The Weekly Sift

If my colleagues on this side of the chamber actually think that President Trump committed a criminal offense, and let’s understand, a high crime is a felony, and a misdemeanor is a misdemeanor. The words haven’t changed that much over time. After he’s out of office, you go and arrest him.

– Bruce Castor, lawyer defending Donald Trump against impeachment
Opening Statement, February 9, 2021

In sum, the majority today endorses an expansive vision of Presidential immunity that was never recognized by the Founders, any sitting President, the Executive Branch, or even President Trump’s lawyers, until now. Settled understandings of the Constitution are of little use to the majority in this case, and so it ignores them.

– Justice Sonya Sotomayor,
dissent in Trump v United States

This week’s featured posts are “The Immunity Decision: End of the Republic or No Big Deal?” and “The Biden Situation“. In this morning’s teaser, I promised a third article about the media meltdown over Biden, but much of that material made it into the other Biden article and the rest is below.

I also want to compliment everybody involved in last week’s comments, particularly the discussion of Biden’s candidacy in response to “They Both Lost. What Now?” Commenters disagreed a lot, both with me and with each other, but by and large the discussion stayed civil. We’re all trying to save the Republic from autocracy; we just disagree on the best way to do it.

This week everybody should have been talking about the immunity decision

I cover this in the first featured post. Summary: It’s not the end of the Republic yet, but could be a significant step in that direction. The fact that the law will no longer constrain presidents just underlines the importance of electing presidents we can trust not to abuse their power.

but we actually talked constantly about Biden’s health and candidacy

The substance of what I think about Biden and his candidacy is in the second featured post: He is doing a good job and I still believe he can keep doing it. But settling down the media storm that has blown up requires political skills I don’t think he has. So I am open to choosing a new candidate, but skeptical that this move will solve the problem.

Late in that post, I discuss just how out of control the mainstream media has gotten. I was originally planning to write a whole article on that, but managed to cover most of what I wanted to say in the article mentioned above. Here’s the stuff that didn’t make it into that article:

One day this week, I fired up my iPad’s NYT app and noticed that the first six articles on the screen all had something to do with getting Biden out of the race. (Aaron Rupar noticed the same phenomenon.) All week, I kept checking CNN to see how they were covering the immunity decision, but I could never time it right: They were constantly talking about Biden’s fitness for office and whether his support was eroding. In one segment I watched, Host Jim Sciutto raised those issues with CNN commentator Van Jones, pro-Biden Republican Adam Kinzinger, and Democrats Howard Dean and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Whenever any of the four expressed support for Biden, Sciutto argued with them. No pro-Biden point could go unchallenged.

There’s an agenda here, and it’s not subtle.

This kind of sustained assault doesn’t happen to Republicans. Republican scandals and pseudo-scandals last for a day or two and then go away. Donald Trump is still a convicted felon who tried to stay in power through force and fraud after he lost the election. Clarence Thomas is still blatantly corrupt. How often do those facts come up? Republican officials can appear on CNN without being asked about them.

But if you raise those comparisons, big-media journalists will protest, “We can’t keep asking people the same questions over and over again.” The Biden example, however, proves that they can. They’re doing it right now. They just can’t do it to Republicans.

Here’s Jemele Hill‘s take:

The Republican Party in general is graded on a curve, but Trump especially. They’ve normalized his buffoonish bigotry. If you watched American news coverage, you would have no idea that Trump often threatens violence, promises to weaponize the DOJ against his “enemies,” is a felon, has been found liable for rape, tried to overturn an election, and incited an insurrection, among other things. If Biden is replaced, all of the coverage will be centered on the dysfunction of the Democratic Party.

AngryStaffer brings back some 2016 memories I had forgotten. We all remember how the NYT and other media blew Hillary’s emails into some big scandal. But do you remember when Hillary’s health was also supposed to be a big problem, one that should push her out of the race? Of course, it’s eight years later now and Hillary is doing fine.

In the featured post, I raise the possibility that replacing Biden will just move the attack to the new candidate. One reason to think so is the essay the NYT published on (of all days) July 4: “Why I Don’t Vote and Maybe You Shouldn’t Either“. If you click the link, you’ll see a toned down headline “Why I Won’t Vote”. There’s a reason for that. @capitolhunters did a deep dive into the author, one Matthew Walther, whose hairstyle and moustache looks more like Hitler than can be a coincidence.

After a big public outrage about an article denigrating voting on July 4, the Times shortened the title to “Why I Don’t Vote”. But then it turned out that records show Walther did vote in 2020 and 2022, so it got changed again to “Why I Won’t Vote”.

But anyway, what’s the editor’s motive in running this dishonest piece? Isn’t it to suppress the youth vote, which any Democrat (Biden or not) will need in November?

and the Fourth of July

When I talk to people these days, I often hear the fantasy of going into a Rip Van Winkle sleep and not waking up until after the election. This week in particular my social media feed included a lot of mournful posts revolving around the theme of this being the last real Fourth of July, the last honest holiday of American freedom and democracy.

I don’t necessarily believe that, but it’s a possibility, and I understand why people are taking it seriously. But let me pass on some wisdom I picked up many years ago when I thought my wife was going to die. (She didn’t.) If you’re afraid you’re about to lose something, appreciate it now.

So if we’re really seeing the last gasp of American democracy, don’t waste this time moping or wishing you were asleep. If you’re worried that these might be the last days of freedom, don’t miss them. Get out there and be free. Whatever “freedom” means to you personally, whatever activities you find meaningful that some authoritarian might try to stop you from doing, go do those things. Do them exuberantly and with joy.

and the France and UK elections

Counter to what this cartoonist (and a lot of other people) expected, the big winner in France’s parliamentary election was the Left, not the Right. The right-wing National Rally (RN) party was leading in the first round of the elections, but ended up finishing third in the final round.

If that sounds confusing, here’s how the rounds work:

The first round eliminates all candidates who fail to win the support of 12.5% of locally registered voters. Anyone who scores more than 50% of the vote with a turnout of at least a quarter of the local electorate wins automatically. The second round is a series of run-offs fought either by two, three or sometimes four candidates.

RN came out of the first round with 33% of the vote, compared to the left-wing New Popular Front’s 28% and 20% for President Macron’s centrist bloc. After that result, RN was expected to be the largest party in Parliament, if not winning an actual majority of seats. But instead:

The surprise result for the leftwing New Popular Front – which won 182 seats, followed by president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Together alliance on 163 and the far right in third with 143 seats – showed the strength of tactical voting against Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN). The far right and its allies had forged a commanding lead in the first round but were ultimately held back by massive tactical voting to prevent them winning enough seats to form a government. …

More than 200 candidates from the left and centre had pulled out of the second round last week in order to avoid splitting the vote against the RN. Those parties had called on voters to choose any candidate against the RN, in an attempt to prevent the far right winning an absolute majority and forming a government.

