<Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., took a dig at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reported claim that a doctor found a worm in his brain by bringing up the assassinations of his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy —continuing his streak of controversial tweets.

“You either die a Kennedy with a hole in the brain or live long enough to become a Kennedy with a hole in the brain,” Collins tweeted Wednesday, referencing Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, when he was shot in the head and back in Dallas, and Kennedy Sr.’s 1968 assassination, when he was shot in the head and back in Los Angeles.

Collins’ tweet appeared to reference a claim made by independent presidential candidate Kennedy Jr. that a doctor determined an abnormality on his brain scan “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” the New York Times reported, citing a 2012 deposition Kennedy Jr. gave.

Last week, Collins was widely criticized for sharing a video of dozens of white, male Ole Miss students taunting a Black woman at a pro-Palestinian protest, with some making racist gestures, which Collins captioned “Ole Miss taking care of business.”

Collins also suggested in a February tweet the undocumented Venezuelan migrant, Jose Antonio Ibarra, accused of killing Georgia college student Laken Riley, should be killed, writing that he “would make a great first passenger for the new Pinochet Air,” referring to the so-called death flights deployed by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, in which dissidents and critics are dropped from helicopters. Earlier in February, Collins suggested another migrant who was charged, then later exonerated, in a Times Square attack on NYPD officers should also be a passenger on “Pinochet Air,”. Following widespread outrage over the Ole Miss video, Collins defended his sharing of the footage in a statement, and said he did not believe the racist behavior was “the focal point of the video,” but conceded that “there certainly seems to be some potentially inappropriate behavior that none of us should seek to glorify.” Collins doubled down on his initial “Pinochet Air” post when it appeared to be removed from the platform, but was later reinstated with a warning about violating the site’s community rules, writing “Never delete. Never surrender.”

Kennedy Jr. made the comments about his alleged health issues in a 2012 deposition for divorce proceedings from his second wife, according to the Times. In it, he said he has “cognitive problems, clearly,” including short- and long-term memory loss, conditions he told the Times he has since recovered from. His campaign spokesperson Stefanie Spear told the Washington Post Kennedy Jr. likely contracted the parasite found in his brain, possibly a pork tapeworm, while traveling “extensively in Africa, South America and Asia.”>

<Donald Trump has branded Paul Ryan, as the “most incompetent” speaker of the House of Representatives in US history after Mr Ryan said that Trump won’t get his vote in this year’s presidential election.

Mr Ryan, 54, doubled-down on his belief that Trump is the wrong choice of canditate for the Republicans, stating he has no interest in giving him another shot in the White House, as Trump gets set for a rematch against his successor, Joe Biden.

His rationale, it appears, is simple: Trump lacks the temperament required to lead the US for a second term.

The former vice presidential nominee said he’d write in another Republican’s name as he said he did in 2020, although he claimed he doesn’t “know who yet”. Mr Ryan also said that he disagrees with Biden on policy.

“Character is too important for me,” he said at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Tuesday. “It’s a job that requires the kind of character he just doesn’t have,” he added.

Following a four year stint as House speaker between 2015 and 2019, Mr Ryan was appointed to the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox Corporation’s board of directors in March 2019.

Trump responded using his typically explosive rhetoric and a flurry of capital letters in an early morning outburst on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“Rupert Murdoch should fire pathetic RINO [Republican in Name Only] Paul Ryan from the Board of Fox. Ryan is a loser, always has been, and always will be,” the 77-year-old GOP presidential candidate wrote on Thursday.

“He was the weakest & most incompetent in Speaker of the House in its History. Fox will sink to the absolute bottom of the pack if Paul Ryan has anything to do with it,” he added.

It’s not the first time that Mr Ryan, who was elected to serve Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District in 1998, has criticised Trump’s attempts to return to the White House.

His latest comments come more than a year after declaring that he would not support Trump’s bid for US presidency in February, 2023.

“There are too many people like me in the Republican Party who would not support him if he were the nominee, and that is why I don’t think he’ll be the nominee,” Mr Ryan told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Mr Ryan speculated that the Republicans will “lose the election if we nominate this guy again”. In 2022, he blamed Trump for his party’s poor midterm performance that gave a slim majority to the House.>

<President Biden on Wednesday expressed deep skepticism that former President Trump would accept November’s election results if he loses, calling it “dangerous” behavior from his opponent.

“The guy is not a democrat with a small ‘d,'” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“This is Trump … and he may not accept the outcome of the election? I promise you he won’t,” Biden added. “He won’t, which is dangerous. Look, I travel around the world with other world leaders. You know what they all say? Not a joke, 80 percent of them after you have a major meeting go, ‘You’ve gotta win. My democracy is at stake.'”

Biden cited Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail suggesting he would prosecute his political opponents and his vow to repeal major Democratic legislation that lowered the cost of certain prescription drugs, as well as a pledge to implement a 10 percent tariff on imports.

