<The Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District on Monday, overruling a 1971 case laying out how the government must keep its distance from religion.

But Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion for himself and his fellow Republican appointees relies on a bizarre misrepresentation of the case’s facts. He repeatedly claims that Joseph Kennedy, a former public school football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington state who ostentatiously prayed at the 50-yard line following football games — often joined by his players, members of the opposing team, and members of the general public — “offered his prayers quietly while his students were otherwise occupied.”

(Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not join a brief section of Gorsuch’s opinion concerning the Constitution’s free speech protections, but Gorsuch otherwise spoke for the Court’s entire Republican majority.)

Because Gorsuch misrepresents the facts of this case, it’s hard to assess many of its implications.

The Court’s decision to explicitly overrule Lemon v. Kurtzman, the 1971 decision that previously governed cases involving the Constitution’s language prohibiting “an establishment of religion,” has obvious implications for future lawsuits: Lower court judges will no longer apply Lemon’s framework to establishment clause cases.

But it’s not clear how those lower court justices should now navigate questions about the separation of church and state. Although the Court overrules Lemon, it does not announce a fleshed-out test that will replace Lemon. Instead, Kennedy announces a vague new rule that “the Establishment Clause must be interpreted by ‘reference to historical practices and understandings.’”

Moreover, because Gorsuch’s opinion relies so heavily on false facts, the Court does not actually decide what the Constitution has to say about a coach who ostentatiously prays in the presence of students and the public. Instead, it decides a fabricated case about a coach who merely engaged in “private” and “quiet” prayer.

If the facts of Kennedy actually resembled the made-up facts laid out in Gorsuch’s opinion, then Kennedy would have reached the correct result. Even under Lemon, a public school employee is typically permitted to quietly pray while they are not actively engaged with students.

Gorsuch’s opinion, however, describes a very different case than the one that was actually before the Court.”.....>

<....Coach Kennedy engaged in very public prayer

In the real case that was actually before the Supreme Court, Coach Kennedy incorporated “motivational” prayers into his coaching. Eventually, these prayers matured into public, after-game sessions, where both Kennedy’s players and players on the other team would kneel around Kennedy as he held up helmets from both teams and led students in prayer.

After games, Kennedy would also walk out to the 50-yard line, where he would kneel and pray in front of students and spectators. Initially, he did so alone, but after a few games students started to join him — eventually, a majority of his players did so. One parent complained to the school district that his son “felt compelled to participate,” despite being an atheist, because the student feared “he wouldn’t get to play as much if he didn’t participate.”

When the Bremerton school district learned of Kennedy’s behavior, it told him to knock it off — though it did offer to accommodate Kennedy if he wanted to pray when he wasn’t surrounded by students and spectators. And Kennedy did end some of his most extravagant behavior, such as the prayer sessions where he held up the helmets while surrounded by kneeling students.

But Kennedy also went on a media tour, presenting himself as a coach who “made a commitment with God” to outlets ranging from local newspapers to Good Morning America. And Kennedy’s lawyer informed the school district that the coach would resume praying at the 50-yard line immediately after games.

At the next game following this tour, coaches, players, and members of the public mobbed the field when Kennedy knelt to pray. A federal appeals court described this mob as a “stampede,” and the school principal said that he “saw people fall” and that, due to the crush of people, the district was unable “to keep kids safe.” Members of the school’s marching band were knocked over by the crowds.

And, contrary to Gorsuch’s repeated claims that Kennedy only wanted to offer a “short, private, personal prayer,” Kennedy was surrounded by players, reporters, and members of the public when he conducted his prayer session after that game. We know this because Justice Sonia Sotomayor includes a picture of the scene in her dissenting opinion.

Gorsuch dismisses this photographic evidence by claiming that “not a single Bremerton student joined Mr. Kennedy’s quiet prayers” after this game — he claims that the players depicted in this photograph are “from the opposing team.”

Whether those players are from the Bremerton school district or not, that doesn’t change the fact that Kennedy engaged in very public prayer sessions, and did so while acting as an official representative of a public school. Nor does it change the fact that, after he was ordered to cease this activity, Kennedy went on a media tour that seemed designed to turn his supposedly “quiet prayers” into a public political spectacle, a spectacle that both players and spectators eagerly participated in.

Under the real facts of Kennedy’s case, Kennedy violated the Constitution. The Lemon case, which the Court overruled in Kennedy, held that the government’s actions “must have a secular legislative purpose,” that their “principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion,” and that the government may not “foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.’”

A public school official conducting a very public prayer during the course of his official duties as a government employee clearly violates this Lemon test.