No party wound up with a majority, so forming a government could take some time. New Popular Front is already a cumbersome union of leftist parties, so holding them together and adding support from centrists might be tricky.

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Meanwhile in the UK, the Tories are out of power for the first time since 2010. Labour won in a landslide and Keir Starmer will be the new prime minister. At least two factors are at work here: the general unpopularity of anybody who was in power during Covid (which hits both Biden and Trump here), plus the Britain-specific factor that Brexit has turned into a nightmare.

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You can tell something is losing popularity when Trump denies knowing anything about it. This week, he tried to distance himself from Project 2025, the plan produced by a consortium of conservative organizations to guide his second term.

Michael Steele points out the obvious:

Ok, let’s all play with Stupid for minute…so exactly how do you “disagree” with something you “know nothing about” or “have no idea” who is behind, saying or doing the thing you disagree with?

Here’s why Project 2025 matters: Trump is not a detail guy. We saw that in his first term. He said he wanted a tax cut, but he knows bupkis about taxes, other than how to avoid them. So Paul Ryan had to write his plan. He said he wanted a “beautiful” health care plan to replace ObamaCare, but he knows nothing about healthcare either, so the Republican Congress ended up just barely failing to repeal ObamaCare without any replacement plan.

He hasn’t changed or learned much of anything, so if he’s going to have any policies during a second term, somebody else is going to have to create them. That’s Project 2025.

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Florida’s law allowing “volunteer chaplains” from outside organizations to provide counseling services in public schools took effect this week, and the Satanic Temple announced that it was ready to participate in any district that started such a program. So far none have. The Guardian article says this about the church’s beliefs:

The Satanic Temple champions Satan not as a literal, omnipresent demon, but as a symbol of rebellion and resistance to authoritarianism.

I may not be all that in touch with today’s high school students, but in my day “rebellion and resistance to authoritarianism” was the de facto religion of a large majority.

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If you’re not from corn country (I am, originally) you might not find the length of this article worth your time, but Chris Jones’ Iowa-based blog The Swine Republic has an insightful essay “Mr. Peabody’s Corn Train” comparing Iowa’s infatuation with corn-based ethanol to West Virginia’s infatuation with coal. The West Virginia situation is further along, so it’s more obvious what a bad decision the state made tying itself to a doomed energy industry. [Footnote for people younger than me: The title derives from an old song lyric. It’s quite evocative if you catch the reference.]

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So “dozens” of Nazis marched in Nashville Saturday.

Dozens of self-proclaimed white nationalists marched through downtown Nashville on Saturday. They wore matching uniforms, with ski masks and sunglasses to obscure their faces, and carried Confederate and upside-down American flags. Witnesses say they chanted the Nazi “Seig Heil” salute and called for mass deportations of nonwhite people.

[OK, it’s actually “Sieg Heil”, but don’t ask how I know that.] You might expect “Should I denounce Nazis?” to be one of the easiest questions in politics. But if you’re a Tennessee Republican it seems to require considerable thought.

As of Sunday morning, Gov. Bill Lee had not released a statement. U.S. Senators Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn, as well as Nashville’s three congressmen, have also remained silent.

Nashville itself is Democratic, but due to gerrymandering all three of its representatives are Republicans. The only Democrat Tennessee sends to Congress is Steve Cohen from the Memphis area.

and let’s close with something timeworn

Kueez collects a bunch of photos showing the long-term effects of small but persistent processes. Cat scratches can completely destroy a banister eventually. If people play an organ for over a century, their fingers wear dips into the keys. And here, a family photo kept inside the cover of this watch eventually imprinted on the metal.

If your version of Christianity wants to put the Ten Commandments in schools but take free lunch out of them, you are worshipping something other than Jesus.

– Zach W. Lambert

This week’s featured post is “The Limits of Originalism“.

This week everybody was talking about the upcoming debate

So Biden and Trump are scheduled to debate Thursday night on CNN. I am resisting the temptation to do something I often criticize the cable-news talking heads for: speculate. We shouldn’t waste our time trying to predict how the debate will go, because in a few days it will happen and we can see.

I will say this: I think the existence of a debate works in Biden’s favor. The biggest reason I am optimistic about Biden’s chances in general is that the Trump campaign is based on lies: that Biden is senile, the economy is bad, crime is soaring, immigrants are responsible for that soaring crime, we were all better off four years ago, and so on. (CNN found 30 lies in Trump’s speech in Wisconsin Tuesday.) Anything that can get voters focused on reality — like what the candidates are actually like when you watch them live — works in Biden’s favor.

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Having had time to mull over his insane sharks-and-batteries story, Trump tells it again, notes that he was criticized for it, and concludes: “It’s actually not crazy. It’s sort of a smart story, right?”

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Biden continues to creep upward in the polls, and currently has a small lead in the 538 polling average. The average includes a Fox News poll from Wednesday, which has Biden up 50-48.

I have been skeptical of the polls that showed Biden behind, and I remain skeptical as he seems to pull ahead (by far less than the margin of error). The trend probably means something, but not the margins.

Aaron Rupar writes sarcastically:

With even Fox News now acknowledging that Biden is pulling ahead, who’s writing the big think piece about how Trump should gracefully bow out at the RNC for a younger, fresher candidate?

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But of course, you would know nothing about Biden’s momentum from the NYT, which publishes only bad news about Biden’s candidacy. Friday’s story on the campaign was about how Trump is catching up in fund-raising.

Oddly, there seems to be no actual news development that occasioned this article. The FEC has not released any new totals, but the NYT is basing its article on claims made by the campaigns, trusting the Trump campaign to tell it honest numbers. The article also accepts the Trump campaign’s claim that they are catching up due to small online contributions, and doesn’t mention the $50 million check Trump’s super-PAC got from billionaire Timothy Mellon.

The New Yorker does focus on such big-ticket donations, and makes this comment:

Trump’s fund-raising efforts have included brazen solicitation of donations from individuals and business interests that have big stakes in regulatory decisions. Last month, the Washington Post reported on an April meeting that Trump had at his Mar-a-Lago estate with senior executives from the energy industry. According to the Post story, Trump said that if he was reëlected he would reverse Biden Administration policies that have restricted oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and frozen export permits for liquefied natural gas. In pressing the energy executives to donate to his campaign, he told them that “(g)iving $1 billion would be a ‘deal’ . . . because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid.”

Chris Hayes calls attention to additional examples of influence-peddling: Trump wanted to ban TikTok until a major TikTok investor gave his campaign a lot of money. Trump wanted to regulate crypto-currencies, but now he doesn’t and is getting millions from crypto interests. He’ll even back away from his anti-immigrant position to suit potential donors looking to recruit immigrant talent: He’s promising automatic green cards to immigrants who graduate from college.

