<Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 40,000 but then dropped back below it; today it closed above 40,000 for the first time in history, ending the day at 40,003.59. This extraordinary performance means investors have confidence the Federal Reserve will get inflation under control without throwing the country into a recession. It is a triumphant vindication of the financial policies advanced by President Joe Biden and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.

In comparison to the breathless coverage of the stock market during Trump’s administration, this milestone is getting very little coverage. Under Trump, the stock market had the highest annualized gain of any Republican president since Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, but at 11.8%, that annualized gain was lower than the annualized return under Democratic presidents Barack Obama (12.1%) and Bill Clinton (15.9%). Biden’s annualized return passed Trump’s in April 2024, as well.

The stock market’s performance is being ignored partly because Democrats tend to underplay the role of the stock market as an indication of economic health because they recognize it is not the only important way to think about the economy. But since he took office, Biden has also had to contend with the constant stream of outrageous news coming from the radical right.

Today is no exception. Indeed, today’s news is among the most shocking that we’ve had since Biden took office.

Yesterday evening, Jodi Kantor of the New York Times reported that in the days before Biden’s inauguration, an upside-down American flag flew in front of Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito’s home. A U.S. flag flown upside down is a universal symbol of distress. In the days after the January 6, 2021, insurrection, Trump loyalists flew the upside-down flag as a symbol of “the impending death of the nation and a call to arms,” according to American studies professor Matthew Guterl.

Leading scholar of the American right Kathleen Belew explained on social media that the upside-down flag was “not just signifying that the election was ‘stolen.’ The inverted flag means the country has been overthrown (to many, if not most, on the right). This is a profound act of symbolism and appalling at the home of a Supreme Court Justice.”

For Alito to fly it was an indication that he was part of the insurrection.

In September 2021, Trump loyalist lawyer Sidney Powell, who was part of the team trying to get the results of the 2020 presidential election overturned, told a right-wing talk show host that while rioters were attacking the Capitol, she and her team were trying to get an emergency injunction to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

“We were filing a 12th Amendment constitutional challenge to the process that the Congress was about to use under the Electoral Act provisions that simply don’t jive [sic] with the 12th Amendment to the United States Constitution,” she said. “And Justice Alito was our circuit justice for that.”

The plan was thwarted, she said, when then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reconvened Congress and certified Biden’s win that night. “[S]he really had to speed up reconvening Congress to get the vote going before Justice Alito might have issued an injunction to stop it all, which is what should have happened,” Powell said.>

<....<Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) said today that “Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, including the question of the former President's immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering. The Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the Court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust.”

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) also called for Alito to recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election and Trump.

The potential for Alito to destroy our country in order to restore Trump to the presidency has continued. Along with Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni was in both sympathy and communication with the others trying to overturn the results of the election, as well as the three extremist justices Trump appointed, Alito has been part of a court that has delayed its decision about whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election for so long that Trump likely has won his gambit to avoid trial before the 2024 election.

When Trump claimed last October that he could not be prosecuted, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing his trial, rejected the argument in December. Trump appealed, and Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide the case immediately. The Supreme Court refused. Then, after a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court unanimously affirmed Chutkan’s ruling in a February 2024 decision that legal observers praised as “thorough and compelling,” Trump appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court then accepted his appeal and scheduled oral arguments for late April, more than a month after the original trial date set by Judge Chutkan.

The result of all this delay, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori wrote in Politico last month, is “that a question whose answer was obvious back in December is unlikely to get that answer from the Supreme Court until its session ends in June.” “If the Court hadn’t intervened, we would already have a verdict in the January 6 case,” political strategist Michael Podhorzer wrote, “and we don’t know whether the Court would have decided to intervene without Thomas and Alito.”

When the story of Alito’s misuse of the flag broke, the justice explained himself to Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream. He blamed his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, for flying the flag, saying she had hung it up in response to a “F*** Trump” sign that was “within 50 feet of where children await the school bus in Jan[uary] 21.” He said that the neighbors are “very political” and had had “words” with the Alitos that had upset Mrs. Alito.

While Justice Alito blamed his wife for the flag, he could hardly have missed seeing it above his house. Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob wrote: “When I was an editor at the Chicago Tribune, I would’ve been in trouble if I’d let my wife put a political bumper sticker on our car. But a Supreme Court justice’s home can fly a flag of insurrection and he’s still allowed to rule on whether the head insurrectionist has immunity.”

