaurant management to make changes. “Just raise your prices by 4%. They are either trying to make a political point or they're basically committing price fraud,” another person posted.

Whether you believe a health insurance surcharge is justified or not, one issue that’s not up for debate is that health care costs are a considerable expense. Here’s more on the story behind the viral post and what you can do to offset your own health care expenses.

Extra fees are nothing new

These types of surcharges aren’t new, nor are they likely to go away. In fact, 15% of restaurant operators plan on adding surcharges and fees to patrons’ checks to combat rising food, supply, and labor costs, according to the results of a recent survey by the American Restaurant Association.

Diners are experiencing other surprise surcharges, as well, including for general service and tap water. What’s more, there’s been a trend toward higher suggested tips, dubbed “tip-flation.”

In response to the overwhelming blowback about the surcharge practice, Zach Pollack, owner of the Los Angeles-based restaurant, posted a public response on Instagram. Pollack said the business is being “singled out” and that “there are dozens if not hundreds of other restaurants in Los Angeles that implemented similar surcharges,” as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

Under the rules of the Affordable Care Act, small businesses with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees are required to offer minimum essential health insurance coverage to workers....>

<I’ll never forget the moment during my clerkship at the Supreme Court when I realized something about it was deeply broken.

It was April 2014, and I had just pulled an all-nighter to finish a second, 50-page bench memo in a pending case. My first attempt had recommended that the justices reverse a lower court ruling. But I couldn’t get over the nagging doubt that I was wrong.

In those days, law clerks were forbidden to work remotely out of concern for information security. (We didn’t love the rule then, but in the aftermath of the leaked draft of the 2022 abortion decision, perhaps it makes sense now). So I sneaked out of bed and drove back to the court. I reread the briefs and found the arguments on each side so close, and the law so uncertain, that I wrote a second memo suggesting the opposite outcome.

Law clerks from the other justices’ chambers were similarly perplexed. The justices, we knew, could reasonably reach opposing conclusions because the case was just that hard. If you’d asked me then for an honest assessment of which side should win, I would have answered with three simple words: I don’t know.

Yet when the justices met to vote on the case at their private conference, by all accounts they needed little discussion to reach their conclusion. And when the court issued its opinion shortly thereafter, it was as breezy as it was self-assured. The sense of complexity that I had struggled with in my dueling bench memos was nowhere to be found. Instead, the justices asserted that there could be but a single correct answer, one they alone were capable of delivering.

That is when it dawned on me. The Supreme Court has an overconfidence problem.

Across America’s history, our greatest leaders have often possessed the virtue of humility. Consider Benjamin Franklin’s famous pursuit of self-improvement, in which he openly acknowledged his weaknesses and sought to better himself by practicing 13 virtues, one by one. (The last virtue on Franklin’s list? Humility.) Or consider George Washington, who laid down his sword after the Revolutionary War and later walked away from a third term as president, twice putting his ego aside to allow others a chance to lead.

If today’s justices were similarly humble, they would freely admit that sometimes, especially in the difficult cases that divide our society, they cannot find a clear answer. Our Constitution, after all, is a remarkably short, 236-year-old document. History and precedent are often ambiguous and conflicting. On issues ranging from abortion to free speech and gun safety to freedom of religion, there are close arguments — not to mention intense interests — on both sides. Recognizing this nuance is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of intellectual honesty and strength.

Today’s legal culture and our polarized politics, however, demand certitude. And the court tends to deliver. Gone are the days when justices would set aside personal views and uphold a contentious law because, in the words of a watershed 1937 ruling upholding the minimum wage, “Even if the wisdom of the policy be regarded as debatable and its effects uncertain, still the legislature is entitled to its judgment.”

Instead, today’s justices often show no doubt even in the hardest cases, and even if their rulings require undoing decades of precedent. Take Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s blithe assertion that a difficult civil rights and free speech conflict involving a Christian graphic designer who refused to make wedding websites for gay and lesbian couples had an “obvious” answer. Or Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s conclusion that Roe vs. Wade was “egregiously wrong” because the reasoning it used to uphold the right to abortion — reasoning that was embraced by nine of the 12 Republican high court appointees who voted on abortion before Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — was “exceptionally weak.”

