Supreme Court’s Alabama Decision Already Affecting Case That Could Shift Congressional Makeup

Posted on by Kate Riga

Ramifications from the Supreme Court’s surprise Thursday decision to preserve the Voting Rights Act’s protection against racial gerrymanders are already developing in a related case out of Georgia. 

Continue reading “Supreme Court’s Alabama Decision Already Affecting Case That Could Shift Congressional Makeup” →

Trump Indictment Shows The Insidious Rot At The Heart Of The GOP

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Can The Rule Of Law Hold?

The first federal indictment of a president strikes a blow for the rule of law, but do you hear the dull thud of the ax hitting the soft dampness of rotten wood?

In the hours after Trump himself announced his own indictment, his GOP defenders rushed to tear down the criminal justice system by sheer invective. The GOP speaker of the House, GOP senators and representatives, the leading GOP candidates for president, and the whole right-wing Wurlitzer launched a furious attack on the rule of law.

Like wolves in sheep’s clothing, Trump and his allies cloaked themselves as defenders of the rule of law to camouflage their attack. They broadly painted the “radical left,” Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and the entire Democratic “cabal” as an unhinged anti-democratic threat to the Republic. But most alarmingly they ramped up the attacks on prosecutors and investigators, and if the pattern holds they’ll resume attacking judges, too. Beneath it all, only barely below the surface, is the incipient threat of political violence.

The Mar-a-Lago indictment and what should be soon-to-come indictments of the Jan. 6 higher-ups are a necessary precursor to the restoration of the rule of law. We can for a moment feel the relief of knowing that Trump is being held to account for his bad acts in jeopardizing national security, making a mockery of protecting classified information, defying grand jury subpoenas, and then trying to cover it all up.

But no indictment or series of them, no amount of steady prosecutorial steeliness or of Merrick Garland keeping his eye on the ball, nothing that the judicial system itself does or is designed to do is enough to preserve the rule of law in the face of nearly half the country believing the rule of law is a weapon to be used against their enemies and shield to protect their favorites from accountability for their wrongs.

Things are not good. Take for example:

  • Jack Smith’s cases must be rushed to completion because they will go away if Trump wins in 2024.
  • Pardoning the Jan. 6 defendants – and now Trump himself – will be a litmus test for GOP presidential candidates.
  • Anyone involved in any aspect of holding Trump accountable at the local, state or federal level faces the real possibility of retaliation and revenge attacks if Trump wins in 2024.

It’s not an equal fight. While Jack Smith is properly using the tools at his disposal to craft a narrow criminal case based on the facts and the law, the neo-fascists are attacking the entire legal edifice, shaking it to its core, and eroding its foundation. And, yes, it is still alarming to see wholesale attacks on the judicial system and the rule of law from the leading lights of one of the two major political parties.

In short, we’re not out of the woods yet. Not even close. The collective civic agreement that we are a nation of laws is broken. It can be restored. But only by civic, social, and political means. The legal system can’t protect itself, and it can’t survive in a vacuum of public support or without a consensus that it is legitimate and worthy of defense.

The Most Unhinged Reactions

  • As an historical artifact, Trump’s hostage-video from his Bedminster, New Jersey club is worth your time. Note that the man who instigated the 2021 coup attempt to stay in power is talking about the indictment as “warfare”:
  • If “warfare” wasn’t strong enough language, you have elected members of Congress calling partisans to arms:
  • The outrage on Trump’s behalf is dangerous, unhinged, and – extremely mockable? See, for example, Mark Levin on Fox News:

More Mockery, Please

BREAKING …

CNN has obtained a transcript of the recording of Donald Trump at Bedminster in 2021 when he was allegedly waving around a secret document about Iran. A few excerpts from the CNN report:

  • “As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump says, according to the transcript.
  • “Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump says at one point, according to the transcript. “This was done by the military and given to me.”
  • Several sources have told CNN the recording captures the sound of paper rustling, as if Trump was waving the document around, though is not clear if it was the actual Iran document.

What’s Next?

Let me run through a few general points and cautions about the Mar-a-Lago case very quickly:

  • Wait until we see the indictment! Without the actual document, the indictment itself, everyone is flying blind. So don’t get sucked in too much quite yet.
  • How many counts? The reporting about the indictment containing seven counts seems premature to me. Last night on CNN, Trump lawyer Jim Trusty said the legal team hadn’t see the indictment either. They were working off what amounted to a summons to Trump from DOJ about his appearance in court Tuesday in Miami. The summons-like document contained a reference to the statutes Trump is being charged under, but that’s not necessarily a reflection of the number of counts. There could, for example, be multiple counts of violating the same statute. Stay tuned on this, but patience is warranted.
  • Will we see the indictment before Tuesday? The indictment is sealed. The normal course would be to unseal it Tuesday in conjunction with Trump making his initial appearance in court. My hope is that DOJ moves to unseal it today, so that the world can see it and not leave 4+ days for Trump and his minions to muddy the waters. That’s a hope though, not a hunch.

