Consider this an open thread to talk about whatever, including the debate. The debate starts at 9 EST. That’s 10 Central and some time tomorrow in Hawaii. I’ve worked really hard at not anticipating how the debate will go.
If you’d like something interesting to read while you wait, I recommend If Helene affects voting, Trump may pay the price by Philip Bump at WaPo, It so happens that nearly a quarter of 2020 Trump voters in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas live in counties declared federal disaster areas. They’ll be receiving all the federal aid from the Biden Administration that the Administration can shovel at them as fast as it can.
Trump has backed out of an interview on 60 Minutes. The plan had been to broadcast back-to-back interviews of Harris and Trump. The Harris interview is still on, but Trump is refusing to be interviewed.
In a statement, the Trump campaign denied it had agreed to the interview.
“Fake News. 60 Minutes begged for an interview, even after they were caught lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop back in 2020. There were initial discussions, but nothing was ever scheduled or locked in,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said.
“They insisted on cutting out of the interview to do fact-checking,” he added.
Asked by CNN if there’s still a chance Trump might sit for the interview, Cheung replied: “Now that they’ve lied about the interaction, they just f**ked themselves.”
The odd thing is Trump is still telling people that Harris doesn’t do interviews because she’s too incompetent or brain damaged or something. Even Trump’s culties might notice that she’s being interviewed and he isn’t.
The Debate Begins
Here we go …
Okay, I’ll watch for a while, but if it’s going to be Vance lying his ass off about Trump’s record, with no fact checks, I’m not sure I can stay with it.
Vance’s answer to the climate change question was weird.
I don’t have a clear sense of how this might be viewed by the infamous undecided voters. Maybe the best we can hope for is a wash.
If anyone’s here, feel free to comment. I’ll check in later.
With Trump it has sometimes been hard to tell if he knows he’s lying. Sometimes I think he knows but doesn’t care. Sometimes I think he honestly doesn’t know. Maybe a little of both. “Truth” to him is just something to be manipulated, not something to be valued for its own sake. Plus his mind is turning into mush.
Lately I’m thinking that what he says is often just an unfiltered reflection of his id. “The id engages in primary process thinking, which is primitive, illogical, irrational, and fantasy-oriented. This form of process thinking has no comprehension of objective reality, and is selfish and wishful in nature,” it says here. He’s a deeply insecure man who got through life by using money and belligerence to seize control and keep himself safe. And now he’s terrified he’s losing control. He may not get to be president again. He may not be able to stop the legal system from taking all control away from him.
So he gets in front of a microphone and shows us how terrified he is. He’s threatening to prosecute Google for running “bad stories” about him. He attacked Fox News for carrying a speech by Harris (which surprises me). According to Trump, Fox shouldn’t be allowed to present a speech by Harris. He’s not just being irrational; I say he’s being irrational because he’s terrified. If he weren’t terrified he wouldn’t care. But he is, so he crazily lashes out because these entities are not protecting him and ceding him control. He can’t stand it.
“These people are animals” (referring to migrants).
“I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We’re going to liberate our country.”
“You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You’re gonna lose your culture.”
And, finally, this gem: “They will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.”
In Trump’s rhetoric, vast hoards of subhuman brown people may already be swarming through innocent midwestern communities, raping and pillaging and taking over homes while tossing the lifeless bodies of homeowners into dumptsters. You may not be seeing that on the news, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. And if you don’t elect him, Kamala Harris will see to it it happens to you.
And, of course, none of this is real, but his followers believe him.
What I suspect is that what he’s really expressing is his own existential angst, his own fear that without the power of the presidency the Justice Department will take everything away from him. His homes, his golf courses, everthing. He’ll be tossed out and into prison. FBI agents will come for him, and life as he knows it will be over.
And then there’s his new ramble on crime, in which he fantacizes that just letting the police bring the hammer down for one day — or just “one rough hour,” — would end crime. This is of a piece with his fantasy about being “a dictator on day one.” Just give him unlimited power to do anything, and he’ll take care of all of his problems and destroy the things that scare him.
And if his poll numbers sag further, or Judge Chutkan releases incriminating information from Jack Smith’s recent super-brief, expect him to get crazier.
