SCOTUS is more useless than I feared.

Steering clear of a political firestorm for now, the Supreme Court said Friday it would not immediately decide the key question of whether Donald Trump has broad immunity for actions he took as president challenging his 2020 election loss.

The court denied without comment special counsel Jack Smith’s request asking the justices to circumvent the normal appeals court process and quickly decide the question, which looms large in Trump’s prosecution in Washington over allegations of election interference.

I’m sure there will be more commentary on this soon.

I’m still here; I’ve just gotten really busy. Christmas stuff, mostly. And now I’m too tired to wsrite much.

Some Colorado ruling, huh?

When I first heard that Trump had been found disqualified to run for POTUS in Colorado, I assumed the SCOTUS would reverse this pretty quickly. And they might. But the fun part is going to see what kind of hoops the justices will have to jump through to reverse it. Adam Serwer:

The Colorado court weighed all of this in arriving at its decision. “We do not reach these conclusions lightly. We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us,” the justices in the majority wrote. “We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”

In framing the stakes this way, the Colorado court is calling the bluff of the U.S. Supreme Court’s originalists, forcing its conservative justices to choose between their purported legal philosophy and the partisan interests of the party with which they identify. The ruling itself seems written with a consciously originalist interpretation, with an eye toward legitimizing its conclusions to the justices who will ultimately be compelled to deal with the case.

The Colorado justices wrote a very originalist/textualist decision, and even cited an earlier Bret Kavanaugh decision as a precedent. So if the court nixies this it’s going to have to reject originalism.

This could be fun.

This seems the stuff of alternative realities. But it isn’t.

Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday invoked Vladimir V. Putin to support his case that the four criminal indictments he is facing are political payback, quoting the Russian president saying that the charges undercut the argument that the United States is an example of democracy for the world.

Mr. Trump made the comment during a campaign speech in Durham, N.H., in which he focused on pocketbook concerns of voters, hammered the state’s Republican governor, who endorsed one of his rivals, mocked his lower-polling competitors for not performing better and painted a dystopian vision of a country in “hell” under his successor, President Biden.

“Even Vladimir Putin says that Biden’s — and this is a quote — politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia, because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,” Mr. Trump said as he railed against the 91 criminal charges he is facing, citing Mr. Putin speaking in September.

Mr. Trump added: “So, you know, we talk about democracy, but the whole world is watching the persecution of a political opponent that’s kicking his ass. It’s an amazing thing. And they’re all laughing at us.”

If we could go back in time about 60 years and tell Americans that some day the presumed Republiccan presidential nominee would not only be under several criminal indictments, he’d be quoting (with approval) a Russian dictator and slamming American democracy, and that this guy could possibly win — they wouldn’t believe us. It’s like the Republican base has become the mirror opposite of what Republicans used to be.

CNN added a bit to it: ““Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. He’s a threat,” he told supporters at a rally in Durham, New Hampshire.” Joe Biden called him a threat to demoracy, so he has to return the favor. It’s the “I’m not the puppet. You’re the puppet” claim he threw at Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Trump also loves Viktor Orban, of course.

Republican polling leader Donald Trump approvingly quoted autocrats Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary, part of an ongoing effort to deflect from his criminal prosecutions and spin alarms about eroding democracy against President Biden. …

… He went on to align himself with Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who has amassed functionally autocratic power through controlling the media and changing the country’s constitution. Orban has presented his leadership as a model of an “illiberal” state and has opposed immigration for leading to “mixed race” Europeans. Democratic world leaders have sought to isolate Orban for eroding civil liberties and bolstering ties with Putin.

But Trump called him “highly respected” and welcomed his praise as “the man who can save the Western world.”

CNN reported that Trump also called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “very nice.” Human rights groups might disagree.

This is from the NY Times:

At the rally on Saturday, a relatively new slogan for his campaign — “Better Off With Trump” — was displayed on a screen over Mr. Trump’s head as he stood onstage before a packed crowd at the Whittemore Center at the University of New Hampshire. In his speech, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Biden’s economic policies, and then broadly said the president had contributed to the degradation of Americans’ everyday lives.

