The Insidious Effort to Rationalize Trump’s Lawfare
This is not a president justified in going after those who went after him. It’s a person making a mockery of our justice system.
Donald Trump and Greg Abbott’s deployment of Texas National Guardsmen to Chicago has hit a legal wall—for now. A federal judge in Illinois handed down an order Thursday night temporarily blocking the deployment, saying she had seen “no credible evidence that there is a danger of a rebellion in the state of Illinois.”
How the president will respond remains to be seen. An appeal is all but certain, but Trump has also contemplated more extreme measures: If judges kept getting in his way, he said this week, he might just be forced to invoke the Insurrection Act. What a fun weekend activity, anticipating this! Happy Friday.
One Size Fits All
by Andrew Egger
One of the most insidious things about Donald Trump’s decade-long turn atop our politics is the way it has seared our political conscience. For years, it has been a cliché to call his various awful behaviors and decisions “shocking, but not surprising.” These days, however, we seem to be losing some of our inability even to feel the shock.
You could see this in some of the early reactions last night to the news of Letitia James’s indictment on two counts of mortgage fraud. The New York attorney general has been near the top of Trump’s enemies list for a while, and literally nobody—at least that I can dig up—seems to be trying to argue that this indictment isn’t an act of naked political retribution. (To be fair, arguing this would be difficult after Trump removed all doubt last month by accidentally putting a post out in public that he had meant to send as a DM to Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding James’s prosecution.)
Instead, the Republican line—parroted by some who should really know better—is that this is a justified act of retribution, in some sort of street-justice sense. Or if not justified, at least understandable, from Trump’s point of view: They tried to get him, now he’s trying to get them. Most charitably, they say, it is an unfortunate tit-for-tat that can’t go on indefinitely—but also a situation in which Trump is just one bad actor in a cast of many.
An editorial from the new-look, more Trump-forgiving Washington Post editorial board this week cast the current moment along those lines. “Many Democrats still cannot see how their legal aggression against Trump during his four years out of power set the stage for the dangerous revenge tour on which he is now embarked,” it mourned. Those who were trying to hold Trump accountable had “show[n] little restraint” in their investigations—a big part of why he was now “showing still less restraint” while hitting back. It’s unfortunate that he lashed out at you like that—but maybe you shouldn’t have made him so mad.
We should be clear about this. There is no comparison between the acts Letitia James took as attorney general of New York to hit Trump’s companies and the ones he is now taking to hit “back” at her. The difference between them is not the difference between a lesser act of political malice and a greater one. (Although it is worth noting the massive difference of scale here: While James’s civil suit accused Trump’s companies of pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars off a years-long practice of misrepresenting properties, the indictment against James accuses her of filing a misleading loan application and coming out ahead less than $20,000.) It’s the difference between the application of law and the application of raw power.
When people accuse James of “lawfare,” or of pursuing a “politicized” civil fraud case against Trump, they mean that she pursued that case with a zeal they believe she would not have shown against another target. Could be! But her fundamental case, as the New York Times noted last month, was not unreasonable. It was rooted in sworn testimony Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen had made before Congress that Trump habitually inflated the value of his properties to get favorable treatment in loans. She won her civil case against Trump at trial. This year, an appeals court vacated the financial penalty the initial judge had handed down, but did not vacate Trump’s civil liability. Trump had his day to argue in court that James’s investigations into him were vindictive and politically motivated—and the courts threw that argument out.
Now consider Trump. As he staffed out his administration with lickspittles and cronies, he didn’t just instruct them to look into James to see what they could rustle up. Instead, he twisted the entire federal government into a shape designed to produce the criminal indictment he demanded. The roots of the mortgage-fraud claim into James weren’t anything he came by honestly: They were the results of a fishing expedition carried out by Bill Pulte, who has used the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which he directs, as a databank to plumb for information on a host of Trump enemies. When that pretext didn’t prove compelling enough to the first Trump-appointed U.S. prosecutor with jurisdiction, the president canned that prosecutor and moved on to someone he was sure would give him the result he wanted: his former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan. Halligan, sure enough, has now done so.
