<....And no wonder! No matter how often he pretends to be free of bigotry, his racist worldview manifests itself at every turn. In his recent “debate” with President Joe Biden, Trump made his usual hateful statements against immigrants (of color) and added that they are “taking black jobs now and it could be 18. It could be 19 and even 20 million people. They’re taking black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”

By “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs,” of course, he was referring to his belief that only certain kinds of work define those communities. It should be taken for granted that he wasn’t referring to engineers, lawyers, office managers, professors, veterinarians, or any positions of a professional or middle-class nature. He sees Black Americans and Latinos as nothing but the lowest-paid, lowest-status workers in America.

In fact, Trump never has anything genuinely positive to say about the Black community, which he sees—just to start down a list—as crime-ridden, dirty, and rodent-infested. Nor does he ever identify any of the groups or individuals in such communities who are working on solutions to the issues they face. That doesn’t fit the view of the former president and many of his followers that communities of color are linked only to dysfunction, decay, and (implicitly) inferiority.

Naturally, Trump was wrong on all counts. First, there is no evidence (and, of course, Trump didn’t present any) that immigrants are taking jobs from Black and Latino Americans. As The Washington Post noted, “The Black unemployment rate remains near historic lows and wage gains are at all-time highs.” In fact, the lowest Black employment on record occurred under President Biden when, in April 2023, it fell to 4.8 percent.

In addition, unlike Trump’s implication that Black people only occupy low-level manual labor jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost half of all African Americans work in professional, management, or office jobs. That would undoubtedly be a revelation to Trump, since in the dozens of businesses he’s started, very few Blacks and Latinos are ever found in high-level or professional positions.

Rather than let Trump get away with his endless series of canards on race in America, interviewers should ask him some pointed questions that are simply never asked in Trump-friendly or Trump-fearful media venues. Three come to mind: Why do you continue to receive such wholehearted support from avowed racists? What is the “anti-white racism” (or “anti-white feeling“) that you so often talk about and why do you consider it more of an issue than racial discrimination against communities of color? Why should Black voters in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, among other places, vote for someone who spent weeks after the 2020 election desperately attempting to disqualify their votes?

Trump does not deserve a single Black or Hispanic vote. Nada. None. His ongoing gaslighting about his record and his appeal to extremists and racists should doom him to the lowest Black and Hispanic vote support in the last 100 years in election 2024.>

<Republican Congresswoman Claudia Tenney of New York is reacting to the House passage of the SAVE Act that she co-sponsored, which aims to prevent illegal immigrants from voting in U.S. elections.

"I think what it does is it just puts an exclamation point on the fact that the states are the ones that have been in power to control the laws and that the states need to ensure that we have citizens only voting in elections so that we're we're solidifying the concept of one citizen, one vote," Tenney told Fox News Digital after the House passed the SAVE Act by a final vote of 221-198.

Only five Democrats voted in favor of the measure, including Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas; Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas; Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine; Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C.; and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash.

"There's nothing more sacred and more profound than the right to vote and especially to preserve our self-governing constitutional republic and to preserve our democracy. And the Democrats can keep talking about democracy, but nothing undermines the values of the right of each individual to have their vote cast and allowing non-citizens to vote," Tenney, the chair of the House Election Integrity Caucus, told Fox News Digital.

Under the legislation, voters would be required to provide proof of citizenship via IDs and documentation such as a passport, a government-issued photo ID showing proof the individual was born in the U.S., military IDs, or a valid photo ID as well as documentation showing proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, the legislation states.

"This will be one of the most important votes that members of this chamber will ever take in their entire careers," House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a press release before the vote.

"And it's an issue we never thought we would have to actually address, but that moment has come to us now. Should Americans and Americans alone determine the outcome of American elections? Or should we allow foreigners and illegal aliens to decide who sits in the White House and in the People's House and in the Senate?"

Democratic leadership urged its members to vote against the bill arguing that it would place "an extreme burden [on] countless Americans."

"It's pretty incredible to me that this is what they [Democrats] continue to do is to really undermine our sacred right to vote, undermine the right of citizens and no one feels more aggrieved by this than people who are new citizens, people who are excited about their ability to vote in an election that's private and free and that's fair," Tenney told Fox News Digital. "And so I think that that really sends a terrible message, if that's what the Democrats plan on running on, as they remain in disarray and chaos over their leading nominee right now for president."

Tenney told Fox News Digital she does not know what the future holds for the legislation in the Senate but is fairly confident Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will "reject it."

"It really is a shame on Schumer and a real disgrace that Schumer as a lawyer and a person that takes an oath to uphold the Constitution of New York and the Constitution of the United States if he would blatantly just undermine our own constitutional principles and not bringing something like this to the floor and recognizing that only citizens should be voting in elections," Tenney said.

Schumer’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

The passage of the SAVE Act drew praise from conservatives across the nation including Heritage Action for America Executive Vice President Ryan Walker who told Fox News Digital in a statement that the vote is a "victory for the integrity of our elections and every single American."

"Heritage Action was proud to include today’s vote on our legislative scorecard because all voters deserve to see which lawmakers sat idly by and let Joe Biden’s illegal alien invasion dilute the power of our votes," Walker said. "Speaker Johnson was right to ask earlier today in a floor speech if Democrats will support any measure to prevent voter fraud. Unfortunately, the answer is no. The Left wants open borders and open ballot boxes for illegal aliens, while conservatives want security for our communities and elections.">

<America's conservative legal movement found a fast track to get their high-stakes cases before the Supreme Court, but even Republican-appointed justices on the bench are pushing back on those efforts.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in more than 50 cases during the 2023-2024 term and the plurality of those have come from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Yet, less than a third of the appeals court's rulings were affirmed by the high court.

This term, the Supreme Court only agreed with the 5th Circuit on three of the 10 cases from the appeals court. On the other seven—which included major cases related to abortion, gun control, administrative power and social media regulation—the Supreme Court reversed the 5th Circuit's ruling or vacated judgment.

"It's definitely been striking the degree to which the 5th Circuit has lost at the Supreme Court," Alison LaCroix, a law professor at the University of Chicago, told Newsweek. "It's more than most other circuits, but it's also notable because the Supreme Court doesn't have to take any of these cases."

"They could decide not to review a decision from any lower court and say, 'We're not going to take a second look at this,'" LaCroix said. "But the fact that they take the appeals from the 5th Circuit, in many instances, has proven to mean that they want to overturn, or at least give a hard look at what the 5th Circuit's done."

Covering federal judicial districts in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi and the entire state of Texas, the 5th Circuit has earned a reputation for becoming a hotbed where right-wing activists are likely to see favorable rulings from the most conservative federal appeals court in the country. Nearly 75 percent of the court's 26-judge bench has been appointed by a Republican president. Six are appointees of former President Donald Trump.

