<A deputy constable in northern Texas spent years trying to charge school librarians with felonies over the books they distributed, reported Lonestar Live.

The controversy occured [sic] in Granbury, a town of 10,000 people just southwest of Fort Worth, wrote Ileana Garnand. Scott London, a Hood County chief deputy constable, accused three school district librarians of letting kids access books he deemed obscene, the report said.

"He visited schools, spoke to district staff, issued subpoenas, obtained student records and drafted criminal complaints" — all with the intent to secure felony charges for distributing harmful material to a minor, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $10,000.

Specifically, according to the report, London said libraries distributed "pornography," with the books cited being “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “Gone” by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson, “Fade” by Lisa McMann, and three books from Sarah J. Maas’ “A Court of Thorns and Roses” fantasy series.

None of the titles contain pornography. Many contain sexual topics, including abuse of children at schools.

Last month, Hood County District Attorney Ryan Sinclair, a Republican, decided against prosecuting the librarians, due to a lack of evidence — but the years of investigations upended their lives nonetheless, with one of the librarians resigning from the school district.

London is linked to the "Constitutional Sheriffs" movement, an extremist group that believes county sheriffs are the highest authority in America and can nullify federal laws, and unsuccessfully ran for county sheriff last year. He also attempted to launch a local chapter of the Oath Keepers, a far-right paramilitary organization whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

His efforts, however, echo a broad push around the country by right-wing activists to try to censor the content in school libraries, encouraged by new laws passed in Republican-controlled statehouses that make challenging such books easier. Much of this was led by Moms for Liberty, a group with ties to the Proud Boys.>

<Arizona’s primaries on Tuesday night saw numerous candidates who have questioned the results of past elections gain ground, the latest sign of Donald Trump’s deepening imprint on the GOP in the Grand Canyon State.

In the most significant races of the night, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Republican Kari Lake were officially chosen as their parties’ respective Senate nominees.

But voters also weighed in on several other contested primaries, including those for seats being vacated by Gallego and Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.). The primary night also offered some clues of what voters might expect in November.

Here are five early takeaways from Arizona’s primaries:

Tuesday night was undoubtedly a good night for election deniers.

Lake, who has refused to concede her 2022 election loss, won her GOP primary. Abe Hamadeh, a former attorney general candidate running in the GOP primary for the 8th Congressional District, has called the 2020 election “rigged” and claimed Trump won his state that year. He was leading his GOP rival Blake Masters, another Trump ally, 30 percent to 23 percent at time of publication.

Former state Rep. Mark Finchem, a former secretary of state candidate who has also espoused baseless claims about the 2020 election, was leading his next GOP rival 45 percent to 37 percent, with 60 percent of estimated vote reported as of Wednesday morning.

And in one of the biggest surprises of the night, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a top election official who pushed back against false fraud claims about the election, was trailing one of his hardline GOP primary challengers.

All in all, the night underscored the extent to which election denialism has taken hold in the Arizona GOP’s base.

Gallego and Lake had been in general election mode long before the primaries took place, as both candidates were heavily favored to win.

On Tuesday night, their matchup became official.

Lake had a primary rival in Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, though Decision Desk HQ quickly called the race for her on Tuesday.

In a nod to the much anticipated head-to-head, the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm quickly released a new digital ad targeting Lake. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the chair of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, called the former local news anchor “a power-hungry liar,” while lauding Gallego as “a proven fighter for his state’s families and priorities.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chair of the Senate GOP campaign arm, called Gallego “one of the most radical Democrats in the country” as he congratulated Lake over her victory in her primary.

An aggregate of Arizona surveys compiled by DDHQ shows Gallego leading Lake 47 percent to 43 percent. The nonpartisan election handicapper Cook Political Report rates the seat “lean Democrat.”

Though Lake quickly captured the Republican nomination, Lamb still received a notable chunk of the GOP primary vote.

Lake received 53 percent of the vote to Lamb’s 41 percent with 63 percent of the estimated vote reported as of early Wednesday morning, raising questions over whether the sheriff’s supporters will ultimately migrate to her in November.

Lake has long been a divisive figure within the GOP. She has sought to court skeptics and the McCain-faction of the Republican Party after isolating them last cycle when she ran for Arizona governor.

But the former local news anchor has in many ways run as the same conservative firebrand that she ran as in 2022, and some of those skeptical of her remain unconvinced about her candidacy.

Whether that will hurt her in November remains to be seen, but the divided vote share on Tuesday suggests she might have work to do in appealing to some Republicans....>

<....Masters first gained national attention as a candidate backed by conservative entrepreneur Peter Thiel in Arizona’s 2022 Senate race. He ended up losing to Democrat Mark Kelly, who is now being considered for Kamala Harris’s running mate.

Masters looked poised to suffer yet another defeat on Tuesday night, this time in the GOP primary in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District against Hamadeh.

The former Senate candidate received a last-minute endorsement from Trump — who also threw his backing behind Masters’s opponent, Hamadeh, saying both men were equally good candidates.

Other Republicans who ran in the GOP contest to replace Lesko included Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma and former Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.).

Tuesday night also underscored a key point that will be relevant for November: Arizona takes a long time to count ballots.

As of early Wednesday morning, many races had yet to be called.

Some of this appears to be due to a newly enacted law that changes how mail-in ballots are verified. The law had sparked confusion among some officials as to how they should track mail ballots, according to Arizona Mirror.

The slow duration of Tuesday’s count offers clues as to what to expect in November. If control of the White House or the Senate ends up hinging on Arizona, it could potentially take days to know the results of those elections.>

Now that worthless REMF <fredthebore> can whinge for many an hour since Arizona has changed their laws on ballot counting.

<In his address to the nation last Wednesday night, President Biden declared that America was at an “inflection point,” at which people would have “to choose between moving forward or backward, between hope and hate, between unity and division.”

He might have added that the entire Western world stands at the same “rare moment in history.”

Biden was referring to the growing threat of populism, which has been on the rise in Europe and the United States for several years.

Like most political ideologies, populism is more easily described than precisely defined.

Broadly speaking, populism is an ideology that pits ordinary people, often led by a charismatic leader, against elites (political, economic and/or intellectual), whom it accuses of governing in their own interests. Populist leaders usually construct a narrow, often ethnically based definition of national identity and rely heavily on scapegoating those they deem a threat to that identity.

Authoritarianism — the concentration of power in the hands of a small group or a single individual — often goes hand-in-hand with populism. Populism thrives on fear, which can lead otherwise rational people to follow a leader who promises to deliver them from perils, real or imagined.

The crisis of European democracy after World War I followed by the Great Depression allowed populism to thrive from 1922-1945. It reached its fullest expression in the fascist dictatorships of Italy, Germany and Spain, but also spawned far-right movements across Europe.

Even traditional bastions of democracy faced the threat.

At its peak in 1934, the British Union of Fascists had 50,000 members. Broadcasting from his church in Detroit during the 1930s, the rabid antisemite and Nazi sympathizer Father Charles Coughlin attracted thousands of listeners to his weekly radio broadcasts. On Feb. 20, 1939, the neo-Nazi German American Bund held a rally in Madison Square Garden attended by 20,000 people.

Today, the Western world is experiencing another wave of far-right populism, stoked by fear and based on identity politics.

