With the beginning of 2024, top Republicans are lining up behind Donald Trump, perhaps acknowledging a fact that much of D.C. has resisted since the summer: That the primary was over before it began.
Among them are a handful whose careers Trump derailed just months ago.
Trump denies that he played a role in encouraging the great House Speaker Defenestration of 2023, though Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the man driving it, spoke vaguely about how his “conversations with the former president” led him to feel “great confidence” that he “did the right thing.”
Donald Trump on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to consider his bid to stay on Colorado’s primary ballot, taking the question over whether his conduct on Jan. 6 disqualifies him for office to the High Court.
Many have learned over the last three months how Hamas and the Israeli right, and especially Benjamin Netanyahu, have a paradoxically symbiotic relationship. Arch-enemies and yet dependent on each other. It’s occurred to me in recent days how many of Israel’s fiercest critics have a comparable relationship with the many far-right extremists who make up Netanyahu’s current and, one hopes, final government. From the start of Israel’s current campaign in Gaza, various members of the current coalition have opined or hoped that the carnage and destruction might be an opportunity to depopulate Gaza.
This kind of rhetoric comes in two basic forms. One is the simple fact that Gaza is a warzone with immense destruction. And civilians generally flee warzones. We saw it in Yugoslavia. In Syria. We see it in Ukraine. That’s what happens in wars and warzones. Civilians flee. But of course this history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict makes it totally different. So you have members of the Israeli far right saying, with perfect disingenuousness, why not let these poor people flee? It’s a humanitarian gesture. It’s helping them! Others barely even bother with this pretense of voluntary departure. It’s just an opportunity to get Gazans to leave.
As you can see, I’ve become very interested in the crazy story of “Cool Mom” Clarice Schillinger who seems to have been both a big time anti-woke/protect the kids activist while also hosting teen keggers on the side and sometimes going off and beating the crap out of the kids. But as I’ve learned over the last few days, there’s a fascinating and, from what I can tell, wildly crooked story about the Central Bucks School Board that goes way beyond her.
First, a bit of background detail: Doylestown is the metropolis of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and some of my interest in the story is that I know the place. Between vacations and summers and random stints I probably spent the better part of 4 to 6 months there during and after college. Or, to be super precise, in Furlong, Pennsylvania, an incorporated something-or-other right next to Doylestown. Also, in yesterday’s post I said that Aarati Martino, the wife of Paul Martino, the VC who has funded a lot of school board activism in Pennsylvania, had lost her school board seat in the Dem backlash in 2023. Not so. She lost her election. She was one of the anti-wokist candidates. But she wasn’t an incumbent — just a candidate.
Now let’s get down to business and discuss the super sleazy sweetheart deal, shall we? Excellent.
After the slowness of the holidays, 2024 kicked off with a burst of activity Tuesday on multiple fronts near and dear to Morning Memo’s heart. Let’s get right to it.
Trump Immunity Argument Is Teed Up For Appeals Court
Last night, Donald Trump filed with DC Circuit Court of Appeals his last written argument in favor of giving presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
A quick reaction and analysis thread:
TRUMP’S “BAD ACTOR PROBLEM” WITH PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY
I finished reading the DC Circuit Reply.
Trump is on the horns of a dilemma with his presidential immunity arguments.
Before we move on from the immunity case, I want to flag a friend of the court brief in the case that is getting quite a bit of attention. Filed by top-notch lawyers representing the nonprofit watchdog American Oversight, it argues that the appeals court lacks jurisdiction because Trump’s loss on the immunity argument at the district court isn’t immediately appealable.
I won’t get into the reasons it offers in support of that argument, but it’s a credible argument and not one that Special Counsel Jack Smith is making. Smith has conceded Trump’s immunity argument can be appealed now before the trial proceeds.
The American Oversight argument is potentially important because it could circumvent Trump’s delay strategy of appealing now, then asking for the entire appeals court to hear the case, then taking it to the Supreme Court. If this new argument were to prevail, Trump would still try to appeal any loss, but it might speed things up if the higher courts decide they have no jurisdiction at this stage.
I bring this to your attention because of two notable developments yesterday: (i) Trump addressed the American Oversight argument right off the bat in his reply brief last night; and (ii) the DC Circuit seemed to give a nod to the American Oversight argument when it issued an order yesterday telling the parties to be prepared to address at oral argument “discrete issues” raised in the friend of the court briefs.
Trump Sues In Maine Over Disqualification Clause
Donald Trump has challenged the decision of Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows that he is ineligible for the GOP primary ballot under the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause by suing her in state court.