Justices of the Supreme Court pose for their official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on October 7, 2022. The Surpeme Court has taken an influx of cases from the 5th Circuit this term, but only affirmed three out of 10 rulings. Olivier Douliery/Getty Images Justices of the Supreme Court pose for their official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on October 7, 2022. The Surpeme Court has taken an influx of cases from the 5th Circuit this term, but only affirmed three out of 10 rulings. Olivier Douliery/Getty Images © Olivier Douliery/Getty Images
"The conservative legal movement uses the Fifth Circuit as a testing ground for many of their legal theories and arguments," Alex Badas, a professor specializing in judicial politics at the University of Houston, told Newsweek. "They understand that it is possible to get favorable decisions from these courts and that helps legitimize their theories and argument."

Because most of the judges on the 5th Circuit champion a conservative interpretation of the law, the appeals court has become a magnate [sic] for litigation, especially for plaintiffs trying to challenge the authority of federal agencies. Although last month's landmark Supreme Court decision reversing the 40-year-old Chevron deference came from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, an equally important ruling related to administrative power emerged from the 5th Circuit.

On June 27, the Supreme Court ruled on Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, siding with a Houston-based hedge fund manager and agreeing that people accused of fraud by the federal agency have a right to a jury in a federal court. In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the justices said the SEC violates this right by allowing in-house judges to adjudicate these cases. SEC v. Jarkesy is one of the three cases from the 5th Circuit that the justices affirmed this term.

The appeals court's willingness to side with conservatives had made it a home for judge-shopping plaintiffs, who want to find sympathetic judges to hear their cases. One of the most ideologically conservative judges in the federal courts is Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who has served as a district judge for the Northern Texas District Court since 2019.

Kacsmaryk has made national headlines for sparking a legal firestorm after he halted approval of the nation's most common method of abortion and for ordering the Biden administration to reinstate the Trump-era "Remain in Mexico" border policy. His record, which suggests that Trump tapped him to serve largely because of his extremely conservative political views, has not gone unnoticed by Republicans.

Conservative groups and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton have filed countless cases in Kacsmaryk's jurisdiction in hopes that he'll hear those cases and rule against Democratic policies or uphold Republican ones. If a party were to appeal Kacsmaryk's ruling, the case would move up to the 5th Circuit.....>

<....This term, the Supreme Court heard its first major abortion case since overturning Roe v. Wade—Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—which challenged FDA approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.

In the lower courts, the case was presided over by Kacsmaryk, who issued an unprecedented injunction that suspended the drug's approval. A three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit tossed out part of Kacsmaryk's decision, acknowledging the statute of limitations to challenge the FDA's 2000 approval had expired, but kept the part of the injunction that invalidated the changes the FDA made in 2016.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the FDA in June, finding that the Alliance did not have standing to bring the case, and fully restoring access to mifepristone.

LaCroix said plaintiffs not only try to file suit in the 5th Circuit because they'll get a favorable decision but because many of the judges have been willing to issue nationwide injunctions, which are "a big win" for plaintiffs who want to challenge the federal government's actions.

"Since many of these decisions often change the status quo by declaring a law or policy unconstitutional or by overturning a precedent the Fifth Circuit sort of forces the Supreme Court's hand and causes them to review the Fifth Circuit's decisions," Badas said.

He added that he was not surprised that so many 5th Circuit rulings were overturned because, "While the current Supreme Court is conservative, the Fifth Circuit is much more conservative."

Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned in an opinion that the 5th Circuit's mifepristone decision could lead courts down an "uncharted path" that would allow citizens to challenge "virtually every government action they do not like."

Chief Justice John Roberts also devoted an entire paragraph to the errors he saw with the 5th Circuit's ruling in the Supreme Court's majority opinion in United States v. Rahimi. At one point, Roberts said the 5th Circuit errored in focusing on "hypothetical scenarios" instead of likely constitutional scenarios, which "left the panel slaying a straw man."

Rahimi was a Second Amendment case that challenged a federal ban on firearms for people under domestic violence restraining orders. The 5th Circuit had invalidated the law, but the Supreme Court reversed the appeals court decision in an 8-1 ruling and upheld the ban.

"It's healthy for the system to see some resistance to [the 5th Circuit], both from the Supreme Court," LaCroix said. "The court really is an outlier and it needs to be checked."

Dan Urman, a law professor who specializes in the Supreme Court at Northeastern University, told Newsweek he agreed that the justices were sending a "clear message" that the 5th Circuit's rulings were going "too far in the conservative direction." But he added that this concept is not without precedent.

"In the 90s and 2000s the 9th circuit went too far in the liberal direction, and this is similar but on the other side of the ideological divide," Urman said.

The 9th Circuit has appellate jurisdiction over Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, most of California and parts of Washington.

While the Supreme Court may be cautioning the 5th Circuit about its rulings, some of the justices on the bench have also signaled to the appeals court that it would be willing to side with them given the right case and right plaintiff. For example, even though Justice Clarence Thomas authored two opinions rejecting the 5th Circuit's interpretation of the law, the most conservative member of the Supreme Court also suggested he'd be willing to review other cases that challenge social media moderation, gun control and other issues....>

<....LaCroix said that when conservative Supreme Court justices signal that there could be standing or that certain procedural hurdles can be overcome with a different case involving a different plaintiff, the judges on the 5th Circuit may read that as a sign that they were not completely wrong on the law.

Instead, she said they may understand that message as the Supreme Court told them to regroup and change the way they're deciding these cases. Both the 5th Circuit and litigators may think that the high court is telling them to "try again," and so, "the Fifth Circuit might not necessarily respond to these overrulings by changing its course."

Badas said he didn't expect the trend to change anytime soon. He noted that the Supreme Court has already overturned the 5th Circuit at similar rates in recent years, but that those decisions did not deter the appeals court.

During the 2022 term, the Supreme Court overturned the 5th Circuit 62 percent of the time. The appeals court was overturned 75 percent of the time in the 2021 term, 77 percent of the time in the 2020 term and 63 percent of the term in 2019.

Badas speculated that part of the reason why these conservative judges have not changed their interpretation of the law in response to the Supreme Court's rulings is because they may be vying for the justices' position themselves.

"Many of the judges on the Fifth Circuit have been floated as potential Supreme Court nominees if Donald Trump is elected to the presidency again," Badas said. "So, these judges might want to broadcast their conservative bona fides to make themselves more appealing to Donald Trump."

"These judges will continue to be conservative in their decisions and the conservative legal movement will continue to target the Fifth Circuit because it is where they are most likely to receive a positive appellant decision," he said.>

<The damage left by Hurricane Beryl in Texas and requests for federal help have opened a rift between the White House and the state's GOP leaders following the storm that pummeled the coast and knocked out power to millions of residents this week around Houston.

President Joe Biden said he tried tracking down Republican Gov. Greg Abbott — who has been in Asia on a trade mission since last week — to get the state to formally request a major disaster declaration that unlocks federal aid. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Biden also said he tried reaching Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has served as acting governor since Beryl made landfall Monday, before they eventually connected the next day.

Both Texas leaders have sharply pushed back on Biden's version of events in the middle of a hurricane recovery that has left some coastal residents facing the possibility of days or weeks without electricity.

“I’ve been trying to track down the governor to see — I don’t have any authority to do that without a specific request from the governor,” Biden told the newspaper on Tuesday.

