I’m following the gag order hearing on the New York Times live feed. Trump’s lawyer basically is saying that everything Trump says has a political context and therefore has to be considered “free speech.”

New York Times, just now (10:22 am edt):

This is not going well for Blanch. The judge is interrupting and scolding him, the New York Times said.

From TPM:

As Blanche flails, Merchan spells it out: “You’re losing all credibility with the court.”

I believe the hearing is concluded. Judge Merchan is not going to give a ruling right away.

There is a widespread perception that the hearing went very, very badly for Trump.

The jury wasn’t present for the gag order hearing, for which Trump and his lawyers should be grateful. The trial will reconvene at 11 eastern time.

Right now there’s an overwhelming amount of commentary on the opening arguments (example) that I’m still sorting out. Here’s also a key takeaways article from WaPo. Jeremy Stahl writes at Slate that Trump seemed to be mentally checking out whenever the prosecution was presenting its arguments. The defense arguments seem wobbly to me, but all they have to do is plant reasonable doubt in just one juror’s mind.

Judge Engoron accepted the hinky appeal bond (drat) but put some conditions on it. The state of New York is never going to see that money, I fear.

I’m hearing that there were no pro-Trump protesters outside the court. Many are also noting that no member of Trump’s family — not his wife, none of his children — are in the Court with him. He’s really all alone.

Tomorrow morning is the gag order hearing. I am not going to guess what might happen.

With so much going on this week I plan to do a lot of short posts instead of a few omnibus posts. I already posted about the Sandoval ruling this morning. That’s interesting stuff by itself. In the Manhattan criminal trial, the prosecution has made opening arguments and the defense is finishing up. It’s going to be a short trial day today because one of the jurors has a medical issue that needs addressing. The best way to follow along is the New York Times live feed, IMO. No paywall.

Update: The trial had time to introduce the first witness, who is David Pecker of the National Enquirer. He’ll be brought back to the stand tomorrow.

The hearing on Trump’s appeal bond is today, but I’m not sure when. I’m not seeing any new news about it pop up yet.

I wanted to say something more about Congress and the bills passed on Saturday. Axios is reporting that many House Republicans are mightily pissed at Marjorie Taylor Greene.

A growing number of House Republicans are accusing their conservative colleagues of enabling Democratic wins, especially after this weekend’s foreign aid votes.

Why it matters: Multiple members believe they could have gotten concessions from Democrats on border policy in exchange for Ukraine funding, only to be blown up by backlash from conservatives.

My understanding is that Chuck Schumer wants the Senate to accept what the House passed as is and march it to the Oval Office to be signed. I don’t think that’s happened yet. But it’s fascinating that Greene is getting blowback for trying to stop the Ukraine bill entirely. I’ve been seeing news stories here and there over the past few days about how Senate Republicans think Moscow Marjorie needs to dial it back. She’s even getting blowback on Fox News. And now some House members are openly criticizing her also. She may be about to learn the limits of her own influence.

Update: See also All Talk Marge by Josh Marshall.

See also Vance versus McConnell defines GOP Ukraine fight at The Hill.

Good morning everybody! This is the first day of what could be a significant week. And we have a ruling on Friday’s Sandoval hearing already.

Merchan granted questioning about the following:

*The New York Attorney General verdict that Trump misstated the value of his assets for economic benefit
*That he violated a court order in attacking Judge Engoron’s clerk during that case
*That he was found to have defamed E. Jean Carroll
*That he was found another time to have defamed E. Jean Carroll
*That he stipulated to the dissolution of the Trump foundation in another NYAG case

This is from the New York Times:

Here is the prosecutor’s original request. One of the items left out is the finding that Trump did in fact “secually abuse” (i,e., rape) E. Jean Carroll.

I’m reading in Newsweek that “Prosecutors cannot ask the former president about the Trump Organization’s tax fraud conviction in 2022 nor the frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton in Florida.”