Over the weekend, Donald Trump began branding Vice-President Kamala Harris a criminal. “She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions,” he claimed at one point. At another, he ostentatiously paused his speech while the crowd chanted, “Lock her up!”
It is obviously unsurprising that Trump would conjure up imaginary crimes by his political opponent. In 2016, he made “Lock her up!” a signature campaign chant. In 2020, he branded Joe Biden a criminal. The pretext for Harris’s prosecution is that, as vice-president, she presided over border-enforcement policies that Trump opposes. In 2016, the pretext was Clinton’s violation of State Department email protocol. In 2020, it was disproven charges that Biden profited from his son’s business activity in Ukraine.
Obviously, none of the particulars of these allegations — in Harris’s case, Trump hasn’t even managed to manufacture a pretextual criminal allegation — matter to Trump in the slightest. His view of the law is fully relativist. Actions taken on Trump’s behalf are by inherently legal, and actions taken against him are inherently illegal.
That is why Trump continuously brands his political opponents as criminals. In addition to all three of his Democratic campaign opponents, Trump has called for criminal charges to be brought against a long list of targets, including (but not limited to) Barack Obama, John Kerry, Liz Cheney, anybody who criticizes pro-Trump judges, “lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and corrupt election officials” involved in the 2024 election, among many others. …
… Trump’s view of crime, as an activity that definitionally encompasses all political or media activity disadvantageous to him and excluding all activity by him or his allies, is so extreme that few of his allies will defend it on its own terms. Sometimes they insist his personalistic view of the justice system is not a reason to exclude him from office, since his efforts to implement failed more than they succeeded in the first term.
At this point I’m not sure he fully grasps the contept of “law.”
In other news, recently Trump has been promising no taxes on tips and also no taxes on overtime. (Harris has also taken up no taxes on tips, with the provision that this only applies to service workers. Otherwise certain highly compensated professionals could reclassify parts of their income as tips.) But in a recent speech he confessed that as an employer he refused to pay overtime.
Former president and current GOP nominee Donald Trump on Sunday admitted he “hated” to pay his staff overtime and would instead replace them with other workers to avoid doing so.
Trump’s confession came during a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, after promising to deliver “gigantic tax cuts” via his pledge to end the tax on tips, overtime and social security benefits for seniors.
“I know a lot about overtime. I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I’d get other people, I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay,” Trump boasted.
At a rally Friday in Walker, Mich., Trump said he was thinking of those in Alabama and other states hit by the storm. “We’re with you all the way, and if we were there, we’d be helping you,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”
KamalaHQ, the Harris campaign’s X account, immediately shared the video clip with its roughly 1.3 million followers, suggesting that the former president was downplaying a deadly disaster and showing a lack of empathy.
“You’ll be okay,” the tweet read, along with the parenthetical note, “(Dozens of deaths have already been reported).”
Plus, Project 2025 calls for doing away with the National Weather Service (what idiots come up with this?). And, of course, since the hurricane Trump has repeated his belief that climate change is a hoax. I do agree with this Daily Kos poster that Harris needs to show up in North Carolina if at all possible. There are reasons why she needs to stay away if she can’t go without a huge entourae, of course. But keep an eye on this. Trump will turn it into a “who cares more” competition.
The Vice President Debate happens tomorrow night. I’ll be here with an open thread if anyone wants to join me.
If you missed Kamala Harris’s speech on border security yesterday, here it is.
I’ve not seen much in the way of editorial commentary on this speech. I thought it was politically smart. She’s throwing the border security issue right back at Trump and saying he did nothing but make it worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if parts of this speech end up in campaign ads.
Today I’m having a hard time focusing, so here’s some other stuff to read:
Those of you who have to deal with Hurricane Helene today, please stay safe.
I don’t pay much attention to New York City politics, but I suppose I should note that Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by the feds for something or other. I am not shocked. I was surprised he was elected in the first place, because he seemed hinky to me. IMO he’s been a poor mayor, and even if he somehow beats the rap I doubt he’ll be re-elected. If the city’s Democratic progressives can all get behind one candidate instead of canceling each other out on the ballot, maybe NYC can get a decent mayor some day. Axios is reporting that Andy Cuomo is thinking about running for the job, so a united front front from the progressives might be the only thing keeping that waste of space out of Gracie Mansion. See also Josh Marshall, Adams Indicted; Gotham Yawns.