Abbott, in an interview from Japan on Wednesday with Austin television station KTBC, said Biden has reached him him multiple times on the same number following previous disasters in Texas but that the president this time never called that phone during Beryl.

“I know for an absolute 100% certainty, the only person to drop the ball is Joe Biden by making up some bizarre lie,” Abbott told the station. “And why he would do that? I have no idea.”

Patrick said he spoke with Biden on the phone on Tuesday and that the president granted Texas' request for a disaster declaration. Patrick has said the state needed to first determine its needs before making a formal ask. Texas has previously requested federal help before hurricanes have made landfall, including before Hurricane Harvey struck in 2017.

Rafael Lemaitre, FEMA’s former national director of public affairs, told the newspaper that major disaster declarations do not need to wait for a thorough on-the-ground assessment. Governors are the lead requesters but can change their request as more information becomes available, Lemaitre said.

FEMA typically positions responders and aid before a hurricane makes landfall, said Beverly Cigler, a professor emerita at Penn State University who specializes in intergovernmental policies, including emergency management.

Once the disaster hits, an initial damage assessment is usually completed. If it reaches the threshold for an emergency declaration, the governor sends that assessment to the White House for review, she said.

“Everything is done well ahead of time,” Cigler said. “But a president has to wait to have a disaster request from the state to really get aid going in a big way.”

About half a million Houston-area homes and businesses will still be without electricity next week, the city’s largest utility said Thursday, stoking the frustration of hot and frustrated residents.>

<The House passed a bill Wednesday that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., claims will counter a major scourge that threatens the sanctity of federal elections. Republicans argue that the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — which passed 221-198 — is necessary to defend against noncitizens voting in the fall, potentially swinging the results of federal elections. In reality, the SAVE Act is a solution to an all-but-nonexistent problem, but if enacted would make it harder for American citizens to exercise their right to vote.

As with much of the House Republican agenda, this bill owes its existence [sic] Donald Trump. Johnson joined the former president at Mar-a-Lago in April to talk about “election integrity,” the sanitized term that the GOP has adopted to launder Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy theories. Since that day, the speaker has made the subtext of the bill’s intentions into text, falsely claiming on X that Democrats oppose the resulting bill because “they want illegals to vote in our elections.”

Unsurprisingly, this is false. Republicans will point to a few cities like New York and Washington that allow noncitizens to vote. But that permission only applies to legal residents participating in local elections, not state or federal contests. Given how rare it is that noncitizens even attempt to register to vote, let alone manage to cast a ballot, the bill is an Anti-Tiger Rock at best, falsely taking credit for solving a problem that doesn’t actually exist. And like most snake oil, it’s much more likely that this bill will leave the patient sicker than if this supposed palliative had never been offered.

In practice, the SAVE Act, drafted by archconservative Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, overhauls the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. That act mandates that states allow residents to register to vote when applying for a driver’s license or other official ID card. In states like New York, that requires applicants to affirm that they’re a U.S. citizen as part of the process, signing an affidavit that makes clear that lying on the form is a crime. Under the SAVE Act, those states would now be forced to require applicants to provide documentary proof that they are a citizen, including a passport or birth certificate, at the time they fill out the form.

This requirement would add a hurdle that many Americans born in the continental U.S. would not be able to easily clear. A survey that the Brennan Center for Justice and other democracy groups conducted last year found that “more than 9 percent of American citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, don’t have proof of citizenship readily available. … And at least 3.8 million don’t have these documents at all, often because they were lost, destroyed, or stolen.”

Imagine that you’ve moved across state lines and need to register to vote in your new district. The odds that you may wait to change your registration — or never change it at all — would likely increase as more burdens are placed on the process, much as forcing people who qualify for federal aid to jump through hoops prevents them from accessing it. And forget about celebrities like Taylor Swift driving nearly as many people to register online at Vote.org if new registrants have to find and upload their documents as part of the process....>

<....Furthermore, the bill’s language is as dangerously imprecise in some areas as it is draconian in others. There is nothing that makes clear whether a state would have to accept documents from someone whose name has legally changed due to marriage or gender transition. Voters would likewise be allowed to register only if they provide a birth certificate issued by “a state, unit of local government, or a Tribal government.”

That requirement could be waived with a naturalization certificate, say, but would have to be paired with a “valid government-issued photo identification card issued by a Federal, State or Tribal government.” As Del. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, D-Northern Marianas Islands, pointed out in the floor debate, the bill’s language manages to completely ignore the territories, disenfranchising his constituents even further.

Tellingly, the rhetoric from Republicans as the bill was being debated on the House floor on Wednesday mostly focused on President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. A common refrain throughout the day was that the SAVE Act is necessary because of the number of immigrants who have entered the country since Biden took office. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump rightly referred to this bill as the legislative version of the Great Replacement Theory, which claims that Democrats are trying to drown out white voters with an influx of migrants who will vote illegally.

The good news is that this bill will not pass the Senate this term, let alone avoid a presidential veto. But five swing district Democrats crossed party lines to give it their approval, showing their concern that the GOP’s rhetoric might hit home with their voters. Moreover, given the threat of a full GOP takeover of Congress next year, we could see the return of the SAVE Act. If so, it would not be as a cheap stunt to raise the specter of an immigrant takeover, but as a newly printed law on the books, one that would further chip away at access to Americans’ most fundamental rights.>

<Suppose, in the immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021, you predicted the following events: Disgraced coup plotter Donald Trump would evade impeachment and then prison. He would not only regain control of the Republican Party but deepen his mastery over it, driving his skeptics within the party into retirement or terrified silence. He would win renomination without the slightest drama. The Supreme Court would rule that he is entitled to commit crimes in office. And then he would win a second term virtually unopposed.

Only the most addled QAnon cultist would have envisioned such a triumphal rise from ignominy to redemption. But now all but the last item on this list has come to pass, and that, too, is on course to transpire — with severe and possibly long-lasting repercussions for the legitimacy of the party that has taken on the task of preventing Trump’s return.

Here is the situation in all its surreality. Joe Biden is the only candidate standing (if we define the term loosely) between Trump and a far more powerful version of the office he previously occupied. Before his shambolic debate with Trump, Biden was already in deep trouble: dragged down by a sub-40 approval rating and trailing in several states he won four years ago, even with the benefit of a saturation-bombing ad campaign in swing states that Trump does not yet (but soon will) have the funding to reciprocate.

After the debate — again, using the term loosely, since it takes two to debate, and only one candidate actually joined the argument — matters look far more grim. Biden has lost his best, and perhaps only, high-profile forum to change the race’s contours. The voters have now seen, and cannot unsee, Biden in what appears to be the grips of advanced cognitive breakdown. Trump could have spent the entire 90 minutes with his pants at his ankles and he still would have won.

