Category: SupremeCourt

Biden wants to reform the Supreme Court. So do Americans

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Tuesday evening, The Washington Post reported that President Joe Biden is preparing to announce his support for major reforms to the Supreme Court. Rather than call for immediate expansion of the court or for the impeachment of justices clearly violating the court’s toothless ethics guidelines, Biden will seek to establish term limits and an enforceable code of ethics.

Biden is also considering whether to promote a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s recent decision giving presidents broad immunity from prosecution.

While not offering the prospect of immediate relief from the precedent-breaking rulings of this ultraconservative court, Biden’s proposals would bring serious (and overdue) changes to the court—and they’re some of the most consequential ever put forward. The proposals also have the advantage of not being overtly partisan or created to generate a particular end, unlike court expansion. They also have the advantage of being really smart politics.

Republicans would viciously fight any Democratic proposal to expand the court. They would see any attempt by Biden to tack on four or six new justices as explicitly partisan, designed to weaken their iron grip on the court. Not only would such a proposal be immediately squelched in the Republican-controlled House, it also wouldn’t see much consideration in the filibuster-happy Senate.

When polled by Gallup in 2023, Americans were roughly evenly split over the idea of expanding the court, with 51% opposing it and 46% supporting it. But the same poll shows overwhelmingly bipartisan support both for placing an age limit on members of the court (74% support it) and for placing term limits on Congress members (87% percent support it). The reported proposal from Biden would sort of combine those two ideas, using a term limit for justices instead of an age limit. This has advantages over putting an age limit on the court because three of the four youngest justices are Trump appointees, and an age limit would allow them to remain on the court for decades to come.

And while Republicans would assail placing term limits on justices, that proposal would likely garner high enough levels of public support to make Republicans think twice. Even if they don’t, Republican leadership would be on record opposing a popular proposal, while Biden would be on record as offering an innovative solution to a widely-recognized problem.

Smart. Politics.

This is even more true for an enforceable code of ethics. A May survey from Data for Progress shows 77% of likely voters say Supreme Court justices and their spouses should be required to follow a code of ethics. Just 10% of likely voters, including only 18% of Republicans, oppose this idea. Overall, 73% felt that members of the court should be held to the same ethics standards as other federal judges. Only 17% felt that the court should be allowed to set its own ethical standards. 

That’s about as good a mandate as any idea is going to get in a day when the majority of Americans oppose teaching Arabic numbers. People may not know the history of the symbols they use when paying for a burger, but they know that Justice Clarence Thomas is dirty as hell.

Republicans in Congress are sure to view any ethics proposal as a response to the escapades of Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito and their insurrection-loving wives. So would the public. However, not only do a majority of likely voters support impeaching both Thomas and Alito (after voters are informed about those justices’ ethical lapses), but putting Republicans in the position of opposing ethical guidelines is essentially the same as forcing them to stand there and declare themselves the party of corruption.

That’s also very smart politics.

Biden’s proposal for a constitutional amendment to reverse the recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity is also likely to be popular. No one is particularly fond of the “Seal Team 6” scenario in which a president would be immune from having his political rivals assassinated. And it could be seen as a willingness on Biden’s part to surrender power and hold his office to higher standards at the same time that he is proposing such standards for the court.

None of this is to say that expanding the court is a bad idea. It may be the only way that the United States could gain relief from this court’s egregious rulings. Democrats should absolutely be ready to push that idea if this year’s election provides them the presidency and a majority in both chambers of Congress.

But right now, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin should be prepared to pounce on Biden’s court proposals as soon as they are announced.

There are good ideas. These are likely to be popular ideas. This is a very good fight to have in the months leading up to the election. So please, have it. Loudly and enthusiastically.

Now would be better than later. Getting this in public and forcing Republicans to react to it while the RNC is still going on would be just … peachy. Let Donald Trump deliver an acceptance speech in which he bombastically defends corruption. Put Republicans on the defense.

And deliver something the public not only wants but needs.

A rogue Supreme Court awaits its king

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts admonished liberal members of the court in his opinion that vastly expanded the idea of presidential immunity on Monday. The court’s three liberal members were only “fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals,” he wrote.

That finger-wag toward terrified, dissenting justices came only a few hours after Donald Trump signaled his desire for “televised military tribunals” that would try former Rep. Liz Cheney for treason. 