Lemon was handed down in a different era, when the Court insisted that the government must remain neutral on questions of religion. Just last week, however, in a case about government funding of religious education, the Supreme Court disparaged such calls for neutrality — even holding that laws which deny funding to religious institutions in order to maintain the government’s neutrality on matters of religion are unconstitutional.

So, in light of that and similar decisions, it’s hardly a surprise that the Court’s new majority decided to overrule Lemon. Indeed, in a line that adds to the many falsehoods in Gorsuch’s opinion, he inaccurately claims that the Court “long ago abandoned Lemon.” Gorsuch also criticizes Lemon because it allegedly “led to ‘differing results’ in materially identical cases.”

<....In Lee, a public middle school invited a rabbi to open and close its graduation ceremony with prayers. The Court held that these prayers imposed subtle pressure on students to join a religious ceremony, and therefore were not allowed.

“The undeniable fact,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in that decision, “is that the school district’s supervision and control of a high school graduation ceremony places public pressure, as well as peer pressure, on attending students to stand as a group or, at least, maintain respectful silence during the Invocation and Benediction.” Such pressure, “though subtle and indirect, can be as real as any overt compulsion,” as it leaves a young nonadherent with “a reasonable perception that she is being forced by the State to pray in a manner her conscience will not allow.”

Kennedy’s prayer sessions were, if anything, more coercive than the ceremonial prayers offered in Lee. A graduation ceremony, by its very nature, marks the end of a public school’s ability to wield coercive power over its departing students. Kennedy, by contrast, wielded ongoing authority over his students when he conducted his prayer sessions. Students who joined those sessions might hope to ingratiate themselves to their coach and gain more playing time and other perks as a result. Students who refused to participate might have feared antagonizing their coach — and losing playing time, a potential college recommendation letter, or a promotion from the junior varsity team to the varsity squad as a result. (Kennedy served as both the head coach of the JV team and an assistant coach on the varsity team.)

To this, Gorsuch claims that there is “no indication in the record that anyone expressed any coercion concerns to the District.” Even if that were true, it would not obviate the fact that teachers and students wield considerable coercive authority over their students, and that students understandably may be reluctant to complain about a teacher or coach for this reason.

Gorsuch also claims that Kennedy was merely acting as a private citizen, and not as a public school employee, when he prayed at the 50-yard line. The school district, Gorsuch repeatedly notes, permitted coaches to take “a private moment” after each game “to call home, check a text, socialize, or engage in any manner of secular activities.” Thus, a coach who wants to spend this moment of free time quietly praying should be allowed to do so.

Again, if the facts of this case resembled the false facts laid out in Gorsuch’s opinion, then Gorsuch would have a point. Public school employees may engage in private acts of devotion, such as saying a prayer over their lunch in a school cafeteria while they are on the job.

But there’s nothing private about a school employee conducting a media tour touting his plans to pray at the 50-yard line of a football field immediately after a game. There is nothing private about the coach carrying out that plan — especially when he does so surrounded by kneeling players, cameras, and members of the public.

In any event, while Gorsuch’s opinion does overrule Lemon, it does not purport to overrule Lee. And, as explained above, Lee permits public school employees to engage in the kind of private, quiet prayer that Gorsuch falsely claims Kennedy engaged in after football games.

That means that the doctrinal implications of Gorsuch’s Kennedy opinion on future cases in which public school employees coerce their students into religious exercise are far from clear. If Gorsuch had held that the Constitution permits Kennedy to do what he actually did, then that would be a hugely consequential decision that would gut the Court’s previous decision in Lee.

But, because Gorsuch paints such a misleading picture, involving a coach who offered a “short, private, personal prayer,” the more limited holding of Kennedy is that this hypothetical activity is allowed. And, again, Lee already permits public school employees to engage in private, personal prayers.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Thus, the self perceived "hero" came to his <own> defense with: "it's come to my attention..."

<Former President Donald Trump and his supporters were quick to try to discredit former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s damning Jan. 6 committee testimony on Tuesday. One of the common themes of the smear campaign was the charge that her statements were all “hearsay,” a hand-waving response deployed by, among others, the Twitter account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and conservative commentator Erick Erickson.

The not-so-subtle insinuation is that Hutchinson’s testimony isn’t credible — that no one should believe what she said because it is hearsay. The reality is both a lot more complicated and a lot less of a criticism than those leveling it want you to believe. At the risk of bringing nuance to a mud fight, here goes.