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Little in this campaign is more laughable than the repeated videos of Trump waving to no one, as if a huge crowd were there to greet him.

and the Supreme Court

The featured post covers the Rahimi decision. On the surface it doesn’t sound like a big deal, because the Court does the right thing by an 8-1 margin. But five of the six conservative justices recognize that the Bruen decision has caused a mess, and they have to figure out how to fix it within the bounds of their originalist dogma.

Still no word on when we might hear an opinion on Trump’s absurd claim of absolute immunity from prosecution. Whether the Court grants his request or not, they’ve already delayed his January 6 trial by more than six months, which was what he wanted.

and Louisiana

So Louisiana has decided to waste a bunch of court time and lawyer fees so that it can be told to remove the Ten Commandments from its classrooms. This is part of a post-Dobbs push in the red states that amounts to: “Since precedent doesn’t matter any more, let’s try stuff that is obviously unconstitutional and see if this Court will OK it.”

Supporters of the law, in defending the measure, have leaned on the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which gave a high school football coach his job back after he was disciplined over a controversy involving prayer on the field. The Supreme Court ruled that the coach’s prayers amounted to private speech, protected by the First Amendment, and could not be restricted by the school district.

The decision lowered the bar between church and state in an opinion that legal experts predicted would allow more religious expression in public spaces. At the time, the court clarified that a government entity does not necessarily violate the establishment clause by permitting religious expression in public.

But of course, here the state isn’t “permitting” religious expression, it’s mandating religious expression. Not even this Supreme Court will go for that. And the case they’re leaning on was a travesty to begin with.

Anyway, it’s just so typical: politicians making a show of their Christianity by doing some symbolic thing that costs them nothing and helps no one. “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” – Isaiah 29:13.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz contrasts public schools feeding hungry children (as Minnesota does) versus forcing state-sponsored religion on them.

I’m a two-decade school teacher. We know that full bellies make better learners. But look, you’re seeing the contrast in this when you get a Democratic governor versus a Republican governor. We don’t have the Ten Commandments posted in our classrooms, but we have free breakfast and lunch. Those are policies the Biden-Harris administration is talking about taking national. It makes a huge difference.

and Willie Mays and Reggie Jackson

Thursday, a major league baseball game was played in a town without a major league team: Birmingham, Alabama. The point of the game was to honor the Negro Leagues, and it also turned into a spontaneous tribute to the great Willie Mays, who had died two days before.

Prior to the game, the usual Fox Sports announcer crew interviewed another Black Hall of Fame player, Reggie Jackson. Reggie comes from the generation after Mays (entering the major leagues in the middle of the 1967 season, 16 years after Mays’ rookie year and 20 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier), and so is not usually thought of as a pioneer. But he had a lot to say about the racism he faced while playing for the minor league Birmingham A’s in 1967.

His story is worth the three minutes it will take you to listen to it, because it underlines a point that is often glossed over in upbeat accounts of our civil rights progress, particularly in this age when any honest testimony about American racism is denounced as “critical race theory”: Racism isn’t something you beat once and then are done with. Twenty years after Jackie Robinson, racism against Black baseball players was still virulent.

Joe and Sharon Rudi, I slept on their couch three-four nights a week for about a month and a half. Finally they were threatened that they would burn our apartment complex down unless I got out. …

Had it not been for my White friends … I would have never made it. I was too physically violent. I was ready to physically fight somebody. I’da got killed here, because I woulda beat someone’s ass, and you’da saw me in an oak tree somewhere.

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This week it was hot in the Northeast, but that was nothing compared with Mecca, which hit 125 degrees (51.8 C). Saudi sources estimate that at least 1300 people died during this year’s Hajj.

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Pastor Robert Morris, founder of the Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas (ranked in 2023 as the 9th largest church in the US) resigned Tuesday after the “extramarital relationship” from early in his career that he had previously confessed to turned out to be the multi-year abuse of a 12-year-old girl.

Morris, a former member of President Donald Trump’s spiritual advisory committee, had long told a story to his congregation and church leaders about a “moral failure” involving sexual sin when he was a young minister in his 20s.

Last week, Cindy Clemishire, now 54, revealed in a post on the church watchdog site The Wartburg Watch that she was 12 when Morris first sexually abused her in 1982. The alleged abuse continued for more than four years, Clemishire told NBC News on Monday.

If the mention of Southlake rings a bell, it might be because two weeks ago I told you about Mike Hixenbaugh’s book They Came for the Schools, which describes the campaign to remove “critical race theory” and so-called LGBTQ “groomers” from the Southlake schools. I didn’t talk about Morris and Gateway’s role in that campaign, but in a 2023 podcast, Hixenbaugh described how Morris and Gateway campaigned for conservative candidates to take over the school board. To protect the children, of course.

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Hardly any Democrat communicates better than Pete Buttigieg. Here, he explains why conservatives’ lack of answers on questions like gas prices, prescription drug prices, inflation in general, infrastructure, child care, and taxes (Rick Scott wants to raise taxes on the poor), leads them to their current rhetoric.

So what do they do? They find somebody vulnerable and pick on them — which at the moment is largely the trans community. And they find something to talk about that can go between the laughable — is Donald Duck going to make your kid gay? — to the incredibly dark, which is the suggestion that the very presence of someone who is gender-nonconforming or trans or gay or lesbian or otherwise different — the very existence of someone like that is an “adult subject”. That if my kids in, let’s say, the first grade classroom were to mention in passing that over the weekend they had a great time going with their dads to the zoo, that they would have somehow, by saying that, uttered something age inappropriate. And get us really fired up about that fight.

and let’s close with something fictitious

The environmentalist website Grist did something creative: sponsored a “climate fiction” contest. Contestants were challenged to “imagine 2200” and “offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress”. From over a thousand entries, the judges chose three winners and nine finalists. You can read the stories here.

In memory of those who fought here, died here, literally saved the world here, let us be worthy of their sacrifice. Let us be the generation that when history is written about our time — in 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 years from now — it will be said: When the moment came, we met the moment. We stood strong. Our alliances were made stronger. And we saved democracy in our time as well. 

– President Joe Biden
at the Normandy American Cemetery
June 6, 2024

This week’s featured post is “To stop fascism, unite around the old guy“.

This week everybody was talking about Israel’s hostage rescue

The good news: Four of the approximately 250 Israelis taken hostage in Hamas’ October 7 attack were freed Saturday.

The bad news: It appears that the raid killed 274 Palestinians. Palestinian authorities don’t try to identify who was or wasn’t a Hamas fighter, so we don’t know how many civilians were killed. We do know that dozens of children were included in the 274 total.

But only three other hostages have been freed by military force since the start of the war. Another three were mistakenly killed by Israeli forces after they escaped on their own, and Hamas says others have been killed in Israeli airstrikes. … Over 100 hostages were released during a weeklong cease-fire last year, in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, and reaching a similar agreement is still widely seen as the only way of getting the rest of the hostages back.