Election outcomes cannot be predicted with certainty. There’s always a chance that something happens to alter the race or that the polls are systematically underrating Biden. But there is no good reason to assume either of these is true and considerable reason to believe the opposite. Contrary to Biden’s claim that he was underestimated in 2020, the polls underrated Trump in both of his last two elections. (Republicans have underperformed in midterm and special elections when Trump was not on the ballot — he seems to draw out certain voters who don’t talk to pollsters and whose only loyalty is to him personally.) And the most obvious game-changing event that could occur is another incident exposing Biden’s frailty. Age-related decline is a one-way ratchet.

Biden has responded to the catastrophe in depressing but expected fashion. He has portrayed his fiasco as “one bad debate,” a phrase meant to obscure both the frequency with which similar episodes have popped up in other settings and the sheer level of dysfunction it revealed. He has leaned more heavily on the advice of family members, whose loyalty rests primarily with him rather than their party or country. And he has pressured Democrats to shut up and fall in line without taking any convincing steps to assuage their concerns.

This response is sadly consistent with the behavior of aging leaders who refuse to sacrifice their power for the greater good. Ruth Bader Ginsburg insisted on her own indispensability, as if the cause of liberalism would suffer by replacing her with a younger, non-cancer-stricken jurist. Dianne Feinstein denied her own cognitive decline to the point where she was too impaired to recognize her own impairment, surrounded by aides whose professional incentive was to sustain the illusion of competence.

This is the trajectory Biden’s campaign is following. If it continues, the presidency will probably fall into Trump’s lap as easily as Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat did.

Democrats have responded to this calamity in three ways. One faction, consisting mostly of moderates in Congress, has implied or stated directly that Biden should leave the race.

A second faction, heavily concentrated among his party’s left wing, has echoed Biden’s insistence that the decision has been made and the debate is over. “I have spoken with him extensively,” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “He made clear then and he has made clear since that he is in this race. The matter is closed.” Never mind how debilitated he is or may become; to invert a phrase made famous by Trump, Biden wouldn’t lose their support if somebody shot him on Fifth Avenue....>

<....The third faction of Democratic officials has publicly endorsed Biden, albeit with less enthusiasm, while some privately wax fatalistic. “We’re riding this horse at this point,” a House Democrat, who privately wishes Biden would withdraw, told the political website NOTUS. “And so I’m shifting gears. I’m gonna make my best case that we should pick the old guy against the crazy guy.” Another Democrat confessed to NBC, “I wish I was more brave.”

The strategy adopted by the hand-wringers is to hope the decision gets made for them. They have prodded Biden to open up his cloistered campaign to more interviews and freewheeling events — such as a rare press conference on July 11 at the NATO summit in Washington — which would theoretically either give him the opportunity to show he has the vigor and mental velocity to make the case against Trump or leave himself vulnerable to the risk of another meltdown, which would force the issue.

The trouble is that the latter possibility is exactly why Biden has refused to expose himself to more than a handful of unscripted appearances. The halfway measure of allowing Biden to keep the nomination while asking him to change his public style has the least chance of success. The threat of a total revolt is the only leverage discontented Democrats have. If they settle for vague promises of incremental change, their leverage dissipates, and Biden can just wait them out. The more time passes, the harder it will get for Democrats to organize a new nominee (or new nominating process), and the less incentive Biden will have to make unscripted appearances. More Democrats are starting to understand this, signaling before the NATO press conference that they were prepared to demand he step aside.

If Democrats suppose it is safe to quietly go along with a losing campaign rather than stick their necks out for a change with an uncertain result, they are not thinking dynamically enough about how their own voters would respond in the aftermath of defeat. Ezra Klein recently reported private conversations with elected Democrats who say, “I can live with Donald Trump winning.”

The party’s organizing basis since the first day Trump took office has been to treat him as a civic emergency. This is the basis for demanding donations, volunteering, and sacrifice. If they are not willing to endure the relatively modest discomfort of a contentious intraparty debate to minimize the chance of a second Trump term, they’ll have broken faith with their supporters.

In the meantime, the result of this paralysis is a crippled Biden dragging a mostly unwilling party to what it regards as certain defeat. Three and a half years ago, one could have imagined Trumpian authoritarianism returning to power in a blaze of violence. Instead, history may record that he took power again when his opposition essentially abdicated.>

<In the wake of the presidential debate two weeks ago, congressional Republicans eyed a variety of steps to capitalize on President Joe Biden’s poor showing. Some, for example, pushed the White House cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and end the Democratic incumbent’s term. Others raised the prospect of a new House select committee that would focus entirely on Biden’s fitness for office.

But it was House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer who, in the wake of his embarrassing impeachment crusade, seemed especially excited to go after his white whale in a new way.

This past weekend, for example, the Kentucky Republican requested that Biden’s physician appear before lawmakers for a transcribed interview about the president’s health. A few days later, as Axios reported, Comer turned his sights on a different group of people close to Biden.

Specifically, Comer this week issued subpoenas to Anthony Bernal, a top aide to First Lady Jill Biden, as well as deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini and senior adviser Ashley Williams.

And why, pray tell, did the Oversight Committee chair subpoena these three relatively unknown officials in particular? As it happens, Comer appeared on Newsmax and explained his perspective.

“Our research indicates that these are the three people that have been pulling the strings for quite some time in the White House,” the beleaguered congressman said. These are the three people that have been trying to cover up the fact that Joe Biden hasn’t been mentally or physically able to perform the job of president ... These three people, their names keep popping up as the gatekeepers, in addition to Hunter Biden.”

Comer added, “Have these three no-name employees — have they been operating a shadow government? Have they been privy to classified information? Do they have national security clearance? Have they been ordering the Cabinet secretaries to do various job duties?”

I suppose the obvious joke here is that if this trio of “no-name employees” have been secretly running the federal branch of the world’s preeminent superpower, Bernal, Tomasini, and Williams have been doing a terrific job.

But the truth is that Comer’s latest conspiratorial gambit isn’t a joking matter, and Oversight Committee subpoenas shouldn’t target White House officials just because its hapless chairman is looking for a new toy after his impeachment effort failed spectacularly.

Indeed, if the Kentucky Republican has any evidence of these staffers “operating a shadow government,” he’s kept it to himself, making his subpoenas sound an awful lot like a fishing expedition.

Nevertheless, if Biden stays in the 2024 race, we can expect more of this in the coming weeks and months. Comer reportedly asked the aides to respond to his subpoenas by July 17, and he wants them to participate in closed-door interviews later this month.>

<Republican Nevada county officials are joining the election disinformation crusade a few months early. On Tuesday, the Washoe County Commissioner Board voted 3-2 against certifying the results of an official recount of contests from Nevada’s June 9 primary, in a move slammed by the state’s attorney general as undemocratic.

The two races, a county commissioner district and a school board trustee spot, saw the same results as the initial tally in the recount.

“The Board’s decision is unlawful, and besieges core tenets of fair elections in our State,” the state’s Attorney General Aaron Ford wrote in a court filing on behalf of the Secretary of State. “Nevada law makes canvassing election results – including recount results – by a certain date a mandatory legal duty for the Board.”

The vote went down along party lines, with Republican commissioners citing unfounded irregularities that, despite the recount, “warrant further investigations,” emphasizing the spread of right-wing attacks on election legitimacy since Donald Trump’s efforts to deny and subvert the results of the 2020 race.

