The reason that Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) is mad today is very convoluted, so bear with me.
Continue reading “Senate Republicans Are Mad They Got Forced To Vote Down A Border Bill That They Like Again”They’ve Got a Plan?
Below I noted that one obvious way to steal the election for Republicans, if we have a 270-268 Biden win, is to reallocated Biden’s (probable) Nebraska elector to Trump. But TPM Readers ED and JP noted that when Republicans tried to change the law in advance, Maine Democrats made clear they’d do the same to even the score. I didn’t realize they’d been so public about it. But it’s very good that they did. Changing the law in advance is very different from illegally doing it after the fact. But this gives me some confidence that if Nebraska Republicans tried this and got SCOTUS to say it was okay then Maine would say “count us in too.” As they should. Still worth keeping an eye on. But this gives me a bit more peace of mind.
Big, Huge, Golf: How Trump’s Lawyers Used The Trial To Flatter Him
NEW YORK — Stormy Daniels was almost done testifying. She was showing signs exhaustion after hours of withering cross-examination from Trump attorney Susan Necheles, who prompted Daniels to describe her open hatred of Trump, her encounters with the paranormal, and her “Make America Horny Again” strip tour.
Continue reading “Big, Huge, Golf: How Trump’s Lawyers Used The Trial To Flatter Him”Republicans’ About Face On Ballot Drop Boxes Is Particularly Cartoonish In Wisconsin
The use of ballot drop boxes was the focal point of much election misinformation and chaos for election-denying Republicans following the 2020 election. But now they might be coming around to embracing it.
Continue reading “Republicans’ About Face On Ballot Drop Boxes Is Particularly Cartoonish In Wisconsin”Okay, This Is Worth Worrying About
I’ve had various readers tell me that I’m saying people shouldn’t be worried about the presidential election. That’s not true at all. I want people to have a realistic sense of the situation and I want people, for lack of a better word, to worry productively. But along these lines, I wanted to mention something that legit worries me. I think we all know that there’s a high likelihood of post-election shenanigans and potentially things much worse than shenanigans, especially if Joe Biden wins but wins narrowly. But there’s one scenario that particularly has my attention.
Let me walk you through it.
Continue reading “Okay, This Is Worth Worrying About”Cricket’s Poll Numbers Surge in South Dakota as Voters Give Noem Big Thumbs Down
Gov. Kristi Noem has reacted to most of the criticism she’s received for executing her dog Cricket and lying about a meeting with North Korea’s paramount leader Kim Jung Un by saying city folk just don’t know the rural folkways of South Dakota. But it turns out Noem’s dog murdering ways are taking a toll on her support in South Dakota too. A new poll shows her job approval has dipped significantly since the Cricket imbroglio, now only just over 50% (52.2%). That’s down from an April poll which had her at 59%. And her favorability rating — which looks at personal qualities rather than job performance — is clearly in negative territory. 48% unfavorable and only 38.6% favorable.
And then there’s the big question: Was Noem justified in shooting cricket in the face just because the dog was a bit of a spaz and didn’t turn in a good performance on her first hunting outing?
Continue reading “Cricket’s Poll Numbers Surge in South Dakota as Voters Give Noem Big Thumbs Down”Supreme Court Makes Racial Gerrymandering Even Harder To Prove In New Ruling
The Supreme Court threw up yet more impediments to protecting minority voters Thursday — one of the conservatives’ most successful crusades and one that has already become a legacy of the Roberts Court.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by all of his right-wing peers (except for Justice Clarence Thomas in one section). The three liberals dissented. The case — Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP — stems from a congressional map in South Carolina; the Court took so long in handing down a ruling that the state’s 2024 elections were already set to take place under the map that a district panel found to be racially gerrymandered.
Alito, as Justice Elena Kagan described in her dissent, “cherrypicked” evidence brought at trial to reverse engineer a conclusion that the map was really drawn to give Republicans a partisan advantage, not to disempower Black voters. Such a distinction means little in a region where race and partisan lean are often closely aligned, but the Supreme Court previously barred partisan gerrymandering claims from being heard in federal court.
The effect of the decision will be to make it even harder to win racial gerrymandering claims.
