Every time I start feeling better about our chances to overcome the horrors of the Trump administration and this iteration of the GOP, the Supreme Court dashes my hopes. I don't know how it can be done, but if and when Democrats ever come to power, there has to be some reform there. It has become a partisan arm of the the Republican executive branch, and not a true arbiter of justice or protector of the Constitution.
One big concern I have about any attempts to reform the SCOTUS, by things like term limits or increasing the size of the bench, is that ultimately any new laws could end up before the very Supreme Court they're meant to reform to be tested for constitutionality. They're all smart lawyers and they're all partisans, and they'll reach their conclusions on constitutionality first and come up with the justifications after.
Fair points, and ones that highlight a central truth that we've taken for granted for years: our elected and judicial leaders would be largely impartial and fair in carrying out their responsibilities. No longer. It used to be at least somewhat true, but in this era it increasingly is an antiquated concept that they would do what is right as opposed to what best serves the self. As long as that remains the case, and fundamental human nature stays the same, the rest of us are screwed.
"Could the drunk friends not have hopped on one of those bachelorette party wagons that plague the city? Were the agents asked to send the friends a bacon-egg-and-cheese sammy with a yellow Gatorade to wash it down the next day?"
Tom and Daisy Buchanan are in charge now. The Epstein class wants to party like Russian oligarchs, and so they will.
Oh, they're partying better than Russian oligarchs. After all, they know they don't need to worry about going to prison, much less falling out of a window.
There’s a large part of this MAGA movement that seems to have created a permission structure to do or say whatever they want because righteousness is on THEIR side.
The size of the court is up to congress which has changed it in the past — 1869 was the last change. Will congress take up that role is really the question, but there are congressional checks that could be used. Changing the number of justices is, honestly, one of the easier fixed.
There are several creative and workable ideas to reform SCOTUS. We don't *have* to resort to just expanding the court in ways that reek of rank partisanship (tempting as it is to progressives/Democrats). Here's hoping that our country will be able to have a *thoughtful* discussion about possible solutions and make decisions based on reason. (I know, don't hold your breath.)
The most logical operational argument, to me, has always been that we update the number of SC justices to reflect the 13 Circuits- the 12 regional + the Fed. The Fed Circuit didn’t even exist until Congress passed The Federal Courts Improvement Act in 1982. Might be nice if Congress threw in some ethics oversight in any new SC legislation…
What are these ‘creative and workable ideas’ you speak of? And in what world would they be seen as *non-partisan*. Does congress have or not have the power to determine the size of the court? We didn’t get the members of SCOTUS we have now through your *thoughtful* discussions but raw politics. Biden tried thoughtful discussions which went nowhere. Whether you like it or not, congress has the power to determine the size of the court, and what it sounds like you are saying is you don’t want congress to assert those powers or don’t believe that a duly elected congress represents the will of those who elected it.
And you don't think the Republicans would retaliate to increase the size of the court even more to install their justices? Not sure why Democrats think that if they get back in power, they will never be in the minority again.
Can we talk about 'pre-retaliation' . . . as in two-ninths of today's Supremes already are sitting there through raw partisan politics. When do we punch back?
They could, but what reform couldn’t be manipulated by bad faith actors. Outside of Texas, aided and abetted by SCOTUS, other Republican states haven’t been that responsive to Trump.
There's nothing in the Constitution about the size of the Supreme Court. It was once up to 10, and that was before the country was anywhere near its current size. We have 13 Federal districts - at a minimum, there should be 13.
Really there should be more district courts and more appellate level courts too. The population is large and court backlogs create real problems for civil litigants, defendants, and court staff including judges.
Same with the number of representatives in the house, what was the population of the country in 1912 which may be the last time that the number was increased.
This is why popular mobilization may be crucial to a pro-democracy reform movement. The court's radical majority could help spark a call for fundamental constitutional changes that sweeps them aside.
In short, it is only the functional country we need. Congress pays the Supreme Court through its budget. Congress makes the laws not the Supreme Court. Yes, the court does strike down a law that the justices feel is unconstitutional. Congress can then rewrite the law, and keep rewriting the law until it is constitutional. Congress can impeach a justice, and impose rules that every other judge in the country have to follow. It is Congress that we have to look to and demand they do their job.
A Constitutional convention could be disastrous. What other surprises would be on the red states' wish list?
The Supreme Court can be fixed through legislation, assuming the Democrats have the balls to eliminate the filibuster when they're back in the majority (which assumes free and fair elections in our future, of course).
Anything passed at the Constitutional Convention still has to be ratified by 3/4 of the states.
The filibuster is the only thing left that protects Democrats power against Trumpism. And you want to get rid of it? As things are going currently, Democrats will often be in the minority in the Senate. The filibuster protects their power.
The key to any useful constitutional revision is supermajority grassroots support. The moneyed interests will seek advantage and will go all-out to influence low-info voters. For this reason, many think a convention would be a disaster, especially for minorities.
A constitutional convention will result in a nationalist, white Christian America with no gun restrictions, with strict abortion bans with gender role lines harshly drawn. Is that what you want, Tom? A fascist state.
Sure, but Donald was elected as the president after being thoroughly disgraced and outed as a sexual predator, after being twice impeached and after being convicted of 34 felony offenses. I won't even attempt to list all of his outrageous actions during Trump 2. So don't tell me that they won't get their super majority. I live in NC where we have a democratic governor and democratic Attorney General, where the electorate is almost evenly divided but where the GOP has a veto proof majority. NC would vote to ratify such an amendment and there is nothing that we can do about it.
Like ICE? Yeah, we didn't agree with that, but there it is. Like killing civilian noncombatants when we aren't at war? More fascism we didn't agree with. Why would anyone need our agreement?
I agree. However, I have a lot of liberal friends who are terrified by a constitutional convention. I don't share those fears because anything they come up with still has to be approved by 3/4 of the states.
Yes, and many of them are red and are on the low end of education levels. Education is paramount to democratic success, which is why we are in this mess.
If 3/4 ratification is the finale, there probably should be a ground rule that consensus is the opener: Everyone would have to either endorse or live with a proposal.
The response to those legitimate concerns about SCOTUS must be Democrats taking their white gloves off and divorcing themselves from this toxic marriage they've had with process and regulation. So many good ideas of theirs like energy efficiency and other environmental mandates are meaningless when the public can see the bright red through line to housing shortages and homelessness. How much energy do we waste dealing with those crises? How healthy of an environment is skid row?
Opposition strategies absolutely must start focusing on results-based leadership from the grassroots level on up. Reforming the court is absolutely an uphill battle, but look at what the GOP did to Roe. It took a couple generations and cutting a lot of corners to say the least, but they got what they wanted. Painful as that's been for those of us who happen to believe women's rights are just as self evident, that game plan should be examined soberly.
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
The problem is that progressives and the left are impatient. When they don't get what they want immediately, they stay home or vote for the other guy "to teach the Dems a lesson." Enough Dems voted for Trump to do that in a number of swing states.
There is no way they will be content waiting a few decades for change. That is part of the problem.
Increasing the size of the SCT is pretty absurd. Both sides would be doing this until the SCT had hundreds of people. What we do need is term limits, however. I love the 18 year limit staggered so each two years, the President has another appointment to make. I've long said lifetime tenure of federal judges was a mistake. The problem now with what's going on is the SCT using its shadow docket to weigh in on every issue.
It can only be done with the agreement/acceptance of Congress, so no, it wouldn't happen all the time. Eighteen years is a generation. That's a long time to wait for change, and when you have a makeup like this SCOTUS, it's a lifetime. And it's a crap shoot who will be in the Oval and who will control Congress when the retirements happen. That's way too much left to chance.
Term limits would require a Constitutional amendment. That is not something that will ever get anywhere with its requirement that 3/5ths of the states must ratify it.