Neither the U.S. nor any country in Europe is facing a crisis remotely like the Great Depression, but all have experienced significant demographic change and economic transformation. The uncertainty and anxiety these changes produce have made voters susceptible to populist leaders promising a return to “the way things used to be.”

European and American populists see immigrants as the greatest threat to their well-being and identity. For decades, a declining native population left many European nations dependent on the labor of immigrants and guest workers.

The 2011 Syrian refugee crisis followed by a steady wave of desperate people crossing the Mediterranean from Africa has increased the percentage of non-native Europeans. This demographic change fueled anger at the cost of caring for refugees and led to acrimonious debates over how many newcomers Europe could absorb. Populist politicians capitalized on this fear and anger.

The poster child of the new populism in Europe is Viktor Orban of Hungary.

Orban first got elected in 2010 with an appeal to Magyar (the Hungarian majority group) nationalism. Once in power, he curtailed the independence of the judiciary, limited freedom of the press and rigged the electoral system so that he could win large parliamentary majorities in the next three elections without ever garnering a majority of the popular vote.

MAGA-supporting Republicans greatly admire Orban, who has spoken several times at the Conservative Political Action Conference....>

<....With its experience of dictatorship under Benito Mussolini, Italy should have been wary of a populist leader, but in 2022, voters gave Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy Party, which has historic ties to Italian Fascism, a plurality of parliamentary seats, paving the way for her to become prime minister.

In a speech before the election, she summed up her political philosophy: “Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology.” She also said “no” to “Islamist violence,” “mass migration,” big international finance” and “the bureaucrats of Brussels, and “yes to secure borders.”

With a similar anti-immigration, anti-European Union message, Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party won the largest block of seats in the Dutch parliament in November.

In June, the far-right Alternative for Germany party polled second in the country’s European Union parliamentary elections.

A hastily assembled leftist coalition prevented the far-right National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, who shares the xenophobic views of Meloni and Wilders, from winning the Fench national election. Nonetheless, it won 140 seats, up from 89 in 2022.

Although Labour won the United Kingdom general election on July 4, its immigration policy promised to “reduce the reliance on overseas workers, address home-grown skills shortages and ensure that hard work is rewarded with proper wages and conditions.” 

British politicians across the political spectrum remember that anti-immigrant sentiment encouraged the 2016 vote to leave the European Union.

Donald Trump’s movement embodies contemporary American populism. Like his European counterparts, Trump exploits identity politics.

For many of his followers, “Make America Great Again” means “make America white and Christian again.” This ideology appeals to white working-class men who have lost their high-paying manufacturing jobs and blame their misfortune on people of color and women (both of whom they consider privileged by affirmative action) and, above all, foreigners.

Like Orban, Meloni and Wilders, Trump has made migrants the essential scapegoats of his populist movement. He has accused people entering the country illegally of stealing American jobs and committing crimes. He has called some immigrants “animals” and “not human.”

Populism is the worldview Biden called on Americans to reject; pluralism is the alternative he wants us to embrace. Pluralism is the belief that racially, religiously and culturally diverse groups can peacefully coexist in a democratic society.

In the contest between populism and pluralism, the United States has a distinct advantage. The country is far more diverse than any in Europe, and it is becoming even more so.

Census projections indicate that, by 2045, the U.S. population will be 49.7 percent white, 24.6 percent Hispanic, 13.1 percent Black, 7.9 percent Asian and 3.9 percent multiracial.

With wisdom based on his 50 years of public service, Biden calls on us to celebrate that diversity, not reject it.>

<For his political opponents, Donald Trump offers a target-rich environment: his criminality, his bigotry, his "bleach those lungs"-levels of ignorance, and, of course, his overall weirdness. At first blush, his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, seems less vulnerable. Vance can speak in complete sentences without rambling about sharks or electrocution. Unlike his boss, Vance is fully literate and capable of writing grammatical sentences without random capitalizations. Vance has not been convicted of any crimes, and he even looks relatively normal, especially compared to the makeup-caked Republican candidate with an elaborate combover. If one accused Vance of smelling like body odor mixed with ketchup, most people would not believe it.

Vance was a poor pick as running mate for this reason, and yet Trump's choice was its own "ecstatic truth," revealing how deeply screwed up MAGA is about sex and gender.

And yet, the fledgling presidential campaign of Vice President Harris is lampooning Vance nearly as often as they're going after Trump, and in the same terms: Vance is "weird." In particular, the Harris campaign has thoroughly lambasted Vance for his love of the tedious misogynist trope of the "cat lady." Vance has repeatedly insulted women who have not given birth by saying they're "miserable" and attacking cats, which are popular pets with people of all genders and parental statuses. He's defended these comments by claiming "the left" is "anti-child" and "anti-family," even though all evidence shows that children are happier when they're born to parents who want them. He even tried to joke that he's "got nothing against cats," which the Harris campaign correctly pointed out means that he is still standing by his denigration of people who have no biological children.

In addition to the willfully childless, Vance attacked stepparents like Harris and adoptive parents like Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in his list of "miserable cat ladies." This is a fixation of his, as evidenced by a 2020 clip that was unearthed Tuesday, in which he said "people who don’t have kids at home" — which describes most people under 25 and over 55 — as "more sociopathic."

Putting Vance on the defense over this is smart for many reasons, including the fact that childless people, stepparents, and adoptive parents have a right to vote, whether Vance likes it or not. It also fits with the "freedom" and "not going back" messages of the Harris campaign by underscoring why Trump and Vance oppose reproductive rights. But it's also helpful because it reminds voters that Trump has a long history of appealing to a deeply unpopular constituency: gross men. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted on Twitter, "It’s an incel platform, dude. It’s SUPER weird."

Vance, 39, married a decade ago and isn't an incel, which is internet slang for a subclass of misogynists who identify as "involuntarily celibate." But his odd "cat lady" rhetoric ties him to a larger far-right fringe defined by their regressive and downright strange attitudes about women, dating, and family life. Incels are one piece of it, but there are also groups like the Proud Boys, "men's rights activists," and "tradcaths," who claim to be reviving "traditional" Catholicism. What binds these groups together is faith in an imaginary past where both men and women happily and unquestioningly submit to repressed sexuality and rigid gender roles.

This is undoubtedly a fantasy version of history and Vance's adherence to it confirms the Democratic charge that MAGA is "weird." It's not just that most modern Americans don't have a "Leave It To Beaver" lifestyle. Most Americans understand that "Leave It To Beaver" was a silly TV show, not reality. Most Americans understand that innovations like no-fault divorce, which Vance has denounced, acceptance of premarital sex, and LGBTQ rights were responses to pre-existing needs of real human beings, and that whatever social upheavals they may have caused were minor compared to the drastic reduction of human suffering....>

<....One doesn't need to be deeply immersed in the MAGA subcultures of "tradcaths" or "incels" to grasp who Vance is speaking to in these clips: Men who, because of their own personal or romantic failures, have been radicalized towards an ideology so far to the right that it's fascistic. Over the years, Trump has relied heavily on this community of under-sexed nerds, angry divorced men, and dudes with an array of hang-ups to fuel what is now nine full years of presidential campaigning. Trump's close ally Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., even said as much recently, telling Newsmax that the GOP can afford to lose female voters because they're picking up new male voters with this politics of resentment. By picking Vance, who speaks fluent Internet Weirdo, Trump appeared to be shoring up his pitch to this base of aggrieved men.