Throughout, Alito consistently expresses more concern about the feelings of South Carolina legislators than he does about their role in disenfranchising their own voters.
“When a federal court finds that race drove a legislature’s districting decisions, it is declaring that the legislature engaged in ‘offensive and demeaning’ conduct that ‘bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid,’” he wrote, quoting old cases. “We should not be quick to hurl such accusations at the political branches.”
Rather than worrying states will use the close relationship of partisan lean and racial makeup to get away with racial gerrymanders, Alito instead frets that challengers — usually voting rights groups and voters themselves — will successfully knock down partisan gerrymanders in federal court under that cover.
In her dissent, Kagan hammered Alito for appointing himself as an additional attorney to help South Carolina’s case.
“Such micro-management of a plaintiff ’s case is elsewhere unheard of in constitutional litigation,” she wrote.
That micromanagement carried into his assessment of the facts, she wrote, leading him to greenlight those that favored the state’s argument and to dismiss those that didn’t.
“This Court is not supposed to be so fearful of telling discriminators, including States, to stop discriminating,” she added.
She ended her dissent with a look to the future — where states simply have to raise the “possibility” that they drew their gerrymanders with criteria other than race in mind to get off scot-free.
“When racial classifications in voting are at issue, the majority says, every doubt must be resolved in favor of the State, lest (heaven forfend) it be ‘accus[ed]’ of ‘offensive and demeaning’ conduct,” she eyerolled.
Thomas, writing separately, mildly criticizes Alito for redoing the work of the district court before taking an extreme position: that redistricting questions shouldn’t be decided by federal courts at all. Full stop.
“In my view, the Court has no power to decide these types of claims,” he wrote. “Drawing political districts is a task for politicians, not federal judges. There are no judicially manageable standards for resolving claims about districting, and, regardless, the Constitution commits those issues exclusively to the political branches.”
Thomas’ positions, once fringe, have increasingly become the guiding light for this far-right Court.
Read the ruling here:
Correction: This case was brought under the 14th and 15th Amendments, not the Voting Rights Act. We regret the error.
Flag-Flying Alito Busted Again … Via Google Street View
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Let Me Say That Again: Google Effing Street View!
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag flying at Samuel Alito’s Jersey shore beach house is right there in Google Street View, if you know where to look. Morning Memo isn’t in the habit of giving out the addresses of Supreme Court justices, but it took about 10 minutes to locate it (would have been faster with more than one cup of coffee under my belt).
It’s not the Google Street View of Alito’s beach house proper. It’s a shot from between two houses on an adjacent street, looking across a canal, toward the back of the Alito house, where the flagpole stands.
One of the NYT’s reporters on the story:
And thanks to the Google Street View car for driving by exactly at the right time. It hadn't been by since 2013 before this image. pic.twitter.com/gmgSCq9VFI
— Aric Toler (@AricToler) May 22, 2024
I want to be super clear though: Google Street View is a hilarious confirmation under the circumstances, but the NYT story almost certainly originated with tip(s) from neighbors and/or others who saw the earlier story about the upside down American flag at Alito’s Virginia home and shared what they’d seen at his New Jersey beach property. The story cites “accounts from a half-dozen neighbors and passers-by.”
I’ll leave the Times to provide you with the background and history of the flag and what it has come to represent. Pay particular attention to the role of Dutch Sheets in elevating the flag to prominence in right-wing religious circles.
Stop The Stealito!*
Let’s have some fun with this, shall we?
- John Collins: “Schoolhouse Rock never prepared us for this shit.”
- Jay Willis: “We’re at most 48 hours away from learning that Sam Alito has been the QAnon Shaman for Halloween for the last three years running.”
- Steve Vladeck: “I wonder what the neighbors did to provoke this one …”
- Chris Hayes:
- And this one:
*Credit for the subhead goes, as best as I can tell, to Leah Litman. Kudos.
On A More Serious Note …
Some of the more substantive reactions to the discovery of the second Alito flag:
- Joyce Vance: “Perhaps we will learn some feud with local aquatic life led Mrs. Alito to fly the flag. But sarcasm aside, when you’re a Supreme Court Justice, you’re supposed to avoid giving off even a whiff of partisan bias. Or religious favoritism. As a judge, and certainly, as a Supreme Court Justice, you have that duty. Justice Alito flunks the test and flunks it badly.”
