<The Supreme Court announced last week that it would take up a case considering restrictions on the most widely-used method of abortion in the United States: the abortion pill. Under a worst-case scenario for American women, that case could have triggered a full reversal of the Food and Drug Administration's approval of mifepristone, cutting off access to the medication across the country. That didn't happen. The Supreme Court said it would only consider a more narrow set of questions about regulatory changes that have made the abortion pill more accessible in recent years. It could significantly limit access to mifepristone, but won't end it altogether.

But it may not matter how the high court rules if Republicans win the presidency next November. That's because GOP operatives have already crafted an expansive blueprint, 887 pages long, laying out in painstaking detail how they intend to govern, including plans to leverage virtually every arm, tool and agency of the federal government to attack abortion access. The document explicitly names their intention not just to rescind FDA approval for the abortion pill if they regain control of the White House in 2024, but to revive a 150-year-old law that criminalizes sending or receiving through the mail any "article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing" that could be used to facilitate an abortion. That law, the Comstock Act, is viewed as a de facto federal abortion ban by reproductive rights advocates and anti-abortion activists alike.

Those plans - and many more, including proposals to attack contraception access, use the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to increase "abortion surveillance" and data collection, rescind a Department of Defense policy to "prohibit abortion travel funding," punish states that require health insurance plans to cover abortion, and retool a law that is currently protecting pregnant women with life-threatening conditions - are outlined in Project 2025's "Mandate for Leadership."

Project 2025 is an initiative of the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing think tank that has helped staff and set the agenda for every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan. It describes Project 2025 as "the conservative movement's unified effort to be ready for the next conservative administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025."

For the last 40 years, Heritage has released a similarly detailed list of policy recommendations before every presidential contest. The organization has a strong track record of exerting influence: Reagan enacted roughly half of the recommendations his first year in office. But Donald Trump bearhugged Heritage's agenda: In 2018, just one year into his administration, Heritage boasted that Trump had already implemented two-thirds of their policy recommendations, the most of any president since the organization's founding.

There is good reason to believe that Trump, if nominated and elected, would find this new set of recommendations even more compelling than he did in his first term. That's because it was drafted with extensive input from many of his allies, advisers and appointees. Among the groups that contributed are America First Legal (led by high-ranking Trump administration officials Stephen Miller and Gene Hamilton), the Conservative Partnership Institute (where Mark Meadows, Trump's last chief of staff, is a senior partner) and the Center for Renewing America (helmed by Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump). High-ranking Trump administration officials even authored individual chapters of the report, including its recommendations to dramatically restrict abortion access.

The chapter that envisions reshaping the Department of Health and Human Services was authored by the Heritage Foundation's vice president for domestic policy, Roger Severino, who served as the head of HHS' Office of Civil Rights under Trump. "Now that the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the Constitution contains no right to an abortion, the FDA is ethically and legally obliged to revisit and withdraw its initial approval" of mifepristone, Severino writes. (Incidentally, Severino's wife, Carrie, is the president of the Judicial Crisis Network, the dark money group that spent tens of millions of dollars on advocacy campaigns that helped cement the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative supermajority responsible for ending the federal right to abortion.).....>

<....Writing for Project 2025, Severino calls abortion pills "the single greatest threat to unborn children" now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. He proposes that, as an "interim step," the next HHS secretary immediately reimpose old regulations that required the pill be dispensed in-person, under a doctor's supervision, a requirement researchers have long argued is unnecessary. His proposal would also shorten the period in which mifepristone could be prescribed to terminate pregnancies: 7 weeks gestation or less, compared to 10 weeks today.

Severino suggests that reimposing the old rules as a stop-gap measure while the HHS secretary works to revoke mifepristone's FDA approval, which he declares, in language echoing the anti-abortion activists who brought the lawsuit challenging the drug's approval, was the result of a "politicized approval process" and "illegal from the start." (More than 100 studies conducted over a 30-year span have found that in 99 percent of instances, mifepristone works with no complications at all, making it safer than many common drugs, including Tylenol and Viagra.)

Elsewhere, Severino complains that the CDC's "abortion surveillance" system is "woefully inadequate," and proposes turning the agency into a kind of snitch network that would collect data about who had abortions and where - and punish any states that refuse to share that information. "Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother's state of residence, and by what method," Severino writes.

Severino declined an interview request, and did not respond to emailed questions about his proposals.