Yep, they certainly do sit in the catbird's seat. They have all the cards, as Don likes to say. Justice can't get a seat in that court edgewise. And they have now decided to weigh in on birthright citizenship. That they would even take that case tells you all you need to about who they serve, IMO. And it doesn't look like it's us.
There are four women on the court, three are in the minority so they're probably not going to write majority opinions. The one female justice in the majority, Amy Coney Barrett, is the newest majority justice so she's not going to be assigned many majority decisions to write because of her lack of seniority. She did write six last term, however. Your suggestion there is some sexism against female justices writing majority decisions is easily explained by reasons unrelated to discrimination.
Yes, but you do know that you can say that about every discriminatory thing coming out of DC right now. I think I am more interested in the fact that most women are liberal and liberals are shut out of power completely, therefore shutting out most women.
Democracy requires constant heavy lifting, constant vigilance. The only way out of this quagmire is to create a fantasy US in which a majority of citizens vote, their votes are conscientious and informed, and they vote to elect legislatures that enact robust, constitutional, airtight, Roberts-proof laws.
These things could happen. Will they? Not bloody likely, but an old girl can dream.
Meanwhile there is no shortcut, no deus ex machina, no magic wand, no movie version in which our problems are solved in 90 minutes by two handsome costars with a theme song. Democracy is a long, hellish slog, and this is why democracies die.
It doesn't have to be hellish. It seems that way now because we have become a spoiled, lazy, ignorant, entitled nation that takes completely takes for granted the peace and economic and military security we've enjoyed.
Democracy is about responsibility. It requires vigilance, participation, and a modicum of interest, ie understanding how things work, what leaders can fix, and what they can't. And knowing the difference between lies and facts/truths.
Americans are just too lazy. They want to their sports, reality television, social media, and video games. They want FUN FUN FUN and anything that isn't what they consider to be FUN is boring.
Congress was given the power to create inferior appellate and trial courts in Article 3, Section 1. What Congress creates, it may destroy. I suggest that the Circuit courts be abolished and that all appeals from the trial courts be taken to an expanded federal appellate court known as the appellate division with 13 courts of ten judges each sitting in their current locations. Appeals of appellate division orders may be taken to the full panel. Each appellate division court would be empowered to select one of its members to sit on a full court panel consisting of 13 judges. The current members of the SCOTUS would be absorbed into this panel of 20 and its numbers would be reduced by the number of current justices who may depart that court in the future until the total number is reduced to 13. In the event of a tie vote during the period of reduction, the decision of the appellate division will stand. The doctrine of stare decisis is repudiated.
"It's not our fault - if we don't accommodate Trump's authoritarian whims, gun-totin' loons may appear on our doorsteps. And it's not our fault there's 400M guns - it's right there in the 2A: "shall not be infringed". We're just calling balls and strikes."
Golly. I guess the Constitution was a suicide pact, after all.
I was so furious at the SCOTUS redistricting decision that I brainstormed on how the six Republicans on the court could be countered. My mind went to some dark places, allowed by their own presidential immunity decision. I AM NOT ADVOCATING THE FOLLOWING!
What’s to prevent a future Democratic president from having the Fascist six taken out (other than basic decency, of course)? He could claim it’s part of his “official duties” to protect our democracy. He could then issue preemptive pardons to the assassins.
Again, this is just a scenario motivated by the Supreme’s own absurd immunity decision and the extraordinary pardon power of the president. I would like to motivate a discussion.
1) Texas gets its redistricting maps. Other states now have the green light to do the same. Impartial voting maps are officially uncool and undesirable. Politicians get to pick their voters and do their business with little to no accountability. Isn't that what shithole countries do?
2) Saying that the current President is rejecting liberal principles is technically correct, but gives him far too much credit for actually thinking about it. More accurate is that we are dealing with the neediest- and greediest-ever occupant of the White House. His true motivations can be boiled down to two things: who flatters and favors him the most, and who lines his pockets the most in a series of transactional relationships. Putin and Xi know that and are planning accordingly. They make their plans and schemes knowing that they are dealing with the most childlike, self-absorbed, and intellectually vacant leader that America ever has had, and by far -- second place isn't even visible over the horizon. It is a golden age for them for as long as it lasts, and most voters aren't smart or concerned enough beyond the self to think that through, and what the ramifications are of it. What could go wrong?
3) The proposal to strip dual citizenship from American citizens, grounded in some half-witted, paranoid suspicion of disloyalty that lacks any substantive evidence, is an open invitation for the best and the brightest to choose to live and work elsewhere, where they will be more appreciated and treated better. It's easy to see great thinkers and innovators fleeing America, taking their talents to other nations that will both house and derive substantial, world-changing gains while we wave the flag and say how we remain the Greatest Nation on Earth because we are such an exclusive club. I believe the expression for that is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Wait until rich, conservative-leaning, Jewish, dual US-Israeli citizens find out about the getting rid of dual-citizenship proposal. (I'm sure they'll get a special carveout under the proposal)
I'm guessing that, if this issue has any traction, the administration will do its usual pivot toward monetizing the matter and come up with a policy that, yes, you can have dual citizenship after all ... if you pay the going rate. Some very elevated figure that brings more money into certain coffers in yet another pay-to-play scheme. The obvious question is: where or to whom does the money go?
They don't have anything to fear because they are white.
Trump is only targeting migrants from Africa and Latin America.
It's not even a matter of rich Israeli-Americans getting a special carve-out. They just aren't being targeted, in the same way that people from Europe aren't being targeted & have nothing to fear.
Trump isn't even trying to hide his administration's racism. They are accepting white South Africans as refugees, and they also said they're willing to accept refugees from Europe who are fleeing "woke" European governments.
I wouldn't be surprised if they don't. The faction pushing this, after all, is not just viciously racist but also anti-Semitic. A rich, conservative Jew is still a kike in their eyes!
Well said👏! 100% agree, it’s not about liberalism, it’s about whatever helps Trump achieve success. It’s all a zero sum game with these people.
FYI: I’ve read that there really isn’t a mechanism to strip Americans of dual citizenship. It’s done by the other countries, and we don’t track people; it won’t show up in our systems. Then there’s people like Melania and Barron; they’re dual citizens of Slovenia, because Slovenia automatically gives citizenship to anyone born to a Slovakian parent.
It’s all grand standing, deflection, and nonsense. It sounds great but will never happen…:)
My armchair psychology says that the president believes he is head of the country in the same way he is/was head of the Trump Organization. Whatever he says, goes.
Agree on items 1&2. On item 3 while I don't disagree with the disloyalty, I think this is more about restricting movement of spenders. More Americans are looking to get additional passports for the expected rough patches to come. I expect the regime to shorten the list of countries where Social Security payments will be made so that those of us who are solidly middle class cannot shop for residency in democracies with healthcare and lower cost of living. Or make the choice harder by giving up (dropping) social security payments.
This can be done easier than getting anything through Congress like stripping dual citizenship or ending totalization treaties for working Americans.
I plan on contacting my legislators about dual citizenship and social security (both maintaining list of approved countries and lifting the cap on taxes).
For number 3 I took my disloyalty thought from the words of the person who proposed the legislation, in a public comment. But overall your point is a good one, and the topic of Social Security warrants much more attention as our population increasingly ages out and needs to access that money, built up over decades and with no ability to recoup it if the federal government were to withhold it. Could that not be considered legalized theft if there is no restriction on people changing their residence to another country?
“When you attack our natiion’s capitol, you attack our very being way of life.” Ye gods and little tin fishes, as Aunt Tillie used to say. Is Irony really that dead? Where was Patel when Cheeto Head pardoned the Jan6 folks???
The SCOTUS is going to do what it will do. We better be prepared for the right winged justices to blow up whatever remains of the VRA. Thank goodness for Gavin Newsom and hopefully the Dems in Virginia. I say it with a deep dislike of gerrymandering.