“We’re going to bring our country back from hell. It’s in hell,” Mr. Trump said. He cited statistics like mortgage rates and attacked Mr. Biden’s energy policies. He also revived a widely condemned comment about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” noting that immigrants are coming not just from South America but also Africa and Asia. He did not mention Europe.

Who is buying this stuff? Racists, obviously. But there was a time our national leaders liked to say things like “We stand, as we have always stood from our earliest beginnings, for the independence and equality of all nations. This nation was born of revolution and raised in freedom. And we do not intend to leave an open road for despotism.” (John Kennedy, 1961) Trump is an open road to despotism. A whole lot of Americans are, apparently, completely deaf to this.

And then there are the evangelicals. I’ve been reading the book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta. I’m about a third of the way through it. It’s a survey of how screwed up evangelicalism in the U.S. is right now. Alberta is himself a sincere evangelical. I’d call him an old-school, traditional sort of evangelical. He is genuinely appalled at Trump support among evangelicals and the rest of the crap that’s coming out of evangelical churches. One of the points he makes is that a lot of these people falling into rabbit holes of crazy are genuinely convinced that the “secular left” is out to get them and destroy Christianity. Certainly a lot of people are (understandably) hostile to organized religion these days, but I’m not seeing calls for violence against Christians.

And, apparently, it’s just American evangelicals who are crazy. Evangelicals in Europe and Australia are still normal. So what’s causing the crazy is something happening here.

At one point a bunch of people were rushing to buy some dreadful pro-Christian nationalist book, saying we’d better get it now, because the secular left will somehow round up all the copies and burn them. They really believe this. And yes, I called it a dreadful book, but burning books doesn’t make ignorance go away.

By the same token, a lot of the racists must really believe the Great Replacement Theory, that “the left” somehow wants to replace white people with non-white people. So book burning (by them) is okay; indiscriminate killing of nonwhite people is excusable.  They have given themselves permission to do unto others what they believe someone wants to do unto them. Except they are imagining things.

Conservatives have lost the culture war, says David Atkins. Here’s just some of his argument:

Contrary to the right-wing insistence that “woke goes broke,” the biggest movie of the year was Barbie, a stridently and subversively feminist juggernaut that raked in over $1.36 billion at the global box office. Oppenheimer, a nuanced meditation on the creation and use of the American nuclear bomb, followed closely behind with just under $1 billion in global ticket sales and broke box office records for a biopic. Disney’s live-action version of The Little Mermaid, which endured heavily racist conservative attacks for featuring a Black lead, hauled in $569 million globally and broke streaming records on streaming service Disney+.

Meanwhile, few people in history have lost as much money as quickly as Elon Musk has since taking over Twitter (now X). After endorsing Biden in 2020, Musk has become a right-wing icon by promoting homophobic, transphobic, racist, and anti-Semitic positions while advocating far-right conspiracy theories all the time feigning to be a zealous free speech advocate even as he caves to authoritarians. He bought Twitter largely because he was unhappy with its supposed left-leaning slant and has shifted the platform well to the right. The result? A financial disaster. Since the takeover, major advertisers have been fleeing Twitter (sorry, X). The flight has accelerated to crisis levels since Musk endorsed the anti-Semitic Great Replacement conspiracy. X is now worth at most $19 billion, compared to the $44 billion he paid. The enterprise is in grave danger of being forced into bankruptcy by its creditors.

It stands to reason. Counties that voted for Biden constitute 70 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Americans continue to urbanize, with the percentage living in urban areas reaching 80 percent and growing. Blue states remain more prosperous than red states and subsidize them heavily.

And so on. The Right really is falling behind in nearly every way such a thing can be measured, and while they may not consciousely admit this, deep down they must feel it. And this makes them dangerous.

But they’re doing it to themselves. The “left” is not taking things away from the economies of red states. Red states are making stupid economic choices. And the “secular left” is not turning the young folks away from Christianity. The young folks see people calling themselves Christian on teevee and want to part of that.