On call with Biden-Harris campaign, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) says SCOTUS' decision on presidential immunity means a Trump re-election isn't just the biggest threat to democracy in a generation. "It's far and away the biggest threat since the Civil War."

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) July 1, 2024

In less than a week, the Supreme Court has issued a string of rulings that demolish the ability of the government to regulate safety, labor, and the environment. Effectively, they’ve made being homeless illegal and being a Trump insurrectionist perfectly fine. And now they’ve presented a vast expansion of presidential power that exceeds the greatest dreams of Richard Nixon. 

Everything that the Supreme Court has done in these rulings paves the way for Trump and his allies’ Project 2025 to complete the purge of democracy that this court has already begun. And it all makes defeating Trump infinitely more important.

There was a time when Roberts was seen as a moderating voice on the Supreme Court, as someone who was concerned about the court being accused of partisanship, and who was willing to ally with the court’s more liberal elements to keep a new conservative majority under control. But the court-watchers who made such predictions could not have been more wrong.

Despite his odes to stare decisis, Roberts has consistently voted to overturn long-standing precedent. Since gaining the support of three Trump-appointed radicals, Roberts has become a reliable member of a series of 6-3 decisions that have redefined the traditional role of the three branches of government. 

In the decision on presidential immunity, Roberts is trying to dismiss the dissents of the three remaining liberal judges as overblown, but if anything, they are a subdued response to this ruling. 

  • The ruling extends absolute immunity to anything that falls within the “‘outer perimeter’ of the President’s official responsibilities, covering actions so long as they are ‘not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority,’” Roberts writes.

  • In determining whether an act is official, “courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.”

  • Also, courts can’t “deem an action unofficial merely because it allegedly violates a generally applicable law.”

If you’re having trouble seeing how anyone is permitted to question any action of the president under this ruling, you’re not the only one.

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writes in her dissent, “Departing from the traditional model of individual accountability, the majority has concocted something entirely different: a Presidential accountability model that creates immunity—an exemption from criminal law—applicable only to the most powerful official in our Government.” She makes it clear that the court creates a “multilayered, multifaceted threshold” that would have to be cleared to charge a president under any circumstance, meaning that “no matter how well documented or heinous the criminal act might be,” it can still be dismissed.

And when it comes to the theoretical example that was raised during oral arguments, yes, “a hypothetical President who admits to having ordered the assassinations of his political rivals or critics” or who “indisputably instigates an unsuccessful coup” still has “a fair shot at getting immunity” for those actions.

Don't tell me the conservative justices don't believe in abortion rights. They are currently trying to abort democracy in the 992nd trimester. And if they get Trump onto the throne they’ve built, the odds of ever finding America again are slim to none.

President Joe Biden may be the last remaining politician in Washington who maintains endless respect for the institutions we have inherited and the network of implicit agreements that kept our democracy patched together over two centuries. As recently as a year ago, he rejected the idea of expanding the number of justices or taking other actions to restrain a court veering dangerously away from its traditional role.

Biden needs to reconsider. The damage this court has done, in just a matter of days, is inestimable, and those horrific decisions are stacked on top of years of increasingly nonsensical rulings, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

This is a highly partisan court whose primary interest is in enacting a radical MAGA agenda. It’s also a court that has repeatedly made clear that it holds itself above the law and has nothing but contempt for anyone trying to hold it accountable. Now it wants to extend that privilege to Trump.

This court must be tamed. But most of all, this court must be prevented from joining the man whose throne they have been preparing. This nation can’t survive this court and Donald Trump. 

Joe Biden is going to have to beat them both. And we’re going to have to help him.

"If Joe Biden is not elected in November, we will not have a democracy that we have known for 250 years," says Goldman, who led the first House impeachment investigation into Trump in 2019.

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) July 1, 2024

Alito’s explanation for his upside-down flag has fallen apart

Posted on by Mark Sumner

New information shows that everything Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has said about the reason an American flag was flown upside down over his home appears to have been a lie. Alito blamed the flag on a dispute with neighbors. Unfortunately for the prevaricating justice, his wife’s altercation with the neighbors became so extreme that those neighbors called the cops. The police report shows that the altercation came weeks after the upside-down flag was hoisted over Alito’s home.