Sunday, Netanyahu rival Benny Gantz followed through on his threat to withdraw from Israel’s war cabinet. He had given Netanyahu a three-week ultimatum to produce a plan to end the war, and that deadline ran out Saturday.

President Biden has put forward a peace plan that pairs a full hostage release with a complete ceasefire. But Prime Minister Netanyahu stands by his condition that Hamas be “completely defeated” before hostilities can end. Gantz’ protest is related to the idea that no one can define what “completely defeated” means, so Netanyahu’s plan seems to be to continue fighting indefinitely.

and more reaction to Trump’s felony conviction

Rick Perlstein hangs around in far-right social-media communities — and he claims that’s not why he’s depressed — reporting on “The Republican Id“. His article got me thinking about the weird dichotomy we’re seeing.

On the one hand, Trump (along with virtually all elected Republicans) are pouring out violence-promoting rhetoric. They’re not exactly saying “Go out and kill liberals”, but they’re definitely hinting in that direction. Trump predicts that seeing him sentenced to jail “would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

What are MAGA folks supposed to do when they “break”? He doesn’t say.

But he has similarly predicted violence if the Republican convention didn’t nominate him in 2016, if Pennsylvania counted all the mail-in ballots in 2020, after the search of Mar-a-Lago, if he was indicted, or went to trial, or was convicted. Other than the convention snub, those events came and went without so much as a major protest. During his Manhattan trial, Trump was so embarrassed by the lack of MAGA demonstrators that he made up an outrageous lie to cover it:

After The New York Times published a story that said Trump was unhappy with the meager crowd he saw when he arrived at the courthouse for opening statements on Monday, Trump posted on social media on Tuesday to deny the story, denigrate a Times reporter and make this claim: “Thousands of people were turned away from the Courthouse in Lower Manhattan by steel stanchions and police, literally blocks from the tiny side door from where I enter and leave. It is an armed camp to keep people away.”

Trump also wrote on social media on Monday that “Lower Manhattan surrounding the Courthouse, where I am heading now, is completely CLOSED DOWN.” And he told reporters inside the courthouse on Tuesday: “For blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.”

He succeeded in inciting a riot once: on January 6. Other than that day, and in spite of all the violent rhetoric on social media and all the death threats against anyone who speaks out against him, his supporters seem to have little appetite for mass action on his behalf.

and the border

President Biden announced a new border policy this week. It’s complicated, but the basic idea is to stop letting people apply for asylum when the number of daily border crossings gets too high. Vox elaborates.

The underlying problem at the border can’t be solved without congressional action, which Trump and his allies have blocked: The US is obligated by law and treaty to give asylum to refugees who meet certain standards of persecution, but the system that processes asylum claims was not designed to handle the current quantity and is hopelessly jammed. People wait years for a hearing, and what should we do with them in the meantime? As the new executive order puts it:

For the vast majority of people in immigration proceedings, the current laws make it impossible to quickly grant protection to those who require it and to quickly remove those who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States. This reality is compounded by the fact that the Congress has chronically underfunded our border security and immigration system and has failed to provide the resources or reforms it needs to be able to deliver timely consequences to most individuals who cross unlawfully and cannot establish a legal basis to remain in the United States.

Executive orders can’t create new courts, hire new judges, or ameliorate the conditions that cause people to leave their home countries. They can only change how the backlog is handled. And even then, the Supreme Court may decide that Biden has exceeded his authority. (In recent years, the Court has interpreted Biden’s authority far less generously than it did Trump’s.)

and the Supreme Court

Still no word on the immunity case that the Court is using to delay Trump’s D.C. trial until after the election. The court’s term is expected to end later this month.

Meanwhile, there were two new reasons to doubt the conservative majority’s honesty and impartiality: First, the neighbor at the heart of Justice Alito’s flag controversy has disputed his story, and seems to have a police report to back up her version of the timeline. Watch her CNN interview. (Almost as disturbing as the Alito lie is the neighbor’s account of how the Alito’s tried to intimidate her.)

And second, Fix the Court has published a tally of all the gifts accepted by the justices who served during the last 20 years. The $4.7 million total is stunning in itself, but the jaw-dropping fact is that more than $4 million went to Clarence Thomas, nearly matching his already-generous salary. Fix the Court says the total is “probably an undercount”.

and Hunter’s trial

It’s been observed many times that Trump and his followers practice projection: Whatever Trump is doing — trying to steal an election, corrupting the Justice Department, … — they claim that his opponents are doing it. Every accusation they make is actually a confession.

Because it has fallen so close to the trial that found Trump guilty of multiple felonies, the Hunter Biden trial is providing a grand opportunity for projection. Here, Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro discusses the “mob mentality” of the Biden family and their attempt to intimidate jurors. (To see how a family with a real mob-mentality operates, look at Pro Publica’s recent report: “Nine witnesses in the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump have received significant financial benefits, including large raises from his campaign, severance packages, new jobs, and a grant of shares and cash from Trump’s media company.” Take care of the Boss, and the Boss will take care of you.)

How are the Bidens carrying out this “intimidation”? First Lady Jill Biden, who has been Hunter’s step-mother since he was seven years old, has been showing up at his trial! Her presence, Pirro claims, tells jurors that “We know who you are. We’re in the courtroom and we’re watching you.” (Very scary lady, that Jill Biden.)

And then there’s Joe, who spent the entire previous weekend with his son! Another Fox host quotes a New York Post writer suggesting this is a “cynical power play” aimed at sending a “Mafia-like” message to potential jurors: “Screw with my son and you screw with me.”

Consider the parallels and contrasts with the Trump trial: Nobody from Trump’s family supported him in court until the media started to notice, and neither Melania nor Ivanka ever made an appearance. (“His family is nowhere to be seen. His wife, at least presently, is not to be seen at his side; his children have vanished; his loved ones have melted away.”) You know who did show up? Power players: the Speaker of the House, numerous senators and congressmen. (Matt Gaetz ominously tweeted that he was “standing back and standing by, Mr. President”. Standing by to do what to who?)

Can you picture Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer going to Delaware to attend Hunter’s trial? What would they do there? Is AOC standing back and standing by?

Trump jurors can only hope they stay anonymous, because Trump’s supporters post threats against them (and the judge and his daughter) daily. But if you’re a Biden supporter, you probably can’t name the judge in Hunter’s trial, or any of the judge’s family members. I know I can’t. I have no interest in finding out who Hunter’s jurors are, and I don’t know anybody who does. Those people are all safe from us, no matter how the trial comes out.

But yes, Fox News, tell me more about the Biden family’s “mob-like” approach to Hunter’s trial.