Jack Smith’s really long brief will be submitted to Judge Tanya Chutkan today. Politico:
The filing — a legal brief accompanied by supporting exhibits — is expected to contain never-before-seen evidence about Trump’s efforts to subvert the last election. It could include snippets of interviews prosecutors conducted with some of Trump’s top advisers, documents Smith procured from the National Archives and a log of Trump’s Twitter activity as violence raged on Jan. 6, 2021.
But prosecutors are not going to file these documents publicly. They must first submit them “under seal” to Chutkan, who will then decide how much of the evidence is fit for public release.
Dem Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has just introduced a sweeping Supreme Court reform bill that includes adding six new justices, which sounds about right. I don’t expect it to pass in this Congress, but let’s get the proposal out there for the next one. And this might give the Chief Justice something to think about.
Some good news I missed: On Tuesday a judge ordered that all of Alex Jones’s media empire must be liquidated to pay the Sandy Hook families. CNN:
Everything from the Infowars.com domain, to its social media accounts, subscriber list, and even production equipment and studio set will be auctioned off piece by piece to the highest bidder on November 13, according to the auction house handling the bidding.
The proceeds of the sale, which could fetch millions of dollars, will be used to chip away at the nearly $1.5 billion Jones owes the families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Jones went into personal bankruptcy after he was ordered to pay the massive sum for pushing false conspiracy theories about the 2012 massacre that left 26 people dead.
And Ruhle wasn’t throwing softballs; it was an intelligent and occasionally challenging interview. Yes it was MSNBC, but note that no one ever complains that all of Trump’s interviews are with Fox or some other clown from the Right Wing Circus. Trump wouldn’t last five minutes with Rachel Maddow.
The Hill noted that “Harris’s interview with Ruhle went deeper into her proposed economic policies than any of the other media appearances and interviews she’s done as the Democratic nominee.” That’s because Ruhle wasn’t asking stupid Dana Bash gotcha questions about why Harris changed her mind about fracking and instead asked questions about Harris’s actual economic policies. It was very informative, I thought. Here’s the video:
The economic policy speech she gave earlier in the day has been well received, as near as I can tell, by mainstream news sources. Right-wing media are tearing it apart, of course.
First off, do listen to Sam Elliott tell you why you should vote for Kamala Harris.
Love it. Next, Paul Waldman writes about the media elites who complain that Kamala Harris doesn’t let them interview her enough.
Other than one sit-down she and Tim Walz did with CNN, her campaign has treated the elite media as though they have no particular claim on her time; she has done more local radio and TV interviews than national ones.
You can read many complaints about Harris’s lack of media accessibility (see here or here or here or here), though reporters seem unconcerned about the fact that Donald Trump does no interviews with them either. He talks to Fox News, other right-wing outlets, and dudebro podcasts, but he does not sit down with major newspapers or television networks, and somehow they don’t seem to mind. But as always, Democrats are held to a higher standard, scolded for failing to uphold the most elevated democratic norms while Republicans’ violation of those norms is taken for granted.
I started to watch that CNN interview with Dana Bash, but bailed before it was over because the questions were stupid. It was all “gotcha” (Why did you flip flop on fracking?) or bits of right-wing talking points, re-framed as questions. Instead of asking about her energy policies, Bash tries to trip her up by grilling her for changing a position on fracking. As a viewer, I found that annoying and tiresome. If I were the candidate I’d be frustrated also.
Basically, Waldman says, media elites are souring on Harris because she is not coming to them as a supplicant and asking humbly for their attention, and he fears they may collectively find some reason to portray her negatively going forward. So let’s watch for that.
At SF Gate, see Drew Magary, The New York Times is Washed. The writer is annoyed because the NY Times persists in calling the presidential race “deadlocked.”
We’re just over a month away from the presidential election and, if you ask the New York Times, the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president/Keystone kriminal Donald Trump remains “deadlocked.” Despite the fact that Trump is losing in Pennsylvania, a state he needs to win, by four points. Despite the fact that polls in North Carolina just turned in Harris’ favor. Despite the fact that a grassroots campaign for Harris, one that numbers in the hundreds of thousands, sprung up the instant her boss ceded his spot in the race to her. Despite the fact that Trump got his ass beat in a nationally televised debate with Harris after repeating, with supreme gusto, the lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets. The lie that his own running mate openly said was a lie.