Read together with the proposals to begin enforcing the Comstock Act, Mary Ziegler, a professor at UC Davis School of Law and one of the preeminent historians of abortion in America, says the data collection plan "is essentially setting the table for investigations to take place later."....>

<....Discussion of reviving the Comstock Act - a 150-year old vice law that criminalized the circulation of "obscene, lewd or lascivious" publications - appears among the policy proposals for the Department of Justice. That section was drafted by Gene Hamilton, who worked in Trump's DOJ and Department of Homeland Security. Today, he heads America First Legal with Stephen Miller. Renewing enforcement of Comstock is an idea that has been promoted on the vanguard of the anti-abortion movement by activists like Mark Lee Dickson - one of the chief figures behind local ordinances banning abortion and abortion "trafficking" - who has touted Comstock's potential as a "de facto abortion ban."

The inclusion of Comstock in this document is somewhat stunning, though, and it marks one of the first times that the idea has been embraced openly by anyone near the mainstream of the Republican Party. Hamilton writes: "Following the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs, there is now no federal prohibition on the enforcement of [the Comstock Act]. The Department of Justice in the next conservative administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such pills." He refers specifically to providers and distributors of pills, but, Ziegler notes, "he deliberately quotes language that's much, much broader than that."

Under the broadest interpretation of Comstock, Ziegler says, health care providers, distributors - and even pregnant women themselves - could be arrested and prosecuted for sending or receiving the abortion medication and emergency contraception in the mail. Hamilton himself writes that federal law prohibits mailing "[e]very article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion" - a virtually endless list.

The attacks on mifepristone and resurrection of Comstock stand out as particularly harmful proposals, but they are only two of the dozens of ways the Republicans behind Project 2025 envision restricting access to abortion and contraception if they win the White House next year. Elsewhere in the document, there are proposals to eliminate the morning-after pill from the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate under the rationale that it is a "potential abortifacient"; to revoke a Biden-era rule that allows members of the military and their dependents who are stationed in states with abortion bans to seek medical care in other states; to prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds; to punish states that require insurance to cover abortion; and to end the requirement that hospitals provide medically necessary abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act and, separately, use the law to "investigate" hospitals and doctors who provide abortions.

The chapter on the U.S. Agency for International Development suggests not only that the next administration remove references to "abortion," "reproductive health," and "sexual and reproductive rights" from all agency materials, but also propose creating a new position that would involve, among other responsibilities, pressing the United Nations for "assurances that language promoting abortion will be removed from U.N. documents, policy statements and technical literature."

The Trump campaign did not respond to an inquiry about Project 2025, and whether the former president would seek to implement its policy recommendations on abortion if he wins a second term next year. Trump has previously resisted pressure to commit to a 15-week national abortion ban like some of his rivals for the GOP nomination, and Rolling Stone has reported on his intention to campaign as a "moderate" on abortion in the general election, despite having appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn federal protections for abortion rights.

Project 2025, meanwhile, is already pre-screening applicants for jobs in the next Republican administration, filtering out candidates based on their answers to a list of questions, including whether they agree or disagree with the statement: "Life has a right to legal protection from conception to natural death.">

<[Event "Boston Met League"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1985.02.23"]
[EventDate "1985"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Provost, Daniel"]
[ECO "A40"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "9th Harvard Open"] [Site "Cambridge Mass"]
[Date "1985.03.03"]
[EventDate "1985"]
[Round "3"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Hertan, Charles"]
[ECO "E13"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "9th Harvard Open"] [Site "Cambridge Mass"]
[Date "1985.03.03"]
[EventDate "1985"]
[Round "4.14"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Boudrot, Ed"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "B13"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "West Suburban Winter Grand Prix"] [Site "Framingham Mass"]
[Date "1988.01.31"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "4"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Boudrot, Ed"]
[Black "Bartley, Daniel"]
[ECO "E11"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<A recent report by the Heritage Foundation warns that, of all the threats facing the United States, none have "grown as fast, or in a manner as difficult to understand, as the danger from cyberattacks."

This fact is not lost on Michael G McLaughlin, a cybersecurity specialist and ex-US Navy Intelligence officer, and William J Holstein, a veteran journalist who has written numerous books on tech-related threats. The duo's new book, aptly titled "Battlefield Cyber" expertly outlines the cyberthreats facing the United States. Specifically, the cyberthreats facing the US from countries like China and Russia.

When readers think of a catastrophic cyberthreat, as the authors note, they usually imagine a "Cyber 9/11" or a "Cyber Pearl Harbor." Such scenarios, however, are highly unlikely.