The textbook definition of hearsay is “an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.” In other words, someone says something (or writes something down), and one side in a legal dispute wants to use that statement in a trial to prove not that the statement was made (that’s usually fine), but that its substantive content is correct. Imagine I saw John Doe jaywalking and told my friend Mike. It’s not hearsay if I testify about what I saw. But it is hearsay if Mike testifies as to what I told him I saw. The default rule is that such evidence is inadmissible — because it’s unreliable; just because I said something to Mike is n’t evidence that what I said is true, whereas my testifying to what I saw firsthand is. (The Constitution even enshrines a form of the hearsay rule, guaranteeing criminal defendants the right to “confront” witnesses against them.)

With all of that having been said, there are three critical caveats to this (seemingly) broad understanding. First, hearsay applies only to judicial proceedings — to contexts in which hearsay is potentially being used to formally establish someone’s legal liability. (Hence the definition’s focus on out-of-court statements.) There’s no comparable hearsay rule in the court of public opinion or, as relevant here, in congressional proceedings, because there’s no formal establishment of liability in either. And no defendant whose right to confront adverse witnesses is at stake. Thus, even if every single word of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on Tuesday would have been hearsay had it been given in court (and it wasn’t), that doesn’t make it inappropriate fodder for Congress.

Second, as anyone who has suffered through a law school evidence class can tell you, the hearsay rule is riddled with both exemptions and exceptions — circumstances in which statements that might otherwise appear to be hearsay are admissible, because they come with far fewer reliability concerns or they are far more likely to be probative (evidence of something relevant) or both. For instance, the Federal Rules of Evidence (which apply to all civil and criminal trials in federal court) don’t treat as hearsay many statements made by a “party opponent”; that is, someone on the other side of the dispute. So if Mark Meadows were charged with a crime, statements he made to Hutchinson wouldn’t be hearsay at all. And if a co-conspirator makes an admission to a third party in furtherance of a conspiracy to commit a crime or a civil wrong, that can be admitted against all co-conspirators. In that respect, even if Hutchinson’s testimony had been part of a criminal proceeding (and, once again, it wasn’t), her testimony about what she saw and much of her testimony about what others told her wouldn’t have been hearsay under the Federal Rules of Evidence at all.

Even when statements do meet the definition of hearsay, they can still be admitted in court if they satisfy one of the “exceptions” to the hearsay rule.....>

The close:

<....Third, even when statements do meet the definition of hearsay, they can still be admitted in court if they satisfy one of the “exceptions” to the hearsay rule. For example, in federal court, witnesses can testify about “present-sense impressions”; that is, statements someone made about an event during it or immediately after it happened. Hutchinson’s testifying about text messages she exchanged with Meadows and others on Jan. 6, 2021, certainly meets that definition. The same is true for “excited utterances,” like Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump’s throwing his lunch against the wall. The Federal Rules of Evidence also allow witnesses to testify about “statements against interest” that others made to them, so long as the people who made the statements are unavailable — including because they have refused to testify themselves despite having been subpoenaed.

In other words, even if hearsay rules applied to congressional hearings (and, one last time, they don’t), the overwhelming majority of Hutchinson’s testimony would likely have been admissible — either because it wasn’t hearsay in the first place or because it was admissible hearsay owing to the nature of the statements and/or the refusal of those who made the statements about which she testified to put themselves in front of the Jan. 6 committee.

Were this a criminal trial, the one line of testimony about which there might be a colorable argument is Hutchinson’s statements about what Tony Ornato — a Secret Service agent who was the White House deputy chief of staff for operations — told her about Trump’s alleged altercation with a member of his Secret Service detail as he was leaving the Jan. 6 rally. But there are still several possible grounds on which even that statement might be admissible in a criminal trial, especially if there were other indications of the statement’s reliability or if Ornato refused to testify.

Of course, none of this proves that Hutchinson was telling the truth. The best evidence of that isn’t the applicability (or lack thereof) of hearsay rules; it is that Hutchinson gave her testimony under oath (lying to Congress is a felony whether you’re under oath or not, but the oath also raises the specter of perjury charges). And it doesn’t matter whether or not this current administration would decline to prosecute her; the statute of limitations for that offense is five years, meaning Hutchinson would be taking a heck of a risk by knowingly making false statements in her testimony.

The point here is one that even lawyers often forget — that Hutchinson’s testimony isn’t just about evidence; it is evidence itself. And that evidence is deeply important to the Jan. 6 committee’s work of fully unearthing the events leading up to and culminating in the violence at the Capitol. People are free to choose not to believe her (people are free to believe the Earth is flat), but contra the claims of Trump’s defenders, there’s just nothing inherently unreliable about virtually all of Hutchinson’s testimony and nothing inappropriate about the committee’s soliciting it and relying upon it.>

<Justice Elena Kagan, in a sly section of a searing dissent, uses historical antecedents to prove that Congress has always delegated broad power to agencies.

