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The Supreme Court Is Now On The Ballot

It’s hard to know the precise combination of developments that changed President Biden’s mind about Supreme Court reforms and prompted him to place them more centrally in the framework of the 2024 election.

Was it the ethics scandals of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and the Supreme Court’s own ineptitude in dealing with them? Was it the series of controversial decisions across a whole host of issues and areas of civic life in which the court wrested power away from the executive and legislative branches and placed it firmly in the judicial branch? Was it the six-justice conservative majority aggressively uprooting the court’s own precedents in pursuit of its own preferred legal and policy outcomes? Was it the fact that he’s trailing in the polls with his own re-election more at risk that at any previous point in his presidency?

All of the above are in play, of course. A tipping point was reached, and it’s unlikely any one development was the difference-maker.

The shift, first reported by the Washington Post, was revealed over the weekend in a call Biden had with the Congressional Progressive Caucus:

“I’m going to need your help on the Supreme Court, because I’m about to come out — I don’t want to prematurely announce it — but I’m about to come out with a major initiative on limiting the court. … I’ve been working with constitutional scholars for the last three months, and I need some help,” Biden said, according to a transcript of the call obtained by The Washington Post.

The NYT separately confirmed that Biden’s “proposals to overhaul the court … could be unveiled in the coming weeks.”

Among the menu of choices Biden is reported to be considering:

• term limits for the justices;
• imposing an enforceable ethics code; and
• Relatedly, backing a constitutional amendment to reverse the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity.

Late addition: I meant to note that enlarging the court beyond its current nine-justice setup does not appear to be among Biden’s proposals.

None of these measures will pass the GOP-controlled House, though they could serve as messaging vehicles on the Hill between now and the election. More importantly, they elevate Supreme Court reforms to his second term agenda, creating the opportunity for the November election to be a referendum on the high court and create legislative momentum if Biden wins. Even then, it’ll be a very heavy lift.

This is a long-game move, that also offers a few short-term political advantages.

What SCOTUS Hath Wrought

Federal prosecutors are beginning to drop obstruction charges against some Jan. defendants, including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer limiting the scope of the obstruction statute, the Washington Post reports.

The ‘Not Biden’ Contingent Is Running Out Of Time

An effort originally intended to insure that Republicans couldn’t keep President Biden off the November ballot in some states has now become a potential focal point for the nebulous effort to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee:

• David Weigel: Democratic rush to confirm Biden in ‘virtual vote’ sets up early test for opposition
• David Dayen: Biden Opponents Have Six Days to Get Him Out of the Race

The intra-party Biden opposition remains fragmented and disorganized, so it remains unclear whether this approaching “deadline” will have any kind of catalyzing effect.

A Recurring Critique

It’s long been a knock on President Biden that he is over-reliant on a tight circle of longtime loyal advisers who exert too much control over access to him and over his access to outside information. Not surprising that in the current environment that particular criticism is coming up again:

• WaPo: Biden allies worry he is not getting complete information about race
• NYT: Biden Circle Shrinks as Democrats Fear Election Wipeout

Ouch

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the leading Democratic in the U.S. Senate race, privately told donors Saturday (before the assassination attempt on Trump) that Republicans could sweep if Biden remains as nominee, the NYT reported:

“I think if he is our nominee, I think we lose,” Mr. Schiff said during the meeting, according to a person with access to a transcription of a recording of the event. “And we may very, very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House.”

Piecing Together The Secret Service Failure

WaPo:

Local police who were assigned by the Secret Service to help spot threats in the crowd at Donald Trump’s rally Saturday were inside the building where a gunman had positioned himself on the roof to shoot at the former president, according to a Secret Service official briefed on the incident.

From inside the Agr International building, they spotted a man acting furtively, walking back and forth around the building with some gear, and radioed a Secret Service command post to alert them, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

The Threat Matrix

• Federal authorities are warning of the possibility of additional violence in the aftermath of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
• The Secret Service had already stepped up security measures for Trump before Saturday’s shooting in response to intel reports warning of a potential Iranian assassination plot against him. There is zero indication that the incident in Pennsylvania was connected to the suspected Iranian plot.

Sen. Menendez Convicted On All Counts

Following Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez’s conviction yesterday in Manhattan in his public corruption case, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on him to resign. Censure or expulsion remain options if Menendez refuses to step down.

This About Sums It Up

Results of the weaponized justice system in 2024 may turn out to be:

-Bob Menendez goes to jail
-Hunter Biden goes to jail
-Trump faces no consequences in 4 cases and has lone conviction thrown out

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) July 16, 2024

Joe Biden’s Justice Department has now secured guilty verdicts in criminal cases against Joe Biden’s son and a powerful Senate Democratic ally; it’s also prosecuting Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar. Relevant context as he gets accused of “targeting political opponents” w/ the law.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) July 16, 2024

Cognitive Dissonance Alert

With Republicans gather to make a convicted felon still facing three other criminal cases their nominee, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) baldy declared: “We in the Republican Party are the law and order team.” 