It remains to be seen if Trump will insist on testifying anyway. Only a moron would testify under these circumstances, but, well, Trump IS a moron, so … Maggie Haberman wrote in the NY Times live feed,

It was always clear that Trump was going to be told to wait to see the outcome of the Sandoval hearing before deciding whether to testify. Recall that he wanted to testify in his trial in the first E. Jean Carroll case, and several advisers and lawyers told him not to. He decided that had he only done so, he would have avoided the liability in that case.

And I’m sure he’s wrong. By all accounts it was his own bad behavior in court that helped put the jury on E. Jean Carroll’s side, and apparently he remains oblivious to that.

The judge is now instructing the jury. I’ll post more stuff today if and when anything significant happens.

Update: Joyce Vance’s assessment.

There’s an article in Salon by Jonathan Larsen that sheds more light on Mike Johnson’s shift toward Ukraine funding. And it indeed has to do with reports that Russians are  targeting evangelicals in Ukraine. Larsen writes that Ukrainians have been in contact with “the Family,” the Christian cult that runs the National Prayer Breakfast.  The  American evangelicals have been mostly focused on their version of “religious liberty,” by which they mean they get to have power in government to shape policy to fit their agenda. They’re big on anti-LGBTQ legislation, for example. I get the impression that they’ve generally approved of Vladimir Putin because of his anti-LGBTQ policies in Russia. But reports of brutality against Ukrainian evangelicals may have changed things. Larsen writes,

While most mainstream news hasn’t picked up on it, religious media outlets have started to notice how Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging a war on that most sacred of right-wing cows: Religious freedom.

That message is coming — with elements of truth but also an agenda — from a small but well-connected cadre of Ukrainian and American evangelicals, including prayer-breakfast leaders.

And right-wing Ukrainian evangelicals with strong ties to American counterparts just won an important ask from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, right as House Republicans are considering whether to help him.

The “agenda” is that the Ukraine evangelicals also favor anti-LGBTQ politics and are promising to promote those policies in Ukraine if Ukraine prevails. They’re like 4 percent of the population of Ukraine, but they have big plans.

Still, if this causes a real shift in evangelical views about Putin, it could be huge. It might even cause some of them to think twice about Trump. And Marjorie Taylor Greene, too, if she doesn’t get the memo.

David Frum writes,

On aid to Ukraine, Trump got his way for 16 months. When Democrats held the majority in the House of Representatives in 2022, they approved four separate aid requests for Ukraine, totaling $74 billion. As soon as Trump’s party took control of the House, in January 2023, the aid stopped. Every Republican officeholder understood: Those who wished to show loyalty to Trump must side against Ukraine.

At the beginning of this year, Trump was able even to blow up the toughest immigration bill seen in decades—simply to deny President Joe Biden a bipartisan win. Individual Senate Republicans might grumble, but with Trump opposed, the border-security deal disintegrated.

Three months later, Trump’s party in Congress has rebelled against him—and not on a personal payoff to some oddball Trump loyalist, but on one of Trump’s most cherished issues, his siding with Russia against Ukraine.

The anti-Trump, pro-Ukraine rebellion started in the Senate. Twenty-two Republicans joined Democrats to approve aid to Ukraine in February. Dissident House Republicans then threatened to force a vote if the Republican speaker would not schedule one. Speaker Mike Johnson declared himself in favor of Ukraine aid. This weekend, House Republicans split between pro-Ukraine and anti-Ukraine factions. On Friday, the House voted 316–94 in favor of the rule on the aid vote. On Saturday, the aid to Ukraine measure passed the House by 311–112. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will adopt the House-approved aid measures unamended and speed them to President Biden for signature.

As defeat loomed for his anti-Ukraine allies, Trump shifted his message a little. On April 18, he posted on Truth Social claiming that he, too, favored helping Ukraine. “As everyone agrees, Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us!” But that was after-the-fact face-saving, jumping to the winning side after his side was about to lose.

Still, 112 House Republicans voted against aid to Ukraine. So this doesn’t amount to a significant rebellion against Trump. But maybe it’s a little one. Frum also points to Trump’s badly lagging fundraising numbers and the minority of primary voters who continue to vote for Nikki Haley. There are cracks in the facade. Maybe more traditional Republicans are realizing they don’t have to be afraid of Trump. We can hope.

