I wanted to direct your attention to this podcast episode from Slate. It’s actually the first episode of a series Slate is doing on popular constitutionalism. (The page linked above is paywalled. But, I’m told, the ‘By the People’ pod series itself is not. So you should be able to find it on podcast platforms.) It brings together in a engaging and coherent way a number of themes we’ve been discussing over the last couple years about the problem of and the corruption of the U.S. Supreme Court. And it frames the question around a 20-year-old book on popular constitutionalism by Larry Kramer (The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review).
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In press conference comments today, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened that state election officials could face jail time if they fail to cooperate with the White House’s purported efforts to “secure” the midterm elections, which seems to involve a range of illegal demands from the White House, Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. The specific demand is for states to feed their voter rolls into the federal “SAVE” database which purports to identify noncitizens on the rolls. Mullin seems to be saying that if states refuse to bend to these illegal White House demands, the federal government will then scrutinize those states’ election returns (by seizing ballots?) and hold state election officials criminally responsible for any illegal voting. (Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has already sent out threats all 50 states and D.C. along these lines).
We have here again the old story. States run elections in the United States. This is guaranteed and mandated by the federal Constitution. Congress can set uniform rules for administering elections. The executive branch plays no role at all in setting rules for elections or administering them. The White House’s strategy is to use illegal means (threatened criminal punishment against state officials) to assert power or compel authority the Constitution simply doesn’t allow. This isn’t how anything works. A president cannot legitimately create by force powers that the Constitution specifically denies him.
The AP has just posted a detailed investigation into the background of David Brouillette, the recently hired ICE agent who shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. It’s genuinely horrifying on more levels than are easy to describe. Brouillette was hired during ICE’s recent hiring spree, as the agency attempted to rapidly staff up to manage a program of mass deportation. Brouillette has a long history of severe mental illness, a lengthy history of violence against at least two wives as well as his children, stalking, a seemingly endless list of restraining orders, violent threats against other family members and more.
The big announcement of a “prime-time,” “Oval Office” “address” was typical Trump, encouraging Americans to live in his world. In the end, none of what he said was new. He did make the ill-founded claims about non-citizens on voter rolls, described in that “draft press release” which was covered by Politico and which Josh noted below. He also said some stuff about China acquiring voter files that we’ve known for years. He did not even go so far as to baselessly allege votes were changed, or that the election was otherwise stolen, as so many predicted he would. He of course concluded with a demand that the Senate pass the SAVE America Act.
We’ll look through the documents his government released and share any interesting or amusing details. More soon.
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Trump acknowledged the reality in a Truth Social post that appeared to be a signal to his far-right supporters in the House to help pass the budget blueprint — even though it won’t include all of his demands.
It was not known publicly that a federal prosecutor marched to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He was appointed this year to run a national task force targeting alleged left-wing political violence.