She’s turning a favored tactic of the conservative majority on its head. In recent major cases — one nixing the constitutional right to an abortion, and one ripping down a 100-year-old New York gun licensing law — the right-wing justices have spent most of their decisions looking backwards.

In the gun case, Justice Clarence Thomas claimed that there is no historical analogue to New York’s law, and thus no basis on which it can stand. Modern concerns — say, a government’s heightened interest in protecting its citizens amid a scourge of gun violence — don’t matter sans historical backing, he argued.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing the lead in the abortion decision, spends pages saying that there wasn’t a right to abortion in the country’s earliest days (no matter that women were considered far less than full citizens then), so there shouldn’t be one now.

The liberals in both cases heartily dissented, pointing out the foolishness in using 18th and 19th century law to determine modern constitutional rights.

In Thursday’s decision about the power vested by Congress in the EPA to regulate power plant emissions, Kagan takes a leaf out of the majority’s book.

“The kind of agency delegations at issue here go all the way back to this Nation’s founding,” she writes. “The records of the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates, the Federalist — none of them suggests any significant limit on Congress’s capacity to delegate policymaking authority to the Executive Branch. And neither does any early practice.”

“The very first Congress gave sweeping authority to the Executive Branch to resolve some of the day’s most pressing problems,” she writes, naming among them “Indian affairs” and “the federal courts.”

The passage, while brief, fits hand-in-hand with her blistering criticism of the majority’s sometimes-textualism.

“The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it,” she writes. “When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the ‘major questions doctrine’ magically appear as get out-of-text-free cards.”

So too with historical references, she seems to argue.

The Court has rooted all of its recent majority opinions in a mishmash of historical proof, which the dissenting liberals pointed out as cherry-picked, just plain bad history. Indeed, the conservatives have prioritized historical antecedents as the key factor in its decisions, sweeping aside modern considerations.

But this time, when the history is even less friendly to the Court’s aims, the majority ignores it. Kagan does not let the change in tack pass by unchecked.>

<In his efforts to remake higher education in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed laws that alter the tenure system, remove Florida universities from commonly accepted accreditation practices, and mandate annual “viewpoint diversity surveys” from students and faculty.

In Florida, DeSantis’s plans for colleges rattle some academics

DeSantis (R) also pushed through legislation he dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act” that regulates what schools, including universities, and workplaces can teach about race and identity. The legislation — which went into effect Friday — already faces a legal challenge.

The lawsuit argues that the act violates constitutional rights and would have a dangerous chilling effect on academic freedom. A judge is expected to rule soon on a request by University of Central Florida associate professor Robert Cassanello to block the law. This week, the judge denied similar requests from other plaintiffs, saying they lacked standing. The state has asked a judge to dismiss the suit.

Cassanello, who teaches classes in civil rights movements, Jim Crow America, and emancipation and Reconstruction argued that the law “restricts his ability to accurately and fully teach these subjects.”

Meanwhile, the board of governors for Florida’s public university system took initial steps Thursday to approve regulations for enforcing the law, with potential penalties including discipline and termination for employees who do not comply. The law also ties some university funding to compliance.

DeSantis has said he wants to prevent the state’s colleges and universities from becoming “hotbeds for stale ideologies” and from developing “intellectually repressive environments.”

Some welcome his plans. But the measures have other faculty and academic leaders concerned. They also worry that Republicans intend to go even further to exert political control over public higher education — and that the conflicts roiling Florida signal fights to come in other states.

Critics of DeSantis’s efforts pointed to draft legislation that would have given to political appointees the power to hire and fire, and to veto school budgets. The proposals for the most part never made it into bills but were disclosed for a public-records request and published in the newsletter Seeking Rents.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the DeSantis administration represents an existential threat to higher education in the state of Florida,” said J. Andrew Gothard, the statewide president of the United Faculty of Florida and an instructor in the English department at Florida Atlantic University.

DeSantis’s office did not respond to questions about the draft legislation and whether the governor planned to propose the measures again.

State Rep. Fentrice Driskell, the leader of the Florida House Democratic caucus, said the proposals floated by DeSantis would be “a gross misstep” and would damage the state’s reputation and rankings in higher education.

“This would erode the autonomy of our public universities and colleges. It would be so far out of alignment with the entire purpose of people attending college in the first place, to prepare them to be free thinkers and to compete in this dynamic and globalized world,” Driskell said.