The Bidens have gone to great lengths to communicate to Hunter that no matter what mistakes he has made in life, he is still their son and they love him. How sinister of them! How unlike the Trump family.

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Meanwhile, the House committee that failed to find any evidence linking Joe Biden to whatever sketchy business deals brother James and son Hunter might have had going has taken its next step: The committee refers James and Hunter to the DoJ, claiming that they lied to the committee about Joe not having anything to do with their business deals.

See the logic? The complete lack of evidence is the clearest sign that the conspiracy is working.

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Three Trump allies have been charged with forgery for their role in the Wisconsin fake elector plot.

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Steve Bannon is finally going to jail. He will start a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress on July 1. During that time he will probably go to trial for his role in conning contributors to his We Build the Wall fund.

Trump has pardoned Bannon for his role in stealing from Trump supporters, but New York state has decided to pursue charges. His accomplices are already in jail.

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AP examines videos that are deceptively edited to make Biden look mentally incompetent. If he’s so lost to dementia, why can’t his critics just use real videos?

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In a strong hint that the Sandy Hook parents he slandered may finally see some money, Alex Jones has changed his bankruptcy filing. Originally he filed for a Chapter 11 reorganization, but he has changed that to a Chapter 7 liquidation.

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I mentioned Trumpists’ projections above. Here’s more: The Federalist’s Erika Andersen thinks Dolly Parton isn’t really Christian and Newmax’ Greg Kelly worries that Taylor Swift fans are practicing “idolatry”, which “is a sin”.

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Just before the guilty verdict in Trump’s Manhattan trial was announced, Maryland Republican senate candidate Larry Hogan made a statement that would be uncontroversial in any other era of American life. He asked people to “respect the verdict and the legal process”.

That pro-civic stance has just about gotten him run out of the Republican Party, which appears to be ready to sacrifice the Maryland senate seat in order to enforce MAGA discipline.

Tuesday, Hogan’s campaign confirmed that he will not attend the Republican Convention in Milwaukee next month. That should avoid some nasty confrontations.

On a similar note, former Republican congressman Ken Buck told Jon Stewart:

I left because I couldn’t tell the lie. The 2020 election wasn’t stolen. The Jan. 6 defendants aren’t political prisoners…There’s a lot of life out there besides arguing about nothing and telling lies. I made a choice to go enjoy what I’ve got left.

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A book you might want to read: They Came for the Schools by Mike Hixenbaugh. It’s the story of how the model suburb of Southlake, Texas began to recognize it had a racism problem and tried to deal with it, until a backlash led to a right-wing takeover of the school board.

You may have seen news stories about Southlake in the last few years. It was the testing ground for the conservative campaign against “critical race theory” and for the idea that teachers and librarians were trying to “groom” children to become gay or trans. I had been loosely following that story, but seeing everything laid out in one narrative is pretty amazing.

The big thing I glean from this story is that the conservative cultural project doesn’t work without lying. Parents need to be convinced that schools are teaching things nobody is actually teaching, and they need to believe that members of their community not just wrongheaded, but are engaged in unimaginable evil.

As I’ve said before, I don’t see how this happens without the flaws in Christianity. You have to believe in a Devil to make these kinds of conspiracy theories plausible.

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Justin Rosario tells the story of his wife’s two miscarriages in 2006. Her situation (both times) was very similar to that of women in red states who very nearly bleed to death, and sometimes suffer permanent consequences, because of abortion bans. But Justin’s wife got the medical care she needed and survived to have two children. (If you have the time, read the comments on this post. Many are by women telling their own miscarriage stories.)

Recently, friends told me a similar story about a miscarriage suffered by their daughter, a girl I watched grow up. Similarly, she was in a blue state and is fine now, probably planning her next attempt at motherhood. But what, they wondered, might have happened to her Texas or Missouri?

Rosario:

What if the next time, [my wife’s] miscarriage had stalled and become septic like [a woman in Texas]’s? Numerous women have had this happen to them throughout Republican-controlled states already. They’ve lost the ability to have children. Some of them have possibly died.

If you’re wondering why these stories have not been massive front-page headlines for weeks on end, you should know the answer by now. Doing so would require discussing why these women are suffering and dying and that would require pointing the finger, unerringly, at Republicans.

But we don’t do that in America’s press. We will run hundreds of above-the-fold articles about a “crisis” at the border to terrorize racist white people but talk about how Republicans are literally maiming and killing women? No, thank you. That would be biased.

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This strikes me as a revealing clip from Fox News: Interviewers ask Trump a question submitted by a viewer: “What’s your relationship with God like and how do you pray?” He never answers. Instead he talks about how well he does with Evangelical voters and how many people are praying for him. Eventually he goes off on a tangent about how people who don’t believe in God have no reason to be good.

I can’t decide: Is he dodging? Or does the question make no sense to him because he has no inner life to report on?

and let’s close with something natural

racooned.com collects photos of animal striking humanlike poses. Here, raccoons seem to be gossiping.

Trump’s refusal to take the stand encapsulates the MAGA approach to politics. Since the 2020 presidential election, he and his surrogates have made repeated accusations and statements about how the system is rigged against them and alleged there is evidence that proves them right. Crucially, they make those arguments only in front of television cameras or on podcasts and radio. They refuse to make them under oath in a court of law, where there are penalties for lying. 

– Heather Cox Richardson

This week’s featured post is “Alito’s Flags Aren’t the Worst of It“, concerning the Supreme Court’s ruling (with Alito writing the majority opinion) in a racial gerrymanding case.

This week everybody was talking about Alito’s flags

It all started last week, when the NYT revealed that an upside-down American flag flew over Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s home in Virginia for several days between the January 6 insurrection and Biden’s inauguration. An upside-down flag is a traditional distress symbol, and was used by the “stop the steal” movement that believed Biden’s 2020 win was illegitimate. Alito blamed the flag on his wife, whom he said was responding to some kind of dispute with the neighbors. (He provided no further details, and also said that the dog ate his homework.)

Then Wednesday the NYT reported that a second insurrectionist flag, the Appeal To Heaven flag sometimes associated with Christian nationalism, flew over the Alitos’ vacation home on the Jersey shore in July, August, and September of 2023. (It’s not clear whether it flew continuously or sporadically.) This flag was also carried by January 6 insurrectionists.

Since its creation during the American Revolution, the flag has carried a message of defiance: The phrase “appeal to heaven” comes from the 17th-century philosopher John Locke, who wrote of a responsibility to rebel, even use violence, to overthrow unjust rule. “It’s a paraphrase for trial by arms,” Anthony Grafton, a historian at Princeton University, said in an interview. “The main point is that there’s no appeal, there’s no one else you can ask for help or a judgment.”

According to the Supreme Court’s own Code of Conduct, which it released last November to demonstrate it was not completely lawless following revelations of Clarence Thomas’ corruption,

A Justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.