You don’t have to work terribly hard to sum up this race as it stands: Harris is destroying Trump, because Trump is a deranged old s—tbag. See how easy that was?You don’t have to work terribly hard to sum up this race as it stands: Harris is destroying Trump, because Trump is a deranged old s—tbag. See how easy that was?
Well, it is pretty close in the polls.
Someone must have told Trump that he’s losing women’s votes, because now in his speeches and social media “truths” he’s trying to appeal to women. But all he’s doing is being creepy, because that’s who he is. The adjuticated rapist and serial maligner of E. Jean Carroll held a national convention that was said to be all testosterone, all the time. But lately he’s taken to telling women “I am your protector” and if he gets another term they’d be so much happier. And it’s creepy. Even Jonathan Chait thinks so.
The Trump pitch begins with a winking acknowledgment that he is losing among female voters. (He calls his deficit among female voters “fake news” but proceeds to follow the premise anyway.) Then Trump makes a normal, or normalish, pitch that his administration will deliver lower crime, inflation, and illegal immigration. Then the pitch gets very weird.
Trump casts himself as a kind of husband to America’s women. “I am your protector,” he declares repeatedly. He presents himself as the solution to all the problems he imagines they are having in their personal lives:
You will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger. You’re not gonna be in danger any longer. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected, and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.
He has no idea what women’s actual concerns are, obviously. But yeah, this is creepy.
Trump’s “you will no longer be thinking about abortion” is, clearly, an attempt to tell us what to think. He’s stressed because he’s getting a clue that the abortion issue could cost him the election. So he’s trying to exert his authority by ordering us not to think about it.
Trump’s handpicked Ohio Republican Senate nominee, Bernie Moreno, at a town hall in Warren County last Friday night, deplored the fact that some women choose to vote on the issue of abortion rights. Indeed, he continued, “It’s a little crazy, especially for women past 50. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”
So Moreno, like Trump, likes to tell women what issues they should care about. He’s even got this one conveniently broken down by women’s age.
Of course, in his MAGA-male way, Moreno can’t seem to imagine anyone caring about anything for any reason other than the narrowest self-interest. Could women past 50 care about their daughters? Or about younger women in general? Or about personal freedom?
Not in Moreno’s world.
In Moreno’s world, and Trump’s, men act in their self-interest, and women are not to think for themselves.
Rightie men as a whole cannot hear what women say. It’s like their brains blank out as soon as they hear a feminine voice. Which is one reason I got a kick out of the Sam Elliott video.
Jack Smith is about to drop a 180-page brief on Judge Tanya Chutkan in the J6 case, it says here.
“In a new filing, the Special Counsel tells Judge Tanya Chutkan its opening immunity brief will be roughly 180 pages with roughly half devoted to a ‘detailed factual proffer’ and plenty of sensitive material warranting redactions,” the attorney added. “The defense opposes the Special Counsel’s request to file such an oversized brief and has asked to have until Tuesday at 5 pm to submit a written opposition.”
Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, also reported on the upcoming brief, saying, “Jack Smith signals his brief on presidential immunity, due Thursday, will come in at 180 pages.”
Legal analyst Allison Gill, better known as Mueller, She Wrote, added that “Jack Smith asks for permission to exceed the page limit for his immunity brief. It will be 180 pages, and as expected, they intend to file a substantial part of it UNDER SEAL.”
Former prosecutor Barb McQuade said, “Not a surprise that Jack Smith’s brief in immunity case is lengthy. He plans to lay out the mountain of evidence against Trump.”
I expect, on top of everything else this week, Trump’s lawyers are going to claim an emergency to try to ban Jack Smith’s book report, currently due Thursday.
As you’ll recall, after Judge Tanya Chutkan finally got the Trump January 6 case back, she agreed with Jack Smith’s proposed path forward: They would submit a brief explaining how the superseding indictment complies with the Supreme Court’s immunity opinion. Chutkan set a deadline of September 26, Thursday, for that brief.
Trump seems certain that if voters see that brief, he will lose the election.