As the duo write, America won't be brought to its knees in one hour or one day; instead, it will be brought to its knees over the course of many hours, days, weeks, and years. Nations crippled by the effects of cyberwarfare die a death by a thousand cuts.

Throughout the book, the authors highlight a range of threats, including Kremlin-sponsored ransomware and the infiltration of U.S. defense industries by Beijing-backed actors. China, suggest the authors, poses a bigger threat than Russia.

In fact, not only does China pose a bigger threat than Russia, it now appears to be a more dominant cyber force than the US. China's ascendancy is driven by two equally important factors: (1) It's vastly superior espionage capabilities (2) The numerous vulnerabilities of the American system, including its overreliance on Chinese markets, driven largely by U.S. businesses desperate to cash in on a huge market.

On the second point, the authors warn that all businesses, including US-owned ones, are compelled to share their cyber source codes as a condition for operating in China. This, they warn, creates an entirely asymmetric situation, giving Beijing an upper hand over lawmakers in D.C. Furthermore, as the book discusses, Russian and Chinese actors regularly use Made in America platforms to spread misinformation and further divide the American people. In addition to shedding light on the actions and intentions of the United States' adversaries, McLaughlin and Holstein also offer some strategies to avert a cyber-related disaster. These include greater levels of training and vigilance, as well as the introduction of legislation mirroring the CHIPS and Science Act, which was designed to strengthen the U.S. semiconductor industry....>

Backatcha.....

Note: you do <not> dictate content here.

<....Holstein, one of the authors of the book, tells the Daily Express US that "the United States and its allies around the world have not yet truly woken up to the nature of the threat posed to them by the authoritarian states of China, Russia and Iran."

"We can see clearly that they have created a kind of entente," he adds, "and are cooperating to support wars against Western interests in Ukraine and the Middle East."

China and Russia, according to Holstein, have mastered the art of penetrating the United States' Information Technology systems, which are all linked to the Internet. However, they have slightly different but overlapping interests. "The Chinese," he adds, "have stolen billions of dollars worth of technology, including the design for their new Fujian aircraft carrier (a dead knockoff of America's Gerald R. Ford class of carriers.) Seeking to shape the global discourse, they are using Artificial Intelligence to plant disinformation in the West's social media. The widespread use of TikTok and other Chinese applications has given the People's Republic the ability to engage in cognitive warfare by, for example, amplifying the voices of younger Americans who are dissatisfied with their economic prospects and therefore with President Biden."

In effect, Beijing is already interfering in American politics and, in the words of Holstein, "in the politics of every democracy in the world."

As for the Russians, they "are most interested in using ransomware to extort billions of dollars from the West's schools, hospitals and companies of all sizes. That serves the shared goal of undermining confidence in our own institutions."

Both countries, according to Holstein, "have planted malware in the critical infrastructure supporting the U.S. military and the rest of civilization as we know it. The Americans almost certainly have returned the favor, but our best guess is that the West's penetration of the authoritarian states is not as extensive because at the end of the day, they are closed systems. Their governments control their telecommunications. There is no private sector."

Which begs the questions: What can be done? What must be done? And what happens if nothing is done?

"The first step," he says, involves "accepting the nature of the threats. Big Tech has emerged as an important tool for the Chinese and Russians because its software is porous. CEOs and boards of companies of all sizes heed the siren call of profit and simply do not invest enough in the security of their data. Perhaps the greatest challenge is to find new ways for the public and private sectors to collaborate."

Holstein finishes by stating the following: "Critical infrastructure is owned mostly by the private sector, which resents government efforts to persuade it to spend more on resilience and extra capacity. And the 300,000 companies in the Defense Industrial Base have fought off efforts by the Pentagon to audit their IT systems to safeguard their security. The result is that the Chinese have been able to engage in wholesale theft of the personally identifying information of the top leadership of the U.S. Navy, the maintenance schedule for American ships in the Pacific, and other information that would be crucial in any military confrontation. In short, the traditional checks and balances in a democratic system have prevented a coherent response."

In other words, radical changes are needed. And if these changes don't come, the United States may, in the not so distant future, find itself in the most precarious position imaginable. The thousandth cut is not far away, it seems.>

<A rare instance when we can take hiz word as gospel.>

<No time for the Grinch. Let's tell tales of the Three Wise Men. Sorry, we're full up at my palace for Christmas. Besides, your inflated ego wouldn't fit through the garage door. (Don't forget, you are anti-religion. The real Virgin Mary was blessed.) It is all prophecy fulfilled; God's word is for real:

Need something to do without FTB to stalk? There are candlelight services on Christmas Eve. Go caroling door-to-door. Help a homeless person and you'll both feel better. If that's asking too much, empty your wallet in the Salvation Army gift pot. They accept American Express, too. Give 'til it hurts.>

<China spent much of the year continuing its attempt to position itself as the new global superpower while strengthening alliances aimed at undercutting American influence around the world.