Trump has continued to push the false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent and rigged against him, despite numerous court cases on the matter being dismissed and election officials at the federal and state level rebutting his claims.

Rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to stop the certification of Biden’s victory after Trump had called for supporters to rally in Washington, D.C., that day.

Last week, the former president indicated he would be reluctant to accept the results if he loses.

“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Trump told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an interview Wednesday. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

One of the core pillars of Biden’s reelection campaign has been warning voters that Trump poses a grave threat to democracy. But Trump leads Biden in battleground state polling, and the two are neck and neck in national polls.

Biden told CNN on Wednesday that he felt good about the state of his campaign, pointing to the strong organization his operation has compared to Trump, who has yet to open field offices in battleground states and has lagged behind in staffing.

“We’re doing the block and tackling. We’re going out and making sure we knock on doors, get folks out the old-fashioned way,” Biden said. “I think I’m feeling good about the trajectory of the campaign. And you know as well as I do, most people don’t really focus and make up their minds until the fall. There’s a lot going on. We’ll see what happens.”>

<One of the few ways in which Donald Trump has improved American politics is in making explicit what was once veiled in implication or euphemism. During the 2016 election, for example, he said what everyone knew but no politicians would acknowledge: That wealthy donors bought access and fealty with their contributions.

These blunt statements have endeared him to supporters who see Trump as a rare figure willing to speak about how special interests and corporations conspire with politicians to screw over ordinary Americans. And because he is a billionaire, they see him as immune to these pressures, wealthy enough to not be beholden in the same way as typical politicians.

That brings us to a Washington Post article this morning. At a Mar-a-Lago meeting in April, oil executives complained that despite pouring hundreds of millions into lobbying the government, the Biden administration had pursued stronger environmental regulations. “Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House,” the Post reports. In exchange, Trump vowed to roll back current regulations and freeze future ones. He told them that, given the savings, a billion bucks would be a “deal” for them.

What Trump was offering is entirely legal and absolutely corrupt. (Or to borrow a phrase: very legal and very uncool.) Thanks to Trump’s bluntness, there can be no hair-splitting about what’s going on here, and that’s good for public understanding. Trump asked special interests for an eye-popping fee in exchange explicit [sic] favors. Trump and the oil companies might argue (dubiously) that their preferred regime would actually be better for consumers, but they are cutting “the people” out of the discussion entirely, subverting democracy. The deal is getting done between Trump and the suits, behind closed doors. It’s a good reminder that Trump’s claim to being an outsider is a sham.

American politics would be healthier if all politicians were so transparent about such deals (though, of course, it would be better were they not making such deals at all). Everyone might “know” that politicians are cutting deals for powerful interests, but they seldom know what exactly those deals are, so it’s hard for them to take it into account when voting. (This is one reason the federal indictment of Senator Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat, is so riveting: The alleged trades are all laid out so plainly.)

Trump, however, has said he’s different. Many people took his frankness about how the system works to mean that he wouldn’t act the same way as the politicians he excoriated. What this report shows is that he’s no different. Trump was describing transactionalism, not critiquing it, and the idea that Donald Trump would ever object to transactionalism is absurd. He’s a grandee in good standing of the Leopards Eating Faces Party.

In fact, he’s arguably worse. An ordinary politician might have approached this situation with a touch more finesse. First, he’d listen to the executives’ concerns. Then, he’d lay out his agenda on energy. Finally, a campaign aide would hit the executives up for donations. That offers a little bit of deniability, which in turns gives a politician in office some wiggle room. It’s not like donors can call him up and say, You made an explicit promise to do this for me! That would be unseemly. If the oil suits produce $1 billion and Trump wins, however, they can do exactly that, since he’s offered an explicit quid pro quo. Not only is he just as beholden to special interests as anyone else, here he’s going out of his way to make himself beholden.

One final tawdry thing about Trump’s offer is the implicit threat it contains. If they don’t pass the hat to produce the cash, Trump might not pursue the same policies—and, as he notes, that could cost them dearly.

Trump runs a real risk to his reputation, as well as his election, by being quite so direct about what he’s offering. One of the biggest scandals in American political history was Teapot Dome, which involved federal officials trading favors to the oil business in exchange for cash. It’s one reason that Warren Harding, the president at the time, has often been ranked among the very worst by historians. (Trump has surpassed him in some recent surveys thanks to his attempt to steal the 2020 election.)

<From eighth grade civics through college government courses to nearly three decades each of working in the House and then the think tank world, I mistakenly believed that Speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives could vote only to break a tie.

My longstanding misunderstanding was shattered last month when, on April 12, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voted to make, not break, a tie, thereby defeating a major amendment offered to the FISA authorization, 212-212. (Tie votes defeat a measure or amendment.)

That development prompted me to look at other roll call votes in recent times. I was startled to discover that Speaker Johnson is a frequent voter. For instance, of the 88 roll call votes cast from March 12 through May 1, 2024, Speaker Johnson voted 59 times (67 percent), and refrained from voting on 29 occasions (33 percent). Most of the outcomes were nowhere near being a tie. I am told by a knowledgeable source that Speaker Johnson’s predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), also voted often as Speaker in this Congress.