Last Thursday, Trump’s lawyers submitted what was supposed to be a discovery filing, in which they basically said, “NOOOOOOO!!!!! No briefing before the election.” …
…Trump will oppose not just the excess pages, 180 instead of 45, but the entire filing. Now he’s got one less day to make that argument.
Which is what you need to understand the other things in the Jack Smith request. Trump is going to stage an emergency to get this question elevated to SCOTUS to prevent the filing this week. He will try to take things SCOTUS ordered Chutkan to do out of her hands, to put them back before SCOTUS.
Anticipating that, Smith starts his request by laying out that he is just trying to do what Chutkan ordered, to show that SCOTUS ordered precisely this briefing.
Of course, the current SCOTUS doesn’t seem to mind looking corrupt and inconsistent, as long as it helps Trump.
I’m sure you’ll be distressed to know that a lot of things are not working out for Trump these days. For example, the Guardian reports that in August the Harris campaign and DNC raised $257 million in campaign contributions, while Trump and the RNC took in only $85 million. And I believe that’s way down from previous months.
Trump responded by announcing he is selling commemorative silver coins, although it’s not clear profit from the coins will go into his campaign. The coins are $100 each, which is quite a markup for silver.
From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The nonprofit research group scoured publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News.
This was expected. There is data going back years from many countries showing that criminalizing abortion tends to correlate to higher maternal mortality rates. Maybe Republicans should have thought about that.
Trump also endeared himself to women by calling MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle a “dumb as a rock bimbo” for arguing in favor of Harris on Bill Maher’s show. Ruhel’s opinion so disturbed Trump he issued a long tirade on Truth Social in which he insulted Ruhle, Maher, Bret Stephens (also on the show), “MSDNC,” and the New York Times. I think we can say that Trump is not exactly a roll-with-the punches guy. That man’s head is going to explode any day now.
Mark Robinson did not drop out of the gubernatorial race in North Carolina. He blew past the deadline for dropping out and will be the GOP candidate until the bitter end. Several news stories say that Trump is trying to ignore the mess. But Trump has a rally scheduled in North Carolina tomorrow. Robinson will not be there, but if any of the press can get close to Trump they’ll no doubt ask Trump to comment on Robinson. And Trump will no doubt say he barely knows the guy. Meanwhile, the Harris-Walz campaign is said to be preparing television ads tying Robinson to Trump. None are online yet, but I bet they will contain some of the same news bits as this CNN report:
Yesterday, as the Robinson bombshell was all over the news, Stable Genius Trump addressed Jewish audiences about rising antisemitism in the United States. He brilliantly made his point by adding to the rising antisemitism. According to The Forward,
In a speech Thursday billed as former President Donald Trump’s answer to rising antisemitism, he said Jews would bear much of the responsibility if he loses the presidential election.
And in a second speech later in the evening, to the Israeli American Council, Trump elaborated on his past assertions in recent weeks that Israel would not survive if he doesn’t win in November, by painting a doomsday scenario in which Iran launches nuclear weapons and invoking the Holocaust.
“The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” Trump said during the first speech of the evening, an hourlong address at an event called “Fighting Antisemitism in America,” organized with GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, at the Hyatt Regency hotel on Capitol Hill.
“You can’t let this happen,” he told his largely Jewish audience.
Trump in recent weeks has offended many Jews by questioning their mental health for voting for Democrats — as most Jews do — and predicting Israel’s demise should Harris win. But Thursday night’s comments seem to represent an escalation in Trump’s rhetoric, in that he singled out Jewish Americans — who represent only about 2% of the electorate — as a significant reason he might lose the election, one whose results he has never pledged to accept.
Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said after the speech that Trump’s remarks endanger Jews. …
… Trump often talks about his support for Israel in transactional terms, suggesting Israelis owe him loyalty in return. Many Israelis appreciate how, in his first term, Trump relocated the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s control over the Golan Heights, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and brokered the Abraham Accords.
And while his complaints about American Jews voting for Democrats have grown common in recent weeks, the theme is not new. After the 2020 presidential election, in which 77% of Jewish voters chose President Joe Biden, Trump accused them of ingratitude.