The end of 2022 in China was a point of nearly unprecedented turmoil, with citizens of the country taking to the streets to protest the government's draconian "zero COVID" policies and calling for freedom in human rights.

"People across China took extraordinary risks to publicly demonstrate for their human rights," Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch, said in the organization's 2023 World Report.

"Governments around the world should support people’s rights to free speech and peaceful protest, and hold the Chinese government accountable for rights abuses committed at home and abroad."

But that moment proved short-lived in a country well-known for crushing dissent, with China spending much of 2023 refocusing its aims on becoming the world's premier power.

Chinese President Xi Jinping ended 2022 by breaking a longstanding Chinese tradition of handing over power after two terms, naming himself as party general secretary in October and setting the stage for an unprecedented third term.

In March 2023, Xi officially won a third five-year term as president, winning a largely ceremonial vote, 2,952 to 0. The move put the world leader, who will turn 71 in 2024, on track to be in power for life.

The Chinese president then immediately set out to bolster the Communist Party's grip on society, according to a Voice of America report, leading a series of reforms that put more government institutions directly under party control.

Along with the likely lifelong extension to his presidency, Xi was also unanimously named commander of the Chinese military, setting the stage for an aggressive 2023.

A visit by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in the summer of 2022 may have marked a turning point in the decades-long dispute over the status of the self-governing island that China has long claimed as its rightful territory. Infuriated by the visit of the American leader, the Chinese military launched a series of exercises in the narrow Taiwan Strait, using its navy to encircle the island while sending scores of warplanes to make passes near Taiwan's airspace.

While the military activity around Taiwan spiked in the summer of 2022, increased incursions became more common throughout 2023. From October 2020 until the summer of 2022, monthly Chinese military aircraft making incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ) topped 200 flights just one time, according to numbers compiled by NPR. Since Pelosi's visit, monthly sorties into the ADIZ have topped 200 four times, including a record 103 military aircraft in one day in September of this year.

If China's intentions in Taiwan were not clear by the aggressive military maneuvers, Xi bluntly made them so during a trip to the U.S. earlier this year. Meeting with President Biden during the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco, Xi told the president that China will reunify Taiwan with mainland China, according to an NBC report, though he noted that the timing of the reunification had yet to be decided.

The blunt message gained increased attention from U.S. officials familiar with the talks, according to the report, who noted the timing of Xi's remarks align with the Chinese military's aggressive actions over the past year.

U.S. military leaders have long predicted that Xi would move to take Taiwan by 2025 or 2027, with CIA Director William Burns saying this year that intelligence shows the Chinese leader has directed the country's military to be ready for an invasion of the self-governing island by 2027.

"Now, that does not mean that he’s decided to conduct an invasion in 2027 or any other year, but it’s a reminder of the seriousness of his focus and his ambition," Burns said at the time.

China's military aggression in 2023 has not been limited to Taiwan, with the country's activities in the South China Sea also raising tensions between Beijing and the Philippines. Those tensions came to a head in October when a group of five Chinese coast guard ships, eight accompanying vessels and two navy ships formed a blockade that prevented two Philippine coast guard ships and two other boats from delivering food and supplies to Filipino forces stuck on a marooned navy ship at Second Thomas Shoal.....>

More ta foller....

<....At one point during the tense standoff, two of the Philippine ships were hit by a Chinese coast guard vessel, causing international outrage.

The flare-up of tensions in the South China Sea between the two countries invoked a response by the U.S., which vowed to uphold a decades-old security treaty between the U.S. and the Philippines should the country come under military attack.

"The United States stands with our Philippine allies in the face of the People’s Republic of China coast guard and maritime militia’s dangerous and unlawful actions obstructing an October 22 Philippine resupply mission to Second Thomas Shoal," the State Department said in a statement.

China has also spent much of 2023 forging alliances with countries opposed to U.S. interests, including North Korea and Russia.

Last month, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sounded an alarm over increased cooperation between Russia, China and North Korea aimed at expanding the three countries' military capabilities and helping North Korean leader Kim Jong Un work around crippling international sanctions.