In other news: There’s an NBC poll showing that a third-party RFK Jr. candidacy hurts Trump more than Biden. As near as I can tell, RFK Jr. has adopted most of Trump’s positions on just about everything, so that would make sense.

The New York Post reports that Michael Avenatti — yeah, that guy — says he’s talking to Trump’s legal team — and would testify for the ex-prez. Michael Avenatti is currently locked up in a federal prison near Los Angeles, so testifying for anybody would be a nice break, I guess. Ari Melber on MSNBC interviewed Avenatti via Zoom a few days ago, and it was a waste of time. Avenatti just wanted to talk about himself. And he had nothing insider-y or original to say about the Manhattan trial.

At the Atlantic, see Boeing and the Dark Age of American Manufacturing. It puts the Boeing debacle into a larger context. Nice bit of writing.

One more thing: This just popped up at Salon — A prehistory of MAGA: “Mainstream” conservatives never really purged the fascists. Paul Rosenberg interviews David Austin Walsh, who is the author of a new book titled Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right, As I understand it, very briefly, the book chronicles that American conservativism tried to put up a wall between “principled,” “normie” conservatism and the fascist/racist Right (see Rachel Maddow, Prequel) , but it didn’t really.  In the struggle between the normies and the Nazis, the normies needed the Nazis to win elections and otherwise get anything accomplished. It seems to me the normies got way too comfortable with dog-whistling and otherwise pandering to the Nazis to keep them in the tent. And that  takes us from Reaganism to Newt Gingrich to Karl Rove and George W. Bush to Donald Trump. At some point the Nazis got the upper hand and decided they didn’t need the normies.

As expected, the House passed $61 billion in aid for Ukraine this afternoon, as well as $26 billion in aid for Israel and Gaza. Earlier they passed $8.1 billion in aid for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region and a bill that requires the current Chinese owner of TikTok to sell or face a potential ban.

Moscow Marjorie is pissed. I understand she threw a fit when many of the Dems started waving little Ukrainian flags when the bill passed.

Now these have to go back to the Senate. I don’t know how much the  House bills differ from what the Senate passed earlier. I hope the Ukraine bill can get done quickly.

The Mowcow caucus did its best to stop the Ukraine bill. MTG proposed an amendment that would have reduced the funding to zero. Some one else tried to get the bill sent back to committee. The final vote was 311 to 112. I believe all the Democrats voted yes. The vote among Republicans was 101 yes, 112 no, and one “present.”

The next question is, why did Mike Johnson decide to support aid to Ukraine? There is reporting from Politico that suggests he was swayed by new intelligence that Ukraine is on the ropes now. He seems to get that Putin wouldn’t stop and Ukraine and could eventually invade a NATO country eventually. And there’s World War III.

Will Mike Johnson be removed as Speaker? The Moscow Causcus will try. But there’s some interesting reporting from Sarah Posner at MSNBC. See Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attempts to out-Jesus Mike Johnson aren’t going to work.

Greene and her fellow ideologues may want to tread carefully. There is a growing backlash on the Christian right against the move to oust Johnson. While Greene’s MAGA influencer antics garner significant media attention, people with longtime clout in the evangelical political trenches, including Johnson himself, have been waging a quiet but scathing war against her in Christian media. The GOP’s evangelical base — vital to Republican hopes in the fall — is hearing that Greene is groundlessly attacking a godly man and imperiling the party’s election chances, thus bringing (in Johnson’s words) the Democrats’ “crazy woke agenda” closer to fruition.

Johnson himself struck first, appearing on the Christian Broadcasting Network with David Brody, a popular evangelical reporter known for nabbing newsy interviews with Washington insiders. The speaker pushed back at Greene’s attacks on his faith, including a tirade on X, railing against Johnson’s supposedly un-Christian capitulation to big government spending: “@SpeakerJohnson you can’t follow Christ and fund full term abortion clinics,” Greene wrote. Never mind that there is no federal funding for abortion, nor is there such a thing as a “full-term abortion.” Greene’s aim was to one-up Johnson as the most ardent Christian patriot in the room.