In these and other remarks Trump consistently conflates all Jews with Israelis, and assumes that American Jews owe their first loyalty to Israel, not the U.S. See also Rolling Stone. Once again, Trump’s utter lack of self-awareness is stunning.
And speaking of bigotry, the very Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, has an op ed in the New York Times defending the Hatians of Springfield and (more in sorrow than anger) calling out Trump and Vance for spreading vicious lies about them.
What’s Up with the Teamsters?
What’s really pissed me off today are the Teamsters. There’s something seriously out of kilter with its leadership. See especially The Gigantic Failure That Led to the Teamsters’ Decision Not to Endorse Harris or Trump by Steven Greenhouse at Slate. Do read this. Open in an incognito window if you hit a paywall. The difference between Trump and Harris on unions is massive. There’s no excuse for this.
The Teamsters say that the decision was based on an “internal survey” of members. What they didn’t tell you was that this “survey” was not an actual polling of members but taken from responses to a survey printed on the back of a Teamster magazine. Steven Greenhouse continues,
But to my mind, that internal survey showing so many Teamsters backing Trump highlighted something else: The union’s leadership must have done a dreadful job informing and educating rank-and-file members about how hugely anti-union Trump is and how aggressively anti-union and anti-worker Trump’s first administration was (and appointees were). Also, Teamster leaders evidently also failed to explain to rank-and-file members that Harris has fought for policy after policy strongly backed by the Teamsters and other unions, including the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which is the labor movement’s No. 1 legislative priority and would make it considerably easier for the Teamsters and other unions to organize. Trump opposes the PRO Act. Harris also supported the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which together will create hundreds of thousands of good-paying union jobs for Teamsters and other union members. Harris, unlike Trump, also supports increasing the pathetically low $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage to at least $15.
This could be the real reason:
Many Teamsters remain angry at Biden for signing legislation in December 2022 that blocked a threatened nationwide rail strike. The Teamsters board seemed to be making this a litmus test, wanting Harris and Trump to pledge not to block a national rail strike even though presidents and Congress are specifically empowered to do so under the Railway Labor Act.
The problem was that a prolonged rail strike at the time would have devastated the fragile economy, in particular the Biden Administration’s work to lower inflation without triggering a recession.
The alleged second Trump assasination attempter, Ryan Routh, appears to be a vocational flake. Multiple news organizations have checked him out. He has no affiliations with any political activist group, left or right. He was a Trump supporter in 2016 but changed his mind at some point.
He did spend time in Ukraine, where he claimed to be recruiting foreign soldiers to fight against the Russian invasion. He also claimed to have somehow obtained a lot of drones for the cause. But it appears he mostly just hung out near the Kyiv hotel where most of the journalists stayed and occasionally got himself interviewed. The Ukrainians made him out to be a crank with several loose screws and wouldn’t work with him. In truth he recruited nobody and apparently obtained nothing.
What’s more interesting to me is this story in Public Notice by Lisa Needham. Although by all appearances Routh intended to shoot someone on the golf course — presumably Donald Trump — all he’s been charged with are weapons charges. And it’s probably the case that’s about all the law can hang on him. And even that is mostly because he has a prior felony conviction and is not supposed to possess firearms. If he’d been a genuine “law-abiding citizen,” he’d be down to one count, of possessing a firearm with a scraped-off serial number.
Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida got rid of even the most meager safety requirements, such as requiring a permit or undergoing training and a background check. Sure, it’s still against the law for a person with a felony conviction to have a gun, but what guardrails are left to stop him from getting one or two or a dozen?
None of this is stopping DeSantis from demanding that Florida take the investigation away from the federal government, not just because he’s sure the Deep State will bury the truth or whatever, but also so that Routh could be charged under state law with attempted murder and potentially serve life in prison. Good luck, buddy. Routh didn’t get a shot off and was roughly 300-500 yards from Trump when he was spotted. He wasn’t even trespassing, as he was on the public side of the golf course fence.
To get to life in prison, Florida would have to charge Routh with attempted first-degree felony murder and prove that he was attempting to kill Trump in the course of committing a different underlying crime like arson, burglary, or carjacking. DeSantis thinks he’ll get there by exploring “red flags” about Routh’s “associations, his motivations, and his ideology,” but even if Routh was a card-carrying Marxist who had been volunteering for the Harris campaign for months, it doesn’t make his behavior attempted murder.
