Editors’ Blog
What To Think About Colorado and the 14th Amendment 
Let me briefly address this Colorado disqualification issue. Does it apply and should it apply to ex-President Donald Trump, disqualifying him from serving again as President?
Before delving into the constitutional text, let’s discuss how we should think about this issue, because there’s a lot going on here besides the plain text of the 14th Amendment. Criticisms that I hear are that barring Trump from the ballot is simply undemocratic. Trump has many supporters and they should be allowed to vote for him. At least in the abstract, good point. Another is that attempting to disqualify Trump and barring him from the ballot may actually help him, allowing him to play the victim and, perversely, to wear the mantle of democratic legitimacy.
Read MoreThe Colorado Supreme Court just ruled that the Disqualification Clause of the Constitution renders Donald Trump ineligible for the presidency. It has stayed its ruling until Jan. 4, 2024, to allow appeals to proceed.
Following up on what I wrote earlier today about future hostage releases, I think we’re started to see some of what I described. Yesterday, Hamas released a video of three elderly male Israeli hostages. Just a short time ago Palestinian Islamic Jihad released a video of two other hostages, one 79, another 47. PIJ is a separate group. It’s been known since the beginning that a smaller subset of the hostages are in their hands. It’s unknown the extent the two groups are coordinating their strategy in terms of the hostages or how much influence or control Hamas has over PIJ’s decisions about the hostages it’s holding.
So far these videos have basically been the hostages demanding their own release, pretty obviously coerced. In the one just released by PIJ the elderly man appears to have his hands handcuffed or tied behind the chair he’s sitting it. As yet they don’t seem to contain any threats. But we can likely expect more of this. When you’re on the ropes you use what you have. And what they have is hostages.
Why It Will Be Much, Much Harder to Get the Remaining Hostages Released
In yesterday’s Backchannel I wrote about the three Israeli hostages shot and killed by members of the IDF in Gaza and some more general observations about the IDF and the situation in Gaza. I’d now like to dig on in the fate of the remaining hostages.
Put simply, I’m pessimistic about any more deals to release hostages currently being held by Hamas. It’s very unlikely they will all be released as part of any deal. I base this on the totality of information I’ve learned since October 7th.
Here’s why.
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Keith Richards at 80
Today Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones turns 80.
For years it’s been impossible to venture onto social media without seeing memes about Richards’ death-cheating immortality: the often gaunt hollowed visage, the legendary drug use, urban legends about recurrent full blood transfusions. Richards’ legendary junkiedom has been decades longer in the myth-making than the reality. As best as the various histories and memoirs inform us, Richards spent about a decade addicted to heroin, from around the age of 25 to roughly 35. There were recurrent clean-ups for tours, relapses, or just decisions to start shooting heroin again. He eventually kicked the habit in stages after a notorious drug bust in Toronto in 1977, which could have sent him to prison for years. In other words, that supposedly central thing about the man actually ended going on half a century ago. Of course, there are drugs and drugs. Richards continued to drink, smoke grass, snort cocaine for years while seemingly weening himself of the vices over time. He even quit smoking at some point during the COVID pandemic.
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Four Deaths, One Story—Examining the Deaths of Three Israeli Hostages
You’ve likely heard about the incident on Friday in which Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Israeli hostages who had either escaped from their captors or been abandoned by them during fighting in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. The three were two Israeli Jews and one Israeli Bedouin, each of whom had been captured on October 7th. At the most basic level this is a version of “friendly fire” in which soldiers inadvertently kill fellow soldiers from their own army during wartime. In this case, it’s hostages not fellow soldiers. But the nature of the case is comparable.
The incident has produced a firestorm within Israel, both for the inherently tragic nature of the hostages’ deaths but also because of the particular details of how they died. Their deaths have added renewed intensity to arguments and protests about how the government is balancing the imperatives of destroying Hamas and bringing the country’s hostages home safely. Recent weeks have seen various protests in Israel, often led by or featuring families of hostages, demanding the government focus more on making a deal with Hamas to return all the hostages. The controversy has been fueled in part by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s almost total refusal to visit and meet with residents of communities attacked on October 7th or the families of the hostages.
Read MoreJeff Roe, the chief strategist for Ron DeSantis’s official super PAC and top cheese of the DeSantis campaign, has resigned. As usual, there’s lots of talk about cronies getting lavish sums of money. But really it’s never a good situation when your billionaire backers have given you massive amounts of money and your campaign is flat-lining.
A DC federal jury just awarded $148 million in total damages against Rudy Giuliani for defaming Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman.
$148 million.
Listen To This: Where Goes Ukraine Goes Democracy
Kate and TPM’s Josh Kovensky talk with Serhiiy Plokhy, director of Harvard University’s Ukrainian Research Institute, about the Russia-Ukraine war at an inflection point as support for Ukraine fades within the Republican Party’s right flank and future aid is imperiled.
Belaboring The Point is now on YouTube! Check out the latest video episode of the podcast here.
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