The problem for MTG, says Posner, is that Mike Johnson has been a big deal in right-wing evangelicalism for a very long time. MTG is someone on the periphery of that world, not really a long-time participant in it, and certainly not a leader of it. There is widespread concern that if there is another messy change of Speaker, it could cost Republicans seats in the House in November. Also it may be that most evengelicals aren’t as fond of Vladimir Putin as MTG is.

There’s also reporting from Time magazine that Russians have been targeting evangelicals in Ukraine with torture and imprisonment. Putin has been oppressive to all religious groups that aren’t that aren’t the Russian Orthodox Church. But he seems to especially hate evangelicals because that’s an “American” relligion.

After they beat Azat Azatyan so bad blood came out of his ears; after they sent electric shocks up his genitals; after they wacked him with pipes and truncheons, the Russians began to interrogate him about his faith. “When did you become a Baptist? When did you become an American spy?” Azat tried to explain that in Ukraine there was freedom of religion, you could just choose your faith. But his torturers saw the world the same way as their predecessors at the KGB did: an American church is just a front for the American state. …

… Evangelicals are targeted by the Russians disproportionally, and Azat’s story is typical for Russia’s systemic persecution of Protestants in occupied Ukraine. Protestants were the victims of 34 percent of the reported persecution events, and 48 percent in the Zaporizhzhia region where Azat was held. Baptists made up 13 percent of victims – the largest single group after Ukrainian Orthodox. Under Russian control 400 Baptist congregations have been lost, 17% of the total in Ukraine.   

This is the first I’ve heard of this. I wonder if Mike Johnson heard some of this, also. Awhile back there was some reporting in Christian publications that it was Volodymyr Zelensky oppressing Christians in Ukraine. This Christianity Today article from 2003 making this claim mentioned Tucker Carlson several times, which makes me suspect he was the source. It’s also the case that before he died Pat Robertson declared that Putin was compelled by God to invade Ukraine because it was part of a larger plan to invade Israel and bring about the end times. I believe I mentioned this at the time, noting that perhaps God needs better maps.

As of this afternoon, the plan as I understand it is that the House crazy fringe is not going to call for Johnson’s removal right away, but instead will build up support for removal in the House which is somehow going to force him to resign. But as I’ve also said before I would not be utterly shocked if some Democrats would vote to keep him in place, if such a vote came to the floor. Because the Republicans could always do a lot worse.

In other news: There’s been a lot of yakking about whether the Manhattan Trump trial is going to help him or hurt him politically. A lot may depend on whether he is convicted, of course. Dahlia Lithwick addressed this last week. I liked this part:

And so, those who are dismissing the electoral consequences of this criminal trial by declaring that events in Manhattan over the next few weeks will merely animate Trump’s base—a base that will see this trial as yet more proof of the Deep State’s (™) persecution of their Lord—are also demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of electoral math. You cannot mobilize the voters who are already absolutely voting for Trump to any greater heights. No matter how rabid their fury, and how bottomless their sense of shared grievance, they still get only one vote each—at least until they figure out how to commit the voter fraud they love to decry on a broader scale. The rank and file in the tank for MAGA cannot become more impactful.

A lot about this trial could have an impact on people who aren’t tuned into politics and may just be starting to pay attention to the election. And I don’t see anythnng about this trial that makes Trump look good.

And let us not forget that Monday is the day Trump’s $175 million bond may be bounced. Or at least there will be a hearing. Yesterday Letitia James asked the court to bounce it.

In a filing on Friday, James said Knight Specialty Insurance Company, which underwrote Trump’s bond, has not been able to show that it has enough collateral to back it. She described KSIC as “a small insurer that is not authorized to write business in New York and thus not regulated by the state’s insurance department,” and said the company had never written a surety bond in New York or in the past two years in any other jurisdiction.

Next week could be eventful.