MUST READ
I touched briefly yesterday on the pearl-clutching going on about invoking the Disqualification Clause to strike Trump from the ballot. Historian Timothy Snyder (whose Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin I belatedly picked up again over the holidays) has a very thoughtful piece up on this issue that I highly recommend:
In this essay, I address the anti-Constitutional discourse that appears in the media: that the Constitution should be displaced by the fears of people who appear on television. …
In advising the Court to keep Trump on the ballot, political commentators elevate their own fears about others’ resentment above the Constitution. But the very reason we have a Constitution is to handle fear and resentment. To become a public champion of your own own fears and others’ resentments is to support an insurrectionary regime.
Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is now asking the entire 11th Circuit to rehear his appeal of his losing effort to remove the Georgia RICO case to federal court. Also of note: Meadows has added former Solicitor General Paul Clement to his legal team, another sign that he will probably press his appeal to the Supreme Court.
Former President Donald Trump won’t face repercussions over the way he appears to have used federal prison guards to intimidate his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, jailing and silencing him in 2020 ahead of his tell-all memoir about the billionaire’s mob-like behavior.
Holy Crap! What’s With All The Qatar News?
I’m not saying all these things are related – but I’m not saying they’re not related. To wit:
A secondsuperseding federal indictment against Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) in the Southern District of New York expanded the case beyond its previous focus on Egypt to add extensive new details alleging that the senator engaged in a bribery scheme whereby he used his position to benefit the government of Qatar in return for Qatari investment in a real estate deal for a Menendez crony.
CNN: “The United States has quietly reached an agreement that extends its military presence at a sprawling base in Qatar for another 10 years, three US defense officials and another official familiar with the agreement told CNN.”
5th Circuit Goes Off The Rails Again On Abortion
The most conservative appeals court in the country ruled that the federal law requiring emergency rooms to perform life-saving abortions must yield to contrary state law in Texas, setting up another abortion decision for the Supreme Court:
Texas Tribune: Emergency rooms not required to perform life-saving abortions, federal appeals court rules
WaPo: Texas doctors do not need to perform emergency abortions, court rules
NBC News: Appeals court rules Texas can ban emergency abortions in spite of federal guidance
Lucy And The Football
David Roberts crystalizes a fundamental power imbalance in American political discourse in this thread (it’s really not about Harvard or Claudine Gay):
All right, I really should be doing literally anything else with my time, but I have certain compulsions, so here's a short thread on the Harvard thing.
Or actually, not about Harvard per se, because I, like most Americans, don't really give a shit what goes on at Harvard.
If Donald Trump wins the presidency at the end of this year, he’s promised to enact a sweeping agenda of retribution and revenge. That agenda will be made much easier, and less reliant on executive actions and friendly courts, if he has a legislature that is willing to go along for the ride.
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday said that Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) alleged bribery scheme was even more brazen than previously thought. In addition to accusing the Democratic senator of shilling for a new country, a superseding indictment alleges that Menendez continued to participate in the purported bribery scheme long after FBI agents first approached him in the investigation.
I wanted to catch you up on some new news about Clarice Schillinger, the anti-woke mom activist at the heart of a lot of school board pressure campaigns in Pennsylvania, especially in Bucks County, which is north of Philadelphia. On Sunday I flagged this totally over-the-top story about how Schillinger, her then-boyfriend and her mom had all been charged with beating the crap out of various teenagers they’d served alcohol to at a boozy birthday party she threw for her seventeen-year-old daughter. Schillinger allegedly punched one sixteen year old in the face three times as he and his friends were trying to leave the party and Schillinger was ordering them to stay. There are reportedly at least two cell phone videos of the assaults, one of which shows Schillinger lunging toward a group of teens and having to be restrained as the teens flee the home.
Now it turns out it wasn’t the first time cops had been called out to one of Schillinger’s teen keggers.
The last we heard of embattled Florida GOP chair and prolific threesomer Christian Ziegler, the state party was preparing to boot him from office notwithstanding the lack of any mechanism in state party bylaws to do so. But now police appear to be investigating a new potential crime.
Greetings! Hope you had a refreshing and fulfilling holiday season, maybe even a little time away, because the election year is now upon us. We are plunging directly into the thick of things, with the Iowa GOP caucus just two weeks away.
It will be an election year unlike any other, with democracy on the ballot like never before, with the leading opposition candidate currently facing more than 90 criminal charges, with a former president seeking to regain the White House for the first time since Grover Cleveland, and with the two main candidates’ combined ages of more than 158 putting their own mortality front and center.
TPM is going to take a different approach to covering this election. We’ve always shied away from the pedantic horserace coverage, but this year in particular such coverage fails to meet the moment. The braindead, gaffe-driven, optics-obsessed coverage of the TV-news era was always a public disservice, but in the current environment it enables Trump and Trump wannabes and obscures the stakes.
If you’re focused on the ages of the candidates instead of the criminal prosecutions of Trump, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re clutching your pearls over whether voters will “tolerate” lawfully enforcing the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause and declaring Trump ineligible for the presidency, instead of focused on what Trump II would entail for the Republic, you’ve got your head in the sand. If you’re assuming Trump will abide by the results of the 2024 election if he loses, where have you been?