- Law Dork Chris Geidner: “It’s been clear for some time that Justice Sam Alito was the Fox News (or an even further right-wing channel) justice on the U.S. Supreme Court bench. The past two weeks have helped to cement that into the public consciousness for those who don’t hear him at oral arguments or read his opinions — particularly his concurrences and dissents.”
- Dahlia Lithwick: “[R]ather than hurling ourselves headlong into the “Alito Must Recuse” brick wall of “yeah, no,” we need to dedicate the upcoming election cycle, and the attendant election news cycle, to a discussion of … what it means to have a Supreme Court that is functionally immune from political pressure, from internal norms of behavior, from judicial ethics and disclosure constraints, and from congressional oversight and why that is deeply dangerous.”
Aileen Cannon Actually Held A Hearing In MAL Case
The good news is U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon held an actual hearing in the molasses-slow Mar-a-Lago case. The bad news is that it was to entertain a ridiculous claim of selective prosecution that most other judges would have rejected out of hand.
Cover Up?
Smartmatic is accusing Newsmax of destroying evidence to thwart the voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit over the 2020 Big Lie, NBC News reports:
Lawyers for Florida-based Smartmatic allege that Newsmax engaged in a “cover-up” by destroying texts and emails of key executives that would demonstrate the network’s knowledge that voting fraud claims being pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies were untrue. Smartmatic says the deletions occurred after Newsmax had received notice to preserve evidence for the pending suit.
Newsmax denies the allegation.
2024 Ephemera
- Bloomberg: Half of Swing-State Voters Fear Violence Around US Election
- NBC News: “Steve Kramer, the political consultant who admitted to NBC News that he was behind a robocall impersonating Joe Biden’s voice, has been indicted in New Hampshire.”
- Nikki Haley commits to voting for Donald Trump again:
Abortion Watch
A new law scheduled to take effect this summer in Kansas would require abortion providers to ask their patients the following questions, compile the answers, and submit them to the state twice a year for inclusion in a public report, as Brandi Buchman reports:
- Would having a baby interfere with the patient’s education, employment or career?
- Was the patient able to provide for the child?
- Does the patient already have enough, or too many, children?
- Does the patient’s husband or partner want them to have an abortion?
- Does the patient lack enough child support from family or others to raise a child?
- Was the pregnancy the result of rape or incest?
- Does the pregnancy threaten the patient’s physical, mental or emotional health?
- Would the child have a disability?
When The Truth Hurts
House Republicans lost their minds yesterday when Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) went on the floor and listed the trials Donald Trump is currently facing. They moved to strike McGovern’s comments from the record and admonished him for making them. McGovern was dumbstruck:
The result of the admonishment was that McGovern was barred from speaking on the House floor for the rest of the day.
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Trump May Have Back-Tracked But The GOP Has Supported Restricting Contraceptives For Years
In a Tuesday interview, former President Donald Trump said he was “looking at” restrictions on contraceptives, adding that he thinks it’s “a smart decision.” Later that day he completely reversed his earlier statement in an all-caps Truth Social post.
“I HAVE NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL, or other contraceptives,” Trump posted.
His campaign also later clarified that the 2024 candidate thought he was discussing abortion medication.
But regardless of how swiftly Trump and his team backtracked on the remarks, the idea of restricting or even banning contraceptives is not a new platform for Republicans.
Continue reading “Trump May Have Back-Tracked But The GOP Has Supported Restricting Contraceptives For Years”Durbin Having a Caffeinated Beverage? Possibly?
Press release just out from Durbin’s office tonight …
Continue reading “Durbin Having a Caffeinated Beverage? Possibly?”DURBIN: JUSTICE ALITO MUST RECUSE HIMSELF FROM CASES RELATED TO THE 2020 ELECTION AFTER ‘APPEAL TO HEAVEN’ FLAG WAS FLOWN AT HIS HOME
Durbin also called for the passage of the SCERT Act, legislation that requires Supreme Court justices to adopt a binding code of ethics