"Obvious." "Egregiously wrong." "Exceptionally weak." This is language that only the most overconfident people use....>

<....Of course, the Supreme Court must still decide cases: It cannot say “I don’t know” and stop there. But crafting decisions that honestly confess when a legal question is hard could be liberating. Such candor would allow the court to achieve other important aims — shoring up trust in the democratic process and congressional lawmaking, preserving legal stability by deferring to earlier rulings and doing the least harm possible.

Indeed, the court used to engage in just such a humbler approach. Even three years ago, for example, in a dispute involving then-President Trump's effort to block a New York subpoena seeking his financial records, the court didn't simply assert that it could uncover a singular answer in the Constitution. Instead, it recognized the important interests on both sides of the case and asked which side — Trump or New York — could more easily minimize the harm of an adverse ruling. Because Trump had better options for avoiding burdensome subpoenas than New York had for obtaining the information necessary for its criminal investigation, the ruling went against Trump.

The justices wisely took the same approach in other divisive disputes in 2020 — over LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and a second Trump subpoena case (this time, they ruled in Trump’s favor). By pointing out productive, post-defeat responses to each of these decisions, the court made sure that the losing groups would have options for recourse other than attacking the court’s credibility.

And it worked. It is hard to imagine now, but a bipartisan 58% of Americans approved of the court in 2020. Sadly, with the new makeup of the court since Justice Ruth Ginsburg's death in 2020, the court has abandoned humility in favor of overconfidence and its public support has fallen precipitously, with just 40% of Americans backing the justices.

In the 2023-24 term, the Supreme Court will decide major issues such as the constitutionality of gun restrictions for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders and the future of the administrative state. The justices' willingness to acknowledge complexity in the cases will be as important as their bottom-line decisions.

The key to restoring the public’s trust in the Supreme Court is not for the justices to confidently bellow that they are always right, or to complain that the court must be treated as if it were above reproach. Just the opposite. The justices should admit that they don’t have all the answers and allow the court to resume the modest role in society that serves it — and the American people — best.>

<Donald Trump has called for the judge in his most recent federal indictment to be removed from the case after she issued a ruling against him.

The ex-president launched his attack on District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan on Sunday morning, days after he appeared before her in court to plead not guilty to four federal charges stemming from a Department of Justice investigation into his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the subsequent January 6 attack on the Capitol.

The day after the arraignment took to Truth Social with a post seemingly threatening revenge on those pursuing him.

“IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” the ex-president wrote.

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team cited that post in a Friday request for Judge Chutkan to issue a protective order that would limit what discovery evidence Mr Trump and his legal can share publicly.

The judge responded by giving Mr Trump’s team until 5pm Monday to respond to the request and pitch amendments to the prosecution’s proposed order.

Mr Trump’s team asked for a three-day extension to respond, but that request was denied by Judge Chutkan.

Then came another Truth Social post attacking the judge.

“THERE IS NO WAY I CAN GET A FAIR TRIAL WITH THE JUDGE ‘ASSIGNED’ TO THE RIDICULOUS FREEDOM OF SPEECH/FAIR ELECTIONS CASE. EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS, AND SO DOES SHE!” he wrote.

“WE WILL BE IMMEDIATELY ASKING FOR RECUSAL OF THIS JUDGE ON VERY POWERFUL GROUNDS, AND LIKEWISE FOR VENUE CHANGE, OUT IF (sic) D.C.”

That post goes to the heart of prosecutors’ argument for why the protective order is needed: Mr Trump’s prolific use of social media.

“All the proposed order seeks to prevent is the improper dissemination or use of discovery materials, including to the public,” prosecutors wrote in the protective order request.

"Such a restriction is particularly important in this case because the defendant has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him,” it continued.

Mr Trump has continuously attacked prosecutors, judges, witnesses and more involved in his many legal battles to maintain his innocence and discredit their arguments.

Before the indictment against the ex-president was made public on 1 August, Mr Trump used Truth Social to inform his followers he expected to be federally indicted at 5pm and called the prosecutor, Jack Smith, “deranged”.

The protective order would limit what Mr Trump and his attorneys could publicly say in order to protect the integrity of the case.

Mr Trump’s campaign issued a statement regarding the request for the protective order saying, “The Truth post cited is the definition of political speech, and was in response to the RINO, China-loving, dishonest special interest groups and Super PACs, like the ones funded by the Koch brothers and the Club for No Growth.”