On May 16, The New York Times broke the story that an American flag was flown upside down at the Alito home in January 2021. The upside-down flag, long used as a signal of distress, was appropriated by Donald Trump supporters following Jan. 6, 2021, to express their solidarity with the insurrectionists who had smashed their way into the Capitol building.

Alito denied any connection to the flag and claimed that his wife had put up this symbol in response to an altercation with a neighbor. He also claimed those neighbors had placed an offensive sign about Trump where it was near children waiting to board a school bus. But that excuse always had problems.

Now everything about Alito’s story is falling apart.

The story that Alito told Fox News reporters was that his wife flew the flag because neighbor Emily Baden placed a “Fuck Trump” sign in her yard that was within 50 feet of where children were waiting for the school bus in January 2021. Alito said that his wife had tried to talk to the neighbors about having a vulgar sign so close to where children waited for the bus, but that the conversation ended in an argument. 

Alito then claimed that Baden put up a sign that personally insulted Martha-Ann Alito and blamed her for the Jan. 6 assault. Finally, Alito said that he and his wife were walking through the neighborhood, ran into a man who lived at the property, and he called Martha-Ann Alito a number of disparaging terms, including the c-word.

So she went home and raised a flag in support of insurrection. As one does.

However, even a cursory look at Alito’s claims shows that they’re simply not true. In January 2021, area schools were still dealing with Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic. Children would not return to the classroom until March. So no children were waiting for the bus for Alito’s wife to be concerned about.

The latest information paints a very different picture of the interaction between Baden and the Alitos. Baden and her then-boyfriend, now husband, reported that Martha-Ann Alito was repeatedly harassing them to the point where they called the police and asked them to intervene. 

“Aside from putting up a sign, we did not begin or instigate any of these confrontations,” Baden told Times reporters.

At some point in January, the original “Fuck Trump” sign blew over. Martha-Ann Alito approached Baden thinking that the sign had been removed, but according to Baden, this encounter didn’t end in an argument. It was the first time Baden could ever recall speaking to either of the Alitos.

Following the Jan. 6 insurrection, Baden added two new signs. One of these read “Trump is a fascist.” The other said, “You are complicit.” Neither mentioned Martha-Ann or Samuel Alito, and Baden says that the signs were not aimed at them. Baden’s mother took the signs down out of concern that the same kind of people who attacked the Capitol might bring that kind of violence to their home.

Sometime after the signs had been removed, Baden and her boyfriend saw Martha-Ann. Alito sitting in a car outside their home and glaring at them in a way notable enough that they mentioned it to friends. A few days after President Joe Biden’s inauguration—which Samuel Alito skipped—the couple was driving past the Alito home when Alito’s wife ran toward their car, yelling something they couldn’t hear. She then appeared to spit in their direction.

It wasn’t until Feb. 15, a month after the upside-down flag flew over the Alito home, that the Alitos walked past Baden’s home while she and her boyfriend were bringing in the trash containers. Martha-Ann Alito then “used an expletive” and called them “fascists,” Baden told Times reporters. This event was also noted in texts that Baden sent at the time.

At that point, Baden said she snapped. 

She does not remember her precise words, but recalls something like this: How dare you behave this way. You’ve been harassing us, over signs. You represent the highest court in the land. Shame on you.

Her boyfriend admitted that he chased this statement with the use of the C-word. The incident was also observed by a neighbor. 

Following this exchange, the boyfriend went inside and called the police, confirming that it happened on Feb. 15, not before the flag was flown on Jan. 17, as Alito told Fox News reporters.

Alito’s excuse about the kids and the school bus was a lie. His claim that the flag was flown following a dispute with the neighbors is inaccurate. And none of it explains why he flew another pro-insurrection flag over his vacation home.

The Supreme Court is currently considering Trump’s motion for absolute legal immunity for his actions to interfere with the 2020 election while in office. It’s also determining whether the insurrectionists involved in the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, can appropriately be charged with obstruction. 

Alito has not recused himself from either of these cases. And on Wednesday, he stated in a letter to Congress that he will not recuse himself.

“I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request,” he claimed in the letter.

The idea that Alito should be involved in considering any case connected with Trump, Jan. 6, or the 2020 election completely violates any concept of judicial ethics. This isn’t just the appearance of a conflict. It’s a conflict.

The only real question is: Will anyone do anything about it?

