Don’t Put an Insurrectionist in Charge of the Insurrection Act
Plus: Will the Democratic Convention Break Trump?
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🫏🎉2024 CONVENTION COVERAGE🎭🐘
We’ll get started, live, after the convention programming ends, around 11:15 PM Eastern. (Yes, later than usual!)
AUSTIN SARAT AND DENNIS AFTERGUT: Don’t Put an Insurrectionist in Charge of the Insurrection Act
DONALD TRUMP’S ALLIES have reportedly been laying the groundwork for him, if returned to the presidency, to use the U.S. military against domestic demonstrators—exploiting the Insurrection Act, a deeply flawed old law that has been lying around like a loaded gun waiting to be picked up by a would-be tyrant.
An in-depth report in the New York Times on Saturday digs into Trump’s longstanding desire to deploy the military on American soil and the cadre of legal and policy advisers working to justify such an order. As the Times blandly states, “that would carry profound implications for civil liberties and for the traditional constraints on federal power.”
JILL LAWRENCE: Kamala Harris Is No Communist, Socialist, or Nixon
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS wants to punish companies for price gouging—but only food suppliers and grocery stores, and only if federal or state authorities investigate and determine that they have violated what her campaign calls “clear rules of the road.”
Reaction across the spectrum has run a mild to overheated gamut of negativity, with the proposal being called everything from counterproductive and “not sensible” to “Venezuelan-style” Nixonomics and “a heavy-handed socialist policy” that will fuel former President Donald Trump’s attacks on her as “Comrade Kamala” going “full Communist” by imposing “socialist price controls” that would cause rationing and hunger.
🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧
Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: Bill Kristol and Michael Weiss: It's Showtime [YouTube]
Shield of the Republic: How to Kill a Democracy [YouTube]
The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood: Disney's Future Is the Past
The Focus Group: MAGA According to JD Vance (with Ian Ward) [YouTube]
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A.B. STODDARD: Will the Democratic Convention Break Trump?
EVER SINCE DONALD TRUMP chose JD Vance as his running mate and then got a new general election opponent a week later, he hasn’t been the same. Watching Vice President Kamala Harris’s popularity soar, his polling lead vanish, and Vance become a mistake has been destabilizing.
Trump has responded to his campaign freefall by returning to his security blankets of conspiracy and racism. He has also nursed fantasies of Joe Biden returning to the ticket, and claimed that a crowd of thousands attending a Harris rally was fake and produced by artificial intelligence, that his audience on January 6th was larger than the crowd at Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and that “more than . . . 100 percent” of new jobs have gone to migrants.
FRANK LAVIN: A Model for Biden as He Passes the Baton
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN’S SPEECH scheduled for tonight at the the Democratic National Convention in Chicago will be among the most important—and difficult—of his career. He will be doing something he has never done before: Endorse his successor after having himself walked away from a campaign. Although common sense and all the polls tell us that withdrawing from the race was the right move for his party’s chances in November, it still runs counter to Biden’s instincts honed in a lifetime of politics.
LINDSAY M. CHERVINSKY: Joe Biden and the Art of the Presidential Farewell
IT’S ONE OF THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL DECISIONS a president makes: whether to run for re-election or step aside. It is also one of the most personally difficult. The presidency requires certain ego, ambition, and dreams of a lasting legacy for a person to believe he or she is the one person who should make the toughest decisions. Those characteristics regularly collide with calculations about party and popularity, demography and democracy. And looming in the background is the nearly mythical status of George Washington, the “American Cincinnatus” who set an important precedent by walking away from the highest office.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Monday! Hope you had a great weekend.
Come join us… In our Substack DNC Convention chat! And tonight, at around 11:15 ET for our post-convention reaction on YouTube.
In local news… It’s the 4 year anniversary of A drive into deep left field by Castellanos…
..and back in D.C… Councilman Trayon White, whom you might remember as the guy who thinks Jews control the weather, was arrested on federal bribery charges. (WaPo)
Judge Luttig… To endorse Kamala Harris (CNN).
Trump tried to clarify… his Medal of Freedom / Honor comments, but it did not end well.
All About My Mom… by Aqsa Rahmani at Will Selber’s Grumpy Combat Veteran + Friends.
The Yippies' Last Stand… Matt Labash on the ghosts of Chicago's past 🔐.
Somebody has created… A Trump assassination attempt watch. For $299. Woof. If you’re looking for a Rolex clone with a ceramic bezel and a Seiko automatic movement for much less, get this one.
Gormless in the Machine… On Running AI and Meat Avatars For Elective Office (Andrew Donaldson, Ordinary Times)
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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.