Regarding the scraped-off serial number, Needham points out that “In 2022, a federal judge in West Virginia concluded that since there were no serial numbers at the time of the Founding Fathers, it’s unconstitutional to ban people from obliterating serial numbers or possessing a gun with an obliterated serial number.” That decision was reversed, but with dissents. One of the dissenters was a Trump appointee.
And this is what happens when gun laws are written by a crazy gun-worshiping cult. If Routh made no declarations that he intended to kill Trump that day, he could argue in court he was just on the lookout for alligators, or something. As far as Routh’s “red flags” are concerned, they seem to say that like Trump himself, Routh is mentally miswired and obsessed with seeking glory. According to several news stories he was smiling and laughing during his arraignment, and why not? He was finally getting what he wanted — attention.
And I’m certainly not saying the law should let Routh go. He’s not a stable person. If it could be guaranteed he wouldn’t have access to guns he might be harmless enough, but this is America. Anyone can always get a firearm, somehow. But he’s probably not psychotic, just flakey. So I’m not sure he could be committed to a mental hospital under present law. I don’t know what anyone’s going to do with him.
Routh sounds a bit like Charles J. Guiteau, who assassinated President James Garfield in 1881. Guiteau was an obscure man who had supported Garfield in the 1880 election. He published and distributed a badly written essay about Garfield to help him get elected, and then when Garfield won Guiteau became obsessed with the belief that Garfield owed him. He spent some time loitering near the White House, accosting State Department officials on the streets, demanding to be assigned to the consul in Vienna or Paris. And eventually he got tired of waiting and decided God wanted him to shoot Garfield, and he did. Flakes with guns can be dangerous.
My representative in the U.S. House is a Republican named Mike Lawler. By current GOP standards Lawler probably qualifies as a “centrist,” meaning he doesn’t support stealing bread from homeless orphans, but it’s hard to tell. Whatever. I’ll be voting for his Dem opponent, Mondaire Jones. The Dems seem to think this is a flippable seat. A lot of money is going into the campaigns.
New York Rep. Marc Molinaro last week gave oxygen to the debunked rumor that Haitian newcomers to Springfield, Ohio, abduct and eat cats and dogs — posting it to X, Instagram and Facebook as one of a multitude of attacks meant to challenge his Democratic rival’s commitment to border security.
Two congressional districts to the south, Rep. Mike Lawler, whose constituency includes a sizable Haitian American population, released a statement urging his fellow Republicans to refrain from circulating unsubstantiated rumors. It was attributed to a spokesperson and blamed no one by name.
Lawler is trying his best to signal the Haitian community that he’s not on board with the hate on Haitians being pushed by other Republicans. But he’s trying to do this without calling out other Republicans. Mondaire Jones has no such restraints, of course, and I understand he is running with the issue. It might make a difference in the election.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Vance knew good and well there was no pet-eating going on in Springfield before he started pushing the story. From Rolling Stone:
According to a Wednesday report from The Wall Street Journal, on Sept. 9 — the day Vance first posted on X claiming local cats were being eaten by Springfield’s Haitians — most of which are in the town legally — his office called local authorities to verify the claim.
A Vance staffer “asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten [true]?’” City Manager Bryan Heck told the Journal. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
The subtext, I suspect, is that the people in charge at the Wall Street Journal realize the Springfield-Haitian flap is hurting Republicans more than helping and are trying to tamp it down before it does any more damage. If they have to throw Vance under the bus, so be it. Nobody likes Vance.
Of course, House Republicans don’t need much help at being their own worst enemies. Some time today the House is supposed to vote on a government funding bill to avoid a partial shutdown starting October 1. “Johnson’s proposed bill combines a six-month stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, a controversial proposal that would require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote,” says the Guardian. This is on orders from Trump, of course.
This same bill was pulled last week because Johnson realized he didn’t have the votes. Even some of his colleagues are surprised he’s pushing the same bill now. Oddly, to me anyway, it’s the Crazy Causes that opposes the bill to be voted on today. I take it it’s not crazy enough.
The Senate has already made it known it will not pass the spending bill with the voter measure included. So even if it passes in the House — and it probably won’t — it’s dead in the Senate. And Mitch McConnell is calling out the House maneuver as beyond stupid. Congress should not be risking a shutdown that will be blamed on Republicans right before an election, says Mitch.