The revelation that Alito had flown a pro-Trump flag at a second location sparked renewed pressure in the Senate. Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin has been calling for Alito to recuse himself—which he’s now outright rejected—and for Chief Justice John Roberts to call this rogue justice into line.

“[Chief] Justice Roberts has to step back and realize the damage that’s being done to the reputation of the court,” Durbin told The Washington Post.

The Senate Judiciary Committee needs to open an investigation into Alito’s partisan support for the pro-Trump insurrection. They need to do it immediately.

Two other members of the committee, Sheldon Whitehouse and Richard Blumenthal, have been pressing Durbin to take action. That includes Blumenthal noting that while the Senate can’t regulate the actions of the Supreme Court, it isn’t without power—including the ability to set the number of justices on the court. And outside groups, like Indivisible and Demand Justice, as well as legal experts have also demanded an investigation into Alito’s leanings.

The new information showing that Alito’s claims about the flag incident were simply untrue only reinforces the need for the Senate to move. An impeachment of Alito is fully warranted, but with Republicans holding a narrow margin in the House and anxious to show their allegiance to Trump over the nation, an impeachment seems next to impossible.

There’s no time like the present to dilute Alito’s toxic presence by adding more seats to the Supreme Court.

RELATED STORY: The pressure is building for the Senate to do something about Alito

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What to know in the Supreme Court case about immunity for Donald Trump

Posted on by Associated Press

The Supreme Court has scheduled a special session to hear arguments over whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted over his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

The case, to be argued Thursday, stems from Trump's attempts to have charges against him dismissed. Lower courts have found he cannot claim for actions that, prosecutors say, illegally sought to interfere with the election results.

The Republican ex-president has been charged in federal court in Washington with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, one of four criminal cases he is facing. A trial has begun in New York over hush money payments to a porn star to cover up an alleged sexual encounter.

The Supreme Court is moving faster than usual in taking up the case, though not as quickly as special counsel Jack Smith wanted, raising questions about whether there will be time to hold a trial before the November election, if the justices agree with lower courts that Trump can be prosecuted.

The justices ruled earlier this term in another case that arose from Trump's actions following the election, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The court unanimously held that states could not invoke a provision of the 14th Amendment known as the insurrection clause to prevent Trump from appearing on presidential ballots.

Here are some things to know:

WHAT'S THE ISSUE?

When the justices agreed on Feb. 28 to hear the case, they put the issue this way: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

That's a question the Supreme Court has never had to answer. Never before has a former president faced criminal charges so the court hasn't had occasion to take up the question of whether the president's unique role means he should be shielded from prosecution, even after he has left office.

Both sides point to the absence of previous prosecutions to undergird their arguments. Trump's lawyers told the court that presidents would lose their independence and be unable to function in office if they knew their actions in office could lead to criminal charges once their terms were over. Smith's team wrote that the lack of previous criminal charges “underscores the unprecedented nature” of what Trump is accused of.

NIXON'S GHOST

Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace nearly 50 years ago rather than face impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal from office by the Senate in the Watergate scandal.

Both Trump's lawyers and Smith's team are invoking Nixon at the Supreme Court.

Trump's team cites Nixon v. Fitzgerald, a 1982 case in which the Supreme Court held by a 5-4 vote that former presidents cannot be sued in civil cases for their actions while in office. The case grew out of the firing of a civilian Air Force analyst who testified before Congress about cost overruns in the production of the C-5A transport plane.

“In view of the special nature of the President's constitutional office and functions, we think it appropriate to recognize absolute Presidential immunity from damages liability for acts within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility,” Justice Lewis Powell wrote for the court.

But that decision recognized a difference between civil lawsuits and “the far weightier" enforcement of federal criminal laws, Smith's team told the court. They also invoked the high court decision that forced Nixon to turn over incriminating White House tapes for use in the prosecutions of his top aides.

And prosecutors also pointed to President Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon, and Nixon's acceptance of it, as resting “on the understanding that the former President faced potential criminal liability.”

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

The subtext of the immunity fight is about timing. Trump has sought to push back the trial until after the election, when, if he were to regain the presidency, he could order the Justice Department to drop the case. Prosecutors have been pressing for a quick decision from the Supreme Court so that the clock can restart on trial preparations. It could take three months once the court acts before a trial actually starts.