Trump's own sexual promiscuity and frequent divorces can sometimes lull voters into complacency, as they tell themselves that he can't really support all the radical anti-sex and anti-woman policies he's embraced. But he personally chose Vance, making it that much harder to run away from the entirely correct charge that Trump has aligned himself with people who have extreme, authoritarian dreams of controlling the sex lives of Americans down to the minute details. For instance, the group behind Project 2025, which is set up to be the agenda of a Trump White House, proudly tweeted about their goals of "ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills." Trump has many close allies that use the term "recreational sex" to slander the private lives of nearly all Americans, straight and queer, married or not.

As Melissa Ryan wrote at Ctrl Alt Right Delete, Vance is deeply entrenched in a "neoreactionary" movement that "calls for the fall of democracies and a return to monarchy and aristocracy." Vance was propped up financially and politically by tech investor Peter Thiel, who has questioned whether women should have the right to vote. Thiel has also backed pseudo-intellectual Curtis Yarvin, who Vance has quoted, and who called slavery a "natural human relationship" akin to "that of patron and client." Vance himself has floated proposals to water down the votes of women and single people by giving "parents" — mostly fathers in practice — an extra vote per child. This odd proposal shares DNA with the Christian fundamentalist notion of "household voting," in which a father does the voting for everyone else in the home. It's another backdoor effort to terminate women's suffrage.

In the days following Vance being named running mate, a silly meme exploded across the internet, falsely claiming that he had written about having sex with a couch in his book "Hillbilly Elegy." The person who concocted this rumor meant it as a joke and, as far as I can tell, everyone who has repeated it also means it as a joke. Even though no one believes the couch story is literally true, the meme spread like wildfire. As the guy who wrote the joke told Business Insider, he was inspired by filmmaker Werner Herzog's concept of "ecstatic truths," which can both be technically false but "make some essence of the man visible." In this case, the "essence" of Vance is that he's got some weird and inhumane views on human sexuality and gender relations. He was a poor pick as running mate for this reason, and yet Trump's choice was its own "ecstatic truth," revealing how deeply screwed up MAGA is about sex and gender.

Or, as the Harris campaign Twitter account wryly put it, "JD Vance does not couch his hatred for women.">

<Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested that Vice President Harris wouldn’t be able to stand up to world leaders because of her appearance, adding that he didn’t want to spell it out but viewers would know what he meant.

“She’ll be like a play toy,” Trump — who has a history of using sexist attacks and stereotypes in campaigns against women — said in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham, a portion of which aired on Tuesday night. “They look at her and they say, ‘We can’t believe we got so lucky.’ They’re going to walk all over her.”

Trump then turned to look directly at the camera and added: “And I don’t want to say as to why. But a lot of people understand it.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said he was not referring to race or gender and went on to criticize Harris over her record on immigration and other Biden administration policies.

“She is weak, dishonest and dangerously liberal, and that’s why the American people will reject her on November 5th,” Leavitt said.

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The pro-Harris super PAC American Bridge 21st Century called Trump’s remark about how Harris would stack up against world leaders “very gross and weird.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the campaign criticized Trump for baselessly accusing Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, of disliking Jewish people.

“Donald Trump is hateful, despicable, and should not be our president,” the campaign said in an unsigned statement. “He roots against America. He insults America. Why would we want to put him in charge of America?”

Elsewhere in the Fox News interview, Ingraham asked Trump how he would improve life for Black women, whom Harris is energizing. Trump responded by saying that Harris would lead to unsafe streets, and “you’re going to have millions of people coming in taking your job and your husband’s job.”

Harris on Tuesday urged Trump to commit to debate her. He has expressed openness to debating but cast doubt on a September date hosted by ABC News that he previously agreed to with President Biden before Biden withdrew from the race.

“Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage,” she told a packed arena in Atlanta. “As the saying goes, if you got something to say, say it to my face.”

Trump has habitually criticized the appearance and intelligence of female political opponents, from Carly Fiorina to Hillary Clinton and Nikki Haley. Last week House Republican leaders asked their members not to attack Harris because of her race and identity after several lawmakers dismissed her as a “DEI candidate,” using the abbreviation for “diversity, equity and inclusion.”>

<President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race, and what he sees as the increasing hostility toward Christianity and organized religion were just a few of the topics Sen. Mike Lee discussed during his appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show.

The episode, released Tuesday, shows the two men sitting across from one another inside Carlson’s warmly-lit Maine studio for a sprawling two-hour interview about politics and faith.

Carlson led off the conversation by referencing an article from journalist Seymour “Sy” Hersh about Biden’s final days in the presidential race — particularly about how Democratic leaders influenced Biden’s decision to drop out. Both Carlson and Lee, a Republican from Utah, were critical of the top-down effort from politicians and donors to convince Biden to leave the ticket.

“It denigrates their own party faithful — the voters who showed up in what was essentially an uncontested primary election,” said Lee.

Lee said journalists have not applied the same scrutiny to what went on with Biden as they would if the candidate was a Republican, as he asked, “Can you imagine the kind of absolute venom that would be released against Republicans if we pulled a stunt like that?”

Lee could not pinpoint the exact date he remembered noticing Biden’s decline, but he said he saw it during the president’s first year in office.

The senior senator from Utah has served with two other presidents: Barack Obama and Donald Trump. He said he remembers a time when Obama bumped into him and the two had a great chat.

“He would call from time to time just to check in on things that we agreed on, projects that we were working on,” Lee said about Obama. Members of Congress would also be able to get on the phone quickly with Trump, too. But that has not been the case with Biden, said Lee.

“They shielded him from us,” said Lee.

Both Carlson and Lee said they had seen Biden excel at connecting with people in the past and this was a skill he had. But Lee said he had seen snippets of Biden no longer being able to do that.

Lee said one time Biden called him to talk about the expansion of two national monuments in Utah. He said the conversation happened either in 2021 or 2022.

“A short time into the phone conversation, I could tell he was reading from a script and not only reading from a script, but his voice would start to trail off at the end of each sentence,” Lee told Carlson.

Acknowledging sometimes politicians will use partial scripts or talking points for phone calls, Lee said when speaking to colleagues, it is not common to read directly from a script.

Vice President Kamala Harris could win the election, said Lee. “And Republicans would make a huge mistake by discounting her.”

While Lee said he disagrees with almost everything Harris said, he said she is a compelling speaker and due to the media rallying behind her, she is a threat. “I think we should be very worried about it,” said Lee. “We’ve already seen the media sponsored apotheosis of Kamala Harris.”

Lee said the media has worked to erase Harris’ role as border czar and to disregard that she was one of the most progressive members of the Senate.

“They’re scrubbing things she has said in the past,” said Lee. “Crazy statements she has made, from defunding the police to aggressive, radical climate change policies, Green New Deal Stuff.”

Calling Harris funny and saying she has a playful side and can be emotionally compelling, Lee said she was one of the most progressive members of the committee they were both on. He was critical of the way she approached Trump appointees and also, the Constitution.

“To channel the inner Isaiah, (she) draw(ed) near to the Constitution with her lips, while her heart may have been far from it,” said Lee, adding he thought she does not acknowledge the separation of powers.