Other experts welcomed the suggestions as long-overdue pushback on liberal universities and saw the effort as an indicator of a more urgent need to rethink higher education nationally.

“It is not hard to preserve academic freedom while introducing genuine intellectual diversity to campus,” Adam Kissel, a former Education Department official and Heritage Foundation visiting fellow, wrote in an email. “In general this is by adding voices rather than restricting them.”

Kissel, whose focus at Heritage is on higher education, also praised the “individual freedom” act that took effect Friday. “It permits full classroom discussion of any issue, using any material, only so long as the professor does not say officially that for the purposes of the class, a certain position is to be deemed true.”

But Cassanello, who is president of United Faculty of Florida at the University of Central Florida, said faculty members are worried. “People are really concerned about their freedom in the classroom,” he said. “A lot of this legislation is unclear about where the lines are.”...>

More behind.....

<....College faculty are fighting back against state bills on critical race theory DeSantis, who attended Yale and also graduated from Harvard Law School, has been a staunch supporter of technical training and certification programs in Florida, noting the need for people who learn trades or skills in industries such as trucking logistics and medical assistance.

In June, DeSantis lauded work experience over “a magic piece of paper which likely would have cost too much anyway” when he signed a law allowing state agencies to substitute work experience, including military experience, for college degrees in hiring.

“Give me somebody that [sic] served eight years in the Navy or the Marine Corps. That education is going to be much more beneficial and pertinent than someone that [sic] went $100,000 in debt to get a degree in zombie studies,” DeSantis said.

He has also pledged to keep tuition at public colleges and universities low, and this week, he changed rules for the state’s Bright Future scholarships to allow work experience by high school students to count toward required community service.

Judge rules for professors in University of Florida academic freedom case

Still, his proposals to rein in the independence of those schools have alarmed some academics in Florida and beyond. In other parts of the country, some legislators and governors are pushing for more autonomy over hiring and firing state employees. Tenure is coming under increasing criticism. And a number of states have passed bills to prevent colleges from teaching “divisive concepts.”

College faculty are fighting back against state bills on critical race theory

Florida may be leading the charge, said Fairfield University mathematics professor Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, adding that Texas is not far behind and that many other states are following suit. “It’s a trend in the larger culture wars … where you see these politicians trying to throw red meat to the base and stir people up.”

University of Tennessee education professor Robert Kelchen said the most startling change in Florida is the recent legislation that will require universities periodically to change accreditors. No other state has done anything remotely similar, he said. Much is at stake; if a college is not properly accredited, its students cannot get federal financial aid.

Some higher-education scholars and faculty critics said lawmakers appeared not to understand the accreditation process, in which institutions undergo lengthy voluntary reviews, and that requiring schools to seek new accreditors would waste time and money.

Accreditation does not typically rise to this sort of public awareness, said Kevin Kinser, a professor of education policy studies at Pennsylvania State University. When it does, he said, it is often because politicians say, “ ‘Wait a minute. Who are these people telling me what I need to do with my colleges and universities?’ ”

But Kissel said the Florida law is common sense. “Just as companies should change financial auditors so that they do not get too cozy with one firm, universities should regularly change accreditors,” he said.

The legislation was passed after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges raised concerns about academic freedom at the University of Florida. Three professors sued the university after they initially were told they could not testify in a lawsuit challenging a voting-restrictions law that DeSantis had championed. Three additional faculty members who wanted to speak out against other DeSantis policies, such as a ban on mask mandates, later joined the case. A judge ruled in favor of the professors this year.

Professors sue University of Florida, claiming free speech restraints

Last month, the accrediting agency announced that it would take no further action after a committee visited the University of Florida to evaluate whether the school was in compliance with standards requiring integrity and academic freedom and reviewed new procedures. School officials said in a statement that the outcome “affirms the university’s commitment to the academic freedom of its faculty members and the First Amendment’s guarantees of the right of free speech.”

<Voting rights advocates expressed alarm Friday, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court said it will consider a conservative legal theory giving state legislatures virtually unchecked power over federal elections, warning that it could erode basic tenets of American democracy.

Democracy advocates raise alarm after Supreme Court takes election case

The idea, known as the “independent legislature theory,” represents to some theorists a literal reading of the Constitution.

But in its most far-reaching interpretation, it could cut governors and state courts out of the decision-making process on election laws while giving state lawmakers free rein to change rules to favor their own party. The impact could extend to presidential elections in 2024 and beyond, experts say, making it easier for a legislature to disregard the will of its state’s citizens.