If the court hands down its decision in late June, which would be the typical timeframe for a case argued so late in the court's term, there might not be enough time to start the trial before the election.

WHO ARE THE LAWYERS?

Trump is represented by D. John Sauer, a former Rhodes Scholar and Supreme Court clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia. While serving as Missouri’s solicitor general, Sauer won the only Supreme Court case he has argued until now, a 5-4 decision in an execution case. Sauer also filed legal briefs asking the Supreme Court to repudiate Biden's victory in 2020.

In addition to working for Scalia early in his legal career, Sauer also served as a law clerk to Michael Luttig when he was a Republican-appointed judge on the Richmond, Virginia-based federal appeals court. Luttig joined with other former government officials on a brief urging the Supreme Court to allow the prosecution to proceed. Luttig also advised Vice President Mike Pence not to succumb to pressure from Trump to reject some electoral votes, part of Trump's last-ditch plan to remain in office.

The justices are quite familiar with Sauer’s opponent, Michael Dreeben. As a longtime Justice Department official, Dreeben argued more than 100 cases at the court, many of them related to criminal law. Dreeben was part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and joined Smith's team last year after a stint in private practice.

In Dreeben's very first Supreme Court case 35 years ago, he faced off against Chief Justice John Roberts, then a lawyer in private practice.

FULL BENCH

Of the nine justices hearing the case, three were nominated by Trump — Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. But it's the presence of a justice confirmed decades before Trump's presidency, Justice Clarence Thomas, that's generated the most controversy.

Thomas's wife, Ginni Thomas, urged the reversal of the 2020 election results and then attended the rally that preceded the Capitol riot. That has prompted calls for the justice to step aside from several court cases involving Trump and Jan. 6.

But Thomas has ignored the calls, taking part in the unanimous court decision that found states cannot kick Trump off the ballot as well as last week's arguments over whether prosecutors can use a particular obstruction charge against Capitol riot defendants. Trump faces the same charge in special counsel Jack Smith's prosecution in Washington.

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ICYMI: House GOP’s ready to admit defeat, Tennessee wants teachers packing heat

Posted on by Daily Kos Staff

The Supreme Court is hearing another abortion case. What could go wrong?

It’s just people’s lives on the line.

GOP lawmakers vote to arm teachers a year after Nashville shooting

Protesters in the galleries chanted “blood on your hands!”

Cartoon: Cell-a-Lago

Some things change, but others stay the same.

Missouri lawmaker caught on video cursing out fellow Republican

You’ll never guess what his defense is.

New ad: Trump couldn’t get hired at a mall—not with his legal baggage

As much as we’d love to see Trump working at Cinnabon …

QAnon nuts muse about what happens if Trump is found guilty 

It’s not pretty.

97% of voters know nothing about the Supreme Court's new abortion case

The law at the center of the case this week is a mystery to most—and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

The Biden impeachment is a huge failure. The GOP is looking for a way out

There’s only so much humiliation a party can take.

History’s most pro-union president delivers 2 more big wins for workers  

Yet another reason to support Joe Biden.

One big move just upended two big Virginia races

Things just got even more competitive.

Click here to see more cartoons.

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Appeals Court cuts down every piece of Trump’s immunity claim—with flair

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court ruled that Donald Trump is not immune to prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The 57-page ruling takes apart the claims that Trump made one by one, thoroughly dismembering his arguments to conclude that Trump’s declaration of “categorical immunity from criminal liability” is “unsupported by precedent, history or the text and structure of the Constitution.”

As The New York Times notes, the unanimous ruling is unlikely to be the last word on executive immunity, but the appeals court “handed Mr. Trump a significant defeat.” Not least of all in determining that, as far as the court is concerned, it’s very much Mr. Trump.

For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.

There’s nothing about this ruling that is going to make Trump happy.

Trump's former attorney Tim Parlatore predicts he's likely bothered by being referred to as "citizen Trump" in yesterday's ruling denying him presidential immunity. pic.twitter.com/E7RDId3wfU

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) February 7, 2024

Mother Jones has sifted the ruling for some of the best lines, and that definitive stripping away of Trump’s former title is just one of them. There’s also the section where the court notes that during his second impeachment trial, Trump’s legal representative tried to have it the other way. In 2021, they argued that Trump shouldn’t be impeached because he was out of office and the proper place to deal with this was in court by writing “[w]e have a judicial process” and “an investigative process ... to which no former officeholder is immune.’”