If the poison pill spending bill fails to pass in the House, the sensible thing to do would be for the House to quickly pass a “clean” bill that isn’t too crazy so that the Senate will pass it to avoid the shutdown. I don’t think either party wants a shutdown drama right now. But whether the House Crazy Caucus will let Mike Johnson get away with that is a big question. Marjorie Taylor Greene is already on the warpath about a possible “bait and switch.”
“Johnson is leading a fake fight that he has no intention of actually fighting,” Greene said Tuesday on X. “I refuse to lie to anyone that this plan will work and it’s already [dead on arrival] this week. Speaker Johnson needs to go to the Democrats, who he has worked with the entire time, to get the votes he needs to do what he is already planning to do.”
Donald Trump, who has championed baseless claims of widespread non-citizen voting, has increased the pressure on Johnson by insisting that the House should only approve a government funding bill if it is linked to “election security” measures.
“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, last week.
Trump does not care if this costs Republicans the Senate and House. He’s just thinking about himself.
[Update: The bill failed in the House. All but three Dems and 14 Republicans voted no. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie voted present. I’m still looking for the identity of the three Dems who voted yes.]
In the first 18 months of this Congress, only 70 laws were enacted. Calculations by political scientist Tobin Grant, who tracks congressional output over time, put this Congress on course to be the do-nothingest since 1859-1861 — when the Union was dissolving. But Johnson’s House isn’t merely unproductive; it is positively lunatic. Republicans have filled their committee hearings and their bills with white nationalist attacks on racial diversity and immigrants, attempts to ban abortion and to expand access to the sort of guns used in mass shootings, incessant harassment of LGBTQ Americans, and even routine potshots at the U.S. military. They insulted each other’s private parts, accused each other of sexual and financial crimes, and scuffled with each other in the Capitol basement. They screamed “Bullshit!” at President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address. They stood up for the Confederacy and used their official powers to spread conspiracy theories about the “Deep State.” Some even lent credence to the idea that there has been a century-old Deep State coverup of space aliens, with possible involvement by Mussolini and the Vatican.
There are indications that Kamala Harris is getting some decent post-debate bounce. It’s still closer than it would be in a sane world.
J.D. Vance explained Trump’s concept of a plan for health care. Per Jonathan Chait:
Vance explained the Trump plan during an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker: “He, of course, does have a plan for how to fix American health care, but a lot of it goes down, Kristen, to deregulating insurance markets, so that people can actually choose a plan that makes sense for them.”
Vance is advocating a partial or complete return to the system that existed before Obamacare. In that world, prior to 2014, it was very difficult to find affordable coverage unless you were on Medicare, Medicaid, or got insurance through your employer. There was a market for individual insurance, and it was possible to buy plans if you didn’t get coverage through a government plan or through work. But that market was dominated by “adverse selection” — the only way insurers could make money was to weed out any customers likely to need medical care.
Was Vance asleep from 2008 to 2010 when the details of the Affordable Care Act were being fought over? And back when millions of people couldn’t get health insurance at any price? Unreal.
There have been 33 separate bomb threats made against schools in Springfield, said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. Several of them came from “overseas,” from one country in particular, but DeWine would not say which country. No actual bombs were found, but of course they have to be taken seriously nonetheless.
Law enforcement officials at a Virginia military base are still actively investigating an August incident at Arlington National Cemetery involving what has been described as a confrontation between former President Donald Trump’s campaign and a cemetery worker, even as the Army says it considers the matter closed, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
As part of the probe led by the Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall Police Department, an investigator with the base’s police department has sought in recent days to contact Trump campaign officials about the incident, the sources said.
Investigators are seeking to interview the officials involved in the incident, according to the sources.
The vote fell largely along party lines, 51 to 44, short of the 60 votes the bill would’ve needed to advance.
“Republicans want people to think they support IVF because they know how unpopular that position is. They want to keep their true agenda hidden from the public,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned during a press conference on the steps of the Capitol. He was flanked by his Democratic colleagues, who held up large photos of families who have used IVF.
They’re more afraid of the Fetus people than they are of being consistent.