This immense power would go to legislative bodies that are themselves undemocratic, many advocates say, because they have been gerrymandered to create partisan districts, virtually ensuring the party-in-power’s candidates cannot be beaten. Republicans control both legislative chambers in 30 states and have been at the forefront of pushing the theory.

The Supreme Court’s choice to take up the case came less than a week after the nation’s highest court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving it to state legislatures to decide whether abortion should be legal, and two days after bombshell testimony before the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The committee has offered fresh evidence suggesting President Donald Trump sought to disrupt the congressional counting of electoral votes to allow state legislatures time to send alternate slates of electors as part of a bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

State legislatures have already introduced or enacted laws in a number of GOP-controlled states that voting rights groups say make it more difficult to cast a ballot. Experts say if the Supreme Court adopts the independent legislature theory, it would give state lawmakers ultimate control over election-related decisions like redistricting, as well as issues such as voting qualifications and voting by mail.

“This is part of a broader strategy to make voting harder and impose the will of state legislatures regardless of the will of the people,” said Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, a nonpartisan pro-democracy group. “It is a significant change to the power of state courts to rein in state legislatures.”

The case could also open the door for state legislatures to claim ultimate control over electors in presidential elections, said Marc Elias, a veteran Democratic voting rights attorney.

“If you believe the strongest form of [the theory] then the legislators can do what they want and there’s no judicial review of that,” Elias said. “The way I view it, Republicans tried to subvert the 2020 election, but were clumsy and they are now learning from that where the pressure points and vulnerabilities are in our election systems, and refining their tactics.....”>

<Republicans across the country are rushing to craft new state laws restricting or banning abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. But one of the most prominent members of their party has been conspicuously missing in action: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

After the June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization invalidated the constitutional right to abortion access, DeSantis pledged in a statement to "expand pro-life protections." But he hasn’t specified how or when. The simplest explanation for his reticence is that tricky strategic dilemmas are leading him to drag his feet and remain quiet on the issue for now. DeSantis is a leading 2024 presidential hopeful, and his hesitation reflects Republican fears of an outsize Democratic backlash and underscores how the right doesn’t have a unified vision of how far to take its anti-abortion crusade....>

<An Atlanta-area prosecutor’s investigation into former President Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat in Georgia poses the most significant legal threat to the former president, legal experts say, with the probe intensifying as Trump eyes a 2024 bid for the White House.

The former president’s team is keeping close watch on Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation, even as it remains unclear whether Trump himself would face charges, according to one source, who noted that recent subpoenas issued to close Trump advisers Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had heightened concerns in Trump World.

“The steps her office has taken, including empaneling a special grand jury and subpoenaing high-profile witnesses, are very likely not steps she would have taken if she did not feel there was at least a significant possibility that she will move forward with charges,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

“The stakes in holding Trump accountable for an attack on our democratic system of government couldn’t be higher, and the evidence is extremely compelling.”

Trump’s effort to bypass the will of voters in Georgia and a handful of other swing states he lost to President Biden in the 2020 election sparked congressional investigations and figure into multiple criminal probes, including by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

But it is the Georgia investigation that is proving to be more of an immediate concern among Trump allies — more so than the DOJ probe, the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol or an unrelated criminal fraud investigation in New York that appears likely to conclude without charges being brought against Trump.

“With the Manhattan criminal probe winding down, the Fulton County probe represents the most clear-cut criminal exposure facing Mr. Trump,” said Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer and partner in the law office of Mark S. Zaid.

The Georgia investigation appears to be intensifying as Trump is weighing launching a White House campaign as early this summer.

The grand jury recently issued subpoenas to several high-profile figures, including Graham and Giuliani, as well as conservative lawyers John Eastman, Jenna Ellis and Cleta Mitchell. And Willis’s office recently informed a group of Republicans who served as a phony slate of pro-Trump electors in 2020 that they could face criminal charges.

The Jan. 6 panel also made Trump’s effort in Georgia the subject of one of its hearings last month. The centerpiece was Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021.

In the call, which was taped, Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find” the number of votes required to overturn Biden’s margin of victory. Raffensperger resisted Trump’s efforts and has rebutted his false claims of election fraud.

The Jan. 6 panel hearing highlighted not just how Trump relentlessly pushed Raffensperger and others to find enough ballots to declare him the winner, but also how the former president and his allies targeted election workers who endured months of harassment as a result.

According to legal experts, a critical question that would face Willis if she pursues Trump would be whether to prosecute Trump individually, or as part of a broader conspiracy.

