This week, a Trump criminal trial actually started, and a jury is already in place. Opening arguments should begin this morning.
During jury selection, we saw right-wing media mount an all-out offensive against the fairness of the jury system. Trump, they claimed, could never get a fair trial in New York, or in any venue where most people didn’t vote for him. In the Manichean world of MAGA, there are Trump lovers and Trump haters, and no Trump haters could possibly put aside their hatred to listen objectively to the evidence of the case.
In this week’s featured post, I push back on that. I think we need to, because trial by jury is close to the heart of Democracy. If ordinary people can’t be trusted to be jurors, then how can we trust them to be voters?
I think it’s important to see this attack on the fairness of juries as part of a larger authoritarian attack on all sources of truth other than the Great Leader himself. Over the last few years, we have heard that we can’t trust public health officials, climate scientists, women, the news media, judges, election officials, historians, librarians, or pretty much anyone else. Only the Leader speaks the Truth. Only he can be trusted. That’s the essence of any authoritarian system.
I look back on my own experience on a jury and argue that we can trust juries, including this jury. Rigging a verdict, even if that’s what you intend at the beginning of the trial, is actually pretty hard.
That post should appear shortly.
The weekly has a lot of other news to cover, including some Trump trial news other than jury selection. But the big news is that Speaker Johnson stood up to Marjorie Taylor Greene and let Ukraine aid come to a vote. It passed easily, as it would have if it had come to the floor six months ago. The House also passed aid to Israel and Taiwan, as well as humanitarian aid to Gaza. MTG is promising a vote to depose Johnson as speaker, which may or may not turn into yet another pointless Republican circus.
It looks like the Iran/Israel trade of attacks won’t escalate into a larger war. A VW plant in Tennessee voted to unionize. The Senate gave the Mayorkas impeachment effort exactly as much attention as it deserved. The Supreme Court is about to consider several interesting cases. And somebody shot a video of an Icelandic volcano erupting under the Northern Lights.
I’ll aim to get that out around noon EDT.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
My impression is that most people don’t vote at all.
Our system is rigged to suppress them, instead of encouraging them. In other countries they do things like:
If we did all of those things, or even some of them, what would the effect on voter turnout be? But we won’t, because a bunch of powerful people in this country are opposed to democracy as an abstract concept.
Less than half the actual population votes, but over half the eligible population votes, so it’s not as dire as you might think
Plus, it varies a lot from state to state and district to district – more people vote in the closer states reaching something like 75% in the swing states in 2020, while fewer vote in the deep red or deep blue states.
(And also fewer people vote in off-years or primaries, too…)
“I think it’s important to see this attack on the fairness of juries as part of a larger authoritarian attack on all sources of truth other than the Great Leader himself.”
This can’t be said often enough. It’s no accident that the official media organ of the Trump criminal/grifting organization has the word “truth” in it, as if what is true is simply and only whatever Dear Leader says.