The deputy chief of staff for Representative Don Beyer (D-VA), who represents the town in which the Alitos live, noted that the local schools were all remote in January 2021 because of the pandemic. “No children were waiting for buses,” he noted. Legal analyst Elie Mystal added: “Sam Alito running to Fox News to explain how…he’s not politically motivated at all…is an under-appreciated part of this ongoing ethical disaster.”

It would be bad enough for a Supreme Court justice to announce a partisan preference. But, as David Kurtz wrote this morning at Talking Points Memo, Alito’s embrace of the insurrectionist flag “was a bold declaration of affinity for and alignment with the smoldering insurrection led by a president of the same party that had just been put down but which still loomed as a threat to civic order, the peaceful transfer of power (which at that point had still not yet happened), and the rule of law.”

<At the first presidential debate in 2020, Donald Trump failed spectacularly to answer the event’s easiest question. Asked if he was willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, the Republican incumbent shrugged and said, “Sure, I’m willing to do that, but I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing.”

As a rule, when asked to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, any answer that begins “Sure, I’m willing to do that, but...” isn’t going to end well.

But the then-president didn’t just hedge when asked to denounce right-wing racist radicals, he also went so far as to send extremists a notorious message: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”

Even some prominent GOP voices were not pleased. Sen. Tim Scott — four years before the South Carolinian started sucking up to Trump in the hopes of becoming his running mate — told reporters, in reference to the then-president, “I think he misspoke; I think he should correct it. If he doesn’t correct it, I guess he didn’t misspeak.”

He didn’t misspeak. Trump was given multiple opportunities to walk back the rhetoric, and he declined.

Four years later, the phrasing has returned to the fore, thanks to one of the former president’s most outlandish sycophants. The Associated Press reported:

It’s important to emphasize the significance extremists have placed on the phrase. As my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem explained, “The Proud Boys took Trump’s words as a signal of approval: The extremist group’s members reportedly called it ‘historic‘ and viewed it as an endorsement of their violent tactics. A Proud Boys Telegram channel posted the phrases ‘Stand Back’ and ‘Stand By’ above and below the group’s logo in the channel.”

For radicals, “stand back and stand by” was, for all intents and purposes, a declaration that cemented a relationship between themselves and Trump. Extremists concluded that the then-president was sending them an encouraging signal, which they were only too pleased to receive.

Common sense — and common decency — would suggest that GOP members of Congress would want nothing to do with such a message. And yet, there was Gaetz parroting the line, apparently indifferent to the effect that it might have on the extremist groups and their members.>

<Two weeks ago, shortly after the media took notice of former President Donald Trump’s lack of familial or other support at his ongoing criminal trial, his son Eric first came to New York to observe the proceedings. Since then, the courtroom has transformed into a “Who’s Who of ‘Who’s That?’” — a veritable parade of familiar-looking faces whose names might be only dimly recalled, even by the GOP faithful.

At least judging by appearances, Trump world has adopted a new mantra: If the court keeps the candidate from campaigning, the candidate will bring the campaign to the court. That’s likely why, over the last several trial days, Trump’s rotating tableau of supporters has included Sens. J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville; Reps. Byron Donalds, Nicole Malliotakis, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert; state attorneys general Brenna Bird (Iowa) and Steve Marshall (Alabama); and even former GOP presidential rival Vivek Ramaswamy.

But they aren’t just “standing back and standing by,” as Gaetz proclaimed, calling back to Trump’s infamous shoutout to the Proud Boys. Instead, those whom Trump has publicly acknowledged as his “surrogates” have assumed a more insidious — and even potentially unlawful — role, even if Trump lawyer Todd Blanche has maintained in court they are simply “members of the public” outside of his control.

To be fair, I don’t doubt that Blanche (or any other member of Trump’s legal team) lacks control over his client’s surrogates. But I’ve also been at the trial every day, either in the courtroom or in the overflow courtroom, and the suggestion that Trump’s surrogates are merely “members of the public,” given the observable circumstances of their visits, can and should be punctured.