I share your revulsion at the undemocratic dark art of gerrymandering and agree if they do it we have to return the favor in kind. It can't be all tits and no tats.
If the recent election in Tennessee is any sign, all this gerrymandering might not be enough to turn the tide for MAGA. It might well make things worse for them.
I agree. This is my comment on Charlie Sykes' recent post about the Supreme Court decision on the Texas gerrymandering case:
"How is partisan gerrymandering fair or equitable or democratic? Why should the elected tell We the People for whom we can vote? Why is gerrymandering even permitted in our constitutional republic? If our republic truly is "government of the people, by the people, for the people," then We have work to do. We can start by talking to our neighbors and making sure that the 2026 midterms reflect our desire to put our country over party." Elect people of integrity who will support and defend our constitution - no more party hacks from either major party.
of course they are going to blow up the remains of the VRA — Roberts has never believed in or supported it. This is a SCOTUS that has said private institutions cannot use race as a criteria for admission, but the carceral state can use race when arresting people who might be here illegally. This is a SCOTUS that is determined to take us back to the pre-civil rights era. I still don’t understand the *why*, but if you look at the history of the court they have been the most conservative political actor with only a brief liberal period.
The good news for me in Texas is that I’m now only in a pinkish district with the newly SCOTUS approved maps. I was previously in deep red Chip Roy country🤮. Now, my new neighbors, stretching from here to 500+ miles west, across a time zone, have a decent shot of electing a Dem.
I am beyond volcanically angry that scotus diluted the power of my vote and other Democratic voters here. I can only hope that the republicans did more damage to themselves by this latest carve up. We had already been gerrymandered to pieces.
This is off topic. But since I live near by MPLS, here is a little status update on ICE in MPLS. It has been big news here. And it seems they are handling it better than other cities that have had their run ins with ICE. They have been pro active, not reactive. The other day its mayor( Jacob Frey) had a presser with its police chief. (Brian O'Hara) In it, O'Hara stressed that the local police are not with ICE and are not supporting it. Yesterday ICE went into a local Restaurant. Knowing that Ice needed a warrant, the owner was having nothing of it and booted them out. We need to see more of this being pro active instead of just raging about it after it occurs.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in New Orleans. Will its officials adopt the tactics and attitude of the cities that have been dealing with ICE and CBP for a while?
I am old enough to remember the stories my parents told me as a child about the Stock Market Crash of 1928, surviving the Great Depression, and of course, WWII. It also included pride at the defeat of McCarthyism, and shame (which I came to feel myself) over Watergate. These experiences shaped their world view, which was filled with courage, resolve, gratitude, hope, and a healthy dose of patriotism shaped through trust in our government to ultimately do the right thing. Even Watergate, while a stain on our country, was resolved through bipartisan action to right a terrible wrong committed by our president.
All of that is now gone.
My greatest fear for a few years now is the prospect of invasion by a more cohesive government than our own. I think that many who decry China as our biggest threat likely share that concern. They do not have as many nuclear weapons, (how many do you need?) but they have enough people in their military (likely millions who will blindly follow orders) to make us vulnerable should they try to invade us. China has, in modern times, always been in favor of stability (a country with that many people to control would need this to function), but if pressed into a situation where their survival depends on invading us, they have the means to do so. And if it not China, there are other threats as well.
If we continue to act as we are now, our military will continue to weaken and shrink, our people will become even more divided, our population will shrink and our foreign policy will destroy our once reliable alliances, all of which will make us ripe for the picking.
So we cannot simply sit back and assume that the chaos that is coming will not affect us at home. With enough chaos here, we will be vulnerable to those abroad who hate us, fear us, or simply want what we have. If and when the fight comes to our shores, it will already be too late. A feckless congress, an ineffective SCOTUS and a corrupt POTUS could easily end our democracy. Will that make us vulnerable to attack by other countries? I think it could. Just ask yourself: would Trump “give” another country Puerto Rico if it meant avoiding armed conflict that would effect him personally? And if the answer is yes, then what’s to stop him from giving away Alaska? Or the West Coast?
Alarmist? Maybe. But ask yourself what are China and Russia thinking right now as they watch what is happening here? And who are North Korea and Venezuela talking to behind the scenes? And what is NATO’s position on defending the US in light of our current “policy” on Ukraine?
This shit is about to get real. And we are woefully unprepared to stop it.
China hasn’t so much done outright invasion as influence operations. They interfered in Canadian elections. They also want to shut up Chinese dissidents abroad.
I can foresee this in Hawaii and especially Alaska since China and Russia acknowledge climate change and are interested in leading in the Arctic. Plus Alaska was part of Russia in the past and is so close to its border.
Russia has already invaded the lower 48 through social media Maga accounts to destabilize us. With our first Russian POTUS in place, I think Putin could be happy with Europe and Alaska.
If China uses Trump wisely, it takes back Taiwan and the impact to America would make enough of a wave, that physical invasion would be long, arduous and not guaranteed victory. More importantly, if Putin has not invaded Europe, NATO would be obligated to come to our defense. Not advantageous to the business interests of China.
I would be less surprised about China taking the US spot of world innovator: we will take Chinese medicine, use Chinese energy infrastructure, allow BYD into the US market.
The enemy combatants that Cotten claimed were poised to return to "the fight" were off Trinidad, as in Trinidad and Tobago--about 2000 miles from US soil. He wants us to accept that e.g. people in San Francisco might be threatened by a two men clinging to a half sunk boat in Lake Michigan.
I was thinking the cocaine bags could be weaponized like the famous "sandwich guy" weaponized a subway sandwich. But your way makes more . . . . sense?
Cocaine can't be dangerous. If it was, surely Trump would not have pardoned a man who was imprisoned for arranging the shipping of 400 TONS of the stuff into the US! /s
I think everything Kagan said was affirmed with the release of our new National Security Strategy yesterday. As a person who grew up during the Cold War, I can’t believe I am seeing our country turn away from Europe and towards Russia. The world order has been sacrificed so that Trump, his family and the people around him can be personally enriched.
every time I read about it I am shocked how gullible Republican voters are. They need to be made to understand that Tucker Carlson is a liar. Life in Russia is much worse than here and most Russians are not religious. This is really about the richest people wanting to hog all wealth resources and power for themselves.
Yes but also lacking any ability to think for themselves. JVL wrote in a Triad about some poor idiot who brought his family to Russia to escape woke and who ended up being sent to Ukraine to fight and was killed promptly.
In far-right ideology, the postwar order was just a way of imposing secular liberalism on the world. Reactionaries admire Putin because they think he's defending religion and tradition from the menace of the "liberal imperium."
It appears to me that some of the people who push that line of thought are profiting from Trump's pro-plutocrat policies, while they preen in their "Christian" piety.
There's a moral sickness at the heart of the hard right.
trump and family will be un-enriched if he locks arms with putin. Oligarchs in Russia make sure they give putin a cut of their wealth. And they stay away from upper floor windows.
I remember being shocked in 2015 that people were sympathetic to Russia after it moved into Crimea. They bought the Russian claim that the US was orchestrating the removal of Yanukovych in 2014.
There's more opportunity for theft, grift, and profiteering when there is chaos. As long as there is a Trump or an acolyte anywhere near power this is what we will have.
I understand the hunger for a consoling narrative that has fallen on us, the collective yearning to believe we’re merely passing through turbulence before the cockpit steadies and the old order reasserts itself. We want the fever to have broken, the delirium to recede, the plot to resume its familiar arc. To me the real terror isn’t housed in the ambitions of Putin or Xi; it festers in the ruin we’ve already revealed about ourselves. Our instability isn’t some stray malfunction, it’s the resonant thrum of a nation whose internal scaffolding has begun to shear away.