Just how unjust a campaign of retribution this will turn out to be remains to be seen. It’s possible, of course, that Pulte’s muckraking turned up actual wrongdoing on James’s part—though James vigorously denies this and Halligan’s non-compromised predecessor seemed to agree. We’ll get to find out, as James will still get a trial—no matter how much Trump, who already says he knows her to be “guilty as hell,” might want to skip ahead.
Still, it’s important to be lucid about where we are. This isn’t Trump escalating a fight James started. It’s Trump being Trump the only way he knows how: smashing, smashing, and smashing until the last irritating opponent is gone from his sight.
The Sound of Silence
by William Kristol
Though I know I give the impression of being impressively hip, it’s been a little while since I’ve followed pop music—about a half century, in fact. But we were all young once. And so I, along with virtually all my fellow impressionable 12-year-olds, quickly became big fans when the overdubbed electric version of Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” was released in September 1965.
We knew the tune, we knew the lyrics. And it’s amazing how those things stick in your head decades later. Indeed, I’ve found myself in recent years recalling—even humming!—the song, and especially the final two stanzas.
“Fools,” said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you.”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence.And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, “The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence.”
You can see why the song came back to mind. Somehow the image of the people bowing and praying to the neon god they made has a certain resonance today. And so does the idea that the response—especially I’d say from those who should know better than to bow to a neon god—has been . . . the sound of silence.
Indeed, over the past nine months, as we’ve descended rapidly down the path to authoritarianism, “silence like a cancer” has grown. From Republican elected officials to business tycoons, from conservative luminaries to establishment functionaries—it’s been dry “wells of silence” all around.
But could it be that a few raindrops are beginning to be heard? Just yesterday, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, criticized President Trump’s deployment of the Texas National Guard to Illinois. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if [Gov. JB] Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration,” Stitt told the New York Times.
And a few weeks ago, Texas’s own Republican Sen. Ted Cruz challenged Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr over his threats against late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. “I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said of Carr’s warning that he would use the power of the federal government against critics and opponents of Donald Trump.
More recently, during the current government shutdown, a few Republican members of Congress have expressed concerns about OMB Director Russ Vought’s threats to take advantage of the shutdown to begin permanently firing government employees and killing programs he and his boss don’t like.
These moments have mattered. Cruz’s words actually may have had a real-world effect in saving Kimmel and deterring Carr. Vought hasn’t so far carried through on his threats. And later Thursday, another Republican governor, Phil Scott of Vermont, stepped forward to echo Stitt.
But these remain pretty small raindrops of protest in a parched desert of complicity and silence. Indeed, the sounds we’ll hear today from Republicans will not be words of dissent. It will be the pitter-patter of GOP feet scurrying as fast as they can to cameras to curry favor with their neon god by complaining loudly that he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize they have to say he deserved.
But maybe, in the midst of all that, a few of them will actually read the citation of the Nobel committee for the prize awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who has been living in hiding after attempting to peacefully oppose President Nicolás Maduro.
Machado was recognized for being willing to “rise and resist” and for keeping “the flame of democracy burning” amid “a growing darkness” and “ever-expanding authoritarianism in Venezuela.”
As the committee said:
Democracy depends on people who refuse to stay silent, who dare to step forward despite grave risk, and who remind us that freedom must never be taken for granted, but must always be defended — with words, with courage and with determination.
Here in the United States, of course, the risks of stepping forward pale compared to those faced by dissidents in Venezuela and around the world. Surely it’s not too much to hope that some heretofore timid Americans, especially Republicans, could find inspiration from the example of María Corina Machado and “refuse to stay silent.”
AROUND THE BULWARK
Mike Johnson Is Becoming the New Liberal Bogeyman… The low-key House speaker’s success and defiance are turning him into a prime political target, reports JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.