The judges also noted that Trump wasn’t alone in making this argument: Thirty senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also argued that once he left office, Trump was no longer the proper subject of impeachment and was subject to the courts. 

But the portion of the ruling most likely to get wide play is one in which the judges point out the pure silliness of what Trump is suggesting.

It would be a striking paradox if the President, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” were the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity.

This is connected to what others have described as the center of the judges' reasoning: Giving the president the kind of immunity Trump seeks would “collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches.” It would immediately elevate the president to an all-powerful dictator, unbounded by anything Congress or the courts might do.

In addition to declaring that he should have absolute immunity, Trump’s appeal included a backup claim that because he had been impeached and Republicans had voted to save him in the Senate, taking him to court on the same issues would be “double jeopardy.” But the court also swiftly dealt with that assertion, making it clear that impeachment and indictment were unrelated.

The ruling gives Trump until Feb. 12 to file an appeal with the Supreme Court. Otherwise, the district court can once again move forward on charges of election interference. The ruling is so definitive that numerous experts have suggested the Supreme Court might not take up an appeal from Trump. 

“My guess is that he’ll be a convicted felon when he gets on the stage to accept the Republican nomination for president.” Chris Christie predicts the Supreme Court will not hear Trump’s appeal, and the trial will begin in May. pic.twitter.com/6n5CXOejRc

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) February 7, 2024

However, some are suggesting that because special counsel Jack Smith originally tried to convince the Supreme Court to hear the case before it was sent back to the appeals court, this could be an opening for Trump’s attorneys to press the court to take up the case.

Trump has responded to the ruling with numerous repetitions of his assertion that presidents must have a level of immunity that no president has ever enjoyed in real life. 

When Trump brought this appeal, legal experts agreed that the issues around presidential immunity were novel and that whatever the court determined it would be making new law. Now a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals has filled in those gaps, and their ruling seems so definitive that they may be the last word on this topic.

Except for Trump. He’ll keep on demanding absolute immunity. Even if he’s doing it from a prison cell.

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Majority of Americans open to kicking Trump off state ballots

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

 Whether by hook or by crook, a majority of Americans—56%—are willing to see Donald Trump kicked off some or all state ballots, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday.

Two state-level rulings in Colorado and Maine have disqualified Trump from the ballot. Feelings about those rulings were more mixed: 49% support the decisions, while 46% oppose them.

But when it comes to the Supreme Court tackling the question of whether Trump can be barred from ballots under the 14th Amendment, 30% said the high court should remove him from all ballots, while 26% said the court should let states decide Trump's fate. Just 39% said Trump should be kept on the ballot in all states—a remarkably low percentage for a major-party presidential front-runner.

The survey also tested support for the federal and state charges against Trump, as well as House Republicans' impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

At base, 56% support the charges against Trump, while 39%—there's that number again— oppose the charges. On the Biden impeachment inquiry, just 44% support it, while 51% oppose it.

But in terms of "strong" support, 41% strongly support charging Trump, while just 26% strongly support opening an impeachment inquiry into Biden.

That means House Republicans are fixated on devoting a bunch of time and energy during a presidential cycle to a matter that only a quarter of voters feel passionately—and that a 51% majority opposes.

That's the definition of fringe politics: elevating the desires of about a quarter of the public over those of the majority of Americans.

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Majority of Americans open to kicking Trump off state ballots

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

 Whether by hook or by crook, a majority of Americans—56%—are willing to see Donald Trump kicked off some or all state ballots, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday.

Two state-level rulings in Colorado and Maine have disqualified Trump from the ballot. Feelings about those rulings were more mixed: 49% support the decisions, while 46% oppose them.

But when it comes to the Supreme Court tackling the question of whether Trump can be barred from ballots under the 14th Amendment, 30% said the high court should remove him from all ballots, while 26% said the court should let states decide Trump's fate. Just 39% said Trump should be kept on the ballot in all states—a remarkably low percentage for a major-party presidential front-runner.

The survey also tested support for the federal and state charges against Trump, as well as House Republicans' impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

At base, 56% support the charges against Trump, while 39%—there's that number again— oppose the charges. On the Biden impeachment inquiry, just 44% support it, while 51% oppose it.