This revelation prompted me to look more carefully at the wording of the rule on Speakers’ voting and its history. In the first Congress, in 1789, the rule read: “In all cases of ballots by the House” (now a largely obsolete voting procedure), “the Speaker shall vote; in other cases, he shall not vote, unless the House be equally divided, or unless his vote, if given to the minority, will make the division equal, and, in case of such equal division, the question shall be lost,” as happened with the FISA amendment cited above.

That original House rule on Speakers’ voting closely tracks the Senate rule which is embedded in Article I, section 3, of the Constitution, which reads: “The Vice President of the United States shall be the President of the Senate but shall have no vote unless they be equally divided.”

Both the original House rule and the Senate’s constitutional provision were derived from the British House of Commons’s rule that the Speaker shall be a neutral presiding officer, only voting to break a tie. Speakers of the House of Commons must also resign from their party and not run again on a party label. In the U.S. House, in contrast, the Speaker is a neutral presiding officer when in the chair, but otherwise the leader of the majority party.

According to the footnotes contained in the “House Rules & Manual,” two attempts were made in 1833 and 1837 to amend House rules to require the Speaker to vote at all times. Both efforts were defeated, the former by a roll call vote of 96-122, the latter by voice vote. The main arguments made against that rule change were that (a) Speakers could not explain their votes from the chair; and (b) the change would result in both the Speaker and the House becoming much more partisan....>

<....In 1850, the House changed the rule on Speakers’ voting to read as follows: “He shall not be required to vote in ordinary legislative proceedings, except where his vote would be decisive, or where the House is engaged in voting by ballot, and in all cases of a tie vote the question shall be lost.”

As the footnote to the rule explains, the Speaker was granted “the same right to vote as other members.” It should be noted, though, that members are required to vote, while the Speaker’s votes are discretionary. The footnote also informs us that the Speaker’s name does not appear on the voting roll from which members’ names are called, meaning if Speakers do not vote, they are not listed as “not voting.”

The footnote in the most recent Manual, published at the beginning of the current 118th Congress, states that the right of the Speaker to vote on any matter has “historically rarely been exercised.” Speakers McCarthy and Johnson have blown through that historical precedent of past Speakers’ reticence to vote unless their vote would be decisive.

One can surmise that the new practice in this Congress of Speakers voting most of the time relates to Republicans’ razor thin majority in which any two GOP defectors can defeat their leadership if Democrats vote unanimously in opposition. At the least, the Speaker’s votes send a strong signal to colleagues of the leadership’s formal position on a critical matter.

Looking back on the history of the rule, it is ironic that its first iteration in 1789 coincides with my long-time mistaken belief that the Speaker was prohibited from voting except when that vote would be decisive. I wish I could claim that my original misinterpretation of the Speaker’s voting status today derives from my failure to realize that the 1789 rule had been changed in 1850 to give the Speaker discretion in voting, but I can’t. I hadn’t bothered to read either version, and had no reason to until now.

There is a tendency to coast on shorthand misperceptions until a jarring change in conditions forces us to take a closer look. A new precedent has been set in this Congress for more frequent voting by Speakers. It will likely be followed in future congresses, regardless of which party is in control.>

<Two of former President Donald Trump’s prospective running mates come with politically fraught complications: the Republican governors who would choose their successors.

If Trump goes with Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis would be in line to select his replacement — perhaps immediately if Rubio resigns and relocates to avoid the constitutional hang-up of having both candidates on the ticket residing in the same state. If Sen. JD Vance of Ohio becomes vice president, Gov. Mike DeWine would pick a new senator.

Both governors have recent, fractious histories with Trump, raising doubts about whether the people they appoint would meet the often rigid right-wing standards of his MAGA movement. And while the succession dynamic will not necessarily sink Rubio’s or Vance’s chances of being selected, it is the subject of speculative conversation in both states.

DeSantis and Trump are coming off a bitter clash for the GOP presidential nomination. Though there are signs of détente, enough trust issues remain that the idea of handing DeSantis the power of a Senate appointment is one that Trump world is approaching cautiously.

“Trump does not want to give DeSantis that appointment,” a Trump confidant told NBC News. “It’s something being considered.”

In Ohio, Trump campaigned vigorously against DeWine’s endorsed candidate, state Sen. Matt Dolan, in a recent GOP Senate primary, branding DeWine as a crusty establishment avatar and RINO, or Republican in name only. Many believe Dolan, who lost the primary to Trump-endorsed Bernie Moreno, would be on DeWine’s shortlist to succeed Vance.

“I don’t think Gov. DeWine really is concerned about what President Trump’s thoughts are or what he thinks,” said former Rep. Jim Renacci, who lost a 2022 primary to DeWine and now chairs the Medina County Republican Party. “He’s in his last term. He doesn’t need the blessing of the former president.”