Hollywood collapses inward like a supernova entering its death throes, alliances groan under the torque of our inconsistency, and authoritarians gather at the perimeter like predators scenting a wounded beast. None of this is incidental. These are flare-signals from the same underlying fracture. A single mirror, shattered, its splinters catching the light just long enough to show us what we’ve become. A country that has not merely misplaced its purpose, but forgotten how to recognize the silhouette of it.
I agree, but also feel like if we’re prey, it’s not because we’ve been hunted, it’s because we’ve been softened. Hollowed out. Johnson and the Red Hat cult have become very adept at using prayers like incense to mask the rot.
Have you ever let a winter squash or a pumpkin sit around too long? For a long time the outside doesn't look too bad, just a few brown blotches here and there, but when you cut into it the inside is rotten.
America has become that pumpkin, after 249 years off of the vine.
Thank you, Katy for taking the time to be here. I wish eloquence felt like a victory, but most days it feels more like chronicling the slow unraveling of a country that keeps insisting the mirror is lying. I'm so grateful knowing people like you exist.
For sure, but right now, we're just whirling in the circle of wind surrounding the REAL chaos. We haven't yet moved to the chaotic center and been completely ripped to pieces.
With Patel's girlfriend's friend's FBI escort, what can be done? You can leak this stupidity to the press, but it will be easy to find the leaker since such a small circle of people know about it, and the only person who might ever face any accountability for the misconduct is the leaker. God only knows what sort of shit we are completely unaware of because leakers are targeted.
I think this is one of the biggest problem of Trump 2.0 - there is so much bad (and potentially illegal) behavior, but no avenue for response. The feds aren't going to get involved, the legislature won't do more than look on disapprovingly, and nothing in the courts really matters as long as this SCOTUS is the final arbiter of the law. Hegseth, Noem, Kennedy, and others can really clearly make up excuses and fake data for pretext, and no one can make them resign, no one can make them stop. So much of our government and society were founded on essentially an honors system with no real means of enforcement if the rich and powerful simply decide to not care anymore. We aren't even a year in.
The Senate is probably out of reach short of a massive blue wave without adding states. With redistricting, the House probably goes the same way for the same reasons. If it were truly proportional, that would be a different story.
Carol Leonig mentioned as much on MS Now today; they are aware of how punitive Patel is and try to report things that are well sourced so there is not an automatic path to an individual.
While things on the domestic policy front are bad and have always worried me the attitude of this administration towards foreign policy could literally end us. Bob Kagan is absolutely right...the "normal" world order is war and chaos. But Americans do not know this. We are not taught European history in school, only American history and most of that is the Revolution and Civil Wars. We weren't dramatically affected by European conflicts because for most of history we were protected from most of the chaos by our oceans. By the time planes became integral to warfare we'd started becoming and then became a superpower. If we are no longer a superpower our oceans can't be counted on to protect us from supersonic jets and ICBMs.
I have long thought one major factor that brought us to the point we are at is that almost no one alive has any memory of life before WWII. And this can be read into every move this administration makes. Get rid of vaccines, end our role in foreign policy, enact tariffs in the belief that we can extract ourselves from the global economy, gut government regulations that have given us clean air and water and public education. These people literally want to take the country back to about 1890 and too many voters, disillusioned by the reality that everyday technology is frustrating and that the US healthcare system is broken and there is an epidemic of loneliness and that stuff costs too much, have decided that the past was better because no one alive actually lived through it. People seem to think that life was better when we were living to an average age of 50 and women were chained to their husbands and children weren't guaranteed an education and that people worked 12 hour days 6 days a week. Because people do not know history. At all. Not even a little bit.
So its not discrimination to redraw your district map to favor Republicans They just happen to disfavor Blacks, which is totally accidental and not at all discriminatory. I get it. There is something really wrong with the Supreme Court.
Would also recommend Charlie Sykes's conversation with Ed Luce. Luce believes the upcoming decision to seize or not to seize Russian frozen assets is a critical decision, signaling whether the will to vigorously confront Russia exists or not. He likens this decision to Churchill's controversial decision to sink a big chunk of the French Navy after France's surrender in 1940 for fear that it would fall into Nazi hands. (Over a thousand French killed.) But the decision was taken by FDR as a sign that the British were all in on the fight and stiffened his own commitment to lead the US to aid the British side.
Every time I start feeling better about our chances to overcome the horrors of the Trump administration and this iteration of the GOP, the Supreme Court dashes my hopes. I don't know how it can be done, but if and when Democrats ever come to power, there has to be some reform there. It has become a partisan arm of the the Republican executive branch, and not a true arbiter of justice or protector of the Constitution.
One big concern I have about any attempts to reform the SCOTUS, by things like term limits or increasing the size of the bench, is that ultimately any new laws could end up before the very Supreme Court they're meant to reform to be tested for constitutionality. They're all smart lawyers and they're all partisans, and they'll reach their conclusions on constitutionality first and come up with the justifications after.
Fair points, and ones that highlight a central truth that we've taken for granted for years: our elected and judicial leaders would be largely impartial and fair in carrying out their responsibilities. No longer. It used to be at least somewhat true, but in this era it increasingly is an antiquated concept that they would do what is right as opposed to what best serves the self. As long as that remains the case, and fundamental human nature stays the same, the rest of us are screwed.
"Could the drunk friends not have hopped on one of those bachelorette party wagons that plague the city? Were the agents asked to send the friends a bacon-egg-and-cheese sammy with a yellow Gatorade to wash it down the next day?"
Tom and Daisy Buchanan are in charge now. The Epstein class wants to party like Russian oligarchs, and so they will.
Oh, they're partying better than Russian oligarchs. After all, they know they don't need to worry about going to prison, much less falling out of a window.
For now, anyway. But I think they will find that a world without the rule of law isn't as cozy as they assumed it would be.
One hopes so, anyway. Or not, because we all have to live in the same world.
There’s a large part of this MAGA movement that seems to have created a permission structure to do or say whatever they want because righteousness is on THEIR side.
Must be nice, huh?
Yep. A great gig, if you can get it.
The size of the court is up to congress which has changed it in the past — 1869 was the last change. Will congress take up that role is really the question, but there are congressional checks that could be used. Changing the number of justices is, honestly, one of the easier fixed.
No, the fundamental question is will the American people elect a Congress who WILL enact reforms.
The question is are they intelligent enough to even do so?
I wouldn’t want to be the judge of that. I believe it’s something other than intelligence, some matter of will and spirit.
LOL ! OMG that's the funniest thing i've seen all day. Bravo !
You're right and as of now I can't see that happening.
There are several creative and workable ideas to reform SCOTUS. We don't *have* to resort to just expanding the court in ways that reek of rank partisanship (tempting as it is to progressives/Democrats). Here's hoping that our country will be able to have a *thoughtful* discussion about possible solutions and make decisions based on reason. (I know, don't hold your breath.)
The most logical operational argument, to me, has always been that we update the number of SC justices to reflect the 13 Circuits- the 12 regional + the Fed. The Fed Circuit didn’t even exist until Congress passed The Federal Courts Improvement Act in 1982. Might be nice if Congress threw in some ethics oversight in any new SC legislation…
"ways that reek of rank partisanship"
Are we back to one-sided revering our 'norms'? That worked swell in the recent past.
Yes. We passed that mile marker ages ago.
What are these ‘creative and workable ideas’ you speak of? And in what world would they be seen as *non-partisan*. Does congress have or not have the power to determine the size of the court? We didn’t get the members of SCOTUS we have now through your *thoughtful* discussions but raw politics. Biden tried thoughtful discussions which went nowhere. Whether you like it or not, congress has the power to determine the size of the court, and what it sounds like you are saying is you don’t want congress to assert those powers or don’t believe that a duly elected congress represents the will of those who elected it.
