SCOTUS Poised to Transform the Presidency

Plus: a livestream with Kim Wehle and Gregg Nunziata.

Apr 25, 2024

BILL KRISTOL & ANDREW EGGER: Pretty Good President, Not-So-Good Candidate
JVL: A Palestinian, a Jew, and a Priest Walk Onto a Campus 🔐
JOE PERTICONE is off this week.

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KIM WEHLE: Supreme Court Poised to Transform the Presidency, Empower Trump if Re-Elected

ON THURSDAY, THE SUPREME COURT heard oral argument on Donald J. Trump’s extraordinary bid for absolute, unqualified immunity for crimes committed by presidents in office. Unsurprisingly, even the Court’s right-wing justices weren’t interested in completely immunizing presidents from criminal liability for any and all crimes committed while president. That was never in serious contention. Judging by their questions, however, what the conservatives are evidently willing to do is manufacture some form of criminal immunity that will be governed by a private-versus-official conduct standard (with only official conduct protected), and then send the case back to District Judge Tanya Chutkan to parse Special Counsel Jack Smith’s January 6th indictment of Trump and excise the parts for which Trump would be protected under the Court’s newly minted criminal immunity test. How the Court will draw the line between official and private conduct is anyone’s guess, particularly if presidents abuse official powers for purely personal gain.

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ANDREW EGGER: Now Do the Border

IT WAS A VICTORY-LAP, SPIKE-THE-FOOTBALL MOMENT for President Joe Biden. “It’s a good day for America, it’s a good day for Europe, and it’s a good day for world peace,” he said in an address from the White House on Wednesday morning after signing the Ukraine-aid bill. Congress had reasserted America’s status as the “indispensable nation,” he said: “We don’t walk away from our allies; we stand with them. We don’t let tyrants win; we oppose them. We don’t merely watch global events unfold; we shape them.”

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🎥 PODCASTS AND VIDEOS 🎧

Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller: Mark Joseph Stern and Dave Weigel: A Bad Day for Jack Smith
Thursday Night Bulwark: Will SCOTUS Grant Trump Immunity? ← Live at 7pm Eastern.
George Conway Explains It All (to Sarah Longwell): Everyone needs to Calm Down about SCOUTS hearing

Did you know? Bulwark+ members can listen to an ad-free version of these podcasts on the player of their choice.

Learn more at Bulwark+ Podcast FAQ.

BILL RYAN: How Quentin Tarantino’s Self-Mythologizing Began

LAST WEEK, THE TRADES reported that Quentin Tarantino had abandoned his plans to make The Movie Critic. The movie, as it had been described in earlier reports, sounded interesting, and I, like many others, had been looking forward to it. But movies that have been publicly announced end up not being made for one reason or another all the time. Tarantino’s own career is littered with unrealized projects (Killer Crow, Kill Bill: Vol. 3, etc.), but The Movie Critic would have been, according to the ten-movie-limit Tarantino has imposed on his filmography, his tenth, and therefore last, picture. And since we now know it won’t be The Movie Critic, fans are left wondering what the final Tarantino movie will be. Many fans are also going the route of psychoanalyzing Tarantino, assuming that the director, having put a specific endpoint to his filmmaking career, is psyching himself out as he pursues what in his mind has to be the perfect Last Movie.

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KIM WEHLE: Here’s How Trump Will Try to Defend Himself in the Hush-Money Case.

GOING INTO THE FOURTH DAY of Donald J. Trump’s trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree, there’s a lot we’ve already learned. David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer and former CEO of its parent company, testified that in August 2015 he met with Trump and fixer Michael Cohen at Trump Tower where he says he was asked “what I can do and what my magazines could do to help [Trump’s 2016] campaign.” Pecker says he agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of the campaign. This opening testimony was critical to the government’s case for two reasons.

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🚨OVERTIME🚨

Happy Thursday! We’ll see you in a bit for our special SCOTUS TNB, which starts at 7 Eastern.

New from Hannah Yoest: The Speed Project: Feral Angel Edition 🔥

A.B. Stoddard joins The Blast with Greg Sargent… to discuss MAGA outrage against Mike Johnson.

For whom the bellwether tolls: Is Ohio an omen? Doug Oplinger wonders in the Ohio Capital Journal.

Things used to work in this country… Clare Coffey at The New Atlantis.

Having a Plan for When Shit Hits the Fan… A Journey in Prepping, by Kevin Curtin in The Austin Chronicle.

The Petty Feud… Between the NYT and the White House (Politico)

Slippery Slope… How Private Equity shaped a ski town (Harper’s).

A MESSAGE FROM THE CHANCELLOR… ON THE RECENT STUDENT PROTEST (McSweeney’s)

⌚️A $5 Columbia field watch… Bringing a #GoodwillFind back to life.

Pat Toomey is 🤏 this close… To getting it. Though, Nikki Haley might be the new ghost of Ronald Reagan. Now don’t you copy him, Larry Hogan! I want to see original, creative write in ideas from you.

A Chronicle reporter went undercover in high school... Everyone is still weighing the fallout.