In both cases, a DeSantis or DeWine appointment would be on an interim basis, until the next statewide election is held.

But there might be a way to limit DeSantis' influence over the pick. The Trump confidant described a scenario in Florida, first reported by The Bulwark, in which Rubio would resign from the Senate immediately upon being tapped by Trump. The resignation would be early enough to trigger a special election for the seat. DeSantis would most likely get to appoint someone until the special election was held, but it would be for a limited time.

A Trump ally who has discussed vice presidential options directly with Trump said Rubio “has the biggest upside but is the biggest bank shot,” meaning that he checks many of the boxes Trump wants checked but that the potential pick would come with risks.

“Marco can talk MAGA in Spanish really well,” the person said.

Trump and DeSantis were seen as close after Trump backed DeSantis’ 2018 bid for governor. But their relationship exploded in a very public fashion after DeSantis decided to run against Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination. By the time DeSantis left the race in January, they were regularly attacking each other openly. And while DeSantis promptly endorsed Trump, he also raised concerns that Trump would prioritize “identity politics” in his search for a running mate.

The two recently had breakfast at a South Florida golf club to offer up a public perception that the hatchet has been buried, but Trump allies say there would still be huge skepticism toward the idea of handing DeSantis a Senate appointment.

A Senate vacancy could be a significant public gift for DeSantis. Among those he could consider for the appointment are his wife, Casey; his chief of staff, James Uthmeier; or former state House Speaker Jose Oliva, a longtime ally, according to three longtime Florida Republicans asked about a potential shortlist. DeSantis could also choose to appoint himself to the seat, these sources said.

In Ohio, Vance may have solidified himself as a top VP contender after having shepherded Trump’s endorsement of Moreno — a decision that yielded a big win for Trump in a competitive race. Moreno will face longtime Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown this fall....>

<....A Trump campaign staffer said the growing consensus among GOP operatives is that Vance is “a lock,” though this person left the door open for Trump to pick Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., or someone drawing less buzz.

Trump’s selection process has been closely guarded, with prospects having yet to receive detailed vetting questionnaires and Trump saying he does not expect to make a choice until closer to the Republican National Convention in July.

Choosing Scott would also put the decision about his successor in the hands of a GOP governor, but in that case one who is an unquestionable Trump ally: Henry McMaster of South Carolina. DeWine, himself a former senator, has had far more friction with Trump and his base.

DeWine’s lockdown orders and mask mandates during the early days of the Covid pandemic enraged voters on the right and led to primary challenges from Renacci and others. And in the closing days of this year’s Senate primary, DeWine issued a surprise endorsement of Dolan, whose comparatively moderate politics irked Trump.

David Helmick, a Republican leader in Mahoning County, said he would prefer Vance to stay in the Senate because his positions on U.S. trade policy closely align with those of working-class voters in the Youngstown area.

“If Bernie Moreno somehow ends up losing in November, I would want DeWine to appoint him to Vance’s seat,” Helmick said. “But DeWine will probably end up appointing Matt Dolan since he endorsed him in the primary.”

Others are not so sure.

Ryan Stubenrauch, an adviser and spokesperson on past DeWine campaigns, said he believes DeWine would seek a consensus candidate palatable to both old-guard Republicans and MAGA voters. While Dolan might have been DeWine’s preference of the choices available in the primary, he would have a larger universe to pick from if a Vice President Vance created a vacancy.

“I would say there’s less than a 50% chance that he would pick Dolan,” Stubenrauch said. “If it came to him, he’s no dummy. He’s been in politics for a long time, and so he understands the electorate, he understands people that don’t like him currently.”

Another Ohio GOP strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, agreed.

DeWine “would want his pick to get re-elected, and there’s no way that the Trump wing of the party will accept” Dolan, the strategist said. “There are plenty of people both sides can agree on. It would be the dumbest move. And Mike DeWine is not dumb.”

Other potential appointees mentioned by Ohio Republican insiders include Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who finished third behind Moreno and Dolan in the March Senate primary; former state GOP chair Jane Timken; and former state Supreme Court Justice Judi French. DeWine also could choose to thin what is expected to be a crowded GOP primary field for governor in 2026 by selecting Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, Attorney General Dave Yost or Treasurer Robert Sprague, two GOP sources said.

Less likely is the possibility that DeWine, 77, could appoint himself as a “caretaker” senator who agrees not to run for the full term while giving Husted a chance to run for governor as an incumbent.

“A thousand percent no,” Stubenrauch said when he was asked about the likelihood of that scenario. “A hundred thousand percent no.”>

<A new lawsuit filed against the state of Nevada by the Trump team and its friends in the RNC says a lot about how they plan to suppress the vote in November.

The Republican National Committee along with the Nevada Republican Party and the Donald Trump campaign continued their relentless assault on voting rights Friday with a new lawsuit filed against the state of Nevada. The authoritarians are challenging Nevada’s vote-by-mail rules, which allow mail-in ballots to be counted up to four days after Election Day.