And you don't think the Republicans would retaliate to increase the size of the court even more to install their justices? Not sure why Democrats think that if they get back in power, they will never be in the minority again.
Can we talk about 'pre-retaliation' . . . as in two-ninths of today's Supremes already are sitting there through raw partisan politics. When do we punch back?
And you don't think Republicans would respond, when they're in power, to increase the Court size even more so they can pack the court?
They could, but what reform couldn’t be manipulated by bad faith actors. Outside of Texas, aided and abetted by SCOTUS, other Republican states haven’t been that responsive to Trump.
There's nothing in the Constitution about the size of the Supreme Court. It was once up to 10, and that was before the country was anywhere near its current size. We have 13 Federal districts - at a minimum, there should be 13.
Really there should be more district courts and more appellate level courts too. The population is large and court backlogs create real problems for civil litigants, defendants, and court staff including judges.
Same with the number of representatives in the house, what was the population of the country in 1912 which may be the last time that the number was increased.
This is why popular mobilization may be crucial to a pro-democracy reform movement. The court's radical majority could help spark a call for fundamental constitutional changes that sweeps them aside.
We desperately need a Constitutional convention, and in a functional country we would get one.
In short, it is only the functional country we need. Congress pays the Supreme Court through its budget. Congress makes the laws not the Supreme Court. Yes, the court does strike down a law that the justices feel is unconstitutional. Congress can then rewrite the law, and keep rewriting the law until it is constitutional. Congress can impeach a justice, and impose rules that every other judge in the country have to follow. It is Congress that we have to look to and demand they do their job.
A Constitutional convention could be disastrous. What other surprises would be on the red states' wish list?
The Supreme Court can be fixed through legislation, assuming the Democrats have the balls to eliminate the filibuster when they're back in the majority (which assumes free and fair elections in our future, of course).
Anything passed at the Constitutional Convention still has to be ratified by 3/4 of the states.
The filibuster is the only thing left that protects Democrats power against Trumpism. And you want to get rid of it? As things are going currently, Democrats will often be in the minority in the Senate. The filibuster protects their power.
The filibuster hurts the Democrats way more thanit helps.
The key to any useful constitutional revision is supermajority grassroots support. The moneyed interests will seek advantage and will go all-out to influence low-info voters. For this reason, many think a convention would be a disaster, especially for minorities.
Question asked and answered. This is our brave new world, I guess?
Indeed it is. Has been for a while now. That only one side realized it is why were here.
A constitutional convention will result in a nationalist, white Christian America with no gun restrictions, with strict abortion bans with gender role lines harshly drawn. Is that what you want, Tom? A fascist state.
You do realize that any changes to the Constitution proposed at a convention would still have to be ratified by 3/4 of state legislatures?
Sure, but Donald was elected as the president after being thoroughly disgraced and outed as a sexual predator, after being twice impeached and after being convicted of 34 felony offenses. I won't even attempt to list all of his outrageous actions during Trump 2. So don't tell me that they won't get their super majority. I live in NC where we have a democratic governor and democratic Attorney General, where the electorate is almost evenly divided but where the GOP has a veto proof majority. NC would vote to ratify such an amendment and there is nothing that we can do about it.
I remember a false slate of electors in 2020. False ratification is probably easy if you have no morals.
Only with our agreement. Why would we agree to a fascist state?
Like ICE? Yeah, we didn't agree with that, but there it is. Like killing civilian noncombatants when we aren't at war? More fascism we didn't agree with. Why would anyone need our agreement?
I agree. However, I have a lot of liberal friends who are terrified by a constitutional convention. I don't share those fears because anything they come up with still has to be approved by 3/4 of the states.
Yes, and many of them are red and are on the low end of education levels. Education is paramount to democratic success, which is why we are in this mess.
Which is why the goon squad is dismantling the Dept of Education, or whatever they're calling it now.
If 3/4 ratification is the finale, there probably should be a ground rule that consensus is the opener: Everyone would have to either endorse or live with a proposal.
The response to those legitimate concerns about SCOTUS must be Democrats taking their white gloves off and divorcing themselves from this toxic marriage they've had with process and regulation. So many good ideas of theirs like energy efficiency and other environmental mandates are meaningless when the public can see the bright red through line to housing shortages and homelessness. How much energy do we waste dealing with those crises? How healthy of an environment is skid row?
Opposition strategies absolutely must start focusing on results-based leadership from the grassroots level on up. Reforming the court is absolutely an uphill battle, but look at what the GOP did to Roe. It took a couple generations and cutting a lot of corners to say the least, but they got what they wanted. Painful as that's been for those of us who happen to believe women's rights are just as self evident, that game plan should be examined soberly.
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
The problem is that progressives and the left are impatient. When they don't get what they want immediately, they stay home or vote for the other guy "to teach the Dems a lesson." Enough Dems voted for Trump to do that in a number of swing states.
There is no way they will be content waiting a few decades for change. That is part of the problem.
Stop radicalizing me (more).
Increasing the size of the SCT is pretty absurd. Both sides would be doing this until the SCT had hundreds of people. What we do need is term limits, however. I love the 18 year limit staggered so each two years, the President has another appointment to make. I've long said lifetime tenure of federal judges was a mistake. The problem now with what's going on is the SCT using its shadow docket to weigh in on every issue.
It can only be done with the agreement/acceptance of Congress, so no, it wouldn't happen all the time. Eighteen years is a generation. That's a long time to wait for change, and when you have a makeup like this SCOTUS, it's a lifetime. And it's a crap shoot who will be in the Oval and who will control Congress when the retirements happen. That's way too much left to chance.
Term limits would require a Constitutional amendment. That is not something that will ever get anywhere with its requirement that 3/5ths of the states must ratify it.
Trump's ballroom will be big enough to hold sessions of a perpetually expanding Supreme Court, so there's that.
Or a double-in-size House of Representatives!
Yep, they certainly do sit in the catbird's seat. They have all the cards, as Don likes to say. Justice can't get a seat in that court edgewise. And they have now decided to weigh in on birthright citizenship. That they would even take that case tells you all you need to about who they serve, IMO. And it doesn't look like it's us.
The president has the power to determine the number of justices who sit on the bench. It's fluctuated over the years.
Roger Taney would feel at home in this court.
Well, he might have some cognitive dissonance regarding Clarence
And the women.
Hey, the women never get their way or get to write a majority opinion, so it's not like they're full members the way Alito and Thomas are.
There are four women on the court, three are in the minority so they're probably not going to write majority opinions. The one female justice in the majority, Amy Coney Barrett, is the newest majority justice so she's not going to be assigned many majority decisions to write because of her lack of seniority. She did write six last term, however. Your suggestion there is some sexism against female justices writing majority decisions is easily explained by reasons unrelated to discrimination.
Yes, but you do know that you can say that about every discriminatory thing coming out of DC right now. I think I am more interested in the fact that most women are liberal and liberals are shut out of power completely, therefore shutting out most women.
Okay, you got it, best comment today. 👍 🌊
Hah ! You beat me to it .
He might object to the pigmentation of some of the members . 🙄
Democracy requires constant heavy lifting, constant vigilance. The only way out of this quagmire is to create a fantasy US in which a majority of citizens vote, their votes are conscientious and informed, and they vote to elect legislatures that enact robust, constitutional, airtight, Roberts-proof laws.
These things could happen. Will they? Not bloody likely, but an old girl can dream.
Meanwhile there is no shortcut, no deus ex machina, no magic wand, no movie version in which our problems are solved in 90 minutes by two handsome costars with a theme song. Democracy is a long, hellish slog, and this is why democracies die.
It doesn't have to be hellish. It seems that way now because we have become a spoiled, lazy, ignorant, entitled nation that takes completely takes for granted the peace and economic and military security we've enjoyed.