First and foremost, consider how the surrogates get to the courthouse and into the courtroom. Journalists, New York lawyers and actual members of the public who want to attend the trial line up, depending on their credentials, as early as dinnertime the night before each trial day. I have met retirees, students and even tourists who say they arrived at 2 or 3 in the morning and still weren’t early enough to get a seat in the overflow courtroom where I and other press often sit....>

<....These members of the public — press included — go through two security screenings: one on the ground floor and another on the 15th floor, that between them feature two metal detectors, an X-ray machine and a manual bag search. We are seated an hour before Trump arrives and we wait, confined to both courtrooms whenever he is moving or is expected.

Trump’s surrogates, by contrast, appear to travel to court with him, some in his motorcade from Trump Tower, and enter the courthouse through a nonpublic entrance on an otherwise-closed street. From there, they take elevators that are unavailable to the public to reach the 15th-floor courtroom that’s been repurposed as a holding room for the former president, his lawyers and others in his traveling party. (It’s when they emerge from that holding room, somewhere beyond doors of darkened glass, that Trump conducts his precourt press availability each day, flanked by Blanche and with his surrogates arrayed behind him like a class of White House interns.) Finally, this crew enters Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom behind Trump and his lawyers, filing into the 16 seats reserved for the former president’s designees in the first two rows of the gallery. Nothing about how they arrive or where they sit resembles the public’s experience.

Second, the conduct of Trump’s surrogates within the courtroom is a far cry from how members of the public are expected to behave. While we are in the courtroom, the public is forbidden from using smartphones, even for note-taking, at the risk of ejection. Nor can the public take any pictures anywhere in the courthouse. Two members of the press were permanently ejected weeks ago for daring to take so much as a joking selfie. We are banned from congregating in the hallways to confer with colleagues or even to eat.

Meanwhile, I’ve witnessed Trump surrogates with their heads buried in their phones, sometimes tweeting about witness testimony. Is that a big deal? After all, the press too can tweet or live-blog; we just have to rely on our laptops. But consider why we can’t have phones: We, presumably, pose a risk to the former president's security, to the administration of justice, or both. Trump’s surrogates flaunt their phone use because they’re not considered a risk, even if their tweets would violate Trump’s gag order, could the DA show they were issued at Trump’s direction. And make no mistake: being “able to go out and overcome this gag order” is, as Tuberville admitted on Newsmax, one of the reasons the surrogates are attending the trial in the first place.

Third and finally, the collective presence of Trump’s surrogates — and the placement of their seats within the courtroom — might be intended to achieve something no member of the public could manage from several rows back: witness intimidation. For their privacy and security, the prosecution’s witnesses do not arrive through public entrances. Rather, they enter the courthouse through the DA’s office, which adjoins the courthouse, and they enter the courtroom itself through a side door, trailed by court security officers and their own counsel.

But using the side entrance comes at a price: Each witness must walk directly in front of Trump’s first row of supporters while making his or her way to the witness stand. For Michael Cohen, that meant passing in front of his former colleague Eric Trump and his wife, now-RNC co-chair Lara Trump; Cohen’s successor-of-sorts, Alina Habba; and others, like Rep. Ralph Norman, who has been calling Cohen a “con man” since 2019.

The bottom line? Witnessed firsthand, it’s hard to believe Trump’s surrogate operation is anything other than what it sounds like: a coordinated effort between and among Trump and his allies, not some disparate, coincidental gathering of “members of the public.” No member of the public would have the access they’ve had — or been allowed the latitude they’ve enjoyed.>

<The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.>

<Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!>

<What a brazen-faced varlet art thou!>

<Draw, you whoreson cullionly barber-monger, draw!>

<A stone-cutter or painter could not have made him so ill though they had been but two years o' th' trade.>

<The tens of thousands of primary votes cast in favor of Nikki Haley over the last several months are underscoring the apparent discontent many Republicans feel with former President Trump as their presumptive nominee, raising alarm for his campaign and fueling questions over whether he needs to do more to unify the party’s different factions.

Haley most recently racked up significant vote shares in the Maryland, Nebraska and West Virginia GOP primaries, which were closed off to Republican voters — meaning, unlike in some past primaries, Democrats and independents couldn’t participate.