The Court is currently hearing a number of cases related to January 6, and has already ruled that states cannot remove Trump from their ballots on 14th-Amendment participating-in-an-insurrection grounds. Alito’s impartiality “might reasonably be questioned” by “an unbiased and reasonable person” in all these cases. But of course he will not recuse himself and Chief Justice Roberts will not demand that he do so, because in practice the Court has no code of conduct and does not recognize any judicial ethics.

Likewise Congress will not solve the problem. The filibuster will prevent the Senate from passing any binding code for the Court, and Republicans would never participate in an impeachment. I agree with Joyce Vance, that the only conceivably effective response needs to come from the voters:

This one, as I’ve written, is up to us, and to investing in the political cycle. Don’t despair, vote! … If you want a Congress that will pass ethics reform for the Supreme Court, as difficult of an endeavor as it may be to craft rules that will pass constitutional muster, then vote for people who will go on record as supporting it.

It’s unlikely we’ll get a majority large enough to impeach Alito or Thomas. But if it becomes clear that their in-your-face defiance of all constraints is a drag on the Republican Party, partisan interests may start to rein them in.

and international courts v Israel

This week, international courts made two moves against Israel. Last Monday International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Kahn sought arrest warrants for leaders of both Hamas and Israel.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and two others are accused of various crimes associated with October 7, including the killings of several hundred Israeli civilians, taking hostages, rape, and so on.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant are accused of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, and other related offenses.

Judges of the ICC have not yet approved the warrants. If they are approved, they may not have much effect beyond their influence on international opinion. Neither set of leaders is likely to surrender itself, and the ICC commands no military force able to bring them in.

President Biden denounced the prosecutor’s move:

The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.

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Friday, the International Court of Justice

ordered Israel to “[i]mmediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The Court also ordered Israel to open the Rafah crossing, to allow United Nations fact-finders to enter Gaza, and to report to the Court within one month regarding its compliance with the Court’s orders. The Court also reaffirmed its prior orders and reiterated its call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other armed groups.

Again, the international court has little ability to enforce this order, but it may have some effect on popular opinion around the world.

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If you’re like me, you may not have previously realized the the ICC and the ICJ are separate entities. Both are located in The Hague. The difference seems to be that the ICC prosecutes individuals, while the ICJ adjudicates disputes among nations.

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Another diplomatic blow to Israel: Spain, Ireland, and Norway will formally recognize a Palestinian state tomorrow.

and the Trump trials

Both sides have now rested their cases. The judge declared a break so that summations and jury instructions could occur without interruption by the holiday weekend. Summations begin tomorrow, and the jury should be ready to deliberate later this week.

What they will do is anyone’s guess. An outright acquittal seems unlikely, given the strength of the prosecution’s case. But to prevent a conviction the defense only needs to convince one juror. That juror doesn’t even have to believe Trump is innocent, just that the case against him hasn’t been proved beyond reasonable doubt.

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To no one’s surprise, Trump himself did not testify, despite saying many times that he would.

He would have been better off not offering a defense at all. It would have looked like a power move: The government hasn’t proved its case, so we have nothing to answer.

Instead, the defense called one technical witness and then Robert Costello, who was a disaster. Not only was Costello disrespectful of Judge Merchan, leading the judge to clear the courtroom to tell Costello how close he was to a contempt of court ruling, but his presence allowed the prosecution to introduce emails Costello wrote that captured just how mob-like TrumpWorld is.

Emails between Costello and Cohen were read aloud to leave the indelible memory in the minds of the jurors that Trump and Giuliani were conspiring with Costello to make sure Cohen didn’t cooperate with the government. There is even an email from Costello to Cohen saying, “Rudy said this communication channel must be maintained…sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places,” and one from Costello to his law partner saying, “Our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the President,” (which they clearly were.) When Cohen didn’t sign on with him right away he told his law partner Cohen was “slow-playing us and the President…What should I say to this asshole? He’s playing with the most powerful man on the planet.” Didn’t he know who he was messing with?

Costello was supposed to undermine Michael Cohen’s credibility, but I suspect he enhanced it. The defense was trying to make Cohen look like a thug, but they overshot and made everyone connected with Trump look like a thug.

and Trump’s assassination claim

At some point years ago, “Trump lies” stopped being a headline; it happens every day, so it’s not news. But this week included a lie so brazen and so outrageous that it deserves attention.

In a fundraising email responding to right-wing media reports that offered a distorted reading of a newly-unsealed court filing in Trump’s classified documents case, Trump falsely claimed Biden was “locked & loaded ready to take me out” when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022.

In a separate post on his Truth Social platform Tuesday evening, Trump further said he was “shown Reports” that Biden’s DOJ “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” in their search of the property for classified documents.

So what’s real? FBI search warrants have boilerplate language that is actually about limiting lethal force:

law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.

In a court filing in the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump’s lawyers left out the “only”, leaving “may use deadly force when necessary”. That document recently got unsealed, and Trump conspiracy theorists jumped on it online, eventually leading Marjorie Taylor Greene and Fox News hosts like Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro to start discussing the “assassination plot” like it was a real thing, including imagining shoot-outs with the Secret Service. From there the wild story got back around the Trump, who pushed it for all it was worth. It’s not clear whether he realized that he started the misperception himself.

In reality, it has been known since the day it happened that the FBI had coordinated with the Secret Service and timed the raid so that Trump would be out of town. Trump knows this. MTG knows this. Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro know it.

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Jack Smith has responded to this incident by noting the possible danger the rumor poses to FBI agents involved in the raid, who could be witnesses in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago trial, if Judge Cannon ever allows it to happen. He has asked Cannon to modify Trump’s terms of release “to make clear that he may not make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”

I can’t imagine the boot-licking Judge Cannon acknowledging that Trump lied or that his violent supporters predictably threaten the people his rhetoric targets. But she’ll have to respond somehow.

and you also might be interested in …

I can’t say I’m surprised that Nikki Haley has finally said that she’s voting for Trump. Did she previously say a lot of bad things about the Great Man? Join the club. Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis — they all said bad things about him before abasing themselves to kiss the ring.

But the people who think Haley is now in the running to be Trump’s VP are crazy. Trump’s VP has to satisfy these conditions:

• You can’t outshine the boss. (That eliminates not just Haley, but MTG and Vivek as well.)
• You can’t have your own following independent of the boss. (So: not DeSantis or Haley.)
• You have to be willing to commit treason for Trump. (He’s not making the Mike Pence mistake again.)
• You must be willing to repeat whatever claim the boss makes, no matter how absurd or counterfactual. (That’s why so many VP wannabees showed up at Trump’s courtroom wearing matching suits and red ties.)

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Just to remind us that there’s no situation so good that a person can’t screw it up, former NFL star Antonio Brown, who earned $80 million during his 12-year career, has filed for bankruptcy.