Meanwhile,  unfortunately, a whole lot of Americans who are not crazy and not especially dangerous are not following politics closely enough to know what’s going on. Will they show up to vote next year? Who knows?

Election years are always stressful, but 2024 is going to be unimaginably nuts.

Just happened: Jury Orders Giuliani to Pay $148 Million to Election Workers He Defamed. 

On to the outrage du jour:

A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said.

In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.

The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN.

The intelligence was so sensitive that lawmakers and congressional aides with top secret security clearances were able to review the material only at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where their work scrutinizing it was itself kept in a locked safe.

It gets better.

The binder was last seen at the White House during Trump’s final days in office. The former president had ordered it brought there so he could declassify a host of documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. Under the care of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the binder was scoured by Republican aides working to redact the most sensitive information so it could be declassified and released publicly.

The Russian intelligence was just a small part of the collection of documents in the binder, described as being 10 inches thick and containing reams of information about the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. But the raw intelligence on Russia was among its most sensitive classified materials, and top Trump administration officials repeatedly tried to block the former president from releasing the documents.

We’re getting to the juicy part.

The day before leaving office, Trump issued an order declassifying most of the binder’s contents, setting off a flurry of activity in the final 48 hours of his presidency. Multiple copies of the redacted binder were created inside the White House, with plans to distribute them across Washington to Republicans in Congress and right-wing journalists.

Instead, copies initially sent out were frantically retrieved at the direction of White House lawyers demanding additional redactions.

Just minutes before Joe Biden was inaugurated, Meadows rushed to the Justice Department to hand-deliver a redacted copy for a last review. Years later, the Justice Department has yet to release all of the documents, despite Trump’s declassification order. Additional copies with varying levels of redactions ended up at the National Archives.

But an unredacted version of the binder containing the classified raw intelligence went missing amid the chaotic final hours of the Trump White House. The circumstances surrounding its disappearance remain shrouded in mystery.

The binder didn’t turn up among the documents seize from Mar-a-Lago. CNN goes on to say that Cassidy Hutchinson believes Mark Meadows took the binder home with him. Meadows denies this.

The binder’s origins trace back to 2018, when Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes, compiled a classified report alleging the Obama administration skewed intelligence in its assessment that Putin had worked to help Trump in the 2016 election.

The GOP report, which criticized the intelligence community’s “tradecraft,” scrutinized the highly classified intelligence from 2016 that informed the assessment Putin and Russia sought to assist Trump’s campaign. 

If Nunes is behind this, I assume it’s junk as far as Russian interference in the election is concerned. But some stuff in it is genuinely hyper-sensitive. The CIA wouldn’t let Republicans handle the documents unless they were kept in a safe within a CIA vault, or a safe within a safe. CIA Director Gina Haspel was concerned release of the documents would reveal sources and methods. Trump nearly fired her because she was opposed to releasing the stuff in the binder.

I believe Kate Cox had already left Texas when the Texas Supreme Court decided that she  didn’t qualify as an “exception” under Texas law. There’s something about this decision that needs to be emphasized. In one part of the decision, the TSC defended Texas law by saying that the exceptions in the law provide adequate projection for women’s health. From the decision:

These laws reflect the policy choice that the Legislature has made, and the courts must respect that choice. Part of the Legislature’s choice is to permit a significant exception to the general prohibition against abortion. And it has delegated to the medical—rather than the legal—profession the decision about when a woman’s medical circumstances warrant this exception. … If a doctor, using her “reasonable medical judgment,” decides that a pregnant woman has such a condition, then the exception applies and Texas law does not prohibit the abortion. 

Okay, but then the TSC turned around and said that Kate Cox’s doctor was wrong about her need for an abortion.

Though the statute affords physicians discretion, it requires more than a doctor’s mere subjective belief. By requiring the doctor to exercise “reasonable medical judgment,” the Legislature determined that the medical judgment involved must meet an objective standard. Dr. Karsan asserted that she has a “good faith belief” that Ms. Cox meets the exception’s requirements. Certainly, a doctor cannot exercise “reasonable medical judgment” if she does not hold her judgment in good faith. But the statute requires that judgment be a “reasonable medical” judgment, and Dr. Karsan has not asserted that her “good faith belief” about Ms. Cox’s condition meets that standard. Judges do not have the authority to expand the statutory exception to reach abortions that do not fall within its text under the guise of interpreting it.