“She’s a progressive’s progressive,” he said. Lee said Harris never missed an opportunity to expand the size and cost of the federal government, and she was always in favor of legislation to expand access to reproductive rights.

When speaking about Harris’ enthusiasm for abortion rights, Lee said he thinks part of this is due to her upbringing and her time in law school.

“American law schools with very few exceptions tend to indoctrinate, for whatever reason, Roe versus Wade, into things,” said Lee. “It’s more fundamental than Magna Carta. It’s more fundamental than the Bill of Rights.”

Lee said proponents of abortion have gone from talking about it as safe, legal and rare to encouraging women to share their stories....>

<....When Lee was 10-years-old and his father was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as Solicitor General, Lee said he asked his dad about Roe v. Wade. After his dad explained it to him, Lee said he told his dad he saw it as a legislative decision rather than a judicial one. It is a position Lee still holds: states should have power over abortion legislation.

“I don’t think I’d ever seen my dad more happy to know that one of his children had listened to his discussions about federalism and separation of powers,” said Lee.

While much of the conversation focused on political issues, Carlson also asked Lee about seeing hostility toward Christianity in D.C., especially since Lee is a religious minority in the country and an advocate for religious liberty.

Lee, an active Latter-day Saint, said he has seen increased hostility toward organization religion.

In the Senate, Lee said there is a healthy respect of people’s background. Both Republicans and Democrats gather weekly for a prayer breakfast of all political and religious stripes, said Lee. But he said he has seen things that have concerned him.

When he heard the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, say “The dogma lives loudly within you” to Amy Coney Barrett, he was unsettled. He said during a committee meeting, he urged caution about the way they were talking about religious beliefs.

Quoting a line from the apostle Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Lee said, “if India is the world’s most religious nation and Sweden is the world’s least religious nation, then America can be adequately described as a nation of Indians governed by Swedes.”

April 12, 1937 was the day when Washington D.C. got “immensely more powerful,” said Lee. It was the day the Supreme Court changed a previously held position on the Commerce Clause — under the threat of court packing, said Lee.

It gave Congress power over interstate commerce in a way it did not have before.

“All of a sudden, Congress went from a limited, narrow purpose legislative body to an open-ended one, rendering the 10th Amendment almost a nullity,” said Lee. If Congress could connect it to interstate commerce, they had more power now over lands, agriculture, labor and other issues.

Congress then wrote vague laws that unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats under the executive branch were tasked with enforcing, said Lee. “Permanent Washington.”

“For those of us who love liberty, this is a nightmare,” Lee said.

In his office, Lee said he keeps a monument to the constitutional problems America faces: two stacks of papers. One stack is a few inches tall and it is all the laws passed by Congress in the last year. The other is the Federal Register: a list of announcements of federal regulations.

“Those are a hundred thousand pages, more or less, that get issued every year,” said Lee. These are not laws passed by Congress, they are decided by agencies and have enforcement mechanisms.

One time Lee said he and others on the Judiciary Committee submitted a request to the Congressional Research Service to figure out how many activities are federal crimes.

“The answer took a while and when it came back, it was stunning,” said Lee. “The answer is unknown and unknowable.” A lot of this had to do with the “Byzantine labyrinth of federal regulations” created by federal employees who are not elected officials and not judges, said Lee.

Maintaining the Supreme Court’s independence
If there is an effort to pack the Supreme Court, it would politicize the court, said Lee. On the off-chance the Democratic Party wins the House, the Senate and the Presidency and increases the amount of justices from 9 to 13, it would set off a chain of events, he said.

If Republicans then took back those powers, Lee said there would be a lot of political pressure on them to increase the number of justices, too. “And before long, it would start to look like the intergalatic Senate on the Star Wars movie.”

The conversation shifted to voting laws and Lee voiced concern about the prospect of state laws around legislative redistricting being subject to federal appointees.

“They also want to essentially divest the power to draw legislative boundaries from the state legislatures and give them to non-partisan independent commissions, thus further taking away the power from elected lawmakers and putting it in the hands of unelected and unaccountable experts,” said Lee.>

<Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) repeatedly raised his voice while questioning acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe.

At a Tuesday U.S. Senate hearing on the shooting of Donald Trump, Cruz demanded to know how many times the former president had been denied requests for additional protection.

"The process, sir, is that a detail will make a request for either staffing or technical assets, which is handled between the field office and the detail," Rowe explained. "It goes up to a logistics office between our offices."

"So let me tell you what I believe," Cruz opined. "I believe that the Secret Service leadership made a political decision to deny these requests, and I think the Biden administration has been suffused with partisan politics."

Rowe insisted that decisions within the U.S. Secret Service were not "political."

"Does the buck stop anywhere?" Cruz shouted. "You are not a Congress! You don't have a cameral!"

"By the way, is it true that on the day of the Butler event that Secret Service transferred an agent from President Trump to the first lady?" the senator wanted to know.

"No sir, that's not true," the acting director stated.

Cruz became irate when Rowe tried to explain why a sitting president like Joe Biden would have a more considerable Secret Service detail than a former president like Trump.

"That's what you asked me, senator, and I'm trying to answer it," Rowe pleaded as Cruz bellowed into the microphone.

"You are not answering it!" Cruz exclaimed. "Is it the same number of agents or not?"

"Senator, there is a difference between the sitting president of the United States," Rowe insisted. "There are other assets that travel with the president that the former president will not get."

"Sir, you are refusing to answer straight!" Cruz yelled. "Sir, stop interrupting, stop interrupting me!"

"You are refusing to answer clear and direct questions," he added. "I'm not asking why you assign more to Joe Biden."

"Senator, I will get you that number so you can see it with your own eyes," Rowe promised.>

Rowe should have simply told Crud to f*** off and die.

<Elon Musk’s social media platform X suspended “White Dudes for Harris” Monday night, shortly after a massive fundraising call where almost 200,000 people helped raise more than $4 million for the vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee.

The account, @dudes4harris, was reinstated Tuesday morning after it was blocked hours before because of “a user report” for “violating our rules against evading suspension,” according to a screenshot shared with The Washington Post. Organizer Ross Morales Rocketto said the group submitted a complaint to X, but had no other direct communication from the platform.

“We hosted the event, and it was wholesome and a bunch of dudes being earnest, getting inspired and excited,” Morales Rocketto said in an interview with The Post. “And suddenly we realized the [X] account had been suspended and we had no idea why.”

“White Dudes for Harris” has no affiliation with the Harris campaign, but was created to energize voters — in this case, White men — for Vice President Harris. It is part of a string of identity-focused groups, such as Black Women for Harris and White Women for Harris, that have been holding calls and fundraisers in earnest since President Biden dropped out of the race.

The more than three-hour online call Monday evening featured actors Mark Hamill, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sean Astin and Josh Gad, among others who expressed their support and enthusiasm for Harris on the presidential ticket.

The suspension on X occurred as the group and its allies were posting heavily about the event after it ended. While the exact reasons behind it are unclear, it reignited broader concerns among Democrats that the platform, which Musk bought in 2022, could be used to influence the online discourse in the months leading to the presidential election.

Musk endorsed former president Donald Trump on the platform this month and has been using it to stump for the GOP candidate. The billionaire has 192 million followers on the platform, giving him a far larger social media megaphone than most any other individual — even Biden, Harris or Trump.