"We are deeply concerned that the PRC and Russia are helping the DPRK to expand its capabilities by enabling it to evade sanctions from the U.N. Security Council," Austin said during a U.N. command summit.

The warning came as similar concerns were shared by South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik, who noted that the three countries formed an alliance during the Korean War.

"If countries that assisted North Korea during the Korean War decide to support it again, they will face consequences similar to those of North Korea," said Shin.

But China has continued to express a desire to deepen ties with North Korea, including a July letter from Xi to Kim that referenced the two nations' "comradeship written with blood."

"No matter how the international storm changes, safeguarding, consolidating and developing relations between China and North Korea will always be a firm policy direction of the Chinese Communist Party and the government," Xi wrote in the letter, according to Chinese state media.

Meanwhile, China has continued to serve as a critical lifeline to Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who have been largely cut off from the international community as the country continues its war against neighboring Ukraine.

China's commitment to that relationship was made clear in September by Yang Jiechi, director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, who vowed continued cooperation aimed toward creating a new "international order."

"The Chinese side is willing to work with the Russian side to continuously implement high-level strategic cooperation between the two countries, safeguard common interests and promote the development of the international order in a more just and reasonable direction," the Chinese official said.

The military aggression in Asia and China's support of U.S. adversaries has continued to strain the relationship between Beijing and Washington. Nowhere was that tension more evident than after an infamous incident this year that saw a Chinese spy balloon fly across the continental United States.

The spy balloon, which was initially spotted over Alaska in January, drifted all the way to the East Coast before it was shot down over the Atlantic by the U.S. military.

While U.S. intelligence assessed in June that the balloon, which China said was merely a weather balloon that escaped its control, had intelligence collection capabilities, it is believed that countermeasures prevented the rogue aircraft from transmitting any data from the U.S. to China during its flight over the United States.

Nevertheless, the incident increased what were already tense relations between China and the U.S., even causing Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a planned visit to China in the aftermath of its appearance over American airspace.

Relations remained tense from there, with U.S. officials working for months to secure a meeting between Biden and Xi at last month's APEC summit in San Francisco in hopes of bringing the temperature down.

In the aftermath of that meeting, Biden noted the need for the U.S. and China to avoid conflict.

"We’re in a competitive relationship, China and the United States, but my responsibility is to make this rational and manageable, so it doesn’t result in conflict," Biden said at a news conference after the meeting. "That’s what I’m all about. That’s what this is about.">

<Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL-Ret.) on Saturday blew up a popular right-wing conspiracy theory, saying some who spread the misinformation were briefed alongside him on the facts.

Kinzinger, who has recently been in the news for jumpstarting a meme about how bad "Trump smells," took to social media to destroy the "Seth Rich" theory. The conspiracy theory, which some say helped propel Donald Trump to the White House, alleges that the slain Democratic National Committee staffer was killed because he was somehow involved in leaking stolen emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election campaign.

But as Kinzinger tells it, some who spread that theory are "knowingly lying" about it.

"Any Republican politician that lends credence to [Seth Rich] conspiracies is knowingly lying," Kinzinger wrote. "We were briefed as to how Russia got DNC emails. If they bother to care."

The former lawmaker then added that there is "always a victim narrative to profit from," calling them "[w]eaklings."

In a follow-up post on Substack, Kinzinger went even further regarding the "victim narrative."

"The whining, weak, brittle, fragile, delicate, feeble, puny, victim mentality of the MAGA movement is one of the most transparently sad, snowflakey, and pitiful movements really in American history," he wrote. "The incessant whining followed by the usual deflection of some harsh attack that reasonable adults would eschew has really reached a boiling point in my tolerance of typical and normal political dialogue."

He added that he was initially attracted to Republicanism because of his "belief that a man could set his own destiny, defend his own family, live his own life, and leave others alone to live theirs."

"The MAGA movement has become an infectious disease of helplessness and victimhood unlike any I can remember. Donald Trump himself is a master victim, suing everyone, everything, yelling loudly about how he is a poor victim of the 'deep state,' Rinos, DOJ, FBI, China, Germany, Mars, the sun, and any other possible force of nature," he then added. "But his victim mentality has spread to the GOP at large, and its [sic] the most annoying and destructive force in the nation. Seriously. This infection has destroyed the GOP.">

<As the Supreme Court’s Jan. 6 insurrection docket piles higher, Justice Clarence Thomas faces mounting calls for his recusal, and former President Donald Trump’s expected appeal of his disqualification in Colorado may cast this campaign into stark relief.