Democracy is about responsibility. It requires vigilance, participation, and a modicum of interest, ie understanding how things work, what leaders can fix, and what they can't. And knowing the difference between lies and facts/truths.
Americans are just too lazy. They want to their sports, reality television, social media, and video games. They want FUN FUN FUN and anything that isn't what they consider to be FUN is boring.
And the citizens aren’t racist.
Oh gosh no !
Congress was given the power to create inferior appellate and trial courts in Article 3, Section 1. What Congress creates, it may destroy. I suggest that the Circuit courts be abolished and that all appeals from the trial courts be taken to an expanded federal appellate court known as the appellate division with 13 courts of ten judges each sitting in their current locations. Appeals of appellate division orders may be taken to the full panel. Each appellate division court would be empowered to select one of its members to sit on a full court panel consisting of 13 judges. The current members of the SCOTUS would be absorbed into this panel of 20 and its numbers would be reduced by the number of current justices who may depart that court in the future until the total number is reduced to 13. In the event of a tie vote during the period of reduction, the decision of the appellate division will stand. The doctrine of stare decisis is repudiated.
"It's not our fault - if we don't accommodate Trump's authoritarian whims, gun-totin' loons may appear on our doorsteps. And it's not our fault there's 400M guns - it's right there in the 2A: "shall not be infringed". We're just calling balls and strikes."
Golly. I guess the Constitution was a suicide pact, after all.
They’re just awful!
I was so furious at the SCOTUS redistricting decision that I brainstormed on how the six Republicans on the court could be countered. My mind went to some dark places, allowed by their own presidential immunity decision. I AM NOT ADVOCATING THE FOLLOWING!
What’s to prevent a future Democratic president from having the Fascist six taken out (other than basic decency, of course)? He could claim it’s part of his “official duties” to protect our democracy. He could then issue preemptive pardons to the assassins.
Again, this is just a scenario motivated by the Supreme’s own absurd immunity decision and the extraordinary pardon power of the president. I would like to motivate a discussion.
Radical right maga operatives.
@Ellen Thomas
WH/SNL Update
https://open.substack.com/pub/ojaiohana/p/videos-trump-doubles-down-sabrina?r=5chxge&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
@Ellen Thomas
dishonoring The Kennedy Center Honors
https://ojaiohana.substack.com/p/video-dishonoring-the-kennedy-center?r=5chxge
Don't let your friends drive drunk. If they seem drunk, tipsy, or buzzed, take their keys and call in an FBI SWAT team.
~The More You Know🌈⭐
The rainbow and star touch at the end are masterful. Well done.
Congratulations on winning the internet today, good sir.
The Big Rock Candy Mountain.🏔️🍭
And call Uber or Lift
That’s so pedestrian when you can wave your hand and have the secret service do it for you — on the tax payers dime.
The tone-deaf entitlement is a whole new level.
It isn't even the Secret Service, it is FBI agents, which I am certain have much more important things to do. What a disgrace.
New ride options on UberSpook and UberFed.
A few quick hits of my own:
1) Texas gets its redistricting maps. Other states now have the green light to do the same. Impartial voting maps are officially uncool and undesirable. Politicians get to pick their voters and do their business with little to no accountability. Isn't that what shithole countries do?
2) Saying that the current President is rejecting liberal principles is technically correct, but gives him far too much credit for actually thinking about it. More accurate is that we are dealing with the neediest- and greediest-ever occupant of the White House. His true motivations can be boiled down to two things: who flatters and favors him the most, and who lines his pockets the most in a series of transactional relationships. Putin and Xi know that and are planning accordingly. They make their plans and schemes knowing that they are dealing with the most childlike, self-absorbed, and intellectually vacant leader that America ever has had, and by far -- second place isn't even visible over the horizon. It is a golden age for them for as long as it lasts, and most voters aren't smart or concerned enough beyond the self to think that through, and what the ramifications are of it. What could go wrong?
3) The proposal to strip dual citizenship from American citizens, grounded in some half-witted, paranoid suspicion of disloyalty that lacks any substantive evidence, is an open invitation for the best and the brightest to choose to live and work elsewhere, where they will be more appreciated and treated better. It's easy to see great thinkers and innovators fleeing America, taking their talents to other nations that will both house and derive substantial, world-changing gains while we wave the flag and say how we remain the Greatest Nation on Earth because we are such an exclusive club. I believe the expression for that is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Wait until rich, conservative-leaning, Jewish, dual US-Israeli citizens find out about the getting rid of dual-citizenship proposal. (I'm sure they'll get a special carveout under the proposal)
Russians living in Florida will get exceptions too, I'll bet.
Do the Russians really want to go back?
I'm guessing that, if this issue has any traction, the administration will do its usual pivot toward monetizing the matter and come up with a policy that, yes, you can have dual citizenship after all ... if you pay the going rate. Some very elevated figure that brings more money into certain coffers in yet another pay-to-play scheme. The obvious question is: where or to whom does the money go?
Or just buy a bunch of MelaniaCoin and you get a pass
They don't have anything to fear because they are white.
Trump is only targeting migrants from Africa and Latin America.
It's not even a matter of rich Israeli-Americans getting a special carve-out. They just aren't being targeted, in the same way that people from Europe aren't being targeted & have nothing to fear.
Trump isn't even trying to hide his administration's racism. They are accepting white South Africans as refugees, and they also said they're willing to accept refugees from Europe who are fleeing "woke" European governments.
They’ve been detains Canadians, too, including those with American-citizen children and even Trump-voting families.
They may have light skin, but I doubt the faction pushing this move sees Jews as white. They certainly didn't historically!
So is Miriam Adelson going to cut her funding to the GOP. 🤣
I wouldn't be surprised if they don't. The faction pushing this, after all, is not just viciously racist but also anti-Semitic. A rich, conservative Jew is still a kike in their eyes!
Well said👏! 100% agree, it’s not about liberalism, it’s about whatever helps Trump achieve success. It’s all a zero sum game with these people.
FYI: I’ve read that there really isn’t a mechanism to strip Americans of dual citizenship. It’s done by the other countries, and we don’t track people; it won’t show up in our systems. Then there’s people like Melania and Barron; they’re dual citizens of Slovenia, because Slovenia automatically gives citizenship to anyone born to a Slovakian parent.
It’s all grand standing, deflection, and nonsense. It sounds great but will never happen…:)
Slovenia?
My bad, thanks for the correction…:)
My armchair psychology says that the president believes he is head of the country in the same way he is/was head of the Trump Organization. Whatever he says, goes.
Nice summary, and well said.
Don’t forget our newly minted South African immigrants.
Agree on items 1&2. On item 3 while I don't disagree with the disloyalty, I think this is more about restricting movement of spenders. More Americans are looking to get additional passports for the expected rough patches to come. I expect the regime to shorten the list of countries where Social Security payments will be made so that those of us who are solidly middle class cannot shop for residency in democracies with healthcare and lower cost of living. Or make the choice harder by giving up (dropping) social security payments.
This can be done easier than getting anything through Congress like stripping dual citizenship or ending totalization treaties for working Americans.
I plan on contacting my legislators about dual citizenship and social security (both maintaining list of approved countries and lifting the cap on taxes).
For number 3 I took my disloyalty thought from the words of the person who proposed the legislation, in a public comment. But overall your point is a good one, and the topic of Social Security warrants much more attention as our population increasingly ages out and needs to access that money, built up over decades and with no ability to recoup it if the federal government were to withhold it. Could that not be considered legalized theft if there is no restriction on people changing their residence to another country?
“When you attack our natiion’s capitol, you attack our very being way of life.” Ye gods and little tin fishes, as Aunt Tillie used to say. Is Irony really that dead? Where was Patel when Cheeto Head pardoned the Jan6 folks???