“This vote has the potential to set a dangerous precedent for elections in Nevada. It is unacceptable that any public officer would undermine the confidence of their voters,” Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in a statement.

Per the Nevada Current, a similar stunt in Arizona resulted in Cochise County supervisors being forced to certify their county’s election results in 2022. It landed two of the supervisors in felony investigations.

Nevada, which has stalled its case against Trump supporters who sent a slate of fake electors to Congress as part of a national scheme to overturn the election, is considered a crucial swing state, awarding its electoral votes to Joe Biden in 2020 after a contentious battle against the state’s counting efforts from the Trump campaign.>

Loser Lake displays pertinacity deserving of a better fate in Arizona, with yet another challenge on behalf of her misbegotten cause:

<Kari Lake is appealing to the Arizona Supreme Court to have the courts reconsider her case over her 2022 gubernatorial election loss to Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) after a panel on the Court of Appeals tossed out her case last month.

Lawyers for Lake wrote in their filing, obtained by Arizona’s Law, that a new election should be conducted or 275,000 ballots should be struck, which would deliver a victory for Lake, after claiming that “based on new information,” a majority of vote center tabulators in Maricopa County failed and “averaging over 7,000 ballot rejections every thirty minutes shortly after polls opened to polls closing.”

The lawsuit claims “Maricopa did not conduct pre-election logic and accuracy (‘L&A’) testing … on any vote center tabulators used on Election Day” and that Maricopa County allegedly had evidence before Election Day of faulty vote center tabulators but didn’t fix the problem beforehand.

Lake has refused to concede the results of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, where she narrowly lost to Hobbs by less than 20,000 votes. The former local news anchor has filed multiple lawsuits over the results, though they’ve largely been rejected by the courts.

Lake is now running for Senate against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). An aggregate of Arizona polls surveying the Arizona Senate race compiled by Decision Desk HQ show Gallego leading Lake, 45 percent to 43 percent.

Gallego slammed Lake’s latest filing, writing on social platform X, “As @KariLake begs Arizonans to make her the next Senator, she’s pushing the courts to overturn the 2022 election and make her the Governor.”

“She’s delusional. She’s unfit to serve. She’s too extreme for Arizona,” he added.

However, Lake’s campaign argued in a statement that she was “keeping her word” by fighting to make sure Arizonans’ votes counted.

“While Ruben Gallego is in DC fighting to allow illegal aliens to vote, Kari Lake is keeping her word to the people of Arizona that she will continue to fight in the courts so that every legal vote in Arizona counts,” Caroline Wren, a senior advisor to Lake, told The Hill in a statement.

The Maricopa County recorder’s office said it had no comment.>

<The more Americans learn about the Heritage Foundation's authoritarian Project 2025 initiative, the more they dislike it. That may be why both former President Donald Trump and groups allied with him are now trying to keep it at arm's length.

According to ABC News, America First Legal — which is led by Trump's top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller — has reached out to Project 2025 and asked to be removed from its list of advisory board members. The network reported that the group was listed among the other groups collaborating with Heritage on Project 2025 as recently as Thursday.

"I have zero involvement with Project 2025. Zero. None. I made an advice video a long while back for students. I have no involvement with the project whatsoever," Miller told ABC.

Miller's gesture may prove fruitless, given that his fingerprints have long been on Project 2025 well before it got its official name. Axios reported in 2022 that several Trump administration veterans like Miller were closely involved with efforts to craft a blueprint for a second Trump administration to radically transform the federal civil service into an army of political loyalists — a key plank of Project 2025.

In addition to Miller, former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, former Presidential Personnel Office Director John McEntee, former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell and former National Security Council official Kash Patel, among others, were named as accomplices in the report describing the plan. CNN reported this week that these Trump White House veterans, along with roughly 140 other ex-Trump advisors and staffers, are involved with Project 2025.

That plan to pack federal agencies with Trump loyalists relies on an executive order known as "Schedule F," which Trump issued just before he left office and which President Joe Biden promptly rescinded not long after taking office. That executive order removes long-standing employment protections for career federal employees, thus allowing a president's direct appointees to drastically go up from roughly 5,000 to more than 54,000.

These appointees, thousands of whom have already been pre-vetted by Heritage, would then be placed in key positions of influence throughout federal agencies, effectively allowing a president to implement draconian policies largely free from congressional interference. Project 2025's criteria for screening potential Trump administration employees aren't based on applicants' knowledge of federal policy, but whether they're dutifully loyal to the MAGA movement.

Miller's move to distance himself from Project 2025 comes after Trump's second post claiming he had no knowledge of the initiative or of who was behind it. On Thursday, Trump posted to his Truth Social account that any effort trying to tie him to the controversial plan was "pure disinformation."

However, Trump claiming ignorance of Heritage's blueprint and its architects falls apart upon closer scrutiny, given that he was recorded speaking to Heritage in 2022 and shaking hands with Heritage president and Project 2025 leader Kevin Roberts.

"This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do," Trump said two years ago.>

<More than 14,000 people on Tennessee’s voter rolls were sent letters earlier this year asking them to prove they’re U.S. citizens, prompting complaints from immigrant communities and Democratic lawmakers.

“Our office has received information that appears to indicate that your voter information matches with an individual who may not have been a United States citizen at the time of obtaining a Tennessee driver license or ID card,” read the letter from Mark Goins, Tennessee state coordinator of elections.

The letter asked recipients to mail back a copy of a document proving citizenship: birth certificate, passport or naturalization certificate. But the letter did not say whether those who failed to respond would be purged from the state’s voter rolls.

“It is clearly intended to intimidate people into taking themselves off the rolls,” said Blair Bowie, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center. The center was one of several groups that have expressed concerns about the mailing.

“I think that this is a classic example of targeting a constitutional classification of individuals to discourage them from exercising their constitutional right to vote,” Jeff Preptit, a staff attorney with the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Guardian.

“Everything in the letter reeks of voter intimidation,” Charles Lieou wrote in a letter to The Tennessean. “The onus would be on me to prove it once again, almost as if I were an indicted criminal. This is utterly ridiculous,” he added.

In a letter to state lawmakers late last month, Goins said the list of voters flagged was based on a “snapshot” of noncitizens in the state’s driver’s license database. He also acknowledged that there might be people on the list who were noncitizens when they got their driver’s license but have since become naturalized citizens.

Goins also said it’s unlikely that anyone would be stricken from the voter rolls before the November election. Tennessee’s primary for state and local elective offices is Aug. 1.>

<Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said Friday that former President Donald Trump’s controversial remark about “Black jobs” during the presidential debate last month was taken “out of context.”

During the debate on June 27 against President Joe Biden, Trump blamed Biden’s open border policy as the cause of inflation.

“His big kill on the Black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border. They’re taking Black jobs now, and it could be 18 — it could be 19 and even 20 million people,” Trump said.

“They’re taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs, and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re gonna see something that’s going to be the worst in our history,” he added.