“There is audio, there is witness testimony, there is documentation, and all of that is currently before a special grand jury. The only question is whether Mr. Trump’s actions were sufficient to bring a criminal charge against him alone and independent of anyone else, or if the Fulton County DA will need to encompass his fragmented actions within a broader conspiracy charge tied to individuals like Mr. Giuliani and the fake electors,” Moss said.

There has been speculation that formally declaring his candidacy could insulate Trump from charges and additional investigations because he could argue they are politically motivated. Trump, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, has also waved away claims that another White House run might be motivated as a way to deter prosecutors.

In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Trump rejected the idea that he would run for president again to guard against potential legal jeopardy.

“Well, I did nothing wrong, so I don’t see that,” Trump told the outlet. “I did absolutely nothing wrong. I had a perfect phone call in Georgia, so I’m not concerned with it.”....>

<....In an editorial, the Kansas City Star noted that Hawley will soon publish a book entitled Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, but said people watching the hearing “didn’t see much virile bravado as he ran from the mob”.

The Star began: “Josh Hawley is a laughingstock. During Thursday night’s televised hearings of the House committee investigating the January 6 2021 coup attempt … [Democratic] representative Elaine Luria showed video of Missouri’s junior senator that will surely follow him the rest of his life.

“In the clip, Hawley sprints across a hallway as he and his fellow senators are evacuated after insurrectionists had breached the Capitol building. When it played on the screen, the audience in the room with the committee erupted in laughter.”

On Twitter, users spliced the video to songs including Born to Run, Running Up That Hill and the Benny Hill theme. Charlie Sykes, a conservative Trump critic, wrote: “Running Josh Hawley is a meme for the ages.”

But the Star also noted that “Hawley has become one of the defining figures of that day. A famous photo captured by Francis Chung shows him raising a fist in solidarity with the crowds that would soon break through doors, loot offices and assault law enforcement.”

The senator shows no sign of backing down. Speaking at a conservative conference in Florida on Friday, apparently without irony, he said: “I just want to say to all of those liberals out there and the liberal media, just in case you haven’t gotten the message yet, I do not regret [voting to object to electoral results].

“And I am not backing down. I’m not going to apologise. I’m not going to cower. I’m not going to run from you. I’m not going to bend the knee.”....>

'I'm not going to run from you.'

Hahahahaha!

<Rep. Matt Gaetz mocked the physical appearances of women who are against the overturning of Roe V. Wade during a speech at a conservative conference in Florida on Saturday night.

Speaking to college students at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa, Gaetz referred to pro-choice women at rallies as "disgusting" and "odious on the inside and out."

Gaetz then argued that ugly women shouldn't be the ones to worry about access to abortions.

He said: "Why is that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions?"

Gaetz continued to make of pro-choice women, saying: "Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb."

The Florida congressman sneered at women who are "5-foot-2 and 350 pounds" and marched in protests against the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe V. Wade — the 50-year-old case that federally legalized abortions.

He said: "I'm thinking, march? You look like you've got ankles weaker than the legal reasoning behind Roe V. Wade."

Gaetz continued: "They need to get up and march for like an hour a day, swing those arms, get the blood pumping, maybe mix in a salad."

The speech was slammed by feminist media outlet Jezebel which referred to it as "cartoonishly misogynist."

Jezebel noted that Gaetz, who the Justice Department is investigating over whether he violated federal sex trafficking laws with a 17-year-old girl in 2019, has previously ridiculed women protesting against the abortion ruling.

In May, Gaetz tweeted: "How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?"

Insider reached out to Gaetz for comment on Sunday morning but did not immediately receive a response.>

Of course, Gaetz' tastes run towards minors, as is well known.

Jaysus, wot a piece of shyte.

<Very early into the Trump presidency, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation into Russian election interference and the Trump campaign. The recusal was not, by ordinary standards, a remotely close call. Government officials don’t conduct or oversee investigations that might implicate themselves. Sessions was not only involved in the Trump campaign, he also lied to Congress about his dealings with Russians.

Trump has repeatedly expressed his resentment at Sessions. The New York Times reports that, following the recusal, Trump asked Sessions to un-recuse himself, and berated him for refusing to do so. Trump has reportedly told people he wants a loyalist overseeing the investigation, and “argued that Eric H. Holder Jr., President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, would never have recused himself from a case that threatened to tarnish Mr. Obama.” While they can be powerful evidence on Fox News, imaginary Obama crimes are not actually binding legal precedent.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Trump’s demands that Sessions overturn his recusal, which fits the pattern of Trump attempting to impede the investigation — or “obstruct” “justice,” if you will. Whatever the legal consequences, his demands that Sessions take the extraordinary step of reversing a recusal that was obviously needed show how deeply Trump believes the law does not apply to him.>

<fredthebore>, suck on that one time!