Musk and X did not respond to a request for comment about the suspension of the “White Dudes for Harris” account and its reinstatement.

Morales Rocketto said he and his team did not receive any communication from X or Musk about the suspension, but he felt the move was “suspicious.” A duplicate account, @dudesforharris, was created during the event, but it is unclear what role — if any — that may have played in the suspension.

“I think it’s a little convenient that my [X] mentions have been full of white supremacists, saying nasty things about me and the organization,” he said. “And our account got suspended, but somehow those accounts continue to tweet at us.”

This isn’t the first time an account supportive of the Harris campaign has run into trouble with its X account.

On July 21, the day Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris, numerous X users reported that they were unable to follow an official Harris campaign account, @KamalaHQ. It had previously been a Biden campaign account, but gained hundreds of thousands of followers in a matter of hours when it changed its name and handle to represent the Harris campaign.

Some users who tried to follow the account that evening reported seeing a message that said: “Limit reached: You are unable to follow more people at this time.”

The incident raised questions among Democratic leaders. On July 23, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) wrote an open letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, urging Jordan to join him in launching an investigation as to how and why it happened and whether Musk had a hand in the “apparent censorship” of a candidate for president.

“It is my sincere hope that you channel the same outrage and pertinacity against platform censorship of the Democratic Party as you do when conservative speech is allegedly suppressed,” Nadler wrote.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment on Nadler’s claims of “apparent censorship.”....>

<....When Musk acquired the platform in October 2022, he pledged to make it a haven for free speech. He laid off a majority of the staff, loosened the site’s rules on hate speech, ended its policy against covid-19 misinformation and reinstated a number of previously banned accounts. This is the first presidential election cycle where Musk is in charge of the platform.

Alexander B. Howard, a longtime tech policy journalist turned open government advocate, said the accounts could have been mistakenly limited. Even before Musk took over, he had seen accounts that change names or suddenly gain large followings run into technical problems. Such mistakes might be more likely, or slower to be fixed, since under Musk, the company’s workforce has been cut “close to the bone.”

“The problem going forward,” Howard said, “is that there’s no assumption of neutrality with respect to people having equal access to support if their account is having problems. That’s the underlying deeper issue with someone who’s been so overtly partisan” as Musk overseeing the site’s moderation decisions.

Gregg Keller, a Republican strategist, said Musk has made X a “true free speech platform now,” which will be “to Trump’s substantial benefit.”

Gene Kimmelman, a technology policy expert who has worked for Democratic administrations, said X has “enormous” influence over public thinking.

“It’s a concern if that power is abused to benefit one political player,” Kimmelman said. “If they favor one candidate who they think will be willing to deliver benefits for them, that’s an enormous danger to our democratic system.”>

<As surprising as it sounds, the Supreme Court isn’t the most right-wing court in the country. That label better applies to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has gone too far in some cases that have led to Supreme Court smackdowns. So it doubly stands out when a 5th Circuit judge goes further than his colleagues.

That just happened in a dispute between Texas and the United States over the state’s installation of a floating barrier in the Rio Grande. By way of background, the federal government sued Texas over the move, arguing that the state violated the law by obstructing the “navigable” capacity of the Rio Grande without congressional authorization and building the barrier without approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Ahead of a trial on the matter, the full circuit court sided with the state on Tuesday, reversing a trial court injunction that said the state had to move it. So the barrier remains for now. In an opinion by Donald Trump appointee Don Willett, the circuit majority decided that the trial court “clearly erred in finding that the United States will likely prove that the barrier is in a navigable stretch of the Rio Grande.”

Though the circuit sided with Texas, Willett’s ruling didn’t need to address the state’s far-reaching claim that it is permitted to erect the barrier in defense of a border “invasion.” The Constitution says that “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress . . . engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

And here’s where we get to the circuit judge who went further than his colleagues: James Ho, also a Trump appointee. The former Clarence Thomas clerk deemed it necessary to address the invasion question and he agreed with Texas, writing that the case “presents a strategic military decision directed toward a foreign enemy within the State’s authority” and that because the state’s claim presents a “political question” that courts can’t review, the case should be dismissed.

Ho’s opinion has been criticized from the right and the left. One of his Trump-appointed colleagues, Judge Andrew Oldham (who clerked for Justice Samuel Alito), wrote separately to explain why the court didn’t need to reach the invasion issue. Oldham noted that it’s “well settled that we should not reach constitutional questions if we can instead decide the case on a non-constitutional ground.” A dissenting opinion from Biden-appointed Judge Dana Douglas further pointed out that Texas’ position “would enable Governor Abbott to engage in acts of war in perpetuity.”

Ho is known for taking outlandish positions, so his opinion isn’t entirely surprising, however extreme its implications. But it’s worth considering because he has been floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee should Trump return to office in November — a scenario that could make the high court more like the 5th Circuit.>

<The Trump campaign issued a very weird statement yesterday disavowing the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 — again. As campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita point out, they've been trying to get them to shut up for some time:

President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way, Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.

The Trumpian threat at the end was a nice flourish but they do mean it. The professional campaign's frustration with the group has been obvious ever since the Democrats jumped on the 900-page manifesto and made it into another Trump-branded product. No matter how hard the Trump campaign tried they couldn't get people to stop talking about Project 2025.

Trump has personally tried to distance himself from the project, calling it "appalling" and "extreme" at different times and claiming he didn't know anything about it, even though his own running mate, JD Vance, has extensive ties to the organization and has even written the foreword to Heritage President Kevin Roberts' upcoming book, Dawn's Early Light, Taking Back Washington to Save America. As has been thoroughly documented, most of the people associated with Project 2025 are Trump administration alumni, such as his former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, trade adviser Peter Navarro, White House adviser Johnny McEntee and former Director of Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought. In fact, one report showed that 31 of 38 authors and editors of the 900-page tome had been on Trump's team at one time or continue to be. This is not surprising since Trump and his MAGA movement have devoured what was once the conservative movement of which The Heritage Foundation was a founding institution. Conservatives are MAGA now or they are no longer relevant.

Wiles' and LaCivita's statement was issued in reaction to the news that Paul Dans, the person who was in charge of producing the "Mandate For Leadership" governance guide, announced that he was leaving the project in August. Dans' departure was immediately interpreted to mean that the Trump people had engineered his ouster and had successfully gotten the Heritage Foundation to back away from it.

But is that really the case?

The 900-page "Mandate for Leadership" is already written. In fact, it was largely finished over a year ago when we first started talking about it. It's all over the internet. The producers of the document are MAGA movement operatives and it is a MAGA document whether Trump wants to claim it or not. Certainly, the Harris campaign is not going to let him off the hook:

Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country. Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real – in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.

Trump is running around pandering to every constituency and donor group, promising anything and everything in order to get reelected. And most of what he's promising is in Project 2025 — except for the third rail issue of abortion, which he fatuously insists he's "solved" by having it go back to the states, claiming that's what everyone on all sides always wanted. That is, of course, absurd. But pretty much everything else from policies on law enforcement to trade to education and immigration are all listed on his own Agenda 47 website with very little to distinguish them from Project 2025, except for the level of detail. In other words, they see Project 2025 as a branding problem, not a substance problem. The media needs to be much more careful to explain that.