But in terms of "strong" support, 41% strongly support charging Trump, while just 26% strongly support opening an impeachment inquiry into Biden.

That means House Republicans are fixated on devoting a bunch of time and energy during a presidential cycle to a matter that only a quarter of voters feel passionately—and that a 51% majority opposes.

That's the definition of fringe politics: elevating the desires of about a quarter of the public over those of the majority of Americans.

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Trump lawyers tell Supreme Court to stay out of 2020 election case for now

Posted on by Associated Press

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to stand down from a dispute over whether he can be prosecuted on charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election results.

Special counsel Jack Smith's team last week urged the nation's high court to take up and quickly consider Trump's claims that he enjoys immunity from prosecution as a former president. The unusual request for a speedy ruling seemed designed to prevent any delays that could postpone the trial of the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner, currently set to begin March 4, until after next year’s presidential election.

But Trump's lawyers told the Supreme Court that there was no reason for them to take up the matter now, especially because a lower appeals court in Washington is already considering the same question, and has scheduled arguments for Jan. 9.

“Importance does not automatically necessitate speed. If anything, the opposite is usually true. Novel, complex, sensitive, and historic issues — such as the existence of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts — call for more careful deliberation, not less," Trump's lawyers wrote.

With Trump facing four criminal cases and 91 felony counts as he seeks to reclaim the White House, a core aspect of his defense strategy has been to try to delay the prosecutions, including until after the election, to prevent them from interfering with his candidacy. In urging the Supreme Court to defer consideration of the immunity question, the defense lawyers are looking to avoid a quick and definitive answer that could push the case toward trial early next year.

“This appeal presents momentous, historic questions. An erroneous denial of a claim of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution unquestionably warrants this Court’s review,” the lawyers wrote. But, they added, that does not mean that the court should take “the case before the lower courts complete their review.”

They also said that the special counsel’s push to get the case to trial swiftly creates the appearance of political motivation: “to ensure that President Trump — the leading Republican candidate for President, and the greatest electoral threat to President Biden — will face a months-long criminal trial at the height of his presidential campaign.”

“As soon as the Special Counsel’s petition was filed, commentators from across the political spectrum observed that its evident motivation is to schedule the trial before the 2024 presidential election—a nakedly political motive,” they wrote.

A separate question before the court is Trump’s argument that he cannot be prosecuted in court for conduct for which he was already impeached — but then acquitted — before Congress. That argument has already been rejected by U..S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case.

The Supreme Court has indicated that it will decide quickly whether to hear the case but has not said what it will ultimately do.

Chutkan last week put the case on hold while Trump further pursues his claim that he is exempt from prosecution. But she left open the possibility of preserving the current trial date if the case returns to her court, saying that date and other deadlines were being paused rather than canceled.

At issue is Trump's claim that he is entitled to immunity for actions he took as part of his official duties as president. The Supreme Court has held that presidents are immune from civil liability for actions related to their official duties. But courts have never before had to wrestle with whether such immunity extends to criminal prosecution.

Chutkan ruled this month that former presidents "enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.”

Trump's team then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but special counsel Smith took the unusual step of attempting to bypass the appeals court — the usual next step in the process — and asking the Supreme Court take up the matter directly. Smith’s team has said there is nothing in the Constitution, or in court precedent, to support the idea that a former president cannot be prosecuted for criminal conduct committed while in the White House.

"The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request. This is an extraordinary case,” prosecutors wrote in asking for the Supreme Court's intervention.

The Supreme Court is expected to soon be asked to weigh in another Trump case with major political implications. Trump’s lawyers have vowed to appeal to the high court a decision on Tuesday barring him from Colorado’s ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who swore an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from holding office.

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The Biden interview: Supreme Court, threats to democracy and Trump’s vow to exact retribution

Posted on by ProPublica

by John Harwood

ProPublica

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

President Joe Biden said Friday that he was not fully confident that the current U.S. Supreme Court, which he described as extreme, could be relied on to uphold the rule of law.

When asked the question directly, Biden paused for a few seconds. Then he sighed and said, “I worry.”

“Because,” he said, “I know that if the other team, the MAGA Republicans, win, they don’t want to uphold the rule of law.”