The jurors and alternates are selected, and the trial begins Monday. There also was a Sandoval hearing today, which is “to let a defendant decide whether it is in his or her best interest to testify. In the hearing, which typically takes place before a trial begins, prosecutors are required to outline a defendant’s past crimes and misdeeds that could be brought up on cross-examination,” it says on the Internet somewhere. The judge will rule on Monday what questions would be allowed if Trump testifies, which he wants to do. Yes, he’s that stupid.

Some guy named Maxwell Azzarello of St. Augustine, Florida, set fire to himself in front of the courthouse. I haven’t heard if he’s dead or alive. If he’s alive he might wish he were dead. He was completely engulfed in flames. Apparently this guy tossed pamphlets around before he lit himself, and Newsweek has published a copy. He was deep, deep down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole that seems to have been of his own making. A shame. He was a young guy.

The House Moscow caucus is fixing to remove Mike Johnson as speaker. If it comes to a vote I wouldn’t be utterly surprised if some Democrats step in to save him. Not that Johnson isn’t a hard-right Christian nationalist whackjob, but I’m hearing that Democrats think he’s easier to work with than Kevin McCarthy was, Democrats might decide they’d rather have Johnson than some other House Repubican who might be another Kevin McCarthy, or worse.

I’m going to be straight with you here. If I were POTUS now, I’d be seriously considering a super-dark special ops operation that takes out Benjamn Netanyahu. With extreme prejudice. And any other extremist faction leader that’s keeping the hard-right coalition in power in the Israeli Parliament. They are a threat to the world at this point.

I understand the Biden Administration was going all-out to persuade Netanyahu to not retaliate. There are reports they even offered to step aside and let the IDF invade Rafah as long as there was no retaliation against Iran. So Bibi retaliated, and I’m sure he’ll invade Rafah anyway. There are also many reports that aid isn’t getting into Gaza any faster than it was before Israel bombed the World Kitchen trucks. Basically President Biden keeps drawing red lines, and Bibi merrily waltzes right over them.

I’m sure Netanyahu thinks Trump will be re-elected in November, which makes Biden  just a temporary annoyance in his view.

Right now it looks as if the Ukraine and Israel aid bills are about to be passed in the House. I understand they are both up for a vote in the full House tomorrow, and if that’s the case I don’t see how they wouldn’t pass. And if Congress passes an Israeli aid bill, President Biden either has to veto it or implement it. But I’d really like to cut off all military aid to Israel now. That might get Bibi’s attention.

In other news: Selection of alternate jurors continues in Manhattan. See also Trump’s covid response was even worse than you remember.

It appears that Speaker Mike Johnson is going to allow votes on all the foreign aid packages passed by the Senate.

Johnson now intends to try to pass five bills — one each for aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Indo-Pacific allies, as well as a GOP wish list of foreign policy priorities and a fifth stand-alone bill to address widespread Republican demands to strengthen the southern U.S. border. GOP leadership announced that the House would stay in session until Saturday to consider the bills.

The first three, at least, ought to pass if the entire House votes on them. The Moscow Caucus is furious and wants to fire Johnson as speaker, and that could happen, also.

Josh Marshall:

Let’s start by noting the one thing that is at least a catalyst if not the trigger: the thwarted Iranian missile attacks on Israel. That clearly changed the game for many House Republicans. Passing some Israel aid became a necessity for a number of them. I assume that Johnson concluded that without assistance from at least some Democrats that too wouldn’t be possible and that he had no choice but to move ahead with Ukraine aid too.

If the House can pass the Ukraine packcage, that would be huge.

In other news: In the Manhattan Trump trial, today they unseated a couple of jurors who had been seated. So now they’re down to five. This could take a few more days.

In more other news: USA Today reports that a lot of Trump’s campaign money is being spent in his businesses.

Trump’s joint fundraising committee wrote three checks in February and one in March to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, totaling $411,287 and another in March to Trump National Doral Miami for $62,337, according to a report filed to the Federal Election Commission this week.