The "Mandate for Leadership" guide is only part of Project 2025. The other component is the vast personnel database that a new Trump administration will use to staff the federal government once they implement "Schedule F", an executive order that strips federal civil service protections from workers allowing them to fire thousands of federal workers and replace them with Trump loyalists. There is no doubt that this is a Trump initiative since they first wrote Schedule F during his administration. This database is as much a part of Project 2025 as the manifesto....>

<....Trump has every intention of implementing its vision. It's his vision, too. Not only would it be terrifying and dangerous, but it would also be dangerously incompetent. That wouldn't be the first time. As I noted back in 2016, when it became news that since Trump had no experience in government he was relying on the Heritage Foundation during his transition, it has a very poor record when it came to staffing a government. As the Washington Post reported over 20 years ago, Heritage was instrumental in one of the most disastrous policies of the Bush administration:

They had been hired to perform a low-level task: collecting and organizing statistics, surveys and wish lists from the Iraqi ministries for a report that would be presented to potential donors at the end of the month. But as suicide bombs and rocket attacks became almost daily occurrences, more and more senior staffers defected. In short order, six of the new young hires found themselves managing the country's $13 billion budget, making decisions affecting millions of Iraqis.

Viewed from the outside, their experience illustrates many of the problems that have beset the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a paucity of experienced applicants, a high turnover rate, bureaucracy, partisanship and turf wars.

For months they wondered what they had in common, how their names had come to the attention of the Pentagon, until one day they figured it out: They had all posted their résumés at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank.

This epic debacle was documented in the book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran which revealed that the Bush administration had decided they wanted ideological litmus tests for the people who were going to build the new Iraq government from the ground up. Among the criteria were questions like whether were they "pro-life" and if they believed in unfettered gun rights, none of which had the slightest relevance to the jobs at hand.

It appears that if Trump wins in November they're going to try it again, only this time they're experimenting on their fellow Americans. And they still have clearly learned nothing from all their previous humiliating failures.>

<Former President Donald Trump is complaining that Black reporters were “rude and nasty” to him, after a tense exchange at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference in Chicago on Wednesday.

Trump, who called ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott “very rude” for asking “nasty” questions, held the line in his long tradition of attacking reporters, especially women and journalists of color, throughout the 37-minute Q&A.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question so . . . in such a horrible manner,” Trump said after Scott asked him why Black voters should back him given his past use of racially charged language.

In a post to Truth Social, Trump doubled down and slammed reporters at the gathering of Black journalists for questions that dug into his repeated attacks on Black Americans, Vice President Harris’s racial identity, and his associations with white supremacists.

“The questions were Rude and Nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!” the former President wrote in the post to Truth Social.

Scott faced a barrage of attacks aimed at her, ABC News, and the event organizers themselves, who Trump claimed “invited [him] under false pretense” and delayed his appearance.

Trump, who faced scrutiny from reporters over his support of blanket police immunity, denied an opportunity to walk back such a proposal, even as reporters asked whether the Illinois police deputy who killed Sonya Massey — charged with murder — should receive such immunity.

“I don’t know the exact case, but I saw something and it didn’t look good to me, with the water,” Trump said, offering that it would “depend” whether the sheriff who shot and killed Massey should receive legal protections.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Trump blasted “certain hostile members of the media” present at the NABJ conference, adding that asking critical questions of the president “will be their undoing in 2024.”>

How <dare> Rachel Scott do her job? Maybe next time, they will get it right and bring a batch of ass-lickers in the mould of Maria Bartiromo.

<House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio is continuing his war on private companies.

Here on the ReidOut Blog, I’ve written a fair amount about Rep. Jordan and his use of the Judiciary Committee to pressure businesses to either invest their money in conservatives or craft policies that benefit conservatives. From trying to pressure social media companies not to curtail hate speech or propaganda, to trying to pressure advertisers to spend more money on conservative media platforms, Jordan has led a right-wing crackdown on industrial independence — which is blatantly hypocritical behavior coming from the purported party of “free enterprise.”

And Jordan isn’t finished.

On Tuesday, he and Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie sent letters demanding information from more than 100 investment companies that form a coalition known as Climate Action 100+. It's a group of investment firms that work to “ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take appropriate action on climate change in order to mitigate financial risk and to maximize the long-term value of assets.” Basically, they make sure that companies they’re investing in abide by a set of climate-conscious guidelines. This kind of investment — known as environmental, social and governance (or ESG) investment — is a way for corporate financiers to prioritize issues important to them as they dole out money. And Republicans have tried their damnedest to demonize it and root it out.

For example, the X account for GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee announced Jordan and Massie’s probe of the more than 100 firms by referring to their coalition as a “Woke ESG Cartel.”

Jordan and Massie’s letter alleges “the Committee has uncovered evidence that financial institutions are colluding with climate activists through initiatives like Climate Action 100+ to adopt left-wing environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-related goals, potentially in violation of U.S. antitrust law.” It also demands each company turn over all documents related to their membership in Climate Action 100+, and answers to questions about how each firm encourages companies to comply with their climate goals.

So Jordan’s committee is essentially putting pressure on private companies for their work to curb climate change, and using a dubious report his committee released in June, which includes the “collusion” accusations, as a pretense to justify his meddling.

The letter even references organizations that may have been scared into withdrawing from the climate-conscious coalition of investment firms.

It says:

Notably, since the beginning of the Committee’s investigation, several of the world’s largest asset managers — including BlackRock, State Street Global Advisors, J.P. Morgan, PIMCO, and Invesco — have publicly withdrawn from Climate Action 100+. In total, “about a dozen” investor signatories have pulled out of Climate Action 100+ over the past six months.

To me, this sounded like thinly veiled threats of a mafioso. Essentially: “These companies knew what was good for ‘em, and avoided our wrath.”

To be sure, some of the companies that withdrew from Climate Change Action 100+ cited other reasons for pulling out of the coalition. But the committee's actions could very well have caused a chilling effect, more broadly.

However you spin it, though, what we’re seeing here is yet another example of the type of government shakedown tactics voters can expect to be completely unleashed if Donald Trump and the Republican Party wield full control of Washington after November’s election.>

<Former President Donald Trump is once again using hard-to-pin-down language to telegraph authoritarian ideas. This time we ought to be vigilant about how Trump knows exactly what he’s doing in these situations — and why it’s such an insidious rhetorical strategy.

Trump told a gathering of conservative Christians on Friday that if they got him into office, they would never have to vote again. “Christians, get out and vote. Just this time,” he pleaded at The Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida. “You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Trump is once again playing a game that he knows how to play very well.

Coming from a man who sought to overturn election results and pledges to be a “dictator for one day,” Trump’s comments raised eyebrows. A few days later, Fox News host Laura Ingraham tried to gently coax Trump multiple times into stating that his Friday remarks did not mean that he had any intentions to try to stay in office forever. This turned out to be a struggle.

“They’re saying that you said to a crowd of Christians that they won’t have to vote in the future,” Ingraham began, in an effort to prompt Trump to clarify his position. He replied first with a completely unrelated tangent about how Christians love him and Jews should vote for him, before finally addressing the question like this:

“I said, ‘Vote for me, you’re not gonna have to do it ever again.’ It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group, they don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them: ‘You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote any more, I won’t need your vote any more, you can go back to not voting.’”