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If you were worried at all about Amy Klobuchar’s ability to hang onto her Senate seat in Minnesota, you can stop. Republicans looks set to nominate an absolute loon.

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Cory Doctorow says that “AIs and self-driving cars are the new jetpacks”. It turns out that there was never any reason to think Jetson-style jetpacks were feasible.

In a terrific new 99 Percent Invisible episode, Chris Berube tracks the history of all those jetpacks we saw on TV for decades, and reveals that they were all the same jetpack, flown by just one guy, who risked his life every time he went up in it. The jetpack in question — technically a “rocket belt” — was built in the 1960s by Wendell Moore at the Bell Aircraft Corporation, with funding from the DoD. The Bell rocket belt used concentrated hydrogen peroxide as fuel, which burned at temperatures in excess of 1,000′. The rocket belt had a maximum flight time of just 21 seconds.

But Moore was a great showman, and got it into our heads that jetpacks were an inevitable part of the future — to the point that many people my age lament “Where are our jetpacks? We were promised jetpacks.”

Doctorow explains how the same kind of hucksterism is happening today with self-driving cars and AI in general. Big things are always just a year or two away, and if the impressive demo videos are mostly fake, they’re not lies, they’re “premature truths”.

and let’s close with something thought-provoking

If you’re looking for blogs to read, let me suggest Jess Piper’s “The View from Rural Missouri“. She has that rare touch for telling personal stories that capture something larger. Two posts to get you started: “Losing My Religion“, about how she drifted away from her Evangelical upbringing, and “Daddy Died a MAGA” about how the right-wing echo chamber turned her father into someone she couldn’t recognize.

Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk.

– Eric Cortellessa, “How Far Trump Would Go“

This week’s featured post is “What Trump Would Do“.

On my week off I led a Sunday service at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois. The topic may be of some interest to Sift readers: “Hope, Denial, and Healthy Relationship with the News“.

This week everybody was talking about Trump’s legal problems

As I reported two weeks ago, the prosecution continues to build a very strong case. The fireworks this week were over the testimony of Stormy Daniels, but it’s important to remember where she fits into the overall case: Trump is accused of falsifying business documents to cover up reimbursing Michael Cohen, who paid $130K for Daniels’ agreeing not to tell her story before the 2016 election.

So the actual truth of Daniels account isn’t relevant. The point is that her story would have damaged Trump politically, motivating him to pay her off and cover up doing so. I’ve heard a commentator describe her as an “exhibit” rather than a “witness”, i.e., the important fact is that her story exists. If it’s true, that’s just a bonus.

A great deal of Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles’ cross-examination of Daniels attempted to make the jury doubt that her story is true. (Personally, I think Daniels sounds credible, and did a good job fending off the attempted slut-shaming.) But the fact that this story would have been damaging (especially in the weeks between the Access Hollywood tape and the election) seems indisputable. Even if you believe Trump’s claim that Daniels made her story up to extort money from him, you can still find him guilty.

After her testimony, Trump’s lawyers asked for a mistrial, on the grounds that the details of her alleged encounter with Trump were unnecessary and prejudiced the jury against him. Judge Merchan denied the motion, essentially saying that the defense had created the problem itself: It invited a detailed account by claiming in its opening statement that Daniels was lying, and failed to object to the questions that elicited the prejudicial information.

As I observed two weeks ago, the defense still tells no plausible story. The only part of the prosecution’s case that isn’t totally nailed down is that Trump knew about the payment and the reimbursement scheme. (This is the one undocumented part of the prosecution’s account. Like a Mafia boss, Trump is famously reluctant to use email or put anything in writing. Cohen will start testifying today about his instructions from Trump, but there are no corroborating documents or other witnesses.) But Trump is the only one with a motive to set the scheme in motion. Otherwise, you have to believe that Cohen completely on his own borrowed $130K to pay Daniels, that Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg came up with the reimbursement plan without telling his boss, and that the notoriously stingy Trump signed over $400K worth of checks to Cohen with no explanation beyond “legal fees”.

That’s a story, I suppose. But I don’t find it plausible enough to create reasonable doubt.

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I wish this trial could be televised, because the transcript makes it look like Daniels won the battle of wits with Necheles. When Necheles characterized Daniels’ porn-directing career as “a lot of experience making phony stories about sex”, Daniels shot back: “If that story was untrue, I would’ve written it to be a lot better.”

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After Daniels’ testimony, Trump asked for his gag order to be amended to allow him to respond. That motion was denied for an obvious reason: If Trump wants to respond to Daniels sworn testimony, he can take an oath and testify himself, facing the threat of perjury just like she did.

But that’s not what Trump wants. He wants to smear her in forums where he can lie without consequences.

He’s bound to make a similar request after Michael Cohen testifies, and he’ll get the same result. Trump claims it’s unfair that Daniels and Cohen aren’t gagged, so they can criticize him and he can’t respond. But they aren’t under indictment, and they have no record of inciting violence against people they attack online.

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Meanwhile, the most open-and-shut case against Trump, the Mar-a-Lago documents case is indefinitely delayed. Judge Cannon plans a public hearing where Trump will get to air his baseless “malicious prosecution” theory.

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ProPublica and the New York Times report on a tax problem that might cost Trump $100 million.

If you’ve ever wandered around downtown Chicago, you’ve undoubtedly seen the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, which sits on the Chicago River proclaiming Trump’s name in giant letters. It looks like a monument to wealth and success.

Actually it’s anything but. The Tower opened into the worst of the Great Recession, and has been a money-loser from Day 1. Losing money, though, isn’t entirely bad, because it produces a tax write-off. The problem is that Trump appears to have written off the loss twice.

and Biden’s increasing rift with Netanyahu

Israel has begun attacking Rafah and is showing intentions to launch a full-scale invasion of the one piece of Gaza where civilians have been taking refuge. Wednesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Congress that the administration was “pausing” shipments of certain weapons to Israel.

Austin said that the US is pausing the shipment of “high-payload munitions” due to Israel’s possible operations in Rafah without a plan for the civilians there.

Friday, a State Department report to Congress gave mixed reviews to Israel’s usage of American weapons so far.

The US says it is “reasonable to assess” that the weapons it has provided to Israel have been used in ways that are “inconsistent” with international human rights law, but that there is not enough concrete evidence to link specific US-supplied weapons to violations or warrant cutting the supply of arms.

Netanyahu continues to have no plan for governing Gaza after the killing stops. This is not just a political problem, it has turned into a military problem as Hamas reinfiltrates areas that had already been cleared.

Criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has increased within the IDF and includes Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who want to know who will replace Hamas. procrastination, they say, has given the terror group space to regroup and force the IDF back into Gaza in larger numbers.

Netanyahu has argued that deciding on a new political manager for Gaza must wait until the war is over, but the IDF and Gallant have countered that during the last few months in which the military have had operational control of nearly all of Gaza avoiding a decision was a missed opportunity.