What The Legal Types Are Saying

Jeffrey Clark Loses In Federal Court

The Trump stooge who angled to become attorney general and preserve Trump in office in 2021 lost a bid to stop DC bar proceedings against him.

Incredibly Important

Were it not for the Trump indictment, Morning Memo would have led today with the voting rights case out of the Supreme Court yesterday, but in particular the way the court used its shadow docket to let Alabama run the 2022 election with a racially discriminatory congressional map and how that helped Republicans win a narrow majority in the House. It’s incredible … really:

  • How big of a deal?
  • Immediate impact:

House Ethics Resumes Gaetz Probe

With the feds declining to prosecute Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), the House Ethics Committee has quietly resumed its investigation of him.

Oh?

Mother Jones: George Santos’ Lawyer Was Part of the January 6 Mob

Stay Tuned For More!

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s associate Nate Paul was arrested by the FBI Thursday in Austin on undisclosed charges.

Pat Robertson’s Legacy

No better person to turn to for a reflection on what Pat Robertson hath wrought than Sarah Posner.

Have A Great Weekend!

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How Pat Robertson Helped Create The Christian Nationalist Lawyer Brigade Reshaping American Life

Posted on by Sarah Posner

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. 

Christian Coalition and Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, who died Thursday at the age of 93, is best known for his failed foray into the 1988 GOP presidential primary, his training of evangelicals to be both successful candidates and reliable voters, and his decades-long highlight reel of homophobia, misogyny, racism, conspiracy theories, apocalyptic warnings, and pronouncements of God’s impending wrath on America for the sins of the left.

Less well understood, though, was Robertson’s significant contribution to the Christianization of the legal profession, and the development of a Christian nationalist legal brigade that has set its sights on ending the separation of church and state, abortion and LGBTQ rights. In 1986, he came to the rescue of a fledgling Christian law school, over the years turning it into the powerhouse Regent University School of Law that has produced lawyers who have gone on to become state court judges, appellate litigators, Republican lawmakers, and political appointees in Republican administrations. 

The roots of Robertson’s law school can be traced to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where, in 1979, his friend and fellow televangelist Oral Roberts founded its original iteration at his eponymous university, with seed money from O.W. Coburn, a local entrepreneur and father of future Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (R). Also key to the development of a law school that would teach the law from a “biblical worldview” was Herb Titus, a Harvard-trained lawyer who became an acolyte of R.J. Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, the radical movement at the core of Christian nationalist legal thinking that asserts that biblical law must govern every facet of public and private life. Rejecting secular law after reading Rushdoony’s seminal book, The Institutes of Biblical Law, Titus believed he had a “dominion mandate” to “restore the bible to legal education.” One of the law school’s first students was future GOP congresswoman and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, who is now the dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent.

Evangelist Pat Robertson’s at Regent Law School in 1995. (Photo by William F. Campbell/Getty Images)

The law school’s first conflict with the secular world portended the battles that have defined the religious right’s ongoing quest to expand religious freedom for conservative Christians and shrink it for everyone else. Because the law school required both students and faculty to sign a statement of Christian faith and profess belief in Jesus as their savior, the American Bar Association refused it accreditation, saying the requirement ran afoul of ABA’s prohibition against discrimination in the profession. The denial posed an existential threat to the school, since most states require graduates to have a degree from an accredited law school in order to sit for the bar exam. To Titus, who believed the ABA’s refusal to accredit the school was “pure religious prejudice,” Roberts was a hero because he refused to “bow down to the establishment.” The school sued the ABA, eventually forcing it to amend its standards to permit the type of faith statement ORU required, and paving the way to its accreditation.

Even with this victory, the law school struggled, something Titus chalked up to the idea of a Christian law school being ahead of its time, a country wracked by anti-Christian sentiment, and students unwilling to take a chance on this radical new kind of legal training. But Robertson, from over a thousand miles away in Virginia Beach, Virginia, was a believer. By 1985, when the school found itself with just eight faculty members and 129 students, Robertson rode in on a proverbial white horse.

The announcement of the transfer of the law school from ORU to Regent (then known as CBN University) was laden with language typical of both Robertson’s and Roberts’s charismatic, prosperity gospel faith. Roberts described it as a “seed-faith gift” to CBN, implying not only ORU’s generosity, but the prospect of God’s blessing and return on the investment. (Roberts taught God would bless the sower of a “seed” gift by meeting all their spiritual, material, and health needs.) Without much evidence, Robertson pronounced the gift worth $10 million, a dubious valuation given it had a smaller faculty than many preschools. Robertson, who two years later would launch his presidential run, called it “a historic moment in American Christianity” and “a testimony before America that those who work for Jesus are co-laborers.”