The GOP Is A Threat To The Rule Of Law
Former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) have each pledged to pardon Donald Trump if they are elected president and he is criminally convicted.
Jack Smith Eviscerates Trump’s Immunity Claim
A well-written and strongly argued brief from Special Counsel Jack Smith to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that Donald Trump’s claims of presidential immunity from prosecution “threaten to undermine democracy.” The appeals court hears oral argument in the fast-tracked appeal next week.
Maine SoS Targeted In Attempted Swatting
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D), who disqualified Trump from the GOP primary ballot last week, was not home Friday night when a hoax caller told police he had broken into her house.
What Will Aileen Cannon Do Now?
An over-the-top legal filing from Donald Trump opposing setting an early deadline for him to invoke an advice-of-counsel defense in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case tees up another chance for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to torpedo her own trial date.
Sheer Brainiac
Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen is asking a federal judge for mercy after he gave his lawyer what turned out to be bogus cases from the artificial intelligence program Google Bard to use in a legal filing — and was called out by the judge.
The NRA’s Long-Awaited Comeupance
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against the Wayne LaPierre and three other NRA insiders over claims of mismanagement and corruption is set to go to trial today.
ICYMI
Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) vetoed a bill that would have banned gender-affirming care for minors.
Which EVs Qualify For Tax Credits In 2024
The IRS released a (very short) list of the EVs that qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500 in 2024. Caveat: The tax credit is still available for leasing EVs regardless of where the car and its components were built.
The year included the hottest single day on record (July 6) and the hottest ever month (July), not to mention the hottest June, the hottest August, the hottest September, the hottest October, the hottest November, and probably the hottest December. It included a day, Nov. 17, when global temperatures, for the first time ever, reached 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial levels.
Israel Supreme Court Nixes Part Of Bibi’s Judicial Overhaul
Israel’s Supreme Court struck down a key component of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious judicial overhaul Monday, delivering a landmark decision that could reopen the fissures in Israeli society that preceded the country’s ongoing war against Hamas. …
In Monday’s decision, the court narrowly voted to overturn a law passed in July that prevents judges from striking down government decisions they deem “unreasonable.”
ANKARA, TURKIYE – DECEMBER 31: An infographic titled ‘US Navy helicopters sink Houthi boats in Red Sea’ created in Ankara, Turkiye on December 31, 2023. US Navy responded to an attempt by four vessels from Houthi-controlled areas to board the Maersk Hangzhou, deploying helicopters and sank three small boats. (Photo by Elmurod Usubaliev/Anadolu via Getty Images)
South Korean Oppo Leader Survives Assassination Attempt
Lee Jae-myung, 59, the leader of South Korea’s Democratic Party, remains hospitalized in stable condition with what are reported to be non-life-threatening injuries after being stabbed in the neck by a 66-year-old man during a visit to Busan.
BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA – JANUARY 02: (EDITORS NOTE: The identity of people in this image has been obscured at the request of the image source; image pixelated by source) In this handout image provided by The Busan Daily News, Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, lies down after he was attacked by an assailant of his neck during a visit to the construction site of an airport on January 02, 2024 in Busan, South Korea. Lee, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, was stabbed in the neck by an assailant while speaking to the media in the southern city of Busan. Lee survived and is in a stable condition at a local hospital. (Photo by The Busan Daily News via Getty Images)
Death Toll In Japan Quake Nears 50
The magnitude 7.6 quake on the Noto Peninsula has killed at least 48 people after it collapsed buildings, ignited fires, and triggered tsunamis.
TOPSHOT – People walk past a badly damaged house in the city of Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture, on January 2, 2024, a day after a major 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck the Noto region in Ishikawa prefecture. Japanese rescuers battled against the clock and powerful aftershocks on January 2 to find survivors of a major earthquake that struck on New Year’s Day, killing at least 48 people and causing widespread destruction. (Photo by JIJI PRESS / AFP) / Japan OUT (Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images)
A Tragic Sidenote To The Japan Quake
TOPSHOT – This photo provided by Jiji Press shows a Japan Airlines plane on fire on a runway of Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on January 2, 2024. A Japan Airlines plane was in flames on the runway of Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on January 2 after apparently colliding with a coast guard aircraft, media reports said. (Photo by JIJI PRESS / AFP) / Japan OUT (Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images)
A Japan Airlines passenger jet collided on the ground at a Tokyo airport with a Japan Coast Guard plane delivering earthquake relief supplies. All 379 passengers and crew safely evacuated the airliner before it was engulfed in flames. Five of the six crew aboard the Coast Guard plane perished in the crash.
Japan Airlines flight JL516, an Airbus A350-941, collided with a Coast Guard plane at Haneda Airport:pic.twitter.com/60DlACUDJc
— Aviation Safety Network (ASN) (@AviationSafety) January 2, 2024
