We’ve been covering different dimensions of this story. But I wanted to highlight what now seems to be the likely government shutdown this fall. We’ve had shutdowns before and by the standards of recent Republican high-wire acts and hostage taking events they’re relatively minor affairs. What is notable about this round of it is that there isn’t really any big budgetary impasse it’s over. We did that during the debt ceiling drama back in May. At some level it’s House Republicans wanting to re-litigate the fight they believe — reasonably enough — that they lost. But even that doesn’t capture the dimensions of it because that agreement has terms that apply to this kind of situation. Kevin McCarthy made them release their hostage.

Back in the Spring I wrote that I expected Ron DeSantis’s hopeless campaign to eventually be replaced by another GOP candidate memestock, and perhaps a succession of them. By this I mean another non-Trump candidate who gets hosed down with high-roller dollars, gets a lot of media attention and sugar-high narrative buzz like DeSantis did, and then inevitably crashes and burns because GOP voters actually want Donald Trump. The only surprise to me is that there hasn’t been any coalescence behind a new guy, even as DeSantis’s campaign has become little more than a running joke. The inevitable conclusion we can draw from that dog not barking is that the couple dozen or so billionaires who play a dominant role funding GOP campaigns have reconciled themselves to getting back on the Trump Train.

But not so fast?

One of Democrats’ pet peeves is that President Biden has not only overseen a robust economy with almost unprecedentedly low levels of unemployment, his policies actually have some decent claim to responsibility for that record. And yet he gets no credit for it. Not only has Biden been mired in low-40s approval for the last two years, his ratings on the economy are some of his weakest.

This is definitely annoying and certainly unfair (what isn’t?). But it shouldn’t seem new or unexpected. If you’ve been following politics closely for a few decades you’ll remember that Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Obama faced a very similar issue. All three presidents had a significant interval when the economy was demonstrably doing well and yet got zero credit for it or even any clear public recognition that the economy was in good shape.

One of the many interesting details in Josh Kovensky’s podcast interview with independent Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar was the discussion of what often seems like Vladimir Putin’s very American culture war politics. To Americans, these statements by Putin can come off as almost a kind of trolling or part of some common rightist, authoritarian playbook. Zygar argued that they are, for the most part, not aimed at Putin’s domestic audience. In short, Putin decided over the last decade that he needed new international allies. And those allies were less a set of particular countries — or not only that — than the right and far-right in North America and Europe. As an example, Zygar argued that Russia’s recent crackdown on trans rights had very little grounding in Russia’s domestic political dialog. It’s not that Russians are pro-trans rights. It just isn’t something that has much salience either way. The crackdown was more something Putin did to deepen his bond with the global right.

From TPM Reader AC who knows quite a bit about the history of the racketeering statutes.

Can I remind people that no president in history has ever acted MORE STEREOTYPICALLY LIKE A GANGSTER than Trump?  He owned casinos.  He has deep connections in the New York City construction industry.  His son-in-law’s father did time for extortion.  He calls people who inform on him “rats.”  He bullies.  He threatens to expose people’s private shame to obtain endorsements.  He filled his administration with pro wrestling magnates and failed movie producers.  His campaign manager’s family made their money building jai alai frontons in Connecticut.  One of his top advisors was Felix Sater, an alleged organized crime figure who has done time for stabbing a guy in the face.  His former personal attorney got his start hanging out at a Russian gangster social club. 

Do I need to go on?  If Trump wants to suggest the law wasn’t intended for men like him, then perhaps he should try acting like a normal politician or businessman rather than a crime lord from a movie

For those of you who are subscribers/listeners to The Josh Marshall Podcast, Kate Riga and I just recorded a special instapod on today’s mifepristone decision from the 5th circuit, in addition to today’s regularly scheduled weekly pod. So that special episode should be showing up on your device some time later today if you subscribe.

You’ve probably noticed that Donald Trump has announced that he’s holding a press conference Monday in which he’ll release a 100-page report which shows both that the 2020 election in Georgia was “stolen” and that all charges against him and his criminal associates should be dropped. In other words, he’s responding to the charges by doubling down on the Big Lie. This isn’t surprising. Trump only has one gear — all-in and over-the-top. But as Clark Neily says in this post at CATO, “Being an inveterate liar is a major liability in litigation.”

He also has an apt description of who Trump is. These are all points we’ve made before. But it’s a tight and concise run-through.

There seems to be a consensus that the coup indictments out of Georgia are unexpectedly strong. I don’t know why it’s “unexpected” or exceeded expectations. The Fulton County DA’s office has been working on this for a very long time and they’ve always seemed in earnest about it, even when it was unclear whether federal investigators were focused on the people at the top of the conspiracy. But it’s a reminder that Georgia was always unique in the broader story of Trump’s failed coup. It’s not simply that there was a more aggressive local prosecutor on hand.

As you know, there’s been chatter about whether President Biden should pardon Donald Trump. Of course, before that there was a lot of discussion about whether Trump should be indicted at all. (Jack Goldsmith is still discussing it.) In both cases, the reasoning, such as it is, has been about bringing the country together, avoiding national divisions or sparking a pattern of tit-for-tat presidential prosecutions. It’s also possible the same underlying question could come up again.

There are some who think there’s a non-trivial chance that at some point perhaps early next year Trump will seek a plea deal. I really can’t imagine that happening. But some people whose common sense and judgment I put a lot of stock in do. Their reasoning isn’t bad. If you put all these cases together Trump is highly likely to be spending the rest of his his life in prison. Staying out of jail requires winning the 2024 election. He might get lucky in one venue. He might get a hung jury. He might beat some of the charges. But even batting .500 likely gets a de facto life term. And Trump, for all his bluster, is deeply risk averse. That’s where the plea deal idea comes in. Again, I think this is unlikely. But if it does we will come back to the same question, how much punishment is required? Either for justice, equality under the law or deterrence. Can he bow out of the race, admit to some offenses and get off with a comparatively light global sentence? What would justify that?

My reason for writing this post today is that I think this way of looking at the question gets the calculus wrong. The news David covers today, of Trump spending the weekend attacking DC district Judge Tanya Chutkan, explains why. This entire range of cases Trump faces, indeed Trump’s whole decade-long smash and grab run through American public life, is about one thing: who is bigger? The American republic, the state, or Donald Trump?

Just a short note about a relatively minor topic. But with new Trump indictments almost certainly coming next week in Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia, I wanted to return to a simple point. Remember the call in which then-President Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and demanded he find him 11,780 more votes and threatened him with prosecution if he didn’t. That call alone should be more than enough to send Trump to prison for years. In its own way it’s worse than almost everything else noted in the federal indictments. It is so stunning that I’m writing this post just to step us back and refocus our attention on just how stunning it is.