In other words, the law gives doctors discretion as to what constitutes a genuine medical need for an abortion, but the state can still prosecute a doctor if the judges and politicians decide the doctor’s decision was wrong. See how that works?

Under Texas law the only exception is imminent death of the mother, apparently, but then the question is, what is “imminent”? How close to the brink does the mother have to be before an abortion qualifies as an “exception”? Already some women in Texas have been forced to wait until life-threatening conditions had set in before they could terminate a pregnancy.

Physicians in Texas have begged the legislature to make the law clearer. The legislature insists the law is fine as it is. Well, it’s fine for their purposes, which is to maintain control over women’s bodies. If doctors were given genuine discretion to make medical decisions, the state would lose that control.

Abortion rights advocates have been saying for years that the real motivation behind criminalizing abortion has nothing to do with “saving babies” but about controlling women. Some states — Tennessee, for example — have passed laws that don’t even allow clear exceptions for ectopic pregnancies. To anyone who isn’t an abortion criminalization zealot, what’s  happening in Texas, and elsewhere, reveals this is true. Critiminalizing abortion is a great issue for misogynists, who can use the law to brutalize women while pretending to occupy a high moral ground while doing so. And the zealots are not going to stop until abortion is illegal everywhere in the U.S., without exception. For example,

As a physician practicing in Tennessee, I now must guess whether a prosecutor would charge me with a crime when I help women through those 5 percent situations, contending with the spectrum of risks and imperfect predictions. If a woman’s amniotic membranes rupture at 16 weeks, if she is febrile and bleeding, I think the risk of prosecution is low. If she is medically stable but at high risk for infection and hemorrhage, I am not sure.

I believe the state’s law was intended to be ambiguous and confusing, to make physicians scared to provide abortion care. We’re incentivized to pause, wait, reconsider — actions that can be life-threatening. Women with ectopic pregnancies have waited in emergency rooms for hospital lawyers to determine whether an abortion can proceed. We have denied abortion care to women with cancer and other complex medical problems who find out they are pregnant. Women with pregnancies affected by life-limiting fetal anomalies — anencephaly (no skull or brain), renal agenesis (no kidneys, no proper lung development) — have had to seek abortion care out of state. One patient I managed who was unable to receive abortion care ultimately required an emergency hysterectomy and delivered an extremely premature infant, 14 weeks early.

State Senator Richard Briggs, a Republican and a physician, is the Senate sponsor of a bill in Tennessee that would amend the law to provide true exceptions to perform abortions for ectopic pregnancies and lethal fetal anomalies and to prevent maternal death or serious bodily harm. It has been developed with tireless input from physicians and in coalition with other anti-abortion state legislators. But the powerful anti-abortion group Tennessee Right to Life, which crafted the original law, has mobilized against the reform, threatening lawmakers that voting for it will affect their “pro-life score.” 

the ambiguity is the point. 

How Texas law views women.

See also Chris Hay.es

The Story Thus Far: In Trump’s J6 trial in DC, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan set a March 4 trial date. And she seems determined to keep that date. She’s begun the process of jury selection already.

Trump’s entire strategy consists of slowing down the process so he can get elected president again before he’s found guilty. To that end, Trump is claiming absolute immunity from prosecution for anything he did while he was president. It’s basically the Nixonian “if the president does it …” position.  He filed a motion claiming immunity with Chutkan, that she denied. Then on Thursday he filed a notice that he intends to appeal Chutkan’s decision to the D.C. Circuit Court, and he demanded that all court procedings stop until the D. C. Circuit gives an opinion. (It’s not clear to me whether this appeal has been filed or if it’s something he still intends to get to eventually, like in 2025.)