Students praying in class at Regent Law School in 1995. (Photo by William F. Campbell/Getty Images)

Nearly forty years later, Oral Roberts’ prediction that the law school would grow “stronger and stronger under Pat’s leadership” certainly proved true. It is the training ground for Christian lawyers who oppose LGBTQ rights in the name of religious freedom for anti-LGBTQ Christians, and who question the separation of church and state. “The faculty at Regent were on the front lines against marriage equality, and they are some of the leading voices opposing LGBTQ rights,” Josiah Robinson, a 2021 graduate who was closeted for most of his time there and is now a queer rights activist, told me last year. “They’re the law review scholars and the legal professionals on religious liberty used as a tool to discriminate.” One of its most acclaimed graduates is Kristen Waggoner, who, as counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, the top Christian right litigation firm in the country, successfully argued Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission before the Supreme Court, notching a significant “religious freedom” victory for a baker who had refused to make a cake for a gay couple. Waggoner is now CEO and president of ADF, which, in recent months, has led the legal fight to reverse the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone and to otherwise restrict access to safe abortion.

Regent has produced a lot of Christian lawyers, and also its fair share of scandals.  Monica Goodling, a political appointee in George W. Bush’s Department of Justice, was at the center of a political scandal for leading an effort to query job applicants about their political beliefs in the quest to staff the agency with people with conservative Christian values. She was later reprimanded by the Virginia State Bar. Mark Martin, a former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, and then the dean of Regent School of Law, helped write a brief for former President Donald Trump in his failed legal effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election results in four states. Dan Cox, the far-right, election-denying Republican nominee for governor of Maryland last year, who had chartered three buses to the insurrection and tweeted (and later deleted) that Mike Pence was a traitor, is a 2006 graduate. 

Robertson, in his prime, was one of the top architects of the religious right that was built in the 1970s and ‘80s. But it was perhaps his salvaging of someone else’s vision — a Christian law school to train Christian lawyers to litigate, enmesh themselves in politics, and even run for office — that could prove to be his most lasting, and damaging, legacy.

Where Things Stand: Republicans’ Abortion Flailing Shows Up In McCarthy’s Caucus Chaos Too

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

My colleague Kate Riga and I have been tracking the various ways in which Republicans are freaking out about how their party’s longstanding and extreme positioning on abortion will impact them in coming elections. Kate wrote an excellent piece earlier this week on Republican 2024 candidates’ flailing as they repeatedly and publicly struggle to pick any specific footing on the issue, aware that restrictive policy platforms and abortion bans in general have proven themselves to be wildly unpopular among voters and will likely hurt them in the upcoming presidential general election.

I won’t unpack all the evidence that supports the notion that Republicans are losing the battle of public opinion on abortion here, but to catch up, I’d recommend reading this, this and this.

But, this week, the omnipresent dilemma and intra-party rift appeared in a new venue.

Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Republicans’ Abortion Flailing Shows Up In McCarthy’s Caucus Chaos Too” →

How The Supreme Court’s Alabama Decisions Affected The 2022 Election — And Could Shape 2024

Posted on by Kate Riga

The Supreme Court knocked down Alabama’s racially gerrymandered congressional map in a shocking 5-4 decision Thursday, preserving a key section of the Voting Rights Act.

Continue reading “How The Supreme Court’s Alabama Decisions Affected The 2022 Election — And Could Shape 2024” →

Medicaid Wins Big At Supreme Court Despite Fears That Right-Wing Majority Would Hobble Program

Posted on by Kate Riga

The Supreme Court upheld a key mechanism for beneficiaries of federal spending programs to sue if states violate their rights Thursday, the conclusion of a case that spawned protests, hearings and bottomless worry from activists and experts terrified that the Court would use it to hobble programs like Medicaid. 

Continue reading “Medicaid Wins Big At Supreme Court Despite Fears That Right-Wing Majority Would Hobble Program” →

So Is Trump Really Toast?

Posted on by Josh Marshall

You probably saw that President Trump has now received a “target letter” from Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s office. We don’t know precisely when it was received, at least not in the reporting I have seen. But presumably it is quite recent. In federal law enforcement, a “target letter” is a mix of threat and good faith warning about your status and what to expect. In other words, we’re not just looking at a potential crime that you’re proximate to or involved with. You’re the target. We are looking at you as a probable criminal defendant and we assume we’re going to indict you. So act accordingly. It provides some back stop to prevent a defendant from saying prosecutors made it like they were just a witness and not the person who was going to get indicted. Lawyers who practice in the federal courts might put the nuance a bit differently or disagree among themselves. But I think this is the gist.

If you’re focused on the “hey is this thing really going to happen?” front, the answer is, you should assume it will. It’s not a guarantee. But it makes it highly likely. And not based on what some outside commentator speculates and pieces together from the clues. This comes from the guy who does the indicting.

Continue reading “So Is Trump Really Toast?” →