Ingraham again prompted Trump with an opportunity to rule out anything more sinister: “You mean you don’t have to vote for you, because you’ll have four years in office.” Trump launched into a tangential point about gun owners, which Ingraham interrupted once more to goad Trump to address her point: “It’s being interpreted, as you are not surprised to hear, by the left as, ‘Well, they’re never going to have another election’ … Can you even just respond to that?”

Trump then repeated a similar set of points describing his pitch to his audience at the Christian rally: "You have to vote on Nov. 5. After that you don’t have to worry about voting any more. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it, the country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote any more because, frankly, we will have such love. If you don’t want to vote anymore that’s OK. And I think everybody understood it," the former president said.

In a later exchange, Trump finally answered yet another attempt by Ingraham to get a clear answer: “But you will leave office after four years?”

Trump responded, almost under his breath, “Of course.”

He continued: “By the way. I did last time. I kept hearing, ‘He’s not going to leave, he’s not going to leave.’ Look, they are the ones that are a threat to democracy.”

To sum it up: Trump overwhelmingly doubled down on messaging that hints at despotism, and even his eventual reluctant acknowledgment of a four-year term was marred by a huge caveat that raises questions about how serious the acknowledgement even was.

Trump is once again playing a game that he knows how to play very well, by exploiting the way that language can be layered with multiple meanings at the same time. In particular, he deploys words and phrases with ripe subtexts that could encourage extreme behavior, and then relies on being able to retreat to the less extreme interpretation of the language as a way to maintain plausible deniability.

Trump’s polysemic signaling puts the media in a bind. Reporters, analysts and commentators debate how much charity to extend to Trump when he uses ambiguous language, and often have to explain to the public that it is impossible to know where Trump stands on that spectrum of meaning. In this case, for example, Trump’s use of “fix” could apply to making the country more aligned with conservative Christian principles (which is in and of itself alarming), or it could refer to rigging elections. The problem of Trump’s slippery language will never really go away, because it is the responsibility of the media to share facts (what Trump is saying) and acknowledge complexity (Trump could be referring to multiple ideas). His traps are effective....>

<....Trump has done this before to great effect. Think about how he helped lure rioters to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by promising it would be “wild.” And how, right before his supporters stormed the building, he told them to “fight like hell.” Trump has relied on how these phrases can be interpreted literally or euphemistically to both encourage extremism and defend himself from accusations (including in his Senate impeachment trial) of inciting an insurrection.

Trump also has a track record of refusing to condemn extremism in high-profile media appearances, allowing him to use triangulation to tacitly endorse extremist behavior. Recall how in a 2016 interview Trump refused to distance himself from the support of Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke; even after it was explained to him who Duke was, Trump simply kept repeating he didn’t know who Duke was. (Trump was feigning ignorance: he had said in 2015 that he did not want Duke’s endorsement.) Or consider Trump’s use of “very fine people on both sides” to suggest that some people at a white supremacist event were OK by floating a specious claim about what the event was about.

Now we’ve seen a similar dynamic with Trump's speech and his interview with Fox News. Trump hammered home a controversial line at a speech. He then constantly refused to admit why his language could’ve been taken the wrong way, before he finally issues a two-word acknowledgement that he would leave office after four years — and then immediately undermines it by noting how he left office after four years in his first term. Trump of course only left because he failed to overturn the election. Trump’s revisionism, combined with arguing that the left is the true enemy of democracy, is ominous foreshadowing and should be taken seriously as such.

Lastly, one must remember that Trump often uses humor and irony as a vessel for sharing his most extreme and antisocial ideas on everything from election rigging to attacking the media, using the possibility that he’s not being “serious” as a way to telegraph nefarious ideas. In his speech Trump sounded playful and ironic in his pledges to “my beautiful Christians” and his promise that they’ll never have to vote again. But his comments also function as a trial balloon for his supporters to consider an endless Trump presidency. It's the same with "dictator for one day," and countless other statements.

This is not a case against sharing the facts of Trump’s actual language, and the context in which they emerge. It’s a case against endless conjecture about the true meaning behind Trump’s language. When it comes to language that sits on the edge of propriety or democratic norms, Trump is conveying exactly what he wants to. One need not choose between taking his language seriously or literally, or between settling on the narrower or most capacious meanings. The different meanings are functioning in concert with one another, serving as a shield and sword, activating militants while maintaining a veneer of restraint. Know that Trump thrives off the confusion he sows, and uses it as a smokescreen to pursue the will to power.>

<Ever wonder how certain Supreme Court justices wind up writing the majority opinions in cases? After oral arguments, the justices discuss them and, if the chief justice is in the majority, he can assign the opinion to another justice or write it himself — as Chief Justice John Roberts did in the Donald Trump immunity case, for example. If the chief is in the minority, then it’s up to the senior justice in the majority.

Against that backdrop, consider a new report that Justice Samuel Alito was assigned two cases this past term but couldn’t keep majorities together. That’s not unprecedented but, like Roberts’ reportedly aggressive handling of the immunity appeal, it can shed light on the opaque court as we review this past term and look toward the future.

That new report from CNN, which hasn’t been confirmed by NBC News or MSNBC, states that Alito was assigned to write the opinion in a big social media case over red-state laws seeking to restrict platforms’ content moderation. CNN reported that Alito (who reportedly declined the outlet’s interview requests) “went too far for two justices — Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson — who abandoned the precarious 5-4 majority and left Alito on the losing side. As a result, the final 6-3 ruling led by Justice Elena Kagan backed the First Amendment rights of social media companies.”

Alito also reportedly lost the majority in a case about retaliation for criticizing government officials, which resulted in an unsigned opinion from the court.

The justice’s unyielding views are well known, whether in his public statements, rulings or related refusal to recuse from cases. So it’s not difficult to believe he couldn’t keep a majority in a given case. And to be sure, while every case is important, he has led Republican-appointed majorities in big right-wing cases with wider impact, most notably his Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.

In some respects, then, the report is as illuminating when it comes to other justices like Barrett and Jackson, who have gone their own ways in various cases. Among other examples this past term, Barrett didn’t fully join Roberts’ immunity ruling in Trump v. United States, while Jackson joined his 6-3 majority opinion narrowing obstruction charges for Jan. 6 defendants and Barrett wrote the dissent in that case, Fischer v. United States, joined by Jackson’s two fellow Democratic appointees.

So their votes — especially Barrett’s, holding more power in the relative middle of the court — are worth watching, even if they don’t move the needle in the biggest cases on the Republican supermajority court, which can afford a defector here and there while still achieving goals that align with the Republican Party (as in Dobbs, where Roberts didn’t agree to overturn Roe but five other GOP appointees, including Barrett, did).

Turning back to Alito, the report also reveals that the aggrieved justice “has reflected in private about retirement.” Presumably, he wouldn’t do so voluntarily under a Democratic administration. The 74-year-old is the second oldest sitting justice after 76-year-old Clarence Thomas. This reinforces the reality that November’s election has potentially dramatic stakes for the court’s future.>

<The behind-the-scenes machinations behind the Supreme Court’s sweeping presidential immunity decision reveals that Chief Justice John Roberts has “lost his authority” and ability to broker compromises on the thorniest and most impactful issues, a legal expert says.