But he said, “I do think at the end of the day, this court, which has been one of the most extreme courts, I still think in the basic fundamentals of rule of law, that they would sustain the rule of law.”

Still, Biden said the court itself should recognize it needs ethics rules after stories by ProPublica revealed that billionaires had given undisclosed gifts to Supreme Court justices and that Justice Clarence Thomas has made appearances at events for donors to the Koch political network. The code of conduct that applies to other federal judges doesn’t apply to the Supreme Court. “The idea that the Constitution would in any way prohibit or not encourage the court to have basic rules of ethics that are just on their face reasonable,” Biden said, “is just not the case.”

The discussion was part of a rare formal interview on a topic the president has laid out as a priority: How America’s democracy is under siege. Seated in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Friday afternoon, Biden seemed relaxed and confident, batting back a question about why he thinks he’s the only Democrat who can protect democracy next year, especially given voter concerns with his age: “I’m not the only Democrat that can protect it. I just happen to be the Democrat who I think is best positioned to see to it that the guy I was worried about taking on democracy is not president.”

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Biden cast the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy as a resistance movement animated by fear of change. “I think Trump has concluded that he has to win,” Biden said, noting the rising vitriol in the embattled former president’s rhetoric. “And they’ll pull out all the stops.”

Biden linked the attempt by House Republicans to bring Washington to “a screeching halt” through a government shutdown to Trump’s effort to regain the presidency. He warned against the desire of “MAGA Republicans” — which he called a minority of the GOP, much less the nation as a whole — to weaken institutions such as the federal civil service to shift power over the U.S. government toward the president alone. Trump has promised his supporters to “be your retribution” in a second term.

The drama over a government shutdown resulted from the “terrible bargain” Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy made with extremist colleagues to secure his job, Biden said. “He’s willing to do things that he, I think, he knows are inconsistent with constitutional processes.” He added: “There is a group of MAGA Republicans who genuinely want to have a fundamental change in the way that the system works. And that’s what worries me the most.”

Biden faulted his Democratic Party for failing at some points to respond effectively to one of the wellsprings of the anti-democratic threat: the anxieties of Americans, most conspicuously blue-collar white men, unsettled by economic, cultural and demographic change.

What’s needed isn’t so much economic benefits as “treating them with respect,” said Biden, who has emphasized his middle-class Scranton, Pennsylvania, upbringing throughout his political career. “The fact is, we’re going to be very shortly a minority-white-European country. Sometimes my colleagues don’t speak enough to make it clear that that is not going to change how we operate.”

Biden expressed confidence that the majority of the Republican Party and the nation itself would ultimately safeguard the American experiment. But he exhorted them to “speak up” in opposition to the increasingly menacing rhetoric Trump has deployed in response to his legal peril.

“[Do] not legitimize it,” he said. He added, in what seemed a reference to the vitriol aimed at jurors and potential jurors in trials for the Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump-related cases, “I never thought I’d see a time when someone was worried about being on a jury because there may be physical violence against them if they voted the wrong way.”

He encouraged Americans concerned about democracy to be “engaging” more with family, friends and acquaintances who have embraced extremism. Even more urgent, he added, is voting in next year’s presidential election. “Get in a two-way conversation,” he said. “I really do believe that the vast majority of the American people are decent, honorable, straightforward. … We have to, though, understand what the danger is if they don’t participate.”

ProPublica also asked Biden whether his former Senate colleague Joe Lieberman is upholding democracy by working with an organization called No Labels to pursue a potential third-party candidacy. “Well, he has a democratic right to do it. There’s no reason not to do that. Now, it’s going to help the other guy. And he knows [that]. … That’s a political decision he’s making that I obviously think is a mistake. But he has a right to do that.”

Biden was asked whether Fox News and other outlets that spread falsehoods about the 2020 election drive the threat that he’s concerned about or simply reflect sentiment that already exists. Both, Biden said: “Look, there are no editors any more. That’s one of the big problems.” Without providing detail, he suggested that reporters on outlets such as Fox are just doing what they’re told.

In response to a question about whether the decision by Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), to lower guardrails against misinformation contributes to the problem, Biden said, “Yeah, it does.” Biden noted that the invention of the printing press had effects that are still felt today. He suggested something similar was happening with the internet. “Where do people get their news?” he continued. “They go on the internet. They go online … and you have no notion whether it’s true or not.”