The lawsuit is one of several Trump and his cultists have brought—and one of many more they intend to bring—either attacking mail-in voting or trying to get voters kicked off of registration rolls. The lawsuits are their attempt to do everything they can to prevent people from voting, because, as January 6 reminded them, suppressing the vote is easier than stealing votes after the fact.

This particular lawsuit stirred panic over the weekend when RNC cochair Lara Trump went on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show to try to explain the complaint. Unfortunately, Chairwoman Trump seemed to lack a basic understanding of both the suit in question and our electoral process. During the conversation, Bartiromo suggested that the RNC and its coplaintiffs were asking battleground states to “stop counting ballots past election day” (yes, shut down the whole vote-counting operation when the clock strikes midnight). Trump responded: “Yeah, that’s exactly right, you can’t have ballots counted after elections are over.” Trump went on to say, “We want, on Election Day, for that to be the last day that mail-in ballots can be counted.”

I’m sure Trump and her father-in-law want that. I’m sure they think that timely and legally cast votes should be discarded if the election officials aren’t able to tabulate them all by midnight on Election Day. Instead of counting all the votes, the Trump clan just wants enough votes to be counted for Trump to win, then have everybody go home.

Thankfully, the lawsuit the RNC and Co. paid for against Nevada is not as extreme as Lara Trump made it sound. It doesn’t say anything about the Trump witchcraft of turning all votes into pumpkins should they not be counted by midnight on Election Day. Instead, the lawsuit takes aim at a rule passed by the Nevada legislature in 2021 that said any ballots postmarked by Election Day could be received and counted for up to four days after the election. It also stipulated that mail-in ballots received up to three days after Election Day don’t need to be postmarked; they are presumptively thought to be valid, even without a postmark or if the postmark is unclear.

The first part of this Nevada rule is nothing new: Nineteen states and territories allow mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day as long as they have a postmark on or by Election Day; in fact, Alaska allows mail-in ballots to be received up to 10 days after the election; Illinois and Utah allow ballots to be received up to two weeks after Election Day. The second part of the rule—allowing ballots to be counted even if they don’t have a postmark—is novel, as far as I know.

I like this rule because it doesn’t punish the voter for potential clerical errors at the post office, and I like it because it takes discretion out of the hands of election officials. They don’t have to wonder and argue about when a ballot with, say, a smudged postmark, was actually mailed if they receive it within three days of the election. They can just presume it was validly cast and move on with their work.

If the Republicans were really concerned about mail-in ballots that might not have been validly cast, they would have stayed laser-focused on this postmark issue. I don’t think this issue is a big deal as it’s unlikely that someone would try to mail in a vote after Election Day to take advantage of the new rule, and it would be statistically insignificant if a couple of strange people did do that. But the rules of Trumpworld demand that all mail-in ballots are questioned, even if there is no earthly reason to question them. The RNC lawsuit challenges both of Nevada’s rules. The RNC’s lawyers lack the restraint to keep their antidemocratic screeching to the novel idea of not requiring a postmark and have instead opted to challenge the entire concept of receiving mail-in ballots after Election Day.

In this case, their legal overreach is probably a good thing: The Republicans can huff and puff but shouldn’t be able to blow mail-in ballots away, because the legal authority to challenge these rules doesn’t actually exist.....>

<....The RNC says that Nevada’s rule changes the date of Election Day, which is prescribed by Congress. But that is patently false. Literally every state has its own unique rules for when votes can be cast, when ballots can be mailed, and the procedures for counting and certifying votes. Nevada isn’t changing the date of the election any more than Arizona is when it allows people to vote up to 27 days before Election Day or West Virginia is when it accepts mail-in ballots up to five days after Election Day.

Personally, I think this situation is absurd. I think it is ridiculous that we’re all the way into the 21st century and we still don’t have one national election system. The fact that we have 50 different states with 50 different rules for casting and counting votes in a national election is bonkers and a terrible way to run a democracy. If the RNC is suddenly interested in making national elections fair and reasonable, they should call me or UCLA Law School professor and election law expert Rick Hasen; we have some ideas on how to make elections make sense.

Unfortunately, many of our ideas for how to fix the electoral system require a constitutional amendment, because the Constitution explicitly allows for the every-state-for-itself system of elections we have today. The problem, now and always, is federalism. Here’s the elections clause from Article I of the US Constitution:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

“Chusing” is in the original, because this part of the Constitution is so freaking old that we’re still running our elections based on the best guesses of people who didn’t have spell-check. But I digress.

The Constitution is, on its face, pretty clear that the states control both the “time” and the “manner” of national elections, unless their rules are directly superseded by an act of Congress. When it comes to Election Day, Congress says only this: “The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election, in each of the States and Territories of the United States, of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress commencing on the 3d day of January next thereafter.” It doesn’t say anything about ballots needing to be received or counted on the day of the election. That’s why 19 states, including Nevada, can basically receive and count votes whenever they want.