Federal law and FEC regulations allow donor funds to be spent at a candidate’s business so long as the campaign pays fair market value, experts say. Trump has been doing it for years, shifting millions in campaign cash into his sprawling business empire to pay for expenses such as using his personal aircraft for political events, rent at Trump Tower and events at his properties, which has included hotels and private clubs.

And there’s this:

In a letter received by Republican digital vendors this week, the Trump campaign is asking for down-ballot candidates who use his name, image and likeness in fundraising appeals to give at least 5 percent of the proceeds to the campaign.

“Beginning tomorrow, we ask that all candidates and committees who choose to use President Trump’s name, image, and likeness split a minimum of 5% of all fundraising solicitations to Trump National Committee JFC. This includes but is not limited to sending to the house file, prospecting vendors, and advertising,” Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita wrote in the letter, which is dated April 15.

It sounds like they’ve had some drama over jury selection. Here is a link to the New York Times updates on what’s going on. Apparently one of the prospective jurors back in 2020 had put a video of people celebrating Trump’s loss on social media. The defense lawyers want her dismissed. The prosecution wants her sworn in.

The lawyers brought the prospective juror who has prompted such a fierce argument into the courtroom to question her directly. Blanche, a Trump lawyer, is asking her about one of her Election Day posts from 2020, saying it appears that the video in it, recorded around 96th Street, was a celebration of Trump’s election loss. She responds that she came across this gathering, and it seemed like a “celebratory moment in New York City.”

She felt that she was a part of history. But she says that while she understands bias exists, she very strongly believes that regardless of her political feelings or thoughts, the job of a juror “is to understand the facts of the trial and to be the judge of those facts.” She contrasts herself with others who walked out yesterday when they thought they couldn’t be impartial, saying she believes she can.

The judge decided she was credible and did not allow her to be dismissed. Then this happened:

He is not allowing the defense to dismiss her for cause. Trump squints up at Justice Merchan incredulously as the judge reads the relevant case law.

Then they moved on to argue about a prospective juror who once posted a photo of Trump captioned “orange is the new black.” I’m not sure what happened with that one. One potential juror really had posted of Trump, “get him out and lock him up,” and the Judge said, okay, you can dismiss this one. I understand they have three jurors chosen as of 3:30 EST. Update: As of 4:00 they’re actually up to six jurors. And there is a foreperson who is “originally from Ireland,” the Times says. No comment.

I also wanted to add that Trump looked really awful in the photo from yesterday. It’s said he fell asleep; he looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. Poor baby.

Late last night Trump’s lawyers filed some documents regarding the $175 million bond in the New York fraud case. The hearing for this will be on Monday, April 22.

In documents submitted late Monday night, lawyers for the former president said the cash sum Trump posted to stop New York Attorney General Letitia James from seizing his assets was secured by Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC) and is collateralized by Trump’s Charles Schwab account, which contains just over $175 million in cash.c…

… Details of how Trump and KSIC were able to secure the money and prove they could guarantee the cash have been revealed in the motion submitted on Monday night, shortly before the deadline. Former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann suggested there was something “fishy” about the arrangement between Trump and KSIC to secure the bond.

“The $175 million bond is collateralized by $175,304,075.95 in cash held in a Charles Schwab account pledged to KSIC, and KSIC has the right to exercise control over that account,” the court filings said.

“KSIC also independently maintains more than $539 million in assets and $138 million in equity and has access to more than $2 billion in assets and $1 billion in equity, of which nearly $1 billion is cash and marketable securities, pursuant to a reinsurance agreement with its parent company, Knight Insurance Company (KIC).”

OK, but Andrew Weissman wants to know why Trump bothered with a bond, for which he has to pay a fee, if he actually had the cash. “And the agreement does not give Knight a lien on the account as collateral and seems to afford Trump a two-day window to dissipate the account.”  Hmm.

Next week’s other hearing, on the gag order, is the following day, April 23.

Oh, and remember the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas? Yeah, I’d forgotten about that, too. The House sent the formal articles of impeachment to the Senate today. The Senate is expected to Do Something about the articles tomorrow. There are big doubts the impeachment will go to a full Senate trial.