Long before the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling, Democratic lawmakers demanded that the conservative justice step aside in election-related cases because of the political advocacy of his wife Virginia Thomas. Those calls are getting louder even as the prospect grows of yet more big cases and complicated questions before the nation’s highest court that raise more concerns about the George H. W. Bush-era justice's ability to rule fairly.

“Mrs. Thomas has been deeply involved in former President Trump’s attempt to overturn the most recent presidential election, including by attending the January 6th rally whose other attendees later stormed the Capitol, sitting on the board of an organization that led the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, and sending dozens of text messages urging White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to prevent certification of the election results,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., wrote in a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday.

Thomas and his defenders have long argued that justices should not be forced to recuse themselves because of the political beliefs of their spouses. Many legal experts agree with that view, and Republicans hope to preserve one of the most reliably conservative votes on a court that already leans right. If Thomas were to recuse from Trump’s disqualification case, and the vote were close, it would open up the possibility of a 4-4 stalemate. The notion that the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from office has some conservative buy-in, and the removal of a single justice would conceivably allow for a 4-4 split, which would preserve Trump’s ouster from the Colorado ballot — but not make precedent for similar legal battles across the country.

Those who argue for Thomas to recuse note that the Supreme Court is now being forced to reckon with whether efforts to block Joe Biden’s 2020 White House victory amounted to an insurrection.

“The question of whether the activity that Mrs. Thomas engaged in constituted planning for or participating in insurrection would be central to the question of whether or not Donald Trump was involved in planning for aiding or assisting insurrection,” former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner told The Messenger. “It's hard for me to see how the two are separated, and that is a question that I believe a reasonable person would consider to cloud the objectivity of a judge who was asked to pass on that question.”

Virginia Thomas has not been accused of election-related wrongdoing, and she has said that she regrets the messages that she sent to Meadows.

In October, Thomas recused himself in a matter involving Trump’s accused co-conspirator John Eastman, who was once the justice’s law clerk. Thomas never explained why he stepped aside, but legal experts say the reason likely related to his prior professional relationship with Eastman, rather than Eastman’s communications with his wife.

According to Bloomberg Law’s analysis earlier this year, Supreme Court justices have only recused themselves from three percent of all cases since 2018, with Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan most frequently stepping aside. Alito’s stock holdings appear to account for most of his conflicts, and Kagan’s stint as U.S. solicitor general during the Obama administration reportedly account for most of hers.

Justice Thomas has not yet signaled any intent to step away from reviewing any Jan. 6-related cases that await the justices in tandem with a polarized American electorate picking its president in 2024.

So far, there’s just one item on the docket surrounding an accused January 6 rioter who is challenging the Justice Department’s use of a criminal statute tied to the obstruction of an official proceeding — a charge that’s been leveled against Trump and hundreds of his supporters.

But more cases could be piling up soon.

By the end of this week, Trump’s legal allies are expected to file a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court seeking to get the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision overturned.

The justices are expected to get asked at some point in the next month to get involved on Trump’s sweeping claims of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution that would negate Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 2020 election-subversion charges, as well as in a civil defamation case that’s scheduled to go on trial in mid-January. On Friday, the Supreme Court opted to hold off on the criminal immunity question for now and instead let the battle play out at a lower appeals court in Washington, D.C. first.....>

<....Two other high-profile Trump cases also could be on their way to the justices: One involving whether a federal judge can impose a gag order on the former president while he’s running for the White House in 2024 and a separate matter entirely where Meadows, a Trump co-defendant in Georgia's sweeping election-racketeering case, is trying to get the criminal charges moved from state to federal court because the allegations happened while he worked for the U.S. government.

For now, the expectation is that the Supreme Court would look into these cases with a full bunch, but Blumenthal doesn’t think it should.

“Mrs. Thomas’s close interactions with senior Trump administration officials about overturning the 2020 election results—the very subject of the litigation—certainly creates circumstances where Justice Thomas’s ‘impartiality might reasonably be questioned,’” the Connecticut senator and former state attorney general wrote in his letter to Roberts.

Blumenthal’s letter followed another from eight House Democrats earlier this month, but on the Senate side, Blumenthal was the sole signatory. But Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., echoed Blumenthal’s call in public statements.