Last night Jack Smith filed a response to Trump’s Thursday notice, saying that Judge Chutkan doesn’t have to stop the whole process. Chutkan can still hold the March trial date on the calendar. She can continue to rule on already pending motions. She can enforce the gag order against Trump and the terms of his release. She can keep things moving forward for the time being.

And today Jack Smith went to the Supreme Court and asked the Court to go ahead and decide whether Trump has absolute immunity.

“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office,” Smith wrote in the court filing.

Smith said it was “of imperative public importance” that the high court decide the question so that Trump’s trial, currently scheduled for March, can move forward as quickly as possible. …

… Smith asked the court to order Trump to respond by Dec. 18 and then immediately act on his request. Under the timeline proposed by Smith, the court — if it decides to step in — could hear arguments and issue a ruling in a matter of weeks.

There is precedent for such an outcome, with Smith citing the 1974 U.S. v. Nixon case, in which the court ruled on an expedited basis that President Richard Nixon had to hand over tape recordings sought during the Watergate scandal probe. Nixon resigned soon after the ruling.

More recently, the court has on several occasions taken up cases at an early stage of litigation to decide issues of national importance, such as the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for businesses and its plan to forgive student loan debt. The justices ruled against Biden in both cases.

Of course there is no telling what the current Court might do. But the question will end up there, anyway. There’s been no response from the Court so far whether they will accept Smith’s request.

In other news: Kate Cox has left Texas to terminate her pregnancy elsewhere. News reports don’t say where. I do not blame her. Now let’s see if odious toad Ken Paxton tries to prosecute her if she returns to Texas.

Update: The Texas Supreme Court ruled against Kate Cox. Texas women have the legal status of cows now.

Update: SCOTUS will hear Jack Smith’s request. They ordered a response from Trump’s lawyers by Wednesdday, December 20.

The Texas Supreme Court has temporarily halted Kate Cox’s abortion.

The Texas Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a pregnant woman from obtaining an emergency abortion in a ruling issued late Friday.

The court froze a lower court’s ruling that would have allowed Kate Cox, who sued the state seeking a court-ordered abortion, to obtain the procedure. “Without regard to the merits, the Court administratively stays the district court’s December 7, 2023 order,” the order states.

The court noted the case would remain pending before them but did not include any timeline on when a full ruling might be issued. Cox is 20 weeks pregnant. Her unborn baby was diagnosed with a fatal genetic condition and she says complications in her pregnancy are putting her health at risk.

If the Texas Supreme Court doesn’t decide in Cox’s favor by the middle of next week, she needs to get her ass out of Texas and get an abortion somewhere else. At 20 weeks, she’s got about three weeks to go before the viability threshold. Of course, then she may not be able to return to Texas, as Ken Paxton will probably prosecute her.

Politico points out that Ken Paxton may be sorry he butted in.

Biden’s reelection campaign plans to argue the case is a prime example of the existential threat posed to women’s reproductive rights if Republicans return to power in 2024.

“Ken Paxton is doing a great job of expressing for thousands of women in Texas the horror of having the state in charge of your pregnancy,” said Cecile Richards, the former CEO of Planned Parenthood and current co-chair of Democratic Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. “These are people’s lives that are at stake, and it’s only going to get worse.”

The campaign on Friday repeatedly highlighted coverage of Paxton’s statement. It also sought to use the legal standoff to target GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, portraying the case as a direct result of the former president’s actions — from appointing three justices to the Supreme Court to backing policies aimed at limiting reproductive rights.

“This story is shocking, it’s horrifying, and it’s heartbreaking — it’s also becoming all too commonplace in America because of Donald Trump,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), a Biden campaign co-chair, said in a statement. “The American people should know that Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans won’t stop here.”

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

You can count on the forced birth fanatics to not know when to back off.

In other news: If you missed Chris Hayes on the Biden economy last night, please watch and share, share, share.