The comments baffled people on social media and didn’t sit right with some Black lawmakers, such as Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas).

But in an interview with The Root on Friday, Scott attempted to defend the former president.

“I think what he meant to say was the fact that two-thirds of the jobs he created ... went to African Americans, Hispanics, and women,” Scott said. “I think we should take a whole look at the picture, and I don’t think that happens.”

He added that when looking at inflammatory comments, “a lot of people close their eyes if it’s a Democrat,” later mentioning a conversation Biden had with “The Breakfast Club’s” Charlamagne Tha God during his 2020 presidential bid where he told voters, “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”

Scott was one of the handful of potential candidates on Trump’s shortlist to be his running mate. The South Carolina senator has previously defended or avoided condemning Trump, such as when the former president made a false allegation that Biden was prepared to kill him during the 2022 raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate.>

<Election law expert and Democracy Docket publisher Marc Elias has been warning that if President Joe Biden or another Democratic candidate wins the 2024 election, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump and his allies will do everything they can to overturn the election results — only they will be better equipped this year than in 2020.

Now, the Heritage Foundation is claiming, without evidence, that Democrats are planning to steal the election.

The Washington Post's Isaac Arnsdorf reports that Heritage made that claim during a "war game" presentation at their headquarters on Thursday, July 11.

"Barbra Streisand kidnapped by Hamas, Antifa-BLM protesters taking over a migrant detention facility, the FBI arresting Donald Trump two days after winning the election — these were among the far-fetched scenarios imagined by a simulation of threats to the 2024 election showcased on Thursday by the right-wing Heritage Foundation," Arnsdorf explains. "The presentation, delivered at the Foundation's Washington headquarters, stated as a given that the Biden Administration was already engaged in a sweeping conspiracy to use multiple forms of federal power to influence the presidential election. It did not supply any evidence."

Mike Howell, executive director of Heritage's Oversight Project, claimed, "As things stand right now, there's a zero percent chance of a free and fair election. I'm formally accusing the Biden Administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election."

Arnsdorf notes that the July 11 simulation, billed as the "2024 Transition Integrity Project," is "technically independent of the Heritage Foundation but included multiple Heritage employees."

Heritage has recently been drawing a great deal of scrutiny over Project 2025, its 900-page blueprint for a second Trump presidency. The proposals range from severe abortion restrictions to giving the U.S. federal government's executive branch considerably more power, and Project 2025 is so controversial that even Trump himself is trying to distance himself from it.

Kevin Roberts, the far-right Chrisitan nationalist who heads the Heritage Foundation, is also being criticized for some recent remarks that his detractors say were promoting violence.

During an appearance on Real America's Voice, Roberts said, "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

In response, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch argued, on X (formerly Twitter), "The author of Project 2025 is calling for revolution and suggesting bloodshed if liberals dare oppose them."

Conservative/libertarian former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Virginia) warned, "Kevin Roberts is threatening violence to anyone not following his dear leader. Every network should cover this. All of this happening while Dems whinge and play new candidate lotto.">

'Evidence? F*** that!'

<Former President Donald Trump just tore into several House Republicans, and made sure to let his millions of followers know their names.

In a post to his Truth Social platform Friday night, the 45th president of the United States attacked six House Republicans for their role in the failure of an anti-DOJ amendment to pass a committee vote. He also That amendment would have made it illegal for federal and state funding to be used in the criminal prosecution of former presidents.

"Just heard from Great Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia that the Amendment to Defund the Prosecution of a Presidential Candidate prior to November’s Election did not pass, 26-25," he wrote. "It lost by only one vote, because one Republican, Mike Simpson of Idaho, stupidly voted NO, and two “Republicans,” David Valadao of California and Dan Newhouse of Washington, the only two remaining Impeachers in the House of President Donald J. Trump, didn’t show up to vote. They must have had more important things to do. Also, Mike Garcia of California, David Joyce of Ohio, and Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, didn’t show up to vote."

"Thanks very much, fellas, for your great support!" He sarcastically added.

The former president's attacks on these Republicans for the amendment's failure may have unintended consequences, particularly for Garcia, who represents a swing district. House Republicans will be struggling to keep their razor-thin majority this fall, as control of the House of Representatives may come down to just a handful of close races nationwide.

Trump's post also represents an obstacle House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has faced since being handed the gavel last fall: Actually whipping the votes necessary to pass legislation. Johnson learned that lesson the hard way earlier this year when Republicans' first attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas narrowly failed due to several lawmakers' absences.

GOP infighting between Trump's handpicked candidates and other House Republicans has been seen recently in Virginia's 5th Congressional District. Rep. Bob Good (R-Virginia), who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus, just filed for a recount in his recent primary race he lost by less than 400 votes out of roughly 63,000 ballots cast.

Good was forced to fight for his political life after Virginia Republican state senator John McGuire earned the former president's endorsement. Trump backed McGuire largely due to Good endorsing Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in his short-lived bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

In an earlier Truth Social post, Trump ripped into the Freedom Caucus chairman despite acknowledging that Good later endorsed the former president after DeSantis dropped out of the race.

"Bob Good is BAD FOR VIRGINIA, AND BAD FOR THE USA,” Trump wrote in May. “He turned his back on our incredible movement, and was constantly attacking and fighting me until recently, when he gave a warm and ‘loving’ Endorsement – But really, it was too late. The damage had been done!”>

<When the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled earlier this month that presidents are immune from criminal charges for laws they allegedly break while performing official duties, Adav Noti, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, thought back to the final weeks of Donald Trump’s time in the White House.

Faced with an embarrassing defeat to Joe Biden, Trump and his campaign had orchestrated a nationwide effort to challenge the loss in court, lying and citing conspiracy theories about fraud. Eventually, they summoned a mob to Washington, D.C., that attacked Congress in an unsuccessful effort to overturn the election results.

But a couple weeks before the Capitol attack, Trump made a crucial decision. In furtherance of his efforts to cast doubt about the election results and provide the grounds to overturn them, outside advisers had urged Trump to issue an order to seize voting machines nationwide, in order to gin up evidence about the machines being compromised. There was even a draft executive order drawn up announcing the seizure. But Trump did not issue it.

The Capitol attack the following month was a crisis, to be sure, but a president issuing a lawless order to seize voting machines would have represented something closer to a directive to overthrow the American democratic process, in which elections are largely run by states and localities.

Now Noti, a former attorney at the Federal Election Commission, wonders if Trump would have acted differently if the new Supreme Court ruling had been in place.

“People in the White House counsel’s office and DOJ said, ‘It’s illegal, you can’t do that,’ and they won that argument,” Noti said. “That’s the conversation that I think potentially comes out differently in this environment. So now, they go to the president and say, ‘You can’t do that, it’s against the law,’ and the president says, ‘I’m not bound by the law! I cannot be subjected to legal consequences for it, so I’m doing it anyway — and that’s an order.’”

Across the country, legal experts and observers are grappling with the Supreme Court decision’s implications for the future of American democracy. If presidents cannot be held criminally liable for laws broken as part of their official duties, hasn’t the Supreme Court incentivized illegal acts by the most powerful person in the world? And in turn, haven’t the justices handed presidents new, powerful tools for subverting democracy?