Mr Trump’s attorneys have publicly used the First Amendment as a defence against the indictment which charges Mr Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights and obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct, an official proceeding.

They have argued that the statements Mr Trump issued claiming there was election fraud and he actually won the 2020 election were only “political speech” and he had a right to say them.

The indictment clearly mentions that while Mr Trump had the right to say what he wanted he unlawfully took steps to try and change election results in his favour.>

<Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., slammed former President Donald Trump’s legal defense in his criminal case over the 2020 election as “deranged.”

A former member of the now-dissolved House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Raskin went after John Lauro, one of the attorneys representing Trump, for saying a “technical violation” of the Constitution is not a violation of criminal law.

“Our Constitution is designed to stop people from trying to overthrow elections and trying to overthrow the government,” Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But in any event, there's a whole apparatus of criminal law which is in place to enforce this constitutional principle. That's what Donald Trump is charged with violating.”

The sprawling indictment over Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election alleges Trump knowingly spread false claims of election fraud as part of his strategy to subvert his loss. Trump’s lawyers have argued the First Amendment protects him from the charges outlined against the former president.

“That’s deranged. That is a deranged argument,” Raskin said. The Jan. 6 committee, the Maryland lawmaker said, saw testimony and evidence that shows Trump was aware there were no credible claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

Raskin pointed to Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021, where the Senate, which requires a two-thirds vote to convict the accused, voted to acquit Trump 57-43. Back then, Raskin claimed, Trump escaped the rule of law, but now he has “met his match.”

“I think that he's met his match now in a special counsel who is holding him to the letter of the criminal law,” Raskin said.>

<Donald Trump and his legal team are escalating efforts to discredit and delay a trial over his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as his fight to avert criminal convictions becomes ever more indistinguishable from his presidential campaign.

The former president’s attorney Sunday vowed to petition to relocate the trial from Washington, DC, claiming that a local jury won’t reflects the “characteristics” of the American people. And as prosecutors seek a speedy trial, he warned that his team will seek to run out the process for years in an apparent attempt to move it past the 2024 election.

Trump demanded the judge set to hear the case recuse herself in a flurry of assaults on the process that may fail legally, but will play into his campaign narrative that he is a victim of political persecution by the Biden administration designed to thwart a White House comeback.

Trump pleaded not guilty when he was arraigned in Washington last week – his third such plea in a criminal case in the past four months. But his new efforts to tarnish an eventual trial in this case mirror his long-term strategy of seeking to delegitimize any institution – including the courts, the Justice Department, US intelligence agencies and the press – that contradicts his narrative or challenges his power.

They unfolded as the precarious nature of his position after his third indictment began to sink in and the ramifications for the 2024 election widened.

Mike Pence, speaking on CNN this weekend, did not rule out providing testimony in a Trump trial if compelled, which would be a staggering potential scenario for a vice president to provide evidence against his ex-running mate.

Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, dismissed one of the arguments the ex-president and his allies have turned to – that he was simply exercising his right to freedom of speech in seeking to reverse the election result in 2020. Barr, who told Trump there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud during his final weeks in office, also said Sunday that “of course” he would appear as a witness at the trial if asked.

Trump’s status as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination has left his rivals with a painful political tightrope walk as they seek to take advantage of his plight while avoiding alienating GOP primary voters. But several candidates stiffened their criticism of the former president over the issue this weekend as campaigning heated up.

Pence said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that in the tense days ahead of Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s election, Trump asked him to put loyalty to him above his oath to the Constitution and halt the process. “I’m running for president in part because I think anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence told Dana Bash.

And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went a tiny bit further in his criticism of Trump, while still arguing that the Biden administration is weaponizing justice against the former president. On a campaign swing through Iowa on Friday, DeSantis – who is battling to preserve his tottering status as the No. 2 Republican in primary polls – said Trump’s false claims about election fraud were “unsubstantiated.”

The fast-moving developments since Trump’s indictment last week are offering a preview of one of the most monumental criminal trials in American political history. They also suggest this case, and two others in which Trump has pleaded not guilty – to mishandling of classified documents and to charges arising out of a hush money payment to an adult film actress – are certain to deepen a corrosive national political estrangement.....>