It was just the latest indication that there’s a significant swath of the party willing to cast a vote for Haley even though she hasn’t been a candidate since March, leaving many Republicans pondering how she will wield her influence and what Trump will do — if anything — to appeal to those voters.

“She’s seeing a consistent message that is coming back off of these primary election results,” said Dave Wilson, a South Carolina-based Republican strategist. “There is a significant chunk of people, Republican primary voters, who are saying they don’t want Donald Trump.”

Trump and his allies argue that Haley is getting relatively big shares of the vote in open primaries where Democrats and independents can vote in the GOP primary. But other Republicans argue the votes for her are still a red flag.

And in the case of Tuesday’s results, Haley’s votes in the three states came entirely from registered Republicans.

“Many believe that these votes are an anti-Trump vote, but there are many who aligned with her policies and style as a politician,” said Ashley Davis, a Republican strategist. “These are solid conservative Republicans that will need to break Trump’s way.”

“We have to remember that in the general election it won’t matter if the voters are registered [Republican], [Democrat], or [independent],” she continued. “They can vote for whoever they want. And as we know, there are many voters that are not excited about any candidate.”

Candidates receiving support after they have dropped out of presidential races is far from unheard of. In the 2012 Republican primaries, ex-candidates like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich received percentages — at times in the double digits — even after Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) clinched the nomination that year.

And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) still had decent showings throughout the 2020 primary season after President Biden mathematically clinched the nomination.

But Haley has at times approached or even surpassed 20 percent of the vote in a few states, a strikingly high number. And the fact that Haley has at least not yet endorsed Trump for president further amplifies the Republicans apparently also not ready to throw their support behind the presumptive nominee.

She saw some of her highest marks yet Tuesday with 20 percent of the vote in Maryland and 18 percent in Nebraska as of the latest vote count. That came a week after she reached almost 22 percent in Indiana.

And Haley received more than 100,000 votes in each of the two key battleground states of Arizona in March and Pennsylvania in April....>

<....Trump brushed off the idea of being at risk of losing those Haley voters Thursday, saying in an interview with Scripps News that “she got very few voters relatively.”

“And those voters are all coming to me, and you may have a lot of Democrats in there because they have a very tricky little system,” Trump said. “But those voters are coming to me.”

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told The Hill in a statement that Trump is “building a historic and unified political movement” and has more than 90 percent approval from Republicans. She also pointed to polls showing that Trump has made gains with traditional Democratic constituencies like Black and Hispanic Americans.

“Anyone who believes in securing the border, rebuilding the economy, restoring American energy dominance, and ending the wars Joe Biden has created around the world is welcome to join President Trump’s team,” Leavitt said.

However, other Republicans say it’s not necessarily a sure bet that all of Haley’s supporters will come out for Trump in November.

“Everything we see in this race is based on one of the candidate’s weaknesses. This is a big one for Trump,” said Doug Heye, a GOP strategist. “Even if most of the Haley voters naturally come home to Trump — which they will — what about the rest? It’s not clear if there is a plan for how to win over those Haley voters who happily donned ‘permanently banned’ T-shirts. In close states, they could matter.”

Republican strategist Rina Shah said the votes that Haley has received are a “statement” that many voters still view her favorably and are waiting to decide what to do.

“They understand that here’s a person that has conducted themselves probably as perfectly as one could after exiting the presidential race,” she said, referring to Haley. “She hasn’t felt the need to go out and endorse Trump for the sake of it, simply because he has an ‘R’ next to his name.”

Shah added that the votes for Haley are a combination of a statement and “wishful thinking” that Trump and Biden will not be the choices for the country in the general election. She said Haley was able to draw some attention even from the center-left while running for president.

“At the end of the day, it is people feeling like this GOP could have done better,” she said.

While Biden has not personally reached out to Haley or her voters, his campaign has left the door open. In March, the president’s reelection campaign rolled out an ad geared toward Haley’s supporters titled “Join Us.” The 30-second spot featured instances in which Trump insulted Haley and her supporters.

Some polling suggests there could be votes to gain for Biden among Haley’s supporters. An Emerson College survey released in March after Haley suspended her campaign found that 63 percent of Haley’s supporters said they would back Biden, while 27 percent said they would support Trump.

But other Republicans are skeptical, given where Biden stands on major issues.

