The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a blow to the Biden administration’s attempts to shore up emergency abortion care Tuesday.
The judges, exhibiting some of the legal contortions that have become standard issue for the notoriously right-wing court, ruled that a federal mandate that requires many hospitals to stabilize patients in crisis does not include abortions — even when an abortion is that stabilizing care the patient needs.
I’ve been making my way through your emails about school board activism in your various necks of the woods. And I have to say, keep them coming, if for no other reason than the immense entertainment value. But seriously, for many other reasons too. I’m digging into them and trying to figure out which ones to report out first. But there are a few points that stand out in advance of that.
One of those points is something I’m half being reminded of, half learning, which is that there was a pretty big backlash against “anti-woke” school boards in 2023. It’s not universal, certainly. But it’s not just the story out of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, I’ve been telling you about for the last few days. There are examples all over the country. (I’ll be coming back to Bucks. Holy Crap, there’s a lot.) This morning I’ve just been reading up on one in a very backwoods part of Idaho, the West Bonner County School District. A lot of the same stuff: a bunch of freaks get washed in in 2021. They do all the anti-woke stuff and other stuff that’s more about just being against public education generally. There’s a successful recall, but not before the board brings in a new superintendent who is a former state legislator whose career went south when it turned out he might not actually live in the state. (Really.) The bigger problem is that Branden Durst had no background in education and didn’t even have the minimal accreditation the state requires for superintendents. He hung on for like three months before he had to resign. That was back in September.
The 14th Amendment Disqualification Clause case is vying with presidential immunity from prosecution to be the first opportunity the Supreme Court takes to weigh in on holding Donald Trump accountable to the rule of law.
After a few days of biding his time, Trump asked the Supreme Court to accept for review the Colorado Supreme Court decision declaring him ineligible for the GOP primary ballot.
Only Congress — not state courts — can determine whether a candidate is ineligible under the Disqualification Clause.
The Disqualification Clause doesn’t apply to the president.
Jan. 6 was not an insurrection and Trump did not engage in insurrection.
The Colorado court violated the Electors Clause.
The Disqualification Clause can be used to bar people from office but not from the ballot.
The Colorado Republican Party has already asked the Supreme Court to take the case, and the winning plaintiffs have agreed that it should. So expect to hear from the Supreme Court at any time, though there’s no precise timeline by which it will decide.
SCOTUS May Get Second Trump Immunity Case
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has refused Donald Trump’s request for the entire appeals court to rehear his claim of presidential immunity from a civil suit in one of the E. Jean Carroll cases — which means Trump may soon ask the Supreme Court to take the case.
With All Deliberate Speed
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance: What the legal system owes America in the era of Donald Trump
Good Read
WaPo: A right-wing tale of Michigan election fraud had it all — except proof
Florida Man Strikes Again
NBC News: Florida man arrested and accused of threatening to kill Rep. Eric Swalwell and his kids
Georgia Election Official Swatted
Gabriel Sterling, the Georgia election official who famously warned after the 2020 election that Trump’s false claims of voter fraud were going to get someone killed, says he was swatted yesterday:
My family has now joined the ranks of those who have had their home “swatted”. We should all refuse to allow bomb threats & swatting to be the new normal. 911 got a call saying a drug deal gone bad, resulted in shooting, at our home. Everyone is ok. But this is wrong.
The anniversary is upon us, and PBS takes a closer look at the long-running citizen-led effort to identify the Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol — featuring our former colleague Ryan Reilly:
Bomb Threats Against State Capitols
Bomb threats forced evacuations Wednesday in more than a dozen state capitols.
Florida’s top health official called for a halt to using mRNA coronavirus vaccines on Wednesday, contending that the shots could contaminate patients’ DNA — aclaim that has been roundly debunked by public health experts, federal officials and the vaccine companies.
Oh, Texas …
The formerly independent state of Texas continues to push the envelope on immigration policy, and the Biden administration keeps fighting back. So far this week:
The Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court to lift the stay that is preventing it from removing the razor wire illegally placed in the Rio Grande by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
MOREHEAD, KY – SEPTEMBER 2: Kim Davis, the Rowan County Clerk of Courts, listens to Robbie Blankenship and Jesse Cruz as they speak with her at the County Clerks Office on September 2, 2015 in Morehead, Kentucky. Citing a sincere religious objection, Davis, an Apostolic Christian, has refused to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling. (Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images)
Remember Kim Davis?
She was the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision.
A federal judge has now ordered her to pay $260,000 in fees and expenses to attorneys for one of the couples that took her to court over her refusal to grant them a marriage license.
So Grateful
Two years ago today, my then-18-year-old son was walking across the street near our DC home when he was hit by a car and nearly killed.
I’ve had this date on my calendar because two years is an important milestone for recovery from a traumatic brain injury like the one he had. Each patient is different, and we know that recovery continues past two years. In Sam’s case, he showed phenomenal recovery after one year and his injuries are now undetectable. But we were advised to take extra care in the first two years to give the brain the maximum chance to heal.
Notwithstanding the sailing accident three months ago in which he and I broke our backs, today represents the day when I can take him out of the bubble wrap in which I’ve encased him, at least in my own mind.
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.