IK, R? I kept checking the date. Did he just say this?
Yes, with one eye on the camera and the other on the AG.
I think it was part of his chest pounding over arresting Bryan Cole, allegedly the 1/6 pipe bomb planter.
Irony, like shame, died a long time ago when it comes to the GOP.
Well, if irony's not yet completely dead, if and when Hegseth finds that out, he'll just order a second strike on it.
There are news reports that the suspect planted the pipe bombs because he believed that the 2020 election was stolen.
What are the odds that he'll be getting a pardon from Trump very soon ?
No no. You forgot. That wasn't an attack, that was a "day of love"! President potato head said so.
ah, yes. Just ordinary tourists visiting the capitol.
Doesn't everyone bring zip ties and a gallows along with them when they tour the Capitol?
Well, I certainly did. My flag pole too, in case I had to beat the security guy if he didn't let me through. you must have seen me there.... :+)))
As Charlie used to say, irony has been beaten to death with hammers, about 9 years ago I’d say.
I am so surprised someone didn't bust out laughing.
The SCOTUS is going to do what it will do. We better be prepared for the right winged justices to blow up whatever remains of the VRA. Thank goodness for Gavin Newsom and hopefully the Dems in Virginia. I say it with a deep dislike of gerrymandering.
I share your revulsion at the undemocratic dark art of gerrymandering and agree if they do it we have to return the favor in kind. It can't be all tits and no tats.
If the recent election in Tennessee is any sign, all this gerrymandering might not be enough to turn the tide for MAGA. It might well make things worse for them.
I sure hope so.
I agree. This is my comment on Charlie Sykes' recent post about the Supreme Court decision on the Texas gerrymandering case:
"How is partisan gerrymandering fair or equitable or democratic? Why should the elected tell We the People for whom we can vote? Why is gerrymandering even permitted in our constitutional republic? If our republic truly is "government of the people, by the people, for the people," then We have work to do. We can start by talking to our neighbors and making sure that the 2026 midterms reflect our desire to put our country over party." Elect people of integrity who will support and defend our constitution - no more party hacks from either major party.
You can say the same for Citizens United. Fair democracy is not a priority for this court.
It's not even a valid concept for it.
The color shifting alveoli surrounding formerly solid red districts may serve to undo their plans.
But I like tits, and I am not sure about tats.
of course they are going to blow up the remains of the VRA — Roberts has never believed in or supported it. This is a SCOTUS that has said private institutions cannot use race as a criteria for admission, but the carceral state can use race when arresting people who might be here illegally. This is a SCOTUS that is determined to take us back to the pre-civil rights era. I still don’t understand the *why*, but if you look at the history of the court they have been the most conservative political actor with only a brief liberal period.
Kavanaugh stops, detaining people based on skin color - allowed
Closing poll locations based on majority color of skin of residents - allowed
Voters picking their representatives themselves - not allowed
The good news for me in Texas is that I’m now only in a pinkish district with the newly SCOTUS approved maps. I was previously in deep red Chip Roy country🤮. Now, my new neighbors, stretching from here to 500+ miles west, across a time zone, have a decent shot of electing a Dem.
Agree.
I am beyond volcanically angry that scotus diluted the power of my vote and other Democratic voters here. I can only hope that the republicans did more damage to themselves by this latest carve up. We had already been gerrymandered to pieces.
Gerrymandering weakens their majority. If Trump screws up badly enough, even some of their redrawn districts may flip. 🤞
This is off topic. But since I live near by MPLS, here is a little status update on ICE in MPLS. It has been big news here. And it seems they are handling it better than other cities that have had their run ins with ICE. They have been pro active, not reactive. The other day its mayor( Jacob Frey) had a presser with its police chief. (Brian O'Hara) In it, O'Hara stressed that the local police are not with ICE and are not supporting it. Yesterday ICE went into a local Restaurant. Knowing that Ice needed a warrant, the owner was having nothing of it and booted them out. We need to see more of this being pro active instead of just raging about it after it occurs.
It seems folks paid attention to Chicago. Maybe??? Anyway. Good on them! Much praise to that owner!
It would be extremely easy for the folks who have been organizing the opposition to ICE in Chicago to talk to folks in Minneapolis.
And they have been ;)
It'll be interesting to see what happens in New Orleans. Will its officials adopt the tactics and attitude of the cities that have been dealing with ICE and CBP for a while?
I am old enough to remember the stories my parents told me as a child about the Stock Market Crash of 1928, surviving the Great Depression, and of course, WWII. It also included pride at the defeat of McCarthyism, and shame (which I came to feel myself) over Watergate. These experiences shaped their world view, which was filled with courage, resolve, gratitude, hope, and a healthy dose of patriotism shaped through trust in our government to ultimately do the right thing. Even Watergate, while a stain on our country, was resolved through bipartisan action to right a terrible wrong committed by our president.
All of that is now gone.
My greatest fear for a few years now is the prospect of invasion by a more cohesive government than our own. I think that many who decry China as our biggest threat likely share that concern. They do not have as many nuclear weapons, (how many do you need?) but they have enough people in their military (likely millions who will blindly follow orders) to make us vulnerable should they try to invade us. China has, in modern times, always been in favor of stability (a country with that many people to control would need this to function), but if pressed into a situation where their survival depends on invading us, they have the means to do so. And if it not China, there are other threats as well.
If we continue to act as we are now, our military will continue to weaken and shrink, our people will become even more divided, our population will shrink and our foreign policy will destroy our once reliable alliances, all of which will make us ripe for the picking.
So we cannot simply sit back and assume that the chaos that is coming will not affect us at home. With enough chaos here, we will be vulnerable to those abroad who hate us, fear us, or simply want what we have. If and when the fight comes to our shores, it will already be too late. A feckless congress, an ineffective SCOTUS and a corrupt POTUS could easily end our democracy. Will that make us vulnerable to attack by other countries? I think it could. Just ask yourself: would Trump “give” another country Puerto Rico if it meant avoiding armed conflict that would effect him personally? And if the answer is yes, then what’s to stop him from giving away Alaska? Or the West Coast?
Alarmist? Maybe. But ask yourself what are China and Russia thinking right now as they watch what is happening here? And who are North Korea and Venezuela talking to behind the scenes? And what is NATO’s position on defending the US in light of our current “policy” on Ukraine?
This shit is about to get real. And we are woefully unprepared to stop it.
The conventional thinking is that our military will always be invincible. As I'm sure you're aware, that's a dangerous assumption.
Yes Doris, the wheels have fallen off the car.
China hasn’t so much done outright invasion as influence operations. They interfered in Canadian elections. They also want to shut up Chinese dissidents abroad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_government_interference_in_the_2019_and_2021_Canadian_federal_elections
On Chinese “police stations” in Canada
https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/trnsprnc/brfng-mtrls/prlmntry-bndrs/20240719/43-en.aspx
I can foresee this in Hawaii and especially Alaska since China and Russia acknowledge climate change and are interested in leading in the Arctic. Plus Alaska was part of Russia in the past and is so close to its border.
Russia has already invaded the lower 48 through social media Maga accounts to destabilize us. With our first Russian POTUS in place, I think Putin could be happy with Europe and Alaska.
If China uses Trump wisely, it takes back Taiwan and the impact to America would make enough of a wave, that physical invasion would be long, arduous and not guaranteed victory. More importantly, if Putin has not invaded Europe, NATO would be obligated to come to our defense. Not advantageous to the business interests of China.
I would be less surprised about China taking the US spot of world innovator: we will take Chinese medicine, use Chinese energy infrastructure, allow BYD into the US market.
The enemy combatants that Cotten claimed were poised to return to "the fight" were off Trinidad, as in Trinidad and Tobago--about 2000 miles from US soil. He wants us to accept that e.g. people in San Francisco might be threatened by a two men clinging to a half sunk boat in Lake Michigan.