“I think many of her voters are still solid Republicans and are concerned about the economy, border and crime,” Davis said. “Even if they were not initial Trump voters in the primaries, they know he will be better than President Biden on those issues.”

Shah said these voters will not necessarily flip to vote for Biden but will likely take a long time to decide who to support.

“The bigger picture is it cannot be extrapolated as a sure Biden vote,” she said. “We just don’t know enough about this group.”>

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<Arizona's attorney general says former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been served an indictment in the state's fake elector case alongside 17 other defendants for his role in an attempt to overturn former President Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes posted the news regarding the Trump-aligned lawyer on her X account late Friday.

“The final defendant was served moments ago. @RudyGiuliani nobody is above the law,” Mayes wrote.

The attorney general’s spokesman Richie Taylor said in an email to The Associated Press on Saturday that Giuliani faces the same charges as the other defendants, including conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges.

Giuliani’s political adviser, Ted Goodman, confirmed Giuliani was served Friday night after his 80th birthday celebration as he was walking to the car.

“We look forward to full vindication soon,” Goodman said in a statement Saturday.

The indictment alleges that Giuliani “pressured” Arizona legislators and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to change the outcome of Arizona’s election and that he was responsible for encouraging Republican electors in Arizona and six other contested states to vote for Trump.

Taylor said an unredacted copy of the indictment will be released Monday. He said Giuliani is expected to appear in court Tuesday unless he is granted a delay by the court.

Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, is among others who have been indicted in the case.

Neither Meadows nor Giuliani were named in the redacted grand jury indictment released earlier because they had not been served with it, but they were readily identifiable based on descriptions in the document. The Arizona attorney general’s office said Wednesday that Meadows had been served and confirmed that he was charged with the same counts as the other named defendants, including conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges.

With the indictments, Arizona becomes the fourth state where allies of the former president have been charged with using false or unproven claims about voter fraud related to the election.

Giuliani faces other legal proceedings, and a bankruptcy judge this past week said he was “disturbed” about the status of the case and for missed deadlines to file financial disclosure reports. Giuliani filed for bankruptcy after being ordered to pay $148 million to two former election workers for spreading a false conspiracy theory about their role in the 2020 election....>

More news to fill the empty life of <evilfred>, that other pole on the magnet of hatred that stalks hereabout.

<....Giuliani was also indicted last year by a grand jury in Georgia, where he is accused of spearheading Trump’s efforts to compel state lawmakers in Georgia to ignore the will of voters and illegally appoint pro-Trump electoral college electors.

Among the defendants are 11 Arizona Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Trump won in Arizona in the 2020 presidential election — including a former state GOP chair, a 2022 U.S. Senate candidate and two sitting state lawmakers. The other defendants are Mike Roman, who was Trump’s director of Election Day operations, and four attorneys accused of organizing an attempt to use fake documents to persuade Congress not to certify Biden’s victory: John Eastman, Christina Bobb, Boris Epshteyn and Jenna Ellis.

Trump himself was not charged but was referred to as an unindicted co-conspirator.

The 11 people who had been nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claiming that Trump carried the state. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document was later sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored.

Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes.

Eastman, who devised a strategy to try to persuade Congress not to certify the election, became the first person charged in Arizona’s fake elector case to be arraigned on Friday. He pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges.

Eastman made a brief statement outside the courthouse, saying the charges against him should have never been filed.

“I had zero communications with the electors in Arizona (and) zero involvement in any of the election litigation in Arizona or legislative hearings. And I am confident that with the laws faithfully applied, I will be fully be exonerated at the end of this process,” Eastman said. He declined to make further comment.

Arraignments are scheduled May 21 for 12 other people charged in the case, including nine of the 11 Republicans who had submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring Trump had won Arizona.

The Arizona indictment said Eastman encouraged the GOP electors to cast their votes in December 2020, unsuccessfully pressured state lawmakers to change the election’s outcome in Arizona and told then-Vice President Mike Pence that he could reject Democratic electors in the counting of electoral votes in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.>

These routine attempts by our prevaricating cyberbully to insert his standard falsehoods hoping to pick a fight with his top target are so very trite, haggard. It has all the desperation of a distant news reporter yelling out over the din at the politician trudging toward his flight.>