Just You Wait

John Ganz on JD Vance:

I’ve described the current condition of the United States as a “politics of national despair.” We can see the two sides of that—rage and resignation—so clearly in recent days: the Democratic party seems to have given up and the Republican party has embraced the demonic phantasmagoria of embittered pseudo-intellectuals. Vance’s form of despair is that, for all his worldly success, he can’t transcend a fundamental grievance, a sense of always being lesser. He didn’t escape the despair of poverty through gumption and intelligence: he carries it with him always. It fuels his ambition. To people like Vance, the system of domination that governs our society made itself painfully apparent. But he despairs of overcoming it: instead, the brutality must be embraced. He can win the game. Come out on top. Show them all. Just you wait.

What JD Vance As Veep Would Mean For Ukraine

“Ukraine is in trouble,” a senior European official told the WSJ in response to Donald Trump tapping Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) as his running mate.

Tim Mak has more on Vance’s strong anti-Ukraine position:

Putting aside his views on other topics, the senator from Ohio has essentially made his entire foreign policy reputation on the basis of bashing the country resisting Russian invasion.

He opposes military and financial aid to Ukraine; opposes Ukraine’s NATO membership; believes the United States should negotiate with Putin; and argues that Ukraine should cede its territory to Russia.

More on Europe’s reaction to Vance as veep.

Party Of Lincoln

Very awkward moment- Congressman Matt Gaetz tries to interrupt former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s interviews, taunting him “Hey Kevin, what night are you speaking?” pic.twitter.com/vE1W5FvTqH

— Joe Khalil (@JoeKhalilTV) July 16, 2024

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A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

History Comes At You Fast

The rapid-fire series of events over the past 18 days has been as mind-bending a stretch in American politics as I can remember.

Less than three weeks ago, Donald Trump was awaiting sentencing for his conviction in New York state on 34 felony counts and needed to win the presidential election to have any chance of avoiding additional criminal convictions and likely jail time.

Then came President Biden’s Thursday night debate debacle, leaving the anti-Trump forces adrift in the doldrums over whether Biden should remain as the Democratic nominee.

The morning after the debate, the Supreme Court reset the playing field for most of the regulatory state, sweeping away its own precedent in Chevron and launching the political economy into a new era with uncertain but far-reaching implications that will take years to fully appreciate.

The following Monday, the Supreme Court rejiggered the balance of power carefully arranged by the founders in order to gift Trump an elaborately favorable ruling on presidential immunity that may keep him out of jail win or lose in November. As a result, his imminent sentencing in New York had to be postponed until at least September. But the constitutional framework will remain fundamentally altered long after Trump has passed from the political scene.

I wrote then that it had been a surreal week in our politics, but what’s happened since beggars belief.

After years of extolling violence and playing with the fire of incitement, Trump survived Saturday’s assassination attempt by a 20-year-old man with unclear motives who was immediately taken out by counter-sniper fire. The spasm of political violence at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania killed one spectator and seriously wounded two others. It was captured in photos and video from a thousand different angles, yielding iconic images of a bleeding Trump with his fist raised exhorting the crowd to “Fight!”

Yesterday, Trump secured another major win in his effort to stave off imprisonment when U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the Mar-a-Lago case against him in its entirety, freeing him for the moment from the threat of what had always been the most slam-dunk criminal case against him on the law and the facts, an assessment upended by Cannon’s corrupt handling of the case.

Within hours of Cannon’s ruling, having just announced Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential running mate, Trump made a triumphal appearance at the first night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, his wound from the weekend gunfire conspicuously bandaged. The crowd serenaded him with chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

the whole RNC breaks out in a chant of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" pic.twitter.com/Ox1g8jGh3x

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2024

What we’ve all just witnessed with our own eyes — the breathtaking pace of events, the mix of staged and spontaneous spectacles, and Trump’s uncanny ability to emerge mostly unscathed through a combination of extreme good fortune and corrupt intervention on his behalf — have all the elements of a fictional political thriller, but one we would probably find preposterous for lack of believability. The whirlwind of political developments has defied what we know about the long, slow, grinding work of politics and political change.

For those desperate to see Trump as a larger-than-life hero touched by the divine, the past three weeks are irrefutable confirmation of everything they believed to be true about the man. For those appalled by the sinister impulses driving Trump and the dark forces he’s unleashed in America, his swift series of wins on the political and legal fronts is an inexplicable reward for such despicable behavior.

The unrelenting pace of events echoes 1968, the standard for tumultuous years in politics, with the assassinations, an incumbent Democratic president who is unpopular despite his historic legislative accomplishments, and his party’s convention in Chicago. The backdrop is different. Then it was the Vietnam War, white backlash to the civil rights movement, and a generational moment as the baby boomers came of age. Now it’s the existential threat of climate change and a far-right politics that makes even the worst fears of a prospective Richard Nixon presidency seem tepid by comparison. The white backlash remains and is, it seems, eternal.

Our faces are pressed too closely to the glass of current events to see what the past three weeks portend for the next few months. The past may be prologue, but past performance is no guarantee of future results. The intense pace is not likely sustainable, but anomalies happen. The impacts of each of these events on the election outcome is inscrutable; their collective impacts are indecipherable. We just don’t know. We pretend to know, sometimes, because it offers a respite from the doubt and confusion. But we don’t really know.

A more Zen person than I would urge you to embrace the uncertainty. I’m just trying to hold on for dear life.

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