The RNC lawsuit should be dismissed out of hand by the courts, even by Republican-controlled courts. A ruling that agrees with the RNC’s formulation of what “Election Day” means would cause chaos, not just in Nevada but throughout the country.

Of course, chaos is exactly what the Republicans want. Remember, the Nevada law at issue was passed in 2021. There’s already been a national election, the 2022 midterm election, run with Nevada’s rule in place. But the RNC didn’t sue Nevada before the last midterms or right after they saw how Nevada’s rules would practically play out (though they did try to gut a similar rule change in 2020, when Nevada liberalized mail-in voting procedures in response to Covid). No, the RNC is suing now, a mere five months before the next election.

The plot here is to confuse voters, especially voters who prefer to vote by mail. We know that confusion is a voter suppression technique. If people think there is some legal disagreement about the validity of mail-in votes, some of them will just show up in person on Election Day, but others might not vote at all.

It’s all part of the strategy to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. Republicans enjoy large advantages in day-of election voting, partially because their voters are older and by definition conservative so they like to vote in the way they always have, and partially because they’ve been fed a steady diet of Fox News that tells them Election Day voting is somehow more legitimate. Instead of encouraging their voters to vote in whatever way is easiest for them, Republicans have doubled down on the notion of making it harder for everybody to vote, as they assume (rightly, I suspect) that their older, wealthier voters are better positioned to overcome hurdles than Democratic voters.

<Missouri used to be a swing state, where Democratic presidential candidates made last-minute campaign stops and sometimes won, and where Democrats frequently held the governorship and US Senate seats. Of the 25 presidential elections in the 20th century, Democrats won 14—even electing one of their own, Harry Truman, as vice president in 1944, and president in 1948. Bill Clinton carried the state twice and, as recently as 2008, Barack Obama came within 4,000 votes of winning it. The state sent a Democrat, Claire McCaskill, to the US Senate through 2018; and it had a Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, who made national headlines for blocking Republican attempts to restrict access to abortion. Now, however, Missouri has an anti-choice Republican governor, two extreme right-wing US senators, and a habit of voting for Donald Trump.

But could Democrats stage a comeback in Missouri in 2024, perhaps making Joe Biden’s reelection bid in the state competitive? Could the party’s likely US Senate nominee, progressive populist Lucas Kunce, have a fighting chance to flip the seat now held by Republican Josh Hawley? Is it a reasonable prospect that the party’s likely gubernatorial nominee, state House minority leader Crystal Quade, might renew Democratic control of the statehouse?

If access to abortion remains the winning issue that it has been since the US Supreme Court overturned national protections with its 2022 Dobbs decision, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that Missouri might renew its battleground-state status. That is because Missourians are now expected to vote in November on a high-stakes abortion rights referendum that could shake up the state’s politics.

The lesson from recent elections around the country is that a referendum of this sort has the potential to significantly increase turnout by pro-choice voters. A significant portion of those voters could, in turn, boost Democratic races for national and state posts.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, a coalition of reproductive health care advocates that has been campaigning to place an abortion amendment on the fall ballot, needed to file 171,592 valid signatures by the end of last week to secure a ballot spot. On Friday, the deadline for filing signatures, a long line of activists began delivering to the Missouri secretary of state’s office boxes containing more than 380,000 signatures. That’s double the requirement for qualifying for a November referendum vote on overturning Missouri’s abortion ban and codifying reproductive rights in Missouri’s state constitution.

“Our message is simple and clear,” says Tori Schafer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer and spokesperson for the campaign. “We want to make decisions about our bodies free from political interference.”....>

<....There is no question that support for abortion rights crosses political lines. Republicans in a number of red states have joined Democrats in backing ballot measures protecting reproductive rights, and that will surely be the case if there’s a November referendum vote in Missouri.

But Democrats believe that the Missouri referendum, like similar ballot initiatives in Florida and Arizona, could also attract young people and other likely pro-choice voters to the polls. The Democratic hope is that these voters would not only back the referendum but also boost the fortunes of Biden, Kunce, and Quade.

Quade, in particular, has been an outspoken advocate for a referendum. That’s primarily because she is a committed supporter of abortion rights who wants to defend personal freedoms. But as a savvy political figure who leads her party’s caucus in the state House, Quade is well aware of the impact that popular support for abortion rights has had in recent election cycles.

When abortion rights issues are on the ballot, even in states that lean Republican, voters show up to defend reproductive rights. And that often benefits Democrats. Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the Dobbs case, voters in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Vermont have backed abortion rights. Two of those states, Kansas and Kentucky, are states that backed Trump in 2016 and 2020 and yet have elected and reelected Democratic governors who support abortion rights. And it’s worth noting that Michigan’s November 2022 referendum on abortion rights gave a big boost to Democrats, who won full control of the state legislature for the first time in decades. After the 2023 off-year elections produced big wins for pro-choice Democrats in Kentucky, Virginia, and New Jersey, the New York Times headline read, “Abortion Rights Fuel Big Democratic Wins, and Hopes for 2024.”