Whose "weapons" are bags of cocaine.
Now, if they could right the boat then fill thousands of ultra-long range drone syringes full of dope, each one aimed at the arm of an American...
I was thinking the cocaine bags could be weaponized like the famous "sandwich guy" weaponized a subway sandwich. But your way makes more . . . . sense?
Wet cocaine packs a punch.
Cocaine can't be dangerous. If it was, surely Trump would not have pardoned a man who was imprisoned for arranging the shipping of 400 TONS of the stuff into the US! /s
Tom Cotton and Bolton never met a war they didn't like.
My guess is that Bolton is turning his nose up at this one.
I think everything Kagan said was affirmed with the release of our new National Security Strategy yesterday. As a person who grew up during the Cold War, I can’t believe I am seeing our country turn away from Europe and towards Russia. The world order has been sacrificed so that Trump, his family and the people around him can be personally enriched.
every time I read about it I am shocked how gullible Republican voters are. They need to be made to understand that Tucker Carlson is a liar. Life in Russia is much worse than here and most Russians are not religious. This is really about the richest people wanting to hog all wealth resources and power for themselves.
The average Republican gullible? Maybe. I'd go with full of hate.
Yes but also lacking any ability to think for themselves. JVL wrote in a Triad about some poor idiot who brought his family to Russia to escape woke and who ended up being sent to Ukraine to fight and was killed promptly.
Their sense of reality certainly is questionable.
Instant karma!
Why can’t it be both?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yup.
In far-right ideology, the postwar order was just a way of imposing secular liberalism on the world. Reactionaries admire Putin because they think he's defending religion and tradition from the menace of the "liberal imperium."
It appears to me that some of the people who push that line of thought are profiting from Trump's pro-plutocrat policies, while they preen in their "Christian" piety.
There's a moral sickness at the heart of the hard right.
trump and family will be un-enriched if he locks arms with putin. Oligarchs in Russia make sure they give putin a cut of their wealth. And they stay away from upper floor windows.
putin is playing trump like a cheap violin.
Trump, alas, is too stupid and way too overconfident to know that.
I remember being shocked in 2015 that people were sympathetic to Russia after it moved into Crimea. They bought the Russian claim that the US was orchestrating the removal of Yanukovych in 2014.
Russia has run a massive propaganda effort. They’ve been at it for years. This woman writes about it.
https://olgalautman.substack.com/
There's more opportunity for theft, grift, and profiteering when there is chaos. As long as there is a Trump or an acolyte anywhere near power this is what we will have.
I understand the hunger for a consoling narrative that has fallen on us, the collective yearning to believe we’re merely passing through turbulence before the cockpit steadies and the old order reasserts itself. We want the fever to have broken, the delirium to recede, the plot to resume its familiar arc. To me the real terror isn’t housed in the ambitions of Putin or Xi; it festers in the ruin we’ve already revealed about ourselves. Our instability isn’t some stray malfunction, it’s the resonant thrum of a nation whose internal scaffolding has begun to shear away.
Hollywood collapses inward like a supernova entering its death throes, alliances groan under the torque of our inconsistency, and authoritarians gather at the perimeter like predators scenting a wounded beast. None of this is incidental. These are flare-signals from the same underlying fracture. A single mirror, shattered, its splinters catching the light just long enough to show us what we’ve become. A country that has not merely misplaced its purpose, but forgotten how to recognize the silhouette of it.
We are prey. Mike Johnson's prayer's notwithstanding.
I agree, but also feel like if we’re prey, it’s not because we’ve been hunted, it’s because we’ve been softened. Hollowed out. Johnson and the Red Hat cult have become very adept at using prayers like incense to mask the rot.
"We The People" are the problem. And "We The People" are the only solution.
The jury is still out on the people being the solution.
Yeah, the use of “prey” was a bit more cute and a bit less technically correct. Also, I think we've largely softened ourselves.
Have you ever let a winter squash or a pumpkin sit around too long? For a long time the outside doesn't look too bad, just a few brown blotches here and there, but when you cut into it the inside is rotten.
America has become that pumpkin, after 249 years off of the vine.
Eloquently said.
Thank you, Katy for taking the time to be here. I wish eloquence felt like a victory, but most days it feels more like chronicling the slow unraveling of a country that keeps insisting the mirror is lying. I'm so grateful knowing people like you exist.
Chaos is coming? I would argue that chaos is already here.
For sure, but right now, we're just whirling in the circle of wind surrounding the REAL chaos. We haven't yet moved to the chaotic center and been completely ripped to pieces.
With Patel's girlfriend's friend's FBI escort, what can be done? You can leak this stupidity to the press, but it will be easy to find the leaker since such a small circle of people know about it, and the only person who might ever face any accountability for the misconduct is the leaker. God only knows what sort of shit we are completely unaware of because leakers are targeted.
I think this is one of the biggest problem of Trump 2.0 - there is so much bad (and potentially illegal) behavior, but no avenue for response. The feds aren't going to get involved, the legislature won't do more than look on disapprovingly, and nothing in the courts really matters as long as this SCOTUS is the final arbiter of the law. Hegseth, Noem, Kennedy, and others can really clearly make up excuses and fake data for pretext, and no one can make them resign, no one can make them stop. So much of our government and society were founded on essentially an honors system with no real means of enforcement if the rich and powerful simply decide to not care anymore. We aren't even a year in.
Nope. Giving both houses of Congress to Republicans while electing this monster president was a tremendous error.
The Senate is probably out of reach short of a massive blue wave without adding states. With redistricting, the House probably goes the same way for the same reasons. If it were truly proportional, that would be a different story.
Carol Leonig mentioned as much on MS Now today; they are aware of how punitive Patel is and try to report things that are well sourced so there is not an automatic path to an individual.
While things on the domestic policy front are bad and have always worried me the attitude of this administration towards foreign policy could literally end us. Bob Kagan is absolutely right...the "normal" world order is war and chaos. But Americans do not know this. We are not taught European history in school, only American history and most of that is the Revolution and Civil Wars. We weren't dramatically affected by European conflicts because for most of history we were protected from most of the chaos by our oceans. By the time planes became integral to warfare we'd started becoming and then became a superpower. If we are no longer a superpower our oceans can't be counted on to protect us from supersonic jets and ICBMs.
I have long thought one major factor that brought us to the point we are at is that almost no one alive has any memory of life before WWII. And this can be read into every move this administration makes. Get rid of vaccines, end our role in foreign policy, enact tariffs in the belief that we can extract ourselves from the global economy, gut government regulations that have given us clean air and water and public education. These people literally want to take the country back to about 1890 and too many voters, disillusioned by the reality that everyday technology is frustrating and that the US healthcare system is broken and there is an epidemic of loneliness and that stuff costs too much, have decided that the past was better because no one alive actually lived through it. People seem to think that life was better when we were living to an average age of 50 and women were chained to their husbands and children weren't guaranteed an education and that people worked 12 hour days 6 days a week. Because people do not know history. At all. Not even a little bit.
So its not discrimination to redraw your district map to favor Republicans They just happen to disfavor Blacks, which is totally accidental and not at all discriminatory. I get it. There is something really wrong with the Supreme Court.
Yeah. And their names are Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.
Highly recommend Bill's conversation with Kagan.
Would also recommend Charlie Sykes's conversation with Ed Luce. Luce believes the upcoming decision to seize or not to seize Russian frozen assets is a critical decision, signaling whether the will to vigorously confront Russia exists or not. He likens this decision to Churchill's controversial decision to sink a big chunk of the French Navy after France's surrender in 1940 for fear that it would fall into Nazi hands. (Over a thousand French killed.) But the decision was taken by FDR as a sign that the British were all in on the fight and stiffened his own commitment to lead the US to aid the British side.