The Supreme Court this summer ruled 6-3 that presidents have "absolute immunity from criminal prosecution" for acts that fall within the "exercise of his core constitutional powers he took when in office." Presidents, according to the ruling, have "at least presumptive" immunity from other official acts, and no immunity for unofficial acts.

The Supreme Court’s sweeping immunity decision has thrown a wrench into legal cases concerning Trump: a New York judge delayed sentencing for Trump’s 34 felony convictions of falsifying business records. And, the Supreme Court’s decision tasked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan with weighing which acts are official and unofficial. A CNN report by journalist Joan Biskupic revealed that Roberts “made no serious effort to entice the three liberal justices for even a modicum of the cross-ideological agreement that distinguished such presidential-powers cases in the past.”

Pace Law School Professor Bennett Gershman said Roberts has found himself alone, and found the task of finding compromises among far right-wing, conservative and liberal justices on the court “virtually impossible.”.

“Roberts finally has realized that his power of persuasion over the fiercely radical Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, the conservatives Kavanaugh and Barrett, and the staunch liberal team of Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackon, is at an end,” Gershman said. “He is alone all by himself, and he knows it.”

According to Gallup, public approval of the Supreme Court reached 43% in July 2024. That's down from 58% in July 2020, and 61% in September 2009.

Gershman said that Roberts is aware that the court’s “public reputation and perception of legitimacy is the lowest in history.”

“Despite his earlier claim that ‘there are no Trump Justices,’ he knows the truth; that five of his colleagues are indeed ‘Trump Justices’ and there’s nothing Roberts can do about it,” Gershman said.

Gershman called Roberts’ immunity decision “bold and extreme” and reflective of his realization that “his only choice was to supplicate” pro-Trump justices.

“To be sure, he’ll continue to assign to himself the big cases,” Gershman said.

But, he added: “He knows he has lost his authority and his Court and is all by himself.”

CNN's report, which cited sources familiar with the negotiations, also points out that Roberts has a long history of finding unanimity on contentious cases – including hashing out compromises in 2020 Trump document cases.

Boston University School of Law professor Jed Shugerman told Salon that particularly in the most recent Supreme Court term, Roberts has veered from institutionalism.

"There’s plenty in Trump v. U.S. and this term to know that Roberts has abandoned a chief’s justice institutional role," Shugerman said.

Shugerman said that the "Roberts opinion itself was so extreme and manufactured without historical evidence, without the commitment to originalism and without precedent, that it’s hard to imagine how that opinion could have ever been in any form something that the three moderate liberals might have found any common ground in."

Shugerman pointed out that Roberts failed to get Justice Amy Coney Barrett on board with the entirety of the opinion.

Barrett concurred in part with Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent, which argued that excluding "any mention" of an official act associated with a bribe "would hamstring the prosecution.'"

Roberts said a prosecutor pursuing a bribe charge could point to public record to show the president performed the official act and admit evidence of what the president "allegedly demanded, received, accepted, or agreed to receive or accept."

But Roberts said admitting testimony or private records concerning a bribe would invite the jury to "second-guess" the president's motivations for official acts — which he argues would "'seriously cripple'" a president's exercise of official duties.

Shugerman said that Roberts' footnote response to Barrett is part of his overall "incoherent" opinion.

Shugerman also criticized the court's March ruling in Trump v. Anderson, which reversed the Colorado Supreme Court decision excluding Trump from the 2024 GOP primary ballot based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

He said the ruling also "reflected a lack of institutional mindset and disregard for consensus."

"Really, it just invented reason to reach a reasonable result," he said.

Shugerman said even though the conclusion may reflect common sense, its reasoning lacked solid historical grounding.>

<...."There's growing consensus among originalists among all different stripes that the Roberts Court conservatives are not serious about methods and not serious about originalism," Shugerman said. "There's a growing number of originalists who are saying so out loud. It’s important to recognize how the Roberts court is not truly textualist or sincerely originalist. But it's abundantly clear it’s driven by conservatism, traditionalism and partisan ideology."

The CNN report found that far-right justices are heartened by Roberts, who at times has taken more centrist positions relative to other justices.

Georgia State University College of Law professor Eric Segall noted that Roberts has taken stances against affirmative action, abortion rights, voting rights and the Medicaid expansion portion of the Affordable Care Act.

The immunity decision stemmed from Trump’s charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election.

A D.C. federal grand jury indicted Trump on four charges in August 2023 accusing the former president of conspiring to thwart his 2020 electoral defeat and the peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden.

The Supreme Court's ruling said deciding whether Trump's alleged fake electors scheme "requires a close analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations."

CNN said that Roberts avoided references to the chaos and violence of a mob’s Jan. 6 march on the Capitol as he “found new immunity vested in the Constitution for a former president.”

Last December, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Trump’s motion to dismiss the charges on grounds of absolute presidential immunity, which he argues completely shields him from prosecution for any actions taken while in office.

"There was broad understanding among the justices that they would need to decide the matter themselves, and only after the usual appellate court hearing," sources told CNN, adding that “Roberts believed that he could assert the large and lasting significance of the case and steer attention away from Trump.”>

<Former President Donald Trump is under pressure for his latest line of attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, questioning her racial identity.

Trump spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual conference Wednesday in Chicago, where he got into a tense exchange with several black journalists. At one part of the exchange, Trump implicitly accused Harris of being a fraud, claiming that she shifted between stressing her Indian and Jamaican racial identities.

“So I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly, very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was black, until a number of years ago when she ran (as) black, and now she wants to be known as black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she black?"

“I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and … she became a black person,” he added, to disapproval from the crowd.

The remark caused many Republicans to panic, who have treated Harris's race as a political third rail.

Republicans immediately started hitting the panic button, with some down-ballot candidates taking Trump's statements on more directly than others.

The most readily vocal was former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a frequent critic of Trump.

“It’s unacceptable and abhorrent to attack Vice President Harris or anyone’s racial identity,” he posted on X. “The American people deserve better.”

Another Republican quick to the trigger was Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), a noted critic of Trump.

"Maybe they don't know how to handle the campaign, and so you default to issues that just should simply not be an issue," she told Axios.

"I don't think it was helpful," Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) told reporters.

Most elected Republicans remained anonymous but were liberal in their criticism, speaking with Axios.

"It was awful," an anonymous House Republican told the outlet. "The entire exchange was embarrassing."

"That was not a demonstration on how to win over undecided voters," another House Republican said.

"To be focusing on anyone's race or gender when there are plenty of things to talk about on the issues that voters actually care about is frustrating for a lot of us," a third added.

Republicans who did speak on the record were more reserved but still implicitly critical, attempting to direct Trump away from comments about Harris's identity.

“It’s not a great idea for either of the parties to be playing racial identity politics, whether it's ‘white dudes for Kamala’ or whatever this is," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said. "We should spend less time talking about race and more time talking about how we're going to get people to work.”

“I think the most important thing we can talk about is the policies and statements she's made,” Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), the chairman of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said of Harris. “They're just very radical.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), a major Trump ally, remained neutral.

“I ain't getting involved in that," he told HuffPo. "Let him talk about what he wants to talk about. I’m talking about how bad our country is in shape right now because of her.”>