Live from D.C.! Catch the recording of SARAH, TIM, and JVL’s show at the Lincoln Theatre, from wild personal stories to real talk about how we face this moment as a country. This episode of The Next Level is all about connection, community, and not giving in to the chaos. When things get dark, we stick together.
Why Our Tech Overlords Took a Hard Right Turn… CASEY MICHEL reviews a new book that tells the story of how Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs became angry admirers of authoritarianism.
Trump’s Abuses of Power Show We Didn’t Learn Much From the Nixon Era… That failure is implicit in nearly every frame of a new documentary about legendary Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, warns JILL LAWRENCE.
The Hopeless Horror of Charles Beaumont… The spinner of spooky tales died before his fortieth birthday—but left behind an influential catalogue of stories and unforgettable Twilight Zone episodes, recalls BILL RYAN.
Quick Hits
BLS (PARTIALLY) BACK IN ACTION: We didn’t get a September jobs report this month thanks to the government shutdown. Fortunately, it’s looking like the economic-data blackout will not be total: The Bureau of Labor Statistics began calling some workers back to the office this week to produce its regular Consumer Price Index report. According to the New York Times, that change is intended to prevent a delay in the annual cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits, which is pegged to third-quarter inflation data each year.
But while some of the bureau’s data-collecting work is resuming, economists and government experts continue to warn that Trump’s partisan meddling at the agency could compromise its ability to carry out its mission. Here’s Reuters:
President Donald Trump’s unwarranted attacks on the integrity of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics were undermining trust in economic data and had accelerated retirements of key personnel at the agency, former BLS commissioners said on Wednesday.
During a discussion at the libertarian Cato Institute, Erica Groshen and William Beach, who headed the agency under presidents of both parties, said the BLS had lost 12 of its 35 senior leaders. . . .
“Trust ... for statistical agencies, it is mission critical. Unwarranted attacks on the integrity of BLS and the other parts of the statistical system will do lasting damage until trust is rebuilt,” said Groshen. “So this is a bad place for the agencies, and we need to recover from it. I trust that the more informed and sober minds in our country will work hard to repair that damage.”
TAPPING THEIR FEET: Pro-life conservatives haven’t been thrilled this year about the way the Trump administration seems to have put anti-abortion policy on the back burner. And that grumpiness turned to outrage last week after the Food and Drug Administration approved a generic form of mifepristone, part of a two-part drug cocktail frequently used to induce abortion.
Now, pro-life groups and lawmakers are putting new pressure on the administration to deliver on a longstanding promise: a full FDA reassessment of mifepristone’s safety. Nearly the entire Senate GOP—with the exceptions of Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins—signed onto a public letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary Thursday, demanding to know how the administration could be moving forward in making the drug easier to access before completing that review.
“While we recognize the FDA’s statutory responsibility in evaluating drug applications, the timing of this approval appears inconsistent with the comprehensive safety reassessment your agencies have prioritized,” the lawmakers wrote. “We urge you to take decisive action to reevaluate whether this generic version of mifepristone is suitable to enter the market.”
While the FDA and HHS have not commented on the Senate letter, an HHS spokesman said last week that the law gave them “very limited discretion in deciding whether to approve a generic drug” and that the mifepristone reevaluation is ongoing.
Cheap Shots
The White House is reacting to the news of the Nobel Peace Prize going to a Venezuelan democracy advocate with all the grace you might expect:
I absolutely love it! the Nobel peace prize winner is from Venezuela! And a protester for Democracy at that! Talk about a giant middle finger and a fuck you to Trumpster!
The Nobel Peace prize to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is well deserved. But one can also see the important message that the committee sends directly to all of us:
Democracy depends on people who refuse to stay silent, who dare to step forward despite grave risk, and who remind us that freedom must never be taken for granted, but must always be defended — with words, with courage and with determination.