No response to be vouchsafed you here--you alone are responsible for that.

Hahahahaha!

<Donald Trump has never been known for being a “details guy,” but there came an occasion this past Monday when he was laser-focused and determined to get the small stuff exactly right. Picture the scene: There’s the once and future GOP standard-bearer, sweating over a last-minute endorsement in Missouri’s senate primary. Here, Trump faced a real dilemma. His clear favorite in the race, disgraced former Governor Eric Greitens, was collapsing in the polls as more and more voters came to be continually reminded of the revenge porn, domestic violence, and campaign finance scandals that forced him to resign. Meanwhile, the front-running state Attorney General Eric Schmitt had refused to say whether he would vote for Mitch McConnell to continue as the GOP’s leader in the senate—a position that was quickly emerging as a red line for Trump.

But as Trump puzzled over the conundrum at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, there came a breakthrough—a minor detail that no one had hitherto noticed: Greitens and Schmitt have the same first name. Couldn’t Trump just endorse “Eric” and claim credit as long as one of them wins? Per Politico:

It was a madcap exit ramp. But Trump went in on the details, asking if the two candidates’ first names were spelled identically—noting that it wouldn’t work if they weren’t. While Trump was intrigued, he also remarked that it might be too cute. He asked for draft endorsements to review, one announcing his support for Schmitt, the other for Greitens.

This is absolutely one of the funniest paragraphs you’ll read in the news this year. Trump “went in on the details”—to make sure that one of the candidates didn’t spell their first name with a k. It was a “madcap exit ramp” because … let me check my notes here … ah, yes, because Trump wasn’t aware of how these two men, major figures in Republican politics in Missouri, spelled their names until he was finally set to offer his endorsement....>

'Why, Eric, of course!'

<....It’s been a long, long year, during which time the question of Trump’s coattails and his power as a kingmaker has been endlessly fretted over. What this charade illuminates is what a waste of time all that cogitation has been: This is how little thought goes into Trump’s endorsement strategy. Trump only cares about loyalty; his one goal is to ensure that he can claim fealty from whoever emerges as the party’s nominee. There are some disqualifying metrics—anything less than fawning praise will damn them; hatred for Mitch McConnell is strongly preferred. But ultimately Trump just wants to be able to claim that he and he alone was responsible for their victory in both the primary and general elections. In the end, any old Eric will do.

There have been instances in which Trump’s endorsement likely played a decisive role in the outcome—he helped lift J.D. Vance to victory in Ohio’s gubernatorial primary and Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania’s GOP senate contest. But there have been few elections since those marquee wins where you could assuredly cite Trump’s potency as a national political force as the difference maker. In many instances, Trump’s presence in the race has been as radioactive for the GOP as it was in the 2018 midterm elections. The Republican Party’s high-water mark since then came in a race where Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin went to considerable lengths to keep Trump at arm’s (or at least elbow’s) length from his campaign. Ultimately, Trump’s been a mixed bag this year, leaving analysts with a chicken and egg–type conundrum as they try to assess his political dexterity and influence. The good news is that in the end, there’s a simple rubric for Trump: He cares most about not being seen as a loser.

In Missouri, his prerogatives couldn’t be clearer. This was not an endorsement at all; Trump just gave his blessing to two of the top-three candidates and left Missouri voters to figure it out for themselves. It’s long been clear that his personal preference is Greitens, who has been steering heavily into the MAGA brand. But let’s notice that Trump is afraid to back him outright. He’s worried that Greitens is going to get smoked—something that has seemed increasingly likely in recent weeks. He’s also worried that not backing Greitens will make him look like a squish. Fortunately, the Show Me State showed Trump a way out by giving him a race with two Erics. Now he can claim victory no matter what happens. If every contest were as accommodating to Trump’s needs, he’d pull this stunt again and again.

This is an egregiously cynical and silly way to do politics, but guess what? Trump’s politics have always been egregiously cynical and silly—venal and self-serving as well. Missouri’s primary is on Tuesday, and late endorsements typically don’t have much of an effect on elections. It’s hilarious that Trump couldn’t simply take a pass on weighing in on this contest. But there’s an important takeaway, nonetheless: It wasn’t strength guiding his hand, it was fear—fear that if Greitens somehow pulled out a win, the story would be about how he executed his incredible comeback without the help and support of his natural ally, Donald Trump. Trump’s “Let’s go, Eric!” endorsement is perhaps the dumbest way he could have injected himself into the race. It’s extremely funny. It’s also perhaps the most quintessentially Trumpian thing that’s ever happened.>