This spring, when the Florida Supreme Court cleared the way for a November referendum on abortion rights in that state, CNN reported that the decision “delivered a burst of Democratic optimism that this once-purple battleground could flip blue again.” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez declared that Florida was suddenly “winnable.”

Florida is an easier state for Democrats than Missouri. Biden got 48 percent of the vote in the Sunshine State in 2020, while he got just 41 percent in the Show Me State. In addition, Missouri voters have shown a tendency to take progressive stands when voting on referendums—as they did in 2018, when they overturned the state’s anti-labor “right-to-work” law by a 67-33 margin—and still elect Republicans to statewide posts. But this year, Biden’s running against a 91-times indicted Trump, while Kunce is targeting Hawley as a senator who encouraged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and then fled the Capitol when Trump backers he had greeted with a clenched fist of solidarity stormed the building on January 6, 2021. Hawley’s also one of the Senate’s most ardent foes of abortion rights, while Kunce is an equally ardent supporter of reproductive rights who says he wants to prevent “control-freak politicians” from imposing their will upon women.

“This fight is about our rights and power—the right to an abortion and the power to control our own lives,” Kunce says of his challenge to Hawley. “I’ll fight to end the filibuster and enshrine reproductive rights and abortion rights into law.”

With the prospect that the referendum fight will raise the stakes in November, there will be added attention to the abortion rights stances of Kunce and Quade. That won’t assure victory. But it could make races up and down the Missouri ballot considerably more competitive.

If national Democrats decide to go all in for Missouri, as it appears they will do for Florida, the political dynamic could shift. And this reddish state might once more be the sort of battleground state where Democrats have a path to victory.>

<Attorneys for Donald Trump sought during hours of cross examination of Stormy Daniels on Tuesday and Thursday to portray her as a fabricator and extortionist, a woman with no regard for the truth who preyed on a rich man for a quick buck.

Daniels, defense attorney Susan Necheles suggested, was more than a porn star. She was a savvy businesswoman who had parlayed her encounter with Trump into a series of enterprises: merchandise including a T-shirt line and a “Stormy Saint of Indictments” votive candle, a documentary, an $800,000 book deal, and much more. She’s a kook as well, Necheles suggested: a talented storyteller equally comfortable writing convincing sex scenes for adult films as creating a podcast about the paranormal which hinted that she had the ability to commune with the dead.

The defense sought to cast Daniels, in short, as a talented con artist who knows how to weave together convincing, but improbable stories involving sex, and apply leverage to cash in on them.

That description of what Daniels was up to was extremely evocative.

But here’s the thing: Trump isn’t alleged to have engaged in the business records falsification scheme because he was being extorted by an enterprising con artist. Instead, prosecutors allege, he was acting in response to the story Daniels had to tell — regardless of whether it was true or false, and regardless of whether he was being, or felt, extorted. He sought to “suppress” Daniels’ “account,” the statement of facts reads, with an eye toward not having the story affect the presidential race.

As prosecutor Joshua Steinglass put it at a hearing at close of court on Thursday, the explosive details that Daniels had to offer are at the heart of the prosecution’s case.

“Those messy details — that is motive,” Steinglass told Judge Merchan. “That was Mr. Trump’s motive to silence her story.”

It’s a subtle difference. But it’s critical to understanding the significance of Daniels’ testimony, and how the defense’s aggressive cross examination fits — or doesn’t fit — with what prosecutors allege.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s case against Trump is composed of 34 counts of falsification of business records, upgraded to a felony because he allegedly faked the records in furtherance of a campaign finance conspiracy. In the story that prosecutors tell, Trump went to extraordinary lengths to cover up his reimbursement to Michael Cohen for the hush money scheme — by falsifying the business records.

In that telling, whether Daniels was telling the truth or lying, and whether she was extorting Trump or innocently shopping her story around, is largely irrelevant. From that perspective, it’s Trump’s response to Daniels’ story — in all its detail — that matters....>

<....For Necheles, casting Daniels as a greedy fabricator represented a tradeoff. On the one side, it concedes that the story had grave potential to damage Trump, thus also conceding the motive for the conspiracy prosecutors allege. It’s almost a stipulation to the prosecution’s contention that, in particular after the release of the Access Hollywood tape, Trump could not afford to have Daniels telling her story in public.

The potential advantage for the defense comes in a few ways. One is that it could help generate sympathy with the jury. As Necheles presented it, Daniels used her talents at fabrication and seamy storytelling to target Trump in the vulnerable final weeks of his campaign, shaking him down for money. Paying her off isn’t illegal — and if he falsified the records, it was for a completely understandable reason: to avoid public humiliation.