Facing attacks from the left and right on the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, Roberts has tried to insulate the institution from accusations of partisanship, and he instituted an ethical code for the first time in its nearly 235-year history, largely in reaction to pay-to-play allegations against Thomas. ProPublica’s investigative reporting showed that Thomas accepted gifts, vacations, real estate, and other largesse from conservative billionaire Harlan Crow. Thomas denied any conflicts of interests, but critics note that Crow’s political activism supports causes that regularly land before the court.

Asked whether Thomas should recuse himself, legal expert Philip Allen Lacovara answered flatly: “Yes, of course, but he won’t.”

Thomas agreed to recuse himself from a case involving Eastman, his former law clerk, but the conservative justice has long denied that his wife’s election-related activities pose a conflict of interest for him.

Since his famously contentious confirmation proceedings, Thomas has reacted with defiance against allegations of wrongdoing. Thomas compared scrutiny of sexual harassment accusations from Anita Hill to lynchings, and he preemptively attacked ProPublica before the news organization published a report on his financial links to Crow.

“He has been ethically tone deaf for decades, and there is little reason to believe that the recent flap leading to a fig-leaf of an ethics code has done anything more than make him feel more bitter and more aggrieved,” said Lacovara, a former deputy U.S. solicitor general and legal counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor's office.

The calls for Thomas’s recusal in Jan. 6-related cases are growing, though mostly in Democratic circles in the House and Senate. In a social media post, law professor Richard Painter called Thomas’s recusal a “no-brainer.”

Not all legal experts agree. “Recusal in this case by Thomas would effectively establish he’ll recuse himself from any case involving a January 6 defendant or these criminal matters,” said Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University School of Law who defended Trump during his first impeachment and teaches a course on the Supreme Court. “It’s hard to believe Thomas would adopt such a blanket recusal position given his past reluctance to recuse himself from various cases.”

Former federal prosecutor David Weinstein noted that Virginia Thomas is not an accused co-conspirator in any election-interference case, and her name does not appear in the final report released by the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“If she was the subject of a case, and he was being asked to decide about it, he'd recuse,” Weinstein said. “There'd be no question about any of that, but that's not really what's going on here. What's going on is it involves a topic that she was very vocal about and that we believe he is aligned with his wife.”

Married couples, Weinstein added, do not always share political opinions.>

<House Republicans have been criticized for authorizing an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden with no evidence of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that typically merit the process. A recent New York Times report has now revealed that one of their chief pieces of evidence doesn't pass muster when analyzing it in its proper context.

While questioning a forensic accountant in September, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) alleged that a text message from Hunter Biden to his daughter, Naomi alluding to giving half of his salary to his father constituted "a potential money laundering operation or potential pay-for-play operation." hinting at illegal "money going from son to father."

“I Hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family Fro[sic] 30 years,” Hunter wrote to his daughter in the January 2019 text message. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

The New York Times' Adam Entous delved into the history that led to the text, which Hunter Biden sent while he was in the throes of addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine. At the time, the Bidens were on vacation at a ski resort in Wyoming, when Naomi's younger sister Finnegan texted her that she had injured herself in a skiing accident. While Finnegan's mother, Kathleen Buhle — who divorced Hunter in 2017 — wanted her to receive treatment for her broken tibia in Washington, DC, where she lived, her father wanted her to be treated by a New York-based orthopedic surgeon recommended to Hunter by the doctor handling his drug rehabilitation treatment. Finnegan ultimately chose to go to DC, which angered Hunter and prompted him to send that text in a drug-fueled rage.

Hunter Biden's reference to giving his father half his salary stems from his time as a college student at Georgetown University in DC, where his freshman year roommate Ted Dziak recalled to the Times that Hunter frequently worked odd jobs even though his father had been a US senator for more than a decade at the time. Dziak said Hunter referenced "a million times" that his father said he could "keep half of the paycheck" from his jobs but "hand over the other half for 'room and board.'"

The Times reported that Hunter Biden frequently invoked that story when his daughters attended Sidwell Friends — a tony private school whose students typically come from wealthy families — and worried that his children were becoming spoiled. Naomi Biden told the Times that during her senior year at the University of Pennsylvania, her father encouraged her to get a job at a local Greek restaurant in order to be more self-sufficient.

"He said, 'now that you’re working, I’m taking away your allowance,’” Naomi said. "And I just thought that was the craziest concept that I'd ever heard. So I'm doing this good thing and you’re taking away my allowance? I was so mad at him, so angry, and I specifically remember him in that instance saying, 'when I was in college, I worked every single day, and I even had to give Pop half the money because he was paying for my college education.'"