Many say the answer is yes.

“If there is a president intent upon committing crimes, this decision gives him a very clear path to that,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former voting rights attorney at the Department of Justice.

“Ordering the Justice Department to institute a sham investigation? Absolutely immune,” Becker said, listing what he called the Supreme Court’s “road map” for corrupt future presidents. “Ordering the military to seize voting machines, as the former president almost attempted in 2020? He’s talking to the military, that’s a core function [of the presidency], he would be immune. Ordering the National Security Agency to conduct secret surveillance on a political opponent? The NSA is part of the executive branch, immune.”

That sense of alarm is common among legal observers. The Supreme Court should rehear the case “so the justices can correct course before the unanticipated consequences of their broad opinion come to pass,” wrote Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department in 2016 and 2017, and who is now executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown.

The ramifications of the decision for the country’s democratic process, McCord told HuffPost, are vast. The president, she agreed, is now arguably immune from criminal prosecution were he to direct the FBI to conduct surveillance of political enemies, for example, or direct the Justice Department to pursue a sham election fraud investigation — something the court’s conservative majority explicitly blessed in its opinion.

“If Congress can’t criminalize — and courts can’t look behind — any of the interactions between the president and the executive agencies, then you can see them being weaponized,” she said. “Beyond DOJ – think about the IRS. ... [For] any agency with any sort of enforcement authority, it becomes a tool for real abuse and overreach of that authority.”....>

<....McCord noted that dissenting justices brought up the hypothetical of a president being immune from criminal prosecution for ordering the military to assassinate a political opponent — a scenario that the majority scoffed at, but did not address specifically in their ruling and concurrences. And she agreed that an order to seize voting machines may be legally protected, too.

“Given the breadth of the majority opinion, if the president ordered the FBI to seize voting machines in order to investigate fraud, baseless or not, in the election — taking this majority at its word, that would be something that not only the president couldn’t be prosecuted for, but also, if Congress can’t legislate on that, and courts can’t examine it, then even a state secretary of state’s lawsuit would arguably be something where the Supreme Court says, ‘courts can’t examine this.’”

Donald Trump is, at least for now, still facing federal (as well as state) criminal charges over his role in the effort to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election. But the future of those charges depends on how lower-court judges interpret the Supreme Court’s opinion.

In essence, the Supreme Court’s majority ruling, penned by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the court’s five other conservatives, broke up presidential conduct into three categories.

According to the ruling, the president’s “core constitutional powers” are “absolutely immune from criminal prosecution,” while “unofficial,” or private, acts are not immune. The decision also outlined a third, middle category – official acts on the “outer perimeter” of the presidency, for which the president is “presumptively” immune, unless prosecutors can show “that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no ‘dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.’” (In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said this vague wording meant that, for presidents, “the Rule of Law now becomes the rule of judges.”)

What’s more, according to Roberts’ opinion, “in dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives,” and official actions cannot be used as evidence in criminal cases brought for a president’s unofficial acts.

Roberts did not write that any of the actions detailed in the federal election interference charges against Trump were “unofficial.” But he did explicitly say Trump was immune from one of the accusations — of attempting to use, as the indictment put it, “the power and authority of the Justice Department to conduct sham election crime investigations and to send a letter to the targeted [swing] states that falsely claimed that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have impacted the election outcome.” This, apparently, would be part of the president’s official duties.

“There’s just no doubt that current, former and future presidents now enjoy really broad immunity from criminal prosecution,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor of law and director of the Public Service Institute at Loyola Law School. “And to the extent that you have a president who wants to push and/or jump over the limits of criminal law, this Supreme Court opinion is rather freeing.”....>

<....Even if the court has stripped all — or even most — criminal penalties for presidents who break the law in office, that doesn’t necessarily mean there are no safeguards against election theft.

After all, if a future president were to move to seize voting machines, for example, he could face a lawsuit in civil court, though it’s unclear how successful that would be. He could also face opposition, or even the threat of mass resignation, from members of his administration who are themselves not immune from criminal prosecution. This is what Trump faced when he threatened to fire then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen after Rosen refused to go along with Trump’s plans.

Trump could preemptively pardon any co-conspiring officials. But in a second term, things could be different anyhow — Trump seems intent on making abject loyalty the top priority for would-be members of his administration.

“You have to look at the larger set of constraints that limit what any president could try to do in terms of illegal conduct,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“What are the other safeguards? Can we count on the courts? Can we count on administrators? Can we count on people surrounding that president to reign in illegal conduct? And one of the dangers with Trump in particular is there is a lesser likelihood of having guardrails in the administration next time, because they’re doing vetting that is focused primarily on the loyalty of those individuals that might work for the government. So I think that creates a greater risk than you would ordinarily see.”

This debate — what, realistically, are presidents now incentivized to do? — continues among legal observers.

The court has given ”a sitting president many more tools to try to use their power to manipulate an election,” Noti told HuffPost. “They’ve greatly expanded the toolbox. And all those tools remain illegal. But as to the president, that no longer really matters.”

They have given a sitting president many more tools to try to use their power to manipulate an election.Adav Noti, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center.

Levinson saw it slightly differently. “There’s not more tools in the toolbox — it’s just, if you steal the toolbox, you might not face any penalties for doing so.”

On one point, though, the lawyers with whom HuffPost spoke agreed: While Trump’s 2020 effort to overturn the legitimate election results largely went through his campaign and outside advisers — people like Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s personal attorney lobbied state legislators with conspiracy theories — the Supreme Court has now incentivized future presidents to work directly through the levers of power exclusively available to the White House.

“[Conservative attorney] Cleta Mitchell will not be on the call with Brad Raffensperger in the future, Rudy Giuliani will not be having meetings in the White House — unless, and I expect as is possible, people like Cleta Mitchell and Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman are hired by the White House,” Becker said.

“It’s the easiest thing to do – for a president who wants to use his position for corruption, the sole consideration for hiring should be fealty to that individual.”

Even setting aside the legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, the court’s majority dramatically changed the norms to which presidents have, for centuries, held themselves: In the past, it was unthinkable that a president would be intimately involved in the prosecutorial decisions of the Department of Justice, for example.

That’s why it was so scandalous when Trump meddled with the DOJ, such as when he pressured then-FBI director James Comey to drop the agency’s investigation of Trump’s then-national security adviser, Michael Flynn.....>

<....But in his opinion, Roberts spelled out that such prosecutorial decisions were explicitly the official domain of the executive branch — and that “the Constitution vests the entirety of the executive power in the President.” Former Trump Justice Department officials told NBC News they feared this would only embolden Trump if he wins in 2024.

McCord pointed out that the justices didn’t explicitly disavow the norm that presidents shouldn’t meddle in the Justice Department’s decision-making — but she also acknowledged that Trump would likely see the ruling as a green light in this regard.

“The next time, he’s not going to be trying to appoint an attorney general that believes in those norms,” she said.