The story thus far: Kate Cox is a Texan who very much wants babies. But she’s been going through a terrible pregnancy, with a lot of pain and discharge. And then she found out the fetus has a severe genetic anomaly, Trisomy 18, that’s seriously bad. The infant has little chance of living more than a few hours, and even if it survives longer it will have massive physical and intellectual defects. Plus the pregnancy itself was so problematic and risky that Cox might not be able to have another one. No babies for her.

Texas law does not allow Cox to have an abortion. But instead of traveling to another state, she took Texas to court. And a judge agreed that she needed an abortion.

Siding with the woman, Kate Cox, who argued the procedure is necessary to preserve future fertility and protect her from undergoing a potentially dangerous birth, Judge Maya Guerra Gamble said, “The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be pregnant, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability, is shocking, and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice. So I will be signing the order, and it will be processed and sent out today.”

This is sensible. But this is also Texas.

Attorney General Ken Paxton Responds to Travis County TRO: pic.twitter.com/zs8nMtSXON

— Texas Attorney General (@TXAG) December 7, 2023

The utterly corrupt attorney general of Texas threatened to prosecute anyone who helps the plaintiff in the case. Note that last line from his statement: “The TRO will expire long before the statue of limitations for violating Texas’ abortion laws expires.”

Yes this is outrageous. But it’s also revelatory.

For years the abortion criminalization movement has denied that there is ever any medical reason to terminate a pregnancy. They could get away with claiming that until Roe was overturned. Since then there have been a number of news stories about women who nearly died because they were denied an abortion. In Ms. Cox’s case, her life is not at risk but she may not be able to bring another pregnancy to term. And the fetus she carries has no future. So one has to ask what purpose is being served, what great good achieved, by forcing Ms. Cox to continue the pregnancy? There certainly is none that I can see.

The interesting question here is why Ken Paxton was so driven to step in to stop this abortion. Paxton has demonstrated time and time again he is utterly amoral, so this has nothing to do with some abstract moral principle. And it’s not as if Paxton is just giving his constituents what they want. According to a 2022 poll only 15 percent of Texans think all abortion should be banned under all circumstances. Even those who want it to be illegal most of the time are open to a variety of exceptions. This is unlikely to win Paxton any popularity awards, in other words.

I’m concluding that Paxton just gets high on power trips. If you can think of a better explanation, do chime in.

In other Republicans versus morality news, Police have recovered video of Florida GOP chair and alleged victim in rape investigation.

First: Norman Lear (1922-2023) died yesterday.

Second:  It seems Kevin McCarthy is retiring from the House. Just as well. I understand he’s leaving at the end of this year.

Third: Republicans in both the Senate and the House are blocking Ukraine funding.

The White House is seeking nearly $106 billion, but the bill has gotten bogged down in negotiations over border security and because of increasing reluctance from Republican lawmakers to approve significant spending on the Ukraine war. GOP lawmakers are insisting on policy changes to halt the flow of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border as a condition for the assistance.

The latest weapons package will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, which pulls weapons from existing U.S. stockpiles and sends them quickly to the war front, said U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been publicly announced.

We seem to be having official “hair on fire” week in news media. The Atlantic is dedicating an entire issue to the disastrous consequences of Trump returning to the White House.

The next Trump presidency will be worse.

For our January/February 2024 issue, @TheAtlantic is closely examining Donald Trump’s 2024 bid for reelection, and the potential ramifications of a second term: https://t.co/8lSX9cjZg6 pic.twitter.com/F0qXTREI2M

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) December 4, 2023

At WaPo, see Robert Kagan, A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.  See also How Donald Trump uses dishonesty by Philip Bump.

The New York Times is more cautious, with Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First by Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman. But see also Frank Bruni, It’s Not the Economy. It’s the Fascism.

At The Guardian, see A second Trump term will be far more autocratic than the first. He’s telling us. At CNN, see Trump is showing how a second term would rewrite the rules of presidential power.

For the Trump pushback, see Trump, allies fire back at media warnings of second-term dictatorship at The Hill.

This is just a small sampling of articles that have come out in the past week. On top of that there’s Liz Cheney’s book, which I take it is a big warning about Trump. I’m hoping this marks the beginning of some more vigorous coverage of Trump.