In my opinion, it is Biden and not Netanyahu who is truly looking out for Israel’s best interests. Netanyahu appears to me to think of Hamas as a leadership structure commanding some number of fighters; capture or kill all those people, and the problem is solved. But I think it’s more accurate to think of Hamas as an idea: Peace with Israel is impossible.

If at the end of this campaign Palestinians are convinced more than ever that peace with Israel is impossible, Hamas will reform — no matter how many of its current members Israel kills.

Meanwhile, the current war erodes the possibility of finding Arab partners to administer Gaza after the war ends. Yesterday, Egypt announced that it would support South Africa’s genocide charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

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Pro-Palestine voters who are thinking of not supporting Democrats in the fall need to consider what Republicans will do if they get into power. Here, Lindsey Graham defends how Israel is prosecuting the war in Gaza by invoking the US nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That was the right decision. Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose.

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When violent counter-protesters broke up the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA, the obvious people to suspect were pro-Israel students. But that appears not to be true.

researchers studying hate and anti-government groups have confirmed the presence at the counter-demonstrations of several far-right activists who have been involved in anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-vaccine protests across southern California over the past three years.

This is in line with previous reporting that anti-Muslim and antisemitic online trolls are often the same people. Spreading hate is the point. Any target of opportunity will do.

and the New York Times

I’ve seen a certain amount of debate in opinion columns about whether the NYT slants left or right. The answer, from my view, is complicated, because I think different things are happening at different levels.

You can’t really understand left/right journalistic bias without this observation: Most MAGA positions rely on believing (or at least arguing) things that simply aren’t true: an immigrant crime wave is sweeping through America’s cities, crime in general is up, climate change isn’t real, the Covid vaccine did more harm than good, the economy is terrible, Trump really won the 2020 election (which entails its own full basket of untruths: undocumented immigrants voted, dead people voted, voting machines were rigged …), healthy fetuses get aborted up to (and even past) the moment of birth, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is justified, the Southern border is “open“, January 6 was a peaceful protest led by patriots, the Black Lives Matter protests burned American cities to the ground, and so on. (I’m sure I missed a few.)

At the reporter level, the NYT remains committed to accuracy, so to that extent it has a liberal bias. On any given day, a MAGA true believer who scans the front page of the Times will almost certainly find something to offend his beliefs about the world.

Similarly, NYT columnists are more likely to lean left than right, and conservative NYT columnists are likely to by anti-Trump. (Of course, yesterday they published a guest essay headlined “Biden is Doing it All Wrong.”) I have little doubt that as the November election approaches, the Times will officially endorse Biden.

But at the level where decisions about what to cover get made, the Times has been showing a decidedly conservative bias. Here’s some data gathered by the CSS Lab at the Annenberg School for Communication.

During the week that [Special Counsel Hur’s] report [on Biden’s retention of classified documents] came out, we examined the top 20 articles on the Times’ landing page every four hours. In that time, they published 26 unique articles about Biden’s age, of which 1 of them explored the possibility that Trump’s age was of equal or more concern. This seems like a lot of articles in a short amount of time, but it’s hard to say whether or not it is excessive without some other equally relevant issue to compare it with. Helpfully, an obvious comparison arose when, on February 10, 2024, Trump announced that if he regained power he would pull the US out of NATO and even encourage Russian invasions of democratic allies if their financial commitments were not to his liking. This announcement that Trump would upend the world’s core military alignment of the last 75+ years, garnered 10 unique articles in the timeframe.

Less quantitatively, I’ve been noticing slanted coverage of Trump/Biden polls. Polls that show Trump leading are highlighted, and sometimes garner multiple articles. Polls that show Biden leading get much less coverage. (Again, the polls themselves are reported accurately; reporters seem to be honest and objective.) Among the polls included in 538’s polling average so far in May, Biden leads in four, Trump in two, and they are tied in one. Would you have guessed that from reading the Times?

In general, if the Right wants the public to pay attention to some issue, that issue will get extensive coverage in the Times. It won’t always be covered in the (false) way the Right wants it covered, but the Times will draw its readers’ attention in that direction.

I have no inside knowledge about the NYT. But from the outside it looks like pro-Trump bias at higher levels competes with commitment to accuracy at lower levels.

and you also might be interested in …

Wednesday, the House voted 359-43 to table Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to oust Speaker Mike Johnson. Democrats joined Republicans to avoid yet another protracted leadership battle. It’s not clear what Greene thought she would gain by presenting this motion, which protests all the times in recent months Johnson has allowed bipartisan majorities to pass legislation.

“This is the ‘uni-party’ for the American people watching,” Greene said, as if the two parties working together for common goals constituted some kind of betrayal.

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A couple of what-Trump-would-do things that have come in recently: He says he’d deport pro-Palestinian protesters and eliminate protections for transgender students.

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Not so long ago, “Will you accept the election results even if your side loses?” wasn’t considered a gotcha question. But today’s MAGA Republicans seem to think it is. Watch Tim Scott squirm around answering it. When the interviewer tries to insist, Scott accuses her of bias: “This is why so many Americans believe that NBC is an extension of the Democrat Party.”

What Scott is indirectly pointing to is the main difference between the parties: Democrats remain committed to democracy even when they lose, but Republicans don’t.

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Steve Bannon’s conviction for contempt of Congress was upheld by a federal appeals court. Former US attorney Joyce Vance comments:

Bannon is effectively out of appeals. He can delay a little bit longer, asking for the full court to review the decision en banc & asking SCOTUS to hear his case on cert, but neither one of those things will happen. Bannon is going to prison.

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Remember how horrible it was when Biden said “Mexico” instead of “Egypt”? Well, Saturday Trump said “Beijing” when he seems to have meant “Taiwan”. And I have no idea what his tribute to “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” was about.

More serious than replacing one word with another, Trump increasingly utters noises that aren’t words at all, like “carrydoubtitebyrite” and “bordeninriviv“. We all call something by the wrong name occasionally, but I know I’ve never heard my verbal centers glitch like that. Something is wrong.

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I was glad to see Brian Broome answer Jerry Seinfeld’s old-man complaint that America has lost its sense of humor due to “the extreme left and PC crap”.

I remember my Mom telling me that nobody was funny any more, not like Bob Hope or Red Skelton or the comedians she remembered. This was during the prime of people like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Robin Williams, who I found hilarious.

I remember many of Mom’s favorite comedians. They made fun of drunks and mothers-in-law and so forth. At some point that stopped being funny, because comedy is always changing. If Seinfeld’s routines have stopped being funny, that’s on him, not “the extreme left”.

and let’s close with something colorful

A cloudy evening caused me to miss this weekend’s spectacular display of the northern lights across much of the world. This photo comes from Brunswick, Maine.