Then, there’s the greatest norm of all — the peaceful transfer of power between presidents. Trump has violated this once before, when he called his mob to Washington, D.C. And he’s never shown any sign of regret for it.

When HuffPost asked Hasen how Trump might use the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling to stack the deck for the next Republican nominee for president in 2028, Hasen took issue with the question.

“You’re assuming that Trump would leave office at the end of his second term?”>

<When Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed a law in June requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in the state, it reignited the longstanding debate over the separation of church and state.

Opponents are pleading with federal judges to block the mandate before the school year begins in August. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom From Religion Foundation are actively seeking to challenge the law in court, arguing it is “blatantly unconstitutional.”

From my perspective as a social scientist, a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be hung over every classroom across the state is flawed for reasons that go beyond its constitutionality. I see it as a fundamentally ineffective mandate, because heaps of research say so. And did I mention it would be a waste of tax dollars?

In the extensive research on human dishonesty, one clear finding emerges: Passive reminders of ethical conduct, like displaying the Ten Commandments, do not significantly influence behavior. To instill moral values and ethical behavior, active engagement and a sense of relevance are crucial. Simply hanging up a poster of the Ten Commandments on a classroom wall would not foster the active, lived experience of ethical principles.

Consider the Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians. Properly invoked, the Hippocratic Oath inspires students of medicine and practitioners alike to actively engage with its ethical calling and think about its principles at important moments, not just because it has been deeply ingrained in the fabric of the medical community. Unlike passive displays, active engagement creates a sense of commitment to ethical principles, which opens the door to more ethical behavior.

Louisiana’s new law exemplifies bureaucracy at its worst — it imposes a mandate based on a principle that extensive research has shown to be ineffective. It’s not just controversial; it will make schools feel as if they have dealt with the problem of ethics, when in fact they will not have.

Moreover, the assumption that the Ten Commandments can serve as a universal moral code is increasingly out of touch with contemporary American society. Over the past few decades, the relationship of the average American with religion has become more diffuse, and the influence of traditional religious codes has decreased.

Research conducted over the past decades on moral reminders concludes that active engagement with the moral reminder — such as the Ten Commandments — can decrease dishonesty. But, given Americans’ waning religiosity, that effect is diminished.

For the Ten Commandments to have an impact on thought or behavior, people have to first buy into the idea that the Ten Commandments are a meaningful set of moral rules. Displaying a moral code that doesn’t carry meaning is the equivalent of hanging a poster written in a foreign language.

Together, these two points mean that if someone wants to increase the ethics of our schools and the ethical behavior of our students, the first thing they need to ensure is that the set of moral principles has very deep and broad buy-in.

Next, the engagement with this set of ethical reminders has to be active and intentional. Of course, such programs are much more complex to carry out than simply hanging the Ten Commandments in different corners of schools — but they have the advantage that they might also work to have an impact.

Finally, the trend of setting up rules that are designed to make a political splash and maybe get some headlines but are not thoughtfully designed for efficacy further erodes our trust in politicians and institutions at large — government, corporations and even academia.

As these institutions lose their authority, there is a collective rejection of standard norms of behavior, which I believe are at play in our so-called “culture wars” and other societal trends that have upended American society in recent years.

The breakdown of trust in government and moral codes that historically guided Americans poses a critical question for our democracy: Can we still function effectively without a shared belief system? As we head into another election year, this question becomes even more pressing. Yet its implications extend far beyond politics.

Without a sense of mutual agreement on our ethical principles and without trust that the people leading us are truly interested in our long-term well-being, any efforts to improve behavior — whether through passive or active means — are doomed to fail.>

<When the Supreme Court’s Ohio v. EPA decision blocked Environmental Protection Agency limits on Midwestern states polluting their downwind neighbors, a sad but telling coda came in Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion. In five instances, it confused nitrogen oxide, a pollutant that contributes to ozone formation, with nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas.

You can’t make this stuff up. This repeated mistake in the 5-4 decision exemplifies a high court not just indifferent to facts but contemptuous of them.

Public trust in the Supreme Court, already at a historic low, is now understandably plunging. In the last four years, a reliably Republican majority on the high court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has embarked on a remarkable spree against history and reality itself, ignoring or eliding facts in decisions involving school prayer, public health, homophobia, race, climate change, abortion and clean water, not to mention the laughing gas case.

The crescendo to this assault on expertise landed in June, when the majority’s Chevron decision arrogated to the courts regulatory calls that have been made by civil servant scientists, physicians and lawyers for the last 40 years. (With stunning understatement, the Associated Press called it “a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests.” No kidding.) The decision enthrones the high court—an unelected majority—as a group of technically incompetent, in some cases corrupt, politicos in robes with power over matters that hinge on vital facts about pollution, medicine, employment and much else. These matters govern our lives.

The 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton School District school prayer decision hinged on a fable of a football coach offering “a quiet personal prayer,” in the words of the opinion. In reality, this coach was holding overt post-game prayer meetings on the 50-yard line, ones that an atheist player felt compelled to attend to keep off the bench. Last year’s 303 Creative v. Elenis decision, allowing a Web designer to discriminate against gay people, revolved entirely on a supposed request for a gay wedding website that never existed that (supposedly) came from a straight man who never made the request. Again, you can’t make this stuff up. Unless you are on the Supreme Court. Then it becomes law.

Summing up the Court’s term on July 1, the legal writer Chris Geidner called attention to a more profound “important and disturbing reality” of the current majority’s relationship to facts. “When it needs to decide a matter for the right, it can and does accept questionable, if not false, claims as facts. If the result would benefit the left, however, there are virtually never enough facts to reach a decision.”

The “laughing gas” decision illustrates this nicely: EPA had asked 23 states to submit a state-based plan to reduce their downwind pollution. Of those, 21 proposed to do nothing to limit their nitrogen (not nitrous) oxide emissions. Two others didn’t even respond to that extent. Instead of telling the states to cut their pollution as required by law, the Court’s majority invented a new theoretical responsibility for EPA—to account for future court cases keeping a state out of its Clean Air Act purview—and sent the case back to an appeals court.

That means that pollution that will cause an estimated 1,300 premature deaths in 2026 keeps on coming. Where fantasy prayers and fake cakes tip the scales of justice on one side, “an underdeveloped theory that is unlikely to succeed on the merits,” as described in a rare dissent from (Republican) Justice Amy Coney Barrett, swung things the other way for polluters. The decision seems aimed at hobbling the EPA by demanding it thoroughly respond to every inane public comment submitted by polluters in perpetuity before issuing a regulation, warns climate writer Robinson Meyer of HeatMap.

Climate change, in particular, seems to draw out the Court’s taste for fiction. The 2022 West Virginia v. EPA decision that halted efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants, another 6-3 opinion, saw the majority enshrine a “major questions” doctrine. This legal theology, conjured from the penumbras and emanations of past antiregulatory decisions, insists that sizable regulations require patently-impossible-to-acquire congressional authorization. This is a “power grab” by the Court, anointing itself the economy’s czar....>

Gosuck, you are as worthless as your mother was--pity we will not see you cashiered!