"I don’t necessarily believe that he gave my Pop half," she added. "It's the classic parent saying, 'you don’t know what it was like for me when I was growing up. I just had it so much harder than you.' Throughout childhood, we would hear that a lot.”>

<[Event "1st Watertown Open"] [Site "Watertown Mass"]
[Date "1988.06.11"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Wolff, Patrick"]
[Black "Seltzer, Robert"]
[ECO "B90"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "FRG-ch International"] [Site "Mannheim BRD"]
[Date "1975.03.??"]
[EventDate "1975"]
[Round "10"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Mallee, Ralph"]
[Black "Lombard, Andre"]
[ECO "B86"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 d6 6.Bc4 Be7 7.Bb3 Na6 8.f4 Nc5 9.Qf3 e5 10.fxe5 dxe5 11.Nf5 Bxf5 12.Qxf5 Qd4 13.Nd5 Nxb3 14.Nxf6+ Bxf6 15.axb3 Rd8 16.Qf3 O-O 17.c3 Qb6 18.b4 a6 19.Be3 Qe6 20.Bc5 Bh4+ 21.g3 Be7 22.Bxe7 Qxe7 23.O-O Rd2 24.Rf2 Rfd8 25.Raf1 f6 26.Rxd2 Rxd2 27.Rf2 Qd8 28.Qe3 Rxf2 29.Kxf2 Qd1 30.Kg2 Qc2+ 31.Kh3 Qxb2 32.Qc5 h5 33.Qc8+ Kh7 34.Qxb7 Qxc3 35.Qxa6 Qxb4 36.Qe2 Kh6 37.Qe3+ Kg6 38.Qf3 Qd2 39.Qf5+ Kh6 40.Qf3 Qc2 41.g4 0-1>

<[Event "FRG-ch International"] [Site "Mannheim BRD"]
[Date "1975.03.??"]
[EventDate "1975"]
[Round "11"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Kestler, Hans-Guenther"]
[Black "Mallee, Ralph"]
[ECO "A15"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "FRG-ch International"] [Site "Mannheim BRD"]
[Date "1975.03.??"]
[EventDate "1975"]
[Round "12"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Mallee, Ralph"]
[Black "Minic, Dragoljub"]
[ECO "B87"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "FRG-ch International"] [Site "Mannheim BRD"]
[Date "1975.03.??"]
[EventDate "1975"]
[Round "13"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Eising, Johannes"]
[Black "Mallee, Ralph"]
[ECO "A03"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "FRG-ch International"] [Site "Mannheim BRD"]
[Date "1975.03.??"]
[EventDate "1975"]
[Round "14"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Mallee, Ralph"]
[Black "Reichenbach, Werner"]
[ECO "B05"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

FRG-ch International (1975)

<House Republicans' pursuit of a far-right policy goal that would disproportionately affect millions of their own constituents may end up costing them their razor-thin majority in 2024.

As part of their negotiations for the next farm bill, Republicans are insisting on instituting even stricter work requirements for the approximately 41 million recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly referred to as food stamps. However, Politico reports that should they be successful in implementing those new requirements, it would result in potentially millions of people no longer receiving food assistance — particularly residents of six GOP-controlled House districts in which more than 20% of households receive SNAP benefits.

"Starving your own constituents of food assistance is not only bad morals. It’s bad politics," Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York), whose district has the highest percentage of SNAP households in the US, told Politico.

According to Politico, five of those six Republican districts are majority-Hispanic. Three of those districts are in Miami-Dade County, which is typically regarded as a Democratic stronghold. And of those three districts, two are represented by relatively new members of Congress. Rep. Maria Elena Salazar (R-Florida) was elected in 2022, replacing longtime Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Florida). Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Florida) was elected in 2020 after defeating Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Florida). Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Florida) represents a district reshaped following the 2020 redistricting cycle, and while reliably Republican, its demographic is predominantly urban and Hispanic.

Salazar, whose district includes roughly 55,000 households receiving SNAP benefits, was noncommittal in whether she supports the proposed new work requirements.

"We must continue to help the most vulnerable who need a hand up, but what we can’t have is a bloated government sending out cash without accountability. It’s critical that we do both," she said.

Republicans have already seen their majority shrink with the expulsion of former Rep. George Santos (R-New York), and Democrats may gain ground depending on the outcome of a February special election in that district. And after the New York Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the Empire State's independent redistricting commission has to draw new congressional redistricting maps, the GOP's representation in New York may dwindle even further. Currently, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) can only afford three defections from his caucus in order to pass legislation, following the December 2023 retirement of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California).>