To create that impression, Necheles questioned Daniels about her work not only as a porn actress, but as a director. Through this line of questioning, Necheles attempted to show that Daniels was skilled at weaving fake stories about sex.

“You have a lot of experience of making phony stories about sex appear to be real?” Necheles asked Daniels.

Daniels replied with shock. “Wow,” before adding: “The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.”

She added: “If that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better.”

At times, Necheles strategy seemed to approach an attempt at jury nullification — when members of a jury disregard the case mounted and the evidence of crimes charged and instead acquit because they disagree with the law or the way in which prosecutors applied it. The defense implicitly asked the panel to find that Daniels had acted so outrageously as to compel Trump to do anything to defend himself. It also left the former president in his favored rhetorical pose: that of a victim.

Necheles’ tack here took her into the world of the occult and the paranormal. She peppered Daniels with questions about her ventures probing the hereafter, asking her if she had claimed to be able to communicate with the dead. They also asked about an episode in which she claimed to have resided in a haunted house in New Orleans, where she claimed that a “spirit attacked her boyfriend.”

“Isn’t it a fact that you’re the one who attacked your boyfriend?” Necheles asked. A prosecutor objected, and Merchan sustained it, before Daniels could answer.

Daniels eventually said the “interesting and unexplained activity” in the house was “completely debunked as a giant possum” living underneath it.

It may have left Daniels as appearing somewhat kooky, but it’s not clear what significance it has for the underlying charges. Those, again, involve Trump’s response to Daniels, not the veracity of her story.

This provocative defense reached its peak at the very end of cross-examination, when Necheles asked Daniels: Was it true that she had spent twelve years lying about a sexual encounter that never happened?

Merchan sustained an objection to the question.>

<Only an extraordinary cocktail of strategic delay, judicial scale-thumbing and good old fashioned bungling could leave just one of four Donald Trump felony indictment cases likely to conclude (and quite possibly even to start) before Election Day.

That future, long looming, became even more concrete this week.

On Wednesday, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of the decision not to boot Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the case following her romantic relationship with a prosecutor she’d hired. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, in a scathing March ruling in which he upbraided Willis for her decision making and conduct on the stand, had allowed her to stay on the case if she removed Nathan Wade, the prosecutor she dated.

Much like the Jan. 6 case — we’re awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling on the extent of Trump’s presidential immunity — litigation over this one spoke of the case must play out before the meaty merits can move forward. In short: delay.

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s valiant effort to foresee and defang the Supreme Court’s pro-Trump feet-dragging in the Jan. 6 case was swatted down, making murky whether the immunity question alone — much less whether Trump incited an insurrection — will be cleared up before Trump potentially takes over the Justice Department.

Prosecution trying to paint Trump as someone who is 'intensely involved in every step' Put an x through the Jan. 6 and Georgia election trials. That leaves perhaps the most straightforward, slam-dunk case: Trump’s indictment for hoarding classified documents in Mar-a-Lago after his presidential term and then lying about it. Luckily for democracy, the case is in the formidable, neutral, just-calling-balls-and-strikes hands of Judge Aileen Cannon (sigh).

Cannon (and Trump) won the weighted dice-roll to get the case in the first place thanks, in part, to the many vacancies at the time in the Southern District of Florida. Why the vacancies? Because for some godforsaken reason, we are still playing by the “blue slip” rules, where the President’s judicial nominees are traditionally blocked unless they get a thumbs up from both home state senators. From 1956 to 2016, the Congressional Research Service found only three judicial nominees confirmed by the Senate despite lacking the two endorsements.

Therefore: Cannon’s constant delays of the trial, essentially an in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign, can be directly traced to President Joe Biden’s reluctance to even nominate judges for that district, knowing that whoever he picks will be rejected by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rick Scott (R-FL). But I digress.

Cannon suspended yet another deadline Monday, in keeping with months of slow rolling and eyebrow-raising amenability to Trump’s dumb arguments. She’s successfully both kept the trial from proceeding and from giving Smith much substance on which he can appeal. She didn’t bother setting a new trial date — the better to get her name on the Supreme Court shortlist, should Trump be given the opportunity.

No Jan. 6, no Georgia, no stolen documents. That leaves the New York case — where Trump allegedly disguised repayment to Michael Cohen for quashing the story about his affair with Stormy Daniels just before the election — as the only game in town.

Polling has remained unfriendly for Biden. He’d made up some ground through the early spring, but still trails Trump (or is virtually tied with him) in the states that will decide the election. But many voters — independents in particular — say that a Trump conviction would disqualify him in their eyes.

If that’s true, a conviction could decide the election. And if it does, it’ll happen in New York — Trump’s hometown, the cauldron of his celebrity and his potential downfall.>

<[Event "Pillsbury Memorial"] [Site "Natick Mass"]
[Date "1997.12.06"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Sharp, Dale Eugene"]
[Black "Kelleher, William"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B96"]
[WhiteElo "2200"]
[BlackElo "2411"]